I remember watching the 2014 FIFA World Cup final between Germany and Argentina, hanging off the edge of my couch, watching a grueling, almost 120-minute match between the two teams. Finally, around the 113th minute, Mario Götze scored Germany’s goal: I jumped up, screaming and cheering. I knew I had just witnessed a historic match, with this having been Germany’s first World Cup win since reunification.

Growing up in the Midwest, I played soccer for most of my childhood through high school. I played striker on the left and right wings, as well as attacking midfielder at times. Soccer has been ingrained in my life, as a player and spectator, whether on TV or in person, like the Bayern Munich v. AC Milan match at Soldier Field in 2016 and the 2018 Tournament of Nations in Bridgeview, Illinois.

So why does this World Cup feel different? With the global rise of fascism that has taken place since 2016, the morale for the U.S. men’s national team (USMNT) for U.S. fans has been mixed. And with the reelection of Donald Trump and the men’s team openly associating with the Trump regime, it’s a no-brainer why so many on the left, like myself, or the average American are rooting for teams that aren’t the United States. 

“The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It’s the way I see football, the way I see life.”

— Bill Shankly, Legendary Liverpool FC manager & Scottish football player

Let’s start with the bad and the ugly of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The matches are played across three countries (Canada, Mexico, and the United States), which are also co-hosting the tournament. There are 48 teams from all over the globe. Some countries, like Cape Verde, Curaçao, Jordan, and Uzbekistan, are making their debuts, while countries like Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo are returning after long absences. You can feel the excitement for the tournament from countries in the Global South that have been oppressed by the U.S. and through other forms of Western imperialism. And while Israel and the UAE did not qualify this year, they are still part of FIFA, which has led to protests against the killing of Palestinian athletes by the Zionist State. Fans have also criticized ties between UAE businesses and FIFA, including ADI Predictstreet’s partnership with the World Cup.

However, with the U.S. being one of the co-hosts, we as fans and leftists have seen U.S. hypocrisy on full display. First, with ICE at airports harassing players and fans alike, with players like Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein being interrogated for seven hours while the team’s photographer was denied entry at O’Hare. FIFA official Omar Artan, a Somali national and referee, was also denied entry and held for 10 hours. Artan said no real explanation was given despite him having the proper documentation. A White House official stated that his detention was due to “affiliations” with terrorist organizations, but did not provide evidence for this claim. Meanwhile, the Iranian national team also has restrictions when playing in the U.S. venues, with same-day arrival and departure requirements to return to their home base in Mexico, having been denied permission to stay overnight in this country.

Other World Cup controversies include climate change, labor, ticket pricing, and even Haiti’s national uniform having to be changed to avoid sending a “political message” celebrating the Haitian Revolution. Labor disputes have been present in all three host countries, but they have been particularly acute at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, where Unite Here! Local 11 asked FIFA to bar ICE from the stadium due to the safety concerns for the workers. The union was prepared to strike before FIFA agreed to the deal on June 8th. Finally, the ticket pricing for the matches raised additional controversy. FIFA said they would use dynamic pricing for this particular World Cup, despite fans’ anger and dismay at the decision. Both Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum called this out.

Despite these injustices and controversies, soccer has shown international solidarity in one of the world’s biggest sporting events. Our first stop is John Brown’s old stomping ground of Lawrence, Kansas, where the Algerian national team has chosen to make their home base during the Cup. A clip circulated online of an American man being asked why he supported Algeria, and he responded because the team “chose” Lawrence to host them. Since then, there have been cultural exchanges, bar meet-ups, and even the Lawrence youth getting to practice with the Algerian team at the Jayhawks’ Rock Chalk Park.

Our next stop is in Canada with the Bosnian national team, featuring players like Edin Džeko, who was 6 years old when the Siege of Sarajevo began. Džeko, on June 11th, wrote an open letter about why this Cup means so much to him. One quote that stuck with me was Džeko saying that when he sees wars happening today, he feels sick and that “…For some reason, adults never learn.” The Bosnian fans have also shown their support for Palestine, waving Palestinian flags and chanting for Palestine in the streets of Toronto.

Our final stop is Boston, where Scottish fans have flooded the city. This is the dreaded Gaelic alliance (Bostonians, Irish, and Scottish fans descending on a single city) that Unionists and Tories in the colonial United Kingdom would have nightmares over. The Scots discover the infamous ‘Cop Slide’ in Boston, which became a viral meme after a police officer sustained minor injuries on it in 2023. A Scottish fan rode the slide, playing the bagpipes on the way down. Seeing these teams being embraced by the average American has given me hope for a better world, and that something like soccer can show international solidarity.

