By filling city council meetings, educating the public on mass surveillance, and cooperating with like-minded allies, DSA members in Westland shot down a Flock contract renewal.

By Dave N. and Kathy E.

In July 2024 the city of Westland signed up for a trial run with Flock Safety that would last until August 2026. Flock’s cameras are Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR) that mark the date, time, and location where a vehicle passes.

Flock claims that its technology does not scan human faces, but its cameras are able to fingerprint cars based on minute details like rust or bumper stickers. The technology is similar to that used in facial recognition software. These services are sold to law enforcement and advertised to cities as a tool for safety (e.g. tracking stolen vehicles or resolving car accidents). In reality, police officers have used this technology to stalk ex-spouses, target women seeking abortions, and aid ICE raids.

Given privacy concerns, civil rights, and the actual safety of citizens, it was in the interest of any resident of Westland to shoot Flock down. We learned, however, through hearing from citizens at Westland city council meetings and by talking with council members, that Westland is a very pro-police city. Even with a DSA-endorsed socialist, Mike McDermott, as council president, the majority of the council were convinced by the police department’s arguments for Flock. Upon approval in 2024, ten new Flock poles were placed in the city.

In 2025 Metro Detroit DSA began organizing in western Wayne County by forming a geographic working group that became known as Socialists Organizing Western Wayne (SOWW). In the beginning, we were learning about one another, how to organize, and even what socialism meant. After six months, we had grown to over 20 members with 15–20 consistently attending meetings. Organizing around the Flock contract turned into our first real project.

The group’s main goal was to find a way to guarantee four council votes (a simple majority) against renewing the Flock contract. Elijah Nemr led the anti-Flock campaign. He was a relatively new DSA member who leveraged his technical background to facilitate meetings, organize members, research, and speak at Westland city council meetings and other civic events.

Most of the city council members are openly pro-police. Mike was able to guarantee one vote besides his own, from the only Republican, Emily Bauman. Mike’s ability to gather two more votes was hampered by a law prohibiting four or more council members to meet in private. SOWW’s Flock sub-group saw that public pressure was the main way to gather two more votes.

Mike proposed two approaches to achieve this pressure, and we executed both: the inside and the outside. The inside approach was to have SOWW members attend city council meetings and speak publicly to council members. We also spoke to the other residents attending the meetings to create public anger and gain more support.

The outside approach was for SOWW members to canvass in neighborhoods and distribute petitions to pressure Westland not to renew the contract. While canvassing we learned that most people didn’t understand the difference between Flock cameras and CCTV cameras. CCTV cameras require a warrant or a subpoena to access the footage, while Flock cameras upload information to an unaccountable database that law enforcement can access at any moment. Once we showed examples of police who misused the technology and explained how Flock cameras didn’t require warrants, residents immediately became disturbed and supported our efforts.

One of the strongest tactics we used was to leverage a wide array of talking points when addressing city council. We got help on our petitions from our sibling group in Ferndale, the Ferndale Area Organizing Committee (FAOC), which had successfully pressured Ferndale not to renew its Flock contract. FAOC gave us many resources, literature, and debate strategies that had been effective there.

We began forming speeches personal to each Westland resident about why they opposed Flock. For example, we have several mothers in our group and one of them, Liz, decided to highlight the predatory threats Flock cameras posed to children. At a council meeting, she stated:

As a parent, I’m deeply concerned about the ever-increasing levels of surveillance our children are being raised to believe is normal. There are many stories emerging of Flock’s inability to keep the sensitive information they collect safe, further raising concerns about this kind of surveillance technology and how it impacts our youth.

Liz’s story, along with framing that focused on the safety concern that Flock cameras pose, immediately garnered public support. This video of one public comment session shows Liz and others who spoke about why they oppose surveillance.

We allied with the president of the Westland Democratic Club to put more pressure and speak out against Flock to the council. We consulted with independent journalists and collaborated with other organizations such as The People’s Assembly. Peoples’ Assembly and DeFlock (a national open-source project that maps Flock cameras) sent speakers to our council meetings. The first meeting of July showed the fruits of these efforts — instead of SOWW members being the main public commenters on Flock, multiple constituents who had not spoken before on the topic rose to voice their concerns about the cameras.

That meeting was the boiling point — within a few days, councilwoman Melissa Sampey posted to Facebook the council’s decision not to renew the contract and to let it expire. Sampey’s post revealed the force behind this decision: “Community Engagement Matters.”

SOWW was able to demonstrate that a DSA geographic group can multiply the efforts of our SIOs. Mike McDermott is our only SIO on city council, and SOWW demonstrated that a DSA geographic group can multiply the efforts of our SIOs. We built an issue campaign to create public pressure on elected officials, through a unified group that devoted time to forming relationships with constituents. Attending Westland Democratic Club meetings and Westland cultural events allowed us to create allies, and those allies came out and spoke against Flock.

SOWW also cultivated organizing skills, and new members gained memorable organizing experience that they can take beyond the Flock campaign. SOWW trained new organizers to speak publicly, compile literature, and canvas.

Growing as an organizer also requires personal development. One of our new members, Kate, said she was “inherently a socially anxious person, but working with such a supportive and motivated group really helped me feel comfortable speaking up.” People are motivated to try things they struggle with when it’s for a greater cause and for others; that’s a core tenet of organizing. The support and camaraderie in SOWW made a space to develop future organizers.

And there’s a need for those organizers: our work on ending mass surveillance is far from finished. Inkster, Livonia, Garden City, and Romulus all have Flock contracts. Our group needs to carry this momentum to one of these cities, but we need to decide soon.

SOWW was created to organize locally alongside our Socialists in Office (SIOs) — Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, State Representative Dylan Wegela, and Westland City Council President Mike McDermott — where their districts overlap in Westland, Romulus, Inkster, and Garden City.

If you are interested in the work we do, please contact Jill Rossiter, Elijah Nemr (Elijah S), or Kathy Elrick on Slack or fill out our interest form.

David N. has been an active member of DSA since July 2025. He is not a part of any caucus. In SOWW he has contributed to power mapping Westland, town hall organizing, and mutual aid.

Kathy E. has been an active member of the chapter since 2023 and is co-chair of SOWW. She started hosting DSA coffee socials in western Wayne County in 2024. She is uncaucused and active in starting a local DSA, community garden collaboration in Norwayne, and Mutual Aid 101 and 102 events.

Flock Off: How Westland DSA Members Pushed Flock Cameras Out of Their City was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

[[{“value”:”

By: Julia Z & Jake S

WORCESTER – Students have returned to Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Freshmen are being shuttled through new student orientation, professors are dusting off their syllabi, and returning students have long soaked in their remaining days of freedom. Many new students were no doubt won over by WPI’s aggressive promotion of its cutting-edge Robotics Engineering, Computer Science, and AI undergraduate programs along with its highly-celebrated R1 Research University status. Many are surely excited for the “project-based learning” described by eager campus tour guides, ready to sell them a vision of high-tech projects on a charming New England campus.

