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Issue 7, the first of which we are publishing with a preview in this format, is the Ballot and the Rebellion. To receive a bimonthly full copy of the magazine issue delivered to your door knowing your funds directly support the independent media we represent, you can subscribe here.

Working Mass is a project of union members and members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in Massachusetts and beyond. We cover strikes, new organizing, and contract campaigns, as well as labor strategy, the reform movement, and socialist politics.

Strikes in the Air, Welcome to Issue 7:

In this issue, organizers debate electoral strategy, from cadre candidates to victory infrastructures, in articles written in between and around clocked-in shifts and showing up day after day for fellow workers on the picket line of the Red Cup Rebellion.

Espresso machines are rusting from disuse, but the fire of solidarity is still running hot.

Note from the Managing Editor

I’m honored to serve as the new managing editor of this publication. I’m from a union family, raised by IATSE rank-and-file worker leaders and United Brotherhood of Carpenters (UBC) union craftsmen, but what led me into labor was my own conditions – when seventy-hour weeks caught like a prairie fire and fanned into a strike. My coworkers and I organized to contract ratification and strike authorization as rank-and-file members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and Campaign Workers Guild (CWG). These left me with a sense of the electric possibilities of collective action, which socialist struggle only showed an even farther horizon for. The Triangle chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) elected me twice to co-chair the chapter; most recently, I have been active in and served as co-chair of the Somerville branch of Boston DSA.

Experiences on the shopfloor and in organizational leadership leave me with a conviction: politics happens at the base, and radiates up. The places where people spend their time and experience exploitation and domination — including the workplace and home — are the places in which the politics that boil into the class forces shaping electoral landscapes are struggled for and over.

In solidarity,

Travis Wayne

Issue 7 Contributors: Terence Cawley, Maritza S, Matt Wolfinger, Jake S, Ric Blair, Jackie Wilson, Dalton Galloway, Carlos B

1. Starbucks Workers United Supermajority Authorize ULP Strike for November 13

2. WPI Resident Advisors On Strike Against Destructive Restructuring and Unionbusting

3. Winning Online: 5 Digital Tactics That Powered Connolly and Zohran To Victory

4. The Starbucks Strike and the Long Memory of the Kitchen

5. Cross the Finish Line, Not the Picket Line – Newton Runs 5k to Support Striking Starbucks Baristas

Opinion Pieces

1. Electoral Strategy With Every Canvass An Organizing Moment

2. A Revolution Requires Revolutionaries, Not Candidates

3. Oppositional, Independent, and Socialist Candidates

The post Announcing Issue 7: The Ballot and the Rebellion appeared first on Working Mass.

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By: Jake S

WORCESTER, MA – On Monday, January 10, North Atlantic States Carpenters Union Local 336 members gathered against a 10-year real estate tax exemption and state tax credit eligibility proposed by Worcester City Manager Eric Batista for Menkiti Group, a Washington DC developer.

They object on the grounds that Menkiti has broken the city’s Responsible Development Ordinance – a list of requirements to be eligible for such exemptions – through its hiring of Barber Drywall. The company has been cited five times over the past two years for ordinance violations relating to wages and hours. Tax exemptions and credits like these amount to a publicly-funded subsidy granted to developers by the city.

Menkiti is seeking the exemption for a project which would convert the upper floor of an office building on Main Street into market-rate apartments. Only five of the 48 planned units will be available to tenants making no more than 60% area median income, according to Chief Development Officer Peter Dunn in communication with Worcester City Council.

Ahna Wowk-Aposhian, a journey-level carpenter and 5-year member of the union, toldWorking Mass that union carpenters weren’t being “prioritized” by City Hall, despite their best efforts to support ostensibly pro-labor candidates.

[Local] 336 has spent countless hours, countless days interviewing candidates, holding political actions, going to rallies, holding signs, and being told over and over again that Worcester government and City Council values the Carpenters union and is on the side of union labor. And with this fourth proposed non-union high-rise [project] — it really is the last straw, it does feel a little insulting at this point.

Candidates that we endorse signed pledges to back union projects and union work, and we haven’t seen that. [The City hands out subsidies to] developers that hire contractors who violate multiple labor laws, who engage in wage theft against their lowest-paid workers, who do not hold themselves to any kind of OSHA standard. Union work across the board is safer, it pays better, it has more protections [for workers].

Union carpenters vocalized the need to improve wages, hours, and working conditions for all workers, and that their union exists to pursue just that. When asked more about the value of her union, Ahna said being a member:

offers a quality of life that’s absolutely unheard of for someone of my age bracket and background. As a 37-year-old, I have a pension, I have annuity, I have a guaranteed retirement. I don’t worry about breaking my leg and not being taken care of; my wife doesn’t have to worry about her healthcare. I know that if I experience workplace discrimination, the full force of the union will come down like a hammer – there are so many people to back you up.

Carpenters stood out in the leadup to a Zoning Board meeting regarding the project and subsequently entered the meeting to voice their concerns. Rather than reject the City Manager’s proposals, Worcester City Council on Tuesday delayed the agenda item until its next meeting scheduled for today: January 20. 

Carpenters Local 336 will return to City Hall in the leadup to the meeting.

Not the First Time

As Ahna alluded to, this wasn’t the first time Carpenters Local 336 demanded change in the city’s distribution of subsidies (and not even the first time in relation to Barber Drywall). Back in May, several building trades unions across Worcester and Fitchburg – including the Carpenters – stood outside of 446 Main Street, the glass high-rise that houses the Worcester office of Synergy Investments.

Synergy had made the decision to hire NEI General Contracting for a similarly subsidized project to the tune of nearly $6.5 million in tax exemptions.

NEI and contractors it planned to hire had previously been charged with 37 minimum wage violations; 39 pay violations; and $15,000 in penalties for retaliating against employees who filed suit over alleged wage and hour law violations (including threats relating to immigration status), according to a press release provided by the unions. 

Such infractions, the unions stated, were clear violations of municipal development ordinances, and should prohibit subsidy projects from being awarded to these contractors. Those violations occurred over the course of other projects receiving combined millions of dollars in tax exemptions and credits.

“They cheat, they don’t pay their people the right wages, they don’t pay the right overtime, they undermine the building trades, and then they get tax money,” said Michelle Arnold, a journey-level carpenter and 8-year member of Local 336. 

These contractors have a history of doing this. We’ve built all kinds of buildings in this town, and we’re very disappointed the town would let these contractors not play by the rules. It takes money off everybody’s checks – union and non-union. Non-union workers are the ones working for these contractors, and they’re getting cheated.

When asked more about the role of her union, Michelle said:

Because of the union, we have a 5-day workweek; because of the union, we have safety protocols and fair wages. We can bring charges to shady contractors and help the people that aren’t getting paid the right way. Unfortunately, that sort of thing happens a lot more than people want to think, and most of the time, it flies under the radar.

She noted events like this could bring more attention to these issues of the building trades, and recalled her fellow union members joining nurses every day on the picket line of Worcester’s historic strike against St. Vincent’s Hospital. “Working people supporting working people can have a big impact. Everybody wants to earn a paycheck; everybody wants a fair wage for their time.”

Dan Mulcahey, Vice President of the Worcester-Fitchburg Building Trades Council (WFBTC) and a member of Sheet Metal Workers Local 63, agreed.

For union workers, if you show up on time and do your job, you get the proper training you need to get licensed in your trade when you’re just starting out, you get job security throughout your career, and you get to retire with dignity when you’re done.

“There’s a lot of development going on right now in the city of Worcester,” remarked Jorge Rivera, President of the WFBTC. “We’re pro-development – but it’s gotta be the responsible type of development.”

Synergy Investments has continued to be the beneficiary of that nearly $6.5 million in tax subsidies for its project – despite the protestations of the building trades unions – which was to turn the eleven-story tower at 1 Chestnut Place into 198 market-rate apartments.

To city and state governmental bodies, both Synergy and Menkiti’s business practices appear to qualify as “responsible development.” The question that Worcester’s working-class residents might ask is: “responsible to whom?”

