Upcoming Events

Wednesday, March 26 (6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Intro to Socialism (Zoom)

Thursday, March 27 (5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.): Education Board Open Meeting (Zoom)

Thursday, March 27 (5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group (Zoom)

Saturday, March 29 (1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialism Reading Group: Ten Myths About Israel (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Sunday, March 30 (12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.): Spanish for Organizers (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Sunday, March 30 (1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.): Know Your Rights Canvassing (Meet at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, March 31 (5:50 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Electoral Board Meeting (Zoom)

Monday, March 31 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, March 31 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Tuesday, April 1 (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Turnout Tuesday for Vision Drive (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, April 2 (6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): New Member Happy Hour at Zeitgeist (In person at Zeitgeist at 199 Valencia)

Thursday, April 3 (7:00 pm. – 8:00 p.m.): Immigration Justice Working Group Meeting (Zoom)

Saturday, April 5 (12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): Chapter Local Vision and Strategy Meeting (Location TBD)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates.

Events & Actions

Turnout Tuesday on 3/25 (Today!) for Spanish for Organizers

Join your comrades in making calls and sending texts to let folks know about the upcoming Spanish for Organizers training. We’ll be meeting at 1916 McAllister today (Tuesday, March 25) from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. RSVP here!

Spanish for Organizers

Join the Immigrant Justice Working Group for Spanish for Organizers! Come learn and practice basic Spanish phrases for organizing. All skill levels welcome. We’re meeting on Sunday, March 30, at 12:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister. See you there!

Can’t make it to Spanish for Organizers or are feeling extra inspired to encourage turnout? Come through for our Turnout Tuesday on March 25 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister. We’ll be making calls and sending texts to let folks know about the Spanish for Organizers training. RSVP here.

Capital Reading Group

DSA SF has started a Marx’s Capital reading group! We’ll be meeting every other Sunday from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister St. and also on Zoom. We’ll meet on April 6th to cover Chapter 1. We’re reading the new translation published by Princeton University Press. You can also join the #capital-rdg-group-2025 channel on the DSA SF Slack for additional information and discussion!

Socialist Job Fair Reportback

Our first socialist job fair was a huge success! On Sunday, March 16, we had 140 registered attendees come down to the Unite-HERE Local 2 HQ to learn about union, worker co-op, organizing, and salting job opportunities from representatives of 14 union locals and organizations. Facilitating this matchmaking and engagement not only helps job-seeking socialists and bolsters worker power in the city economy, it provides an alternative job pipeline that challenges the logic of capitalist exploitation. More to come!

If you’re interested but were unable to make it, or want to follow up and need contact info, reach out to the Labor Working Group at labor@dsasf.org.

Behind the Scenes

The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and newsletter, etc. Members can view current CCC rotations.

To help with the day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running, fill out the CCC help form.

by Gregory Lebens-Higgins

We live in a world of detachment; disconnected from our material surroundings, separated from one another, and desperately seeking distraction from our isolation. The unease is measured in deaths by alcohol and suicide, the frequency of mass shootings, and hours spent looking at our phones. An “epidemic of loneliness” is decried in mainstream media, but with incomplete analysis and stunted solutions. Unsurprisingly, “Work … appears to be of little help.”

This condition of alienation emanates from capitalism, circulating through the system and shaping the way we live and relate to one another. Capitalism perpetually drives our atomization into socially disconnected nodes of extraction, replacing social bonds with self-interested economic exchange.

Capitalism alienates workers from their labor. Under a capitalist mode of production, production is directed for profit and dependent on wage labor. The status of wage-laborer is not voluntarily assumed by the worker. This class of “free labor” had to be created, a task accomplished by the enclosure of common lands, the severing of feudal bonds, and advances in technology. 

Opportunities to escape the compulsion of rent under capitalism were foreclosed. Where economic coercion failed, violence was ready to step in. At the end of this process of primitive accumulation, the means of production—machinery, raw materials, and productive land—were securely in the hands of a capitalist ruling class. 

Workers came to relate to the object of their labor—the means of life—not by direct exchange with nature, but through the mediation of capital. Workers are forced to sell their labor power, manufacturing commodities that are in no part theirs, nor produced for their direct subsistence. “[T]he process of production has the mastery over man,” says Marx, “instead of being controlled by him.” The worker is transformed into an appendage of a much larger and impersonal machine. 

The worker must then act as a consumer, relying on the market for food, shelter, and other necessities. These objects are produced for profit, and the worker relates to them as exchange value, available only for purchase. Thus, crises of overproduction are unique to capitalism—goods destroyed or left to rot because workers’ wages are insufficient to effect their realization as capital.

This mass of commodities also shapes our world, carrying unintended externalities—whether cars, guns, smartphones, or pesticides. Still, democratic decision-making over production is largely foreclosed, with consumer choice the only recognized input.

Workers cannot escape their condition (despite the promised payoff of “hard work”), because wages are calculated only for social reproduction—the capacity to reproduce workers’ labor power. The surplus value of their labor (i.e., what remains after the subtraction of wages), is extracted through the production process and alienated as capital. This surplus value comes to dominate workers as thoroughly as the commodities they produce. Capitalists invest surplus value not only toward the further expansion of their capital, but to protect their power with lobbying, union busting, and corruption. 

These means are used to secure ever greater control over workers. In effect, every increase in production leads to a decrease in their freedom. “Labor itself progressively extends and gives an ever wider and fuller existence to the objective world of wealth as a power alien to labor,” says Marx. We need look no further than the divergence between increasing productivity and stagnant wages to illustrate this point.

Capitalism also heightens our experience of social alienation. Production is premised on competition, and workers are pitted against one another to offer their labor for the lowest wage. We come to relate to one another as exchange values, with mutual exploitation propelling our interactions. We are left with the question, “What can I get from this person?” We are all indoctrinated into the false consciousness of capitalism, driven to accumulate by any means necessary.

Social bonds are dissipated by unasked-for innovation. “The bourgeoisie cannot exist,” claims Marx, “without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.” Every space is increasingly marketized; cut off from its public use. The occupation of social space now comes with an entrance fee, limiting opportunities for socialization not mediated through capital. This enclosure has led to a proliferation of online spaces where people can escape into a digital realm; dispersing the psychic anxiety of the reality crumbling around them by yelling into the void.

The capitalist class is also alienated. Though they own the means of production, they are similarly separated from its object. Commodities are produced for profit rather than any meaningful consideration of their use value. The capitalist cares not whether he produces school buses or precision bombs.

The protection of ruling class status requires war on humanity. To maximize profit, workers must have their wages reduced, hours extended, and be employable “at will.” In search of new markets, capitalism sponsors slavery, colonialism, and reckless resource extraction. 

At some level the capitalist cannot avoid acknowledging their guilt. In the Twilight Zone episode “Printer’s Devil,” a newspaper editor who exchanges his soul for success exclaims, “You’ve caused tragedy, you’ve destroyed life and property. I didn’t bargain for this!” “Oh yes, you did,” responds the devil. “But you put it out of your mind. You thought you’d get everything for nothing. That’s not the way life works.”

Though the rich view themselves as gods, they confront the same mortality we all do. This self-conception can never correspond to reality, leading to inevitable dissatisfaction. They are driven to ever larger displays of grandiosity to prove their worth, outward expression compensating for an absence of inward reflection.

The capitalist class cannot experience shared humanity, since their existence is in opposition to its continuation. Instead, they descend into hedonism. “Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives,” observes Marx. Seeking distraction in ever greater novel pleasures, they descend into the perversions of Epstein and the rituals of Bohemian Grove.

The working class can defeat the capitalist engine of alienation by acknowledging our shared struggle and turning toward cooperation. Only by finding common cause will the working class be motivated to use its limited free time not for escapist pleasures, but to build an alternative political project. Such self-sacrificing solidarity is required to seize the means of production and reorient production toward humanity rather than profit. When the means of life are made available to all, new social structures will take root in our shared humanity and alleviate our alienation.

