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Nine things to do before Friday May 1, and one thing to do on that day

1. Plan to take the day off work, either by going on strike at your workplace (probably not that many of you have that option), or by taking a personal or sick day.

2. Find a demonstration near you statewide here and here. Bay Area here (scroll down).

3. Reach out to your union, affinity group, pod, friends, co-workers, family members, parishioners and/or comrades, and invite them along.

4. Make signs. Here are four slogans to start you off: 

• Tax the rich for schools and health care

• Fund communities, not war

• Yes to socialism, No to fascism

• Abolish ICE! Immigrant rights = everyone’s rights

5. Read about the history of May Day.

6. Grab some popcorn and set up a group screening of the thirty-minute documentary video, We Mean To Make Things Over: A History of May Day, streaming for free here.

7. Join DSA, the largest socialist organization in the United States since the 1940s. If you’re already a member, recruit a friend.

8. Spend some time thinking about the best, most sustainable activity you can involve yourself in  to fight fascism.

9. Grocery shop on April 30 so you don’t have to on May 1.

10. Join millions of workers around the country and the globe on May Day, International Workers Day, in demonstrating for a better world. Workers over billionaires! No Work, No School, No Shopping!

For many years I taught labor history at night to working students at City College of San Francisco. Since Bay Area workers and their unions had carried out two consequential general strikes (San Francisco in 1934, and Oakland in 1946), each semester I assigned my pupils an essay question:  Is it possible—or even desirable—for our region’s workers, if faced with oppressive circumstances, to replicate those feats today?

My students’ essays appeared along a range of responses between two poles. On one end, no, not possible, even if desirable, due to changed conditions like suburban distances between home and workplace, along with the decline of union density. On the other, yes, both desirable and possible, because new communications technologies allow ideas and organizing to spread rapidly online, and labor’s steep decline means that workers are angry enough to make it happen. Few students in either camp thought it would be an easy lift, reflecting a general sense of limited horizons for labor-led progressive change in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries.

The 1946 Oakland General Strike was the very last one American workers had managed to put together, literally a lifetime ago. But metaphorically, post-January 23, 2026, we might now be onto a new calendar. In the wake of the powerful “No Work, No School, No Shopping” day that erupted in the Twin Cities, alongside a steady drumbeat of growing demonstrations and electoral successes against the Trump regime, there’s wind in the sails for mass action on May Day 2026.

Just in my neck of the woods many events have already taken place, and more are on the boards, combining planning, training and coalition building for that once-unpopular holiday, officially observed in one hundred or so nations across the globe but not in the country that birthed it. I hear from a friend in Minneapolis that he’s been going to meetings attended by hundreds of people dedicated in a serious way to making May 1 another day of action. 

We shouldn’t underestimate the significance of what happened January 23. In the midst of a brutal occupation by poorly trained, heavily armed troops operating with seeming impunity on behalf of their fascist mission of ethnic cleansing, the ordinary people of Minneapolis organized themselves to defend their streets, their democratic rights, their immigrant neighbors, and their idea of a decent society to demand “ICE out!”. Somewhere around 75,000 people showed up on a cold Minnesota winter day to freeze the gears of the local economy and the occupation. 

It was pretty close to a general strike, and unlike all the other dozen-plus city-wide general strikes in American history it was waged not around an economic struggle between workers and bosses, but on behalf of a political idea, more like what happens every so often in other countries. Which is very much in the spirit of May Day.

Tools are there to be found

Doing such things will not suddenly become easier. The Minnesota circumstances are unique, with an unprecedented level of assault running into a recent baseline increase in labor-community alliance and activism. The ICE invasion reignited the embers of powerful alliance-building and union contract victories that peaked in 2024. But every city has its own local history, culture and traditions of collective action, and despite the diminished capacities of the labor movement, the tools are there to be found—providing they are sought out seriously.

One hurdle is the legitimate fear of labor leadership over legal consequences for calling a general strike, forbidden by the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, a federal legislative backlash by the Republican-controlled Congress against the 1946 strike wave. Unions can be fined and labor leaders jailed for overtly calling for sympathy strikes. Thus while mostly supportive behind the scenes, unions were muted in their participation in the May 1 2006 “Day Without Immigrants” demonstrations and the November 2011 “Day of Action” in Oakland that shut down the docks and shuttered many businesses in support of Occupy Oakland’s call for a general strike. 

Making distinctions

In Minneapolis unions and labor federations advanced the ball down that field without quite uttering the words “general strike”, although everyone was pretty clear what “No Work, No School, No Shopping” meant. Which brings us to the distinction between what Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch termed ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’ utopias. Both contain the hope for something better than what we’ve got, and both can propose action to get us from here to there. But an abstract utopia fails to marshal full consideration of the many-sided realities that need to be navigated in order to arrive at a successful endpoint. A concrete utopia pays attention to what Marx was getting at in his Introduction to the Grundrisse when he noted that “The truth is concrete; hence, unity of the diverse.”