Jake S is a member of Worcester DSA and a contributing writer to Working Mass.

The post Bad Blueprints: Worcester Building Trades Challenge Subsidies to Developers appeared first on Working Mass.

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Trump's “One Big Beautiful Bill” enacted a novel policy: no tax on tips. It may look like a win for tipped workers, but who really benefits?

The post What “no tax on tips” means for workers appeared first on EWOC.

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By: Emma Buckley & Henry de Groot

This article was originally published by Reform and Revolution in November 2025. These positions are the authors’ own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass.

What role did the Bolsheviks play in the trade unions?

Two classic theoretical works to the Bolshevik labor strategy are Lenin’s What Is To Be Done, and the helpful introductory pamphlet “Lenin And The Trade Union Movement” by the Bolshevik union leader Solomon Lozovsky.

But these two works deal primarily with theoretical considerations, not practical questions of organization. Therefore, they may not be enough to satisfy the curiosity of the action-minded trade union socialists of today, who know that – while theory is valuable – talk is cheap. Such practical-minded activists want to know about ‘the work:’ the concrete building of organizations and campaigns.

The history of revolutionary organizing across more than three decades reveals that Lenin and his comrades did indeed contribute not only theoretically, but also practically in the workers’ movement. From training organic worker-leaders, to building up trade union networks through house calls and structure tests, to leading strike action and winning leadership of worker organizations, the Bolsheviks were intimately involved with the same types of every-day work familiar to union activists today. It was on the back of this activity that they seized power, building a revolution from the workplace up.

The Russian Rank and File Strategy

For the socialist trade unionists of today, involvement in the trade union movement often means implementing some version of the “rank and file strategy.” The starting point of this approach is the idea that the socialist movement is largely composed of college educated intellectuals, and, in order to bridge the gap to the broader working class, socialists should take jobs in unions to integrate themselves into the workers movement.

The perspective of socialists today is not so different to that of early Russian revolutionaries. The Nardoniks, a movement of left populists, was largely composed of university students and recent graduates. But believing that socialist revolution would be won by the people themselves, they sought to embed themselves among the ‘rank and file’ of the Russian population, the majority of whom were rural peasants. As the members of the early Narodnik group Circle of Tschaikovsky saw it in 1872, their job was to “Go To The People,” to spread among the peasantry ideas of the need for revolution.

But first, they needed to train up a larger number of agitators. They built out their ranks with fellow student agitators, and also set about organizing circles of workers in 1872 and 1873. Overcoming the class divide, they made connections with the urban workers, sometimes by posing as laborers or by taking jobs among the people. By 1874 the Circle of Tschaikovsky had organized several hundred students and workers into circles spread out across several major cities.

And so in the “Mad Summer of 1874,” these forces left the cities, heading out into the countryside to fulfill their mission. The populists donned peasant garb and headed out as tramps in an attempt to educate and agitate across the countryside. The movement spread out from the major cities to the secondary cities and towns of the empire, with rumors of the movement energizing new waves of youth to take to the countryside, not unlike a children’s crusade. All told, some 2,000 to 4,000 students and workers participated in the Narodnik campaign. It was an agricultural rank and file strategy.

As it turned out, many of the highly religious peasantry chafed against the privileged’ students Bohemian ways. Some peasants were sympathetic, but before much organizing could get underway, the Narodniks were quickly rounded up by the Tsar’s police. By the fall some 1,600 had been arrested by Tsarist police, with 193 charged in a mass trial in 1877. Although most of those tried were eventually acquitted, while waiting for years in jail some 45 of them died by suicide or succumbed to mental illness. Outside of the prison walls, the circles they had painstakingly built were mostly, but not entirely, uprooted and dispersed.

Just the year after the trial of the 193, a new initiative was started up- this time at the initiative of some of the populist workers themselves. The Northern Union of Russian Workers was founded in 1878 by populist workers S Khalturin, a carpenter, and V Obnorsky, a fitter. Obnorsky had lived abroad and come into contact with the Marxist Social Democratic parties and the First International, and the group adopted a program calling for both economic and political demands. The ‘union’ brought together circles in St. Petersburg and in neighboring cities, gathering especially the more highly-skilled metalworkers. Its membership reached as high as 200, with about as many sympathizers in addition. The union established a central treasury to manage a growing strike fund, with funds especially marked for the families of exiled strike leaders. In 1878 and through 1879 it participated to some degree in a wave of labor unrest before its leaders were largely arrested and its operations severely curtailed. So the Going To The People campaign had not kicked off a peasant revolution, but it had laid the seeds of the early workers movement.

In the wake of the early defeats, the Narodnik movement became divided between those who wanted to continue the orientation to the rank and file masses, and those who sought a shortcut in terrorism. Most of the college-educated Narodniks chose the path of terrorism, although the majority of the working class members kept the orientation to mass work. Those who stayed true to the rank and file approach were more and more won over to Marxism and a focus on the industrial proletariat which was growing across Russia.

For the next two decades, this work among the rank and file largely took the form of the ‘kruzki,’ or the educational worker ‘circle.’ Until 1895 the workers movement was primarily maintained through these circles, underground cells which mainly focused on worker education. Often meeting in back rooms or apartments, these circles met to discuss topics of interest to the workers. The circles had a layered existence. A bridge to the circles were the public night or sunday schools, often sponsored by factory owners and run by the intelligentsia. Circles would establish contacts in these schools, perhaps among a friendly teacher, and use them to contact new recruits into the underground formations. Plekhanov helped lead these circles from the Narodnik days, and described of the workers who participated at the time,

After working at the factory 10-11 hours a day, and returning home only in the evening, he would sit at his books until 1 o’clock at night … I was struck by the variety and abundance of the theoretical questions which concerned him … Political economy, chemistry, social questions, and the theory of Darwin all occupied his attention … It would have taken decades for him to assuage his intellectual thirst.¹

While many participants were grounded in the need to use education as a vehicle for broader political work, some workers saw personal education and development as a solution to their problems in itself. For others, the purpose of developing the education circles was explicitly revolutionary, but thought through only in a linear manner, rather than as a bridge to some other forms of organization and struggle. As S.I. Mitskevich, a participant in an early circle, recalled

We had long conversations on the future of the workers’ movement. How abstractly we still conceived the future forms of the workers’ movement… gradually the number of workers studying Marx will increase; they will draw still more numbers into the circles studying Marx; with time all Russia will be covered with such kruzhki and then we will form a workers’ socialist party. What tasks this party was to perform and how it should conduct its struggle remained unclear.²

If the circles were limited by their emphasis on pure education, they nonetheless constantly engaged and developed new layers of working class socialists in cities and towns across the Russian empire. Not by taking jobs in the factories, but by offering education and coaching to the workers who already worked in them, the college-educated members of the socialist movement painstakingly seeded and cultivated a layer of working class organic intellectuals.

Many of these organizers, including Plekhanov, were jailed or forced to flee abroad for their efforts. But they took up the translation of Marxist works into Russian and organizing the movement from abroad, smuggling revolutionary works over the border to be passed from circle to circle. And if the circles were cut down by the Tsarist police every few years, they just as surely re-formed and redoubled there efforts. And so the workers movement slowly grew in the waning decades of the 19^th century Russian empire.

The St. Petersburg League of Struggle

When Lenin arrived in St. Petersburg in 1893, the worker circles had recently been reorganized under the general, if not absolute, leadership of some local social democratic students. Under the leadership of the student Radenko, the social democrats emphasized the need for strict underground methods to avoid police capture.

