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Statement on the Political Retaliation Against Dr. Tammy Carpenter
From the Portland DSA Steering Committee:
At the Beaverton School Board meeting this Thursday, after an hour-long closed-door session, a motion was made to engage a “third-party investigator” to look into the actions and comments of Dr. Tammy Carpenter, an elected school board member and a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). What was her alleged offense? Being an unabashed supporter of Palestinian liberation in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. While discussions in executive session are legally withheld from public records laws, our understanding is that this retaliation was instigated by the Jewish Federation of Portland, an organization lobbying for Zionist interests and the State of Israel that has a history of waging smear campaigns against pro-Palestinian elected officials and community members.
We commend Dr. Carpenter for fighting for the rights of all children – in Beaverton, in Palestine, and around the world. We believe that children have the right to go to school in peace, unburdened by war and famine, and that those defending them are on the right side of history. As the United States’ funding of Israel grows increasingly unpopular, it is clear this “investigation” into Dr. Carpenter is a desperate maneuver to force local governments to crack down on free speech, and to go down with the sinking ship of the Zionist project. In the last 600 days of genocide in Gaza, every public school and university in the territory has been destroyed by the Israeli military. We cannot allow this to continue.
Dr. Carpenter is a beacon of community integrity and is the only elected official on the Beaverton school board to regularly hold town halls, respond to constituent inquiries, and share information with families. She is also a champion of unions and workers’ rights in our schools. It is no wonder that the political establishment is colluding with the Jewish Federation of Portland to slander her.
This is just the latest example of how the US’ war industry attempts to silence dissent around Palestine. Schools – and by extension, school boards – should be a place where people can speak freely and learn the truth about our military’s complicity in genocide. The people of Beaverton elected Dr. Carpenter, and she is our voice for justice.
We call on all supporters of free speech and a free Palestine to rally at the Beaverton School Board meeting to show our opposition to this undemocratic retaliation! Join DSA and allies this Monday, June 2nd, 6:30pm at the Beaverton School District offices at 1260 NW Waterhouse Ave to defend Dr. Carpenter, along with all those facing political retaliation for their support of Palestinian children and families. No to Genocide! Solidarity Forever!
The post Statement on the Political Retaliation Against Dr. Tammy Carpenter appeared first on Portland DSA.
The U.S. will explicitly target socialists
Review: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
Collective Grieving Under Late-Stage Capitalism
Demands Aren’t Enough
By Brent
Over the last 9 years we’ve seen some of the biggest protests in this country’s entire history. Just a couple weeks ago (at time of writing) five MILLION people rallied as part of the nationwide “Hands Off” rallies. I attended the one here in Rochester, which had over 3,000 in attendance. I do not intend for this piece to be a polemic, but to share critiques that both apply to this rally and others like it to consider ways to move beyond the streets toward an organized mass movement.
Nearly 4,000 angry people in a single location, with clear demands like “No Cuts to Social Security” (or Medicare/VA Healthcare/Scientific Research, etc.) and “Get Musk out of Government.” But I saw no clear plan to get those demands achieved, other than to hold up a witty sign and yell and call your legislators. Signs are easily ignored, and federal legislators aren’t up for election for over a year. When at one point attendees were called upon to march, we were instructed to stay on the sidewalks as not to impede traffic.
Four thousand angry people, and 5 million nationwide. The energy is there! But it must be harnessed, organized, and directed towards a shared goal.
Frederick Douglass once said “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” I’ll add to that—power concedes nothing without a threat, ‘cause power will ignore your silly little demands all day long.
In order for demands to be effective, there must be material consequences to ignoring them. After all, they do it to us every day. Every rental lease and every subpar job offer is signed under duress. Agreements signed under the threat of homelessness and starvation. “What are you gonna do? Live somewhere else that charges even more? Work somewhere else that pays even less?”
Those consequences can take a couple different forms: strikes and boycotts.
Strikes are the number one way for workers to affect material change and win their demands. Remember, we don’t need bosses, the bosses need us. If we shut down production, the capitalists can’t make their profits. Unfortunately, sympathy strikes (striking in solidarity with another union) and political strikes (going on strike in support of a political goal unrelated to a contract) are illegal in the US. However, when contract negotiations are happening, workers could, for example, build protections for trans, immigrant, and other workers into their contract and strike until the company agrees to their demands.
