Sunday Nov. 9^th, eight Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to end the shutdown. 

Despite the outrageous cruelty Trump wielded during the shutdown, including stopping food assistance to millions of Americans, Democrats had been both justified and moral in standing their ground. They were fighting to keep healthcare costs from doubling, tripling and even quadrupling for 24 million Americans. 

Last Tuesday, voters made it crystal clear that the fight for healthcare was resonating. Across the country, voters turned out for Democrats, and even Trump acknowledged that the shutdown negatively affected Republicans. It seemed like Democrats finally had leverage.

But instead of wielding this leverage and forcing Republicans to support healthcare, Senate Democrats folded. They caved to Republicans’ cruelty, with nothing but a promise that the Senate will vote on extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies—which we all know the Republican majority will reject, if they keep their promise at all. (Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has already stated that he won’t allow this vote in the House.)

We don’t know why Democrats caved. Maybe they truly are naive enough to believe that ending the shutdown would end Republicans’ assault on the most vulnerable. Or maybe they capitulated to elite pressure from a coalition of hotel chains, casinos, and convention bureaus, who urged them to end the shutdown before the most “economically important” travel week of the year. Or maybe they just utterly lack conviction. 

What we do know is that establishment Democrats won’t save us. They have consistently failed to protect us from anything, because they stand for nothing. They are too comfortable collecting their checks from donors and corporations, while ignoring the people they claim to represent. It is time, instead, for working class power—a party for the working class that believes our government can and should care for its citizens. 

The Seattle Democratic Socialists of America believe that food, housing, and healthcare are human rights. We believe in putting people over profits. And we know that we, the people, are worth fighting for. 

Stand for something. Join DSA today.

1. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-johnson-says-he-wont-promise-aca-vote-in-the-house-as-part-of-a-shutdown-deal
2. https://www.ustravel.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/UST25_Letter_ThanksgivingTravelShutdown_v6.pdf

The post Democratic Socialists Have Spines appeared first on Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.

In mid-August 2025, on a sweltering Chicago weekend, ringing with camaraderie, over 1200 socialists descended for the Democratic Socialists of America’s biennial National Convention. The Democratic Socialists of America or DSA is the largest socialist organization in the United States, boasting 80,000 members nationwide. DSA, democratically run by this membership, organized in different chapters, is on the front lines of building a better tomorrow through: labor organizing, international solidarity, standing up to America’s fascist administration, and many more actions. 

The National Convention is DSA’s highest decision-making body, where the next two years of direction is decided by delegates, elected by the membership of each chapter, and the National Political Committee is elected to shepherd DSA until the next Convention. From Silicon Valley DSA (SV DSA), there were 12 delegates, from veteran attendee Chapter Officers to DSA newcommers.

DSA has several diverse tendencies, many of them disagreeing on specific issues, often vehemently. However, there is still unity in this diversity, as all DSA members share a vision for a better tomorrow under socialism, no matter what form that takes. One visiting officer commented regarding this unity at the Convention, “Being surrounded by so many like minded comrades was an energizing experience”, demonstrating that DSA’s membership has more in common than it has differences.

At the Convention, DSA delegates deliberated and debated many resolutions, putting its democratic values into practice. One item that took more than a day to debate was Resolution 22: For a Fighting Anti-Zionist DSA, which would reaffirm a previous resolution to “Make DSA an Anti-Zionist Organization in Principle and Praxis.” Our Chapter’s delegates, by the democratic will of the Chapter, swore to vote “yes” on this Resolution and “no” on a controversial amendment, which some (including much of our Chapter) argued would dilute the intent of the original resolution. The resolution passed with a majority of 675-524 votes. This would earn DSA the praise of groups like Palestinian Youth Movement and outlets like Middle East Eye, who noted DSA’s evolution into a truly Anti-Zionist group devoted to Palestinian Solidarity.

Additionally, on Saturday afternoon, DSA hosted its first Cross-Organizational Political Exchange from 3 PM-6 PM, where groups were invited from all over to observe the convention and how DSA’s socialists conduct themselves within the Convention. Groups represented an entire section of the left, from activists like the Palestinian Youth Movement and Sunrise to American labor unions.

However, organizations were not only restricted to the US, as comrades from around the world came to the Convention. Some, like the Democratic Socialists of Canada, were smaller and sought to emulate DSA’s internal democracy in their own country. Others, though, were much larger, including well-known parties like Mexico’s MORENA, the current ruling party of the country, and La France Insoumise, most famously represented by Jean Luc Melencheon. Other guests included members of Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (PSOL) from Brazil and comrades from Japan, Belgium, and many more. 

In this diversity of groups though, was a unified message for comrades in DSA. Of their message, our officer said: “our comrades are looking to us and relying on us to do some major organizing. We are in the heart of the Empire, and the decisions of the United States impact the organizing terrain of everyone. It was humbling and inspiring to hear that people were counting on us to have an impact and shape the trajectory of the country and the world”. Additionally, he regarded the support of American organizations as proof that DSA and its members are not alone in seeking to build a better world.

The events at the Convention show that DSA has an important role to play in building a better tomorrow not only for America, but for the whole world. As Silicon Valley DSA’s delegates returned home, they brought many lessons with them. Some like Tyler N and Fred, nicknamed “The Red”, gained a newfound appreciation for Robert’s Rules, a code of conduct that DSA uses to run meetings. “The rigidity of Robert’s Rules is worth it for large meetings where some set of parliamentary rules is required for having any reasonable debate and when the motions considered feel consequential and conducive to debate,” Tyler said regarding the rules, with Fred adding, “in the right hands, Roberts Rules can be used to ensure everyone equal access to be heard, and to weed out disruptors, ego-trippers, and saboteurs”. Such were lessons taken by our delegates to the Convention.

Times may seem tough. The government is increasing its targeting and repression of dissenters and the marginalized with each and every day, stripping away our rights. Working people seem to have less and less power every day. However, a better world is possible. And based on the lessons our comrades brought home from convention, there is only one way: working together as comrades, side-by-side. For what is weaker than the feebler strength of one? And what is mightier than the power of the masses united?

The post Thoughts on our National Chapter Convention appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.

The High Peaks Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (HPDSA) mourns the lives of the more than 334 transgender and gender non-conforming people (TGNC) lost in 2025, including the more than 57 people who lived in the U.S. Many of those lost were trans people of color, a pattern that continues year after year, and a tragic reminder that we are failing the most vulnerable people in our communities. We are heartbroken by the loss of our comrades. 

We believe that trans people deserve to live free and full lives of peace, joy, and happiness without fear of being discriminated against, harmed, or even killed for how they choose to express their gender. We know that any lives lost–whether to direct or stochastic violence–represent a failure by all of us to address pressing issues within society. We ask everyone to stand up and defend our TGNC community at every opportunity, and push back against harmful anti-trans ideologies wherever they may appear.

