Chapter Notes: June 2026
Hey hey, comrade! It’s another edition of the Pinellas DSA Chapter Notes!
We scored some very exciting victories this month (more on those in a minute). And, the socialist movement in Florida continues to grow at a rapid pace. But, as Antonio Gramsci said writing from a jail cell in 1930s Europe, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
The fascists sitting in Washington — and in Tallahassee — are feeling their grip on power slip. They’re desperate to hold on, and they’re more than willing to do what liberals, until very recently, assumed simply couldn’t happen here. The only way we can beat them and build a world in which all of humanity can thrive together is with mass, working class organization!
Every move we make is made with the aim of getting us closer to that goal, so read on and see what we’ve accomplished so far…and what comes next!
May Highlights
We started the month by joining in with other local progressive groups and labor unions to rally in downtown St. Pete in recognition of International Workers’ Day on May 1st.
We also hosted a fundraiser for Oliver Larkin, a member of Broward DSA who is running to represent Florida’s 25th Congressional District in Washington. Oliver’s opponent is a devoted zionist and self-described “DeSantis Democrat,” so we were happy to lend Oliver our support and endorse his campaign!
We rallied in front of the Florida Second District Court of Appeal building in downtown St. Pete in response to DeSantis’ illegal attempt to gerrymander the state and further suppress the voices of working Floridians. Members of our International Solidarity Working Group hosted a screening of The Voice of Hind Rajab, a powerful new film centered on the murder of five-year old Hind Rajab, as well as her family and the medics that attempted to rescue her, at the hands of the IDF in 2024. And, our Ecosocialist Working Group hosted a community town hall as part of our chapter’s ongoing Dump Duke campaign.
Anything we’re missing? Oh right…can’t forget the biggest news of the month! Pinellas DSA member Richie Floyd has been re-elected to St. Pete City Council! Months of knocking doors and collecting petition signatures by our campaign cadre paid off, ensuring that the socialist movement will continue to have a voice in local government for the next four years.
CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Re-Elect Richie Floyd
The campaign to re-elect PDSA comrade Richie Floyd to the District 8 seat of St. Pete City Council is complete!
As we did for Richie’s first election back in 2021, Pinellas DSA members pounded the pavement, collecting the 500 signed petitions needed for Richie to qualify for a place on the ballot. Noon on May 29th marked the deadline to register as a candidate for the August election, and with Richie as the only registered candidate, he is now officially running unopposed!
Everyone who was with us on election night in 2021 will remember what a nailbiter that evening was. But, this is the power of sustained grassroots organizing in action. When the capitalist class knows that the working class is engaged, activated, and ready to go to bat for the politicians that represent their interests…the capitalist class doesn’t even bother to show up.
HUGE congrats to Richie, the campaign team, and everyone in our chapter who knocked doors, sent texts, and raised funds to help make our victory happen!
CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Dump Duke
Our Dump Duke campaign is continuing to gain traction. In May, we hosted a town hall with St. Pete City Councilmember Richie Floyd titled Electric Bills 101. The aim of this presentation was to help St. Pete residents get informed, understand their bill, and learn how local decisions could impact costs in the future.
We also achieved a major milestone: getting St. Pete City Council to set a date and time for a vote on whether to commission a feasibility study for a public power utility. This study would be the first major step toward our ultimate goal of dumping Duke Energy and returning St. Pete’s power grid back to the democratic control of the people!
UPDATE: WE WON!!
We called for “all hands on deck” at City Hall on Thursday, June 4, and the people answered! Thanks to overwhelming pressure from the public, who took time out of their day to show up to tell their councilmember: Commission the study! Give us the facts on public power! the city council voted to commission the study, bringing us one step closers to our goal of Dumping Duke Energy!
To see what’s next for the campaign, go to dumpdukefl.com.
Upcoming Events
We have more than a dozen political events, working group meetings, and social outings scheduled in May. You can always view our full calendar of upcoming events, along with the most up-to-date times and locations, on our website: https://www.pinellasdsa.org/home.
Queer Movie Night with Queer Expression
Saturday, June 6 from 1:00–3:30pm at The Nest (544 1st Ave N. in St. Pete.). The Pinellas DSA Health Justice Working Group and Queer Expression are hosting Queer Movie Night where we will be screening Patient No More (2019). Pizza and refreshments will be provided!
“War on Cuba” Screening & Fundraiser
Sunday, June 7 from 6:00–8:30pm at Bar Chica (1180 Central Ave in St. Pete). $10 suggested donation to help buy medical supplies for the Cuban people.
Ecosocialist Working Group Meeting
Monday, June 8 from 6:30–8:00pm. Zoom only.