Krupskaya recalls meeting Lenin for the first time in February of 1894, several months after he had arrived in St. Petersburg, at a conference disguised as a pancake party. Krupskaya was one of four women teaching at the factory-sponsored night school, and who were among the leaders of the local Social Democratic circle which oversaw the worker groups. These women leaders helped to screen workers that took their sanctioned classes and feed them into the underground circles. At the meeting, Lenin mocked the idea that the working class could be liberated through education alone, pushing for more assertive action. He was soon set up with his own circle of workers to educate and mentor.³

By 1895 Lenin had won over around 20 worker circles to a more assertive approach: the circles transformed from schools of general worker education into training camps for agitators. The entire operation was run by a core team of 22 persons. These members were divided into three regions with bureaus of 4 to 5 persons, encompassing all the persons except for Lenin, who was to lead literary work, and Radchenko and his wife, who were to lead the conspiratorial work. Each bureau maintained contacts with workers circles in its district, and all told in its beginning the League oversaw some fifteen factory committees and managed around 100 to 150 contacts.

By spurring the existing circles into action, and through them distributing agitational material among the factory workers of St. Petersburg, the League helped to instigate a series of strikes. In the Autumn of 1895, the League consulted with textile workers from the ever-problematic Thornton Factory. When the factory owners cut their pay, the workers struck; the League itself produced propaganda around the strike, publishing two leaflets. One of these, ultimately released a day after the strike ended, featured Lenin writing in the voice of a factory worker and drew lessons for the rest of the city’s working class. Several more strikes followed in the last months of 1895, including a strike at the Putilov metalworks, organized by a League member Zinovev who worked in the boiler room. But before the end of the year, Lenin and many of his comrades were arrested. Lenin would be held in jail for more than a year before being sent into Siberian exile. Nonetheless, the rumor of the League and of its underground operation with cells in every factory continued to grow, as the prepared alternative leadership stepped in to continue the efforts. Finally, in May of 1896, a massive strike of more than 30,000 textile workers from across multiple factories erupted. Strike leadership issued their demands to the League, and the next day they were published across the city.

Although by May 22nd, the strike began to unwind, the movement would never be the same. Spurred by the League and mobilized through the underground circles, tens of thousands of workers had taken action, a democratic consensus around clear demands had been established despite Tsarist repression, and unity was built across factories and industries. Decades of work in the underground was simultaneously validated and surpassed, as the working class of St. Petersburg transformed its own view of what was possible and necessary by taking the course of mass action.

Lenin The Labor Journalist

If the members of the kruhzki had mastered a knowledge of Marx and Engels, that did not mean that they had mastered a knowledge of mills and engines, the wage scales in the textile factories, or the day to day issues in each and every workplace in the empire. Making a concrete intervention into the lives of the workers required the development of labor studies. As Krupskaya recalls, Lenin placed an emphasis on collecting information about concrete working conditions so articles could be grounded in lived experience;

I remember, for instance, how the material about the Thornton Mills was collected. I was to call out my pupil Krolikov, who worked at the mills as a sorter (he had been deported from St. Petersburg once), and collect all the information from him according to the plan outlined by Vladimir Ilyich. Krolikov arrived in a posh fur coat which he had borrowed from somebody, and brought a bookful of notes which he supplemented verbally. His information was very valuable. Vladimir Ilyich fairly pounced on it. Afterwards A. A. Yabkubova and I, with shawls over our heads to make us look like mill workers, went to the Thornton hostel, where we visited both the single and married quarters. Conditions there were appalling. It was only from information gathered in this way that Vladimir Ilyich wrote his correspondence and leaflets.⁵

By meeting with workers, and sending intellectuals undercover, thorough information was collected by the League from its early days, which could then be reflected back to the workers.

Lenin is famous for many forms of written interventions: he penned fierce polemics, strategic writings on revolution, and heady theoretical works. But from 1895 to 1917 he also consistently wrote on the specific questions facing workers in the factories, turning his talents to a form of ‘labor journalism.’

While the more political of these writings are better known, he also wrote a large number of ‘apolitical’ articles. His contributions investigated the minutiae of proposed regulations, exposed the horrid working conditions of this or that factory, guided workers on the use of the Tsarist legal system, analyzed statistics on strikes or the labor market, or otherwise dealt with the concrete questions faced by organizing workers, labor economists, and employment lawyers alike.

Fighting Economism

For more than half a decade, the Russian workers movement was caught in the well-known dispute between the ‘economism’ and ‘politicalism.’ Economism is the tendency which called on the workers to limit themselves to fights for economic reforms in the workplace, and not to raise political demands. This tendency had a profound impact on the workers movement in Russia.

Although Plekhanov noted the tendency of Economism as early as 1883,⁵ the mass impetus to the workers movement sparked by the strikes of 1895 and 1896, paired with the simultaneous mass arrest of the League’s leadership, gave Economism a new significance in the workers movement. A new generation of Economistic activists called for the workers movement to take up only economic demands, and to abandon the conspiratorial form of organizing for open, democratic leadership methods. Lenin waged a ruthless fight against the lowering of the workers movement, already under revolutionary leadership, to a mere fight for economic reforms. Writing from Siberian exhile, Lenin reminded the growing movement that

The conviction that the class struggle must necessarily combine the political and the economic struggle into one integral whole has entered into the flesh and blood of international Social-Democracy.⁶

His polemics on the subject culminated in his famous work What Is To Be Done?

The organizational form of the fight against Economism was the re-consolidation of the movement around Iskra, the anti-economist newspaper published abroad. Just as the League had united the circles of St. Petersburg, Iskra united workers across the entire empire, by placing its editorial board outside the reach of the Russian Tsarist police.

Through Iskra, Lenin grew his organizational structure into an international operation, with cross-border couriers to smuggle in the latest issues, roving propagandists to roam the country and win the allegiance of new circles, and local activists to extend the networks reach into factories and working class neighborhoods. In this way, the original approach which paired revolutionary intention with mass work among the rank-and-file was re-established.

Systematic methods: Leninism-Mcaleveyism

The Bolshevik orientation to the labor movement meant taking up systematic work. In his 1902 “Letter To A Comrade On Our Organizational Tasks,” Lenin laid out a method of systematic organizing from the underground into the factories.⁷

In terms of team-building, Lenin centered the importance of establishing core organizing committees, advising that “We must try to get on the committee revolutionary workers who have the greatest contacts and the best ‘reputation’ among the mass of the workers.” This is in parallel with the McAlevey logic that workers are already ‘organized’ and the most effective way to build majority support is by winning over pre-existing leaders with strong reputations and the respect of their coworkers. As Lenin continues, “the committee should, therefore, include, as far as possible, all the principal leaders of the working-class movement from among the workers themselves.”

Lenin’s focus on the tactic of literature distribution as a means of establishing a comprehensive organizing structure is also in parallel to the structures of distributed outreach developed in the McAlevey model. As Lenin wrote,

[The distribution of literature] is an extremely important task, for if we secure regular contact between a special district group of distributors and all the factories in that district, as well as the largest possible number of workers’ homes in that district, it will be of enormous value, both for demonstrations and for an uprising. Arranging for and organizing the speedy and proper delivery of literature, leaflets, proclamations, etc., training a network of agents for this purpose, means performing the greater part of the work of preparing for future demonstrations or an uprising…. If no newspapers are available, leaflets may and should be distributed, but the distributive machine must in no case be allowed to remain idle. This machine should be brought to such a degree of perfection as to make it possible to inform and mobilize, so to speak, the whole working-class population of St. Petersburg over night.

Here we see that the distribution of literature is not only an end in its own right, but also a means of building comprehensive links with the workers which can be built up steadily during times of moderate activity, and then tapped quickly during peak periods of unrest. And we can imagine that establishing distribution directly into workers’ homes paralleled the tried-and-true union tactic of ‘house calls,’ which enable the building of deeper relationships through 1-on-1 conversations. Lenin’s comment about the danger of the ‘machine’ remaining ‘idle’ emphasises the point that the system exists not only for the purpose of distributing literature, but of building a network which must be constantly fed and maintained.

His methods of identifying and tapping organic leaders, building representative committees, and building organizing structures in order to secure majority support are not dissimilar to the late Jane McAlevey’s organizing theory in her work No Shortcuts.

The 1905 Dress Rehearsal

As the movement continued to grow and expand, the Tsarist government increasingly sought means to co-opt the workers movement. To this end, in 1904 the governor of St. Petersburg allowed for a local Orthodox Priest, Father Gapon, to organize a state-sponsored worker assembly.

