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.

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.

by Travis Covitz

This month, I re-read To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee for the first time since my freshman year of high school (which overlapped with the first wave of Black Lives Matter uprisings). Mockingbird was written by Lee (a Southern white woman) in the early 1960s; it follows the girlhood of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, who is white and the daughter of a lawyer, in Depression-era Alabama. A major plot point of the book is Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, defending a local Black man who has been charged with rape of a white woman. Atticus is posed as a noble white hero in contrast with the ‘backwards’ racists in the countryside. Reading in 2026, the juxtaposition of the police brutality in Ferguson and the lawfare in Mockingbird seems like it was just begging for commentary. But at my school in the Phoenix, Arizona suburbs, where we had a very small Black population, I have no memory of such a conversation. What I do remember is, at some point during the year, one of the few Black girls in my grade commented that the murder of Michael Brown echoed the murder of Trayvon Martin. I know that she saw the parallels between Scout’s fictional world and the world we found ourselves growing up in. 

My mom has always been a huge fan of Mockingbird and the Finch family in particular. As the youngest in her family, my mom related heavily to Scout’s perspective as a young child surrounded by adults. Perhaps because of her connection with Scout, or perhaps just because of her own liberal white sympathies, my mom glorified Atticus as a paragon of virtue. I remember seeing a lot of discourse in 2020 about how white people preferred quoting this fictional white lawyer, instead of living Black people, to demonstrate their values of racial justice. My re-reading of Mockingbird was, in part, a desire to revisit the character of Atticus Finch and see just how valiant he really was. Was he a principled anti-racist or a white savior? I found myself thoroughly underwhelmed, but not surprised, with how Atticus actually behaves in the book. And then I read the sequel.

Go Set A Watchman takes place in that same small Alabama town, centered on that same Finch girl (who is now a woman), about two decades later. Scout is in her mid-twenties (actually very close to my current age) and visiting her hometown on a trip away from her life in New York City.  She is forced to confront the imperfections in the moral characters of her father (Atticus) and lover (Hank), who have joined the local white Citizens Council in protest of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Watchman was only published in 2015, and takes place after the events of Mockingbird, but it is actually more interesting than a mere ‘sequel’. Lee wrote Watchman in the 1950s, as the first draft of this story, only for it to later be edited into the narrative we know as Mockingbird. 

Reading Watchman greatly enriched my appreciation of Mockingbird – but I think that Watchman was only able to be so profound because of that decade of relationship I already had with the Mockingbird story. I felt that the loss of Atticus’ heroism, rather than a betrayal, was a very plausible continuation of the character. In fact, I think that character journey is an important one to read for white readers who, like the young Scout, saw Atticus as a perfect gentleman. In my experience, Mockingbird is used by liberal Americans to assuage their guilt over racism, by allowing them to reassure themselves that they’re ‘one of the good ones’. It paints a picture of racism as a personal problem rather than a political one. The subtextual rebukes to this narrative which I found in Watchman actually allowed me to more deeply appreciate the world that Lee built. By showing how a kind, honorable white man – who treats Black people as equals in daily life – can still feel so threatened by the idea of Black people in power that he organizes to prevent it, Watchman illustrates how racism is a political issue, not just a personal moral failing.

In Watchman, Scout is positioned as the moral hero in contrast to Atticus, but not necessarily enlightened, which I feel is the correct choice for the character. She is still learning the ways of the world, but we can see that she has deep moral convictions that ground her. If Scout had been written as perfect, it would have ruined the whole story, which is about coming-of-age and realizing that your heroes are only human. My revisiting of Lee’s work has been its own coming-of-age story, after all. Even though I generally appreciated the direction of Watchmen, I disagree with some of the political conclusions Lee offers. But this way in which I disagree with Scout paradoxically makes me relate to her even more. Just as her long-time deification of Atticus was confronted by a painful reality when Scout realizes she has her own moral positions, I had to realize my own values are based on the people I live and organize with – not just the books I’ve read.

If you remember reading Mockingbird, and especially if you remember quoting Atticus Finch, I would highly recommend Watchman. It might be painful, but I think you will be all the better for realizing that even the Finches have flaws – and wondering what actual anti-racism would look like.

The post Narratives of Imperfection: Revisiting Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) and Go Set a Watchman (2015) first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Enjoy your September 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, hear about hot labor updates, organizing trainings, 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 — Cool Fall Organizing
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• Work for DSA! Application Deadlines Begin Friday 9/18
• Sign Up for Fall 2026 Emergency Tenant Organizing Committee Training Series! Classes Begin Saturday 10/24
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From the National Political Committee — Cool Fall Organizing

It’s September again, and while hot socialist summer is over, there’s lots of cool organizing going into the fall. From chapter Labor Day celebrations, to back-to-school organizing, to worker solidarity actions you can do right now, DSA members like you are getting in gear across the country!

We spent Labor Day weekend with hundreds of DSA members in Chicago at the annual Socialism Conference organized by Haymarket Books, which is a great opportunity for political education and big-picture strategizing across organizations on the left. DSA members were represented on over 20 panels, including ones on organizing a general strike and building a stronger pro-democracy labor movement, and showcasing our own “Workers Deserve More” program with special guest Hasan Piker. In DSA, we always want to focus on outward-facing work that builds our power with more and more people, but it’s important to make time to keep learning and testing each others’ ideas too! 

This spring, over 170 DSA chapters participated in May Day actions. And last week, chapters  came out to organize and celebrate workers — check out some of our highlights here! From NEPA DSA’s Labor Rally in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to Greater Baltimore’s Labor Day Potluck, to Northern Colorado’s Labor Night Out, DSA members came together to create community and showcase worker wins. And check out some photo and video highlights!

