Introduction: A Mass Orientation

This article will attempt to address some ongoing debates within DSA on how best to carry out electoral work and build a socialist working-class party. The first section will lay out what we mean by mass movement electoralism, followed by a sum-up of some of the practical electoral organizing done in Chicago. The next section gives voice to many of the tactical considerations in building campaigns, working in coalitions, and how DSA can gain experience and sharpen our socialist politics. Lastly, we address the strategic question of how to build a broadbase socialist party that can contend for power. Two key questions run through our analysis: how to become a more multi-racial working-class organization, and the need to support class-struggle candidates as well as DSA cadre.

There have always been debates, inside and outside of DSA, as to what constitutes “socialist politics.” There are those who argue explicit socialism must always take priority: fly the red flag proudly and wave it for all to see. This argument posits that anything less reduces our appeal as an alternative to the Democratic Party. Electoral campaigns like those organized by the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and various small communist groups are rarely serious about winning. Their purpose is making political points to educate the working class, who nevertheless give miniscule support to such candidates. Perhaps the working class is to blame for failing to support these radical candidates. Or maybe the working class is looking for more than pure ideology.

Unfortunately, ideological purity cannot protect us from the dangers of our time. We are now at a conjuncture where fascism is the main threat to all the advances won over the past century by mass popular movements. These include victories by labor, people of color, women, the LBGTQ+ community, and the environmental movement. We believe there is a strong anti-fascist majority in our country, and that is where we need to be rooted. We need to be working with all our friends and allies to fight fascism, and we have many to call on. That means socialists must be everywhere, developing relationships, creating issue-based coalitions, and building alliances for defeating authoritarianism. In other words, cohering a broad progressive front, or what might be called an anti-fascist united front.

DSA can play a central role in this. As the largest socialist organization in the U.S., we can help unite a broad array of forces, gaining respect through building unity and solidarity with others. Through mass work we can also best popularize our socialist political vision. This means rejecting a siloed or sectarian style. The 2025 campaign of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was an excellent example of such a broad and principled outreach.

But should we only support cadre candidates who can boast long-term allegiance to DSA? Or do class struggle candidates, those with loose ties to DSA but committed to the same ideas and issues that DSA holds dear, also deserve support? We believe both types of candidates are needed to build a multi-racial, working-class socialist movement, and that mass-movement electoralism plays a key role in this effort.

Whether supporting cadre or class struggle candidates, we need to ask the following questions: How will the campaign build the fighting capacity of the working class and push back against MAGA and corporate Democrats? How do we create an ongoing coalition and broaden our relationship? Can the campaign change the balance of forces in Chicago? Will it increase our organizational capacity and knowledge? Will it expand our membership, and help transform the class and multi-racial membership of DSA? Answering these questions and others will help us map out a strategy for mass movement electoralism. Canvassing for that perfect candidate who started as a DSA comrade and promotes every policy that seems socialist. But if we want to really contest power, we must organize with all friends and allies, many of whom are not, or not yet, socialists. These allies only need to agree with our program that “workers deserve more” and be willing to fight to break the power of corporations and the far right.

I. Mass Movement Electoralism

Our starting point is the key link between mass movements and elections. Mass movements are instrumentally valuable for winning elections. But elections are also instrumentally valuable for growing a movement. Call this mass movement electoralism.

Starting With Sanders

The development of mass movement electoralism is largely a by-product of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns. Starting in 2016, Sanders framed his campaign as a political revolution from the bottom up. The messaging of “Our Revolution” reflected the campaign’s movement orientation: it aspired to transform the U.S. government through collective action. The movement orientation of the campaign was further reflected by its small-dollar grassroots funding model and its volunteer-driven field operation. The Sanders campaign was mass movement-oriented in both messaging and structure.

Fast forward to 2020, the campaign went even further. Building on the success of 2016, its leaders leaned deeper into a movement identity. Through messaging, the campaign created a new slogan: “Not Me, Us.” As the slogan explicitly suggests, the campaign was not about Sanders, but the movement. Meanwhile, the campaign aspired to scale up its operations by fundraising more small-dollar donations from more people, while knocking on more doors with more volunteers. Sanders’ campaigns reflected a new model of electoral organizing: mass movement electoralism—using a mass movement to win elections, while using elections to grow the movement. The largest organizational gain was a tremendous growth in DSA. Much more so than the organization Our Revolution, which grew out of Sanders’ 2016 campaign. It never expanded much outside of its identity with Sanders and has failed to sustain enough enthusiasm to lead a mass movement.

Meanwhile, in 2017, an unknown organizer named Zohran Mamdani joined the New York City chapter of the DSA. As an unknown organizer who rose to become the Mayor of New York City, Zohran has repeatedly cited Sanders as one of his biggest inspirations—like so many others in DSA. And from a small organization to the largest socialist organization in the country, DSA has experienced unprecedented membership growth, in large part due to Sanders, Mamdani, and Trump.

Democratic Socialism and Mass Movement Electoralism

It is one thing to practice mass movement electoralism. It is another thing to practice it as democratic socialists. Democratic socialist mass movement electoralism is anchored by a distinctive political identity with a principled aspiration to build a society that is democratically owned. 

If you look back at U.S. history, the foundation of socialist organizing has almost always been labor, not elections, and for good reason. The foundation of socialism is anchored in a distinction between workers and owners. Because workers do not have ownership, they are powerless. Unless, of course, they form a labor union: an organized group with other workers that can act as a source of power that counters that of the owner. Organizing workers at their jobs is thus, and always has been, a core aim of socialists. So why has DSA embraced mass movement electoralism?

First, elections speak to the masses—particularly in the U.S. While socialists aspire for a class-conscious movement that sees the economy as its terrain of political struggle, the reality is that most Americans do not think of politics in that way. Rather, the popular way of thinking about politics is a narrow one: politics is about elections. To communicate socialist politics and win the hearts and minds of a mass audience requires socialists to engage electorally. This can also be quite effective. As Sanders indisputably proved, an effective movement-oriented campaign has the capacity to transform popular political discourse and put a socialist political movement into motion. Finally, there is an urgent need to stop fascists from consolidating power, through elections or otherwise. Whether it is speaking to the masses to put in motion a working-class movement, winning governing power to transform society, or taking electoral power away from fascists, there are deep justifications for socialist mass movement electoralism.

Problems of Race and Class for Mass Electoralism

Yet there are different problems for electoral organizing, and the first practical question will always be our capacity. In the current political climate, there are simply not enough socialists to do all the organizing work that needs to be done. By contrast, the second problem is a matter of values: what is the most valuable use of our capacity in which some commitments are ranked higher than others? Linked to values is political strategy. What are our goals and how should we organize to achieve them? This problem generates some of the most heated debates.

For example, the debate over only supporting cadre candidates, or additionally class struggle candidates. Cadre candidates are those who have shown long-term commitment to DSA, are accountable to the organization, and proclaim allegiance to socialism. Such candidates should certainly be a key effort in DSA electoral work. A class-struggle candidate may have looser ties to DSA, but a long history of fighting for working-class issues and solid roots in her community. This is particularly relevant when a candidate seeking DSA endorsement is a person of color with a proven track record as an organizer. After all, building multi-racial class unity is a core principle of socialism. This speaks to underlining strategic conceptions of how to build DSA, the importance of cohering a broad socialist movement through coalitions and alliances, and how to lay the foundation for a socialist party that can contend for political power.

In the context of multi-racial organizing, it is imperative to respect a group’s right to self-determination—especially as it relates to lived experience. This is also an important principle in how we relate to potential electeds. The ideal of cadre candidates can sometimes downgrade the importance of lived experience. People come to politics and demonstrate their commitments in many ways. Yet we often issue judgments against people who have demonstrated their commitments outside of DSA.

Imagine, for example, someone who comes to socialist politics through their experience of racial domination in our society. They demonstrate their commitment by dedicating themselves to organizing to solve problems affecting their community. They organize tenants to fight for better housing. They organize parents to fight for better education, for better healthcare, or against police brutality. Now imagine they come up for endorsement in the chapter. Yet, they are rejected for having an insufficient relationship to DSA. In doing so, DSA fails to take into consideration their lived experience. The candidate chooses to organize their communities through the lived experience of racial domination. Yet they are rejected for endorsement for committing themselves to their community rather than to DSA.