But a university campus is much more than its students,  teachers, and overpaid administrators. WPI may claim non-profit status on its tax filings, but in order to compete in a cutthroat higher education industry, it still carries all the fixtures of a corporate enterprise — in many ways, becoming more a landlord/buffet/hedge fund/private police department conglomerate that offers college degrees on the side — including a massive staff force to keep the lights on, the students learning, and the tuition dollars rolling in.

So who are the faces that keep those lights on? Who does everything from preparing curriculum, to the research that won WPI its R1 status, to taking out the trash and setting the tables for big donor wine-and-dine sessions? And, more importantly, why are they increasingly becoming self-organized into trade unions to represent them against the interests of WPI’s endowment managers?

Working Mass sat down with representatives of three organized labor unions at WPI, plus the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), to talk about the importance of their work, their organizations, and their conflicts with the bosses on campus.

Trades, Groundskeeping, and Custodial Staff

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 32BJ

SEIU 32BJ is the international union representing facilities workers at WPI. Without their labor, repairs and maintenance on buildings would go unaddressed, trash would pile up in every classroom and office, and the grass on the Quad wouldn’t get cut — in other words, the campus itself would probably become an overgrown ruin. Every few years, by being organized in their union, facilities staff negotiate a contract with WPI to lay out fair wages, decent benefits, and dignified working conditions. Between every contract cycle, the contract needs to be enforced; the staff, through their union, sometimes find themselves continuing to battle with WPI’s administration to follow the terms of the agreement that both parties have already signed. Mark, a union steward elected by fellow custodians to address such problems on the job, told us about a recent fight, and how the union united his coworkers to push WPI toward a fair resolution that protected their jobs and made their lives easier.

About a year ago, the administration brought in consultants from Core America to evaluate the campus practices, supposedly as a checkup to make sure everything was properly staffed and maintained. Core America went to work to cut good union jobs and clamp down on upkeep costs. Part of what they developed was a proposal for communal trash bins in office buildings: rather than entering individual offices to pick up trash and recycling, office staff themselves would take on the work of custodians and deposit their trash in a larger, central bin. Less time spent gathering trash meant WPI could try to get away with paying fewer custodians to do it. The plan would cut five jobs and open the door to more “reorganizations” (i.e., more cuts).

As Mark said, nobody thought to talk to custodians themselves about the change. Not only was WPI trying to skip past a contractual obligation to negotiate over these changes with the people who do the work, it wouldn’t even have worked out the way they wanted.

“They don’t know anything about our jobs,” Mark said, of the administration and their outside consultants. “If you had office staff doing this, I’d be spending more time getting everything into the right bin than I would have spent just walking through their offices anyway. President Wang used to work at a school that tried this idea out, and that’s exactly what happened.”

Union representatives called a meeting with management and were quick to demand the plan be reversed. Union members took collective action by delivering a petition to back up what their reps were saying, and WPI backed down. Core America’s recommendation wouldn’t go through. Mark reflected on the outcome:

We got them to open those five positions back up. Did you know they don’t approve purchases in May until the fiscal year ends? At certain points in the year, we have to be really careful with the supplies we have left. Students pay tens of thousands a year to go here, and management has tens of thousands to spend on these consultants, but they want to cut our jobs and make us ration toilet paper?

WPI estimates the annual cost of attendance while living on campus — which is required of first- and second-years — to be just shy of $85,000. The total evaluation of its endowment sits at well over half a billion dollars.

According to Propublica, in the fiscal year ending June 2025, WPI’s Chief Finance Officer — who reportedly interfaced with Core America consultants — was paid roughly $600,000, while the school’s President took home just over $1 million total.

Resident Advisors

United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2322

Resident Advisors (RAs), Residential Mentors (RMs), Community Support Assistants (CSAs), and Community Development Mentors (CDMs) come together to form a union affiliated with United Auto Workers Local 2322. Student workers in any of these four positions perform key roles in keeping students safe, submitting requests for maintenance and repairs, and building community amongst undergraduate students. Without their labor, the dorms would be less safe, less maintained, and much more lonely places to live.

We met with Zoey and Dom, two union stewards for this group of workers, which voted to unionize in 2024 and won its first contract with WPI the following year.

One core reason the Res Advisor Union (RAU) formed was to challenge constant changes to job descriptions imposed by  WPI. In fact, WPI only had a single Res Advisor role, but very soon after RAs won their union election, the administration proposed breaking the job into its current roles, removing most RAs from on-campus housing. Admin claimed this would lighten the workloads of RAs, but Zoey and Dom know it was another cost-cutting measure. Most of the new roles would receive no meal plans, no housing, and less pay. Moreover, RMs would be charged with developing a meaningful relationship with 75 or even 85 students at a time, where in their old role, RAs were only expected to handle around 35.

“This seemed to be the personal project of the Dean of Undergraduate Students,” Zoey told us, “but nobody wanted to actually engage with us to figure out a solution that would actually work.”

During intense contract negotiations, RAs went on strike from October 31 to December 15, 2025, after which the RAU won a decent contract with WPI that includes just-cause firing, increased pay, housing vouchers, meal plans, and workload caps. And while many of the job description changes were ultimately accepted, they’ll be implemented gradually over a 2 to 3 year phase-in period with a joint Union-Management Committee to oversee the transition. If the new roles aren’t working for Res Advisors themselves, the union will return to the negotiating table in 2028 with an opening to fight again for a better system.

Graduate Student Workers

United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2322

Several hundred graduate student workers are organized under the WPI Graduate Workers Union, WPI-GWU, a UAW Local 2322 affiliate. Most doctoral students, and many master’s students, often work as Research Assistants (RAs) or Teaching Assistants (TAs), with others working as administrative staff while pursuing their graduate degree. As a teaching and research institution, the value of this work is obvious. Without TAs, grades wouldn’t be submitted; without RAs, WPI would attract no grant funding; without administrative staffers, very little work could get done at all. Although faculty generally direct teaching and research, graduate workers perform an enormous share of the day-to-day work: office hours; proctoring exams;  grading student work; running experiments; and applying for research funds.

Stephen is a doctoral student in Biomedical Engineering, a co-chair of WPI-GWU, and an officer in Local 2322, which not only represents grads and res advisors at WPI, but thousands of academic and non-academic workers across New England, including similar workers at UMass Amherst and the University of Vermont.

The GWU won its first contract in 2023 after several months of tough negotiations. Prior to the contract, grad workers could barely afford to live in Worcester, and a litany of safety problems plagued their research labs. Stephen told us that some of his colleagues were forced to live on food stamps and simply couldn’t make rent. The ambiguity of their student-worker status even led to delays and complications in receiving worker’s compensation for lab injuries.

Their first contract changed everything. Stipend and hourly pay increased as much as 20%; graduate workers were guaranteed paid time off for the first time; WPI now covers the cost of many grad workers’ health insurance, and they now enjoy clear definitions of what’s expected of them at work. Workload caps, just-cause firings, and even new protections and benefits for international students were enshrined in the agreement.