The post A is for Alienation first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Note: This report was written by the 2024-25 Executive Committee and originally presented to Madison Area DSA membership ahead of the March 2025 Chapter Convention. This public-facing version has been edited or abridged in some places.

Executive Committee

• Bonnie W, co-chair (she/her)
• Adithya P, co-chair (he/they)
• Jason M, administrator (he/him)
• Nathan J, treasurer (he/him)
• Halsey H, communications coordinator (she/her)
• Alex P, membership coordinator (he/him)

Introduction

The re-election of Donald Trump and the chaos of the first 100 days of his return to office have dominated the headlines and occupied the minds of our members lately. But as our annual convention meets in this uncertain and uneasy environment, our chapter should take time to reflect on all that we have accomplished since our convention last March.

This report is not intended to be an exhaustive account of everything our chapter and members have done in the past year. Rather, we intend to highlight critical achievements, pressing challenges, and new opportunities that will help guide future decision making. Every contribution made by our members, no matter how large or small, is crucial in building the organization and world that we need and deserve: one ordered on the flourishing of human potential, and not endless exploitation and accumulation.

What We Did This Year

Madison Area DSA is a membership organization, funded entirely by dues, optionally paid by our members directly to the chapter on a monthly basis, and from national DSA on a quarterly basis. Our numbers, our time, and our money are the resources we have to fight back against a rising fascist tide. Growing and maintaining our membership, therefore, is an organizational imperative. We are pleased to report that in this moment of national crisis, our chapter has attracted many new members, and reactivated lapsed members, who are motivated and ready to work in socialist organizing.

• Just this month, Madison Area DSA reached 440 members in good standing (MIGS). This set a new all-time high for the chapter and surpassed the previous membership peak in 2021. Since the November 2024 Presidential Election, we have added over 100 new members.

• Our chapter’s average meeting attendance over the last year was about 44 people, or 38 if only members are included. From April through October attendance was mostly in the 30-40 range, while post-presidential election there has been a large increase–about 80 in November, dipping to the 50s for December and January, and then over 90 in February. The February meeting is the largest known MADSA meeting ever!
• After moving from two chapter meetings each month to one in late 2023, this year the executive committee (Exec) decided to lengthen the monthly chapter meetings from 90 minutes to 2 hours. This was in response to both an increase in business (from regular chapter-wide deliberation over the School Meals priority campaign to political education to the fall election and DSA’s response), and a sense that discussions were not being allowed enough time to build collective political analysis and understanding.
• In early March 2024, we endorsed the Wisconsin Uninstructed campaign to urge then-president Biden to stop the genocide in Gaza. In close collaboration with UW-Madison YDSA, we hosted four neighborhood canvasses and two campus tabling days, contributing to the 47,800 Uninstructed votes in the April primary election. This was a very fast moving, highly intensive campaign for organizers and volunteers.
• A number of YDSA and MADSA members attended or otherwise contributed to the UW-Madison Palestine encampment protest (aka Popular University for Gaza) that started at the end of April and lasted for almost two weeks. MADSA also endorsed and had different levels of organized involvement with several other solidarity actions over the course of the year: the War Profiteers Out of Madison rally in June (protesting a weapons manufacturing conference), the Not Another Bomb rally in August, and All Out for Lebanon in September.
• At the December chapter meeting following the election, members voted to organize within the local People’s March as well as develop a People’s Platform on which local elected officials could run. MADSA members played a large role in planning the local People’s March which occurred on January 18th, and the chapter had a well-organized contingent present.
• One goal that Exec identified this year was providing more political education opportunities to members. While there is still work to do in this area (for example re-forming a political education committee/working group or similar), there has been fairly regular inclusion of political education programming in chapter meetings, and a reading group around Marx’s Capital (Volume 1) started up in the fall. Other notable political education events for the year included hosting a talk by Professor August Nimtz in April, “Beyond Lesser Evils: Rethinking the Importance of Elections”; and the annual Socialism Conference in Chicago, which the chapter provided financial support for members to attend.
• This year, our chapter made the following electoral endorsements: DSA member Heidi Wegleitner for Dane County Board of Supervisors (uncontested, won), DSA member Francesca Hong for State Assembly (uncontested, won), DSA member Maia Pearson for state assembly (contested, did not win), and the 2024 Madison City and School November Budget Referendums (won). Out of all of these campaigns, we meaningly contributed volunteer time and energy to Maia Pearson’s campaign. Maia was running a slim campaign with only a few volunteers, and our chapter significantly expanded the communications and canvassing her campaign was able to do. Despite this, Maia did not win her race.
• We have a suite of Working Groups, Committees, and Campaigns, and this year they accomplished a lot, from helping new folks unionize their workplace to abolitionist political education to pressuring the school board for free school meals for all. For more information on what our chapter working groups and committees did this year, please see the other reports further down in this document.

Co-Chair Report and Reflections

Bonnie W, co-chair

Adithya P, co-chair

We have been proud to serve as your Madison Area DSA co-chairs for the past year. We have both served in multiple leadership roles in MADSA over the past several years (including as chapter admin and co-chair respectively in 2023-2024), and this informs our reflections shared below.

Background

Although Madison Area DSA existed since the 80s, its modern era (like most other DSA chapters) began in late 2016 following the first Bernie Sanders presidential run, and the chapter grew quickly but unevenly in leaps and bounds over the next few years. From 2020 to 2021, in the context of the COVID crisis and racial justice uprisings, the chapter almost doubled in membership from around 240 to 440. 

However along with the new members and radicalizing political landscape came internal challenges. All chapter activities moved to Zoom in 2020, which, over time, negatively impacted our ability to form relationships, work together, and resolve conflict. Chapter leaders also faced difficulties in trying to bridge the sometimes siloed, federated nature of our working groups. Efforts to set chapter priorities at previous conventions had mixed results, as most proposals were passed but lacked the focus and collective buy-in to be truly prioritized by the chapter.

These factors, in addition to a period of internal conflict in 2022 and the burnout and exodus of some former leaders disillusioned with DSA, initiated a slow decline in active membership and capacity in our chapter starting in 2022. This mirrored the membership trend in DSA nationally. 

When we joined the executive committee for our first term in 2023, most of the chapter’s active leadership core had disengaged from the chapter, and most exec positions were filled by first-time leaders facing the difficult task of assuming the mantle of both administrative and political leadership. Despite these difficulties, the reduced activity also presented an opportunity to address MADSA’s long-standing issues with siloed working groups, lack of political cohesion, and leadership turnover.

Over the course of 2023, we helped make changes which helped to set the chapter on an upward growth trajectory by the end of the year. We began holding hybrid chapter meetings instead of Zoom-only and reduced meeting frequency from twice to once a month. We started hosting in-person chapter socials. We focused more on membership development at the chapter level and took advantage of support and training opportunities from DSA member-volunteers and staff.

Chapter leadership also made a substantial effort to rethink the 2024 MADSA Convention. We made the Convention a one-day in-person event instead of a two-day virtual event, as it had been for the previous 3 years. We did most voting in-person at the event, instead of virtually after the event, which was a significant shift in chapter culture and helped reestablish decision-making as a collective, participatory process rather than an individual, isolated task. Lastly, in order to refocus the chapter on a unifying strategic mission, we moved away from voting through a slate of chapter “priorities” in favor of voting through one priority campaign.

Politically, the year 2024-2025 was defined by the fight for Palestine and the election of Trump, sharpening the urgency of our organizing. For our chapter, it was a year of growth, campaign work, and renewed political clarity. Through it all, we made key interventions to build our chapter’s strength and impact—now, we take this moment to reflect on what we learned and where we go from here.

General Membership Meetings

Our goal was to increase attendance at general membership meetings and make them a central space for chapter-wide decision-making, discussion, and accountability. To achieve this, we committed to holding one chapter meeting per month, with a social afterward to encourage connection. We experimented with a second monthly meeting in late October but saw little additional engagement, so we stuck to the monthly model. Structurally, we aimed to include updates, political education, and discussion of ongoing campaigns in every meeting, though this wasn’t always feasible. A key shift was increasing the number of votes held at meetings—encouraging working groups and members to bring organizing proposals forward in a ready-to-vote format. This helped move decision-making out of smaller groups and into the general membership, creating a culture where members expected to participate in chapter-wide discussions and strategy. We also improved meeting promotion and divided up meeting roles more intentionally.