That is not to say running a cadre candidate is not a key organizing goal, nor is it to say that one’s relationship to the organization is not an important consideration, but rather that it cannot be treated as a disqualifying condition. This is particularly true for the purpose of multi-racial organizing because DSA is weakly rooted in minority communities, which is reflected in the makeup of our membership. The basic reality is that individuals within marginalized communities come to politics through distinct lived experiences that motivate distinct commitments. What matters, substantively, is whether those demonstrated commitments are aligned with DSA politics. Organizing across differences requires respecting demonstrated commitments anchored in lived experiences, not just DSA membership.

What are some of the most important shared lived experiences that can unite us? The first source of unity is fighting for the material well-being of society. A universal point of agreement within DSA is that our economy does not meet the needs of the working class. Mamdani’s “Make New York Affordable” taps into what is becoming a near universal demand. That experience has the potential to command unity when an electoral strategy is tied to specific, concrete policies that can improve lives. However, economic demands should never be our sole campaign issue. The U.S. faces an intersectional crisis that includes racism, sexism, discrimination against non-citizens, environmental disasters, and imperialism. Here we can turn to the Mamdani campaign to study how a focus on affordability can co-exist while also addressing these issues.

Our other issue is at the level of systemic reform of the electoral system itself. The entire left shares a common anger towards the ruling elites and their political control inside the Democratic and Republican parties, propped up by a privately financed two-party system. Killing the two-party monopoly and creating publicly financed multi-party democracy is a strategic demand that can help guide the movement’s electoral organizing.

II. The Chicago Experience: Using Electoral Work to Build Alliances and Grow DSA

So what has been the experience of mass movement electoralism in Chicago? How have we used electoral work not just to make a point, but to build a base of active socialist organizers and civically minded voters? We believe the “Chicago Model” of coalition-building offers a blueprint for this transition. The path to building a mass socialist party is not found in running educational campaigns that garner one percent of the vote, but in running to win governing power through coalitions.

The 2019 Breakthrough: Bridging Movements to Electoral Power 

Our first breakthrough in Chicago resulted in the election of five to six alders in 2019, mostly people of color, and the formation of a Socialist Caucus in the Chicago City Council. This was not achieved by parachuting candidates into districts waving red flags. It was achieved by running candidates who were already embedded leaders in existing movement struggles; essentially, class-struggle candidates in which DSA linked to pre-existing work and coalitions.

Take the 20th Ward victory of Jeanette Taylor. Her campaign was rooted deeply in her leadership of the hunger strike to save Dyett High School and the NoCopAcademy movement. The proximity of the Obama Presidential Center to her ward also highlighted concerns around gentrification. Her track record was able to demonstrate a community-centered approach to the processes involved. Similarly, Rossana Rodríguez-Sanchez in the 33rd Ward didn’t just run on ideology; she ran on her track record of neighborhood organizing against gentrification and for expanded community services having been involved with the Immigrant Youth Justice League. These victories helped DSA gain a foothold in the larger gentrification and police politics of Chicago, and with residents who had been fighting on these issues. 

Similarly, the victories of Byron Sigcho-Lopez demonstrated DSA played a vital role in beating entrenched power structures. The corruption of incumbent Danny Solis, forced to vacate his seat due to an FBI sting operation, validated much of the 25th Ward IPO narrative that propelled Sigcho-Lopez to his second run in 2019. In the 40th Ward, DSA’s large presence prevented the almost four-decade entrenched alderman from being re-elected by working alongside a formidable progressive coalition supporting Andre Vazquez who was chair of the North Side chapter of Reclaim Chicago. In the 1st Ward, community organizer Daniel LaSpata was a ten-year member and vice-president of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association and an organizer with the Jane Addams Seniors Caucus. He faced off and won against the entrenched political machine of Proco Joe Moreno. Finally, Carlos Rosa was an organizer with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and was the first CDSA member elected to city council. Rosa’s insurgent politics were validated with his resounding re-election victory, and the addition of all the above socialists joining him at City Hall.

These victories proved a vital lesson: Socialists can lead and partake in multi-tendency coalitions when we fight around concrete, winnable demands that affect the working class and people of color. These candidates were supported by progressive unions like the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and various neighborhood organizations. They demonstrated that we win respect not by running on abstract socialism, but on delivering and respecting the local historical conditions. All these candidates were well-known activists in their communities, supported by an array of progressive forces in their wards. Their primary identities were as class fighters, not DSA cadre. But DSA provided a path outside the corporate lead Democratic Party machine, merging socialist organizational capacity with homegrown organizers—an organic relationship arising out of the lived experience of organizers in working class wards.

2023: The Apex of Mass Organizing and the “Proto-Party” in Action

If 2019 was the breakthrough, the 2023 mayoral victory of Brandon Johnson represents the apex of this mass-based strategy. This victory was not a single candidate’s campaign, but the culmination of a decade-long labor-community-socialist alliance, organized largely through vehicles like the CTU, United Working Families, ward-based Independent Political Organizations (IPOs), and community groups attached to non-profit services. This coalition framework had already been taking shape in tackling issues like affordable housing.

DSA played a critical role in this coalition, helping to re-elect our incumbent aldermen. But DSA did not endorse Johnson even though he was a former Chicago Teachers Union organizer and had their strong backing. Nevertheless, some individual members campaigned for him, believing Johnson aligned with working-class demands even though he did not carry the socialist label. He was, in other words, a class struggle candidate. This stands in stark contrast to the narrow impulse that would reject such a candidate because he is a Democrat or not a declared socialist. The unity behind Johnson delivered a tangible shift in power to a working-class-led alliance. This is the ultimate proof that we run in elections to win governing power. By prioritizing the “proto-party” coalition over purity, we achieve the energy and victories necessary to transform city politics. And once in office, Johnson appointed DSA council members to important committee positions, and Carlos Rosa to head the Department of Parks and Recreation.

A recent resolution titled “Which Side Are You On?” written by Chicago DSA Co-Chair Sean Duffy and veteran member Alan Maas, passed in a close vote at our March 2026 general meeting. The resolution was a reconsideration of the last mayoral election noting that DSA has “been hindered (by) remaining silent on city-wide races, most notably for Mayor.” It went on to state, “An electoral defeat of Mayor Brandon Johnson and the socialists and progressives largely allied with him on the City Council would be a defeat for the left and the progressive wing of the labor movement, with his replacement almost certain to be a major barrier to advancing a democratic socialist agenda in the city for years to come.” This is a recognition of the need to support class struggle candidates, particularly a progressive Black mayor being challenged by the white corporate Democrats who traditionally hold power in Chicago.

But the resolution was also open-eyed about differences DSA had with some of Johnson’s actions in office. The question being, how to extend support to someone who from a working-class perspective is clearly the best choice, while at the same time maintaining the independence to criticize? Here the resolution offers a path forward. “The challenges and failures of the Johnson administration demand an honest and critical analysis, but strategies of uncritical allegiance, open hostility, passive disconnection, or simply ‘ignoring the elephant in the room’ are not realistic or viable in an election that is on track to largely be a referendum on Mayor Johnson.” The answer is to ask all candidates “which side are you on,” while working to unite left-wing and progressive forces around a common agenda to tax the rich and reject austerity. This puts class politics and racial solidarity at the center of our mass electoral work.

Reclaiming Our Legacy

This “proto-party” approach isn’t a novelty; it’s a return to the most effective traditions of Chicago’s working-class history. We are reconnecting with the era when communists, socialists, and trade unionists worked to organize the packinghouses and steel mills.

In those days, the left didn’t isolate itself. It was the backbone of the union drives led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the early civil rights struggles in the first half of the 20th century. These organizers understood that political power wasn’t just about a ballot line, but about building a “bloc” that could contend for power in the workplace and the neighborhood simultaneously. The current relationship of DSA, the CTU, and community groups should mirror those historic efforts to merge the socialist vision with the muscle of organized labor. A key component to our mass movement electoralism strategy.