What didn’t do that? The cry immediately after January 23 by various individuals and organizations to replicate “No work, no school, no shopping” nation-wide a week later on January 30, which predictably fizzled, absent the hard work of analysis and organizing that produced January 23.

What did do that? In the background, helping to set the stage for Minneapolis, was United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain’s call—issued in 2023—for unions across the country to line up their contracts for common expiration on May 1 2028. Here was a call not to have a general strike, but to organize one. A concrete utopia is one that bridges the gap between the current unsatisfactory situation and the desired outcome with appropriate tactics, strategies, and inspiration—and above all, with a cleareyed picture of and willingness to do the work needed in the timeframe needed to do it.

We may be learning that there is nothing like a dose of fascism to clarify the minds of labor and other progressive movement leaders. Besides all-but-calling a general strike, and getting onto the May Day train, unions around the country have been stepping up ‘tax the rich’ efforts at the state and local levels and signing onto coalitions supporting socialists running for office. Not everywhere, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and it seems to be starting. There are some 250 democratic socialists in office today in the United States, the most since the heyday of the Socialist Party in the early twentieth century, nearly all elected with union support. The imagination of the labor movement, perhaps not coincidentally mostly slumbering since the 1946 strike wave, is waking up.

The direct confrontation with fascism experienced in places like the streets of Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and elsewhere is not everywhere. Where it’s happening it’s real and deadly serious, on the wrong end of weapons wielded by our government against its own citizens. Fascists are occupying the federal government apparatus, and as they are wont to do, they are stripping it of its helping functions and shifting resources to the repressive functions. But the occupation is being contested. Civil society is the playing field, and democracy is still in play.

Mayhaps

May Day has always been about collective imagination—to be precise, workers imagining a new world, one in which they will be in charge. This act of collective imagining involves another pairing, not the same as but rhyming with the concrete/abstract utopias distinction: individual imagination and fantasy. In psychoanalytic terms, fantasy is a regressive and often self-destructive escape from reality, a defensive flight toward would-be omnipotent control, but only in one’s head. The ultraleft posturing that goes into a call for a general strike without regard to material circumstances is a good example. Imagination, by contrast, actively and creatively engages the work necessary to move from internal conception to making something actually happen—like lining up our contracts to expire on the same day, May Day 2028, with a timeline matched to the magnitude of the task. 

Fain’s concrete utopia also rhymes with how May Day began. Following the execution of the Haymarket martyrs in Chicago, the Socialist International declared a day of commemoration, with demonstrations in every country for the eight-hour work-day, the cause for which the Chicago labor leaders were put to death. Wisely, the call did not impose a one-size-fits-all set of instructions, but instead suggested that each country assess its situation and determine what sort of demonstrations made sense in their own context. The results ranged from weekend marches to general strikes. In some places, over the years, the marches became general strikes, May First became a workers’ holiday, and the labor movement achieved the shorter workday.

For eight decades in this country we’ve done the weekend marches, not the general strikes, the door to which has been shut tight. The people of Minneapolis showed us something remarkable on January 23—that with the work that accompanies imagination, it just might be possible to crack the door open and let the light through. Minneapolis isn’t everywhere, nor should we expect it to be—like Mamdani’s victory could happen because it happened in New York, and New York also isn’t everywhere. But both events show us that something different is possible when collective imagination is fired by the vision of a better world, and the vision is matched with the work it takes to get there. 

On May 1 2026 we’ll be testing how far along we are on the path to the mass actions necessary to push back the fascist tide. We should expect the results to be uneven, but we can learn from them and thus be stronger as we head toward the next rounds of struggle.

In last month’s California Red progressive tax column, “The unfathomably vast yet still growing level of California’s economic inequality” we learned that our state’s billionaires are busy making unintentional arguments for raising taxes on themselves. As Exhibit A, we heard the statement by tech mogul Tim Conway who, in speaking of the Billionaires Tax, described it as “…the greatest tragedy this state has ever felt”. We’re fairly certain that, say, Native Californians who suffered a genocide in the nineteenth century, falling from a third of a million people pre-contact, to fifteen thousand by 1910, might disagree with Conway’s historical viewpoint.

It would be hard to top this perspective for revelation of the navel-gazing narcissism of the billionaire set at the prospect they might have to pay their fair share of taxes to support the society that had made them rich, but at least it had the virtue of honesty, albeit of the self-delusional variety. No such sideways move accompanied billionaire activities earlier this month, when a large envelope landed in the letterboxes of homes across the state. 

Designed to mimic official state electoral mailers—the printing even said “OFFICIAL 2026 VOTER PETITION ENCLOSED”—it contained three elements: a flyer headed “Yes to Protect Retirement and Life Savings”; a petition for an initiative measure for the November state ballot; and an already-paid return envelope to send the filled-in petition to something called “Californians To Protect Retirement and Life Savings” at a Burbank P.O. Box. 