These efforts helped increase attendance, with average meeting participation rising from 19.6 in 2023 to 32.2 in 2024, even before the post-election surge. General meetings have become the lifeblood of the chapter, reversing the previous dynamic where working groups were the primary spaces for organizing. While newer members sometimes hesitated to speak or vote against proposals, participation remained high, and the shift toward more in-meeting decision-making helped integrate members into the chapter’s organizing process.

Note: Meeting attendance figures may not be 100% exact for some months.

Increased Transparency

To improve transparency of the executive committee, we made the #executive-committee Slack channel public, allowing members to see our discussions and deliberation. We also created and maintained documents explaining chapter resources and processes (like the chapter Quick Start guide, tutorials on how to use our texting platform, etc), making it easier for members to access important information. Additionally, we strove to share bi-monthly executive committee reports, which were shared via Slack and email to keep the chapter informed on exec votes, membership, the treasury, etc. Unfortunately, we failed to release a report between Oct. 2024 and March 2025.

Nevertheless, these efforts received positive feedback through word of mouth and our exec survey, showing that members felt positively about increased transparency. We recommend the next executive committee improve on this by making minutes of exec meetings more readily available to general membership and provide a record of decisions made by Exec in written or verbal reports at chapter meetings.

Commitment to External Work

We took on a number of large external-facing campaigns the past year, including the Uncommitted primary campaign in early March, the launch of the School Meals Campaign in April, support for the UW-Madison Palestine encampment in early May, the Maia Pearson State Assembly primary in June and July. School meals work continued through the fall and winter, interspersed with other initiatives like coordinating local Palestine solidarity rallies, the October endorsements of local budget referendums, and the People’s March in January.

As outlined elsewhere in this report, we saw major successes in some of these efforts. There was a collective sense of urgency to meet the political moment in 2024, as well as a shared desire among active membership to re-establish our presence locally after spending most of the previous year rebuilding the chapter. Madison DSA’s profile grew with increased media coverage and local visibility, and our increased presence was an important factor in our post-election membership growth and causing more people to see our chapter as a potential political home for them.  

A recurring theme across many of the campaigns was that they often came together on short notice or with extremely aggressive timelines. Many also happened concurrently or immediately after other efforts concluded, and were bottomlined by a small group of the same chapter leaders who were juggling multiple projects and other leadership responsibilities. This resulted in an organizing environment where we deprioritized the crucial steps of debriefing and reflecting on work we had done in favor of taking on new work.

Chapter leaders had less time to devote to important questions of larger chapter strategy and political leadership, and spent less time communicating with other members and leaders and maintaining alignment on shared organizing goals. Falling into a rut of doing the work and losing touch with a guiding political vision is a prime recipe for burnout. Despite these shortcomings we see a lot of room for growth in the chapter this year, especially with many newer members looking to start new chapter work. We look forward to seeing new projects take shape and get developed collectively by membership.

One shortcoming of our priority campaign selection process at last convention was encouraging members to develop fully-formed campaign proposals before bringing them to chapter convention. The School Meals Campaign won majority support from membership both for David O’s strong vision, but also for the level of development and detail in the proposal. However, this led to some pitfalls when actually running the campaign, where despite David’s support other members struggled to build confidence and a sense of ownership organizing around the issue, and too often deferring on political and strategic questions to overburdened campaign leadership. 

One lesson from this is that to build stronger leadership and buy-in, more members need to be involved in the process of developing strategies and vision for external campaigns, even if that means taking more time for campaigns to take shape and launch. More members taking ownership in this process is key to the further political development of the chapter.

Depoliticization

This reflected another chapter trend in 2024 – a depoliticization of the way we assessed our work internally and externally through an explicitly socialist lens.

While general membership weighed in on questions of strategy for ongoing work, these discussions sometimes de-emphasized the political dimension – not just considering what work to take on and why, but taking time to question and examine the ideological priors undergirding those strategies. This stemmed from a lower level of political development among active chapter membership and leadership compared to several years prior, and a lack of confidence applying a socialist analysis to our organizing methods and understanding of history. 

For example, the school meals campaign’s original proposal invoked the legacy of the Black Panthers’ free breakfast programs. However the campaign and chapter never set aside time to learn and discuss the historical context those programs arose from, analyze how those conditions did or didn’t map onto our own, and reflect on what other lessons to take from previous generations of socialists. 

Our attempts to place more emphasis on political education were haphazard, although we see significantly more chapter interest and opportunities to reprioritize this in the coming year. Developing members’ confidence in applying a socialist analysis informed by theory and history to their work is an important step to building a larger body of leaders and organizers in the chapter. While we made significant steps in building our organizing practice last year, we hope this year the chapter combines that with more engagement with socialist theory, further sharpening our practice.

Member and Leader Development

Our goal and continual challenge as a chapter was to re-engage membership by developing more members into active participants and future leaders. To do this, we made a number of changes to practices. Our February 2024 membership drive reinstitutionalized the practice of structured listwork of our membership; listwork being the practice of tracking outreach to and development of members. Listwork had not been done in the chapter in several years. This year, the practice was maintained in some working groups and campaigns. Exec also started doing listwork periodically to better track engagement and leadership development of active chapter members. 

We also focused on delegating more entry-level tasks—such as setting up for meetings and processing sign-up sheets—to newer members, helping them build familiarity with chapter operations. Exec held two Leadership Roundtable retreats in June and December with working group and committee leaders to talk about membership development and strategize about collective work.

We had major success with revamping our monthly New Member Orientations (DSA 101s) and putting more emphasis on organizing new and prospective members to attend. Over the course of the past year, we made major overhauls to the presentation and our distribution of organizing labor around the events. In the fall we began regularly textbanking new and prospective members and had two members running the orientation, improving attendance to 5-8 people a month. This increased exponentially following the election, and we overhauled the format to meet the demand. Our November NMO had over 50 attendees, and we enlisted other chapter leaders to help facilitate breakout groups. Attendance remained above 30-40 in the last two months, and we began delegating more meeting roles to other newer members on the revived Membership Committee, which has yielded positive results. We intend to continue with this format going forward and encourage other chapter bodies to consider similar practices for delegating more responsibilities for meetings and events.

This year, we saw growing pains balancing continued internal membership engagement with a renewed focus on external-facing work. Our February 2024 membership drive helped develop many active members who took on larger leadership roles following the 2024 Convention on Exec, working groups, and the school meals campaign. We struggled to backfill their contributions on the membership committee, and a significant amount of membership work between the March convention and November election was performed by our membership coordinator Alex P and other members of the executive committee.

In the coming year, we recommend chapter leaders increase focus on membership development, such as the training series we held in February covering 1:1 organizing conversations and strategic campaign planning. Another area of emphasis for the chapter this year should be focusing more attention on leadership development and supporting current chapter leaders. Due to previous leadership turnover and loss of institutional memory, many new and existing leaders in the chapter did not receive as much support as needed to ensure they were in a position to succeed and help develop other leaders behind them. New and existing working group leaders were placed in difficult positions and some were unaware of all the resources and tools available to them through the chapter and national organization. This led to leaders being tasked with too many responsibilities and stretched thin.

Overcommitment also led to constantly planning and coordinating new actions and events, and we too frequently fell into the trap of core leaders taking on too many tasks themselves in order to meet tight deadlines. This came at the expense of opportunities to develop other members, creating a cycle where potential new leaders were less prepared to step up because they hadn’t gotten enough experience in lesser roles, because those were being done by existing leaders who were too busy to develop new leaders. One example of this was the YDSA-led People’s Org Fair the weekend after the election. Seeing the event planning well behind schedule, several members of the executive committee stepped in the week before the event and took on significant responsibilities planning panels and developing programming themselves, rather than working to identify other members who could be asked to take on these tasks.