Teaching and Research Faculty

American Association of University Professors (AAUP)

Professor Dan DiMassa is Vice President of WPI’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). At WPI, the AAUP doesn’t function like a traditional labor union, but still represents the organized interests of full- and part-time faculty. Despite the reality of a totally unequal power imbalance between faculty and the university administration that holds hiring and firing authority over them, labor law treats faculty as “managers,” and restricts their rights to organize unions at private institutions like WPI.

According to Professor DiMassa, the AAUP chapter at WPI formed in 2018 to deal with the administration’s attempt to rewrite parts of the faculty handbook. Their changes would have undermined academic freedom, putting the right to adjudicate disputes over academic integrity into the hands of trustees and administrators. Since then, the AAUP has also been forced to confront management  over COVID-era cuts to faculty retirement  benefits, which have only been partially reversed.

At WPI, the AAUP chapter often works through the faculty governance system, which is the main mechanism through which faculty can have a say in the development of university policies. Through this channel, despite lacking legal rights to negotiate a union contract, faculty organized under the AAUP have won new tenure-track jobs and enfranchised a new category of teaching faculty. Faculty governance isn’t a perfect way for professors to get what they need, but because they’re organized and can unite in collective action, their conditions stand a chance at improving.

Dan told us that the AAUP truly sees the interests of faculty and students as aligned. Both share a common investment in the core educational functions of a university: teaching and research. For the whole system to work, students and faculty alike need to build and maintain an environment of academic freedom where their thoughts can be tested and challenged. Robust faculty governance — capable of  struggling against the power of professional university administrators charged with driving up revenue while cutting down on costs — plays an important role in that process.

Without its workforce of wage labor, WPI would cease to function, just like any other private enterprise under capitalism. And just like at any other workplace, it’s when workers organize for collective action in their own interests that they can challenge the boss to improve their lives, their workplace, and the world around them. Workers keep the world running, and the working class deserves to run the world!

If you want to hear more from Resident Advisors and graduate student workers about their work, their lives, and their labor unions, head to working-mass.com and type “WPI” in the search box!

On Wednesday, November 11 at 5:00pm, WPI YDSA — the campus section of Central Mass and Worcester DSA — will facilitate a town hall featuring members of each of the worker organizations we interviewed in this article!

Come hear about upcoming contract negotiations of the graduate student workers and facilities staff, and learn more about what it means to be in a union as a part of the working class!

Julia Z and Jake S are members of Central Massachusetts & Worcester DSA and contributing writers for Working Mass.

The post Stiffing Workers, Rationing Toilet Paper: Who Really Makes WPI Run? appeared first on Working Mass.

“}]] 

By Asanti M.

The conversation surrounding healthcare access is more than an abstraction of cost and risk, it’s life and death, and people are dying. I know because I’ve pronounced them. I know because I’ve cleaned their lifeless bodies. The burdens of the ailing are only compounded by the general disservice of our institutional frameworks. The nebulous jargon tossed around boardrooms and between pundits materializes in the financial reality that confronts the humanity of the unfortunate and the ailing. I’ve seen eyes full of pain, the walls of life crumbling around them, forced to discuss the finances of death, because let me be clear, dying is a very expensive endeavor hear in the States, and God forbid you attempt to hold on to life!

The junction of societal divides is never so transparent as the time spent dying in Intensive Care. How perverse a world we’ve been forced into when the sick and dying are seen as another avenue for profit. When the burden of ailment and disease ceases to be a collective human struggle and becomes the burden of one. Oh what a beautiful freedom we have here in the States to accumulate our wealth from wherever we please, the opportunities are endless; no rite, no life stands too sacred as to not fall at the altar of Capital. Oh what freedom we’re blessed with! Blessed are those whose conscious is freed from the suffering of their brothers and sisters; blessed are those whose life is freed from the collective struggle against ailment. There’s a pity as lifeless as my patients, offered to those unfortunate enough to be poor. As if their lack of wealth taints their souls and damns them not in the next life, but right here in this one. How many hours should they have to work to pay off the death of their father, of their daughter, of their son? Fret not, those numbers are meticulously calculated by the profiteers who mandate we exist in such a carnivorous system.

We’re told by those with the wealth of a small nation that there’s no money to alleviate this collective suffering within the bounds of the current structure. If that’s truly the case, then it’s time we rid ourselves of the current structure. Any system that allows for such obscene levels of wealth to congeal into individual hands while the multitude counts pennies on their death beds must go. What principle do you cling to, to justify the needless death and stress of the sick? What sort of perverse freedom precludes the Preservation of Life! Blessed are the stars and stripes! If only the poor had sacrificed more to accumulate Capital, maybe their death wouldn’t be so distasteful; maybe their death wouldn’t be burdened by bills, and they could focus on their grief. What a sordid freedom the nation takes pride in. Our government cries, “how much”, “at what cost”, as they calculate the expense of expanding Healthcare. Look in this bed, there lies your cost! There, lifeless and grey! Can the nation not see the cost! Is it the grey? Maybe if we cast them green and stamped “e pluribus unum” on their forehead they would see. What a beautiful freedom we have here. Six Hail Marys, Lord let it be known that my brother has died at the altar of Capital in the sordid name of our perverse Freedom!

The post Six Hail Marys: Thoughts of an ICU RN first appeared on Red Fault.

By Nolan R.

This article was originally published in Democratic Left: Find it here

We all know the narrative by now: socialists are too radical, fringe, and unpopular to win any kind of lasting power. “Enjoy your time in the sun, lefties, because any moment now the hammer of reasonable, moderate thought will come crashing down and send you back to the depths of political obscurity with your collective tail tucked between your legs.”

Variations of this line are repeated constantly across the country by national media and prominent members of both parties. They repeat it like a mantra, both because they need it to be true and because they would rather eat glass than honestly engage with our ideas. Unfortunately for them, the recent streak of socialist victories has proven there is immense hunger for a working-class movement in this country. In fact, DSA may be more popular among Democratic voters than the Democratic Party itself. One out of three Democratic voters now identify as democratic socialists, and even among those who don’t, two-thirds would be comfortable voting for one.

How does the media react when a socialist wins against allegedly insurmountable odds? They minimize. They put Zohran’s victory down to personality and social media presence, not policy. When a slate of DSA candidates won across multiple levels of government, they said that’s just New York. When DSA won in Denver, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Detroit, well, those are all reliably blue areas, so what’s the big deal?

On the other hand, they pounce on any whiff of failure as an opportunity to discredit the entire movement. Fox News triumphantly declared Kai Newkirk’s loss in Arizona a “setback” for DSA even though Newkirk only became a member days before requesting an endorsement, and was not endorsed in his primary. Similarly, they label progressive politicians like Abdul El-Sayed “commies in camouflage” despite his self-identification as a “capitalist who believes in regulation.” Their goal is to erase nuance, lumping anyone to the left of Stephen Miller into the same communist boogeyman so they can tar us all with the same brush.

