By Henry McKeand

In the everchanging movie landscape of the past decade, one of the great casualties has been the wide-release R-rated comedy. In the 2000s, raunchy joke-a-minute projects were being made with big stars for less than $50 million and reliably turning a profit at the box office, but there was a shift in the industry around a decade ago. Suddenly, studios were afraid to take a risk on releases that didn’t have superhero spectacle or franchise potential, and mid-budget films began to face an uphill battle at the cineplex. Comedy moved to television and the internet, while lighthearted fare in movies was relegated mostly to direct-to-streaming leftovers and throwaway gags in larger blockbusters.

This is part of what makes One of Them Days, Lawrence Lamont’s new comedy starring Keke Palmer and SZA as friends on a Los Angeles odyssey to recover their rent money, such a breath of fresh air. It’s a capital-C comedy with a back-to-basics buddy dynamic and modest budget (around $14 million), relying on a funny trailer and the strength of its stars to drive audiences to the theater. There’s an old-school appeal here that has already made it successful with critics and audiences, but the real highlight is the working class core of the narrative. When was the last time you watched a crowd-pleaser where the main dramatic question was whether or not the main characters would be evicted?

Palmer plays Dreux, an ambitious young woman working as a waitress at a small diner who has an important corporate interview coming up in the afternoon. SZA plays Alyssa, a talented artist with a laid back demeanor and “candles and crystals” sensibility. While Dreux has a plan for everything, Alyssa goes with the flow and believes that the spirits of their ancestors will guide them through anything life has in store. But when Alyssa’s do-nothing boyfriend Keshawn runs off with their rent money, they’re forced to work as a team and race against the clock to get their money back before their landlord kicks them out, contending with various local oddballs, criminals, and love interests along the way. 

The ticking clock, escalating insanity, and “best friends” bickering call to mind countless comedies from yesteryear, from House Party to Superbad, but the best reference point may be the original Friday. Syreeta Singleton’s script shares not only a working class LA milieu with the F. Gary Gray and Ice Cube classic, but also a similar blend of social realism and class clown silliness. The best Black comedies of the 90s and 2000s, such as Friday and The Wood, served as more socially conscious alternatives to their “white yuppie in crisis” peers, and One of Them Days is no different. Whereas the few big-budget comedies of the past ten years have either been absurdist romps disconnected from reality (Bottoms, Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar) or Hangover-esque tales of well-off middle class characters cutting loose (Booksmart, Ricky Stanicky), Lamont and Singleton focus on the daily problems that Black and working class people face. 

More so than the gangsters and bullies who stand in Dreux and Alyssa’s way (here, Friday’s Deebo is swapped out for a take-no-shit neighborhood woman nicknamed “Big Booty Berniece”), the true villain is the capitalist, white supremacist world that they live in. Their ceiling is falling apart, but their landlord hasn’t fixed it. When they get their first white neighbor (Euphoria’s Maude Apatow) as a result of ongoing gentrification, they’re shocked that her unit has a working AC. In order to whip up some quick money, their only obvious options are trying to donate at a blood bank and applying for predatory loans. And when they end up en route to the hospital after one of them is electrocuted, they decide to escape from the ambulance because they can’t afford the medical bill.

Things aren’t all bleak, though. This is a film that understands the power of friendship and solidarity in the face of oppressive systems. The various neighbors argue and isolate themselves just like everyday people, but they also come together and stand up for one another as tenants and members of a shared community. And while Dreux and Alyssa have their differences, the script never forces conflict between them. For all of her flakiness, Alyssa is refreshingly supportive in her support for Dreux, and SZA, in her first major acting role, captures the character’s eccentricities and contradictions remarkably well. Palmer, too, is predictably great; her movie star charisma has been evident for years, and she is routinely hilarious as Dreux. Together, they create a lived-in quality to their characters’ friendship that’s authentic and warm.

It doesn’t hurt that this is the funniest feature-length script in years, never afraid to balance sweet human touches with comedic big swings. One scene, involving the blood bank and Abbott Elementary’s Janelle James as an irresponsible nurse, is one of the most laugh-out-loud things to grace the big screen in a long time. There’s also no shortage of perfect cameos, including Lil Rel Howery as a sneaker obsessive and Katt Williams as a sidewalk truth teller named Lucky. But the biggest standouts are the lesser-known names, such as Patrick Cage as Dreux’s mysterious crush and Joshua Neal as Keshawn. Neal, especially, embodies an all-too-real kind of unambitious, manipulative boyfriend with hilarious conviction.

Movies like One of Them Days are often classified by Hollywood as “minor” or “low stakes.” There’s no high-concept twist or massive energy beam threatening to destroy the world. These kinds of “low stakes” movies, however, are the ones that capture the actual joys and stresses of modern life. Take, for example, the scene where Dreux has her interview and has to prove herself to a white hiring manager who doesn’t know how to pronounce her name. The sequence is overflowing with emotion and humor and suspense, and it’s all rooted in something “mundane.” 

At one point, as Dreux is talking to a neighbor who has been evicted and is worried about where he’ll go next, she says four simple words: “Your life is lifing.” It’s an acknowledgement that day-to-day existence is far too urgent and scary for the majority of us. One of Them Days isn’t a radical film, or at least it shouldn’t be. It’s not a vitriolic call to action or an openly socialist film. But by honing in on these kinds of mundane, material realities, it stands out from the endless stream of studio releases that are completely disconnected from working class concerns. 