Following our co-chair terms, we intend to help build more intentional leadership development opportunities in the chapter for both current and prospective leaders, and we hope to start breaking the cycle of leadership burnout and turnover that has plagued the chapter in previous years. We believe that with the influx of new members we have many potential new leaders who can develop and step into elected and middle leadership roles across the chapter in the coming year.

The Coming Year

As we look ahead, it’s clear that there is always more to do. In a time of rising fascism and ongoing attacks on workers’ rights, the pressure to act is constant. But our mission is not just to act—it’s to act strategically. We must sharpen our socialist analysis to understand the political conditions of our city and country, using that understanding to choose fights that will build worker power and grow our capacity. A healthy chapter and a strong socialist movement require both external organizing—strategic campaigns, coalition building, and political education—and internal work to sustain ourselves, from leadership development to communications and membership outreach. Balancing these priorities is challenging, but we make small advances every day. To grow, we must also reflect, assess our choices, and improve through collective discussion and report-backs, and we encourage every working group, committee and campaign to make these a regular part of your organizing.

At the heart of it all, people stay in the fight because of each other—because of the relationships they build, the struggles they share, and the trust they develop. Strengthening the social fabric of our chapter is just as important as our organizing. We encourage everyone to plan and attend socials, talk to one another, talk to other chapters, and also build community connections beyond DSA. These relationships, particularly connections to DSA leaders across the country, have been central to our personal growth, which we’ve brought to the chapter and we encourage others to do the same.

As co-chairs, we’ve learned so much over the last year, and we’re energized by the growing number of people stepping into leadership and bringing new ideas. We welcome the diversity of political thought, debate, and even disagreement—because through these discussions, we sharpen our analysis and build a stronger movement. We encourage everyone to stay involved, step up, and help shape the future of our chapter!

Treasury Report

Some financial information has been redacted from the public-facing version of this report.

Nathan J, treasurer

1. As our chapter grows, there is a greater need to accurately budget, which in turn requires tracking transactions in a ledger. Besides getting in the habit of budgeting and maintaining a ledger, a cash handling policy was adopted and a reimbursement request form (https://madison-dsa.org/resources/) was created to improve traceability of transactions.
2. Balance: our chapter is financially stable and the balance of funds grew over the past year (April 2024 – March 2025). Budget details are included below, but here is a high level overview.
3. Opportunities for growth: while it is nice to have a growing chapter balance, our chapter can afford to spend more money on outreach. Of our expenses, approximately 35% is for overhead expenses (rent, software, transaction fees, etc.), approximately 50% is for internal chapter development (meetings, conferences, food, etc.), and approximately 15% is for outreach (campaigning, tabling, public events, etc.). Overhead expenses and internal chapter development are necessary but should be viewed as serving the purpose of ultimately growing the chapter through outreach and making a difference in the community.

Membership Report

Alex P, membership coordinator

Adithya P, co-chair

• Membership Numbers
  • As mentioned above, Madison now has over 440 members in good standing as of 3/8/2025, our highest total ever. Members in good standing (MIGS) refer to members up to date on dues, granting them full voting and participation rights within DSA.
  • This time last year, the chapter had about 325 MIGS. Counting constitutional members (members whose dues lapsed within the last year), MADSA has over 490 members today versus around 430 last March.
  • Madison saw a net gain of 56 MIGS (from 312 to 368) over the 2024 calendar year, an 18% increase. Of the 50 largest DSA chapters, only 3 grew at a faster rate than Madison over the same time period. DSA membership nationally grew by 4% during this time.
  • Madison saw a net gain of 108 MIGS (from 326 to 434) in the 4-month period between the election and the end of February, a 33% increase in membership. Of the 50 largest DSA chapters, only 4 grew at a faster rate than Madison over that period. DSA membership nationally grew by 21% during the same time span.
• Membership Trends
  • We saw a MASSIVE bump in membership following both the presidential election and inauguration. This rising trend will likely subside sometime in the next few months, but has not as of yet.
  • As one might expect, interest in the chapter most often correlated with recent chapter activity in public spaces, be it tabling, protest participation while wearing/bearing DSA identifiers, or ongoing campaign actions. This has in part allowed us to maintain our numbers even in periods where National has seen slight membership declines.
  • By far most new members coming to our chapter are ones who have self-selected joining (ie they found us, we did not find them). Going forward, it should be the goal of our membership strategy to utilize campaigns to make more direct asks of people to join our organization. Every action, big or small, is an opportunity to recruit. 
• Membership Committee
  • Following the last convention, much of the existing membership committee participants were heavily involved in other leadership roles in the chapter. The formal organization of the committee went on hiatus during this time, but has since returned in early 2025. The committee is now meeting regularly (every other Wed.) and has been steadily growing in numbers.
    • Much of the infrastructure for comprehensive membership outreach is already established, but will require more hands on deck to utilize. Further growth and development of committee members should be prioritized in the coming year.
  • New Member Orientations have seen a complete re-work, moving towards a more interactive, discussion-centric model intended to allow us to learn about the myriad reasons new and returning members are seeking work in our chapter and organization. 
  • Active efforts have been taken to ensure that at least one chapter social event occurs every month, utilizing a more collaborative planning process that hopefully will see a greater variety of events being sponsored. Additionally, members have been empowered to reach out to others in the chapter more informally to organize smaller social gatherings to build more direct ties of solidarity. 
• Other Work
  • Chapter membership tracking and listwork has been significantly revamped, mostly to integrate automated member tracking and communications through ActionNetwork. Using this, we’ve been able to keep better tabs on what actions members are engaging in, how active they are with chapter events, and automating outreach to inactive and dues-lapsed members. Going forward we hope to see a greater degree of use and integration with ActionNetwork among other working groups and committees in the chapter. 

Communications Report

Halsey H, comms coordinator

The big development in the last year is that we now have a communications committee that meets on a monthly basis. We’re starting to set up some roles and recurring tasks for different platforms, and we have a solid group of people who are doing some great graphic design, for social media and print propaganda materials. We have been posting regularly on our social media, and have a team of people working on making sure we have daily engagement, but there is definitely room for more people to get involved and support that work. Comrade Emerson M. has been making weekly posts across all of our platforms with all of the events coming up each week, and this has been very helpful for making sure we have more regular content and that members and prospective members have somewhere they can always check to see what’s going on. Our email newsletter has gone out roughly twice per month, and that and our other email communications have very good engagement.

Right now we’re working on creating some templates and how-to guides to get more people plugged in to comms work, to diversify the type of content we’re able to put out, and to make it easier for people throughout the chapter to get their events promoted. We’ve had a lot of success building the capacity of our comms committee, and I’m hoping we can continue to improve our ability to reach people in person and online in the coming year, and to post more photos and videos of all the cool stuff we have going on in the chapter – especially when we have members give presentations or speeches, because that content does really well.

Maine unions are speaking up for their members and their communities in the face of Trump’s attacks. Just this week postal workers organized multiple protests in Bangor and Portland, teachers rallied at Deering High School and Rowe Elementary for full funding of public education, federal workers spoke out against mass firings in Brewer, Social Security workers denounced layoffs that could paralyze the system, and nurses marched on Sen. Susan Collins office, calling on Mainers to defend Medicaid. 

After two months of MAGA blitzkrieg, it’s encouraging to see Maine labor taking to the streets. We’ll need to raise our organizing efforts another order of magnitude to begin to limit the damage Trump and Musk are inflicting on public education, health care, federal workers, and workers in general. But this was the first week where it felt like there were two sides to this fight and marked a stark contrast with the pathetic spectacle of 3 out of 4 (Golden, King, and Collins) of Maine’s congressional delegation voting for Trump’s budget the week before. 

As unions ramp up the fight, it’s worth thinking through what Trump hopes to achieve in the coming year and what drives him. 

First, there’s his obvious thirst for revenge against enemies, real and imagined. It would be a mistake to underestimate his uniquely self-centered vision of politics. This means there is not always a larger objective at play. He might well strip Maine of tens of millions of public education money just because he’s enraged that Gov. Mills had the gall to stand up to him in public. Even if that were to ruin Laura Libby’s run for the Blaine House. 