City Council Mobilization: Make The Morgan City-Owned Public Housing
Tuesday, June 9 from 5:00–6:00pm at St. Pete City Hall (175 5th St N. in St. Pete). Speak at St. Pete City Council during Open Forum to urge the city to buy The Morgan Apartments and make it into a model for city-owned public housing.
Portland Canvass
Tuesday, June 9 from 6:00–7:00pm at The Portland Apartments (300 8th St N. in St. Pete). Canvass to inform and encourage tenants to attend a tenants meeting, where they can tackle the issues facing their property together!
International Solidarity Working Group Meeting
Wednesday, June 10 from 6:30–7:30pm. Zoom only meeting; link will be available in Discord.
People’s Pride Coalition Teach-In
Thursday, June 11 from 7:00–8:30pm at The Nest (544 1st Ave N. in St. Pete.).
Morgan Canvass
Saturday, June 13 from 1:00–2:30pm. Meet at Family Pak and Ship (2822 54th Ave S. in St. Pete) to canvass The Morgan Apartments to encourage tenants to collectively withhold rent until slum-like conditions improve!
General Meeting & Socialist Social Hour
Sunday, June 14 from 2:00–4:00pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete).
Steering Committee Meeting
Sunday, June 14 from 7:00–8:30pm. Zoom link.
Electoral Committee Meeting
Monday, June 15 from 6:30–7:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete). Meeting in the Hybrid Room.
Housing Working Group Meeting
Thursday, June 18 from 7:00–8:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete). Meeting of the Pinellas DSA Housing Working Group and St. Pete Tenants Union to decide action on tackling the exploitative capitalist housing system.
International Solidarity Working Group Meeting
Monday, June 22 from 6:30–7:30pm. Zoom only meeting; link will be available in Discord.
Educational-Social Working Group Meeting
Tuesday, June 23 from 6:30–7:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete). Meeting in the Hybrid Room.
Socialist in Office Working Group Meeting
Wednesday, June 24 from 6:30–8:00pm. Zoom only meeting; link will be available in Discord.
Labor Committee Meeting
Thursday, June 25 from 6:30–7:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete). Meeting in the Wesley Room.
Peoples Pride Coalition
Friday, June 26 from 5:00–11:00pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete).
Pride Tabling
Sunday, June 28 from 7:30am — 5:00pm. We’ll be tabling on Central — check the Discord to get the cross streets!
Steering Committee Meeting
Sunday, June 28 from 7:00–8:30pm. Zoom link.
–
NOTE: All dates and times are subject to change, so check the website regularly for updates!
Online Code of Conduct
Purpose
As a volunteer, democratically run, socialist organization we are dedicated to building a majority movement that will make democratic socialism a reality in America for the working class. We are committed to creating a safe, respectful and inclusive space for our members and comrades in both our online and in person interactions. We expect everyone who joins our chat server to abide by the following community standards.
“Better things are in store for us. The world ever moves onward. Get into the fray. Do your part, and you will soon see the results of your efforts. Don’t expect all Socialists to be either perfect human beings or to think exactly as you do. Learn to overlook the shortcomings of your comrades. Remember we are fighting for a better system, not to make all men uniform or perfect. Filled with a conviction of right, resolved with a determination to win, nothing can stop the onward march of this movement for a higher civilization until final victory is achieved.”
Daniel Hoan, “The Failure Of Regulation”
- Community Agreement
By joining our chat server, you agree to follow these community standards and to respect the decisions of the moderators, Harassment and Grievance Officers (HGOs), and admins. Anyone who violates these standards may be warned, muted, kicked or banned from the chat server at the discretion of the moderators, HGOs, and admins. The moderators, HGOs, and admins reserve the right to update or modify these standards at any time with prior notice.
Thank you for being part of our community and for making it a better place for everyone.
- Community Guidelines
The following guidelines are strongly recommended best practices for community discussion. Many of these guidelines are modified from DSA Guidelines for Respectful Discussion. Repeated failure to abide by the guidelines may result in moderation actions. (see Policy: Internal Communication and Moderation section IV.)
- Assume good faith in your fellow comrades
Assume good faith in each other. Please try to speak from experience, speak for yourself, and actively listen to each other. When someone makes a point, repeat what you heard, summarize, and ask clarifying questions like “did you mean X” or “what makes you say that” to get more information. Encourage yourself and others to maintain a positive attitude, honor the work of others, avoid defensiveness, be open to legitimate critique and challenge oppressive behaviors in ways that help people grow. We want to “call each other in” rather than calling each other out — in other words, if you are challenging someone’s ideas or behavior, do it respectfully, and if you are being challenged, receive it respectfully. Remember, mistakes will be made, nobody is perfect.