What does this World Cup mean for international solidarity? It shows the U.S. (& Western) hypocrisy when it comes to labor, immigration, and other issues like climate change. But it also shows that no matter where one comes from and what atrocities they have faced growing up, there is a chance to show their nation and culture on a world stage unlike any other. And understanding the common bonds of basic humanity, from the players to fans.

For myself, I’m rooting for everyone other than America: Algeria, Bosnia, Colombia, the DRC, Haiti, Germany, Iraq, Iran, Scotland, and Turkey.* I love underdog stories; what can I say?

*Updates on the teams have been eliminated since the Cup started: Bosnia, DRC, Haiti, Germany, Iraq, Iran, Scotland, and Turkey. 

The post Soccer & Solidarity: How the World Cup brings International Solidarity to the forefront appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

As the country marks its semiquincentennial, Americans are right to feel something has gone deeply wrong. We will need courage to confront the crisis.

The post At 250 Years, the U.S. National Project is in Trouble appeared first on Democratic Left.

After a car bomb killed her brother, a prominent opponent of the Pinochet dictatorship, Fabiola Letelier fought back for three decades and transformed human rights law in the process

The post Fabiola Letelier:  Face and Force of the Chilean Human Rights Movement appeared first on Democratic Left.

The problem of anti-religious bigotry on the secular Left

As the calendar moved toward Donald Trump’s birthday on June 14 and the summer solstice on June 21, leftist political commentator and comedian Francesca Fiorentini invited astrologer Chani Nicholas to give her  Bitchuation Room podcast audience some insight into how the stars might be impacting the United States and its current authoritarian leader.

It was all done in a spirit of lighthearted fun, and while Chani might be a different kind of guest than the politicians or activists that often visit The Bitchuation Room, Fiorentini is no stranger to quirky and irreverent takes on the news of the day.  Lord knows we all need a laugh now and then to help us cope with the deadly serious news in the daily headlines. I giggled along with Fiorentini and Nicholas as I listened to the segment on my way to work, but then I made the mistake of looking at what people in the comments had to say. 

I think very little of right wingers because of their nonsensical views and their inability to see reason past their culturally enforced beliefs. I think the same for astrology weirdos. 

Space/birthday bigotry. No thanks. We have enough scientific illiteracy killing us already. 

Stop that nonsense. You can’t practice astrology and be a socialist. The two are mutually exclusive. 

Some secular leftists tend to view both organized religion and any spiritual “woo woo” as illogical and therefore symptomatic of the anti-intellectualism that characterizes U.S. fascism. This categorical rejection of all so-called “nonsensical” beliefs betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of spirituality, as well as a deep, often unchallenged bigotry among secular socialists against the vast majority of working-class people in our country. 

In a nation where 82% of people identify as religious and/or spiritual, anti-religious prejudice must be discarded by socialists who want to draw more people into the fight against capitalist exploitation. These rationally minded people would do well to learn more about religion from both scholars and everyday practitioners, in order to understand what the many diverse forms of healthy spirituality can do for human beings. 

Rationality and empiricism, I would argue, are irrelevant to the function of spirituality. Humans are emotional, psychological beings who have emotional, psychological problems that can’t be addressed purely through the tools of the scientific method. Spiritual systems help us navigate everything outside of our higher cognitive functions–the emotional storms brewing beneath our conscious intellectual processes. Spirituality helps us become conscious of our unconscious drives and our embodied, emotional experience of life, the fathoms-deep shadow side of human consciousness to which none of the factual statistics in the world can ever speak.

Spirituality gets a bad rap for removing humans from reality, but I believe everyone needs a form of spiritual practice in their lives to be able to fully accept and logically address the (increasingly illogical) realities of our society. I define spiritual practice broadly, and for atheists, agnostics, or anyone else who has no desire to engage with theistic beliefs or organized religion, a spiritual practice can be therapy, meditation, or intentional engagement with art or nature. These practices touch the irrational and emotional parts of our human experience that, left unexamined, can blind us to our own prejudices, limitations, and harmful habits. These spiritual practices can also come from Islam or Christianity or Hinduism or reading tarot cards or practicing astrology. We can’t judge people’s spirituality based on its logical premises. We can only judge it based on its outcome for human flourishing. 

The oppressive systems that co-opt spirituality to hold power over people, whether that’s the Christian Right or a manipulative “counter-cultural” cult, are the problem when it comes to religion, and I fully support the strongest criticisms of those exploitative powers. But we can’t throw out the baby with the bath water if we want to stay self-aware and grounded in reality. (Woke, if you will.)