[Read next: We’ll need popular resistance to defend trans rights in Maine]

Second, Trump’s journey from apolitical playboy to MAGA fascist began when he realized his path to power passed through the right-wing evangelical church and white nationalist movements. Now that he has united and empowered these forces for his own gain, he must feed the monster. Trump’s campaign against immigrant workers will disrupt tourism, construction and agriculture in Maine and most likely lead to higher inflation, but he will reap political power from the fear it instills. 

Third, what is Trump’s economic game plan? This is a big question, including tariffs, foreign investment, AI, and a lot more. But I will focus on just one part of it here: the federal budget and taxation. Trump wants to extend tax cuts for corporations and the richest 1 percent. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts reduced corporate taxes from 35 to 21 percent and cut individual income taxes on the wealthiest from 39.6 to 37 percent. Those cuts cost the government approximately $2 trillion in revenue between 2018 and 2025. Extending the cuts to 2034 will cost another $4 trillion in revenue. The 2017 tax cuts (and COVID spending) ballooned the deficit, and this cannot be done again without threatening the value of the dollar as the global reserve currency—the secret power to the American financial system. So, this time around, Trump has to slash the federal budget in order to pay for his tax cuts. 

When the infamous gangster Sonnie Hutton was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Where will Trump find $500 billion per year to hand over to his rich pals in the federal budget?

Not all parts of the budget are equally vulnerable, nor equally lucrative. Take Trump’s decree abolishing the Department of Education. Firing the few thousand federal education workers might save about $250 million. That’s not even a rounding error in the $6.9 trillion federal budget. In fact, if Trump succeeds in firing, let’s say, 20 percent of the roughly 3 million current federal employees, that would save approximately $60 billion per year. That sounds like a lot of money, but it’s just 8 percent of the Pentagon budget. 

Eliminating the Department of Education, USAID—he can cross that off his list—and the FBI would free up about $100 billion. Eliminating bigger targets like the Departments of Transportation and Agriculture would cut around $300 billion from the budget, but there’s virtually no chance Trump will cut what are effectively huge subsidies to Big Ag and the auto industry. That leaves the big ticket items like paying the interest on the national debt ($892 billion), the Department of Defense ($872 billion… and rising), and veterans benefits and federal pensions ($500 billion). Trump either can’t, or won’t want to, strip significant funds from these pools. 

[Read Next: Tax the rich, it’s a decent start]

What does that leave? Social Security accounts for 21 percent of the federal budget ($1.5 trillion) and Medicare is about 15 percent ($912 billion). Trump has promised—promised!—not to touch those popular programs, even if his billionaire Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnik might well be more eager to pick seniors’ pockets. It would be foolish to pretend Trump won’t eventually try to cut these programs, but he’s most likely to look for an easier target. 

Which brings us to Medicaid and the associated Children’s Health Insurance Program, which account for about 8 percent ($626 billion) of the federal budget. Medicaid disproportionately serves economically vulnerable portions of the working class, providing subsidized prenatal care, medications, nursing homes and elder care, and serving as a critical safety net for people with disabilities. At the same time, Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals and health care facilities deliver much needed resources to every county in the country. Without Medicaid, rural health care will suffer quickly and drastically. The closure of Northern Lights hospital in Waterville is a canary in a coal mine. Cutting Medicaid by 25 or 50 percent would devastate health care in Maine. Be that as it may, $626 billion must look awfully tempting to Trump.

At the rally to defend Medicaid organized by the Maine State Nurses Association last week, Julianna Hansen, an RN in the neurosurgical and trauma unit at Maine Med asked, “Our seniors, those with disabilities, and our young people are the ones who would most be hurt by cuts to MaineCare [Medicaid in Maine] and CubCare. How can Sen. Collins and our elected representatives even consider taking away this life-saving care?”

It’s a good question. Sonnie Hutton had an answer. Unfortunately, we know what Trump’s will be. If we want a different one from Sen. Collins—or whoever replaces her in 2026—we’ll have to build on what we did this week in the months and years to come.

[Read next: Jared Golden leads, Schumer follows, Trumps wins]

The post The method to Trump’s Medicaid Cut Madness appeared first on Pine & Roses.

During the early morning of March 18, as people were asleep or preparing suhoor to begin their Ramadan fast, the Israeli occupation forces openly resumed the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. Over 400 Palestinians were murdered in a single day, including 174 children – one of the largest child death tolls in Gaza ever recorded.

Israel’s recent assault follows several violations of the recent ceasefire, including a weeks-long siege on Gaza cutting 2.2 million people off from food and electricity. This recent genocidal escalation and brazen refusal to abide by the ceasefire lays bare the intentions of the Zionist project: the theft of Palestinian land and the annihilation of the Palestinian people.

In the face of this inexcusable violence, our commitment to the Palestinian solidarity movement and to the liberation of the Palestinian people will only strengthen.

People today are increasingly seeing past the bankrupt morality of the pro-genocide bipartisan consensus. As a result, both parties have attempted to silence activists, and have increased the political repression of anti-Zionists. In the Bay Area and across the U.S., ICE has targeted immigrants who’ve spoken up against fascism and for Palestine. People like Mahmoud Khalil – a leader of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University, who was arrested off the streets walking back from iftar and has been threatened to lose his green card without due process. Moreover, local students, workers, and faculty have faced harassment, expulsion, firing, arrest, and more for their principled advocacy for Palestinian liberation.

In the face of such odds, people have continued to stand strong and speak out against the genocide: thousands filled the streets across San José, San Francisco, and the U.S. this week in protests against the ceasefire violation. The Palestinian solidarity movement is only growing in power, and no government repression will stop it.

To end the immediate genocide for good, we must march onward and continue the struggle for Palestinian liberation, by fighting for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and by securing an arms embargo. We must fight at every level, from local businesses, to city councils, to county supervisors, to state legislatures, to Congress and the highest levels of government, to cut off all U.S. support to the genocidal state of Israel. In Silicon Valley, we must also fight big tech companies, which have created dangerous AI weapons and tactics of surveillance, often first unleashed on Palestinians before being used by police and military here in the U.S. This is our duty as socialists in the Bay Area, as the cause of liberation here, in the heart of the tech industry fueling the war machine, is inextricably linked to the cause of liberation in Palestine.

To build our power as a movement, we need you — yes, you! — to take a stand for justice and join an organization. The Bay Area has several groups fighting for the Palestinian cause: Palestinian Youth Movement, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Jewish Voice for Peace, Vigil 4 Gaza, and San José Against War. Additionally, we at Silicon Valley DSA have our own International Solidarity Working Group which supports Palestine solidarity. Our work includes the No Appetite for Apartheid campaign, where we educate local businesses on the Israeli apartheid regime, and convince them to boycott and remove Zionist food products from their shelves.

Together, through persistent organizing, dedication, and solidarity, we will fight Zionism, imperialism, and all forms of oppression. Together, we will win a better world. One where Palestine will be free!

The post SVDSA Condemns the Recent Genocidal Attacks on Gaza appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.

The Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America condemn the introduction of California Assembly Bill 1468 (Zbur, Addis), which seeks to distort ethnic studies curricula to focus exclusively on the “domestic” experiences of historically marginalized groups in American society.

We oppose the proposed restriction to focus on “domestic” experiences, because foreign policy evidently affects various ethnic groups in the U.S. today. Supporters of AB 1468 specifically want to hinder students from gaining a comprehensive understanding of the global context behind marginalized groups and injustices, such as the Palestinian Nakba in 1948. This is especially unacceptable given the ongoing imperialist genocide being waged on Palestinians by Israel with full U.S. backing.

A comprehensive ethnic studies curriculum should encompass both domestic and international perspectives, to fully educate students on the interconnectedness of global struggles and histories. Additionally, such a curriculum must not shy away from talking about U.S. complicity in past crimes against humanity – including, but not limited to, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, the transatlantic slave trade, and the U.S. Empire’s destruction of working people’s homes worldwide, such as in Vietnam, Korea, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Palestine. Understanding these contexts is crucial for developing critical thinking on how the past affects marginalized groups in the U.S. today, and why state-sponsored reparations are long overdue for various communities. AB 1468, on the other hand, dissuades these discussions and censors critical thinking.