Films are powerful in their ability to reflect and influence public opinion, and the success of One of Them Days points to a growing dissatisfaction with capitalism. The contradictions and stresses in our everyday lives have gotten to a point where audiences are ready for stories that take stands landlords and the healthcare system. Slowly but surely, the needle is moving.

If your life is lifing right now, and you want to fight for a world in which people don’t have to struggle in order to have simple necessities, then the time is now to get involved with groups like Triangle DSA and Triangle Tenant Union!

Pine and Roses’ Todd Chretien sat down for breakfast at Ruski’s Tavern in Portland with Maine DSA member and recently-elected City Councilor Wes Pelletier to talk over his priorities in City Hall. 

TC:  What’s your favorite breakfast here at Ruski’s? 

WP: The oatmeal. It’s four dollars. It’s a good deal. 

TC: Excellent. Cheap government, that’s an old slogan from the Marxist movement.

TC: How did you decide to get involved in this whole mess of American politics?

WP: I’d been canvassing and phone banking with the Dems from a very early age. I always watched the Daily Show and was a real news junkie. But then at a certain point, I was thinking about climate change and decided I needed to get involved. I heard about DSA six or seven years ago and signed up and started paying my dues. One day I got an email from DSA about a meeting and I decided to show up. Turns out they needed a secretary, and I got convinced to take the position and since then I’ve been learning how to organize, how to run a campaign. I met a bunch of comrades and then decided to, from a psychological point of view, put all my stress into things that I can try to control at the local level. Even as a non-elected, you have more control over local politics than state and obviously national issues. It’s where you can affect change and actually improve lives and show people what good government can do. We had a friendly city councilor stepping down, so I decided to run. 

TC: When you decided to run for city council, what was central to your platform? 

WP: There’s a huge housing crisis in Portland, and in Maine generally. We passed a number of referendums in 2020 under the banner of People First Portland, including rent control. And we’ve defended it from several attempts by landlords to overturn or weaken it. It’s wildly popular in Portland, but the city government does not want to proactively enforce it, which means that for a lot of folks, the law just doesn’t exist. So we need a city council that’s willing to take action rather than just sit by.

TC: Trump’s 2016 election, Bernie’s 2020 campaign, the Covid pandemic, and Black Lives Matter spurred Maine DSA into action. Really enormous political events shook the country. Now we’ve got two socialists on city council. Do you think there is something unique about the way that Portlanders have responded to all those crises? 

WP: Portland is somewhat unique. We think of ourselves as a city, but we are basically a large town. But we’re the biggest city in the state. DSA keeps the bar to entry low so we’ve been able to organize and train a lot of people. So, sometimes, we’re able to do more than the Democratic Party machine, which isn’t as powerful as it is in a lot of places. But the structure is set up so that the unelected city manager and high-level staff have more capacity and power than the mayor or the city councilors. When Black Lives Matter arose in Portland, one of the organizers’ main demands was getting rid of the city manager. We’ve lost a little bit of momentum on that but we are able to take these national moments you mentioned and engage a large enough coalition including labor unions, leftist organizations like DSA, and progressives to get things done. It’s a broad set of alliances. For instance, former Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling is a pretty prominent  member and leader in DSA and he has a lot of knowledge about how the system works. That institutional knowledge and experience is critical when you combine it with organizers who are adept at ground-level organizing to give enough volume to these ideas that they can’t be ignored. We can show up in big numbers given enough organization. We are able to leverage a lot of different parts to build a bigger thing that has more impact due the smaller size of the government.

TC: Being a newly elected city councilman, what stands out to you?

WP: The most obvious thing is that the city councilors don’t really have a ton of power. Honestly, I didn’t run on this point because it is sort of a bleak message, but I did understand the dynamic beforehand. The power city council has on paper is really watered down because we all have second jobs and no support staff, while city management is able to devote their full time and hundreds of staff hours toward moderating the political course of the city. To be clear, the vast majority of the work done by staff, both by management and by the largely unionized rank and file, is mostly unseen and underappreciated. It’s what holds our social fabric together. But there’s chafing when that establishment comes into contact with democratically elected leaders, because we are there by design to make changes to the status quo to best serve people. Those changes usually create logistical hassles for staff. In looking to minimize that hassle, city management has taken on a conservative political role, often slow-walking or hampering councilors’ efforts that they either publicly or privately disapprove of through a combination of legal hand-wringing or simply deprioritizing the research and legwork needed to see those efforts through. That creates a sort of paralysed government that can’t adapt to a changing political and economic landscape, and it’s a huge reason Portland is in the crisis it is.

To cut through that malaise and effect change, I need to leverage organizing structures to get our own research and legwork done to bring forward proposals even without management’s blessing, which is frankly one of the most exciting opportunities presented by having an elected DSA cadre. I’m not an electoralist, and I don’t believe that we win socialism simply by getting someone elected, but it allows us to get back to what the party system used to mean, which is to have working class people come together as a team and organize to use democracy to win change.

TC: Can you give me an example of the power imbalance between the city manager and the city councilors? 

WP: The city manager runs all of the full-time staff, and the higher level department leaders get paid well over $100,000. Whereas we get paid $7,000. In reality, I get a check every week for seven bucks, because it goes into benefits. Don’t get me wrong, the health care benefits are good! But being on the city council is not a working-class position. You have got to have another job or the economic flexibility to live off something else. 

TC: Who are the big economic players in Portland and what kind of access do they have to the City Manager and the staff?