“If you’re boycotting everything, you’re boycotting nothing.”
Boycotts are the number one way for consumers to affect material change. We’ve seen success from consumer boycotts in the BDS movement. Puma pulled out of sponsoring the Israeli soccer team, Intel halted production of a factory in Israel, Barclays bank divested from Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit. We’ve also learned that boycotts must be targeted. If you’re boycotting everything, you’re boycotting nothing. Pick a target, make your demands, and boycott them until those demands are reached.
I’m glad people are fired up, it’s good to see people taking a stand on something they care about. But that energy must be channeled into productive methods of change. By all means, call your reps—I do! But also, organize something bigger than that. Unionize your workplace, fight for a new radical contract. It’s on us to facilitate that. In the words of labor organizer and former General Secretary of the Communist Party USA William Z. Foster, “The left wing must take the lead in the organization of the unorganized millions. This is an historic necessity of the situation. We must not falter or fail at our task. It is a time for intelligent, courageous, militant action.”
The post Demands Aren’t Enough first appeared on Rochester Red Star.
For Ruth and Rosane: Mass Workers Battle Another Wave of ICE Kidnappings
By: Travis W, Brad L, James N, Reid J
Timeline of Events:
- Tuesday, April 29, East Boston: ICE detains Ruth Mufute at Logan Airport
- Wednesday, April 30, Boston: Mass mobilization at the Moakley Courthouse demanding Ruth’s release
- Thursday, May 1, East Boston: ICE releases Ruth from custody
- Sunday, May 4, Waltham: ICE abducts a Working Mass author’s neighbor, still in custody, and leaves a child abandoned in the street after abducting their guardian and mocking volunteers
- Wednesday, May 7th, Worcester: ICE arrested a man, Clara Moura’s partner and father of her three-month old son, on his way to work and told her she needed to sign documents at an immigration facility the next day
- Thursday, May 8th, Worcester: ICE arrests Clara Moura when she arrives with her infant child and is told by ICE that her mother needed to take custody of her daughter during the arrest, forcing Clara to call her mother Rosane Ferreira-De Oliveira, who is baited out of her house to be promptly arrested by ICE — but after 25 people intervene, ICE calls city police for backup
- Friday, May 9th, Worcester: Hundreds, including Worcester DSA members, march from City Hall to Worcester Police Department headquarters, as community leaders and activists voice concerns during a YMCA press conference
- Sunday, May 11, Worcester: People rally again to the Worcester Common
- Monday, May 12, Boston: DSA member and schoolteacher witnesses ICE regrouping at a Boston staging ground
- Tuesday, May 13, Worcester: City officials decide to close City Hall, citing “threats of violence”, the same day another non-violent protest was planned outside the building
- Thursday, May 29, Somerville: ICE attacks Somerville High School, only to stare off a crowd protecting students during dismissal
Immigrant Worker Detained, Then Freed Under Community Pressure
By: Travis Wayne
EAST BOSTON, MA: On her return from vacation on Tuesday, April 29, Ruth Mufute was detained at Logan Airport.
A member of the Student Clinic for Immigrant Justice, Ruth is a 70-year-old community organizer known for wearing colorful hats and building community in her workplace. Despite her permanent legal residency status, Ruth was detained by ICE upon her arrival back from Zimbabwe.
The community rallied with less than twenty-four hours. The Student Clinic for Immigrant Justice sent out its call to all organizations of immigrant workers, who in turn mobilized their bases to Moakley Courthouse demanding Ruth’s release the next day. Unionists and organizers spread the emergency call by word of mouth, including throughout Boston DSA.
At noon on Wednesday, April 30, people poured out to Moakley Courthouse. One community member welcomed the crowd with song. Jonathan Goldman, executive director of the Student Clinic for Immigrant Justice, said:
Ruth is a 70-year-old grandmother, a mother, a wife, and a beloved member of our community. She’s the type of person who wants to make sure you always go home with leftovers so you have something to eat, the first person to turn on the music to dance together, the sort of person who rallies together our staff to throw a surprise birthday for me after she’s only been working there for two months. That’s the sort of person Ruth is.
Jaya Savita, director of the Asian and Pacific Islander Civic Action Network and coordinator of the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network, said:
“The Trump Administration is using deportations as a way to repress working families and also now as a way to silence people and hold cities that speak out for justice and defy him. Across Massachusetts, we refused to be silenced. We refuse to stop defending our immigrant residents from this state violence. On the eve of International Workers’ Day, we’re calling on the public elected leaders and the media to be in solidarity with immigrant worker women of color — like Ruth.”