We have seen an alarming increase in hateful rhetoric directed at TGNC people in 2025, along with tens of millions of dollars spent by political campaigns in recent elections to sour public opinion against them, with little political defense from the mainstream Democratic Party and its allies. Combined with influencers masquerading as experts and discredited or misrepresented studies being used as proof of harm, all backed by conservative think tanks and politicians funded with dark money, TGNC people have never been at greater risk. This damaging propaganda has led to trans people losing their jobs, new and vindictive restrictions on their ability to travel abroad safely, bans from participating in sports, and hundreds of thousands of TGNC youth losing access to life-saving medical care. Further potential injustices are a constant threat on the horizon.

“As a trans person myself, I feel the incredible pressure we’re under every day,” says Cayenne Wren, member of HPDSA. “We wake up, turn on the news, and we’re instantly confronted with unhinged social posts about us. Our very right to exist is endlessly debated about, even though we’re never included in those discussions. All too often we’re underemployed and unemployed, and when we do get a job, we are frequently harassed. Our greatest risk of harm is often from intimate partner violence and even our own family members. My heart breaks continuously for not only those we’ve lost, but also for my trans siblings who must continue to live with injustice every day of our lives. I love each and every one of you, and please know that you are never alone.”

For gay and bisexual individuals who fail to see the fight for trans liberation as central to the broader queer struggle, and for feminists who reject trans women as part of their coalition. Like Jewish liberal Zionists over the last two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, they will continue to find themselves ostracized further from the broader social justice movement, and forced into the untenable position of having to align politically with reactionary right-wing forces that subjugate them as well to uphold the white supremacist heteropatriarchal order.

HPDSA asks you to join us today in pledging to end all forms of violence against TGNC people. You can make a difference by directly donating to TGNC people in need, uplifting trans voices, showing up to public meetings to advocate for trans rights and inclusivity, being vocal against anti-trans propaganda, participating in local and state elections, and advocating for our elected officials to do more to protect TGNC in our state and provide a sanctuary for those individuals who face greater threats elsewhere. 

Together, we can make a difference in the lives of our most vulnerable community members and work towards a future where trans people can live openly and authentically without fear. 

Resources

• New York Name Change Guide

The post High Peaks DSA Honors Transgender Day of Remembrance appeared first on High Peaks DSA.

It can feel impossible to keep up with every DSA chapter across the country, even for our most active members. Luckily Democratic Left has you covered with chapter report updates from coast to coast, this time covering chapters with immigrant-rights campaigns and more. 

The post Fall 2025 Chapter Reports: Immigrant Rights and More appeared first on Democratic Left.

This article was first published in Power Map Magazine, and is being re-printed here with the author’s permission. We are including this piece as part of our ongoing debate in Maine DSA about candidates in 2026. Pine and Roses welcomes contributions. 

Earlier this year Maine Governor Janet Mills made national headlines when she quipped “see you in court” to Trump at the National Governors Association summit after he threatened the state over its laws that allow transgender athletes to play sports. In the bleak days of February, when it seemed like everyone was capitulating and few Democratic figures had yet to mobilize against the new administration, it was a bright moment for opponents of the president and trans people alike. For a relatively low profile governor from an otherwise sleepy state, it was also much of the country’s first introduction to Mills as a figure. Overnight she became a liberal icon. Sites selling shirts with her likeness and her now famous quote quickly cropped up.

Given her national reputation, one would assume that Mills’s entrance into next year’s Democratic primary race would galvanize Democrats across the political spectrum. From this outside perspective it would be easy to be confused as to why an alternative candidacy in Graham Platner so quickly ballooned when Mills was on offer. Many were quick to ascribe this to Mills’s advanced age or that Platner, as a burly white working class male type figure, had some intrinsic appeal. While both of these factors may have been in the mix, they don’t explain the full story. 

Missing from much of the discussion online is much substance about who Janet Mills actually is as a political figure. Afterall, there is a reason why I, a trans woman who is appreciative of Mills’s stance on Trump, and someone who is on the record as hating the hyper-masculine populist trend as a solution to our post-2024 woes, am so opposed to Mills’s candidacy and jumped on the Platner campaign (although now after tattoo-gate, I have jumped off it). And I am obviously not the only one, given a recent poll showing her behind by 34 points. The fact is that in Maine, and to those familiar with the state’s politics, our governor has a far more complicated history than her more recent image depicts. Far less paid attention to, for example, was what Mills was at the time doing with her powers as governor, such as (unsuccessfully) trying to cut funding for childcare, refusing to sign a bill that would end the state’s cooperation with ICE, or more recently, opposing a ballot question on Maine’s gun laws—changes being pushed in the wake of a mass shooting that claimed the lives of 18 people.

It would be easy to think from her comments to Trump that Mills is a liberal champion, but within Maine she is well understood as a moderate, leaning to the right of the Democratic Party (a party whose legislative caucus she frequently is out of step with). One should not expect her to be straightforwardly a safe vote as a senator under a hypothetical future Democratic administration trying to push anything like court packing, or trials for ICE agents. While she may not be quite the level of a Lieberman, a Manchin or a Sinema, Mills will almost certainly be in the bloc of moderate Senators who endlessly frustrate liberals with their positions, and will be a roadblock to progress—after all she’s already announced as much with her declared support for the retention of the filibuster.

It’s not uncommon for residents of a state, particularly politically active ones, to have a quite different perspective on a local figure than those looking in from elsewhere across the country. Yet the gap between how many progressives in Maine view Janet Mills, and those only familiar with her from the Trump incident, is wide and divergent. With her new national prominence, it’s worth exploring her history in detail.

First, we should give Mills a bit of credit: it was genuinely quite bold of her to stand up to Trump in the meeting. It is also not something out of character for her to do. As Attorney General, she was frequently at loggerheads with Governor Paul LePage, a far right Republican elected with only 37% of the vote, who has often been compared to the president. It was this record that helped propel Mills to victory in a crowded 2018 gubernatorial primary. And four years later she would face LePage in her 2022 reelection campaign in which she trounced him, attaining the highest vote share by a gubernatorial candidate since 1998 (and the largest by a Democrat since 1982). With Trump occupying the White House, these are certainly desirable traits in a candidate. 