WP: Historically it’s been the Chamber of Commerce. Recently, they’ve been pretty, I would say, poorly managed. They’ve staked out a very right-wing stance, and promoted a lot of stuff that many people in Portland find very odd. They’re more anti-worker than they are pro-business. They are an outside organization, they’re not part of city government, but they get to be on decision-making calls, right? They have access to the city manager and department heads that even I don’t have. They’re not lobbying me because I have not been a friend to them. 

TC: What do you want to accomplish this year and what are the biggest barriers you see? 

WP: The number one thing we’re facing right now is a budget shortfall. The state, let alone the federal government, is looking to slash general assistance. A lot of things that are now helping people stay on top of a very thin edge. And without those, it is going to be a bit of an apocalypse. That’s not set in stone yet, and we’re hoping that the state doesn’t make that decision, but we do need to prepare for it and we need to start raising local revenue in creative ways. That means looking for ways to raise taxes and fees on the wealthy, to raise fees while not impacting people who are barely making it through. 

For instance, there’s a push to expand a tax program that sends a check back to people who meet certain requirements after they pay property taxes, which is a workaround to allow us to raise taxes on the wealthiest. But we also have to try to make Maine Med—the biggest hospital in the state— pay its fair share. As a non-profit they don’t pay property taxes even though they continue to purchase property, draining us of revenue which would otherwise allow us to fund social services which could prevent people from needing to go to the hospital in the first place. We can make the cruise ships actually pay disembarkation fees that at least begin to offset the amount of environmental damage they do. We can make the yacht owners pay when they tie up here in the summer. We can start issuing fines on landlords who are breaking rent control. We’ll need to raise revenue so that we can pay our workers and maintain services rather than give into the nihilism of austerity in the face of economic hardship

TC: Trump has declared that unless the state bans trans athletes from competing, he will defund the state. The number I saw was $256 billion in federal funding for Maine. How should we respond to this threat?

WP: There are two kinds of tactics. There is an instinct to keep your head down and not draw attention to yourself. I think that there’s something to be said for that, but I also think that vulnerable people in our community do not benefit from that. I am not a Mills fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I do very much respect holding the line and saying to Trump, you know, fuck you, that’s fascist. We’re not going to go along with that. We have to state our values and make sure that people in our community know that they are safe, regardless of what happens on the federal level. We’re going to be looking after them and we’re not gonna throw them to the wolves. We might think sacrificing one part of our community will save us, but it won’t. Trump’s gonna cut funding over one thing or another. We’re a blue state and he’ll punish us for it. 

The other tactic is really building up community, stuff like holding street fairs, block parties, just showing up and getting people to know each other and building those connections so that when this shit hits the fan, we don’t resort to fearing each other. That’s what fascism preys on. We have to stand in the way of that and build up our side. 

TC: As part of your work in Maine DSA, you’ve helped launch the Portland Tenants Union. What inspired you to get involved in that and what role do you see for the union? 

WP: Everyone is entitled to a place to live, right? If you’re paying rent, you start to have an understanding that this is my home, why is the landlord able to take that away or gouge me on a whim? Building a tenants union means building consciousness and awareness of that antagonistic relationship, and really building up your community, to go back to what I was just staying. You get to know your neighbors and understand that, together, you’re able to push back against someone that otherwise is holding all the cards in their hand. Portland’s in a very unique place because we have rent control so there are tools to fight back. Even if you’re not in a labor union, you are able to say, yeah, I understand what it means to have solidarity and to have comrades and to organize. And all that’s important because, even if it’s not necessarily you who is facing harassment or eviction, you know your neighbors will be protected if it comes to it. 

TC: Last question and this comes from Jess, our Maine DSA communications co-chair. People should join trade unions, tenants unions, immigrants rights organizations, local churches, community groups, softball teams, and local PTAs. We want people to join all sorts of organizations in general. But why should people consider becoming a socialist and joining DSA specifically?

WP: DSA is my political home because, like Portland, it is something that you as a participant and member have the ability to change. You can become involved and you get to know the ropes and you get to know the people. It’s like a social organization, but it is also a political organization. You don’t necessarily need to be friends with everyone, but you know that you are on the same political page. And you get to struggle together and you get to figure out what that means, and really build something that can punch far above its weight. You can help create outsized change by getting just a little bit organized. In DSA, we decide on things together, which doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone’s in agreement or that everyone’s doing it the same way, but we democratically decide on what programs we’re doing and what projects we’re undertaking. Then we pull our resources together, and we pull our members together, and we work to accomplish those plans. We grow because of that and we flex our power. It’s very rewarding. It’s so much more rewarding than sniping from the sidelines, than criticizing everything. Of course, there is a lot of criticism, it’s very much endemic to DSA, but it is part of being involved. 

Join Maine DSA and help us win small things because even those tiny wins can be built into something bigger. It’s better than just throwing up your hands and saying, well, this is not revolutionary enough so I won’t participate. Get involved, do stuff that is, at the very least, pushing towards socialism and, crucially, building organization. It is helping us to get together and be ready for when shit hits the fan and to be prepared to take advantage of turning points, which I think we’re going to have a lot of in the coming months and years, locally, nationally, and globally. Getting organized now helps us be ready to turn things around. 

The post Punching above our weight in Portland, Maine appeared first on Pine & Roses.

On December 9, 2024, after a years-long campaign from a broad-based coalition that DSA-LA is part of, Los Angeles Mayor Bass signed the LA Sanctuary Ordinance. The ordinance is a long overdue policy to protect and defend immigrants and a huge victory for the LA Sanctuary Coalition.  