However, to sustain this today, we need more than just coalitions that come together for an election and disperse. We need the permanence that our forebears built. We need structures that hold the working class together between elections. This brings us to the necessity of IPOs, building DSA, and creating coalitions linked to mass organizing. It’s what Antonio Gramsci called creating institutional power in civil society. It also affects how we see building a mass socialist party addressed in Section IV.

III. Base Building and Coalitions

Having laid out our approach to mass movement electoralism and providing examples from DSA organizing, we now turn to the details of building institutional power and organizational capacity.

Building and participating in a mass movement is complex and requires balancing competing priorities. To build a mass electoral movement, we must focus on three goals:

1. Building relationships between organizations and groups of people. Only a broad coalition between groups can reliably deliver significant wins on a state and federal level. These bonds are not forged overnight, but require time and resources within any strategic plan.
2. Creating a mass base that will support and mobilize a left agenda. A genuine mass movement must strive to win votes and bring new members in.
3. Emboldening the left flank to play a significant role in defining messaging and policy priorities. A mass movement is one step on the road to Socialism. The form such a constellation takes is not certain, but it is very likely that DSA will be a major voice in defining the explicitly anti-capitalist wing of such a coalition. In this case, we must doggedly pursue a voice in decision-making. This influence will better the odds that a coalition heightens the contradictions between labor and capital and builds a revolutionary working class.

Such influence isn’t acquired by yelling the loudest. Instead, we must build leverage through institutional capacity, build electoral and governing expertise within our organization and gather data and knowledge to deploy in future campaigns.

These goals must be pursued in qualitatively different campaign formations: cadre candidate campaigns, small-scale class struggle coalitions, and large-scale class struggle coalitions.

Cadre Candidate Campaigns

These goals must be pursued in qualitatively different campaign formations. DSA should and will continue to run their own “cadre candidate” campaigns. These are crucial for goal number three, as such campaigns immediately build our capacity because DSA members are guaranteed positions in leadership, coordination, and the data gathered by such campaigns is ours to use.

As we’ve seen with the Zohran campaign, these projects also build a mass base of support. NYC–DSA membership boomed during his campaign, and the campaign mobilized 100,000 volunteers under the Zohran vision for the city. Many of these volunteers would certainly be back to support a broader mass movement.

Perhaps a less championed boon of DSA’s efforts during the campaign was its successful attempt to weave together other organizations into a coalition. Even in cadre candidate campaigns, coalitions should be cultivated.

Small-Scale Class Struggle Coalitions

Small-scale electoral coalitions through Ward IPOs can also contribute to our ends. In these coalitions, DSA is still a major partner. Campaigns under the ward IPO stand to offer our members leadership positions (though fewer than they would enjoy in cadre candidate campaigns). By participating in these campaigns, our organization and allies also have an opportunity to build relationships and gather contact information for potential recruits to our ranks of activists and leaders, and for further support during future campaigns and mobilizations.

More importantly, DSA has significant gaps in support, particularly with working-class people of color. This is a critical failure in an organization that stands for the most marginalized groups in society. This won’t be corrected by merely handing out flyers or wheat-pasting. Diverse working-class neighborhoods already have organizations with deep ties to the community and working knowledge of the needs and aspirations of the population. DSA stands to gain by working closely with these organizations, learning to refine our own messaging and platform and showing genuine dedication to the cause of the multi-racial working class.

These campaigns are crucial for organizations like DSA to grow support in new areas. In any given campaign, win or lose, our goal should be to create a base of working-class support door by door, ward by ward. This requires retaining connections within the community that can be mobilized for further campaigns, ranging between electoral actions, legislative goals, social protest, and labor support.

These small-scale campaigns must be selected through careful strategic analysis. We should not consider the campaign based on the candidate or platform alone, but must think carefully about the coalitions we wish to cultivate and the areas that we most sorely need contact with. We must look beyond the short-term stump speech to how campaigns can directly contribute to our central electoral goals.

Larger campaigns pose far greater risks and rewards. Major runs for federal office, governor, or even mayor require much broader coalitions, but can help spread working class-oriented messaging and make substantial gains for the working class. This is what the resolution “Which Side Are You On” explained above recognizes. Bernie Sanders, who formed a diverse left-progressive coalition in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns, played a central role in revitalizing the left, even though he spent very few resources on directly building socialist institutions. These huge campaigns are key opportunities for building a mass base to fight for working class power, even if they are often not explicitly socialist.

Large-Scale Class Struggle Coalitions

Such campaigns also can make incredible material gains. Brandon Johnson, whose progressive coalition won him the mayoralty of Chicago, has notched real wins for working people. His administration oversaw a historically generous contract with the Chicago Teacher’s Union. Johnson vetoed legislation allowing snap curfews. The administration’s investment in community programs and resources along with Community Violence Intervention Programs within policing have contributed to the lowest murder rate Chicago has seen in decades. Johnson’s victory and these policies would not have been possible under a narrower coalition.

Of course, Johnson’s administration is not socialist: what’s good doesn’t go far enough, and it is difficult to assess how much the administration’s harmful stances (poor housing for migrants at the beginning of his tenure and, more recently, a budget proposing significant cuts to crucial city services such as Chicago libraries) is due to the constraints of his office or broader ideological shortcomings within his coalition.

In many cases, the possible benefits of such campaigns will outweigh such risks, but we must be careful to mitigate the greatest dangers. Any endorsement of a broad-based coalition must be put to a democratic vote. Political education also has its part to play, ensuring that members understand the potential risks and benefits of such political actions. This will deepen organizational democracy, but it will also allow an opportunity to inoculate against uncomradely debate.

We must consider a final element related to these broader campaigns: our own institutional capacity. Depending on the nature of the coalition, DSA may stand to enter members into positions of leadership and governance. If we wish to build our campaign capabilities, there is no better place. The sheer scale of such campaigns could offer our members unique opportunities to build expertise. There is no substitute.

What is to Be Done?

We must approach electoral politics seriously. Selecting individual campaigns based on the fleeting merits of purity will only get us so far. Instead, we must develop a deeper electoral strategy that considers organizational goals above the number of buzzwords in a candidate’s speech. Additionally, during these campaigns we must be ever aware of long-term strategic considerations, such as party building and class consciousness. To truly achieve our political goals, we must take calculated risks with campaigns and coalition partners that may not be explicitly socialist. 

This can be applied in government as well. Once a candidate is victorious, how do we use it to further our fight for a mass party? There are some easy answers here: pursue staff positions to build institutional knowledge and use organizational pressure to get candidates on board for specific messaging or policy goals. But there are less immediate goals to consider as well. We hope to form a mass party that has countless candidates in government. Now is the time to experiment with community and coalition partnerships and inside-outside mobilizations. How do we coordinate efforts between the halls of power and mobilizations in our streets and workplaces? How do we deepen democratic ties with the community to build a durable base of support and responsive governance? Answering such questions will take a great deal of trial and error. It will be exciting to see what conclusions our comrades in New York develop while Mamdani is in Gracie Mansion.

IV. Tasks in Building a Socialist Party

Finally, we want to consider the strategic goal of mass movement electoralism, that is building a major socialist party that can contend for state power. The need to build a socialist or labor party has been long discussed on the left. Labor leader Tony Mazzocchi helped found the U.S. Labor Party in 1996, which had the support of nine international unions and hundreds of locals. But the party would educate first and run candidates much later. In fact, the Buffalo chapter of the party was expelled for prematurely running candidates. Meanwhile, labor leaders were still drawn to the Democratic Party, and leftist factional struggles undercut organizing efforts. But the call for an independent working-class party never stopped, particularly among socialists who see the Democratic Party as a dead-end or class enemy. The debate on how to establish an independent socialist party continues among DSA members today. The DSA podcast episode featuring David Dulhalde from the Socialist Majority caucus and Ramsin Canon of Bread & Roses provides good insights into the current discussion.