At a time when trans people are under intense attack, and Democrats are under pressure to abandon trans people in the name of electability, that Mills chose to defend us is worth immense praise. Her actions put her in a tradition of Maine politicians standing up to authoritarianism, not unlike when Maragret Chase Smith (a family friend of the Mills family during her childhood) gave her Declaration of Conscience speech against McCarthyism in 1950. But it would also be a mistake to assume (as evidently many have) that the reason Mills did so is because she is a passionate defender of trans rights. Mills has a solid record on the issue—as much as any Democratic governor would—but as anti-trans bills were later introduced and debated in the Maine State Legislature, she would clarify her comments: “if [lawmakers] wish to change [the law], they have the authority to change it, but you don’t change it by executive order or by wishing it differently.” When asked about her personal stance on the issue, she declined to comment, saying the issue of trans children in sports was “worth of a debate, a full democratic debate.” Not exactly a full throated defense of trans people.

Instead these comments make clear Mill’s real passion: the law.

When Mills stood up to Trump, she wasn’t so much doing it out of strong conviction about trans issues, she was doing it because she was “complying with state and federal law.” Her disagreement with the president was around his use of executive orders to unilaterally change the law, something he straightforwardly does not have the power to do. This should not be surprising to anyone who knows Mills’s history. A graduate of Maine Law, Mills spent her whole career as a prosecutor, becoming the first female district attorney in New England in 1980, and culminating in her appointment as Maine’s Attorney General in 2009, which besides for a brief two year window, was an office she would continue to hold for the next decade. Like LePage before him, Mills is not going to simply let Trump get away with violating these laws, and the institutions she has spent decades defending and enforcing. To do so would go against the animating impulse that has defined her career. 

But there is a far darker side to Mill’s commitment to our legal institutions, and one that causes her to frequently clash with those in the state who want more out of our government and who are critical of the injustices that it has wrought. The clearest example of this is the issue of Wabanaki Sovereignty. 

Maine’s relationship with its indigenous nations can be described as rocky at best. Unlike all other federally recognized tribes, the four in Maine (the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, the Mi’kmaq Nation, the Penobscot Nation and the Passamaquoddy Tribe) have a unique set of rules that govern their relationship with the state. This is based on the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, a law passed by Congress to settle a dispute between the Wabanaki and the state government, and since then the state has used the settlement to deny these nations the sovereignty to which they are entitled. Because of this, the Wabanaki nations do not have the same rights and legal protections as sovereign nations that other federally recognized tribes hold, nor do they have the same access to federal benefits and programs, a fact that is hindering their economic development and causing the state to lose out on thousands of jobs.

In her role as governor, Mills has played a major role in enforcing this status quo, using her veto pen to oppose both sweeping legislation, and piecemeal reform. To be quite clear this is not a question of moderation on Mills part, nor is this a partisan issue, many Republicans as well as Democrats are quite supportive of changes to the law. LD958, the reform Mills vetoed earlier this year, was introduced by the Republican House Minority Leader, and passed by the majority Democratic legislature. Mills’s defense of the institution of Maine’s state government is something we may welcome when it comes under federal attack, but we can’t forget that it also limits what she is willing to support when it comes to changes, and that it leads her to support ugly, racist policies.

Since coming to office Mills has used her veto power against a wide variety of issues, covering everything from tenant protections, to the rights of farmworkers, to the rights of public sector workers (who she has been no friend to when it comes to wage negotiation). Glaringly, she vetoed a proposal to close down the infamously racist Long Creek facility, the state’s youth prison. This past session in addition to blocking the anti-ICE legislation mentioned previously, Mills also pushed back on expanding ranked choice voting to state offices (Maine only uses RCV for federal offices due to an obscure constitutional wording—again the law). One of the major wins of Mills’s time in office—paid family and medical leave—only happened with the threat of a ballot question hanging over it. Currently, as her senate campaign gets off the ground, she is doubling down on the state’s existing “yellow flag law,” a compromise that failed to prevent the 2023 mass shooting. Following that shooting, while even conservative Democratic Congressman Jared Golden was flipping on gun rights, Mills was vetoing a bump stock ban.

Her approach to the budgetary process has been similarly frustrating. While Republicans may try to frame her as such, Mills is certainly no tax and spend liberal and under her time in office, the state has taken an extremely fiscally cautious approach. During the boom years following the COVID-19 pandemic, as federal funds flowed to the states, rather than using the flush of cash the state had to improve things for residents, Mills instead opted to save, running up huge surpluses in the state’s budgets. In fact these surpluses were so significant (and continue to be so) that the state’s rainy day fund—an account where any excesses in state funds go—earlier this year reached its legal maximum. While the state’s accounts are filling up, under the guise of responsibility Mills has pushed for cuts to public services, and generally resisted funds for new programs. She has also been an opponent of new taxation, even vetoing a proposed bipartisan tax hike on the wealthy put forward by a Republican.

It should also be understood that while Mills has nothing but contempt for the LePages or the Trumps of the world, she doesn’t have the pure hatred of the GOP that the moment calls for. Coming from a Republican family, she endorsed her brother when he ran for governor in 2006. While this is somewhat understandable, more recently, and far more damningly, when asked about her soon to be opponent just a few months ago, Mills told reporters “I appreciate everything [Collins] is doing,” something the Collins camp is already taking advantage of in its ads.

It is obvious that our system is broken. Most Americans do not think it is working. Our institutions have failed to prevent Donald Trump from attempting to rule the country as a monarch. If Democrats return to power in 2028, a return to normalcy will not vanquish Trumpism anymore than it did in 2020, and we need elected officials willing to enact greater change if we hope to see it defeated. We need to be willing to overhaul our institutions if we want to protect our democracy. And that is not Janet Mills. She will speak out against authoritarianism—a brave and laudable thing to do—but will do little to go on the attack. As a trans woman living in Maine, I am incredibly thankful that Mills did not buckle when Trump threatened the state. Because of her actions (Maine did beat Trump in court) my community continues to be protected to an extent from a federal government that hopes to attack our existence. But with our country in crisis, her particular brand of politics is not suited for the moment. Electing Janet Mills in the hopes of getting the anti-Trump crusader, is likely to get you Janet Mills, the moderate lawyer. Having those sorts of senators is what got us into this mess in the first place.

The post Maine Voters Don’t Want Janet Mills for Senate. There’s a Reason for that. appeared first on Pine & Roses.

Trans workers face discrimination and bigotry on the job, but unions can provide the protection, benefits, and solidarity missing in non-union jobs.

The post Trans workers belong in unions appeared first on EWOC.

By: Jake S

Resident Advisors at Worcester Polytechnic Institute live in the student dormitories and offer services and resources to the students that live in their buildings to keep them safe and offer them help when they need it. RAs voted to form a union and affiliate with the United Auto Workers – the same union that represents graduate student workers at WPI – roughly two years ago, and have been in first contract negotiations with the university for the last year as WPI-RAU-UAW.

On October 31, they launched a strike demanding that WPI respond to their workplace needs and agree to a decent contract. 