The explicit goal of the body was to contain the energy of the working class and forestall the influence of the revolutionaries. At first, the activities of the group were limited to promoting basic literacy and music events. But similar to how William Z. Foster later called for Communists to organize even within company unions, or how socialists today organize within unions run by reactionary bureaucrats, the Marxists of the day entered into the formation and pushed it to the left. After a year of skillful organizing, the organization took on a political and economic program. As 1904 turned to January 1905, a strike at the Putilov plant involving Gapon’s assembly spread to include over 130,000 workers across the capital. This mass uprising was quickly met with state violence: on what came to be known as Bloody Sunday, hundreds of workers were massacred as they attempted to deliver their demands to the Winter Palace. Soon general strikes were launched in cities across the country and peasant unrest spreading throughout the country.

The social democrat union organizers working in Gapon’s legal formation had forced a confrontation with the Tsarist regime, further alienating it from ever-greater expanses of the population. Social democrat students organized the student strikes to pair up with the workers movement. At the start of the fall semester, socialist students took control of their campuses and hosted night school classes for workers. Within weeks, tens of thousands of workers were meeting nightly on the campuses in mass meetings, and dozens of unions were formed in campus classrooms.

Through the combination of these efforts, the industrial strike wave of the previous winter was renewed, with a strike of Moscow printers quickly growing to include railroad workers. The wave crested in the form of a general strike. A council of union representatives, or soviet, was formed on the campus of the Technical Institute to coordinate the strike. And although the socialists had not planned for the importance of the new formation, they quickly adapted the soviet as an organizational structure and drove its work forward.

The general strike forced concessions from the government, which for the first time conceded the rights of freedom of assembly, the right to form associations, and the need to hold elections to a constituent assembly. The general strike claimed victory and workers returned to work, but the Tsar soon launched a counter-offensive, arresting the Soviet leaders, which in turned sparked new strikes and an armed insurrection. Although the rising was defeated, the workers for the first time had both won concessions which allowed for increased organizing, and also took the path of revolution.

Between Revolutions

In the years between the revolutions of 1905 and February 1917, the Bolshevik movement deepened its involvement with, and integration into, the workers movement.

The reforms won during 1905 created a varied and shifting environment, as the government went back and forth between allowing for liberal reforms and clamping down on dissent in counter-revolutionary fury. The Bolshevik wing of the socialist movement continued to affirm the possibility of exploiting the legal institutions created by the Tsar for the purpose of cooptation. But the Bolsheviks also emphasized the need to use the formations in service to the revolutionary cause, and organizationally this meant maintaining the underground party.

The dispute over this question eventually led to the full separation of the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions into distinct parties. The Mensheviks, with their emphasis on legal organizations, gained a foothold in the insurance societies and remaining legal unions, especially of state workers and other more privileged sections of the working class. In contrast, the Bolsheviks focused on maintaining the underground factory committees. Although at first the Mensheviks appeared to have the upper hand in influencing the official workers movement, when the Tsar further reduced the scope of legal organizations, the Bolsheviks were better able to maintain activity.

In the long years of counter-revolution which followed the failed Revolution of 1905, the workers movement returned to the old form of an underground conspiratorial center- organizing worker circles at the factory level. The membership of the party, which had reached some 40,000 in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution of 1905, dwindled in the face of state repression to only a few thousand. Nevertheless, the party survived: drawing upon their well-practiced conspiratorial organizing methods, the Bolsheviks cultivated a membership that, even at its nadir, remained exponentially larger than it had been ten years earlier. As the repression waned, the Bolsheviks were well-positioned to re-emerge and re-establish themselves. In May of 1912, Lenin’s organization launched Pravda, the first daily workers’ newspaper.⁸ By 1914 the paper grew to include submissions from some 2000 worker groups spread across the empire. As worker upsurge grew, suppression unions were re-formed. The Bolsheviks consistent presence allowed them to quickly win leadership of these formations among the less privileged layers of workers. In the re-established metal workers union, the center-piece of the organized workers movement, they won an overwhelming majority as against their Menshevik rivals.

The Bolsheviks at this time also brought the strength of the workers’ movement to bear in the parliamentary elections, and simultaneously used their public electeds in the Duma to the benefit of the unions. The Duma representatives used their immunity to speak to worker meetings, and their offices to help coordinate the clandestine networks of contacts spread throughout the factories of Russia.

The February Uprising

Even before the start of the First World War, the resurgent workers movement was once again headed for a clash with the Tsarist regime. The war’s outbreak, coupled as it was with an initial patriotic fervor, temporarily delayed this clash; however, as the imperialist conflict stagnated, the latent contradictions between the working class and Tsarist state assumed an unprecedented volatility.

In Petrograd, Russia’s largest industrial producer at the time, the cost of living increased to 14.4 times that of pre-war levels; in 1917 alone, prices increased by a factor of 2.3. The whole of the working class had watched as the reforms won in 1905 were reversed. Consequently, industrial activity was increasingly conducted illegally. While three legal unions existed in Petrograd in January of 1917 (printers, pharmacy, and shop assistants), 11 underground illegal unions were operating through the hard work of labor militants.

The early patriotism precipitated by the war’s onset had stymied labor action in non-Bolshevik factories; however, as food shortages worsened and prices continued to increase, the conditions were ripe for the overthrow of the failing ruling class. It was this environment in which a protest by women textile workers on International Working Women’s Day over the cost of food and frustration with the Tsarist regime developed into a general strike as metalworkers and others joined the action. In the whirlwind of action which followed these strikes, the masses took up arms, the soviets reformed, huge portions of soldiers mutinied, and the Tsar was finally deposed by his own armed “subjects.” Although the initial actions were not planned, the role played by organized revolutionaries, in leading other unions out on strike, reforming the soviets, and organizing popular demonstrations, was crucial to the success of the movement. The organization of years had been carried out in days.

Even after the abdication of the Tsar, the confrontation between workers and their employers persisted. Lacking a suitable resolution, workers continued to escalate their strikes across 1917. In April, the total number of strikers sat at around 35,000; by June, this tally had increased to 175,000. Ultimately, the number of strikers would eclipse 1.2 million that October.9

On the organized labor front, the number of unions was likewise dramatically expanding.. As early as March organizing drives in Petrograd founded 30 unions, what had existed before the February revolution. Many of the militants that had been involved in the underground since the upsurges in 1905 and 1912 were instrumental in organizing these new organizations and they had distinct factional splits within leadership. By March 15th the Petrograd Council of Trade Unions (PCTU) was formed with an executive committee of 4 Bolsheviks, 4 Mensheviks, and 1 syndicalist. According to Smith in Red Petrograd, the Bolsheviks emerged in leadership in Petrograd unions, with either majority control or the ability to coalition with the left Menshevik Internationalist faction for a majority while Mesheviks held leadership strongly in Moscow unions and unions with predominantly skilled workers.

The Bolsheviks operated in multiple spheres within unions to gain influence and build the labor movement. In the Vyborg district, which saw some of the highest rates of striking in the period, a core of Bolshevik skilled workers interacted with the newer and unskilled sections of the working class which resulted in the greater militancy and led factories such as Aivaz, Baranovskii, Vulcan, Nobel, New Lessner, Phoenix and Puzyrev to fall under Bolshevik influence. The Bolsheviks held full leadership in the metal workers, textile workers, food workers, and woodturners unions, with party members Alexander Shylapninov as chair of the metal workers union and I.F. Zhonerovich as chair of the woodturners union.