• Boston DSA showed that socialism beats fascism
• Middle Tennessee DSA Labor Day marchers said Workers Deserve More
• Miami DSA’s Labor Day highlight was their most ambitious Leftist Movie Night of the year: a special 90th anniversary screening of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times

Socialist socializing like these Labor Day events create organizing opportunities! DSA members understand that bringing people together helps start conversations about how we can organize our workplace, protect our communities, elect socialist candidates, and more. (That’s probably why the Wall Street Journal set out to make coffee with comrades scary!)

And our Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) Fall Drive is off to a great start. Since last semester, more than 45 new campuses have started YDSA chapters. And since the beginning of August, YDSA has doubled its membership! Last year, YDSA chapters organized to protect immigrant students, support campus worker unions, end student lunch debt, and more. 

From the University of Florida YDSA’s kicking the Department of Homeland Security out of their Career Fair, to YDSA at the University of Delaware successfully pressuring the administration to stop collaborating with ICE, to University of Oregon YDSA winning medication access on campus, YDSA students are making big wins and learning how to organize long-lasting campaigns. That’s why they’re growing so much! And given the rise of right-wing campus outreach, we need our youth organizers more than ever.

And speaking of fall labor solidarity… we’re boycotting Starbucks this pumpkin spice season! Take the boycott pledge with our DSA National Labor Commission and DSA members across the country.

In solidarity with over 12,000 baristas across the country with Starbucks Workers United, DSA has pledged to operate as a Starbucks-free political organization during the duration of the boycott. This means that Starbucks products shall not be purchased with DSA funds for meetings, conferences, trainings, offices, conventions, or other official events. You can hear from Starbucks workers about the boycott here.

Solidarity work like this is one reason that thousands of people are joining DSA and renewing their memberships. They see members like you showing up and doing the work our communities need! Would you like to reach out to other members about renewing their dues? Sign up for one of our Fall Drive phonebanks! Training is provided on the call.

• Sunday 9/27 at 5pm ET/4pm CT/3pm MT/2pm PT with special guest Professor Richard Wolff. One lucky phonebanker will receive a signed copy of Professor Wolff’s book Understanding Socialism!
• Wednesday 10/7 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT with special guest David Griscom. One lucky phonebanker will receive a signed copy of David Griscom’s book The Myth of Red Texas!

And read on for more ways to stand up for a brighter, more democratic future!

Solidarity,

Ashik Siddique and Megan Romer
DSA National Co-Chairs

PS: last week, more than 1000 people joined us for “End Times Fascism:” A DSA Conversation with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. Check out the book talk video here!

Sunday 9/27 — How Should DSA Respond to Data Centers? RSVP for our DSA Labor Call!

The construction of data centers around the country is leading to ecological damage and skyrocketing electricity costs, causing grassroots coalitions to take a stand and in some states, win moratoriums on new construction. But for unionized workers in the trades, data centers have led to new contracts and renewed investments in apprenticeships.

Join DSA’s National Labor Commission Sunday 9/27 at 1pm ET/12pm CT/11am MT/10am PT for Building the Machine: The Trades and Anti-Data Center Organizing! On the call, you’ll hear the perspectives of anti-data center organizers and rank-and-file union workers about how socialist unionists should orient to the data center boom.

Work for DSA! Application Deadlines Begin Friday 9/18

DSA is hiring! Please apply if you’re interested, or send to someone you know who has the right experience.

Open positions include:

• Regional Organizer (rolling; first deadline 9/18)
• Membership Growth and Retention Coordinator (deadline 9/20)
• Designer (deadline 9/25)

You can learn more about these positions on our Careers page here.

Sign Up for Fall 2026 Emergency Tenant Organizing Committee Training Series! Classes Begin Saturday 10/24

The Housing Justice Commission is proud to announce that our 2026 Fall Emergency Tenant Organizing Committee (ETOC) cohort is now accepting RSVPs from prospective tenant organizers. ETOC is a DSA initiative to promote the formation of militant tenant unions through tenant-to-tenant training and instruction.

This ETOC cohort will teach you the fundamentals of tenant organizing over a series of 4 meetings in October and November. The series starts Saturday 10/24 at 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT. RSVP today! Instruction will focus on giving you the skills you need to develop new tenant unions that will organize tenants on a citywide or regional scale. We encourage you to invite others you intend to organize a tenant union with.

Mutual Aid Working Group Reforms Disaster Relief Committee — Get Involved

The Mutual Aid Working Group (MAWG) is reforming the Disaster Relief Committee! MAWG’s Disaster Relief Committee will organize MAWG members to collaborate on disaster preparedness, awareness, and relief. If you would like to get involved in this new committee, or other work in MAWG, join the working group!

Sign Up for National Political Education Commission Newsletter

Don’t get left behind on the left! Keep up with DSA’s National Political Education Commission — with popular trainings, debates and events, national reading groups, media, commentary, and more — by signing up for our monthly missive, Red Letter!

Housing Justice Commission Abolish Rent Book Club — Final Sessions Still Open

Join DSA members and tenant organizers around the country for a nationwide reading of the book Abolish Rent, written by two co-founders of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis. Sessions have already started, but there’s still spots for the Wednesday 9/30 and Wednesday 10/14 meetings. Book club meetings will be at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT.

Together, we’ll learn from the book, share our experiences as tenants and organizers, and discuss how to create a world where rent doesn’t exist. Use the discount code in the signup link here link for a discount on a copy of the book!

Contribute to Democratic Left!

Democratic Left, DSA’s official news publication, is opening applications for non-editorial board roles. If you are interested in supporting Democratic Left’s movement journalism as a book reviewer, reporter, arts critic, copy editor, graphic designer, or chapter correspondent, please fill out the third form linked on this page on the DSA forum.

The post Your National Political Committee newsletter — Cool Fall Organizing appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

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.