Reading between the lines

The outside of the mailer said, “Sign now to stop Sacramento politicians from taxing your personal property”. On the inside, the unnamed politicians pushing their unnamed tax on everyone were further chastised.

You would have to read between the lines, but two of the flyer’s three bolded bullets give away its actual agenda. One tells us that the ballot measure petition we are being urged to sign “prohibits new state taxes on personal savings, and personal property…” . The other “prohibits retroactive taxes”.  

The only proposed tax on personal savings and property, which is indeed designed to apply retroactively to January 1, 2026 (that much is true), is the Billionaires Tax, which will fall on the shoulders of precisely 246 people in the Golden State. Nonetheless the flyer argues that “Politicians should not be allowed to change the rules and tax what you have worked a lifetime to earn” (emphasis added). 

Despite the second person form of address, no one will be taxed by the Billionaires Tax unless he or she is a billionaire. However, the Billionaires Tax is not mentioned anywhere in the flyer. To do so might undercut the multiple deceptions at the heart of this mailer.

Worn and tattered economic blackmail banner

The BT is not emanating from scary Sacramento politicians. It is an effort spearheaded by a health care workers union, United Health Workers-SEIU, to plug the $20 billion per year hole opened up in the California state budget for Medi-Cal recipients by Trump’s HR1, the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”, beginning in 2027.  Should the Billionaires Tax fail to make it, with no other action taken, millions of the poorest Californians would lose their health care, and tens of thousands of decent union health care jobs would disappear as well. 

As for those unnamed but undoubtedly evil “Sacramento politicians” supposedly pushing the tax, Sacramento politician numero uno, Gavin Newsom, among many others, opposes the Billionaires Tax. His deeply unoriginal reasoning is the worn and tattered economic blackmail banner that always gets waved about by wealthy would-be tax dodgers—they’ll all leave the state! and take all the jobs with them!—which research has proven to be largely fallacious. 

The main argument—dishonest in form, as well as content—is the one that states that the proposed tax is on “you”—and since everyone hates taxes, or so it is assumed by the makers of the argument, “you” will become incensed and get to work opposing it. Here the authors of the mailer thoughtfully provide a petition for “you” to sign and return in a pre-paid envelope. (They must be hoping that the “you” is more than the 246 people who are actually the “you”.)

Certainly a handful of anti-social billionaires oppose the tax. It’s hard to imagine a more selfish perspective. According to the Billionaires Tax campaign website, “California billionaires have increased their wealth 158% over the last three years, making a 5% tax, spread over five years, truly negligible relative to their enormous gains.” In other words, this wealth tax doesn’t actually decrease billionaire wealth; it merely slows down its rampaging growth in order to save Medi-Cal. 

Tsunami of lies headed our way

The goal of this mailer and its petition is nullification of the Billionaires Tax, should it pass. Let’s be clear: the billionaires tax campaign hasn’t even finished gathering signatures, let alone qualified for the ballot, and, dare we mention the final hurdle, gained fifty percent plus one of the votes of the electorate. We are seven months from Election Day, and tens of millions of dollars in right wing billionaire money has already been dropped into our mailboxes and into credulous mainstream media stories breathlessly announcing the drain-circling our fourth largest economy in the world will undoubtedly suffer when all the billionaires leave. Imagine the tsunami of advertising, mailers and surrogates lying through their teeth all washing over us once the measure qualifies.

Lost in all the noise are two simple points. First, everyone, meaning the megarich too, needs to pay their fair share of taxes—Silicon Valley billionaires who have benefited hugely from Trump’s federal tax cuts included. Second, elections in a democracy should be decided on the basis of the merits of the argument—not dishonest scare tactics amplified by unlimited billionaire spending. Ironically, the dirty tricks already pulled by this campaign demonstrate that the billionaires behind it have more money than is good for truth, fair elections and their own better selves, should they actually have any. 

They might want to pay a bit more attention to the rising public perception that their political spending is bad for democracy. They might then decide it’s in their own interest too to pay their fair share to support the basic public services needed by the rest of us. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it over a century ago, taxes are “the price we pay for a civilized society”.

On Tuesday, November 3rd the voters in this country may deal a significant blow to the Trump and MAGA movement by taking away the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Every vote will be important in these very important elections.

What role will DSA play in this important battle? Tens of thousands of activists across the state will work to defeat the Republicans. Will DSA be there with them? Will DSA be known as an organization that stood up to do what was best for the people in this critical moment of history?

I hope so.

That's why I am proposing that we organize and direct our effort to support the Democrats in the five swing districts across our state.  One way we could do this is by developing a California DSA Congressional Elections Committee

I recorded this short video introducing myself and proposing we build this committee. Please take a moment to watch it. I will expand on it more here in this article, but it will introduce the idea.