- Please ask yourself “Why am I talking?”
While the internet is infinite, we all have limited capacity/time for discussion and engagement. When in discussion, please ask yourself “What am I adding to the conversation?” Consider whether or not what you want to say has already been said, whether what you want to say is on topic or if there’s a better time and place to say it, and other methods for showing how you feel about the conversation (eg. ‘liking’ or reacting to other’s posts)
- Please recognize and respect others feelings, background, and cultural differences
Many people have different levels of experience, knowledge, and feelings in social justice and radical activism and all participants should respect and embrace this diversity. Many people from different backgrounds have different definitions of what it means to be an “activist” or “radical.” While we all don’t have to agree on everything, we should respect our diversity of opinions. Recognize that everyone has a piece of the truth, everybody can learn, and everybody has the ability to teach and share something. Please, refrain from using acronyms or complicated language that could exclude others, and be ready to explain your meaning in good faith if your comrades are confused.
- Be respectful of diversity and difference.
Celebrate the diversity of our members and comrades and the richness of their cultures, backgrounds and experiences. Do not make any assumptions or judgments based on stereotypes or prejudices.
- Be constructive and supportive.
Share your ideas, feedback and resources in a positive and helpful manner. Respect the purpose and goals of each channel and topic.
- Be responsible and accountable.
For sensitive discussions, please take them offline or to an encrypted platform
- Be mindful of how you present yourself online.
It is important to organize to communicate online with members and beyond, know that it is different to interacting through voice or person to person, and some nuances may get lost in the digital space.
- Be open and willing to learn.
Recognize that we are all here to build a better world for everyone. Do not assume that you know everything or that you are always right. Listen to different perspectives and experiences and be open to feedback and criticism.
- Please be mindful of what time you are sending messages into the chat server. Depending on urgency, try not to send messages to members between the hours of 10pm-6am
- Please keep your screen name consistent with the name you introduce yourself with in meetings. It does not have to be your legal name, it can be a nickname.
- Have a sense of humor
Who said movement building can’t be fun? This is a great opportunity for people to get to know one another, building lasting friendships and relationships, to laugh, love, and build a movement.
- Report any violations or concerns to the moderators, HGOs, or admins.
- Community Standards
The following standards are required for anyone participating in online discussion in Milwaukee DSA forums. Any failure to abide by these standards will result in moderation actions (see Policy: Internal Communication and Moderation section IV.)
- Do not insult, harass, bully, threaten or discriminate against anyone based on their identity, beliefs, class, opinions or experiences.
- Do not spam, troll, derail or disrupt the conversations.
- Do not share any confidential, personal or sensitive information without permission, (including names and contact information)
- Do not make posts showing nudity, or other “not safe for work” content.
- Do not engage in any other illegal, unethical, or harmful activities on the chapter server.
- Do not make any comments/posts which could reasonably be interpreted as encouraging or threatening violence
- Report any violations or concerns to the moderators, HGOs, or admins.
- Do not argue about moderation decisions outside of direct messages. Moderation actions can be appealed to the HGOs. See Procedure: Moderation Appeal.
School Districts Can Oppose ICE
By TZ
Citizens are outraged at Congress for wielding its power in the abusive manner we have witnessed for decades. The Patriot Act routinely violates the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments and leads us to the breaking point we are subjected to today. Frustrations increased exponentially with ICE invading communities, and citizens distrust the government more than ever.
It is important to remember that your federal representative does not hold all levers of power. Activists are protesting and arguing with city officials around the country, attempting to block ICE from infiltrating their communities. During these battles, it is often forgotten that traditional government positions (such as state and federal representatives, senators, mayors) are not the only officials with power to fight ICE. Positions such as superintendents, park directors, library boards can all exercise some level of their power against ICE. An institution that has taken a step in the right direction is Royal Oak School District. On January 29, the District announced new safety protocols that create a much sterner, strict approach for ICE and Border Patrol (CBP).
Key points within these new safety protocols will protect staff, students, and families in the community. First, any ICE and CBP agent that appears at a school building will be properly identified and redirected to the Board Office, and met by the superintendent, legal counsel, and local law enforcement.
Second, if the agents refuse this and attempt to enter the school anyway, the building will enter lockdown mode, which is the safety protocol enacted when an active threat has entered the building or is on school grounds.
Lastly, if ICE or CBP appear during arrival or departure times, the building will enter lockdown mode and an emergency alert will be sent to all families notifying them of the presence of federal agents. The same team — the superintendent, legal counsel, and local law enforcement — would meet the agents on school grounds.