The campaign for Sanctuary began in 2017 during the first Trump Administration. Despite pressure from the ‘ICE out of LA’ coalition, which demanded that LA adopt a law to disentangle the City from federal immigration enforcement, no policy was introduced at that time. Instead, the City of Los Angeles merely proclaimed itself a “city of sanctuary” and former Mayor Garcetti issued a directive regarding immigration enforcement. This meant that the City of Los Angeles, despite being home to large, diverse, and vibrant immigrant communities, was falling behind other localities such as Santa Ana and Berkeley that adopted policies refusing to use local resources to collude with immigration agents.

Socialists in office make the difference

Fast forward to 2023, after the successful election of DSA-endorsed candidates Nithya Raman, Hugo Soto-Martinez, and Eunisses Hernandez to Los Angeles City Council. Having three socialists in office marked a significant shift in what was possible within local politics. We finally had the champions who were willing to call out the unjust nature of immigration arrests, detentions, and deportations, and to introduce a sanctuary policy.   

The three socialist Council members introduced a motion on March 7, 2023 directing the City Attorney to draft a Sanctuary ordinance. The Sanctuary Coalition had been meeting with them for months to discuss putting forward the strongest possible language, and mobilized dozens of people to turn out that day. 

Fast forward again to October 2024. We were on the cusp of elections and the City Attorney had still not shared a draft ordinance. Worse yet, the City Council was deciding whether to approve the selection of Jim McDonnell as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department.  During his time as the Sheriff of Los Angeles County from 2014 to 2018, McDonnell colluded with ICE to transfer Angelenos for arrest, detention and deportation, separating thousands of families in Los Angeles. In just one year (2017), the Sheriff’s Department spent $1.4 million dollars on ICE entanglement and transferred 1,223 people to ICE. Jim McDonnell also opposed a sanctuary bill at the state level. 

The coalition quickly sprang into action, mobilizing to host two press conferences—one before the Public Safety Committee meeting and the other before the full Council vote. Speakers included leaders from the Central American Resource Center, California Immigrant Policy Center, SEIU USWW, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, and Black Lives Matter-LA. They spoke intersectionally about the ways in which law enforcement has harmed communities of color and the need for the Sanctuary Ordinance. 

The coalition also organized a rally and march that featured Los Jornaleros del Norte playing from a flatbed truck. Hundreds of people showed up to call for Sanctuary, in order to ensure that no LAPD Chief—current or future—would facilitate deportations. Over 80 organizations signed onto a letter underscoring their strong concerns about McDonnell and supporting moving forward with an ordinance that would completely prohibit ICE transfers, as LA County did in September 2020.

No ignoring Trump’s mass deportations pledge

With Donald Trump’s election this past November, it became clear that the City had to take a stance to defy the anti-immigrant bigotry that has defined national discourse and news. There was no ignoring the pledge of mass deportations that was one of the cornerstones of Trump’s campaign. The City would have to prepare for ramped-up targeting, harassment, profiling, and arrests of LA residents. 

On November 19, 2024, with the City Council poised to vote on the ordinance, the Sanctuary Coalition held a vibrant press conference on the steps of City Hall. Hundreds of attendees rallied while speakers representing labor and immigrant rights groups spoke. We then went into City Hall, providing comments and holding up “Sanctuary Now” signs. That day the Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted to pass the Sanctuary Ordinance. 

The organizations that worked on this victory included DSA-LA, ACLU-So Cal, California Immigrant Policy Center, Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), CLEAN Carwash Campaign, Garment Worker Center, National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), SEIU-USWW, Public Counsel, UCLA Center for Immigration Law & Policy, UCLA Labor Center, and many more groups! 

This victory will have a tangible, material impact. The City is committing to refuse its resources (personnel, property, funds, etc.) for immigration enforcement. Immigrants will feel more comfortable accessing City programs, without the fear that contact with the City will result in their deportation. This is significant given that 1.3 million immigrants reside in Los Angeles City, totaling over 34 percent of the population.

Not just in words

The Sanctuary Ordinance makes Los Angeles a true “sanctuary city,” not just in words but in actions. Its key components include: 

• Barring the City from asking about, or collecting, information about a person's Citizenship, Immigration Status, or place of birth

• Preventing the police from citing, arresting, holding, transferring, or detaining any person for Immigration Enforcement purposes

• Not providing any Immigration Agent access to any non-public areas of property owned or controlled by the City, including City jails, for the purpose of Immigration Enforcement

• Prohibiting the direct and indirect sharing of data with federal immigration authorities. City contractors and subcontractors must confirm in writing that they will not share personal information collected for City services with immigration authorities.

•   City staff cannot participate in any joint task force with any immigration agency

•   City staff cannot make any person in City custody available to any immigration agent for an interview

With this important step, LA will no longer support an immigration detention and deportation system that has its underpinnings in white supremacy, settler colonialism, and the exploitation of immigrant workers. The Sanctuary Coalition will continue our work to ensure that our local resources are spent on supporting City residents and making LA a place where working class immigrants can thrive.

The first half of this piece was published  in last month’s issue of California Red. There I discussed the background and initial responses to the Los Angeles fires, including from DSA-LA. 

---

After the fires in Los Angeles had been extinguished, I took time to drive up Lake Avenue toward the San Gabriel Mountains and see the devastation of the Eaton Fire that had torn through Altadena. It’s one thing to see photographs, it’s another to drive past block after block of destruction. Places that I grew up visiting, where I’d share a meal with my family, the homes of friends and their parents reduced to nothing but chimneys and piles of black dust. We’re now more than a month out from the start of the disaster, and the causes, responses, and effects are all beginning to come into focus. 