The organizations that bottomlined the Wednesday solidarity action followed the mass mobilization of community members with mass emails, legal proceedings, and further statements of pressure from prominent Boston community leaders. “Ruth is a lawful green card holder residing in Worcester, and her only crime seems to be working with a known immigrant non-profit,” the organization argued.
The next day, the government rescinded its “motion for detention.” Ruth was released on International Workers’ Day.
Abductions in Waltham
By: Brad L
WALTHAM, MA – On Sunday, May 4th, I was on the scene immediately following an ICE raid in Waltham. I watched the secret police get in their all-black Dodge Chargers, Dodge Durangos, and Chevy Tahoes. An anonymous source informed me that this was the second one they knew about that day. It was only 10AM.
That same day, in the same Waltham suburb, ICE abducted a third neighbor. They kidnapped an adult and abandoned the child that was with the adult in the street. Volunteers helped the kid get home while the secret police filmed the volunteers in mockery.
It’s clear that ICE local attacks’ geographic spread is informed by Greater Boston’s own history of rigid segregation and layout of immigrant communities. Dense and vibrant concentrations of immigrant neighborhoods in East Boston, Chinatown, Mattapan, Chelsea, and Quincy seem to be particular targets of the Trump Administration. Another is Waltham, home to new immigrant communities from Guatemala, China, India, Haiti, and Uganda, as well as immigrant workers key to Boston’s construction, domestic, and academic industries.
At this point, it has become clear that Boston and its metropolitan area is a special target of the secret police terrorizing immigrant worker communities nationwide. Boston’s “sanctuary city” status has made the city a target to the Trump Administration currently also in a public war with Harvard University, one of Greater Boston’s largest employers. According to Tom Homan, ICE’s seizure of 370 people from their homes, workplaces, and places of worship in just the March wave of abductions in Massachusetts was a direct response to the Governor’s and Boston Mayor’s apparent efforts to prevent the Boston Police Department from cooperating with ICE.
This is what fascism looks like: a violent crackdown on a city as punishment for even weak attempts to defend residents.
Since the city has proven unable to defend us, organizers continue to build grassroots community defense. One of these is the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network, an entirely volunteer-run and immigrant-led organization that coordinates immigration defense in Massachusetts, which organized the release of Ruth Mufute on International Workers’ Day.
Boston DSA’s Internationalism and Immigration Working Group (IIWG) is also organizing a strategic campaign and building relationships with immigrant rights coalitions. Anthony O-F, co-chair of IIWG, told Working Mass:
We’ve established nascent relationships with immigrant rights groups across eastern Massachusetts such as MIRA (Boston DSA has formally joined) and BIJAN (collaboration partner). We’ve done a lot of organizer trainings to do ICE watch work and know your rights talks.
Since then, IIWG has formally solidified its ICE watch plan. Organizers have agreed to combine a campaign against the State House for safe communities and rent stabilization legislation with ICE watch hotline trainings and mass education to combat the secret police.
Keeping the Heat on ICE
By: James N and Brad L
WORCESTER, MA — Three days before Mother’s Day, on Thursday, May 8, ICE arrested a grandmother: Rosane Ferreira De-Oliveira.
Rosane’s violent arrest was the culmination of twenty-four hours of terrorizing unleashed by ICE on one Brazilian family in Worcester. First, they arrested Clara Moura’s partner and father of her three-month old son on his way to work. Then, they told Clara that she needed to sign documents at an immigration facility the next day. Clara Moura left with her sister and infant, was detained by ICE, and forced to ask her mother Rosane Ferreira De-Oliveira to leave her home to take her grandchild during Clara’s arrest. As soon as Rosane stepped out onto Eureka Street, ICE left Clara alone and abducted Rosane. The Rolling Stone described the secret police’s strategy for what it was: using her daughter as bait to kidnap Rosane.
The outrageous arrest by ICE and subsequent response by city police galvanized activists, residents, and organizers.