Here there are several strategic questions we need to consider. Is DSA by itself the heart of the process of establishing such a party? DSA is certainly core to the process. But even as we grow in numbers and elect more officials, does that mean at some undefined but not distant point we can transform ourselves into the long-sought socialist party? We don’t think any single organization can viably claim to be a party representing our large and diverse working class without broader unity built between labor, social movements, and the left. Even if DSA has quantitative growth with more elected members and more membership, how is this a qualitative change from the proto-party we are today?

Let’s start with this picture of reality. The Democratic and Republican parties each pull in 75 to 82 million votes in presidential elections. To be a serious national alternative, we need a base of 15 to 20 million, a significant bloc in Congress, a strong base in city councils, and mayors and state legislators  across the country. Those are the building blocks that make a new national party a competitive reality. There is a wide range of socialists and progressive independents willing to cut ties with the Democrats and found a third party. 

Can we glimpse this reality today? We think so. A strong indicator was the No Kings March of eight million people. The largest march in US history bringing together a huge mass of people deeply dissatisfied with the nation’s political and economic conditions.Take those eight million and double it. All those folks, in all their diversity and concerns, need to see a political future in socialism rather than liberalism, and they must be convinced to vote for socialist candidates. DSA will certainly be a key organization in that process. But constructing the relationships to do so may take an extended period of coalition building, electoral alliances, and growing confidence and respect among coalition partners.

Building Multi-Racial Unity

Here is another topic that we must assess realistically. Let’s look at the racial composition of DSA. In Chicago, 39 percent of the population is white; people of color make up 61 percent of the population. That is far from the composition of our local membership. Building a socialist party can only be done through mass work within the multi-racial working class. The U.S. population is now 40.2% people of color. We don’t have national statistics on the demographics of national DSA membership, but we estimate it’s about 80 to 85 percent white. Of those in the top 10 percent of wealthiest households, 88.5 percent are white, only 2.2 percent are Black, 2.4 percent Hispanic, and 6.9 percent Asian. If we just look at the working and middle classes, people of color constitute 45.6 percent, or about 137 million people.

Any socialist party worthy of representing the multi-racial working class needs to reflect this reality in its membership numbers. That means minority-based social movement organizations and many thousands of minority individuals need to join in the founding of a socialist party. It means major unions need to affiliate, not only because labor is a key component of our strategy, but because the largest percent of society with union households is the Black community. A socialist party that is serious about winning power must be built around that working-class reality. Of course, our voting base will be much larger than our membership. But we need an institutional infrastructure built upon a strong multi-racial grassroots base.

This is easy to say, of course, and much harder to achieve. U.S. society pushes against racially integrated organizations because of its institutional racist history—a history of segregated communities, churches, civil organization, schools, and social events, as well as laws and ideology that privilege white supremacy. During the upsurge in the 1960s, the radical landscape was split into the overwhelmingly white Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), while people of color organized within their communities with groups such as the Black Panthers, Crusade for Justice, the American Indian Movement, Puerto Rican Socialist Party, various Asian-American advocacy groups, and so on. These groups worked together through coalitions like the Panther-led Rainbow Coalition in Chicago. Moreover, the war in Vietnam played a unifying role. But the most integrated groups were within communist circles. The traditional Communist Party built on its historic ties and the Angela Davis campaign, as well as some organizations in the new communist movement, which had 30 to 80 percent minority cadres. But overall, these numbers were in the low thousands. Building a multi-racial socialist party will take a dedicated and continual effort, putting an analysis of racialized capitalism at the heart of our understanding, and connecting with minority-lead organizing.

An example of a missed opportunity: In Chicago, there was a militant and long campaign to create a civilian review board to oversee the city’s racist police force. This entailed a lot of community organizing. DSA was largely absent from this movement even though it had widespread support, particularly in black and brown neighborhoods throughout Chicago. Eventually, the movement forced the City Council to create the board, although not in the precise manner the organizers had advocated. When district elections were held for board members, DSA was nowhere to be found. The criticism was the community-based boards would be a sham without enough power. But if socialists are to be “everywhere,” as the recent eponymous DSA initiative calls for, it needs to recognize the struggles that people of color identify as important and be there too. Running for and supporting board candidates would have provided a direct connection with the organic demands of the minority community and strengthened the influence of the boards.

Nevertheless, DSA has done some excellent work electing minority candidates, both in Chicago and nationally. Our most nationally recognized members, Zohran Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib are people of color, as well as the rest of the Congressional “squad.” And most of Chicago’s DSA city council members come from the Black and Latino/a community. This certainly represents a strong start in building DSA as a fully multi-racial working class organization. 

Conclusion

Mass movement electoralism is an essential tool in building a socialist movement that can challenge capitalism and win governing power. Despite its limitations, electoral work is how most workers identify and live through political struggle. Mass movement electoralism embraces this tendency, meeting the majority of workers where they are, not only to ameliorate some of the most pernicious aspects of our social system but to offer agency and an alternative political vision.

Such a strategy is by necessity open and inclusive. To truly reach workers, who are largely non-socialists, we must promote and collaborate with seasoned activists and organizations embedded within existing communities and struggles. This is especially crucial when considering multi-racial working class communities where DSA seems to struggle to build membership. Rather than merely running recruitment drives, we should work with and learn from existing groups and organizational structures.

Test cases of this strategy abound in Chicago. A number of left alders ran with the support of DSA but also as established members of other communities and organizations. These runs prove the ability of DSA to pursue electoral victory within broader left coalitions. The Brandon Johnson mayoralty itself has been extremely informative, both highlighting the shortcomings of abstention during major left electoral campaigns and illustrating the dangers and contradictions broad coalitions present.

These dangers and contradictions point to a second focus of our proposed mass electoral strategy. To maintain some voice within these broad coalitions, we must build our own organizational capacity. Electoral targets should be selected with the intention of building strategic long-term coalitions, increasing our presence in key communities, and developing our own members and internal capabilities to assert ourselves as a significant partner in larger campaigns.

Lastly, we must consider DSA’s participation in mass movement electoralism within the broader goals of our organization: establishing a socialist party. To build a party capable of national contestation requires a base of support far larger than today’s self-identified socialists. As No Kings has proven, many people are dissatisfied with the state of our current political terrain, but winning these voters over to a truly left-wing, worker-oriented alternative will require a long-term strategy of coalition building and a continuous effort to listen to and support the struggles of workers of color. These priorities are absolutely necessary to build a truly mass organization.

DSA has done some amazing work we all can be proud of. We have much more yet to do.

Acknowledgement

We like to thank Bijan Terani for his thoughts and comments.

The post Mass Movement Electoralism appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

[[{“value”:”

By: Siobhan McDonough

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

CAMBRIDGE — Last Monday, community members crowded into Cambridge City Hall to voice our support for a proposed resolution calling for an end to the U.S.’s devastating Cuba blockade. Cambridge City Councillors and democratic socialists Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler and Ayah Al-Zubi, along with Councillor Marc McGovern, proposed the resolution.

In opposition to her colleagues, Councillor Patty Nolan cut off discussion using her “charter right” authority, which postpones further debate to the Council’s next meeting on May 11, 2026. Councillor Nolan argued the Council had no business addressing foreign policy:

I do not believe that the City Council should deliberate or use time during regular business meetings on foreign policy issues, which I see this as.

Councillor Nolan is correct that the Cuba blockade, in a very narrow sense, is about foreign policy. Cambridge’s action on this resolution is, by itself, insufficient to force the Trump administration to change its posture toward Cuba. The people of Cambridge, like most people in the United States, have almost no say in our federal government’s aggression toward other countries. The president dictates U.S. foreign policy in practice. Trump, without Congressional approval, kidnapped Venezuelan President Maduro and started a catastrophic war with Iran. Just last week, he unilaterally issued an executive order expanding international sanctions on those participating in the Cuban economy. 

The U.S. awards its globe-spanning military and economic apparatus to the winner of the Electoral College, a system which makes most U.S. citizens’ presidential votes essentially meaningless. Through the anti-democratic Electoral College, both Republican presidents this century first came into office with fewer votes than their opponent. Winning that non-democratic institution also authorizes presidents to pick lifetime appointees to the Supreme Court. The Court gave itself the power of judicial review to strike down acts of Congress, but on foreign policy, courts allow presidents free rein by consistently refusing to enforce laws that limit presidential acts of war.