Why should we focus on the swing districts? The swing districts are the battleground. Most districts are solidly Republican or solidly Democratic. They are stable territory for either side. The swing districts are where the two parties fight and gain or lose ground.

California has five of them: 

• CA-13 is held by Democrat Adam Gray, who won in 2024 by only 187 votes. The district also voted for Trump. CA-13 includes all of Merced County, most of Madera County and parts of Stanislaus, Fresno and San Joaquin Counties. Our closest chapters are North Central Valley, East Bay and San Francisco. 

• CA-21 is more likely to remain Democratic. Current representative Jim Costa won by 10,065 votes, but that is still close enough to have it make the swing districts list. It includes part of Fresno County and Tulare County. Our closest chapters are North Central Valley, East Bay and San Francisco. 

• CA-22 is held by Republican David Valadao. It includes most of Kings County and parts of Tulare and Kern Counties. The closest chapter to this district is North Central Valley DSA and we also have an Organizing Committee in Kern County.

• CA-45 is held by Democrat Derek Tran, who narrowly won in 2024 by just 653 votes. It is located mostly in Orange County and includes a small part of Los Angeles County. Our Long Beach, Orange County and Los Angeles chapters could collaborate on this race.

• CA-48 is also held by a Republican and it includes parts of San Diego and Riverside counties. We have chapters in the Inland Empire and San Diego.

You can check out maps of the districts and voting results of the 2024 general elections here in this site I put together.

The election committee will include people from chapters across the state.  We will help each other organize members in our chapters to participate in these elections, discuss how things are going and to help each other out and share ideas and resources.  We will discuss successes and challenges getting members involved in the campaigns.

I acknowledge that these Democratic candidates in the swing districts hold positions on some issues that many DSA members may be strongly opposed to. But priority number one right now must be stopping MAGA fascism in its tracks, and one crucial and necessary tool is a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. 

All we as DSA members need to do is show up and participate in the campaigns and we can figure out together how best to do that. 

Participants from a chapter could tell the congressperson’s campaign that they would like to focus on an area where many of the members live or an area that participants want to focus on for some other reason. We can publicize campaign events to our members and encourage them to help. We can look at voter statistics for the areas we choose and become more advanced in our understanding of the voting history of the area we focus on. Some of you will have other ideas about what to do as well and they will be welcomed. We will discuss them openly together!

Working together on this important political event will help us to function in an organized and collective way, like an organization bigger than our isolated chapters, and to learn to work together smoothly, efficiently and with unity.

We need to work that way if we are going to successfully march down the long and difficult road of building socialism. Right now MAGA stands ahead of us, right in the middle of that road. 

Please contact me (lealfaro@protonmail.com) to work together on getting our people to help with any campaign event.  Contact me if you have questions or views on this very important time.

[reprinted by permission from Jacobin]

On a late March afternoon, beneath the vaulted, medieval-revival ceiling of Immanuel Presbyterian Church, more than four hundred members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) gathered in the lingering heat of a citywide heat wave. The air inside the sanctuary was thick and stubborn as members fanned themselves with paper copies of the meeting agenda and shifted in their seats.

The proceedings moved briskly at first. Members discussed strike solidarity with the teachers’ union, upcoming labor actions, and campaign work. But as the temperature held and the room settled, the chapter turned to the main act, a more contentious question: whether to reopen its endorsement process for the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral race. What followed was a three-sided debate, carried out with intensity but also with (mostly) practiced comradely discipline.

More than one hundred members had signed petitions backing housing activist Rae Huang. Another one hundred supported City Councilmember Nithya Raman. Others argued that reopening the process would risk overextending the chapter’s resources and undermine a carefully built electoral strategy. In the end, 54 percent voted to reopen endorsements, but the measure failed to reach the required supermajority.

It was the kind of debate that would have once remained obscure and relevant only to a relatively small organization. As DSA’s LA chapter has grown to five thousand members, and the national organization has become an increasingly prominent force, DSA-LA’s decisions have begun to register as reportable events in the political life of the city. What was once “inside baseball” now carries implications for multimillion-dollar races and the direction of governance in the second-largest city in the United States — part of a broader maturation of socialist politics.

For years, DSA-LA has pursued a disciplined electoral strategy focused primarily on city council races, with massive districts that each encompass over 260,000 residents — but where, when the Left concentrates its forces, it can still meaningfully shift outcomes. This strategy flows from both ongoing campaign work and the chapter’s political program, and has delivered results on the council.

Shake Up City Hall Slate

Nithya Raman’s 2020 victory marked a breakthrough, and in the years since, DSA-backed candidates have steadily expanded their presence. Today multiple members or allies of the organization sit on the fifteen-member city council, and the chapter has built a reputation for running serious, field-heavy campaigns rooted in tenant organizing and alliances with labor unions.

