Organizing in remote workplaces is based on the same principles of in-person organizing, but it can be daunting to reach out to people you’ve never met.

The post How Do You Organize in a Remote Workplace? appeared first on EWOC.

Cleveland DSA joins the rest of the Democratic Socialists of America in condemning President Trump’s immediate assault on immigrants, trans people, and workers through his recent slew of executive orders. These orders will not only make life worse for workers across the nation, they highlight the undemocratic nature of the US state, investing such powerful authority in its executive and judiciary to carry out these attacks while obstructing and limiting our proportional representation as workers in the legislature.

As socialists, we are not surprised that right-wing Republicans are joining their pro-capitalist, anti-worker economic policies with hateful culture-war rhetoric, which always go hand-in-hand—neither are we surprised that Democrats, equally committed to the status quo, have failed to put up any meaningful resistance to these efforts, with many falling directly in line. Despite these conditions, DSA will continue fighting for its program and loudly proclaiming that Workers Deserve More! While we prepare to defend each other, we will never stop demanding universal healthcare, a shorter work week, an end to the US war machine, a free Palestine, and a socialist economy that works for us all. 
It is our belief that only the organized power of the working class, whether at the ballot box or in the streets, can prevent Trump’s agenda from coming to pass. It is our mission to do everything we can over the next four years to build that power. To join us in resisting these attacks on working people and to build a socialist alternative to the two-party system, join DSA at https://dsausa.org.

The post Cleveland DSA Statement on Trump Executive Orders appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

CT DSA welcomes the ceasefire in Gaza that began on Sunday, January 19, 2025, as a result of the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their heroic resistance against the United States-backed Israeli genocide. Although we never held any illusions about the cruelty of imperialism, the images coming out of Gaza for the past 15 months have shocked our consciences beyond words. The depravities committed by the Israeli occupation forces have inflicted a deep injury to humanity and dignity.

Across our region, many people are frustrated by the political system and eager for change. One major obstacle is the current campaign funding structure, which allows vast amounts of money to be funneled into races at all levels of government, sidelining the voices of everyday residents. When most campaign funding comes from super PACs and special interests, policies are inevitably shaped by those donors rather than the people. This must change.

New York City’s Campaign Matching Funds Program for empowering residents. This program amplifies small-dollar donations by matching them with public funds, allowing grassroots candidates to compete without relying on big-money donors. By implementing a similar system in Cincinnati, we can create a fairer electoral process that supports candidates who prioritize residents’ needs rather than corporate interests.

Currently, establishment candidates in Cincinnati benefit from a fundraising system that makes it difficult for grassroots campaigns to compete. While some local leaders have enacted positive policies, much more must be done to address the serious challenges our communities face. A publicly funded campaign matching system would level the playing field and ensure that candidates focused on working people—not wealthy donors—have a fair shot at winning office.

It’s time to bring this reform to Cincinnati. We need to build momentum for a Campaign Contribution Matching Program and push for action. Let’s organize, advocate, and demand a system that puts power back in the hands of the people.

A plea from a civil servant: do not let them overwhelm you into apathy. We must stay united, informed, and proactive.

Thorn West: Issue No. 224

State Politics

• Amid fears that his administration will withhold federal aid, Governor Newsom met with President Trump in Washington DC.

• Newsom announced that Casey Wasserman, currently serving as chair of the Olympics Committee, will also lead a private-sector wildfire recovery program, known as “LA Rises,” along with Magic Johnson and Dodgers owner Kevin Walter. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass appointed Steve Soboroff, former chair of the police commission, to lead the recovery effort in Pacific Palisades. It isn’t yet clear how the multiple city and state efforts will be coordinated.

City Politics

• At a press conference with Mayor Bass and other local leaders, President Trump demanded that Pacific Palisades residents who had lost their homes be immediately allowed to begin the process of rebuilding, before they could be safely cleared of toxic debris. His subsequent executive order implemented an “unprecedented” short time frame for debris removal.

Health Care

• Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles to demand that the hospital reverse its recent decision to stop offering gender-affirming care to transgender youth. The hospital’s decision was a capitulation to an executive order from President Trump threatening to derail federal funding to medical institutions that provide this form of health care.

Immigration

• A week of protests at City Hall, as well as student walkouts, all in opposition to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies, gained media attention after protestors briefly shut down the 101 freeway.

• A leaked document obtained by the LA Times indicates that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning a “large scale” flood of “immigration enforcement actions” this February in Los Angeles.

Environmental Justice

• Video evidence strongly implicates Southern California Edison equipment as the cause of the Eaton fire. Spokespeople for the private utility company initially denied responsibility, and even attempted to shift blame to a nearby encampment, but have now acknowledged irregularities with their equipment at the time of the fire.