Nominally, Congress should be able to represent popular will and thwart presidential warmongering. However, both chambers of Congress—the Senate and the House—have their own barriers to popular input. The Senate prioritizes the representation of land over the representation of people and protects its members from voters with six year terms. Thanks in part to the Supreme Court’s rulings in Rucho and Callais, the House is an ever-worsening mess of gerrymandered safe seats designed to entrench the status quo and disenfranchise non-white voters. Corporations and elite interest groups flood the Senate and House with campaign contributions to offset popular pressure. Altogether, it’s no wonder that popular will has almost no impact on federal policy compared to the preferences of economic elites.

But that’s exactly why we must act. When the state of U.S. democracy itself is so woeful, representative governing bodies like the Cambridge City Council must use their democratic legitimacy to serve as a voice for the community’s values on such crucial issues as the lives and freedom of the Cuban people facing the deep violence and social murder of the blockade. The democratic structures of the Cambridge City Council are relatively strong, compared to the non-democratic ones above. Instead of gerrymandered single-member districts, we have a proportional City Council that represents the ideological diversity of Cambridge voters and open, public council meetings that begin with an opportunity for residents to be heard. 

Our democracy in Cambridge is far from perfect. We do not allow non-citizens to vote, we do not have automatic or same-day voter registration, and our unelected City Manager retains far too much power over the budget and city operations. Wealthy donors and corporate interests hold too much sway in the political process. Still, the City Council remains the best institutional voice Cambridge residents collectively have.

Our city’s residents overwhelmingly oppose the oppressive U.S. blockade of Cuba. As Trump ratchets up sanctions while openly threatening that “Cuba is next,” we demand our institutions push back on the violence done in our names. With Congress non-responsive, that duty falls to the representative Cambridge City Council.

Cambridge community members should show up in force at City Hall once again on May 11 at 5:30pm to demand Cambridge City Council affirms our city’s anti-imperialist values.

Siobhan McDonough is the treasurer for Boston Democratic Socialists of America, the trustee chair for the National Organization of Legal Services Workers (UAW 2320), and a civil rights attorney for working-class people.

The post OPINION: Cambridge Can and Must Take Action To Oppose the Cuba Blockade on May 11 appeared first on Working Mass.

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By: W.J.

I found my way to a Metro Detroit DSA meeting through my work with one of the ballot initiatives the chapter endorsed last year. Another volunteer and I were there to give our pitch and try to recruit MDDSA members as petition gatherers. What struck me when I opened the door to Ant Hall was how packed it was — all the seats were full. It was standing room only. I’m a bigger guy, so I had to “ope” and “pardon me” my way from the front door to a tight corner off to the side, navigating around to the counter space where we’d set up our computer to record new volunteers and set out our clipboards and petitions.

As we got ourselves ready before the start of the general meeting, we were approached by one of the many leaders of the chapter, Jess Newman. Jess came to check in with us, made sure we had everything we needed, and gave us a rundown of how the meeting would go and when we’d be beckoned forward to make our pitch.

We were all set. Jess told us that we’d be called up front near the end of the meeting, before members would be released for the post-meeting social. With nothing to do for a bit, I decided to putz around Ant Hall and check out the meeting, not quite sure what to expect. I walked in right after the emcee got done asking new members to stand and ask what got them interested in DSA. The answers I heard were about what I’d expected: Some “recovering” Democrats, others who were unaffiliated with the two parties had just had enough and wanted to be productive, and a few who weren’t quite sure but wanted to come see what the Democratic Socialists of America were all about. Regardless of the passion or certainty in their responses, all received fervent applause and smiles from their new comrades.

I went back to the main hall after a few minutes and noticed that they’d started a panel to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Their discussion sat with me for a good long while. I’d paid some attention to what was going on over there, passively looking at the news and reading the occasional article that made it into my feed. Listening to the panelists describe the history of the occupation and the atrocities committed after the October 7th attack left me angry. Angry at my country for enabling it and angry with myself for being powerless to do anything about it.

Then the conversation changed. They talked about various humanitarian organizations on the ground, and how we, an assembly sitting in Hamtramck, could support them. There was some relief at the mention of direct action we could take, but a mix of anger and dread remained.There was a look of quiet defiance on the faces of the membership that I noticed during this panel, and I realized that I was in a space filled with people that weren’t just going to sit quietly and listen about atrocities happening and go on about their day afterwards. With that realization came some reassurance and a lingering curiosity: what would I do next?

The meeting continued. As it neared the end, Jess returned to the front with a few others to talk about the on-going petition drives within Michigan For The Many. I think the meeting had gone over time, because she proceeded to give a quick overview of each one herself instead of calling up reps to go over them (which I didn’t mind at all). What did catch me off guard was Jess calling the group’s attention to me as not only an organizer for my group, but also a future DSA member, which received a small applause. I was feeling a bit mischievous, so I smiled and said, “We’ll see.” I actually already had the membership page up on my phone and was just going back and forth on the pledge amount for a sustaining member. Afterwards, I joined my partner at the counter and signed up about a dozen comrades to carry our petition. It was not a bad day at all.

After the meeting, we packed up, and I was hungry. At Jess’s recommendation, we went to Yemen Cafe down the street, where I ate entirely too much. While I was waiting for my check, I unlocked my phone, set my pledge amount, and skimmed the page welcoming me to DSA.

So why did I join? It was being in community with others. Sharing a space that made me believe that a better world is possible, and knowing there’s over a thousand Metro Detroiters organizing to make it so.

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Why I Joined DSA: To be on the Right Side of History was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

[[{“value”:”

By: Frederick Reiber

CAMBRIDGE — Harvard students are in their reading period in advance of finals as Harvard’s graduate union representing workers in around sixty programs of departments across the university surge to the end of their third week on a historic strike at the world’s richest university. Seeking to continue escalating pressure following a 79% turn out with 96% of its membership in favor of militant strike action for the union’s demands in April, workers have escalated to withholding teaching and research, disrupting end of semester activities, and slowing operations.

The Harvard Graduate Student Union (HGSU) – UAW Local 5118 strikes as other unions on campus have so far chosen other strategic routes in negotiations, despite the potential for contract alignment, but anger over workplaces issues in the rank-and-file movements is increasing across campus and its surrounding communities. The university focused entirely on attacks from above increasingly faces dissent from below.

And since workers make Harvard run, ultimately, the workers’ threat demands the university’s attention.

Demands for Dignity and Against ICE

HGSU has been bargaining for a total of 14 months, with only two tentative agreements—one on access to space for office hours and another on holidays, personal days, and vacation. Harvard has refused to bargain over issues including access to ADA-compliant spaces, union representation in cases of intellectual property disputes, rights to healthcare, and academic freedom. The university has also denied workers the right to open bargaining, recognizing the potential for increased worker power when negotiations are not done behind closed doors. 

The current campaign has coalesced around four primary demands:

First is the creation of an independent process for addressing workplace harassment, discrimination, and bullying. Union data estimates that at least one in five student workers experiences some form of harassment as researchers and teachers, while Harvard currently controls the only formal channels for reporting and resolving those cases. Graduate workers are calling for access to a neutral, third-party system, with the ability to appeal to an independent arbitration with the authority to issue binding remedies.

Workers spoke to the need for Real Recourse. In anonymous testimony published by HGSU, one student worker reported:

“I was repeatedly told I didn’t have a good Title IX case because I had a previous relationship with my harasser and because I was not assaulted. Though they suggested I could get help from CAMHS, there was no action taken to address my concerns or protect future victims… The person who harassed me did end up assaulting someone else about a year after I went to the Title IX office. If the university had acted on my concerns when I brought them, they could have prevented an assault. The way that the university failed me and the other members of my department in this process is incredibly frustrating… If I had had union representation to support me as I navigated the process, I believe I could have stood up for myself better.”