Origins

Though the causes of these calamities, and ones like them, vary in slight degrees, we know that they are unleashed  by an economic system that prioritizes privatization, profit, and wealth over our safety and dignity.

The Eaton Fire was likely caused by a private utility company, Southern California Edison. For a long time, utilities have paid a lot of money to elect candidates and exploit our ballot measure system to pass laws enabling them to make even more money. Whether they’re charging us higher rates or failing to repair equipment that ends up burning down our homes and livelihoods, it’s always at our expense. They see the loss of wildlife, housing, and people merely as the cost of doing business. It wasn’t long ago when Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), a private utility that has a near monopoly on energy for much of California, started the Camp Fire, destroying the town of Paradise and the surrounding area, killing 85 people. Six years later, the people of Paradise  are still rebuilding. This story is becoming tragically common in our state.

Even when a private utility isn’t to blame for the precise origin of a fire, like the one in the Palisades, the lust for wealth in the US has been both the spark and fuel. With the reality of climate change, extreme weather events are becoming more and more frequent. This will not be the last time that Los Angeles experiences extraordinary amounts of rain followed by drought, and we know that billionaire greed certainly isn’t going to politely go away. As these events become more deadly, ruinous, and costly, it’s incumbent upon us to be serious, realistic, and strategic about our work moving forward. 

The responses

As soon as the fires started, reactionary billionaires were already sowing the seeds of distrust for our government and reciting their common antidotal script for solving our problems: only the wealthy, a market economy, and charity can solve the problems we’re facing.

Landlords also wasted no time in taking advantage of the disaster by immediately raising rents and rushing to evict tenants who’d lost their jobs and income. In response, members of the community began compiling databases that included the listings of units for which the rent had increased more than the legal amount. These efforts caught the attention of elected officials from the local to statewide level.

Billionaires like Rick Caruso have used this tragedy to relaunch their failed political brands. Yes, the same man who hired private firefighters to steal our water in order to save his shopping center is claiming he actually gives a damn about you. Using a foundation that he started in the wake of the fire, he is partnering with one of the founders of AirBnb to “donate” prefab homes to around 100 victims. He is also likely to run for governor. Funny that a company like AirBnb, which has played a significant role in causing housing costs to rise in the United States, suddenly cares about making sure people have housing.

We are also looking at the first instance in US history where a federal government, led by Republicans eager to prove their cruelty has no bounds, may put conditions on disaster relief. Even where this relief has begun, much of the focus has been on the Palisades Fire (the only site Trump bothered to visit), where residents tend to be much wealthier than those affected by the Eaton Fire in Altadena. Of course, loss of belongings and homes is always tragic, but Altadena, a historically Black community in LA County, has already found itself falling behind in the official response. 

Moving forward 

These events have highlighted both the inequities that exist in our country and the interconnectedness of their effects. When people are forced out of their homes, the housing market becomes even more strained. The people who are left able to afford staying in Los Angeles are much more likely to be white and much less likely to be working class. When smoke fills the air for weeks, working class people are much more likely to work outside and suffer the health impacts of unhealthy air quality, if they haven’t lost their jobs altogether. Those health impacts mean people need to seek medical attention from our private healthcare system. If you can afford that, great. If you can’t, well, you can’t. Insurance companies, notorious for avoiding as much coverage as they can get away with, have spent years deciding to no longer cover fire damage.

DSA-LA’s socialists in office (SiOs) on the LA City Council moved quickly to propose tenant protections through an eviction moratorium and rent freeze. Shamefully, despite pressure from DSA-LA and the Keep LA Housed Coalition, a majority of the council has continued to delay the proposal, even as rent checks are due and eviction notices begin to pour in. Thankfully, the LA County Board of Supervisors stepped in with their own temporary protections for tenants where the city failed to do so. Their action, due to the emergency declaration, extends to all the cities within Los Angeles county, providing tenants with much needed relief. 

The Long Term

While disaster relief and tenant protections are absolutely necessary at this moment, capitalism’s need for continual and more costly bailouts is not sustainable or just. We must replace our profit-centric policies with human-centric ones. In other words, though each disaster presents a new challenge, our mission is largely the same: replacing capitalism with democratic socialism.

Los Angeles once had one of the largest transit systems in the country. The problem with that system was that it was all privately owned. As soon as it was no longer profitable to its few private owners, the rails and their charming cars were sold and dismantled. Los Angeles Metro, our public transportation system reviving our rail services since the 1990s, has come a long way, but it remains too dependent on profit-seeking private contractors as it slowly constructs its way around the county. We deserve a truly public transportation system that can get us to all the places where we need to go.

Californians also deserve publicly-owned utilities that provide renewable, affordable, and safe energy to the many rather than providing profits to the few who own them. Campaigns like the Build Public Power New York can serve as case studies for efforts here.

Eviction protections and rent control are steps that we can take in the short term, but beyond that, we deserve guaranteed housing that we can actually afford. This would require a major shift  from our speculative housing market toward housing as a human right.

Disasters and emergencies are going to happen again, and when they do, people will inevitably need healthcare. We know, as democratic socialists, that we need a single-payer, guaranteed healthcare system in California. 

Rather than donations from people like Rick Caruso, we deserve a tax system that forces billionaires to pay their fair share to fund our schools and services. 