Francesca Hong started her campaign for governor of Wisconsin as a little-known state assembly member going up against the full weight of the Democratic establishment and still managed to come within a razor-thin margin of the nomination as an open socialist in a swing state. Outspent by several orders of magnitude, she relied on a robust canvassing operation of enthusiastic volunteers. Her narrow loss proves the viability of insurgent socialist campaigns even in states conventionally considered moderate. To the New York Times, however, the results represent a brick wall for DSA’s momentum.

It would be much more sensible, pundits and political operatives argue, to nominate safe, unchallenging centrists who promise nothing and deliver less. Otherwise, we might spook the independent voters, sink the Democrats in the upcoming midterms, and doom us all to a freshly empowered Trump administration. The goal is to browbeat the voting public into believing that holding principled positions opens the door to fascism. If Democrats stand for nothing, then there’s nothing for Republicans to criticize, right?

This narrative is bullshit. It assumes that independent voters’ politics lie smack dab between Republicans and Democrats, but the reality isn’t so simple. While most independents describe themselves as moderate, they also tend to hold an assortment of incongruent beliefs, such as support for universal healthcare. Rather than diehard centrists, they often refuse to identify with power (hence the independent label) and feel abandoned by both parties.

Corporate media endlessly promote pundits who complain that Democrats have gone too far left instead of admitting that many voters are disillusioned by the cycle of optimism and disappointment that comes with electing milquetoast Democrats. Millions of Americans voted for Obama or Biden with the earnest belief that they would get the change they were hoping for and then they were duped into supporting a vessel for the capitalist status quo. Despite the hand-wringing, independents and the politically disaffected are fertile ground for DSA’s growing constituency.

Each DSA win forces the mainstream media to move the goalposts and adjust their narrative. They argued that AOC and Zohran were outliers, that we could only win in New York City, that we couldn’t win in swing states like Michigan. Now, they’re arguing that we can’t win in competitive races against Republicans. How will the narrative shift again when we prove them wrong?

In all likelihood, they’ll double down on the idea that DSA’s success will hurt Democrats in the midterms. After the midterms, they’ll likely argue that while socialism may be gaining in popularity, our policies will inevitably fail. No electoral success will prod the hostile media into fairly appraising our program or our candidates.

At the end of the day, we shouldn’t internalize the bad-faith criticisms of the corporate media and the party duopoly. The fact that the media can’t stop talking about us, that they’re so obviously terrified of an ascendant Left, means that we are on the right track. We will harness this energy and attention that’s being focused on us, and we will ride that wave to victory.

We are now the largest socialist organization in the history of the United States, with 120,000 members and counting. Our names and our ideas are echoing in hushed tones throughout the halls of power. The president and the speaker of the house describe our movement in apocalyptic terms while the Senate holds McCarthyist show trials alleging connections to terror. While they lie about our goals and our methods, they are right to be afraid. We threaten to seize the reins of power that the ruling class has taken for granted for so long and to deliver them into the hands of the people.

More than ever, it seems that a better world is possible. Keep winning, DSA.

The post Socialists Can Never Win — Until We Do first appeared on Red Fault.

“Red All Over” — an occasional roundup of media coverage of DSA

The post Hold Your Nose And Vote appeared first on Democratic Left.

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor launched their book tour for “End Time Fascism: and the Fight for the Living World” on a DSA mass call on Thursday.

The post Out of the Bunker appeared first on Democratic Left.

In December of last year, I started watching the television show M*A*S*H, which ran on CBS from 1972 to 1983. As a history nerd with a penchant for old TV shows I quickly became obsessed, watching every single episode in under six months.

For those unfamiliar, the show is a comedy-drama following the exploits of the personnel serving at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M*A*S*H) during the Korean War (1950-1953). Intended as an allegory for the Vietnam War, the show tapped into the intense anti-war and anti-institutional sentiment of broad swaths of the American public of the time.

The show is unapologetically anti-war and progressive, unrelenting in its insistence that basic human dignity be upheld in the most horrific circumstances. It is extremely well-written and enjoyable to watch, a true classic of twentieth-century television. M*A*S*H may have premiered over fifty years ago, but it still has much to teach us today.

Best Care Anywhere

Alan Alda stars as Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, a gifted young surgeon drafted into the war. He has a penchant for pranks and a consistent distaste for military discipline. Alda’s performance is unmatched, and he is truly a once-in-a-generation comedic talent. His sardonic wit, impeccable comedic timing, and old-school slapstick gags combine to create a masterful performance. At the time of writing, the 90-year-old Alda is still acting and speaking out for progressive causes. He deserves to be recognized as one of the greatest American comedians of the twentieth century, standing alongside the likes of Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, and Steve Martin.

There was a significant amount of cast turnover spanning the course of the show’s run. Every time someone left, I was very nervous to find out who their replacement would be, and I wondered whether the new actor could live up to the standards of those departing. I was never disappointed.

Hawkeye’s original sidekick, Captain John “Trapper” McIntyre (Wayne Rogers) was a zany, sarcastic prankster. His replacement, Captain B.J. Hunnicut (Mike Farrell) is a grounded family man who often serves as a calming presence and voice of reason. Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) was the good-natured, borderline incompetent commanding officer of the outfit in the early run of the show; he was replaced in season four by the firm-but-fair, no-nonsense cavalryman Colonel Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan). The whiny, arrogant, and right-wing Major Frank Burns (Larry Linville) was replaced in season six by the blue-blooded and snobbish but cultured and honorable Major Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers).

Rounding out the main cast are the two other characters who stayed for the entire series: the meek and kind-hearted Catholic chaplain Lieutenant Francis Mulcahey (William Christopher), and the career-driven and tough head nurse Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Loretta Swit).

The only character swap that is more ambiguous is the replacement of the boyish and innocent but preternaturally competent company clerk Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff), who left the show in season eight. He was replaced by Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger (Jamie Farr), the Toledo-born, Lebanese-American cross-dressing soldier who spends much of the war attempting to convince the Army he has gone insane in pursuit of a Section Eight psychiatric discharge. Both characters are quite beloved by fans, and Radar’s departure marked a major turning point for the series.

The focus of the show is highly varied. Plots typically involve pranks and hijinx, Army bureaucracy, dealing with North Korean and Chinese POWs and Korean civilians, confronting racism, the psychological and emotional struggles of the staff, attacks by the enemy, interpersonal conflict that blurs the line between comedy and drama, and much more. The show also experiments with its own format, for example by filming an entire episode from the perspective of a wounded G.I. (S7E11), following a casualty in near-real time (S8E11), and depicting a soldier who is lingering as a ghost after succumbing to his injuries (S10E10).

M*A*S*H is based on a 1970 film of the same name and the 1968 novel that inspired it. Both works fall outside the scope of this article. The franchise received three spinoff series: Trapper John, M.D., which is not related to the show at all; W*A*L*T*E*R, the once-aired pilot for a show following Radar; and AfterMASH, which ran for two seasons. I would only recommend the latter to the most die-hard fans.