In addition to the Bolshevik party press agitating for the labor movement and advertising union meetings, Bolshevik led unions came out with their own publications: “The Metallist”, Zerno Pravdy, and Tkach for the metal workers union, the food workers union, and the textile union respectively. These publications offered the Bolshevik-led unions a means for mass communication. They likewise served as mechanisms for politicizing labor organizing, acting as a literary complement to the internal work undertaken by Bolsheviks in union meetings and on the shop floor. In addition to providing important news and updates within the labor movement, many of these journals took directly revolutionary political lines; as early as May 1917 700 flour workers passed a resolution calling for “all power to the soviets.” As the year went on, more factories came to sympathize with the Bolsheviks, with many openly affiliating with the party

The Bolshevik’s also promoted novel analyses and programmes for the internal politics and structuring of unions themselves, strongly emphasizing the centralization of unions and organizing on the industrial level. While craft unionism was a much smaller movement in Russia than in other parts of the world, Shylapinov wrote articles criticizing the practice in ‘the Metallist’- citing a situation in the Gruntal Workshop where eight welders formed a union, left the factory demanding wages without consulting other workers, and got the rest of the unprepared workforce laid off in their efforts. Additionally, the woodturners union, while heavily Bolshevik influenced, refused to join in efforts with metal workers within the same factories. Despite PCTU asking the union only to strike where the majority of the factory were woodturners, rank and file rejected the proposition and went on strike anyway. However, by this point in the year other workers were fully politicized and refused to work in solidarity with the woodturners (the October Revolution interceded the strike and it was called off by Oct 28).

When in centralized bodies such as the PCTU the Bolsheviks pushed for political as well as organizational interventions. Outlined in Red Petrograd, over the 30 sessions of the PCTU over 1917 they discussed 29 matters of a political nature, 26 concerning organizational construction, and 14 concerning economic struggles. In many ways, the Bolsheviks’ work in the factory committees complemented their work in unions. Brinton in The Bolsheviks and Workers Control describes how Bolshevik-controlled factory committees would compete for power when the workers were represented by Menshevik led unions. By June, the Bolsheviks helped organize the Petrograd Central Council of Factory Committees (CCFC) which held a large majority of 19 Bolsheviks compared to 2 Mensheviks, and a few representatives of other factions. By October the body employed 80 people and held commissions in communications and personnel, economic, finance, literary and editorial, agitation, and conflict.

Factory Committees: The Seeds of Workers Self Management

As they already had on so many other issues, the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks took different stances on the war and therefore influenced the labor movement in different ways. While the Mensheviks took a ‘defensist’ position and supported Russia’s efforts in WWI, the Bolsheviks agitated (illegally) the line of ‘revolutionary defeatism.’ Rather than lend even critical support to the conflict, Bolsheviks instead sought to stop the international war in order to create a civil war in Russia against the ruling class and bourgeois. Due to this major political difference, workers who took part in strikes, whether economic and political, often gravitated towards the Bolsheviks, especially when faced with the brutal tsarist oppression which was often unleashed on militant workers.

Ironically, the Menshevik’s counter-revolutionary defensist line would birth an organizational form that proved instrumental to the subsequent revolutions in 1917. Beginning in the state factories with skilled workers, influenced by the Menshevik line, pro-war factory committees were formed in order to keep production high enough for the war effort despite the mismanagement of the Russian bourgeoisie. However, this form of committee expanded around the country and became, as 1917 progressed, a means to ensure workers were fed, a tool to assert the workers will on the management of the factory, and often blending into the functions or actually becoming a union for workers to struggle through. Despite the Mensheviks early involvement, factory committees took on a life of their own and eventually became powerful base for revolutionary-minded Bolsheviks.

In many ways, the factory committees became a home for a spontaneous movement of the working class seeking workers’ democratic control over management and society. Unlike the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks did support the spontaneous movement in 1917 as a whole and found success in the committees while spreading their political programme to the class. In May of 1917 in “Materials Relating to the Revision of the Party Program,” Lenin proposed an amendment to the party program to include that references to a widespread “demand for state and public control of the production and distribution of all staple products” which “induce the Party to demand nationalisation of the banks.”

While the Bolsheviks supported the movement as a whole, their specific strategy went against the existent prevailing attitude of the committees. Rather than argue for direct worker management at the Bfactory level, they supported the idea of workers managing factories on a national level (a workers state) and attempted to use the committees to further the revolution. Unlike union boards, which consisted on long time trusted labor militants and were therefore slightly more balanced between political factions, factory committees were directly elected and consisted of a Bolshevik majority. The party used these committees to contest factories under Menshevik led unions, organized to consolidate these committees first in citywide and then nationwide meetings, and used their power to challenge the state.

By May 30th the first full conference of the Petrograd Factory Committees met in the Tauride palace. The Bolsheviks already held majority and encouraged militancy on the committees, especially around political demands. This directness was captured by one of their worker delegates, Nemtsov, who declared: “Working of the factories is now exclusively in the hands of higher management. We must introduce the principle of election.”¹⁰

By August the provisional government was openly attempting to dissolve the factory committees, pitting more workers against the Mensheviks. At the eve of the October revolution on October 17th, the committees finally organized the first All Russian Conference of Factory Committees where the Bolesheviks held 86 out of 137 delegates. By this point the factory committees were seen by the party as vehicles for seizing factories and beginning the insurrection- within 8 days of the conference the provisional government was overthrown.

A Revolution Through The Workplace

By October, the Bolsheviks had won a strong majority in most of the unions and factory committees and in the Soviets of the two capital cities, and in the municipal elections. The latter saw the Bolsheviks earn overwhelming vote totals in the working class districts.

This longstanding and proactive orientation towards the labor movement proved decisive. When the time arose to launch the October rising, the Soviet Revolutionary Military Committee turned not only to the soldiers, but also to the workers to carry it out. Many workers took part under arms. In St. Petersburg alone, the Red Guards militia were 20,000 strong, mostly drawn from metalworkers and dockworkers. Carrying out the overthrow of the government meant taking control of the very workplaces which the Bolsheviks had been organizing within for years. The printing workers took control of the print shops, and ran the printers for the Soviet government. The telegraph workers took over the central exchange. The rail workers took control of the trains and rail lines, and refused to transport troops under government orders.

The working class, through its central body, took control over its own workplaces in order to carry out the revolution. Workers at the arsenals organized the distribution of arms, and dockyard workers took control of valuable supplies for the revolutionary cause.

Having seized power through both force of arms and workplace action, the new worker government further secured worker supremacy on the shop floor. On November 14, the Soviet government released a decree announcing the establishment of workers control over all commercial, industrial, and agricultural enterprises which hire employees. The decree mandated that all work be brought under the supervision of factory or shop committees or similar democratic bodies of workers.

This measure, signed by Lenin, required owners to turn over their books and functional control of the entire empire’s national industries to the management of the Russian working class. This was the culmination of the interrelated struggle for worker control: in their seizure of the government through class struggle, they consequently also secured full power over their workplaces.

However, this control was hardly secure so long as the civil war raged on.. The Bolsheviks would continue to rely on workers organized at the point of production to expand and defend the revolution. In the immediate post-revolutionary period, the unions contributed greatly to the civil war effort: they sent scores of fighters, helped secure control of crucial wartime industries, and participated in managing the growing Soviet national economy.

Bolshevik Labor Strategy In DSA

For more than three decades the Russian revolutionaries organized in the workers movement in a fight for control over both the workplace and society. The strategies employed by the Bolsheviks uniquely featured an inside-outside strategy in regards to the labor movement with consistent labor focused literary work while maintaining a presence with patient rank and file long term organizing. However, the politicization of labor struggle was used to unify these strategies into a coherent organizing method, often focusing efforts to centralize and nationalize organizations, to equip and spur the working class to power.

While all of these strategies are present in the labor movement today, there is no cohesive, policicizing effort to combine these strategies leaving the socialist presence in the labor movement much less uniform and visible to the broad working class. However, the socialist movement today has made serious strides in uniting its cause with that of the workers movement.

A conscious and open fight against economism within DSA has only just begun in 2025, and already it has made strong progress with the near-passage of the Partyist Labor Strategy at the 2025 convention. But far more organizing is needed before DSA masters the dual tasks of building the workers movement and leading it in a revolutionary direction.

The greatest defense for adherents to Economism is the false claim that they hold a monopoly over the pragmatic efforts of the workers movement. We see from the historical record that the opposite is true; long before Lenin launched his attacks against Economism, he was active in building the workers movement through doing ‘the work.’