As we identify what we want, our next task is to figure out how we’re going to get it. This requires us to come together, both with our chapters and across California, to understand which levers we need to take control of and pull to achieve our goals. We know that even if city-level legislation begins to favor the working class, it will eventually run up against the limitations of the laws passed at the state level

What do you you think democratic socialists should be calling for in the wake of the climate crisis and face of disaster capitalism? What would your vision for the future of California be? What are some of the ways your chapter can begin working with other chapters to win the state power necessary to fight for the working class?

These are some of the questions we can address in California DSA as we face fascism in the federal government and the new uncertainty it brings to California state politics.

Prior to November 5, 2024 we were running our introductory “California DSA 101” sessions every few months for a dozen or two mostly new members. The ninety-minute meetings were held on zoom, and comrades from across California would tune in to learn about the first statewide DSA in the country and have a chance to ask questions of the state officers. 

The presentation featured a slideshow in four parts.  The first three sections addressed basic questions: What is capitalism? What is socialism? and What is DSA? The fourth part consisted of a condensed overview of the state’s political and labor history. We augmented the slideshow with breakout rooms for small group discussion and reserved time at the end for Q&A.  The participant feedback said we were on the right track.  

We then scheduled a session for December 1, a few weeks after the election. We revised the presentation to reflect the changed political landscape, with a new section toward the end on what fascism looks like in twenty first century America.  Seventy comrades showed up; at the next one, earlier this month, we had seventy-five.  

The jump in attendance numbers reflects an understandable dismay at the election results and a healthy desire by comrades to find an organizing space in this historical moment as the curtain descends on American democracy.  With the Democratic Party leadership mostly in confused disarray after its neoliberal election strategy’s catastrophic failure, there is a hunger for answers that make more sense than ‘doing the same thing, only better’. 

We do not pretend in California DSA to have a guaranteed roadmap to success. But we do understand that it will take a powerful mass movement to defeat the fascist forces in control of the federal government. This understanding is already a step ahead of the tired old guard at the top of the Democratic Party. 

While California DSA does not have the resources to lead that mass movement, we certainly do have the ability to help build it.  Our 101 program is a part of that contribution. Come to the next one on March 30.  But don’t wait until then to build the movement. Attend your local DSA chapter meetings and join with your comrades in taking a stand. This isn’t pretend fascism we’re facing. It’s the real thing.

Sign up for our next 101

On February 1st, we held our first State Council meeting of the year with sixty California DSA delegates in attendance. 

After greetings from co-chair Paul Zappia, we heard chapter reports from Los Angeles and East Bay.  Shelby, co-chair of the DSA-LA Climate Justice Committee, spoke about how the state’s largest chapter is responding to the city’s devastating wildfires—coordinating rapid response work and organizing beyond immediate needs to push for solutions such as eviction moratoriums and rent freezes. 

Juan C., co-chair of East Bay DSA, talked about how the chapter started a Boycott Chevron campaign to pressure Alameda County to divest from companies involved in and supporting genocide. Juan also highlighted November wins in local elections, the losses in state elections, and how the chapter is fighting the rightward shift in the Bay Area.

For the rest of the meeting, we had regional breakout groups to discuss what we want to build toward. With all the attacks from our fascist federal government, it’s easy to get bogged down in despair and be on the defensive.  But we must not forget what we are fighting for. Our co-chair Paul said it best in his opening remarks: “Being anti-Trump is not a political program.” 

Some highlights from the discussions included the ongoing need to strike down Prop 13, taxing corporations, social housing, universal healthcare, and building a united front with unions and other natural organizational partners. California DSA leadership will be collecting and assessing these priorities to build a "Vision for California," a program through which we can plan and execute strategic statewide campaigns.

Our next State Council meeting will be on Saturday, April 5th. While only delegates may vote, all DSA members in good standing are welcome to join.

“Escaping this crisis will depend, above all, on the actions of federal workers.”
    —Eric Blanc in ”Federal Workers Can Defeat Musk’s Coup” 

While we felt it as a gut punch, most of us, as socialists, were not really surprised to see some of the first and fiercest attacks from Musk’s munitions exploding on social service workers. Their publicly funded jobs, creating care and use value for the working class at large, hold seeds of the economy and society for which we agonize and organize every day.  I was particularly concerned for two friends, working in different capacities for the Environmental Protection Agency. When I asked them how they were holding up, I got reports of a crazy atmosphere, but also of “interesting developments” they’d soon make public.

Interesting, and heartening indeed, was the announcement from Labor Network for Sustainability and American Federation of Government Workers of a February 14th webinar on fighting funding and job cuts at the EPA. On the heels of this announcement was a message from the newly-formed Federal Unionists Network (FUN), calling for SOS (Save our Services) actions–from rallies to social media posts—across the country on February 19th. This cross-union call for public support to defend the workers and services we all depend on was just what we needed! But how were we to get it together in a scant week?

Event map organizing

FUN was smart. They used the now-common ‘event map’ first seen in Move On actions. Soon, they were partnering with Move On, and the map quickly filled with 59 events across the county. 

With a few minimally annoying minutes filling out the online form, we had a local photo-op here in the East Bay on the map.  

An older technology—human relationships—also facilitated a nimble response to FUN’s call. La Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley holds monthly meetings of “the Old Guard”—activists who founded the Center in solidarity with Chilean refugees in the mid ‘70s. What better place to fight a coup! I quickly asked the Old Guard organizers (whom I’ve known for fifty years) if we could tack the photo op on the end of the meeting, and they were more than happy to support the cause.