• Rain earlier in the week caused debris flows in the burn scar of the Palisades fire, triggering a weeklong shut down of a stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway. Heavier rain is expected this week.

The post Trump Executive Orders Derail Wildfire Recovery + Spark Protests appeared first on The Thorn West.

[[{“value”:”

Other Surveillance Technology Proposals Pass Council, Despite Community Opposition

By Siobhan M.

CAMBRIDGE — Community members flooded a meeting of the Cambridge City Council on Monday evening, successfully pushing the City Council to shunt back to committee a proposal for a surveillance drone for the Cambridge Police Department. The Council, over many residents’ strong objections, voted 6-3 to approve two other surveillance proposals: a device to unlock cell phones seized by police, and automated license plate recognition technology to allow police to track residents. The city’s unelected chief executive, City Manager Yi-An Huang, brought all three proposals on behalf of the Cambridge Police Department.

47 members of the public registered to speak at the meeting, the vast majority of whom spoke in opposition to the surveillance technology. “I’m terrified that the federal government has announced they’re going to go after my friends who have spoken truth to power about Palestine, and I do not want the Cambridge police to have more tools to do the same” said Dan T., a member of Boston Democratic Socialists of America, during the meeting’s public comment period. Dan stated this as part of a comment in which he also advocated for a municipal housing voucher program. Affordable housing was noted by many commenters as a better use of public funds than surveillance technology.

DSA was far from the only group standing up to this proposed expansion of the surveillance state. MIT’s Coalition Against Apartheid and Harvard’s Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee put out a joint statement urging community members to oppose the proposals, and many students and university workers answered the call. As “a union organizer and a community organizer,” Hanna M., a grad worker at MIT, said she has “had lots of firsthand experience with Cambridge PD, who shows up to even the smallest community actions with numbers, technology, and force that I would call comically unnecessary if it wasn’t also deeply chilling…a main use case of this technology is surveilling civilians who are exercising their right to protest.”

Some community members also highlighted the toll these proposals would take on surveilled communities. “Everyday surveillance puts significant wear and tear on the human body, elevating blood pressure and heart rate, ultimately resulting in chronic illness and staggering rates of poor mental health,” said Somaia S., a medical student. “Surveillance technology is not what Cambridge needs and is in direct opposition with the well being and good health of our community.”

While the Council’s majority seemed unconcerned by automated licence plate recognition technology, commenters noted it is a powerful tool to aid police misconduct and repression. Across “hundreds” of documented cases, police misused license plate readers “to get information on romantic partners, business associates, neighbors, journalists and others for reasons that have nothing to do with daily police work.” Virginia police were also caught using theirs to build databases of individuals attending political rallies.

While the community was able to fend off surveillance drones in Cambridge, they have been adopted by police departments across the country to monitor protests. An estimated 1,400 law enforcement agencies now use drones, with “event monitoring” seen among police as an increasingly necessary function. Yale PD, who arrested 48 pro-Palestine demonstrators at a sweep of a student encampment on April 22, 2024, were later revealed to have compiled a massive trove of information on the protestors, including drone images and social media profiles.

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) was slated to help fund all three Cambridge PD proposals. UASI is a federal grant program of over $500 million a year to militarize and increase the surveillance capacity of state and local governments, as well as private nonprofits. Alongside other programs like the State Homeland Security Program (SHSP), this process of militarizing police departments functions as a giveaway of more than $1 billion per year to private weapons and surveillance contractors. UASI and SHSP were initiated in 2003, shortly after DHS’s founding, alongside other DHS elements like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). These DHS programs collectively serve to spy on and repress working class communities and political movements while lining the pockets of capitalist war and surveillance profiteers.

As part of his opposition to all three surveillance proposals, Boston DSA’s endorsed Cambridge City Councillor, Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, raised concerns about the surveillance technology also being used to enforce a future federal abortion ban.

Concerns about the Trump Administration’s potential misuse of surveillance data are entirely justified, but the surveillance and abuse of protestors has often been a bipartisan project. Democratic Party-led cities across the country used police to crack down on protests against American support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including in Cambridge and Boston. Alejandro T., an MIT undergraduate student, recalled that “as students protested the complicity of the universities in the genocide of Palestinians, Cambridge PD aggressively arrested students as they peacefully protested. They had 5-6 cops pinning down individual students. They slammed students into the ground and caused multiple injuries in the process.” 

A militarized, capitalist-controlled police force, armed and outfitted by private arms and spyware dealers, will always be an opponent of the better world we strive to build. Socialists, and all those fighting America’s police state at home and imperialism abroad, must continue to stand against government surveillance no matter which capitalist party controls it.

Siobhan M. is a member of Boston DSA and UAW 2320. The views expressed herein are her own and do not represent her employer.

Photo by Pok Rie: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grey-quadcopter-drone-724921/

“}]]