“There’s No Such Thing as an Anti-War Film”

In a real sense, this quote from the late French filmmaker François Truffaut is true. Accurately capturing the abject horror of war renders a movie effectively unwatchable as entertainment and impossible to distribute beyond an extremely limited audience. No such project could ever appear on network television.

At the same time, M*A*S*H avoids the typical pitfalls of other “anti-war” media that actually serve to glorify armed conflict or advance pro-war messages, such as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan or Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. There are several reasons for this.

First, the surgeons in the show are not soldiers in the conventional sense. They are doctors first and foremost. Hawkeye, Trapper, and later Hunnicut only reluctantly submit to military discipline. The show does not depict frontline combat or give the sense that a victory on the battlefield is a victory for the cast. Direct engagement with the enemy is sporadic and never glorified. The show makes it explicitly clear that every advance of blue squares on the map in a general’s office sends countless teenage boys to the hospital in critical condition. The surgeons at the 4077th must perform “meatball surgery” on their shattered bodies in the hope of keeping them alive long enough to get them to a hospital in Seoul or Tokyo. This constant drumbeat of “incoming wounded” keeps the show grounded in its values, and many episodes focus explicitly on the unique stresses endured by wartime medical staff.

Second, overt displays of patriotism, love of country, and sympathy with American foreign policy goals for Korea are almost completely absent. The show’s thesis does not seriously entertain counter-arguments as to why war should be seen as a moral good or a regrettable necessity. Characters do express belief in traditional American virtues including justice, fairness, democracy, and equality, but it is rarely tied explicitly to patriotism. It is only foils like Frank Burns who demand loyalty, obedience, and paranoia as they salute the flag.

Finally, the more “gung-ho” officers, soldiers, and civilians who visit the 4077th are consistently depicted in a negative light. The doctors are often pitted against officers willing to trade young lives for their own glory, bigots of all stripes, war profiteers, adventure-seeking journalists, anti-communist witch hunters, the officious bureaucracy of the U.S. Army, and more. These figures are often drivers of conflict in the series. They nearly always either learn a lesson, receive some kind of comeuppance, or set up a serious and contemplative moment for the main cast.

The show is not intended as an attempt to shock the viewer with the horrific, gory reality of war. Its elements are packaged in a way that is palatable for 1970s TV. Episodes are by no means excessively violent, and they aren’t at all unpleasant to watch. But they do send an unambiguous and consistent message: There is no value in this kind of killing.

If any piece of popular media can be considered truly anti-war, M*A*S*H is it.

Questions of Taste

Most of the humor in the show holds up to modern standards. It is intelligent and well-written, and there are relatively few cases in which a joke is made that I consider to be in poor taste. In one early episode (S2E9), the doctors paint a soldier in partial blackface to teach him a lesson about racism after he requests that he not receive “the wrong kind of blood” (referring to the recent integration of the U.S. Army’s blood supply). The message is intended to be anti-racist, but this plot point couldn’t air today for obvious reasons.

Some of the accents of the actors playing Koreans are uncomfortably broad by today’s standards. Many Korean characters’ inability to speak English seems to render them unable to speak at all, though this is likely due to the difficulty of sourcing actors who speak the language fluently at a time when the number of Korean-Americans in the U.S. was much smaller than it is today. There are also a few cases in which a person being kissed against their will is played for laughs, most often Major Houlihan. For these reasons, and likely a few more that I missed, some viewer discretion is advised. By the standards of a fifty-year-old show, however, there isn’t much to cringe at.

The portrayal of the cross-dressing Corporal Klinger is particularly noteworthy as an early example of what I would consider positive trans representation in media. Klinger is not transgender in the modern sense. He openly admits that he dresses in women’s clothing only to convince the Army he has gone insane, though his wardrobes are quite involved and he obviously revels in the freedom of expression it affords him. Klinger never changes his name or pronouns, he refuses a Section Eight that would require him to admit to being a “homosexual,” and he returns to a regulation uniform and ceases to angle for a discharge after he replaces Radar as company clerk.

The most notable part of the performance is how the majority of the cast treats him with matter-of-fact tolerance, and the characters who scorn him (particularly Major Burns) are portrayed as bigoted and petty. Even from those characters, anti-trans rhetoric doesn’t go to extremes.

Other trans people have different opinions on this topic. They believe Klinger plays into a harmful stereotype of the “man in a dress” that has been weaponized by the cisgender majority to delegitimize trans experiences. Given how the show approaches LGBTQ+ issues more broadly, including Hawkeye and Trapper’s acceptance of a closeted gay soldier (S2E22), I am personally inclined to believe the showrunners approached the question of Klinger’s identity as carefully and sensitively as could be expected for the time. That said, readers are encouraged to form their own conclusions.

Goodbye, Farewell and Amen

The series finale is a two-hour tour de force. Its live broadcast was watched by over 100 million people nationwide, and to this day it remains one of the most-watched scripted television events in history. Directed by Alan Alda, the finale does an excellent job of capturing the heart of the show. The episode is perfectly calibrated in its bittersweetness, and it serves as a powerful, emotionally satisfying, and fitting sendoff.

There is one rather disturbing plot point in the episode relating to the ultimate reason for Hawkeye’s hospitalization. It isn’t graphically depicted and is handled with care, but sensitive viewers can choose to skip that section, which takes place from timestamps 38:51 to 41:25.

As the ceasefire is announced during the finale, the total number of U.N., communist, and civilian casualties is read out over the base’s loudspeaker system, serving as a memorial for all those killed and permanently scarred by the Korean War. Klinger’s question: “Vietnam? Where’s that?” is particularly poignant as a nod to the show’s origin as a critique of the Vietnam War.

* * *

M*A*S*H is solidly progressive in a way that socialist viewers will immediately recognize. None of the characters are socialists, nor could they be in a show set during the early Cold War. But we can still admire and praise the virtues the show promotes: Radical tolerance of those different from us. Scorn for the horror of war and cruelty in every form. Sacrifice for those who have nothing. M*A*S*H reminds us that we should not apologize for our values, that our most basic humanity must be upheld against the forces of imperialism, militarism, and hatred.

The doctors of the 4077th are unable to stop the unbelievable carnage around them. They can only do their best to help those who come through the door. In our own time of global crisis, we should strive to do the same.

M*A*S*H is currently available to stream in its entirety on Hulu.

The post M*A*S*H is an Antiwar Masterpiece appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

A universal right to bargain would turn Simone Weil's philosophy into a concrete tool for building economic democracy in the American workplace.

The post A Right to Bargain appeared first on Democratic Left.

As CDSA forges ahead into a busy and demanding aldermanic cycle, membership is set to consider a new slate of potential endorsees at September’s General Chapter Meeting: four candidates for Chicago’s first fully-elected school board.

Before those votes take place, I’d like to make the case for why lending our chapter’s endorsement of all four candidates is critical to amplifying our “Workers Deserve More” program and furthering the class-struggle messaging that will help build out our movement and propel us to victory in February’s municipal elections. All four school board candidates under consideration (Hilario Dominguez, Jason Dones, Karen Zaccor, and Debby Pope) are self-identified socialists who have a clear-eyed vision for what it means to bring socialism to the Board of Education. 