I sent email and texts with the link to the FUN site for our Berkeley action to a few of my own connections—Labor Rise Climate Jobs Action Group and Bay Resistance—and voila! we had an action planned!  Day of, I brought a few signs I whipped together and brought some poster board, fat pens and tape for some spontaneous sign-making. Grabbed a comrade with a phone to take pictures to post at #saveourservices on Instagram and Facebook. Brought a guitar to support singing the high energy “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around” during the shoot. It was fun, it was easy, and 75+ folks chatted with each other about resisting the coup. We felt the connection with thousands of protesters around the country.  I’d venture to say we all felt some degree of power in collective resistance to fascism.

Effectiveness requires streets and durability

But was it effective? A question time best answers. I’m convinced that we need mobilizations of large numbers—a visible, noisy united front of all who object to the Musk/Trump takeover. But we’ve seen the limits of mass mobilization in past years. While providing learning experiences and making relationships that may facilitate more enduring organization down the road, the 2020 anti-racist uprisings after the George Floyd murder raise some questions about our failure to stop, or even reduce police violence and murder. 

We need millions in the streets and on apps amplifying our chants and slogans. But we also need durable organizations that can build power to win our demands. We need democratic organizations that can strategize, campaign and evaluate practice free from funders druthers. We need long-lived, brick and mortar institutions like Peña, where food and music and art nourish a culture of resistance over generations. We need membership organizations that nurture leaders and facilitate meaningful participation from busy workers and parents. Little of that happens quickly or on social media.  But that kind of organization-building is what drew me, and I’d wager some of you readers, to DSA.  

Bridging the gap

How do we bridge the seemingly spontaneous, one-shot, energizing, high-turnout mobilizations with our slower, democratic process of building long-lasting working class organizations? Does this nascent Federal Unionists Network offer a clue? 

We don’t know where FUN will go from here. But we do know that this Save Our Services defense against Project 2025 and its fascist trajectory came from (at least intentionally) democratic membership organizations: unions! A network of unions is a different beast from the staff-run, often siloed non-profits that have called for many of the mobilizations we’ve seen.  I’m writing this in hopes that our chapters and California DSA will support the growth of FUN and whatever other union opposition rises against the coup. (Think Shawn Fain’s call for a 2028 general strike?) As resistance to fascism continues to build, I hope DSA will not stand above or apart from the mobilizing events that are springing up in response to the shock and awe of the Musk/Trump monster. But, as socialists, let’s lend major muscle to those actions that help us fight as a class and contribute to the durability and expansion of union and socialist organization.

Upcoming Events

Tuesday, February 25 (7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.): Abolish Rent Reading Group, Session 1 (In person at 438 Haight)

Tuesday, February 25 (7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.): Organizing 102 (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, February 26 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Maker Wednesday (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, February 27 (5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti Imperialist Working Group (Zoom)

Friday, February 28 (4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Education Board Open Meeting (Zoom)

Friday, February 28 (7:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.): Comrade Karaoke (In person at The Roar Shack, 34 7th St.)

Monday, March 3 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Electoral Board Meeting (Zoom)

Monday, March 3 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, March 3 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Tuesday, March 4 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): DSA Board Game Night (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, March 5 (6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): New Member Happy Hour (In person at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia)

Thursday, March 6 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Immigration Justice Priority Working Group (Zoom)

Saturday, March 8 (1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Training & Outreach (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Sunday, March 9 (10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.): Chapter Local Vision and Strategy Meeting (In person TBD)

Monday, March 10 (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Tenderloin Healing Circle (In person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate)

Monday, March 10 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Ecosocialist Monthly Meeting (Zoom)

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

Events & Actions

Electoral Board Organizing to Oppose Removal of Police Commissioner Carter-Oberstone

This week the Electoral Board has organized a letter campaign, direct lobbying action, and turnout for a public commentary hearing to organize opposition to the removal of Max Carter-Oberstone. Commissioner Carter-Oberstone has supported reduction of pretext traffic stops which disproportionately affect People of Color in San Francisco, and had refused to comply with illegal requests from former Mayor London Breed’s office.

Folks who are available today, February 25 at 3:00 p.m. are invited to join us at City Hall for public comment. You can sign up to attend here. Can’t make it or also want to participate in our associated letter writing campaign? Please submit an email to the Board of Supervisors, the Mayor, and the Budget Clerk here.

---

Organizing 102

Come out and flex your organizing skills with the Labor Committee in this follow up to Organizing 101. Attendance at Organizing 101 is not a pre-requisite. At this next session today, February 25, we’ll jump into what it takes to start planning collective actions with a special focus on workplace organizing. We’ll meet 7:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister. See you there!

---

Socialists in Office Hours

SFPD is requesting how many millions in overtime? What’s up with Dorsey wanting to hire some crime consultant for $300k a year? Get answers and ask questions at this week’s Socialists in Office Hours with Jackie Fielder this Friday, February 28 at 3:00 p.m.

---

Maker Wednesday on February 26th

We’ll be having a Maker Wednesday tomorrow, February 26 from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the DSA SF office at 1916 McAllister! Support chapter work through art or bring your own project and come hang out. We’ll be making Know Your Rights cards to support Immigrant Justice, buttons, and more. Masks are required and will be provided! See you there!

---

Comrade Karaoke

Do you like karaoke? Do you like free karaoke? Do you like radicalizing your friends and comrades with the power of song? If so, come through to the Roar Shack (34 7th St) Friday, February 28 from 7:30-10:00 p.m. It’s free with a suggested donation to the chapter of $10. We will have wine and beer available for purchase but feel free to also bring your own bevs and your comrades.

---

Board Game Night

We’re hosting board game night! Come get to know your comrades while playing some board games, all are welcome. We’ll be at 1916 McAllister 7:00-9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 4 with some games, snacks, and drinks to share. 