The Bolshevik emphasis on politicizing labor struggles was not a sectarian “ultra” maneuver meant to demonstrate the party’s radicalism, but served as a means to drive labor militancy during periods of patriotism and complacency, to gain dedicated long term factory organizers who stayed in the struggle over the years despite the consistent government crack downs on labor organizations, and eventually managed to sway entire factories through their consistent political support for the working class to take power.

In leading circles of workers in education, conducting careful and incisive labor journalism, organizing the mass distribution of leaflets, advising workers in strike action and labor law, overseeing a growing machine of communication which reached into every factory and neighborhood, and growing his publications into an underground mass-media which could counter the narrative of the Tsarist regime, Lenin and his Bolshevik comrades paid their dues in the building of the workers’ movement. Their efforts earned them the right to critique Economism for its attempt to limit the movement to pure bread and butter demands. Workers and agents inside factories would organize, distribute literature, and provide inside information to writers on the conditions of factories. Whenever possible, from the centralization of reading groups into the League of Struggle at the turn of the century to the centralization of factory committees and unions into first city-wide and then nation-wide organizations shows a consistent struggle against parochialism, economism, and craft unionism towards the organized universalization of the struggle.

In We Are The Union, Eric Blanc lays out research showing that current worker leaders and labor organizers are inspired to take the many hours of unpaid organizing and risks primarily from four different factors: other labor struggles, Black Lives Matter, the movement following Bernie Sanders, and LGBTQ+ activism. While the largest factor for these organizers was seeing other workers participate in active class struggle, during periods of low labor militancy asserting the primacy of political factors becomes essential in sustaining and developing the movement. “Sowing the seeds of labor militancy by steadfastly politicizing and training worker leaders is what built the Russian labor movement: from reading groups at the turn of the century to the general strikes of 1917, concerted organizing drove the revolutionary process forward.”

For DSA activists who look to the Russian Revolution today, we offer the Bolsheviks work as a guide. We can “go among the people,” but even more so, we can systematically recruit organic leaders from across the major industries. We can write about high politics, but also we can master the language of labor journalism, writing in the fluency of wages and working conditions. We can help lead organizing drives and strike actions which kick off struggles so broad we lose control of them. We can build for majority support within the unions, and contest and win leadership of them. And we can run workers for public office, and use electoral campaigns to highlight and forward worker struggles.

We can organize for a revolution, from the workplace to the White House.

Emma Buckley is a member of the New Seasons Labor Union and Portland DSA.

Henry de Groot is the founder and former managing editor of Working Mass.

Works Cited:

1. G.V. Plekhanov, The Russian worker in the revolutionary movement, Sochineniia, vol.3, p.131.
2. S.I. Mitskevich, Revoliutsionnaia Moskva, Moscow 1940, p.144.
3. Krupskaya’s “Reminiscences of Lenin” St Petersburg 1893-1898, www.marxists.org/archive/krupskaya/works/rol/rol01.htm
4. Ibid.
5. Plekhanov, Socialism and the Political Struggle, 1883, www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1883/struggle/chap1.htm
6. Lenin, A Protest by Russian Social-Democrats, 1899, /www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1899/sep/protest.htm#bkV04E061
7. Lenin, A Letter to a Comrade on Our Organisational Tasks, 1902, www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1902/sep/00.htm
8. Lenin, The Results of Six Months’ Work, 1912, www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1912/jul/14.htm
9. Smith, Red Petrograd, 1983, https://archive.org/details/redpetrogradrevo0000smit
10. Brinton, The Boleshiviks and Workers’ Control, 1970, https://www.marxists.org/archive/brinton/1970/workers-control/
11. Lenin, Materials related to the Revision of the Party Program, 1917, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/reviprog/index.htm
12. Sovnarkom, Decree on Workers’ Control, 1917, www.marxists.org/history/ussr/events/revolution/documents/1917/11/14.htm

The post Revolution in the Workplace: Bolshevik Labor Strategy from the Underground to October appeared first on Working Mass.

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Atlanta DSA condemns the murder of Renee Good, the violence ICE has brought to Minneapolis and other communities, and the racist, authoritarian immigration enforcement regime that made this killing possible.

On January 7th, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis while she was exercising her right to protest. This comes just days after an ICE agent murdered Keith Porter, a black man, in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. ICE, created within the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11, has long used raids, detention, and deportation to terrorize black, brown, and immigrant communities, facilitating systematic human rights abuses and deaths. ICE does not keep people safe; it cages and kills them. Today, ICE functions as the secret police force of an increasingly authoritarian state, granting masked armed agents sweeping powers to strongarm local governments and surveil, harass, and arbitrarily arrest working-class people.

The murder of Renee Good — an unarmed activist peacefully observing ICE operations — shows an agency that treats public scrutiny as a threat to be eliminated. ICE’s immigration enforcement operations must be halted immediately. ICE must be stripped of funding, its detention network dismantled, its political power broken, and the agency itself abolished. In its place, this country must build a system rooted in unconditional respect for migrants’ human rights, family unity, and free movement—not militarized borders and mass incarceration.

We are reminded of the similar killing of Tortuguita by the Georgia State Patrol three years ago during an extended campaign to protect vital forest and public space. The red thread of violence weaved between local, state, and federal law enforcement on our bodies, especially queer and black and brown bodies, strangles us from Minnesota to Georgia. Our collective resistance inflames these tools of capital because it reminds us that our liberation comes when we are all free.

Atlanta DSA stands in solidarity with Renee Good’s family, with immigrant communities in Minneapolis, Atlanta, and across the country, and with all those resisting ICE violence. Twin Cities DSA is joining a broad coalition of unions and community groups to call for a day of action on January 23rd to shut down the city and demand that ICE get OUT of Minnesota! We encourage our communities to donate to the grassroots organizations on the front lines organizing resistance against ICE, including Tending the Soil in Minnesota and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights. On Tuesday, January 20th, the DSA National Labor Commission is hosting a national call and phone bank in support of the January 23rd day of action.

We call on our members, our labor and community allies, and elected officials to join us in the struggle to defund, disarm, and abolish ICE, and for ICE to leave immigrant communities in Minneapolis and nationwide immediately, because the only people qualified to protect these communities are the citizens, the workers, the parents, and the families who live in them.

Labor federations have called for a day of protest January 23. The momentum is growing from mass protests and building on long-term organizing.

The post Will ICE ignite a mass strike in Minnesota? appeared first on EWOC.

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By: Ben A

BOSTON, MA – In the wake of the Trump regime’s criminal attack on the Bolivarian Revolution and Venezuela’s sovereignty, as well as the ICE killings of Renee Good and Keith Porter, over a thousand people gathered on Saturday January 10th in the Boston Common and City Hall Plaza to demonstrate their refusal to stand by while the Trump regime commits heinous acts of violence at home and abroad.

The protest on the Common was organized by the Boston chapters of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), alongside a number of sponsoring organizations, including Cambridge Our Revolution, Mass. Peace Action, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), the MA Sierra Club, Mass. 50501, and others, which marched through the streets of downtown Boston to meet up with a simultaneous protest in City Hall Plaza organized by the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network.

Renee Good, one of the two murdered by the secret police, participated in a Minneapolis ICE Watch operation similar to LUCE.

“We bore witness to the imperial boomerang this week,” said Bonnie Jin, co-chair of Boston DSA, and a speaker at the rally. Jin outlined demands for Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey and other elected representatives to take more authoritative action. “Take a public stand against ICE, and use the full power of the law to hold ICE accountable.”

This protest was just one of nearly a thousand that took place across the country, many of which were part of a day of action called for by the national leadership of DSA, along with PSL and the Palestinian Youth Movement nationwide. While the political tendencies represented at this protest were diverse, protesters were largely united in their demands. Protesters carried signs demanding “No Wars for Oil,” a call back to the deeply unpopular and disastrous Iraq War, as well as “Abolish ICE” and “Nobody is Illegal on Stolen Land.”  

The shared messaging points to a larger shared understanding.