Second is the implementation of a “fair share fee.” This clause would require all workers covered by the contract to contribute to the costs of union representation, regardless of membership status. Doing so helps to spread the substantial costs of organizing and contract enforcement more equitably, helping to sustain the union’s operations. Such fees are common in states without anti-labor right-to-work laws, including Massachusetts.

Workers are also demanding wage increases, setting a baseline of $55,000 for all graduate student employees. RAs and TFs at peer schools such as MIT, Stanford, and Princeton make far more while boasting smaller endowments than a university located in the country’s most expensive city. In addition to a higher base pay, workers are calling for a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) which ties annual raises to inflation, ensuring wages keep pace with rising expenses over the life of the contract. Similar clauses have been won at other universities. Organizers demand a living wage with COLA adjustment that reflects the realities of living and working in Boston’s high-cost environment while addressing longstanding pay disparities. Right now, research-based positions earn roughly $40,830, compared to about $26,300 over ten months for graduate workers in teaching roles—a gap the union argues is unjustified given the university’s reliance on both forms of labor.

Harvard heavily discourages and often forbids other forms of employment. Nonetheless, during bargaining with HGSU, university representatives called the living wage demand “unreasonable.” Harvard indicated in bargaining that its top priority is growing its endowment, even as the university during the same November 7, 2025 session rejected the union’s requests to bargain for paid family leave, healthcare during leaves, and full compensation for RAs and TFs whose appointments cancel last minute, necessary for financial stability for the most vulnerable student workers.

Harvard University has an endowment of $56.9 billion.

Finally, the union is demanding stronger protections for international student workers, with organizers pointing to an increasingly hostile national climate, including intensifying immigration enforcement and right-wing political attacks, which leave non-citizen workers vulnerable. Crucially, the union is fighting back against a university that has bowed to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant culture war demands. Of course, that also means that HGSU’s inclusion of the fight against ICE in its organizing forces Harvard University into the position of raising the stakes of its choice to hold its head down and hope the White House stops beating its crimson walls.

The demand to protect immigrant workers has, in many ways, crystallized into the nexus of the union’s fight. In June 2025, HGSU introduced into contract negotiations a call for Harvard to safeguard I-9 forms, fund legal counsel, and prevent ICE agents from entering spaces without a valid judicial warrant. Some students pointed out the University of California has held these policies for a decade.

The Structural Challenges of Organizing in Academia

Organizing at a university presents many unique challenges. Workers contend with an uncertain legal landscape, as the current National Labor Relations Board has a Republican majority, which may revoke graduate students’ dual status as students and laborers. In order to help avoid such an outcome, graduate worker unions across the country have pulled numerous unfair labor practice charges in an attempt to limit such a ruling. 

One effect of this is that workers at Harvard are now on what is considered—in legal terminology—an “economic” strike. Unlike an unfair labor practice (ULP) strike, which provides legal protections around employee replacement, economic strikes have no such protections allowing employers to—theoretically—higher permanent replacements for striking workers. While such action is unlikely, the inability to use ULPs can negatively impact organizing and outcomes.

Challenges also appear at the community level, with workers needing to overcome a highly dispersed workplace, with social connections often centered around the academic department. These siloes compound the experiences of academic workers as isolated and overextended, needing to balance multiple responsibilities, and challenges around how the broader ivory tower and surrounding communities view academic work. Indeed, Harvard has attempted to weaponize these characteristics. The university forcefully removed more than 800 student workers from the union, refusing to recognize their employment status, during a series of restructurings and reclassifications that multiple staff in multiple unions described to Working Mass as latent attacks by the university on its own workers in July 2025. These included also capitulation to federal demands including the closure of offices serving communities of color on campus, which HGSU bargaining committee member Denish K. Jaswal pointed out to the Crimson.

The answer to overcoming structural obstacles for HGSU organizers was an organizing model focused on developing strong inter-personal relationships through one-on-one conversations. As grad worker Marley Hornewer explained:

It’s a lot more one-on-one conversation than in any other organizing I’ve done before. [You need to be] really accepting of the fact that organizing takes time […] folks have so much else that they’re doing that responding to a text or getting coffee with you isn’t necessarily a priority, but when it happens […] it feels so powerful to people to see themselves as a worker.

Jessica Van Meir, a TF at the Harvard Kennedy School, emphasized the ways in which organizing and the strike has transformed rank-and-file grad workers, whose anger at the university on behalf of every demand increases with each day of evidence from Harvard of its own obfuscation:

The outpouring of participation in the strike and refusal to cave to the administration’s scaremongering demonstrates that graduate student workers understand our importance to the university. Harvard can easily end the strike and restore business as usual by offering us a living wage, independent arbitration for harassment and discrimination cases, and protections from ICE coming on campus without a judicial warrant. But until then, no teaching, no grading, no research assistant work. How embarrassing to have to explain that to the parents who are forking over their retirement savings for their children’s education. The choice is Harvard’s.

Creative Strategies for a Community Organization

Harvard workers have deployed numerous creative and community-based strategies for the purposes of solidarity. For instance, striking workers have been blocking deliveries, a tactic in which workers will form a picket line outside of university docking sites. Drivers attempting to deliver Harvard’s packages from unionized or pro-labor workplaces like UPS or USPS will refuse to cross a picket-line, either through previously established union contracts or out of solidarity for the workers, which disrupts university operations and pressures administrators to come to the table.

HGSU has also run a number of teach-ins, covering topics like labor history, socialist activism at Harvard, and an intro to agency or “fair-share” fees. One was an Undergraduate Strike School on April 24. Workers have also launched a number of community events focused on bringing in both academic and local communities into their struggle.

One of the largest events was the first week community rally, hosted on April 23rd at the Science Center Plaza, the day before the Undergraduate Strike School. A wide range of speakers representing labor unity spoke, including current HGSU president sara speller as well as brother and sister unions at Harvard including Harvard Academic Workers (HAW) and SEIU 32BJ and UNITE-HERE Local 26. The unions were also joined by organizers from the Harvard Temporary Protected Status (TPS) Coalition and undergraduates from the Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM).

The event also featured a number of local and state politicians including Massachusetts State House Rep Mike Connolly, DSA-endorsed Cambridge City Councilor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, as well as challenger for incumbent Marjorie Decker’s seat and former HGSU president Evan MacKay. City Councilor Sobrinho-Wheeler said, during his speech:

I’m glad to stand here and deliver the message… if Harvard wants Cambridge to have its back, its gotta have the back of its workers.

Various other university communities have also thrown support behind the striking graduate workers. Earlier this week, around 200 first year Harvard Law School students signed letters urging their professors to press the University to come to the table with the union. Faculty—albeit at significantly smaller numbers—have also signaled their support to the striking graduate workers, agreeing not to replace or retaliate against workers on strike.

Diverging Strategies in a Shared Fight

Harvard’s graduate workers are not alone in facing an expired contract, or the brunt of the Harvard administration. Other Harvard bargaining units are also embroiled in contract fights, but have taken different tacts to striking. While multiple bargaining units are affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW) that have pioneered the strategy of coordinating unions to strike when bargaining happens at the same time and now lead the charge for contract alignment on May Day 2028, strategic contract alignment has not been on the table at Harvard.

The Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW), the largest union on campus representing over 5000 administrative workers essential to the university’s operations whose members often work closely alongside HGSU members, is scheduled to vote on May 12–13 on a modest agreement that would grant most members a $2,300 raise and expire after one year. The union has proposed this contract to membership after Harvard’s central fundraising office laid off a dozen HUCTW union members and announced mass summer layoffs likely to decimate HUCTW’s ranks. David Deming later confirmed the intent to target union workers in an open forum, where the Dean of Harvard College called essential labor work that “you would never really know or care about.” In one email obtained by Working Mass, HUCTW organizer Bill Jaeger intervened to ask members to vote yes on the proposed contract, while the HUCTW Rank-and-File Movement, focusing on building up the leadership of rank-and-file members over the union, publicly urged membership to remember “we can’t eat prestige” and instead vote no on May 6, 2026.