By the time the arrest culminated, around twenty-five people had begun intervening directly. Federal agents were surrounded by community members chanting for the secret police to stop and screaming “Where’s the warrant?” and “Don’t take the mother!” as they surrounded the car where Rosane was held. An agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) was also on the scene, according to one witness. Community members hounded ICE agents until ICE agents called the Worcester Police Department, who intervened militarily, suppressing the popular crowd and escorting the unmarked car of the secret police from the scene. Many audience members reported Worcester police used excessive force by pinning the 16-year-old sister of Clara Moura to the ground.
Yesterday, ICE came to Eureka St in Worcester to steal a woman out of her home
— 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗗𝗦𝗔
A crowd gathered to protest, and WPD swooped in to arrest two people (including her teenage daughter), make sure ICE got the job done, and escort their unmarked car off the scenepic.twitter.com/i1gCqT8ozo
(@WorcDSA) May 9, 2025
(@WorcDSA) Claire S.D. volunteers with LUCE, who received a tip through their hotline about ICE activity on Eureka Street in Worcester. Claire and other members of their rapid response team reported to the scene as the popular crowd unfurled around agents. One glimmer of hope amidst the ICE crackdown, Claire said, was the response by Worcester residents and activists who tried to stop ICE agents.
The community intervened. They intervened to send a message that there’s another force, nonviolent power. The immigrant is so central to Worcester .. and these raids are an affront to who we are.
Claire also noted the arrests of three women, one of them holding an infant, occurred just prior to Mothers Day.
Worcester City Manager Eric Batista performed impressive moral dodgeball in his press conference on the incident. “I want to reassure our community that the municipality will never target individuals based on their immigration status and reaffirm that the City of Worcester and Worcester Police Department does not assist with ICE civil detainments, according to Massachusetts State Law, but may not interfere with it,” Batista said. “However, it is the municipality and department’s responsibility to uphold the law and protect the peace of our community.”
In other words, Worcester’s city manager was careful to underscore that the police does not assist ICE, but does not interfere, and if there was a threat, and the police did happen to assist ICE, then that was because it’s to uphold the law and protect Worcester from immigrants.
Batista did not earn favor for that response.
On Friday, May 9, hundreds marched from City Hall to the Worcester Police Department to stand against ICE and the city’s police response. Jake S, Worcester DSA organizer and communications chair, said at the rally:
Cops aren’t here to protect us either, and every time they get the chance, they show us whose side they’re really on, whether that means cracking skulls on picket lines or ripping apart immigrant families,
Mayor Joseph Petty filed an order with the city clerk asking Batista and the police chief to create a written policy on how the city interacts with ICE. The Mayor’s request indicates the city has no formal policy about ICE interactions.
Jake S continued:
Instead of listening to [Batista] justify more police funding and tax breaks, Worcester DSA is going to host our own State of the Workers address to let him hear what we think of his management style.
The State of the Workers address on Wednesday, May 21 was held directly outside of Worcester City Hall. As Eric Batista delivered his State of the City speech, he was drowned out by the sounds of activists in the audience yelling “ICE out of Worcester!” and “Batista out of office!” until they were escorted out by security. Worcester DSA held its forum for the wider working class outside the venue. They accused Batista and the municipal government of siding with the Worcester Police Department’s abetting of the ICE raid on Eureka Street, as well as its own self-investigation of excessive force, racial discrimination, and brutal accounts of regular sexual assault. Jake S went on to call for the abolition of ICE itself:
Our demand is not so simple as ‘come back with a warrant,’ And we don’t just want ICE out of Worcester — we want ICE out of business! We’re against all attempts to underpay, illegalize, disorganize, or otherwise precaritize immigrant labor, and that includes opposing separate punishments like deportations.
Meanwhile, Clara Moura put together a GoFundMe for financial support after ICE’s attack on her family. As of this writing, they have yet to reach their own fundraising goal. You can support them in reaching here.
ICE Attacks A High School
By: Travis Wayne
SOMERVILLE, MA – On Thursday, May 29, ICE staged an attack on Somerville High School, only to be repelled by a large crowd protecting students during dismissal. Students all escaped without abduction and the crowd dispersed by 4PM.
LUCE was joined by mutual aid groups in mobilizing people to the scene before the high school bells rang and ICE descended. Crowds of Somerville residents that showed up just two months earlier at Powder House within hours appeared to defend students at Somerville High’s dismissal with only an hour of warning. Two ICE vehicles had been confirmed on Highland Avenue.
Local workers also indicated to Working Mass that they’d been seen in East Somerville earlier, prior to the high school raid.