Working Mass met with Zoey and Christian, two WPI-RAU members on the union’s bargaining committee, to learn more about their roles, their union, and what they need from WPI to do their jobs that WPI is refusing to give them.

WM: What makes these jobs important?

Zoey: At its core, this job is about people. It’s about being there for our residents in a number of ways and showing up to support them however we can.

WM: What kind of things do your residents come to you with?

Zoey: There’s a lot of things. Sometimes, they’ll talk to us if they’re really struggling with academics and they’re worried that they’re gonna fail their classes because they haven’t had enough sleep. Sometimes, they’ll come to us with mental health challenges or, you know, trouble with socializing on campus if they haven’t been able to make many connections or friends. We can direct them towards opportunities and resources and help with those things. In some cases, they come to us because it’s the middle of the night, and there’s an emergency that needs to be urgently dealt with, and they know that we’ll know how to handle it – someone’s suffering from alcohol poisoning, for example. We provide a peer that our residents can go to when they’re unsafe, or if they need access to help. We’re there in the dorms with them and they know that we’re a safe person they can go to.

Christian: The important piece is being there in the halls with the residents living alongside them throughout the academic year, because you have a chance to get to know them and build up trust and that sense that if something goes wrong – if they need to come to you for something urgent – you will be there to them and they feel comfortable coming to you for something that might be more serious.

WM: Why did you and your coworkers decide to form a union?

Christian: We formed the union about two years ago because a large percentage of the staff was really upset with constant and repeated changes to job expectations and responsibilities. There were several meetings over several months where management drastically changed what we were supposed to be doing and we got very – I believe rightly – upset with management over those repeated changes. The contract that we had originally signed did not align with the duties that we were now expected to perform. So, we formed our union in response to these actions taken by management.

We’ve been undergoing contract negotiations for nearly two years since.

WM: How has the University responded to that decision to organize?

Christian: We were moving towards our union election, and they just kind of didn’t.

WM: Sounds like they tried to ignore you!

Christian: There wasn’t very much of a response right after we had our election and our union was certified, either. We began our bargaining in late summer 2024. Not long into that process, there was an introduction of a pretty drastic restructuring of our positions that would fracture it into multiple different positions with totally different responsibilities. This particular piece has been a major part of what we’ve been fighting against for the past year, and is a major piece of why we’re on strike.

WM: Tell us more about your core demands.

Zoey: Like Christian said, the biggest thing is that we do not want this restructuring. They proposed it about a year ago, and they have made almost no changes to it, or movement on it, since they initially proposed it. And we have been steadfastly opposed to it the whole time because the positions are not well thought-out, they are not fully developed and ready to be put into practice. It’s barely a prototype that’s not ready for real-world use.

WM: You just had a bargaining session this past Monday in which they have not moved on that position around restructuring of the unit. Do you want to talk more about how it went today? 

Christian: Absolutely. Our bargaining committee has worked tirelessly to put together a full written contract proposal that has had significant and meaningful movement on our positions. We believe that the contract that we put together and presented to them today would benefit our whole community. The most important piece to us, of course, is those three roles WPI wants to recategorize us into. The solution we proposed to resolve that was to put their half-baked roles on pause and, for the duration of this contract, keep the positions as they are. But we proposed to form a committee that would do it the right way, modifying their proposed positions or developing something new with feedback from res advisors, residents, and housing staff to put together something that makes sense for all WPI residents. This was totally rejected by management, and they maintain their commitment to the positions that they’ve proposed, and still have not been moving on them whatsoever.

They claim that our proposal with this committee doesn’t meet anywhere in the middle. We disagree.

We have been steadfastly opposed to it the whole time because the positions are not well thought-out, they are not fully developed and ready to be put into practice.

WM: What do you think is motivating the restructuring of this unit?

Zoey: We’ve heard a lot of things over the months. One thing they said is that they’re not doing it for monetary reasons. They believe that the RA role as it is isn’t good enough, and they want to “modernize” it. Maybe their idea is meant to be some sort of new flashy thing that they want to advertise. It seems like it might just be sort of the pet project of the Dean of Students.

During bargaining, the Dean of Students talked with us a bit about why she’s sticking to this vision, and it was something that we’ve heard from her a bit before. Basically, it’s that four years ago or so WPI had a pretty serious mental health crisis. There were seven suicides in a period of six months. This was during the COVID pandemic, a very tumultuous time in the world, and in that span of time somebody at WPI talked to some RAs and heard that RAs were struggling to do everything that they were doing. They were expected to do too much. And this is apparently what they think the solution to that looks like. Meanwhile, we have our RAs and our whole community speaking out to tell them that this is not the path forward. 

WM: It’s interesting that, under crisis, WPI is moving to eliminate the RA role rather than to address the needs of their RAs with more support – hiring more of you, for example. A friend of mine used to serve as an RA at WPI, and it seemed like he was on call basically all the time for his floor. It was a very stressful, demanding job that didn’t give a whole lot back to him. Do you believe them when they say at the bargaining table that this has nothing to do with money?

Christian: It’s hard to know for sure exactly what they’re thinking, but of course there’s a monetary aspect to this. I mean, WPI has a lot of money… the endowment alone is massive and always growing. WPI just bought two new hotels to turn into new student housing, and we have tons of grants that continue to flow in to support different programs. I really can’t imagine why they would want to do a restructuring of our roles that they know could harm residents unless it would be for financial gain.

WPI just bought two new hotels to turn into new student housing, and we have tons of grants that continue to flow in to support different programs. I really can’t imagine why they would want to do a restructuring of our roles that they know could harm residents unless it would be for financial gain.

They claim it’s not, they claim it’s for these other reasons, but they haven’t made any movement based on the feedback anyone has given them on the basis of their supposed reasoning. That’s what we saw at the bargaining table again today. So, it makes it really hard to believe that there isn’t a financial incentive, or at least some ulterior goal from the upper administration that they’re trying to accomplish.

WM: Do you think it also has something to do with employer control in the workplace?

Zoey: Absolutely, I would say it does. In their insistence on sticking to these roles, really what they’ve been saying is that they believe it is their right to unilaterally decide what the job descriptions are, and they universally have the right to create any additional roles or additional job descriptions without talking to us about it beforehand.

As WPI’s previous president left the position, she took home a compensation package of just over $2 million. Converted to an hourly wage for a 40-hour work week, that’s nearly $1,000 an hour. Res advisors are not currently paid a wage or stipend. Many of its next top earners are administrators being paid base salaries deep into the six figures. The school’s endowment sits at nearly $650 million; its total assets held, roughly $1.3 billion.