But perhaps it would be illustrative to first share what the stakes are in these elections; in other words – what we stand to lose should charter and billionaire-backed candidates take these seats instead. 

Should a right-leaning school board take the helm after November’s elections, there can be no doubt that school closures would be on the table. This would be sold to us under the tired slogans of “fiscal responsibility” and “chronic under-enrollment.” It’s quite the masterful gambit, really. These schools are chronically under-enrolled because of decisions at all levels of government that have left Black and Brown neighborhoods starved of resources for decades. Now, those same actors are returning to demand the closure of schools that they intentionally underfunded.

A right-wing school board would likely forsake any attempt at progressive revenue streams from the state. Instead, it would likely close schools exclusively on the South and West sides of the city, just as it did in 2013. School closures aren’t just about underinvestment. They are a form of violence inflicted on the most vulnerable neighborhoods in this city. They leave communities divested, depopulated, and scarred. Today, the vast majority of CPS schools closed in 2013 remain in disrepair, a constant reminder for neighbors that Chicago has long valued the lives of certain residents over others. Additionally, school closures themselves are often antecedents to violence. Research has consistently demonstrated that areas immediately surrounding closed schools have seen higher rates of gun violence since 2013. 

Schools are community anchors and hubs where neighbors and their families convene to dream of a better tomorrow – one made possible only by the right to a free, accessible, and comprehensive public education. In many cases, they serve as centers for community programming, provide free summer enrichment programs, and welcome families that have recently arrived to the United States. When families are stripped of that right and forced to send their children to schools miles away at the behest of a school board that’s been bought and paid for by the charter school lobby, it’s an example of how the boot of racial capitalism continues to crush communities of color while enriching their oppressors. 

How can we seek to grow our presence on the South and West sides under the message of “Workers Deserve More” if we stand by while they’re given less and less? If “Workers Deserve More” is to be an actual vision for the implementation of democratic socialism, rather than a mere rallying cry, it must account for the workers (and their families) most likely to be affected by school closures: in Austin, Garfield Park, Englewood, and Auburn Gresham, among so many other neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. 

Furthermore, the election of a right-wing school board would likely mean cuts to services for students across the board. The first programs to go would likely be those that support Diverse Learners, students who require special education services. At a time when schools are already understaffed for the personnel that would accommodate these students’ needs (SECAs, paraprofessionals, etc.), it would be unconscionable to consider further cuts. Many students who receive accommodations and curriculum modifications have disabilities. As socialists, we must view this fight through the lens of disability justice. To ensure that every child, in every part of this city, has access to education as a tool of liberation, we must fight to expand funding for our Diverse Learners, not sit idly by while it’s rolled back.

While the prospects are quite somber should the school board swing right, there’s also much to be excited about should the board remain aligned with workers and their children. Just as with the City Council, we are fighting to build a bloc of school board members who have proven records as organizers for the working class. These candidates will mobilize the working class to demand the progressive funding for our schools that Governor Pritzker and the Illinois General Assembly have been refusing to answer for. 

With stable, progressive revenue, we can start to dream bigger. We can work with our bloc of board members to develop a coherent set of policy planks around education that transforms and integrates our schools even deeper into the fabric of the communities they serve. We can begin to imagine a district of Sustainable Community Schools, with wraparound programs like free healthcare, legal aid clinics, and nutrition education. Our district could also fund Universal Pre-K at age 3. Both of these are policies that school board president candidate Hilario Dominguez is running on.  It is a program we as a chapter can and should rally around.

So in the words of educators across this country: “Raise your hand if you’re here, CDSA.” We need to be here to fully fund our schools. Here to push back against the tide of corporate and billionaire money. Here to ensure that the schools in our black and brown communities are as well-resourced as any school in Lincoln Park or Lakeview, not shut down. And here to dream and organize around a better future for Chicago’s children.

The post Raise Your Hand if You’re Here: Why CDSA Must Intervene in the Board of Education Races appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

by Martin O.

One of the critical questions, if not the most critical and contentious in Cleveland DSA, is our strategic and tactical orientation toward “The Groups.” As we pursue our objectives, where do the many NGOs and activist groups in the metro area fit in? This debate encompasses a variety of political perspectives that have been represented historically for hundreds of years. In fostering healthy discussion of this issue, it’s important to recognize that these positions represent a place in this broader historical political debate rather than simply a particular moral or ethical viewpoint about the value of particular causes.

None of the information I’m going to convey here is new; there are no new insights, it’s all available in other places. However, as I’ve been in the middle of discussion with comrades both to the “left” and “right” of me lately (as you’ll see, this terminology breaks down completely at a certain point), I felt it might be important to put all this together in a single post. After all, it’s easier for someone to read one post than 12 and I think it’s essential that comrades recognize the full scope and nature of the discussion and the positions their fellow DSA members hold.

This will be about the three most prominent orientations in Cleveland DSA (and really the socialist movement as a whole) toward its direction as it relates to cooperation with outside forces, along with the pros and cons that others have laid out, in the way that I see them. These are, as I’ll refer to them, the “Popular Front”, “United Socialist Front” and, “For a single mass party” positions. These positions to some extent exist on a spectrum of their own that seems to defy the traditional left and right descriptions. 

Individuals’ positions in this debate are determined to some degree by their personal relationships to these groups around Cleveland and the issues the groups deal with, but there is also an important political assumption often being made in the background around the question of “is DSA one group out of the many groups that an individual might want to do work in and weigh equally?” or “Is DSA the most important group to me out of all of these possible groups?” This assumption affects one’s position on coalitions to a massive degree. There are also questions about the tactics these groups use, beliefs about their effectiveness, their effectiveness in building long-term power, etc. 

I’ll be upfront that I am a believer in the “for a single mass party” theory of change. Some of this is just because I don’t have the time to be involved in anything other than DSA and my past political activity took me into some of The Groups such as Justice Democrats (not particularly active in Cleveland) and then out of them. My point with this post is to help members understand the perspectives on display so that they can learn to frame questions themselves and we can argue about the politics of the situation and the historical justifications for one approach or the other rather than taking personal shots at each other.

Popular Front

Popular Front politics, as a historical phenomenon, have roots in the earliest days of the movement for working class political power. A popular front simply means an alliance of cooperation between socialists/communists and liberal political forces, usually against reactionary elements such as Fascists. This is almost always a cross-class coalition between people who depend on wages and people who own capital (in some sense). The working class fought alongside the Republican elites (in the “we want a Republic not a Monarchy” sense) in the 1830 and 1848 Revolutions in France in order to eliminate the Monarchy. In the 1920’s & 30’s, Communists, Anarchists, Syndicalists, and liberals formed popular fronts across Europe to oppose Fascism. 