HUCTW has urged members to turn down work that managers ask them to perform that would normally be done by grad workers – crossing the picket line – but indicated members should continue to do “their own jobs as usual.” When asked about HUCTW, multiple organizers with HGSU declined to comment about their relationship with the other union.  

Harvard custodians with 32BJ SEIU ratified a 4-year contract in March that union leaders called the “biggest wage increase in decades:” a 4% hourly raise by 2029. While Harvard dining hall workers went on strike in 2016, their 500 rank-and-file workers affiliated with UNITE HERE Local 26 have not yet chosen that route even as their negotiations have dragged into. Most controversially, members of the Harvard Academic Workers (HAW) – UAW —a unit of non-tenure-track researchers and instructors that has been bargaining for 18 months—recently decided not to strike. In a controversial move, HAW’s bargaining committee overrode the vote of membership after citing concerns on sufficient votes for strike authorization and uncertainty about support from the union international. This decision was made by a bargaining committee made up of rank-and-file members after consultation with UAW staff.

The union also recently filed a Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) against Harvard. 

At the same time, workers within HGSU praised the academic workers’ commitment to solidarity and struggle. One worker said:

I do feel a lot of solidarity from them. We’re fighting for a lot of the same things … and continuing to work together towards a more just academic environment generally.

Whatever the tactical differences, these parallel struggles underscore the broader potential for cross-union solidarity and coordinated fights that can reshape power across the university. Further, every single union shares an employer – one seemingly intent on facing, and then offsetting, the wrath of the federal administration onto its staff.

Higher Education, Labor, and Struggle

Higher education is not a refuge from conflict, but a site of struggle. As Harvard PhD candidate Laura Chen put it:

Every morning when we do delivery pickets and get to cheer for the Teamsters as they turn their trucks around for us, it’s incredible. It’s so fun. And getting to explain to various burly truck drivers why we’re with the UAW – delightful.

These moments capture something larger than a single strike. They show how academic workers are linking up with a broader labor movement, building relationships that extend beyond the university.

At a moment when higher education is defined by precarity, political attacks, and deepening inequality, these contract fights are about more than pay or procedure – they are battles over the basic necessities of life and worker humanity. What is unfolding in higher education organizing is not an isolated conflict, but part of a wider struggle over power and dignity.

Readers can support grad workers by joining them on the picket line, held each day, or contributing to the union hardship fund.

Frederick Reiber is a contributing writer to Working Mass.

The post Harvard Faces Grad Workers’ Strike as Discontent with the University Rises From Below appeared first on Working Mass.

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This guide explains the AI issues facing workers and how they can organize for a voice in how it's implemented at work.

The post How to protect your job from AI overreach in the workplace appeared first on EWOC.

An Italy-based writer and activist on the recent pro-Palestine and antiwar protests in Italy, their impact on the Meloni government, and how the “Gaza Generation” is revitalizing the Italian Left.

The post The Gaza Generation and the Italian Left: Democratic Left Interviews Michael Leonardi appeared first on Democratic Left.

A new documentary shows what workplace democracy can look like through the lens of the Teamsters’ epochal 2023 contract fight with UPS.

The post A Moving Picture appeared first on Democratic Left.

By Jane Slaughter

Meeting members of UAW Member Action, the reform group within the UAW, makes me remember why we’re doing this socialism thing. On a recent weekend their steering committee met in Southwest Detroit. People came from Kansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, New York state, as well as around Michigan — and not all of the 40 or so members were even on the steering committee. They just wanted to be part of the action.

UAW Member Action was founded a year ago, after the previous reform group, UAWD, dissolved over internal differences over what a reform caucus should be. It was sad, because UAWD had done great work to help get Shawn Fain’s slate elected to the union’s executive board in 2022–23.

But leaders regrouped and founded UMA with the mission of educating members and training new leaders. Despite Fain’s big win at the top in 2023, almost all UAW locals are still run by the same crowd of management-friendly types who came up in the union’s bureaucracy before. They make it harder to fight the companies and their way of operating encourages members’ cynicism about the union and the possibility of change. UMA is digging in for the long fight for change throughout the union.

FROM THE SHOP FLOOR

When I went to their Friday night social, I wasn’t thinking of an article. I didn’t ask if I could use anyone’s names, so I won’t. I met a retired case worker for the state of Michigan, a member of UAW Local 6000; we talked about the problem that a Local 6000 member with a similar job had just brought to DSA’s labor working group (threats of violence from clients).

I met a Ford worker from Kentucky who said he works with DSAers all the time, including on a May Day festival coming up, co-sponsored by DSA, his local, and the AFL-CIO.

I sat by a Ford worker from Chicago who told how she and her co-workers leafleted all shifts, all four entrances, in their fights with management. I talked with another Ford worker who’s running for state senate in Indiana.

I met a Detroit Stellantis semi driver with just four years’ seniority who’s running for UAW Convention delegate. I congratulated a Jeep worker who just got elected delegate, on his third election try. He’s a leader of an informal group there who ran against the “good old boys” who head the local.

At one point UMA Chair Scott Houldieson said to the crowd, ““If we’re not building our union to fight the boss, what are we building our union for?”

It was encouraging that when I introduced myself, “Jane Slaughter, I’m with Labor Notes,” everyone knew and liked Labor Notes. Some mentioned our book, Secrets of a Successful Organizer. Some are going to the national Labor Notes Conference June 12–14 in Chicago. (The DSA labor working group held a fundraiser on May Day to send Detroit-area lower-wage workers who are unionizing.) It’s all part of the “troublemaking wing” of the labor movement.

In DSA, we can disagree about a lot of things. I think we’re pretty united on working with these types of worker-leaders who really exemplify the future of socialism in this country. We’re not going to get there without them. We need DSA to be their allies and eventually their own.

[Jane Slaughter is on the board of Labor Notes, where she covered the UAW for decades. She works on Detroit DSA’s newspaper committee.]

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Rank-and-File Reform Alive and Well in the UAW was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Kind words from chapter foes, Piker rallies with endorsees, and more in the April edition of Chapter and Verse.

The post More Than 170 Chapters Take May Day Action appeared first on Democratic Left.

[[{“value”:”

By: Travis Wayne

SOMERVILLE – Somerville and its new mayor face a test from organized labor as the city’s executive sits across from a burgeoning municipal workers’ union: Somerville Workers United (SWU) – AFSCME 93, whose members are joining a union representing 45,000 state, county, and municipal workers across New England.

The new city workers’ union, which seeks to represent around 220 non-union workers in the city including both the bulk of the city’s administrative staff and positions of lowest compensation, hovers near the 50% threshold of cards needed to formally request voluntary recognition from the mayor. 

The union crosses the threshold after taking the unusual organizing decision to announce their intent to unionize to the public before reaching a 50% majority — which led only to more support, both externally and internally. Compensation and rising austerity in the city government were common themes in conversations between city workers and Working Mass. 

Rising Anxiety and Opaque Compensation 

Multiple non-union employees that Working Mass spoke with shared that feelings of destabilization in their jobs began in late 2024, but were exacerbated in 2025. Non-unionized city workers have felt increasingly unstable as Greater Boston continues to lose tens of thousands of jobs – a trend that has only worsened. 

ICE’s early descent on Somerville did not help in making workers feel safe. 

As workers’ vulnerability increased, the need to protect their employment collectively did, too. Individuals’ requests and questions regarding stability and compensation were often punted under former Mayor Ballantyne’s administration. Workers were asked to wait for a Compensation Plan to be released in 2025, the summer before the city elections. But upon its release, the Plan did little except unlock deep dissatisfaction in much of the non-union workforce. According to Josh, one city worker and SWU organizer: 

While the base rate was increased for the the lowest-paid employees, the top line pay for directors also increased – and the way they paid for this was a giant step and grade system in the middle for the vast majority of non-union employees.

The sheer complexity of the Plan makes its meaning entirely opaque to many employees looking for critical information on their own employment terms. Many employees have no idea what step and grade to expect at any given time. In effect, the policies are obscured by a wall of legalese that increase barriers to entry for workers just trying to put food on their tables.

Luis, a strategic planner with the city, also added that the Compensation Plan didn’t include any mention of gender parity or Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) increases – even as gas soars and rent rises. Layoffs also remained firmly on the table. 