In February of this year, WPI was recognized as an R1 research university, distinguishing it as an institution that produces a high number of doctorates and has significant resources at its disposal for funding academic research. Room and board costs for first-year students (who are required by the school to live in the dorms) have ballooned to more than $16,000 for a single academic year. And over the last ten years, undergraduate tuition has climbed steadily from roughly $45,000 to just over $60,000, representing an increase of over 30% – more than double the average rate of undergraduate tuition increase across Massachusetts.

Jake S is a Worcester DSA member and a former member of United Auto Workers (UAW).

The post WPI Resident Advisors On Strike Against Destructive Restructuring and Unionbusting appeared first on Working Mass.

This opinion piece is part of an ongoing debate in Maine DSA about candidates in 2026. Pine and Roses welcomes contributions. 

“[O]ur notion, from the very beginning, was that ‘the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself[.]’” — Friedrich Engels, 1888 Preface to the Communist Manifesto

Troy Jackson is a man that needs very little introduction within the labor movement in Maine. Troy has spent nearly half of his life in public service, having been first elected to the Maine State House of Representatives in 2002, and the State Senate in 2008, where he eventually became Senate President in 2018. During his entire time in public office, Troy has earned a reputation as a stalwart ally to Maine’s working class. 

When I first heard about Troy, I was quite dismissive. I quietly entered the labor movement with a lengthy article on the need for an independent working class party, so when I heard some of my comrades gushing about Troy as the latest reform candidate running on the ticket of a bourgeois party, I assumed that they were describing a certain kind of political candidate and electoral strategy which I had already thoroughly criticized. My position changed, however, when I had the opportunity of hearing Troy speak at the Maine AFL-CIO’s summer institute, and I saw that Troy was actually something completely different from what his supporters had described to me.

What makes Troy Jackson’s gubernatorial campaign qualitatively different from those of other reform candidates is this: unlike other mainstream reform candidates like Zohran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, and Graham Platner, all of whom demand systemic reforms which would benefit the working class while leaving intact the system that dominates the working class, Troy’s campaign is actually demanding worker control over the levers of political power, albeit still within the bounds of the existing political system. In doing so, Troy has actually fused the economic side of the struggle for working class emancipation with its political counterpart, as opposed to “lending the economic struggle a political character” (Cosmonaut Magazine). In this regard, Troy stands leagues above every mainstream reform candidate in my opinion, even above Sanders, who Troy names as one of his personal influences. It is for this reason that I think Troy is worthy of endorsement by all self-described socialist and/or communist organizations.

Now Troy is very much not a Marxist, nor any other kind of socialist or communist, nor does Troy pretend to be any of these things. He therefore does not articulate his demand for working class political power in the same terms that my comrades and I would use. It is apparent in his speeches that Troy is driven by lived experience and intuition rather than a scientific critique of the status quo. Any excerpt I present from Troy’s speeches could therefore never make my entire argument for me, as they demand to be viewed in their full context. Nevertheless, I find the following excerpts from his speech at Bernie Sanders’ Labor Day rally in Portland to be highly illustrative, as they punctuate the end of a speech where Troy talks about the lessons he learned as a fifth-generation logger about the importance of the working class taking collective action to advance its own interests:

“I’m running because it’s time to put power back in the hands of people[…] We know that the only way to build our future, the future we want, is if we build it ourselves! That’s why this campaign isn’t just about sending me to the Blaine House, it’s about sending each and every one of you coming along with me, to restore our dignity, and fix what’s been broken for too damn long![…] It’s about time for real folks to take the wheel! Hell, we built the wheel!”

There are many socialists, however, who will acknowledge that while there is clearly a lot to like about Troy, the fact that he is not running on the ticket of an independent working class party disqualifies him from some, if not all, forms of support. While this is very close to my own general position towards socialist electoral participation, and I agree on the concrete need to establish an independent working class party which fields its own candidates in elections, the path to get there must be developed according to the time and place in which we find ourselves. Supporting a position with a strong argument is not enough to bring about change in the world—oh what a different place the world would be if that were the case!

Those who argue a priori for an independent working class party, while correct about the concrete necessity of such a party, forget that such a party has no social basis so long as the working class has not realized the impossibility of consistently advancing its interests in parties consisting of both bosses and workers, such as the Democratic Party (Cosmonaut Magazine). 

Here in Maine, the most advanced section of the working class, represented by Troy and the labor unions, are currently tied very closely to the Democratic Party. I know this quite well because I have conversed with numerous Democratic Party activists at the Maine AFL-CIO events which I have attended. The same phenomenon becomes apparent at the national level when looking at national political fundraising data available on OpenSecrets. It’s an arrangement which, owing to favorable conditions, has worked well for the Maine AFL-CIO, as it has successfully gotten numerous union members elected to seats in the state legislature on the Democratic Party ticket.

The organized and disorganized sections of the working class cannot be won over with argument alone, but must arrive at our conclusion themselves. Socialists need to aid this development by engaging in struggle and agitation alongside the workers and their representatives in the unions. To argue otherwise is to essentially insist that the working class must come to us socialists for our support. Those who commit this error forget these salient words from the Communist Manifesto:

“In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.” — Communist Manifesto section 2

This is where Troy and his campaign once again enter the picture, as his campaign has already become a scene for class struggle in the political arena.

Though it is not always the deciding factor in elections, the candidate whose campaign succeeds in raising the most money generally stands a very good chance at winning their election. And since the capitalist class has the most money, the fundraising data disclosed by political candidates serves as an indicator of which candidates are preferred by the capitalist class (Cosmonaut Magazine).

At the time of writing, the available fundraising data for the most prominent candidates in the gubernatorial race is as follows: 1) Hannah Pingree (Dem.): $542,000; 2) Shenna Bellows (Dem.): $529,000; 3) Angus King III (Dem.): $434,000; 4) Troy Jackson (Dem.): $400,000; 5) Robert Charles (Rep.): $257,000; 6) Richard Bennett (Ind.): $202,000 (Maine Ethics Commission).

Were it not for small donations raised through his connections to Maine’s working class institutions, Troy would not even be on this list. It is quite telling that despite having spent the most time in office and having the most endorsements of anyone currently running on the Democratic ticket, Troy is currently being out-fundraised by someone as formidably unimpressive as Angus King III—son of former Maine Governor and sitting US Senator Angus King. The fact that Troy ranks fourth in fundraising despite being the strongest candidate clearly indicates that the capitalist class will only tolerate working people in government so long as they remain subordinate to a non-working class executive, mirroring the condition of working people in the economy more generally. Troy’s considerable resumé is irrelevant to the capitalist class. They don’t care that Troy has been a faithful Democrat for over 20 years. They don’t care that Troy is probably the candidate who is most representative of the average Mainer. They would rather have a vegetable like Angus King III in the Blaine House—leave it to the guy with the surname King to campaign on nothing other than birthright!