Today in the DSA of 2026, many argue that the conditions of Trump’s second term such as state violence and climate change mandate a popular front approach for DSA to orient itself as part of a “movement of movements”. This “movement of movements” would be an alliance of groups all across non-Fascist politics like Indivisible, labor unions, issue/advocacy-based nonprofits, DSA, to Trotskyist groups (maybe, maybe not), etc. Some examples of DSA writing representing this are “DSA For the Masses: Organizing The Anti-Fascist Majority” by Emmett M and “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda:  A Vision for a Nimble, Mass‑Oriented DSA” by Chris K of LA-DSA. In Organizing the Anti-Fascist Majority, Emmett writes:

 “We are witnessing the breakout of large amounts of unrest targeted at the Trump administration, without DSA at the forefront to meet the masses. DSA should support any anti-Trump protest from the Left instead of applying purity tests to them and thereby allowing liberals to control the anti-fascist and anti-Trump narrative….A strong principled Left opposition is needed to stand up to the threat of Trump, and DSA should be at the forefront of it nationally, not standing by self-consciously worrying that we may be mistaken for liberals.”

The argument goes that DSA is still a small organization, unable to effectively oppose fascism by itself and that the circumstances demand a unified defense of the American people by DSA acting in cooperation with their allies. Skeptics of this assumption might ask if the popular front itself is even able to cohere the necessary numbers & political power, or question its capitalist character. Proponents of popular front positions might argue however that the actual chance to build a large movement depends precisely on the cooperation with non-socialist forces because DSA is so small and in such an embryonic stage of life, being barely over 120,000 members as of 2026. It follows that the membership of progressive and liberal groups are the closest to DSA politically and the most likely of anyone on the political spectrum to join DSA and build its numbers, which are required to fight fascism. The essential point being made is that the demands of the historical moment or the threat presented by fascism dictate the need to cohere the greatest numbers to oppose fascism in the short term, through a diverse coalition of political perspectives. 

Critics of popular front approaches such as Jack L in “Coalitions of the Liberal & Socialist Left” argue that this approach has innate limitations that proponents of popular front politics fail to acknowledge or even ignore, such as apparent historical evidence that the bourgeoisie will eventually betray the working class’s political goals. This manifests in particular ways. In “Ultraliberalism: The Dominant Tendency of the American Left”, Chicago DSA member Ramsin Canon argues that the influence of the NGO sector on the left through cross-pollination of membership and the general class position of politically active people means that the socialist movement must fight to maintain its drive to liberate the working class and this requires rejecting the liberal individualist politics of the nonprofit sector that is influenced by competing for funding and the careerism of executive directors.

The traditional historical argument such as in Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution by Vladimir Lenin says that unprincipled partnership between socialist groups and the bourgeoisie results in the “liquidation” of revolutionary politics to maintain the needs of the coalition. Overall the critical position is represented by a belief that coalitions between socialist groups and liberal groups have inherent limitations. These limitations can be driven by class interests, differing theories of change, disparate organizing capabilities, and competition between activist groups and their leaders, but they represent essential differences between DSA and liberal groups. 

Points in favor

• Historically, popular front movements such as in Spain & France have mounted strong opposition to Fascism even if they didn’t always defeat fascism. In Russia, the Tsar was in part able to be overthrown because the national bourgeoisie were tired of him as well. 
• Cooperation between DSA & issue-based advocacy groups has resulted in some huge legislative wins like NYC-DSA’s Build Public Renewables Act. 
• Important electoral wins such as Zohran Mamdani’s in NYC over Andrew Cuomo (backed by Trump) that have energized hundreds of thousands of people 
• Simple reality that DSA is not politically strong enough to get policies passed on its own because this requires legislative majorities or executive power 
• Proponents claim that each incremental reform won allows a new baseline from which to agitate for more changes and which validate the effectiveness of the socialist movement 

Points against

• Skeptics say that liberal organizations are more concerned with control of the state in the sense that they can better manage it than fascists, while (as skeptics say) socialists should be concerned with opposing the state as it exists
• This can take the form of the political horizon being shrunk to simply incremental reforms – this shows acutely on the topics of policing & anti-imperialism
• Reconciling strategic objectives & decision-making across both liberal groups and DSA can be very difficult when they are structurally so different – mass member democracy vs nonprofits run by executive directors & full-time staff 
• Issue-based coalitions often encounter friction between activist leaders along with mission drift which can lead to wasting time 
• Liberal groups fighting for control of the state / favor with the state might end up shifting their struggle solely to parliamentary concerns or focus just on liberal “consciousness-raising” as Ramsin Canon puts it 

United Socialist Front

As if to address some of the concerns the critics of popular front politics point out, some socialists believe partnerships should only be built with Groups that meet particular political standards such as advocating for police abolition or Anti-Zionism. Operating off a similar assumption that DSA is still a small, still mostly weak formation, they advocate for strategies like running electoral candidates in coalition with other socialist groups like Party for Socialism & Liberation, and using DSA resources to support candidates from those groups. Examples in DSA include the arguments in Akron DSA and elsewhere to support PSL candidates for office and the Springs of Revolution caucus’s strategy of coalitional electoralism.

Similar to the popular front argument, this train of thought says that these groups are all “close enough” to DSA and that the demands of the historical moment require us to form the most numerically robust opposition to fascism that we can, except that Zionist groups or pro-NATO groups and such aren’t included. Some of these groups include (but are not limited to) PSL, FRSO, CPUSA (Communist Party of the USA), Socialist Alternative, Revolutionary Workers’ Party, and the Revolutionary Communist Party (of Bob Avakian fame). I personally never bothered until recently to learn what any of these groups were or were about because I came to DSA from the progressive electoral world and I looked at most of these groups as the weird people who just protest all the time and run the occasional third party electoral campaign that gets 1-2% of the vote. 

In a sense, the horizon for the Socialist Front position shifts from simply opposing fascism to also advocating for socialism unapologetically. However, just as with Popular Front approaches, problems arise immediately because of the nature of the various organizations in the coalition, that often also includes “progressive enough” liberal groups or the front groups that these various sects create in order to appear more legitimate to the general public like the Peoples’ Forum in NYC. This is a reflection of the sect groups’ particular attention to certain historical texts such as Vladimir Lenin’s “What is To Be Done,” which Lenin himself emphasizes is merely a snapshot of a debate at a point in time in the history of Russian socialism, not a blueprint for everyone.

The overarching impediment to cooperation between them (and with DSA) is that all of the sect groups believe their organization is the one that’s going to “actually” the one that’s going to cohere the working class against capitalism and the others “aren’t” for various reasons such as their “deviations” in political line. This is a result of the historical development of these groups and the particular interpretations of historical tendencies that they represent, as offshoots of the organizations that came before them. This can include Trotskyists but also Marcyites, Cliffites, Shachtmanites, etc. PSL for example is a Marcyite formation. The question of what to aim for (Socialism in some form) becomes less prominent, although this can be contentious. Instead, the question of how to get there takes center stage. 