There was another layer, too, which fundamentally impacted the nature of the labor done in the workplace. Non-union city workers had seen their job descriptions slowly divorced from requested responsibilities and compensation. “All non-union employees were doing other duties, one-off pet projects of the mayor or whoever the city manager was at the time,” said Josh. Directors can press rank-and-file workers for assignments entirely outside their job realm and hold them accountable for that work and workers shared between departments. As Luis indicated:

It’s very difficult to figure out what to do when no one can come to agreement on what my job actually is… and we do what they need us to do at any given time.

New Austerity Suffocates City Workers Further

Mayor Jake Wilson has stated values that are aligned with many of the same priorities as Somerville workers. He supports the development of social housing and calls for the city to be a “guinea pig” in the fight against displacement. And when Mayor Wilson reported in the Cambridge Day that administrative restructuring has occupied much of his effort since taking office, he said “we’re building a team” as his biggest accomplishment of his first one hundred days in office. 

Many workers have been made to feel they are decidedly not inside that team.

First, city workers already anxious about their employment since 2025 heard silence from the mayor. According to multiple sources, Mayor Wilson did not contact or introduce himself in any way to the workforce, not even an email. “To this day, we haven’t been properly introduced to the Cabinet of the new Mayor’s Office,” said Luis, shaking his head. Other workers that spoke to Working Mass confirmed that they also had not seen the mayor once.

Then, the mayor fired Arts Council Director Greg Jenkins. The same “departmental reorganization” that created the Cabinet never introduced to workers was enough to end someone’s career after 25 years. In that case, multiple sources speculated to Working Mass that the mayor showed up in-person to introduce himself to workers (one of the only times reported) to assuage their anxieties after their direct manager’s abrupt firing.

But larger concerns than just the remoteness of the mayor were top of workers’ minds: namely, cuts. One SWU organizer shared with Working Mass that every department is expected by the administration to cut a position from their department, as of the end of April 2026. This is after they fired a staff person working in housing, an “active and essential organizer,” in late April 2026. Workers expressed the broader feeling the cuts underscored: that their labor was not valued, with dire consequences to residents. Josh said:

 The nature of our job is policy implementing for the public good. It’s a real problem we have no voice in crafting the policies we are charged with implementing.

For example, the city’s portfolio of complex permits is overseen by just three staff members charged with the enforcement of all zone ordinances and inspection in Somerville. In just one department, then, an austerity pattern towards staff from the Mayor’s Office can decrease access to direly-need services for tenants and protection from abusive landlords. Luis summarized the effect of the cuts on the already-squeezed staff:

You start to think of yourself as a number. The perception of how the administration treats us is just as a number in this work: a producer of outputs. People are still passionate about the work.

In lieu of investing in the workers who actually hold relationships with residents and can serve their needs most effectively, the Wilson administration has been characterized so far by what two workers called “a tech bro approach.”

In the Cambridge Day, the mayor underscored a “performance measurement tool” that turns many of the key calculations workers make in policy implementation into an automated dashboard for metric tracking. The mayor is also forcing workers back to work in person, following the same pattern as corporations after the pandemic. 

Meanwhile, the labor movement in Somerville beyond City Hall also signaled dissent to the austerity of the new administration impacting non-union city workers. According to the Somerville Educators’ Union (SEU), the mayor aims to take funds from Somerville schools: 

Mayor Jake Wilson has asked the district to prepare for up to $1 million in reduced funding, which is well below level-service. This is to account for the projected $5.3 million deficit in the City’s budget.

The mayor has asked for these cuts despite, as the teachers’ union pointed out, the fact that the City of Somerville holds 23.8 million in “Free Cash” and $15 million in a Stabilization Fund. Those funds not only can be utilized to float education, but also support city workers.

Organizing the Union of the Formerly Non-Union

Within the city government, around 220 non-union employees make up the workforce that SWU seeks recognition to represent. The organizing drive took off across multiple non-union departments after the Compensation Plan’s release, but especially revved up as workers felt the need to ensure their own jobs’ stability as the city administration changed. 

The Office of Sustainability and Environment was among the first centers of agitation. According to SWU organizers, department workers’ direct feedback was met with coldness by their director, leading to further dissatisfaction exacerbated by micromanagement that followed. Any projects that needed directorial approval were stonewalled and access limited. 

The Office of Sustainability workers were the first to sign union cards, with three members of the original Organizing Committee (OC) from that department, because of both that stonewalling and another key factor: the employees’ own deep experiences. Workers in the office included a federal employee purged from the Environmental Protection Agency and a former member of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), equipped with union experience, while another employee was a community organizer hired to work in community development for the city due to their organizing background.

Other departments proved more challenging to reach and build solidarity with, because they were more remote, more autonomous, and better-managed by their director than others. 

Non-union workers share a workplace – tasks, relations, ideas – with unionized colleagues. Thus, even in departments without workers with labor or organizing experience, workers had exposure to the major differences between their contracts and those of union workers. The Somerville Municipal Employees Union (SMEU) was unaffected by the Compensation Plan and, when union employees saw benefits won, non-union workers also observed increases due to the city’s requirement for parity. The difference became stark.

City workers first sought to organize into one of the city government’s existing unions that inspired so many of their ranks. Ultimately, that choice seemed less possible over time for workers’ needs, according to Josh. Despite SMEU President Ed Halloran’s support, the reception of SMEU membership to their coworkers’ unionization was frostier than they hoped. Controversy between other parts of the Somerville labor movement and SMEU around the reinstatement of one union member that led to the 2024 resignation of library workers was also not encouraging.

We started having these amorphous conversations… those of us who were former municipal workers began reaching out to SMEU, the Steelworkers, UAW, and eventually AFSCME 93… their expertise with the public union process was on display in a way the others in a technical space weren’t… and many felt SMEU would not yield in their challenges, and the time it would take to activate leadership would be too long for workers.

In the end, 75% of the nascent union chose to affiliate with AFSCME 93. 

Going Public 

Somerville Workers United (SWU)’s demands are, in the end, simple.

“We need a seat at the table,” Josh told Working Mass. “We need clear policies and procedures in the handbook, like overtime, flexibility, offboarding, steps and grades made transparent, position reclassification.”

The union chose to go public on March 10, before reaching the 50% threshold, largely because one obstacle they encountered was hesitancy from their coworkers to join in any clandestine effort. In a city where so many unions bargain with the city, some non-union city workers felt uncomfortable organizing with Somerville Workers United till the union was open about its work. 

According to SWU organizers, the strategy of going public early was successful. Going public allowed the union to speak to more and more of their non-union coworkers openly. Questions of dignity, compensation, and stability unfolded in conversations from City Hall to the most remote corner, with organizers conducting one-on-ones department by department. 

The mayor’s office did not interfere or in any way communicate its notice of the new union. On April 10, 2026, SWU had reached 70 union cards signed out of around 220. The union held a series of socials for workers and their allies in labor and beyond: a St. Patrick’s Day social at the Burren, building-level tabling at the Annex and City Hall, a potluck picnic in Winter Hill, an art build at Aeronaut Brewery. Workers signing on steadily grew, till by the end of the month, the union hovered near the 50% threshold needed for climactic action. 

On May Day, as workers rallied in socials and events across Greater Boston, SWU coordinated with the Somerville Educators Union on their rally to “demonstrate solidarity across public sector workers in the face of looming budget cuts” in their final stretch push for recognition from the city government. The action signals an important shift from seeking recognition as a union to acting as one, as part of and connected to the fight for recognition – in this case, representing workers’ interests in unity with Somerville’s teachers’ union facing the city to reject the notion of a zero-sum game between schools and services.

“To some extent, to be the union is the point,” Josh said. SWU has certainly become the union. It’s up to the mayor whether he will recognize the workers as the union they already have become, or not. 

Travis Wayne is a union organizer in Somerville and the managing editor of Working Mass.

The post Somerville City Workers, Facing Opaque Pay and Austerity, Unionize with AFSCME 93 appeared first on Working Mass.

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