In the current cycle, DSA-LA has endorsed the Shake Up City Hallslate of six candidates. DSA-LA’s 2026 slate includes both incumbents and challengers, with councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, a Highland Park organizer advancing tenant rights and advocating for improving public safety through better social service and mental health provision, and Hugo Soto-Martínez, a former hotel worker and union organizer who has delivered legislative wins for renters, immigrants, and labor.

The challengers include Estuardo Mazariegos, a South LA organizer running on social housing, tenant power, and a Green New Deal, and Faizah Malik, a tenants’ rights attorney focused on housing affordability and land use reform on the Westside.

Beyond council races, school board member Rocío Rivas is seeking reelection as a defender of public education against privatization. And Marissa Roy is mounting an insurgent bid for city attorney to reorient the office toward civil rights and corporate accountability.

The Other Citywide Race

That last race represents something new. The office of city attorney has historically been low-profile, technocratic, and largely insulated from ideological contestation. Roy’s campaign, by contrast, seeks to transform it into a site of democratic accountability, raising questions about prosecution priorities, tenant rights, and the legal architecture of inequality in Los Angeles.

“The city attorney is one of the most powerful and least understood offices in LA, and the current city attorney is using the office to obstruct the pro-tenant, pro-worker agenda our DSA electeds are trying to implement in city council,” said Sydney Ghazarian, cochair of DSA’s Marissa Roy Working Group and a former DSA National Political Committee leader. “We’ve learned the hard way that the policies we pass don’t matter if the city attorney refuses to enforce them. ”

Roy’s candidacy is not just another race. It is a test of whether democratic socialists can expand their project beyond legislative bodies into the legal machinery of the city itself. It’s one thing to pass legislation; it’s another thing to enforce it and have the city devote its legal might to supporting tenants and workers.

“Right now, we have a city attorney who wastes the office’s resources defending indefensible LAPD misconduct instead of prosecuting slumlords, bad bosses, and polluting corporations,” added Ghazarian. “Marissa will use the power of the office to defend tenants, workers, and millions of working-class Angelenos, not just the powerful few.”

The Mayor’s Race Enters the Room

The debate over the mayor’s race sits uneasily alongside this strategy. Before Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor last November, the question of intervening in the race wasn’t on the minds of many LA chapter members. But that upset election rippled out in energizing waves across the country.

On one side were those who saw a mayoral endorsement as a natural next step. With DSA-backed candidates now holding multiple council seats and with the deep polling weakness of LA’s current mayor, Karen Bass, the prospect of a democratic socialist mayor no longer feels entirely out of reach. A mayoral campaign, in their eyes, would bring visibility, attract new members, and potentially consolidate the gains of the past decade.

“I want our chapter to be able to seize this moment and demonstrate to thousands of working-class Angelenos that DSA-LA is an organization worth joining, and I want a movement that understands 2028 is not just about returning to corporate Democratic policies but rather reshaping the fabric of American society,” said chapter cochair Leslie Chang, who supported a Nithya endorsement. “Supporting Nithya for mayor is our chance to build a movement here in Los Angeles that is ready to support a democratic socialist for president in 2028.”

On the other side were those who view such a move as premature or even counterproductive. The chapter’s strength has been its disciplined allocation of resources, particularly volunteer labor for phonebanking and canvassing. A citywide race could absorb enormous capacity, potentially weakening the campaigns where DSA has its clearest path to victory.

There are also political considerations. Raman, despite her history with DSA and her strong record on tenant protections and advocacy for the homeless, has at times diverged from the organization on key issues, including Palestine, housing policy, policing budgets, and the implementation of the city’s “mansion tax.” Raman has drawn heavy fire at times from DSA members nationally for being accommodating to local pro-Israeli groups. For instance, she was censured by the chapter in 2024 for accepting the endorsement of Democrats for Israel–Los Angeles. At the recent chapter debate, some members active in housing fights raised concerns about her being an inconsistent ally to the housing left in the city and criticized her efforts to rewrite Measure ULA, the city tax on top-tier property sales that flows directly into the city’s affordable housing programs, to exempt apartments, condos, and mixed-use housing. Raman contends that it is a tactical move to keep lobbying groups opposed to the measure from gutting the law with a statewide ballot initiative..

Huang, by contrast, is seen by some members as more closely aligned with socialist principles but faces questions about electability and citywide recognition. “She’s not on the Shake Up City Hall slate, but she’s here to shake up city hall,” says Gabbie Metheny, a DSA-LA chapter member and volunteer community manager for the campaign.

Democracy Is Good, Actually

These are not superficial disagreements. They reflect a deeper tension within democratic socialist strategy: whether to prioritize ideological clarity or electoral viability, and how to balance the two in a political environment still largely hostile to socialists.