As early as February, East Somerville community leaders told City Council that their clients at immigrant restaurants were being pushed into hiding by ICE. Many businesses are worried that the secret police would force them to close their doors by emptying the streets of East Somerville of foot traffic. About 75% of Somerville enterprises are immigrant-owned.
Somerville High School wasn’t the first school in the Greater Boston area where students have been forced to flee ICE. The secret police’s tinted windows were spotted by an anonymous schoolteacher and Boston DSA member in her workplace on May 12, as well. “We couldn’t even walk the kids to the park, we snuck back outside,” the teacher reported.
But the cars weren’t there for a raid. Instead, they utilized the school lot as a staging ground. Organizers and immigrant activists now suspect ICE uses some parts of the metro area as staging grounds, others as target raid zones.
The crowd at Somerville High School dwindled by 4PM. Organizers began mobilizing people to the next action: protecting students coming to school. Residents reported back to the high school the next morning at 7:15AM.
But on Friday, May 30, ICE was gone.
Towards Community Defense
By: Reid Jackson
Boston, MA – New England finds itself on the front lines of authoritarian overreach once again, just like nearly 250 years ago in the struggle for the nation’s independence against the British Empire. From Worcester to Boston, the threat of ICE looms over our communities as the secret police targets the most vulnerable members of our Commonwealth. The Trump Administration has targeted immigrant workers in justice organizations, like Ruth, and baited grandmothers out by hostaging their children, like Rosane. Organizations like LUCE and MIRA continue to build up a volunteer base capable of instituting the first steps necessary to stop ICE.
One of the most powerful tools in ICE’s arsenal is that ICE has the benefit of making the first move, often without warning, against the targets they want. They attack at the best time for them and the worst time for any resistance to organize. But we do know now multiple points of information about their movements. We know they hold staging locations, as observed by one Boston DSA member and schoolteacher at work, and we have observed the pattern of which cars they use for patrols in New England, at minimum: Dodge Chargers, Dodge Durangos, and Chevy Tahoes. LUCE posted other information for community awareness as ICE raids increased in May:
Beyond reporting to LUCE for rapid response to both raid and staging locations, as well as building up the volunteer network of hotline responders, there iss another potential step to combat ICE raids: mapping. Mapping involved collecting enough data about these raids to populate projects like the Immigrant Defense Project has piloted to outline areas ICE is likely to target, geomapping where to allocate watch group resources. This map would have to be regularly updated with reliable reports from a hotline like LUCE’s, but make reaching individuals before ICE has a chance to detain them far easier. This has shown promise in New York community defense.
As we build up our community defense today, we can look to historic resistance groups that did even more with less. In 1966, the Black Panther Party of California took advantage of the state’s open carry laws at the time and literally “policed the police” by following cruisers around in their own vehicles and intervening with their weapons drawn if any traffic stops would occur. It’s hard to say how this would result in de-escalating violence with today’s hyper-militarized police if similar tactics were used, nor is it clear how we can track secret police movements without a base of community connected enough for rapid response. Geomapping represents a step towards making Panther tactics possible.
This wave of ICE raids seems to have receded. It’s possible that multiple high-profile incidents caught by the media have brought too much heat to the federal agency’s Massachusetts operations. Incidents such as Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Oztürk’s kidnapping in broad daylight in Somerville and the disturbing video of both ICE and the Worcester Police Department working to detain Rosane amidst a popular crowd of twenty-five fighting back shook across Massachusetts. But so did the possibility for collective power. The crowd forced ICE to call for reinforcements in Worcester while beating them back from their raid in Somerville. People power works.
But the situation may worsen. On Thursday, May 22, the House of Representatives passed Donald Trump’s so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” with one big pile of planned attacks on the working class. These include benefits for the rich and historic cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, the vestiges of welfare remaining in the starved American bureaucracy. They also include deep stripping of access to HRT, ensuring trans death, leading the entire bill to be described by trans organizers as a “Murder Budget.” Most forbodingly for organizers focusing on defending against ICE abductions, the bill headed to the U.S. Senate includes $45 billion for detention facilities, $14 billion for deportation operations, and funds for 10,000 new secret police agents by 2029.
We’ll need the collective organization to fight.
Travis Wayne is the deputy managing editor of Working Mass and the co-chair of the Somerville branch of Boston DSA.
Brad L is a community organizer in Massachusetts focused on building grassroots power and fighting for healthcare justice.