An example of the problems inherent in these sect-type organizations is described in “The Task of Left Renewal” by Lewis N in Prometheus Mag talking about the Left in Britain: 

“The left in Britain has a number of problems – a key one of these is the age problem. Within the British left, there exists a core generation which retains control over the apparatus of the broad left (Stop The War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, union branches, etc.), primarily those within their 50s-60s. The problem is not with the participation of these comrades within the movement; it is with their insistence upon leading the movement and stifling the enthusiasm and energy of younger comrades with outdated political culture and processes, ultimately resulting in an insular left which exists simply to remember its past and rest upon its laurels (of which it has little in the past few decades). Younger comrades are consistently tokenized without actually encouraging meaningful participation, resulting in those younger comrades who fall in line with the older sections of the movement out of respect or deference for their history becoming absorbed into the same sectarian struggles which have plagued the left for decades. When we have a situation in which younger socialists are splitting into pre-existing sectarian groups based on their perceived disagreements over their interpretation of historical events for which they were never even alive, and then continue to reproduce the same toxic ideological divisions which have consistently paralyzed the left, we are unable to move forward – only to act as a living museum for those who came before us.”

This highlights the primary problem that DSA faces when trying to coordinate strategy alongside these groups. Not only do they solely represent specific niches ideologically, they often are under the control of ruling cliques such as the Becker family that dominates PSL’s central committee. This raises an essential question: are these groups really building a mass movement that can last, or simply a self-serving project of a particular set of activists, usually from a given social class? As we might ask in Cleveland DSA, are they more focused on mobilizing or organizing? 

Points in favor

• Generally more revolutionary political line than Popular Fronts that excludes problematic politics like pro-policing and Zionism 
• Preserves ability to have some strength in numbers via cooperation
• Easier to coordinate agitational campaigning across groups with generally excellent media operations
• High level of political education across “members” 
• Centralized governance makes for generally efficient operations
• Not dependent on government or capitalist funding*
  *exception for Neville Roy Singham and PSL

Points against

• Not really that many people when you add up all the alphabet soup of acronym groups – for example SAlt was ~1000 pre-split, PSL is estimated to be a few thousand, FRSO is estimated to be even smaller
• Have to argue for membership in your group vs. the other groups – Why would I join DSA who is knocking on my door when the candidate I like that they’re knocking for is from PSL?
• Can a coalition of this nature withstand the need for freedom of criticism across coalition members when many of these groups exist because they split from other ones or descend from a prior split? 
• Critics say because of the history of these groups they are bureaucratized and controlled by various cliques 
• Emphasis on purity politics and adherence to line means that organizations often split and cohere around charismatic figures and leaders (most famously, splits in various Trotskyist & Maoist groups)

“For a single mass party”

Finally, I’ll turn to my own camp, the “For a single mass party” crew. A sort of synthesis of both the popular front and the purity politics of sects suggests itself through the failures of the groups Our Revolution that originated from the Bernie Sanders campaign and Justice Democrats that originated in the NGO sphere to recruit progressive candidates. As Bernie said, the regular people of this country today have the historic task of building a mass movement to defeat fascism and demand the democratic republic that we do not currently have, restricted by gerrymandering, campaign finance, the Senate, the Supreme Court, and so on. I have always taken this idea to mean we needed one big organization that would be the standard bearer for the left that people could unify around. Notably, he didn’t say “now all of you go join a bunch of various individual groups like your local Maoist or Trotskyist cell”. It took me years to realize that the missing link was that it had to be driven by member democracy in order to be most effective. 

Our Revolution never became that organization because it was not based on mass member democracy but run like any other nonprofit around an executive board. But we also need the labor movement to be there too, as the class of society we fight for and whose historic task socialism is to carry out. The classical Marxist merger formula as stated by Karl Kautsky says “Social Democracy [meaning the mass socialist party] is the merger of socialism with the workers’ movement”. So what this “For a single mass party” orientation represents is the project of building that organization, according to its proponents.

The “focus on building DSA first” approach views DSA in this light. Supporters of this view of how to run DSA often view DSA, despite its relatively small membership, as a successor to socialist parties of the past and the best shot at a Socialist party of the future. Therefore, for it to be successful requires the organization’s politics and structure to be cultivated carefully into a true party, with conventions, a program like the Erfurt one adopted by the SPD, and so on. 

In Cleveland specifically, this dovetails with the reverence this crowd expresses for the organizing style of Jane McAlevey in her book No Shortcuts. No Shortcuts, as many would hold, is the key blueprint for building up the organization that merges socialism & the labor movement into a big whole because of its emphasis on building members of the working class into majorities for political action and building individual agency. The main criticism of both the nonprofit sector and the sects that is made by this group is that nonprofits and groups like PSL are all primarily oriented around mobilizing and direct service provision; protests, one-off rallies, harm mitigation, etc. This is in contrast to the mass-movement building that they see happening through organizing in the McAlevey style.

But why is DSA the organization most likely to accomplish this out of all the ones that have existed? The answer lies not just in its mass membership democracy but also in Mike MacNair’s thesis in his book Revolutionary Strategy that what is essential to defeating capitalism in the 21st century is a party that harnesses “unity in diversity” across the left. 

In contrast to the marginalization of the many sect groups throughout the 20th century due to splits and purges, and the absorption into liberal coalitions that the UK Labour party underwent, MacNair advocates for a multi-tendency organization to be the independent political home of the working class, one driven by mass member democracy. Because many of the “for a single mass party” people understand the importance of the multi-tendency organization (not limited to them however), they are some of the most committed to DSA for its own sake. 

Central to this debate from the perspective of this tendency is what Mike MacNair refers to as the “Strategy of Patience”, the idea that the independent class-based political party must preserve its own political independence and revolutionary character so as to ensure it can build strength and carry out its mission. This means a cautious approach to entering into government coalitions with bourgeois politicians and a cautious approach to partnerships with liberal politics, save for in specific campaigns as a tactic to advance our goals. 

However, unity in diversity and mass member democracy are not a magic wand. A “DSA for everyone” would seem to replicate the same problems of coalitions, except internally rather than externally. In that sense, it cannot “be” everything for everyone at the same time. 

Points in favor

• Emphasis on multi-tendency organizing means new ideas are generated constantly
• Focus on building majorities within 1 org means able to wield organizational power in a focused way
• Proponents say avoids pitfalls of popular front politics (risk of liquidation into liberal politics or other organizations)
• Proponents say avoids pitfalls of sect form of organizing (such as consolidation of power and lack of accountability) because of emphasis on internal democratic processes & structure-building
• ”Better off together than apart” 

Points against

• Can be hard to make decisions among clashing political perspectives
• Not always responsive to immediate conditions
• Dizzying to navigate for people joining
• Critics might say the Strategy of Patience is incompatible with the timetable presented to us by climate change 
• Can lead to strategic flip-flops as different tendencies vie for control of the organization 

The current composition of DSA is only slowly starting to move toward multi-racial nature and still biased toward a “precariat” perspective, far from fulfilling the promise of the merger formula. But many would say that this represents our best chance so far. Above all, answering the question of how you think DSA should relate to The Groups requires you to clarify what you believe DSA is FOR and how it would be most effective at achieving that. 

The post Cleveland DSA & “The Groups” appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.