Behind the Scenes

The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and newsletter, etc. Members can view current CCC rotations.

To help with the day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running, fill out the CCC help form.

Welcome to another Town Meeting Day.

Last year, Champlain Valley DSA’s Burlington-focused voter guide lamented the brevity of the Queen City’s ballot following Democratic city councilors’ unusual refusal to allow voters to consider a citizens’ initiative condemning Israeli apartheid, even though more than 1,700 residents had signed the organizers’ petition. And now, the same thing has happened again.

One question, six towns (or more)

This time around, however, activists didn’t limit their efforts to Burlington. The Apartheid-Free Community pledge – drafted originally by the American Friends Service Committee – will appear on ballots in Winooski, Vergennes, Montpelier, Brattleboro, Newfane, and Thetford. Hearteningly, as it turns out, the Burlington Democrats’ contempt for democracy may be unique within Vermont; across the state, other city councils and select boards have determined to let the people have their say.

Coincidentally, Champlain Valley DSA no longer exists: Green Mountain DSA – a new chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America seeking to represent all of Vermont (or, at least, all but the sliver belonging to our Windsor County comrades in Upper Valley DSA) – has replaced it. On our first Town Meeting Day, we endorse the Apartheid-Free Community pledge in every municipality whose ballot contains it.

The text is the same in all six places. Vote yes on Article 5 in Winooski, Article 7 in Vergennes, Article 13 in Montpelier, Article 2 in Brattleboro, Article 38 in Newfane, and Article 23 in Thetford. Please tell your friends, or you can send them this video or this op-ed written by GMDSA’s co-chair for the Times-Argus.

On behalf of the Shelburne Progressive Town Committee, a member of Green Mountain DSA also plans to propose the Apartheid-Free Community pledge from the floor at Shelburne’s Town Meeting Day, along with a resolution advocating for healthcare reform. GMDSA endorses this effort as well. If you’re planning to attend an in-person town meeting where you live, consider doing the same thing!

Winooski

Due to a procedural error last time around, Winooski must vote again on its Just Cause Eviction charter change, which passed by a huge margin in 2023. You can learn more about Just Cause Eviction, a policy that protects renters, here.

Municipal charter changes must travel through the statehouse. Burlington, Essex, and Montpelier passed Just Cause Eviction in 2021, 2023, and 2024, respectively, but none of them has won permission to implement it. And with the Vermont General Assembly trending rightward, its immediate prospects don’t look good.

But tenants will keep fighting, and someday the tenants will win. GMDSA endorses Just Cause Eviction. Vote yes on Article 4 in Winooski.

Randolph

The Orange County town of Randolph has 4,774 residents. At that size, one might expect it not to have a police force. Jericho, Georgia, and Waterbury are all larger than Randolph, and none of them employ police officers.

Yet Randolph does have its own police department, and that police department has requested a budget of $820,937 for fiscal year 2026. Including generous supplements from the town’s American Rescue Plan Act allocation, spending has grown rapidly since fiscal year 2022, when the town paid just $343,960 for law enforcement services.

The Randolph Police Department serves the Randolph Police District, not the entire municipality. The residents of the Police District, specifically, must therefore approve or reject the police budget as an independent article rather than as a component of the townwide vote on Randolph’s annual general fund expenditure. As a result, they have a chance to say no to this particular form of municipal spending without saying no to the rest.

Like many other parts of Vermont, Randolph appears recently to have begun moving toward austerity. The Orange Southwest School District has proposed cutting $1.1 million from its new budget in order to avoid property tax increases in Randolph, Brookfield, and Braintree. Yet the Randolph Police Department has bet that the growing cheapskate attitude that has emerged out of Vermont’s cost-of-living problem will make an exception for expensive policing.

We hope they’re wrong. GMDSA endorses a “no” vote on Article 5 in Randolph. It won’t abolish the police, but it’ll send Randolph’s bloated cop budget back to the drawing board.

Candidates

The membership of Green Mountain DSA did not vote to endorse any candidates for public office on Town Meeting Day this year. But our Electoral Working Group recommends the 17-candidate slate endorsed by the Vermont Progressive Party.

We’re especially pleased to see Progressives in Windham, Lamoille, and Addison counties running for select board and school board positions. In Burlington, East District and South District candidates Kathy Olwell and Jennifer Monroe Zakaras both face competition for open seats.

Victories in those races would give Progressives a majority on the Burlington City Council. Burlington’s ballot also includes a critical vote on a $152 million bond for improved wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, upon which plans for new housing depend – we recommend a yes on Question 3.

School budgets

Taking a hint from the stronger-than-usual showing for Vermont Republicans in November’s legislative elections, school districts have aimed to head off an anticipated taxpayer revolt on Town Meeting Day by slashing their budgets preemptively. Hundreds of school employees will lose their jobs, but that may not be enough to satisfy voters in some towns.

In 2024, Vermonters shot down about a third of the school budgets across the state, forcing cuts that hurt students, teachers, and families alike. This year, we recommend voting yes on every school budget.

Town Meeting Day is Tuesday, March 4, 2025. Please email us at hello@greenmountaindsa.org if you’d like to join a canvass between now and then (here’s one option), or if you’d like to see an item on your town’s ballot included in this guide. 

You can check your voter registration here. 

Common Ground workers began fighting against mistreatment at work and ended up winning a union and ownership of the business.

The post How Common Ground Cafe workers won a union and a cafe appeared first on EWOC.