I’ll give an example from a spiritual perspective that I myself am prone to look down my nose at. Jessica Lanyadoo describes herself as an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator. Claims of psychic perception certainly strain logical credulity for me, and I’m wary of the con artists that walk among the sincere believers. But on Jessica’s Ghost of a Podcast, she recently used her “nonsensical” spiritual framework to provide very helpful guidance to an emotionally vulnerable woman in need of help. 

The guest was seeking an astrologer’s advice in navigating her “relationship” with an AI chatbot. Using their shared spiritual beliefs, Jessica guided her guest toward a path I think most socialists would agree with–she backed off AI use in favor of real human connection and got a reality check about the unsavory motivations of the capitalists who profit from our use of LLMs. 

The guest’s animistic beliefs about the spirits of the minerals that make up technological hardware would probably have been viciously mocked by the people who left the YouTube comments quoted above, but Jessica, an ethical person who shared her spiritual framework, was able to engage with her and help her escape her (in my opinion) unhealthy delusions about the “personhood” of her AI chatbot. She was helped, not harmed, by spiritual counsel that most secular skeptics would dismiss as irreconcilable with reality. 

I sympathize with my secular comrades who are sincerely troubled by the wobbly nature of reality in our unstable, “post-truth” society. And I agree that any form of religion or spirituality that urges us to turn away from the material problems our world faces is no more than an opiate for the overwhelmed masses. But the idea that socialism and spirituality are mutually exclusive is both historically false (see Dorothy Day, Oscar Romero, or the DSA’s own Zohran Mamdani) and politically disastrous. 

Eliminating religious and spiritual people from the ranks of our potential allies means never achieving a socialist majority in this country. Instead, we should take the advice of someone who both atheists and people of many different spiritual paths can agree had some solid ideas. How do we divide helpful spirituality from harmful spirituality? “By their fruits you will know them.”

The post Can Socialists Use Astrology? appeared first on DSA Religious Socialism.

Monthly Newsletter of the Rochester Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America

Welcome to the July issue of Rochester Red Star. You’ll find upcoming events and meeting times, coverage of chapter activities, and essays on topics including billionaires, immigration, gardening, and the Rochester budget.

Interested in contributing? Send submissions to bit.ly/SubmitRedStar, or get involved with our Communications Committee. Reach out to steering@rocdsa.org and join DSA today!

The post Rochester Red Star | July 2026 | (Issue 27) first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Class podcast interviews Jalil Muntaqim and Sid C.W. to discuss the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the Spirit of Mandela’s July Fourth Mobilization Against Genocide.

The post The Fourth of July: Against Genocide, for Democracy and Liberation appeared first on Democratic Left.

DSA backed Melat Kiros in the June 30 Democratic primary for a Denver U.S. House seat. Updated with remarks from Kiros's victory speech.

The post LIVE BLOG: “DSA Difference” Mass Call July 2 appeared first on Democratic Left.

Events & Actions

Tuesday June 30 (5:30 PM – 6:30 PM) Drink-in for Good Jobs & Union Beer! (BuzzWorks, 365 11th St)

Tuesday June 30 (6:30 PM – 7:30 PM) Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Tuesday June 30 (7:00 PM – 10:00 PM) Tenant Organizers Social (1600 17th St)

Wednesday July 1 (5:30 PM – 7:30 PM) Phonebank for the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act (zoom and in person at 1600 17th St)

Thursday July 2 (12:00 PM – 1:00 PM) Housing Guarantee Act Turn Signature Turn-In Rally (San Francisco City Hall, Van Ness steps)

Thursday July 2 (6:00 PM – 9:00 PM) Housing Guarantee Act Signature Gatherer Happy Hour (Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia St)

Thursday July 2 (6:00 PM – 7:00 PM) Education Board Open Meeting (zoom)

Thursday July 2 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Immigrant Justice Regular Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Friday July 3 (5:00 PM – 6:30 PM) Delaney Hall To Adelanto! Solidarity Rally with the Hunger & Labor Strike (Turk Street & Taylor Street)

Monday July 6 (6:00 PM – 7:30 PM) Labor Board Meeting – Office Hours (zoom)

Monday July 6 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Wednesday July 8 (6:45 PM – 9:00 PM) DSA SF General Meeting (zoom and in person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Thursday July 9 (6:30 PM – 7:30 PM) Public Bank Project Meeting (zoom)

Thursday July 9 (7:00 PM – 8:30 PM) ICE: Emergency Planning (1916 McAllister St)

Sunday July 12 (5:00 PM – 6:00 PM) Tenderloin Healing Circle Working Group (zoom)

Monday July 13 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Tenderloin Healing Circle (Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Monday July 13 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Labor Board Meeting – Existing Union Support (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

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

Drink-In for Good Jobs and Union Beer!