The backers of AB 1468 have explicitly stated that ethnic studies classes should not discuss Israel and Palestine, and that they “don’t think that ethnic studies is a foreign policy discipline.” This constitutes an unacceptable erasure of the U.S. Empire’s responsibility for ongoing and past violence worldwide.

Silicon Valley DSA condemns AB 1468 as an attack on the foundational values of ethnic studies itself, as highlighted in the 2021 Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum: for students to “challenge racist, bigoted, discriminatory, and imperialist/colonial beliefs and practices on multiple levels” and “connect ourselves to past and contemporary social movements that struggle for social justice.”

We stand in solidarity with all marginalized communities, and all victims of U.S. Empire. We commit to supporting their struggles for comprehensive representation in educational curricula, and their needs for material reparations more broadly.

Join us in opposing AB 1468 by emailing your state legislators.

Join SVDSA!

Help us build democratic socialist power locally by joining SVDSA! Join our mailing list through the form below. We will get you set up with email & text updates, and reach out to you individually. Please also read our Code of Conduct for participating in SVDSA spaces.

The post SVDSA opposes AB 1468’s racist attacks on ethnic studies appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.

As part of our 2025 Migrant Rights Campaign, DSA San Diego is pressuring local school districts to defend students against ICE raids. Read more. [...]

Read More... from Migrant Rights Priority Campaign: Spring 2025 Update

The post Migrant Rights Priority Campaign: Spring 2025 Update appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America | San Diego Chapter.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass.

By Nick Lavin

In the whirlwind of unconstitutional executive orders from the Trump administration, it’s easy to miss the storm brewing over the 2026 Massachusetts budget. 

BEACON HILL—Governor Healey’s “fiscally sustainable” budget offers some more housing and transit funding as mandated by the 2022 Fair Share Amendment, but also major cutbacks to healthcare spending, especially for the most needy. Since her 2022 election, Healey has undertaken an increasingly neoliberal economic retrenchment in line with Democrats’ decades-long strategy of “me too, but not so much” Reaganism, cutting taxes for the wealthy while draining critical public services.

Trump’s election opened the floodgates for a conservative resurgence in the Democratic Party, with Party leaders and caucus members regurgitating right-wing talking points on LGBTQ issues and immigration while letting the White House’s Reaganite budget sail through Congress. As frightening as the backslide of our democracy is, unions are the best positioned institution to resist it. Through the Rank-and-File Strategy and community organizing, DSA can play a central role in rebuilding union militancy to win against authoritarian neoliberalism.

“Through the Rank-and-File Strategy and community organizing, DSA can play a central role in rebuilding union militancy to win against authoritarian neoliberalism.”

The Landscape

Even under Democratic President Joe Biden, federal funding for state social services was inconsistent. For example, the expiration of federal Covid-era ‘ESSER’ (Elementary and Secondary School Education Relief) funds spelled the end to hundreds of teaching jobs across the state. With an authoritarian Republican in the White House however, the need for blue states to fill in the gaps will only increase; but Healey is not stepping up to the task.

Healey has made affordability in Massachusetts her centerpiece issue, but not for everyday people. While the Governor raised millions from real estate developers, biotech corporations, and the Kraft family to support her 2022 election, she remained silent as union and community activists hit the streets to win new taxes on the wealthy through the Fair Share Amendment. Her 2023 tax cuts — including $350 million for wealthy estates, large corporations, and financial assets — led to a 2024 budget shortfall for which she reached into the Fair Share funding to cover.

Her 2026 budget continues spending for housing and transit mandated by Massachusetts voters in the 2022 Fair Share Amendment ballot question. To be “fiscally sustainable”, however, Healey also made substantial cuts to healthcare for the state’s most vulnerable.

Healey’s budget cuts half the state’s Department of Mental Health workers, meaning 170 case workers will lose their jobs. The closure of two facilities — Pappas Rehabilitation Hospital for Children and Pocasset Mental Health Center — was paused only after major community blowback that culminated in a large union-led rally at the State House on February 25th. 

“The closure… was paused only after major community blowback that culminated in a large union-led rally at the State House.”

For the state’s homeless, Healey’s budget allocates $425 million more for shelters, a deal reached after upending Massachusetts’ forty-year policy of guaranteeing safe haven for pregnant women and people with children, and drastically reducing the number of people eligible by mandating proof of residency.

The Governor’s budget also freezes MassHealth rates paid to community and ‘safety-net’ hospitals, which provide services regardless of an individual’s ability to pay. The freeze suffocates hospitals and healthcare workers providing lifesaving care to the state’s most vulnerable as state remittances will continue to fall behind inflation.

Unions recognize the threat these cuts pose to their membership. In a statement, SEIU 509 President Dave Foley addressed Healey directly, calling her budget “an injustice to those who rely on these crucial programs” and demanded full funding to “ensure that residents across the Commonwealth can continue receiving the care they deserve.”

Teachers, too, are feeling the heat. With the depletion of the aforementioned Covid-era funds, school districts across the state are facing budget cuts. Like SEIU 509, the Massachusetts Teacher Association (MTA) directly called on Healey to stopgap the cuts with state funds.

The Problem

A close observer might wonder why these same unions now angry with the Governor also lined up behind her in the 2022 election. If workers can’t rely on these politicians to deliver on their promises, why endorse them?

A closer observer might also observe the dilemma of choosing between a conservative Democrat, a far-right Republican, or sitting out of electoral politics entirely. One might even ask why these unions limit themselves to strongly worded statements, rather than flexing their most powerful muscle – the strike – as unions do with relish in other countries.

It is easy to point to liberal union leadership “in bed” with the Democrats, and there’s a lot of truth to it – many union leaders have become bureaucratic and conservative after decades of beatdowns for the labor movement. But unions often take defensive positions and make defensive endorsements for the same reason their membership votes for whatever more-or-less odious Democrats are on the ballot – the feeling they lack the power to forge an alternative.

Our task as socialists is not to cajole union leadership merely to cut ties with Democrats. Our task is to organize constituencies both inside and outside unions to make the labor movement’s resistance both powerful and inevitable, setting the stage for a new party in the process.

Organizing the Rank-and-File

Power at the bargaining table – whether battling the boss or the politicians – is defined by the most radical action the majority of your membership is prepared to undertake. The membership of our unions, the rank-and-file, is the key to rebuilding a powerful labor movement. If we want the labor movement to fight back against local budget cuts and the Trumpist onslaught, we need to focus on organizing from the bottom up.

DSA’s rank-and-file strategy is a proposal to do just that. It identifies two problems — a low level of working class self-activity and organization, and DSA’s social, economic, and political separation from the working class. Rather than taking the position of highly-educated (if downwardly mobile) middle-class activists lecturing everyday people about the importance of political activity, we can directly foment democratic mass action from the shopfloor by taking rank-and-file jobs in strategic industries like logistics, K-12 education, and healthcare.

The bottom-up movement for Palestine is a powerful example of the labor movement building political power. Rank-and-file unionists across the country organized in their workplaces to pressure congresspeople for an arms embargo against Israel. In my union, the Boston Teachers Union (BTU), we organized members to rally against Katherine Clark, passed an arms embargo resolution, and called our representatives en masse as union members demanding an end to the war. Just days after our resolution passed and our President personally called the Senators, both Warren and Markey voted to stop weapons shipments to Israel.

We can organize the labor movement’s resistance to Trump’s authoritarian neoliberalism, but only from below. Rank-and-file organizing will therefore be the catalyst not only for renewed shop-floor militancy, but also for stronger political interventions against the bipartisan neoliberal consensus. Until the rank-and-file is itself organized to directly confront political power, we cannot expect union leadership to offer more than pointed statements against our government’s routine acts of injustice. 

To this end, Boston DSA should bring programs like the Rank & File Project to the chapter to develop members into rank-and-file organizers. We should also continue our labor solidarity campaigns (such as with UAW and the Teamsters), which will help DSA’s membership identify the merger of the labor and socialist movements as our primary task and rank-and-file participation as its primary vehicle. Labor solidarity demonstrates socialists are the most reliable fighters for working class issues and helps us identify the militant minority – existing leaders in the labor movement – with whom we should build relationships.