What stands out, however, is not the existence of disagreement but the form it takes. The debate inside DSA-LA is structured, participatory, and transparent. Petitions circulate. Members argue openly. Votes are taken, and decisions are respected even when the margins are narrow or the outcome frustrating. The result is messy, sometimes slow, and occasionally anticlimactic.

Members also sometimes vote with their feet in a mass organization where democratic socialism spills out into a broader movement not always contained by DSA. Formal endorsement or no, over 120 DSA-LA, Long Beach, and Orange County members (mostly new recruits) are volunteering for Huang’s campaign (out of 1,110 volunteers total), taking up organizing roles in canvassing, digital outreach, policy, and more. Many DSA members active in the United Auto Workers have been pillars of support for the Nithya campaign. But messy or not, DSA-LA’s internal debates provide a rare example of large-scale democratic practice in an era when most political organizations operate through top-down decision-making or informal influence networks.

The stakes extend beyond Los Angeles. As democratic socialism becomes an ever more powerful force in American politics, questions of strategy, scale, and internal democracy will only become more pressing. DSA-LA offers one possible model: a mass-membership organization capable of contesting elections, organizing in social movements, and still arguing, in full view of its own members, about how best to proceed.

The labor movement has marked May Day 2028 for strikes across the U.S. Now is the time to build the capabilities that will make that vision a reality.

The post DSA Prepares for May Day 2026 — and Beyond appeared first on Democratic Left.

Minnesota labor and anti-ICE organizers are finding common ground and tools in the fight against authoritarianism in the workplace and on the streets

The post How to organize against authoritarianism appeared first on EWOC.

It feels like we have all been here before. A massively unpopular president, mass organizing against repressive policies, an electorate that seems primed to opt for a more aggressive combating of the status quo

And then… nothing.

The Illinois primary saw many credible challengers fail to gain enough momentum to break through against a littany of AIPAC-sponsored candidates, old Democratic Party incumbents, and “progressive” but pro-Israel politicians. In a few races, voters had several decent options and coalesced around none. In others, a sea of money flooded them out. In several races, the most credible progressive candidate didn’t even finish second.

Chicago DSA needs to look at what happened in these races and ask two key questions:  how this happened and what we can do to prevent this in the future. And nowhere in the city can we learn more about how things currently stand than in the 9th Congressional District, made up of most of the Lakefront North Side.

We must be honest with ourselves that with three open congressional seats in the city and a plethora of candidates running trying to be the “left” candidate, only one sought the endorsement of Chicago DSA. , And that required some coaxing on our part. In IL-9, where there are hundreds of CDSA members, not one candidate sought out our endorsement.

We had candidates running for Congress that are dues paying members of our chapter who did not seek our endorsement. We can debate how much we should prioritize electoral organizing, but this is a verdict on the power of this chapter to intervene in events in this city. These candidates either did not trust that DSA would endorse them if they applied, did not believe we could meaningfully influence their race, or calculated that our electoral efforts wouldn’t outweigh any downsides of being “DSA-endorsed”

***

Let’s start by taking a step back to look at the electoral terrain.  United Working Families has seemingly imploded, and the Chicago Teacher’s Union and SEIU Illinois found themselves on opposite sides of multiple races in this cycle. There is no one group that leads the left in the city now. Comrades on the Northwest side have shown the ability to build electoral power, allying with local ward organizations to construct a “Commie Corridor” up and down Milwaukee Avenue (overlapping with the territory of Chicago DSA’s Northside Blue Line Branch). There is much to be learned from the process by which they have gained power, even though some of these electeds have not been endorsed by CDSA.

We need to follow through with the priorities we established at the December General Chapter Meeting and encourage members start attending meetings of their local Independent Political Organizations (IPOs). But we should take this a step further. Those of us with children should integrate ourselves into the school communities and talk politics with those people. If we are members of faith communities, we should be present there. It is how we can identify candidates and it’s how we make CDSA a presence in places we currently struggle to reach. A key rule of union organizing is that one needs to build trust with co-workers on the shop floor before one starts to talk about a union. The same is true of political organizing.

A second lesson is that for everything else that may have changed, both showing up locally and having local ties seems to matter. Kat Abughalea’s campaign did very well in the district (winning the Chicago vote), but it was hampered by both the candidates own missteps in blowing off CDSA, Indivisible, and People’s Lobby forums in a part of the city incredibly friendly to the type of politics she was espousing. By not seeking to work with anyone organizing on the ground in the north side of Chicago, Kat’s campaign passed up on a huge apparatus of volunteer organizers and advocates who could have tipped what turned out to be a close race.

There were other problems in Kat’s campaign that we might not have been able to overcome.  Comrades on the ground that were working for various campaigns reported that many potential supporters  had already made up their minds not to vote for Kat due to the short amount of time she had spent in the area prior to running for Congress. She was accused of being a “carpetbagger” by some detractors for that reason. The divide in Chicago between transplants and natives is a well-known dynamic, and it can be an uphill climb for candidates who have few ties to the community they want to represent.