When Anchor Brewing reopens, workers deserve good, union jobs.

Join us to call on the new owners to offer workers their jobs back, and sign a neutrality agreement with the union!

Attendees will receive a UNION BEER poster!

Buzzworks SF, 365 11th st, on Tuesday Jun 30 at 5:30PM. RSVP here!

Tenant Organizers Social

Meet tenants organizers from across the Bay. Come to Thee Parkside, 1600 17th St on Tuesday, June 30 at 7:00 PM for one final time before it closes its doors for good. 

The same forces of rampant speculation and gentrification responsible for destroying local culture spaces (like Thee Parkside) are causing the massive displacement of tenants throughout the Bay Area. Please come and share your experience as tenants organizing in the face of finance capital’s agenda to build their “luxury city”.

The Affordable Housing Guarantee Act is Headed to the Ballot!

BIG NEWS!! In just two short months, we’ve reached our signature goal and the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act is headed to the ballot!

Thank you to everyone who helped us so far to get us to this point. Hundreds of volunteers gathered signatures, donated, fundraised and secured endorsements. If you haven’t donated yet, here’s the link. We’ve got two ways to celebrate coming up on Thursday, July 2nd:

• 12PM: Rally to turn in signatures at City Hall (Van Ness Steps) — RSVP here!
• 6PM: Signature Gatherer Appreciation & Social Housing Happy Hour at Zeitgeist (199 Valencia)

You don’t even need to have gathered a single signature to join us at the happy hour, you just have to want a beautiful future where housing is permanently removed from the speculative market and treated as a human right!

In case you missed it, here’s how we got here: Since 2020, the transfer tax approved by voters has generated more than $500 million for affordable and social housing. San Franciscans made it clear where they wanted that money to go, but City Hall has refused to use it for its intended purpose and is now trying to gut the tax altogether. Not on our watch!  This ballot measure is going to make sure those funds are used the way voters intended: to build social housing and make San Francisco a more affordable place to live.

Stand with Strikers in Immigrant Detention: Solidarity Rally

Friday July 3, 5 PM

Turk & Taylor

Immigrants in detention in Adelanto, California and in Delaney Hall in New Jersey, facilities run by the private prison corporation GEO Group, have had enough and since last month have been on hunger strike, while at Delaney Hall, they have also been on a labor strike, refusing to work for pennies per hour. 

Strikers at Delaney Hall are demanding the immediate release of all detained people, starting with the elderly, pregnant, children and those with serious medical conditions. They are also calling for fair review of immigration cases, and an end to pressure to sign “voluntary” deportation orders. They are also demanding a meeting with New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill so she can observe conditions and hear directly from detained people.

Meanwhile, in Adelanto, hunger strikers are protesting inhumane conditions, including mold, substandard food, lack of medical care and retaliation against hunger strikers. 

To win, strikers will need community support from coast to coast. Come join us in solidarity at the site of the historic Compton cafeteria riots, the first well-documented trans and queer uprising against police violence, which is now a carceral facility run by GEO Group.

Come tell GEO Group and ICE: Free them all, and GEO Group out of our city!

EWOC Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing Course

Sign up here!

EWOC holds a regular training course to help you build your union from the ground up alongside workers in your industry. It doesn’t require an organizing background to understand the material, which covers topics including mapping and charting, building an organizing committee, uniting over common concerns, and how to take action. If you’re interested in becoming any level of organizer for EWOC, this course is mandatory.

This course will in person at the DSA office (1916 McAllister). We’ll watch the EWOC lecture together and then go through the discussion activities. If you can’t make all of the sessions, reach out to Caitlin Stanton (SF EWOC local lead coordinator) for accommodations.

SCHEDULE:
Week 1: Developing Leadership
Tuesday, July 14 (7-8:30PM)

Week 2: The Organizing Conversation
Tuesday, July 21 (7-8:30PM)

Week 3: The Arc of the Campaign
Tuesday, July 28 (7-8:30PM)

Week 4: Inoculation and the Boss Campaign
Tuesday, August 4 (7-8:30PM)

A new book rescues supporters of wage-setting policies — including the minimum wage — from the condescension of 101-level economists.

The post The Wage Standard-Bearer appeared first on Democratic Left.