James N is a member of Worcester DSA.
Reid Jackson is a contributing writer to Working Mass and a former member of the YDSA at the University of Rhode Island.
Solidarity with Austin’s Muslim Community
By Austin DSA
For over a year and a half, Austin DSA has argued that the state of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people is inseparable from struggles for justice in Texas and the United States. We see this everywhere: from the militarized police forces that stalk Black and Brown neighborhoods after being trained by the Israeli military, to the women in Gaza forced to navigate reproductive healthcare structures that have been obliterated by imperial US foreign policy as reactionary domestic policy destroys those same systems at home. The local is inseparable from the international, as the violence that the US oversees abroad returns to our own communities in the form of fascist violence.
We stand in solidarity with Nueces Mosque, Austin Diyanet Center, and the Islamic Ahlul Bayt Association (IABA), which on May 22 were spray painted with “symbols, including Stars of David, defacing the mosque’s main entrance and surrounding property.”
Conventional media in the United States often frames violence in Palestine as a religious conflict that has lasted for centuries. The spray painting of a Star of David on a mosque perpetuates this myth, when in fact, this conflict is defined by the aggression of a Zionist, racist, setter-colonial state against an indigenous people which refuses to let itself be destroyed. Framing this as a religious conflict hides a national liberation struggle and inflames both Islamophobia and antisemitism around the world. While Zionism claims that no Jewish person can be safe from antisemitism without a militarized ethnostate, Jewish people suffer when their religion is co-opted and equated to the violent, political ideology of Zionism.
The use of a Jewish religious symbol as a hate crime object against Austin’s Muslim community at large and the UT community at Nueces Mosque in particular is only one more example of how these dynamics have tangible consequences in our city. Recall the stabbing of Zacharia Doar following a Palestine solidarity protest in Austin in 2024, the attempted drowning of a child in Euless, TX later that year, and the emboldening of local neo-nazi groups to carry out actual antisemitic hate crimes in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election. None of us are safe unless all of us are safe.
Austin DSA and Austin Against Apartheid organize for a free Palestine by diverting US resources away from Israeli genocide and apartheid. In doing so, we are standing against all occupational forces that stand between working class people and freedom. We all deserve to live in a world free from money spent on state violence and war instead of life affirming services like housing, healthcare, and social safety nets. Israel’s aggression and religious framings of the conflict breed acts of hatred around the world. The struggle for Palestinian liberation affords us a vocabulary for envisioning a safer, freer world. A free Palestine means a safer society at home and abroad.
The post Solidarity with Austin’s Muslim Community first appeared on Red Fault.
Two Men Abducted by ICE in Maine
On May 26th, Marcos Henrique and Lucas Segobia, both skilled workers here in Maine, were abducted by ICE on their way to work at 6am. They are being held at Twin Bridges Facility in Wiscasset on no charges, and they fear removal from the state and deportation. As of this report, a representative stated that the men were informed they would be moved shortly. If and when they are, it will be hard for their legal representatives to locate them. This is how the government disappears people.
In response, there was a press conference today, May 30th, at 10 AM in front of Portland City Hall. Roughly 100 people showed up on short notice to show support, along with local news outlets. Those who spoke included friends, family, and coworkers of the two who were abducted.
When neither of Lucas or Marcos showed up for work on Monday morning, loved ones tried to locate the pair for over 36 hours. In that process of calling Border Patrol, ICE detention Centers, Local prison facilities, and using the ICE locator page, family members were misled and lied to multiple times before they were located. Worse, Marcos and Lucas were lied to about where they were, believing they were in Portland when they were in Wiscasset. Every person in this country has a right to due process and habeas corpus. To waive the rights of people based on their immigration status is not just an attack on the immigrant community, it is an attack on everyone. We must bring Lucas and Marcos home to their friends and family.
People’s Inclusive Welding, Southern Maine Worker’s Center, Maine DSA, and more are desperately urging the Maine community to contact their representatives, both locally, statewide, and nationally, to express outrage at this miscarriage of justice.
The post Two Men Abducted by ICE in Maine appeared first on Pine & Roses.
Ecosocialist Working Group Releases Transit Rider Survey Report
By Ecosocialist WG member Jordan Lewis
Transit isn’t just a nice-to-have; someone in your community relies on it, and they deserve better service.