In some ways, Kat’s staff and supporters did a very good job running a campaign. Their social media and communications work was excellent. They raised a surprisingly large amount of money. And they came unexpectedly close to defeating Daniel Biss, finishing in a close second at 25.9% of the vote compared to Biss at 29.6%. However, their efforts did not prove to be enough. Comparisons to Zohran Mamdani fail to take into account that Zohran used his social media prowess to reinforce a strong message. This message proved not only popular, but was also reinforced by his time already spent fighting for working class New Yorkers. Delivering a message that resonated with voters is the area where Kat struggled.

Comms, memes, and social media are valuable tools to a candidate that is telegenic, well spoken, and likeable. But they are not enough to win elections. Voters need to get to know the candidates and trust them to deliver change . Those candidates should have some kind of base where they are running. Kat’s campaign had a great messaging infrastructure that also failed to connect with voters. 

Going forward, with an eye on future elections, we should remember that our strength as an organization is always going to be our members. We have an excellent Comms Team. We have smart theorists. But our key advantage is always going to be a motivated base that is politically educated and skilled in political organizing. Our comrades who worked polling locations on Primary Day for 25th Ward Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez ran into election workers who were almost always paid by our opponents to be there. They often didn’t care about the outcome, it was just another job. How many of us feel personal stakes in the success of the places we work? Many of these paid canvassers want to collect their check and go home, and some won’t even vote for the candidates they are “supporting.” 

The upcoming political cycles around the 2026 midterms, the 2027 Chicago mayoral race, and the 2028 presidential elections are likely to be particularly tough one. There are going to be massive sums of money spent on convincing people that the corporate interests and real estate developers of this city have the best interests of working class Chicagoans at heart. We have decided we will challenge those who have chosen to put the interests of corporations over the people. We have decided to be more dedicated in trying to find candidates. But we also must be clear about where we are strong.

If we want the kind of power and influence that allows us to push citywide narratives, we have to win elections. We must not just serve as the tail end of a larger movement, but as an organization capable of putting on our own candidates in office. We are never going to be an organization that is able to build political power by spending money or gaining media space. But with strategic focus on contesting elections, by seeking partners in the struggle, and by finding candidates suited to run where they are, we can build working class power in this city that can withstand AIPAC, crypto billionaires, and whatever else the capitalist class throws at us.

The post Lessons from the 2026 Primary Season appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

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By: Vanessa B

BOSTON – On Sunday, February 22, postal workers gathered for a rally in front of South Station. Agitated by growing managerial bloat and stagnant starting wages, postal workers affiliated with the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) are looking to win a contract in 2026 that will make the postal service a sustainable place to work for years to come. 

In speeches, workers repeated the call for “30/30”, demanding a $30 starting wage and a ratio of 30 workers to 1 manager.

“If this job is going to survive, if we’re going to recruit and keep people, $30 an hour should be the floor, not the ceiling,” said a rally speaker. “The cost of living didn’t freeze in 2006; housing didn’t freeze, gas didn’t freeze, groceries didn’t freeze. The only thing that froze was us on the streets, and our starting wage.”

Rally speakers outlined a list of demands, such as an all-career workforce, as well as shorter timeframes for moving up the pay scale and overall pay scale reforms, which postal workers hope will help increase retention rates for newly hired letter carriers. 

The fight illustrates an upsurge in letter carrier rank-and-file organizing locally – but why? What brings rank-and-file postal workers together amidst a bad contract, tensions within the union over its bargaining process’s (dis)empowerment of members, and a hostile federal environment?

2024 NALC Conference Opens the Door to Democratic Reforms

Rank-and-file worker organizing has been steadily accumulating into a nascent reform movement within NALC. Workers brought proposals for constitutional reforms to bargaining to the national NALC conference in 2024, aiming to increase transparency around the process. 

Prior to a national NALC convention in 2024, NALC’s constitution empowered just one person to negotiate contracts between the union and USPS: NALC’s national president, Bryan Renfroe. Much of the ire about the lackluster contract campaign that emerged in 2025, following the 2024 conference debates, has been directed at Renfroe.

The anger of many rank-and-file members towards their union president over the contract stems from the ways in which 2024 reforms did not go far enough. At the NALC Conference, membership won some bargaining reforms. For example, rather than solely having closed-door meetings between the union’s president and management, there will be an appointed group of worker leaders from across the country invited to give input on bargaining. 

Despite improvements, members of NALC still have not won a fully transparent open bargaining process. 

According to Read Wilder, a young letter carrier and shop steward in Cambridge, the lack of transparency, slow negotiations, and a disappointing contract last year have all led to an upsurge in rank and file organizing amongst postal workers in the greater Boston area. 