Most protesters, affirmed with each head nod to each speaker, hold a series of beliefs:

1. Immigrants are not our enemies,
2. We don’t benefit from imperialist wars in other countries, especially not our immigrant neighbors terrorized by ICE, and,
3. ICE is our actual foe, alongside the government funding its crimes, the same government attacking Venezuela.

While the crisis of capitalism, manifested by an affordability crisis and a housing crisis, continues to ruin the lives of working class people in the United States, Trump’s regime would rather dump hundreds of billions of dollars into paying for war in other nations and tens of billions into expanding ICE operations, instead of helping working class people afford their rent, their groceries, or their utilities.

Rallying for the Safe Communities Act

While protests stretched across most major cities nationwide, one specific aspect of Boston’s was a demand: the Safe Communities Act.

A priority of Boston DSA in its campaign alongside ICE Watch, the Safe Communities Act would terminate state cooperation with ICE, including courts and police questioning about immigration status, as well as protecting basic rights. The rally drew numerous labor leaders, including Evan McKay, former president of the Harvard Graduate Student Union (HGSU) and DSA-endorsed candidate for Cambridge’s Middlesex-25 district for State Representative, who told Working Mass about the need for urgent action and passing of the Safe Communities Act.

This legislation has been blocked by the Statehouse in secret votes, year after year, in secret votes by powerful politicians that want to hide from accountability. Today, we said enough is enough, because we know who is accountable… State House leadership.

MacKay is challenging incumbent Marjorie Decker for the Cambridge district spanning from Central Square to Harvard and Porter in the 2026 election, which they lost in 2024 by only a handful of votes.

Nadeen from the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) drew connecting lines between military action in Venezuela and the genocide in Palestine:

Economic strangulation is presented as policy, long term occupation and intervention presented as stability – but stability just for the oil oligarchs.

Another speaker from the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) has launched a long-shot bid for U.S. Senate. The candidate, Joe Tache, connected the historic context of Boston as a site of revolutionary and abolition activity to the current moment:

I see Renee Good’s murder as connected to Trump’s war of aggression in Venezuela, which he is trying to conquer for oil. The capitalist system which prioritizes profits above all else, and uses racism as a tool to dominate working people, is going to continue to allow figures like Trump and the right-wing to grow.

Trump’s recent kidnapping of Venezuelan President Maduro is the continuation of a long history of illegal U.S. interventions in Latin America. President Trump, in a moment of remarkable transparency, posted on Truth Social about the financial inflow from the operation, writing that, “this Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and the money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America…”.

Geo Maher, an abolitionist scholar and author, has argued that the move for the U.S. to reassert itself in Latin America represents a decline of traditional U.S. imperial power on the global stage.

Both the ICE crackdown at home, and the U.S. assault on Venezuela abroad are symptoms of the crisis of capitalism and the decline of the US empire. ICE operations target and remove people deemed expendable by the Trump Regime and the capitalist class, mimicking mass incarceration by essentially getting rid of people that the US can no longer provide for as economic conditions worsen. Meanwhile, the attack on Venezuela is designed to prevent China and Russia from accessing much needed oil, and to create more compliant regimes in Venezuela and all of Latin America as the United States proceeds with its plans to create new supply chains that cut out China and are based in Latin America. The plan is clearly outlined in the latest National Security Strategy document released by the Trump regime in November 2025.

Deportations may also serve to bolster this as well, by keeping the Latin American work force in Latin America, forcing them to become the labor driving this new supply chain. 

The long term vision of this plan decoupling the U.S. supply chain from China in order to prepare for a great power war. Obviously, the consequences would be devastating to the all of the working classes around the globe. Our only chance of ensuring that we never see this outcome is by creating a powerful anti-war movement that can ultimately challenge the capitalist class’s control of the US and the world. Actions like the nationwide protests seen on Saturday are important developments along the path of building this movement, with more to come soon.

Ben A is a member of Boston DSA and contributing writer to Working Mass.

The post January 10, 2026: Mass Protests Against ICE and War in Venezuela Hit the Boston Common appeared first on Working Mass.

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Enjoy your January National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 27-person body (including both YDSA Co-Chairs) which functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, melting ICE, standing against militarism, volunteer opportunities, and more!

And to make sure you get our newsletters in your inbox, sign up here! Each one features action alerts, upcoming events, political education, and more.

• From the National Political Committee — Energy in Darkness
• Apply for the National Arms Embargo Committee and Abolish ICE Committee! Deadline Tuesday 1/27
• Sunday 2/1 — RSVP for Starbucks Strike Reportback with the DSA National Labor Commission
• Are You a Union Member? Check Out Our Hands Off Venezuela Resolution Template!
• Join Labor for an Arms Embargo Trainings Wednesday 2/11 and Wednesday 2/25
• RSVP for Political Education Trainings Thursday 1/22 and Thursday 2/5
• Sign Up for the Housing Justice Commission’s Emergency Tenant Organizing Committee Training Series! Starts Saturday 2/7
• Be Part of the DSA National Editorial Board! Applications due TONIGHT, Thursday 1/15
• DSA is Hiring! Application Deadline Sunday 2/8
• Welcome Our Newest Chapter!

From the National Political Committee — Energy in Darkness

Dear Comrades,

Happy New Year! Just a few weeks into 2026, we’re feeling how intensely the contradictions are heightening across our society.

On New Year’s Day, we celebrated with our comrades in New York City who froze their toes off for hours in the crowd of thousands outside City Hall, inspired by the warmth of collectivism as we watched the inauguration of Zohran Mamdani, who proudly announced he will govern as a democratic socialist mayor of the world’s wealthiest city. While Lucy Dacus sang the historic labor anthem “Bread and Roses,” Bernie Sanders swore in the mayor over a Quran, and Zohran himself touted “DSA meetings” as a core part of the civic fabric of this city of 8 million people, it was hard not to feel deeply moved by how far our movement has come through the past decade of DSA’s massive growth in the United States.

Within just two days, we watched in horror as the Trump administration bombed Caracas and rapidly escalated an illegal military intervention and regime change in Venezuela by kidnapping their President and his wife. Just days after that, ICE agents murdered Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, and we continue to see an all-out siege of the Twin Cities by the occupying force of ICE. You can donate here to support Twin Cities DSA’s ICE Watch and Know-Your-Rights work. Threats of active regime change are escalating against Cuba, and Trump is increasing belligerence against Mexico, Colombia, Greenland, Nigeria, Iran, and more — openly invoking the Monroe Doctrine of naked imperialism from over a century ago, and shamelessly embracing it as the “Donroe Doctrine” to dominate the whole hemisphere to plunder resources.

Next week is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. His internationalist vision is more crucial than ever. In his pivotal “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Dr. King said “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Today, the US is in a zombie state. Our government’s military budget soars past $1 trillion, and the ICE budget balloons larger than the militaries of most other countries — all while basic social services are cut for millions of working class people.

As Antonio Gramsci said: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” Against all the darkness, we believe this is our time to win. Against the flailing of the monsters leading this regime, we’re organizing everywhere for a gorgeous and more compassionate world for all. Millions of people are realizing what we’ve known all along: as the existing order continues to decay, socialism is what can beat fascism.

Across the country, that’s what DSA is demonstrating. Within hours of Trump’s invasion of Venezuela, our National Political Committee sprang into action with our members to coordinate days of action and say Hands Off Venezuela. DSA chapters quickly organized actions and showed up with thousands across the country to say No War, No ICE. More and more Americans are realizing that abolishing ICE isn’t a radical demand. It’s a rational response to an out-of-control force of state terror that’s still younger than most DSA members today.

MLK Day will fittingly kick off a week of protest across the country, with labor unions and community groups gearing up for a statewide shutdown of Minnesota. We’re calling on people across the country to join a nationwide day of action against ICE terror on January 20, to walk out and show up on the streets.