In anticipation of Oregon’s once-a-decade Transportation Package, which decides transportation spending priorities for the years ahead, Portland DSA boarded TriMet’s busiest bus and train routes to survey actual daily riders. Our goal was to learn the needs of those who depend on transit so we could best advocate for them in state deliberations over the transportation package. We felt riders were not advocated for in these negotiations, as proceedings tended to center lane expansion projects and a “back to basics” framing over any kind of transit service improvements. This was confirmed when the Oregon Transit Association warned of coming service cuts if the existing STIF Payroll tax were not raised from 0.1% to 0.5% (early drafts of the package proposed a mere 0.18% STIF rate).
“My commute time to work used to be 15 min to the Portland VA when the 64 still existed. Now my commute time is 1 hour with transfers even though I live 15 min driving distance from work. This has been an abysmal change that has made my workdays so much harder […] It doesn’t help that I am also disabled with constant chronic pain, to add to how difficult my life has become since this bus schedule was unnecessarily changed.”
The Ecosocialist Working Group, itself composed of many regular transit riders, recognized Elite Projection in how media, local and state governments told stories about public transit. While they describe our buses and trains as “Portland’s largest homeless shelter”, with otherwise fine service interrupted by homelessness on the streets and on trains, our membership did not think that was the whole story. Our suspicions were supported by Trimet’s own Attitude & Awareness Survey (A&A) which did report safety concerns twice as common as cleanliness or service concerns, but whose demographic data showed a non-representative sample. 66% (!) of A&A respondents had Bachelors Degrees or higher; 24% had the option to work fully-remote.
It is our belief that the A&A survey, which was distributed via advertisement, mail and e-mail to those already on TriMet’s internal contact lists, oversampled professional office workers who may not ride as much post-pandemic. Our survey was designed to be distributed in-person, either digitally or with pen and paper, to those riding the bus, MAX or streetcar during rush hour or on weekends. We thought this approach would better represent the average TriMet users who rely on it as a public service. We surveyed every “Frequent Service” transit route in the city of Portland in order to maximize response rate, and we selected sessions geographically in order to distribute surveys evenly across the city. We did not collect any identifying data other than ZIP Code, regularity of riding and Transit route (due to data privacy concerns), but the geographic distribution seemed very even across the city. In total, we canvassed 340 riders from 65 zip codes, across 33 transit routes. While 11% of our respondents rode less than once per week, 40% of “Attitude & Awareness” respondents rode less than once per month.
The survey findings did not totally contradict the A&A survey; most riders still listed passenger behavior as their most common negative experience, but poor stop shelter conditions trailed it by a few percentage points. When increased service frequencies were offered alongside increased outreach workers, the same riders who reported feeling unsafe preferred increased frequencies.
“Specific to the 77, more frequency. Overall unpleasant conditions at stops makes the experience waiting at the bus uncomfortable. I ride with my toddler and there is often human feces and drug paraphernalia. Lack of marked well lit crosswalks at stops also means I get off further than I would like to so that I can feel safer crossing at night.”
Our theory as Ecosocialists is that ridership follows service quality just as much as it follows homelessness rates. A strategy to improve transit service, both for current riders and for potential new ones, must prioritize increased service frequency, cleaning/maintenance of shelter facilities, and an increased presence of unarmed rider ambassadors to de-escalate difficult situations onboard.
“Most buses downtown have incredibly difficult disabled access. trimet security and police intimidate and harass people and delay trips and make riders feel unsafe. NARCAN. security should be public safety such as narcan, not policing fare.”
All of these improvements require an increase in funding to agencies like TriMet through raising the STIF Payroll Tax to at least 0.5% by 2030, and ideally to a full 1% by 2035.
The next steps are to lobby for these changes, both through discussion with state representatives and senators, and during the public testimony opportunities which are as-of-yet unannounced. The Package (now known as TRIP) is still under discussion, and so the specifics of the Bill have not yet been revealed, though a draft was released in early April and a controversial May memo has not inspired much confidence. Move Oregon Forward has an email form through which you can contact state officials with influence over the bill. Ecosocialist WG member Jordan Lewis has reserved a public communications slot at Portland City Hall at 9:30 AM on June 11, which he will use to present the findings of this report to city council.
You can view or download the full report here (PDF, 854KB):
“We need more seating and shelters at more stops, it sucks to have to stand at a stop while waiting for a ride.”
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