“The same activists who got open bargaining passed are also looking for a better contract campaign this time around,” Wilder said. 

2025 Contract: Too Little, Too Late, Say No

Adding to the urgency organizers feel around the 2026 contract fight is a widely-held feeling that the recently settled 2025 contract was ‘too little, too late’ for many. The contract was voted down by members following a nationwide vote no campaign. The final vote tally: 63,680 no votes to 26,304 in favor.  

The contract went to arbitration before a judge, where a deal was reached between the postal service and NALC virtually identical to the one that was rejected by membership. Despite leadership’s promises to “fight like hell,” NALC wrapped up arbitration with the US Postal Service after just two days spent in mediation.

NALC’s 2026 contract fight comes only a year after the previous contract was settled in March 2025. Letter carriers went on working under an expired contract for 700 days. Boston postal worker Harman said:

I was on the phone with my steward when he found out that we got a new contract. It was pouring rain. We were both working a 12-hour that day, but finding out that we got the same contract that we voted down was just like a punch in the gut… It killed any morale, finding out that they took 700 days to negotiate, but only a few days in arbitration to give us the same thing we said no to.

The Movement of Building a Fighting NALC (BFN)

For those committed to building a rank-and-file reform movement within NALC, the focus isn’t toppling the establishment overnight. Their priorities lie in strengthening locals and empowering union members to take ownership of their union, their work, and their contract fights. 

In a July statement, NALC reform caucus BFN stated that:

Build a Fighting NALC (BFN) aims to build a national rank and file reform movement to transform NALC into a democratic, fighting union that engages with and mobilizes the membership to fight for better wages, working conditions, and a high quality public postal service.

BFN organizer Derek Liehmon, a Boston-based postal worker, said that he hopes the caucus will “give people an opportunity to learn how to do union democracy.” He continued:

BFN is not doing something because one person or some leader who’s three or four levels of bureaucracy above the rank and file, decides we’re doing it. We vote on stuff, we decide together.

Establishing union democracy internally has involved electing leadership for the caucus, and drafting a constitution for the reform group to follow. Liehmon said the group has looked to other reform caucuses, such as UAW’s Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) and Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), for guidance as they start the process of reforming the letter carriers’ union from within.

“We are trying to apply the last 50 years of reform caucus history in our context, and this is something that really hasn’t existed in the postal unions. From my understanding there aren’t reform caucuses in the other ones,” said Liehmon.

Growing concern about the future of USPS

While union leadership are under increased pressure from members to win a stronger contract this time around, questions remain about the USPS’s ability to remain afloat financially. In their financial report for fiscal year 2025, USPS reported a loss of $9 billion.

At a House subcommittee meeting about the financial future of the USPS, Postmaster General David Steiner testified that the USPS may not be able to provide the current level of service a year from now. Steiner cited decreased usage of the service and high labor costs as factors in the current crisis, and asked that Congress increase the service’s borrowing authority while they “determine what the Postal Service should do to best serve the American public.” Rather than a government that wants the massive funding the USPS requires to fully succeed as a public service, the USPS faces a government deeply invested in its disinvestment. 

According to the Office of the Inspector General, USPS spent over $800 million from 2022-2024 on grievances, which are typically related to violations of the collective bargaining agreements between unions and employers.

In a statement published on NALC’s website, the union agreed with the Postmaster’s call for Congress to extend USPS’s borrowing limit, but pushed back on Steiner’s suggestions related to the workers who deliver the mail. 

“We will fiercely fight limiting letter carriers’ workers’ compensation benefits in any way or increasing usage of non-career employees in our craft as some in the hearing suggested. Even suggesting such foolish actions are insulting to America’s hardworking letter carriers,” said NALC president Renfroe.

Liehmon told Working Mass:

If you listen to how Renfroe and the union admin talk, they’re really worried that pushing management too hard is going to destabilize the Post Office, that pushing too aggressively is going to create a target for our union and for the postal service, that trump is going to DOGE us. But he might just do it anyway. What happens when they do to us what they’ve done to everybody else?

“The answer to this is not austerity or lower wages,” Liehmon said. “It’s a political decision. Where do we want to spend our money? Do we want to spend it on this public service that mostly funds itself, or do we want to spend money on the military? We (NALC) have to be left wing, and have left wing politics because at the end of the day, it’s a political question.”

That political question may be solved beyond the shopfloor of the Post Office, but NALC faces its own political decision in engaging the question. NALC can work within the broader labor and reform movements to create the political conditions needed for its needed survival. But without leadership from below, there’s no guarantee.

The future of NALC, in other words, relies on the workers. As always.

Vanessa B is a member of Boston DSA and contributor to Working Mass.

The post Postal Workers Demand 30/30 Amidst Organizing Surge Among Rank-and-File Letter Carriers appeared first on Working Mass.

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