Last year, DSA delivered the perfect synthesis of these strategies to Amazon’s front gates just in time for Christmas. With DSA Amazon workers organizing their coworkers on the inside and chapter’s Labor Working Group handing out hot coffee and walking the picket outside, DSA helped workers pull off the most exciting labor action against Amazon this country has seen so far.

Organizing Our Communities

Just as DSA employs inside-outside strategies to support labor organizing, we can fight on the terrain of social movements to create space for labor activists to move their unions on political questions.

In 2023, the moral outrage that poured into the streets across the country over Israel’s genocide quickly resonated in places of worship, community centers, and union halls. The union resolutions, rallies, and statements carefully shepherded by rank-and-filers drew from the energy of the pro-Palestine movement: ceasefire resolutions would have been impossible without the mass protests; pro-free speech resolutions without the encampments, etc. 

By supporting organic social movements – around Palestine, immigration, housing affordability, and more – DSA can create clear opportunities for the merger of socialism and the labor movement. But our movement-style campaigns must have clear political targets and seek to ally with – not co-opt – existing community organizations.

We should work with organizations with real community ties. What groups have challenged and won against the status quo? What groups have real constituencies? Which take on a ‘radical’ posture and name, but have neither a constituency nor clear strategy?

Our campaigns should also be broadly and deeply felt, uniting the broadest possible swath of the population. Arms embargo tied military spending to the depletion of social services; shelter policy fits neatly into the fight for housing affordability, etc. These base-building, agitational campaigns will not only build DSA’s reputation as a democratic and mass-based center for organizing, but also help identify and develop natural community leaders to support in future electoral races.

The Boston DSA Palestine Working Group (PWG) spent many cold winter and sweltering hot summer days on street corners, collecting signatures to demand our congresspeople call for an arms embargo. This painstaking work not only involved connecting to and supporting the various community organizations involved in Palestine solidarity, but also helped us identify union members in our neighborhoods. In fact, several rank-and-filers in BTU’s arms embargo effort came not from shop-floor organizing, but through conversations they had with PWG petition clipboarders who then passed their contact information off to friendly BTU Palestine organizers.

To Fight Big, Start at the Shop Floor

Healey and the State House hold tremendous power over unions through the budget allocation process. For decades, this has placed unions on the backfoot, attempting to negotiate small victories against the bipartisan neoliberal consensus. Economic retrenchment and the ossification of a conservative labor leadership has led us to our current political moment, defined nationally by Trumpist authoritarianism and locally by Democratic not-quite Reaganism. But if we build militant, class struggle unions and social movement campaigns we can create a vibrant socialist labor movement to defeat both — and the place to start is on the shop floor.

Nick Lavin is a Boston Public Schools paraprofessional and a member of the Boston Teachers Union.

By Terence Cawley

SOMERVILLE, MA — As Starbucks Workers United continues to organize for respect on the job, workers have begun escalating pressure on the company locally and across the country. 

Since 2021, over 550 stores representing over 10,500 workers have unionized – more than 25 percent of which have joined since February 2024. None have reached a collective bargaining agreement with management. Starbucks Workers United’s demands include a company-wide living wage, expanded healthcare benefits and paid leave, and consistent scheduling. The union is also fighting for protections from racial and sexual harassment and enshrinement of current benefits in the contract itself. 

“My coworkers and I who supported and voted yes on Election Day wanted more of a voice in how our workplaces were run and what impacts it had on us,” said Julie Langevin, who joined Starbucks Workers United as a staff organizer for the Northeast after becoming involved with the union as a rank-and-file Starbucks barista in the winter after its formation. “For us to be factored into the equation at all.”

From 2021 to 2024, Starbucks pursued an aggressive anti-union strategy. Workers responded in kind with over 700 Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) filings with the national Board. The company appeared to change course in February 2024 when management reached an agreement with Starbucks Workers United to negotiate a “foundational framework” for contracts for union stores before failing to meet its own end-of-year deadline. The company offered no raises or benefit increases for union baristas in the first year of their contracts, a clear violation of the union’s demands, which Starbucks Workers United rejected by going on strike at 300 stores on Christmas Eve 2024 in the largest labor action in company history. 

Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol earned over $97 million in 2024 while commuting from his California home to company headquarters in Seattle via private jet.

From Filings to Sip-ins to Strikes

Starbucks workers in Seabrook, N.H. filed a petition in February for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. The election is scheduled for April 3, 2025. Should workers vote to unionize, their shop will become the fourth Starbucks in New Hampshire to unionize.

But filings have become only the beginning of a larger pressure campaign. Starbucks Workers United escalated further in March as negotiations stalled: from March 8-11, Starbucks Workers United members and allies hosted “solidarity sip-ins” at over 100 Starbucks locations in advance of the company’s annual shareholder meeting on March 12. Supporters ordered coffee under names like “union strong” and unionists held strategic organizing conversations about the union with non-union baristas. Starbucks Workers United has employed sip-ins to recruit baristas at not-yet-union stores, offer moral support at union stores, and apply public pressure on Starbucks in a way that unites workers and union supporters.

“This round of sip-ins was specifically [meant] to show the holes in the company’s ‘everything’s fine here’ messaging that they put out around their shareholder meeting,” said Langevin. “Knowing we’re seen and supported is so very valuable and breaks down the isolation and doubts we have while organizing.”

On the last day of the nationwide sip-ins and the day before the national shareholder meeting, Starbucks workers in three cities went on strike and occupied their shops to demand fair union contracts. The company called police on workers in all three cities to arrest protesters. Langevin believes the entire gamut of tactics were effective in applying pressure on the company:

“Not only did we see a decline in Starbucks stock in real time as our sip-ins and strikes and acts of civil disobedience were publicized around the country, but we’ve heard reports from managers and seen heightened presence from low and mid-level leadership in stores terrified that we’ll keep escalating and growing.”

On the Frontline of a Local Sip-in

Enthusiasm for the union was high at one local solidarity sip-in held at a Starbucks store in Davis Square in Somerville. Two baristas verbally thanked supporters for their work. 

One sip-in attendee, Brian Murray, was a “salt” organizing on the inside as a rank-and-file worker during the initial wave of Starbucks organizing in  2021. After two years with Starbucks Workers United, he now works for the Harvard Graduate Student Union, HGSU-UAW Local 5118. Murray noticed that when he got to the register to order, the cashier was taken off duty and someone who appeared to be a manager took their place.

“This was a tactic I saw in Buffalo,” Murray said. “Often, corporate wouldn’t want everyday workers to receive that support and have those interactions.”

Still, Murray found it “really heartening” to see his fellow community members show up to support Starbucks workers. Support can bleed across industries and strengthen morale across multiple kinds of workers in different shops. In Buffalo, striking nurses showed up at Starbucks shops during their pickets to encourage Murray and his coworkers.

“For some folks, that was really empowering,” said Murray. “Gave them strength.” 

What’s next for Starbucks Workers United?

Supporters of Starbucks Workers United can show their solidarity and receive email updates about future actions by signing the No Contract, No Coffee pledge. Langevin also confirmed workers will continue to escalate in its fight with Starbucks for the strong union contracts its members deserve.

“As of right now, our goal is to get Starbucks back to the bargaining table,” said Langevin. “[As] our acts of civil disobedience show, we’re willing to do whatever it takes to get there.”

Terence Cawley is a member of Boston DSA.

I’m sure you’ve had the same conversation by now. A friend, family member or near-stranger calls and says, “Talk me down. I’m freaking out.” 

I fielded two of these recently. The first caller, an old friend and comrade, is not a newbie. After a couple decades on the left, during which she was an activist in a teachers’ union and leader in various union campaigns, she upped her game, getting herself successively elected as a school board member, City Council member and finally County Superintendent of Public Instruction, overseeing seventeen school districts. She served two terms, staying faithful to the progressive ideals she started with.