What excites me about Troy’s campaign is precisely what Maine’s capitalist class disdains most about Troy’s campaign: Troy Represents the conscious self-activity of the working class advancing its own interests in the political arena. I do not expect miracles from Troy if he is elected. For me, Troy has already performed his most important miracle by making his campaign a demand for direct working class political power. I know Troy isn’t the socialist movement’s ideal candidate, but he doesn’t need to be in this case. If Troy becomes Governor, Maine’s working class gets the opportunity to witness the limitations of advancing its own interests within a bourgeois government; that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for [their] own purposes” (The Civil War in France). If Troy loses in the party primaries, then it will demonstrate to Maine’s working class the problems of trying to advance working class interests in a party consisting of workers and owners—something already hinted at by the fundraising data shown above. Hence my frequent refrain when comrades ask me what I think of Troy: Maine’s working class takes a step forward whether he wins or loses. And as Marx would say: “[e]very step of real movement is more important than a dozen programs” (Letter to Bracke).

The post The Case for Troy Jackson appeared first on Pine & Roses.

Imagine that in the poorest neighborhoods of Detroit, Atlanta, and Chicago, you could find a public park with glistening swimming pools, world-class sports and recreation facilities, and spectacular landscape architecture rather than vacant lots. If you are a single mother, rather than being forced  to lug your clothes blocks away to pay to wash your clothes, you can come to a public, well-maintained, space to do your laundry for free while you eat delicious food grown at the agroecological garden nearby. Meanwhile, your children can learn how to swim, attend workshops on how to grow food in the city, hit up the planetarium to learn how Mayan Cosmology relates to the Big Bang, hang out at the skate park, or take a guitar lesson.

As you eat your lunch and do your laundry, there is a staffer whose job it is to talk to you and be on the lookout for any whiff of domestic violence in your life. If you are dealing with domestic violence, right next door is a counselor who can help you. Imagine in this scenario, somewhere in the most gutted sections of U.S. cities, you can have access to an expert lawyer should you need one. Regardless of what you’re dealing with at home, you are welcome to see the massage therapist and acupuncturist in this same public building, a space for women known as Casa Siemprevivas. She doesn’t just provide you with bodywork, but will teach these practices to fifteen of your neighbors and friends so that you can use this space for peer-support bodywork circles. These are spaces where emotional release through laughter and crying are encouraged. All of this is free and funded by the government.

In the U.S., this kind of investment in such expansive public services remains imaginary, for now, but it is very much real and operating efficiently in Mexico City under the leadership of the MORENA party of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, the left-wing populist leader of the country. 

Such public institutions in Mexico are called “Units for Transformation and Organization for Inclusion and Social Harmony” or UTOPIAs for short. There are now sixteen of these, at present exclusively in Mexico City’s most populous and poorest borough of Iztapalapa. Virtually all UTOPIAs provide services for women dealing with domestic violence, harm-reduction forward centers for drug users, spaces to support queer and trans folks, community centers for the elderly, and workshops to support men in deconstructing toxic masculinity – which in practice involves teaching men whose relationships are in terminal decline or men who have become single fathers due to unforeseen tragedy, how to do things like wash dishes, fry eggs, or braid hair. No small thing.

Each UTOPIA  has a range of other specialized services. For example, UTOPIA La Libertad, sited directly behind a prison wall, has a petting zoo and a planetarium. UTOPIA Meyehualco, occupying what used to be an extensive park full of soccer fields for use by exclusive leagues only, now has a large animatronic dinosaur park (yes, you read that right) and a hockey rink. UTOPIA Olini hosts extensive manicured ponds, a tidepool, and gym that’s the home field for an outstanding breakdancing squad. UTOPIA Estrella Huizachtépetl sits atop a reclaimed drainage area from a water treatment facility that has been converted into an extensive wetland ecosystem. And UTOPIA Quetzacoatl, sited unusually across multiple discontinuous buildings and spaces in a dense urban area, has a strong focus on children’s mental health services, with an art therapist on staff. Some of the UTOPIAs have regular workshops supporting residents, especially women, in forming small businesses and cooperatives under the banner of the ‘solidarity economy.’

In the following section, I will share more stories of how people use and benefit from the services provided at the UTOPIAS based on several months of research on the ground in Mexico. My aim is to expand our collective imagination in the United States and elsewhere in the imperial core about what a robust urban commons of care can look like. In addition, I hope to share the deeper history of working class organizing and struggle that made these programs a reality. Despite the many differences between our organizing contexts, I suggest that US organizers have much to learn from organizers who have built mass power in Mexico.  

Stories from below: how the UTOPIAs improve the lives of working people

With all of these free social services on offer with a strongly anti-carceral, feminist, and ecological inflection to boot, it is no wonder that the UTOPIAs have garnered attention among international left-wing circles as a concrete example of what municipal ecosocialist politics can look like.  As part of my research in urban political ecology, I’m now spending a sabbatical semester here and I’m basing this article on visits to eight of the sixteen UTOPIAs and interviews with a range of staffers, users, and functionaries.

Across these visits and interviews, an unambiguously positive picture emerged. Mental health counselors told me about how they were able to spend far more time with clients working at the UTOPIAs than they had been working at understaffed clinics. 

An OB-GYN who rotated among the UTOPIAs believed that she was finally able to do what she went to school to do: “bring reproductive justice directly to the people.”

A farmer on staff at UTOPIA La Libertad shared that his agroecological vision for the future was that “cities can and must grow their own food.”

An elderly woman told me that the workshops on death and dying provided her with community and solace after her husband passed. 

A 24-year old butcher who used to be addicted to heroin got clean thanks to the harm reduction and counseling services at UTOPIA Teotongo, and he now goes to the site at least once a week to assist the on-site shaman in conducting temazcal sweat lodge ceremonies. He explained, “the UTOPIAs provided me with a life that I could have never imagined before.”

A group of teenage girls who started a punk rock band confirmed that there was no way they could have done so without the free instruments and practice spaces provided by the UTOPIA.

The UTOPIAs also demonstrate that expanding the urban commons of care-giving does not need to be expensive. The government of Iztapalapa has stated that each UTOPIA cost $100 million pesos (about $5 million USD) to build, with an operating budget of about $1 million USD. Even if these figures are underestimates, and even if they were ten times higher in the United States due to higher prices for materials and labor, the numbers would still not be very burdensome when you consider the billions that our big cities spend on cops and tax breaks for the rich.

As I spoke to workers and users of the UTOPIAs and asked about how these spaces were built, one name came up consistently: Clara Brugada, the former mayor of Iztapalapa and now Head of Government of all of Mexico City. I was told by mental health workers, retirees, hydroponic technicians, and site administrators that the UTOPIAs were the brainchild of Brugada, and that it was through her vision and through the sheer force of her political will, backed as it was by the people, that the UTOPIAs were built. 