From coast to coast, chapters are taking on Trump’s fascist deportation machine. DSA organizers from Los Angeles to Chicago to Charlotte are learning from each others’ strategies to help each other protect residents and resist ICE — participating in ICE Watch programs, exposing the malfeasance of ICE agents near Minneapolis as they swapped out license plates before conducting raids to kidnap people, organizing for sanctuary city legislation, and making ICE collaboration a toxic decision for businesses like Avelo Airlines. Within a day of Renee’s killing by ICE, we learned that DSA members helped score a major win to pressure Avelo to cancel their contract with ICE, after chapters across the country threw down over the past year with a boycott campaign to expose their deportation flights and show that tearing families apart is toxic to their bottom line.

Learn more about that incredible win on our mass call on Wednesday 1/21 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT: From Solidarity with Minneapolis to a Win Against Avelo Airlines! And then join us for our next ICE OUT call Tuesday 2/3 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT!

Meanwhile, DSA chapters across the country are standing with workers against bad bosses. From Atlanta, to Detroit, to Denver, to Wilmington in North Carolina, to San Antonio in Texas, and beyond, are standing with Starbucks Workers United and saying “No contract? No coffee!” Last month, striking baristas brought the picket line directly to Starbucks’ biggest regional distribution centers in northern Nevada and Pennsylvania, and DSA labor organizers and chapter leaders showed up in solidarity as they faced mass arrest in protest of Starbucks’ unfair labor practices. The largest nurses strike in NYC history is underway, and Mayor Zohran was right there on the picket line in solidarity with 15,000 nurses and many NYC DSA members. 

Socialist elected officials are leading and winning on an affordability agenda for all, and we’re continuing to expand toward our ultimate horizon as socialists: everything for everyone. NYC DSA members have stacked mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team — all the better to deal with the challenges of building municipal socialism in America’s largest city. The right wing is freaking out about DSA member appointments like tenant organizer Cea Weaver, but our movement is strong enough to stand strong against bad faith attacks from the landlord lobby. Within two weeks of taking office, mayor Mamdani began to deliver on a core campaign promise for free childcare for all. We’re not resting on our laurels — DSA chapters are looking ahead to build on our historic wins from the past year and keep contesting exciting races for elected office across the country in 2026.

All this is why more people are part of DSA now than ever. This week we just passed 95,000 members nationwide, our biggest membership milestone yet, with hundreds more plugging in week by week. Our 2025 recruitment drive wrapped right after New Year’s Day, and the results show we’re organizing everywhere. Some of our fastest growing DSA chapters are in places you might not expect — Corpus Christi DSA in Texas; Sonoma County DSA in California; Middle Georgia DSA, and Bluegrass DSA in Kentucky. If you are not yet a DSA member, join us now!

2026 will demand even more energy and courage from all of us, and we know DSA members everywhere will do the most to support each other in the struggles ahead. With our massive increase in membership comes a lot more in collective resources we can use to level up our people power. At our National Political Committee’s first monthly meeting of 2026 last weekend, we committed to major increases in support to the amazing work happening across DSA, with $1 million in direct grant funding we will disburse to chapters throughout the year to sustain and promote our ongoing growth, hiring more full-time staff to support our member-led organizing work, stipends to help support working class leadership of our elected body, and organizing tools to help reach masses of people in our organizing campaigns. 

DSA is more powerful today than most of us could have imagined a decade ago, and we will keep organizing everywhere for the world we know we all deserve to win.

In Solidarity, 

Ashik and Megan
DSA National Political Committee Co-Chairs

Apply for the National Arms Embargo Committee and Abolish ICE Committee! Deadline Tuesday 1/27

As part of the implementation of convention resolutions, last December the NPC chartered two new national appointed committees, the Arms Embargo Committee and the Abolish ICE Committee.

The Arms Embargo Committee will include four liaisons from other national bodies and  At five Large seats. It will provide coordination and develop joint strategies across different bodies carrying out arms embargo-related work. 

The Abolish ICE Committee will include five liaisons from other national bodies and six At Large seats, and will develop a robust national priority Abolish ICE campaign. 

The NPC is soliciting applications for the At Large seats of both committees! Apply by Tuesday 1/27 midnight PT through the Arms Embargo Committee Application Form or the Abolish ICE Committee Application Form if you have relevant experience and are excited to develop DSA’s anti-war or migrant defense national strategies.

Sunday 2/1 — RSVP for Starbucks Strike Reportback with the DSA National Labor Commission

Since Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) kicked off their strike in November 2025, DSA has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with them as they fight for their first union contract to bring dignity, respect, and union power to Starbucks baristas across the country. While the strike continues in Oregon, Illinois, New York, California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Texas, in many cities, SBWU members are back to work. During this strike, DSA chapters across the country have stepped up to support baristas, experimenting with new strategies and building new capacities in the process.

Join us for a debrief discussion at the NLC Membership Meeting on Sunday 2/1 at 1pm ET/12pm CT/11am MT/10am PT to go over our strike solidarity organizing, next steps for continued solidarity with the Starbucks Strike, and how DSA members can get involved in building a powerful labor movement in 2026!

Are You a Union Member? Check Out Our Hands Off Venezuela Resolution Template!

The National Labor Commission has created a Hands Off Venezuela resolution template for union members to pass in their union locals and labor councils. Please share this in your chapters and labor networks. 

And if you introduce this resolution in your union, please let us know using this resolution tracker so we can track its progress and follow up with you.

Join Labor for an Arms Embargo Trainings Wednesday 2/11 and Wednesday 2/25

There is no ceasefire. The United States sends more weapons for Israel’s genocide than any other country on Earth. In these trainings, you’ll learn why we need to win an arms embargo to support Palestinian liberation. Map your community, identify allied unions/organizations, set organizing targets, and get your campaign off the ground.

Attend to know what you need to unite your city and stop these shipments! These two-part trainings will recur monthly. You can RSVP here:

• Wednesday 2/11, 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT/6:30pm MT/5:30pm PT Labor for an Arms Embargo: Introduction
• Wednesday 2/25, 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT/6:30pm MT/5:30pm PT Labor for an Arms Embargo: Setting Up Your Campaign

RSVP for Political Education Trainings Thursday 1/22 and Thursday 2/5

It’s a new year, and DSA’s National Political Education Committee (NPEC) has old and NEW trainings on the books! 

• Join us Thursday 1/22 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT for our regular training on setting up and running your own chapter political education committee.
• And on Thursday 2/5 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT, join our new Socialist Archiving workshop, The Digital Deep Dive!

To find out more about upcoming trainings, committee goings-on, and all things poli ed, sign up to receive the Red Letter, NPEC’s monthly email newsletter.

Sign Up for the Housing Justice Commission’s Emergency Tenant Organizing Committee Training Series! Starts Saturday 2/7

Start your year with everything you need to know about starting a tenant union! This is a four week training in February, with a two-hour session each Saturday at 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT. We’ll go over the basics of talking to your neighbors, creating collective demands, and how to strategize around the landlord-tenant contradiction. If you bring at least three participants, we’ll find your group a mentor to give you more support as you start your tenant union!

Be Part of the DSA National Editorial Board! Applications due TONIGHT, Thursday 1/15

Applications are DUE TONIGHT to the 2025-2027 DSA National Editorial Board. The Editorial Board is a 9-member body appointed by the NPC that oversees the organization’s two national publications, Democratic Left and Socialist Forum. The Editorial Board is composed of members with various points of view on important political questions. It does not exist to develop a single theoretical or strategic perspective. As a result, the publications reflect the wide range of views within the organization. The goal of the Editorial Board is not to espouse a particular “party line,” but to maintain strong editorial standards for our publications. As such, the process prioritizes familiarity with DSA and editorial experience in appointment to positions on the board.

If you are interested in being appointed to the Editorial Board, please fill out this application by tonight, Thursday, 1/15 at 11:59PM Hawaii Standard Time.

DSA is Hiring! Application Deadline Sunday 2/8

DSA is hiring a Media Coordinator! Applications are due by Sunday 2/8. You can find details here.

Welcome Our Newest Chapter!

Let’s kick off 2026 with a warm welcome to our latest chapter, Central Mississippi DSA! You can find a full list of our chapters here.

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