After retiring she joined DSA and continued to stay active in electoral politics in a support role. In short, she is not naïve or easily rattled. But on this occasion, she was feeling completely unnerved and overwhelmed. Why? By paying too much attention to the news, chock full of horrifying stories about Trump, Musk, Vance, and the other elected and unelected fascists in their ugly campaign to destroy the helping powers of government and make life for the multiracial working class as miserable as possible. 

She called because she was looking for human connection with a comrade whom she hoped could point to some rays of light amid the darkness. I told her that many people are resisting the fascist tide in many ways—in the courts, in all levels of government, and in the streets. New coalitions are being formed, and old ones resurrected. I mentioned the popup demonstration staged by FUN (the new federal workers network California Red reported on last issue) that I had attended. 

I told her the mainstream media is certainly not helping here. Its underreporting of the resistance is spotty, often politically unsophisticated, and fearful of taking on Trump. If you pay too much attention to it, it will freak you out and/or wear you down quickly—part of the goal of a fascist regime. She got off the call telling me that she felt a bit better, and promised she would more carefully titrate her media consumption going forward. 

In the middle of the call I saw my brother was trying to reach me, so I called him back—and found myself essentially returned to the same conversation, complicated by where he lives, a small conservative rural town. He said analogies with history (Germany 1933) were making him extremely nervous.  

In both conversations (and others like them) I gave two pieces of advice: watch your political media intake carefully, and find a group of like-minded people with a common resistance perspective and shared activity to join with—being careful to take on only the amount of work that won’t burn you out over the long term. It also helps to have a best guess big picture to work with.

Best guess: Three lines of defense

I—and I’m not the only one—see three lines of defense and broad areas of activity between now and the 2026 elections (if we are still having them by then). The first, a focus on the courts, leaves out most of us for strategy discussion and direct participation, as legal action mostly requires being a lawyer. But we can certainly participate in support campaigns, including publicity, education and organizing. Since the highest court in the land is in the hands of Trump appointees, this first line of defense may only get us so far, with its main utility buying time. It may ultimately be more effective for education of the public than actual legal redress—especially if the fascists choose to ignore and sideline the courts. For what it’s worth we note that of the eighty suits filed against Trump he has won 12 and lost 22. 

The second front is electoral—organize to overturn the thin majorities of Republicans (now a fully fascist party) in the House and Senate. It is critical that at least one house of Congress goes to the Democrats in order to block the worst actions of the trifecta held by Trump et. al. At this point there is no guarantee that there will be elections in 2026, or if there are, that they will be conducted fairly. So this part of the strategy requires state and local work around election protection, as well as a candidate selection process that makes certain no Trojan horses like Manchin or Sinema are among the Democrats running, and replacement of weak straws like Schumer among the current leadership. Then, of course, there’s actually electing candidates in 2026.

Alongside these two frontline areas it will be crucial to construct robust non-violent direct action (NVDA) wings of our movement. Sit-ins, marches, occupations, other forms of civil disobedience and face to face confrontations against the people moving the country to dictatorship will gain news coverage and, with successes, provide information and courage for the long term. Such activities will bring in new recruits. (They will also require savvy and well-prepared security. Depending on how things unfold the MAGA forces might well unleash their violent rabble on peaceful demonstrations.)

There is at best a two-year shelf life on these two lines of defense, which is why development of street support for them is so critical; the latter will likely become the key component of what follows. If lines one and two crumble the final line of defense before full on dictatorship will be mass action. What might that look like? 

Here is where unions come into the center of the picture, and we must begin preparing now if there is to be any chance of success. Maximum impact on this far right government and oligarchy (which since January have become synonymous) will be earned when masses of workers refuse to work. The more that the consent of we the governed is withdrawn from the abuse we are suffering, the more leverage we will have.

Forward toward the…

I have never been one of those people who think it’s a good idea to call for a general strike to deal with a problem, even if the problem—say, the United States going to war under false pretenses—would deserve to be met with that solution. Why not? Because there are sound reasons why we’ve only seen around fifteen (depending on how you define them) citywide general strikes in nearly two hundred and fifty years of American history, and none since 1946. We’ve had exactly one national general strike, in 1886, which after achieving only limited success toward its goal of an eight-hour workday, brought on the first Red Scare. 

Called by the young American Federation of Labor (AFL) and supported by large sections of the Knights of Labor on May 1, 1886, the strike was honored by some three hundred thousand workers (in a non-agricultural workforce of around twelve million). It eventuated over a period of years the establishment of International Workers Day on May 1 in nearly one hundred countries around the world, but not here, the country in which the events occurred that inspired the holiday. In the wake of that setback, the eight-hour day movement had to wait nearly half a century before it became the law of the land.

This historical record might not encourage hope for a general strike’s success today. Neither does the current state of organized labor, which is weaker in terms of workforce density than it has been in a century, and contrary to what is required for a general strike, fractured along several fault lines. 

Don’t call: organize

But recent developments mean the political landscape is shifting. Many strikes erupted in 2022, the most important of which was the autoworkers’ victory over the Big 3. In its wake the UAW’s president Shawn Fain issued a challenge to the rest of the labor movement: line up your contract expiration dates for May 1, 2028 and prepare to act the way a united working class should act. No leader of a major national union has talked—concretely—like this for decades. 

Although we have seen no citywide general strikes since 1946, in 2018 the “red state revolt” of education workers featured anti-austerity walkouts that in their scale were essentially general strikes of public education. Currently in California a number of major urban teacher unions have been meeting and planning to bring these ideas together: a common contract expiration date and united action when the contracts expire. 

When Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this month that it was cancelling TSA workers’ collective bargaining rights, Sara Nelson, head of the Association of Flight Attendants, responded that workers have “very few options but to join together to organize for a general strike”.

The wording is precise: not a call, abstractly, for a general strike, but to organize for one. This was the beauty of Fain’s call. Embedded in how he issued the call was how to make it happen. Even so, it will take a massive effort to pull it off. The plan was presented before Trump’s election with a three-and-a-half-year timeline—appropriate for scaling up this way. But given the speed at which the fascists are breaking government and completing their coup, we will probably need to move up the schedule. Is that possible?

An extraordinary event, a general strike takes a rare combination of circumstances to bring it about, let alone win.  Four preconditions are required:  widespread anger among working people; a high degree of cooperation in a strong enough labor movement; union leaders confident enough in their level of organization that they are willing to stick their necks out and call for it to happen; and a spark or symbolic incident that crystallizes people’s willingness to act.  

In light of the relatively small size of the labor movement today, coalition with other progressive organizations is crucial: finding common cause with community organizations representing working class, poor and otherwise marginalized constituencies, with international solidarity and anti-war movements, with NGOs of all types, will be important.

It is likely that building block actions will contribute along the way—sectoral strikes, demonstrations and occupations, with (best outcome) growing solidarity and tactical sophistication developing through successes and failures. Labor leaders will need to be convinced through this process that militancy is a practical matter. This will no doubt not be a linear process; more like a chaotic one, the lessons of which need to be considered on the fly, tested and retested. A general strike—the ultimate weapon of the working class—will result from intent, experience, reflection and a bit of luck.  

Attitude counts

That’s as far as my best guess can take us. I’ll close by emphasizing that unity of the forces of resistance to fascism and oligarchy is created by coalition building and enabled by an attitude not always present in the culture of the left. We are far too prone to being alert to openings to argue, to disagree, split, stay in silos, and allow purity of principle to keep us divided. This is especially the case within organized labor. Seeking differences is relatively easy. We are less used to (and less good at) seeking openings to find our common interests and purpose and then acting together as one. But without that attitude of openness and unity-seeking, coalition building becomes far more difficult.  

Fighting fascism is not a time and place for purity, single-issue politics or doing things the way we’ve always done them. It’s a time to set aside the narrow lens for a broad one. By all means continue to work on your social justice cause, the one that you have passionately cared about and pursued for years or decades, whatever that may be. But don’t let that divert you from the task of standing with others in the alliances that are now forming to build the strength necessary to defeat Trump, Musk and their fascist assault. We’re in this together or we’re not going to make it.