The consensus that I heard was so widespread that it felt silly to simply deny it , even if it seemed implausible that a single individual could compile such a radical set of diverse services related to issues as varied as mental health, science education, and urban agriculture. But still, something seemed incomplete – so I dug deeper. Through my research into the recent history of Mexico City’s politics,  it became clear that there was in fact a mass movement that shaped the city’s urban political matrix, developed and piloted many of the initiatives commonly found at the UTOPIAs today, and in a significant way directly produced Clara Brugada. It’s called the Urban Popular Movement. 

The Urban Popular Movement and MORENA: political organization in the wake of neoliberalism

Decades before the MORENA party took shape, a far more scattered constellation of urban organizations were fighting for working people’s immediate demands for titles to their land, water services, and electricity. But in some instances, these organizations went beyond fighting for immediate political demands, and also experimented with and ultimately built direct services to improve people’s lives. They created centers for women dealing with domestic violence, grew food, regenerated urban forest ecosystems, and provided harm reduction services for drug users. In essence, they built many of the elements that we now find, at scale, across the UTOPIAS.

That urban organizers in Mexico City managed to create a forceful social movement with real political muscle under these conditions should give us further confidence that we can too.

The Urban Popular Movement itself built political power among the city’s disenfranchised squatters, the informally employed urban poor, and other working class people clinging to some semblance of normality and dignity.  This movement grew in the fertile soils of urban disaffection with the decades of pro-capital rule by the Institutional Party of the Revolution(the PRI) and subsequent conservative opposition. 

The ruling PRI party had historically maintained its power from the late 1940s all through the 1990s and even part of the 2000s through a corporatist structure built on three organizational pillars under its strict control: theConfederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos (CTM), representing labor, the Confederación Nacional de Campesinos (CNC) representing peasants, and the Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Populares (CNOP) representing urban middle classes, “civil society” organizations, and, in theory, the urban poor. 

By the 1980s, though, large numbers of Mexico City residents were neither in industrial unions nor were they meaningfully represented by the CNOP. For those of us living in the United States in the 21st century, this likely sounds very familiar: union density has plummeted in our own country since the 1980s, and ‘civil society’ organizations have gradually receded from popular life.  

Just like in the United States, by the 1980s the labor movement in Mexico was a shadow of its militant past.  The CTM formed in the crucible of the 1930s. The progressive president Lázaro Cárdenas established the organization with the aim of bringing together the more militant and communist-inflected industrial proletariat with more independent workers in the transit sector and those working for smaller businesses. But after the rightist Miguel Alemán Valdés came to power in 1946, he rechristened the official party as the Institutional Party of the Revolution(the PRI) and set out to purge militants from organized labor. He appointed Alfonso Ochoa Partida, nicknamed “el charro” for his love of the Mexican rodeo sport of charrería, as the head of the CTM to carry out these purges. To this day, flat-footed pro-capital unions are known as “sindicatos charros” in Mexico. These capital-friendly unions remained powerful political forces throughout the economic halcyon years of relatively prosperous Import Substitution Industrialization during the 1950s and 1960s. 

This era of relative class harmony held together by the PRI’s corporatist structure started to unravel in the late 1960s. The 1968 Tlaltelolco and subsequent Halconazo massacres of student activists, followed by the dirty war of the 1970s carried out by José López Portillo, created a crisis of political legitimacy for the PRI. Despite the relatively moderate demands of the student movement for political reform, the PRI was unwilling to tolerate any challenge to their corporatist hegemony. The PRI’s crisis of political legitimacy was supercharged by the global economic crisis of the late 1970s, which sounded the death-knell for Import Substitution Industrialization that had maintained rising standards of living in the postwar decades. These combined crises spelled the beginning of the end for the PRI, and created political openings for left-wing opposition to organize and build.

During the 1970s and 1980s, radical organizers and students who had fled to the countryside during the repressive days of the Dirty War had been hard at work carrying out rural political education programs, often inspired by the Maoist mass line theory.  Many peasants already had existing radical commitments anchored in the legacy of Emiliano Zapata, the militant champion of peasant land rights from Mexico’s revolutionary days. Such commitments were reinforced by their lived experiences of rural economic struggle over the years. 

As the 1970s economic crises began to make rural livelihoods less viable, tens of thousands of these newly dispossessed peasants began to move to the outskirts of Mexico City. While these new arrivals were poor, lacked formal political power, and were highly vulnerable to the predations of greedy landlords, they were far from passive actors. They brought their radical political analyses with them and quickly began to form politicized community organizations. As the legitimacy of formal avenues for popular urban political participation collapsed, these organizations grew into the Urban Popular Movement. 

The story of thirty-year-old Enrique Cruz, a militant with one of the organizations of the Urban Popular Movement known as the UPREZ (the Emiliano Zapata Popular Revolutionary Union), helps shed light on this history. He explained to me, 

I’m an Indigenous Soque-speaker and I was born in Oaxaca. My parents and grandparents were deeply involved in the struggle against gold and silver mining that was destroying our land and threatening the ecosystems we cared about. When I moved to the city, I found a school run by the UPREZ adorned with murals of Emiliano Zapata, and I knew that these were my people. Through the UPREZ, I gained a strong political education and became an organizer fighting for dignified housing, providing direct education and political education to others, and working on other issues.

Organizations like the UPREZ emerged in the 1980s, and became especially strong in the aftermath of the catastrophic 1985 earthquake that sparked a wave of urban mutual aid activity. One of the strongest of these organizations is known as the Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo (the Union of Settlers of San Miguel Teotongo), located in the far northeast corner of Iztapalapa on the edge of Mexico City.  

When I visited their community center and office to examine their archives in August and explained that I was interested in the history and political consequences of the UTOPIAs, staffer Marco Antonio Flores informed me that “If you’re interested in the UTOPIAs, you’ve come to the right place. Much of what you see in the UTOPIAs – services for women facing domestic violence, support for drug users, agroecology – we piloted those things, experimented, and developed them starting in the 1980s. To see them widespread and supported by the government now is a wonderful thing.” 

On first encountering the UTOPIAs, there were some things that seemed familiar. In my political and academic work, I have seen an impressive range of projects with similar aims, from scrappy anarchist outfits doing land projects, to non-profit sexual health and harm-reduction centers, to community-based agriculture organizations. But to see these things, and so much more, packaged together and brought to scale with the full muscle of the state behind them felt like something quite different. 

What made these organizations successful in not only fighting for basic urban services and also finding a foothold in national and city politics? I asked Marco Antonio why his organization seemed to be so robust and so persistent, with such a strong presence in the community today, while other member organizations of the Urban Popular Movement seemed to have disbanded. He responded, “In the 1980s, many of the organizations focused narrowly on demanding land titles, water hookups, electricity, and even rent control. Once some of those demands were met, they didn’t have much of a reason to continue. Our focus was larger: we fought for basic rights but also built  a vibrant community center with a more expansive goal of providing for the well-being of community members in a comprehensive way.” 

Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada herself is of this movement. While she was a student, she began organizing with Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo. She worked to organize for basic services like electricity, water, and sewage. According to an elder woman organizer who has lived in the community since the 1970s, Brugada played a critical role as a young strategist in the early 1980s. She pushed their group to lobby the government to fulfill these demands, in addition to self-organizing to provide services that the state would not.

In the 1990s, Brugada was a leader in a campaign to repurpose a women’s prison that also held political prisoners during the dirty war into a preparatory school. This campaign, which we might today describe as ‘abolitionist,’ ultimately succeeded and the school was inaugurated in the year 2000. While they fought for land titles, Brugada continued to organize with the Unión de Colonos to establish a community center to support women dealing with domestic violence, to restore urban ecosystems, and to provide support for drug users.

Here, there is a larger lesson for the US left, for DSA, and perhaps even more specifically for an incoming Zohran Mamdani administration in New York City. We have movements in our cities that are building the capacity for mass, militant mobilizations. These include the tenant movement and the labor movement. But they also include innovative projects carried out by community-based groups focused on environmental justice, reproductive justice, agroecology, and more. 

In other words, the community organizations of Iztapalapa that endured the test of time and won durable political power didn’t just fight for things like rent control and basic urban sanitation, as vital as those things were. They also directly built the means of providing urban community care with scarcely any resources, and in doing so ensured that when a political opening came about, their ideas and practices would be right there on the table for sympathetic political forces to run with. 

These groups intentionally built partnerships with people who would eventually build the MORENA party and become part of the state apparatus. As the MORENA party consolidated power, these groups were therefore integrated into municipal governance rather than kept on the periphery. 

Existing community organizations and the battle for the urban commons

Each of the UTOPIAs is situated in a neighborhood with a particular political and economic history. While the Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo was a powerful and visionary force for community organizing and development, other UTOPIAs had significant if less persistent community organizations in place. Many UTOPIAs are sited on formerly abandoned lots and parks. The Tecoloxtitlan and Papalotl UTOPIAs, for example, were both sited in empty urban fields that used to be black markets for stolen auto parts. 

The programming coordinator from UTOPIA Papalotl, Rodrigo Castellano Hernández, shared  that starting in the late 2000s, a group of community members came together to start running youth programming around the community. They offered martial arts classes and started to experiment with urban agriculture. By the time that Clara Brugada became the mayor of Iztapalapa, there were already robust community efforts in place to reclaim the site for positive and care-forward community activities. 

Likewise, in UTOPIA Tecoloxtitlan, a group of neighbors combined community resources to start a center for special education and an Alcoholics Anonymous center in the park, self-organizing community labor to clean up the dilapidated urban field. And in UTOPIA Meyehualco, which was built in a park that was previously available only for private soccer league members. The municipal government, alongside allied community organizations, organized to secure this land for free public use despite objections from the private club members who sought to maintain their complete ownership over the property.

In cities in the United States, the specific process of finding space for projects like this would likely look very different than it did in Iztapalapa. At the same time, US cities do have considerable leeway over municipal budgets, even if the ruling classes have been terribly successful at maintaining funding cops rather than care year in and year out. But radical movements in the US have demonstrated that things need not be this way. From teachers striking for better conditions over the past 15 years, to abolitionist campaigns in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, our own movements have revealed that municipal budgets can be meaningful sites of class struggle.

It is worth emphasizing that the UTOPIAs do not merely function as an organ of the MORENA party and Mayor Clara Brugada. Radical community organizations use the spaces to organize independent political power too. In September, I attended an event at UTOPIA Paplotl put on by one of the most important member organizations of the UPREZ, Enrique’s organizing home. In a packed auditorium of about five hundred people hailing from dozens of smaller community-based organizations and cooperatives focused mainly on housing issues, the leaders of the UPREZ formally inducted these groups and their many working class members into their organization. 

One of the founders and movement elders of the URPEZ, Jaime Rello, described how these mass movements relate to the UTOPIAs and the MORENA party succinctly:

Comrades, the UTOPIAS are the synthesis of all this experience and struggle of more than 57 years since the 1968 movement. Our comrade Clara, who emerged from the popular movements and the Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo, learned well from all this experience of struggle and now puts it into practice. But that’s not enough, comrades, if there isn’t a strong movement to continue to fight for these issues, because the pressures that we face and that Clara faces from the right, the pressures we face from the interests of capital, are very strong. 

Our organizations are not built solely by leaders. Our organizations are built by everyone. We need everyone to contribute and put the collective interest before our individual interests. We have come as far as we have because of  thousands and thousands of social activists who have dedicated their lives to transforming this country and this city.

The UPREZ and the larger Urban Popular Movement are undeniably allied with the MORENA party. Clara Brugada herself came from these working class movements of Iztapalapa. Nonetheless, it is clear that these organizations are not demobilizing simply because one of their own is in power. The relationship between these mass organizations and the MORENA government could serve as a model for how DSA and other left organizations might relate to a Zohran Mamdani mayoralty or similar administrations: using the spaces, resources, and platforms provided by such an administration to fiercely organize for the rights of workers and tenants, to build independent centers of community power, and to develop a robust urban commons of care both within and outside of the state.

The historical roots of the UTOPIAs show us that community-driven initiatives to care for one another can be elevated and brought to scale by the state when conditions are right. It is not necessary to build good ideas for community care, urban agroecology, and physical and mental well-being from scratch. Many organizations have been doing this work. With relatively modest funding from the state, they can blossom into serious programs available to the masses. In the U.S. context, we can find similar types of local and regional organizations that have the vision and experience that could help  our versions of UTOPIAs flourish.

Armed with visions of community care similar to what has been realized in Mexico City along with the growing political muscle of DSA, we are in a position to fight for precisely these things in our cities. We should seize this opportunity, in New York City, and across the country.

Bibliography:

In addition to interviews and field observations, this piece draws heavily on the following books on the urban history of Mexico City:

• Davis, Diane. 1994. Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century. Temple University Press.

• Gerlofs, Ben. 2023. Monstrous Politics: Geography, Rights, and the Urban Revolution in Mexico City. Vanderbilt University Press.

• Vitz, Matthew. 2020. A City on a Lake: Urban Political Ecology and the Growth of Mexico City. Duke University Press.