This protocol was in addition to some guidance in the fall on how to speak with federal agents if needed. This included contacting administrators, protecting identities of all students, and requiring a legal warrant signed by a judge.
This protocol creates reasonable guidelines that should be expected of any school district, but not all districts do so. It is imperative for citizens to ask for their school district’s safety plans for ICE/CBP, and to demand more from the school board and superintendent if they are lacking. Schools are able to provide strict protection of students and have the capabilities to alert families as well.
It is important to note that this policy has not been tested yet — there have not been any federal agents on school grounds in Royal Oak. It is unknown who the Royal Oak police will truly side with if the situation occurs. Police departments across the country have not exactly given citizens reason to trust police to protect them from lawless federal agents.
A superintendent and/or school board using some of their limited power to create safeguards in their community against fascism is a perfect example of power that citizens can direct their attention to. Royal Oak is a community known for leaning liberal — — parents and students were outraged last fall when a Turning Point USA Chapter was created at Royal Oak High School, resulting in student walkouts and protests. Students consistently protesting fascist issues and citizens demanding transparency from the Royal Oak City Commission helps pressure school district officials into creating policies, or shows they will have support for such protections when they create them. Activism is not only about forcing those who are resistant to make positive change, but also about providing support for those who are hesitant to make bold moves.
Local institutions like schools, libraries, and parks can be some very specific zones that citizens can pressure to create protective policies for their community. After all, change often happens from the bottom up. Readers interested in stricter ICE protocol in their local school district should gather a coalition of like-minded parents and citizens to voice their concerns at school board meetings. The same approach can be applied for city commissions, library boards, etc. The more businesses, institutions, and citizens that take stances against ICE, the more likely a city or state is to create a safer protocol.
School Districts Can Oppose ICE was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
My Beef with RFK Jr.: The Problem with the New USDA Dietary Guidelines and Who Really Benefits
by Anna V.
Meat is expensive. It always has been. Prices are higher, sure, but it’s never really been cheap. Many people don’t think of it as the most expensive item but ounce for ounce it is. It’s why when you go to a hotel breakfast buffet the meat will generally be placed at the very end so you fill your plate with the less expensive fruit and bagels and can’t get as much of the pricier sausage and bacon.
The reason meat costs so much is due to the amount of resources needed to produce it. Before you can slaughter a cow you need to give it feed made from corn and soybeans for one to two years. Grass fed beef is even more expensive as it takes longer to get a cow up to slaughter weight on grass alone. This is why multiple studies have found that vegetarian diets can be less expensive, because instead of feeding soy beans to a cow for a year or more you can just make them into tofu.
That’s why it is concerning that the new USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans increase the protein recommendations and are emphasizing eating beef – as well as the similarly expensive dairy – to meet those new recommendations.
It would be one thing if these changes were backed by science, but most nutrition experts heavily disagree with these guidelines. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics released a statement expressing concerns over the new recommendations (source). Furthermore, the guidelines actually contradict themselves. For example, they keep the recommendation from the previous guidelines to keep saturated fats consumption under 10% of total calorie consumption. However, in the list of recommended cooking fats are “beef tallow, butter, and olive oil,” two of which are saturated fats. Not only would canola and soybean oil be healthier, but they are less expensive, so it seems the new guidelines are going out of their way to make Americans spend more money on worse health.
Now it would be easy to write this off and say, “Well, everyone knows RFK Jr is crazy, no one is going to listen to him.” However these guidelines aren’t just suggestions for the average American. They instruct how federal food programs like WIC and School Lunches are set up. So if the guidelines aren’t making Americans healthier and aren’t reducing costs, who do they benefit? Well luckily they tell us on page 2: “We are realigning our food system to support American farmers, ranchers, and companies who grow and produce real food . . .”
A lot of people think of farmers as working class but don’t let the big trucks and boots fool you. A lot of farms are owned by large companies or families with generational wealth who make their profit exploiting the low paid farm workers who are the ones actually getting their hands dirty. These profits translate into power via groups like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Global Dairy Platform who go on to influence politics.
This problem isn’t even unique to the current administration. Probably for as long as you can remember you’ve seen the recommendation that adults need three servings of dairy a day. This has been heavily contested over the years. It’s not that you can’t have a balanced diet with that much dairy in a day, it’s just that it isn’t always necessary. Many people, especially those of non-European backgrounds, get all their nutrients in with little to no dairy. However, it’s in the guidelines and therefore has an effect on government programs. I once spoke to someone who had been on WIC and complained that they gave her way more milk and cheese than she knew what to do with.
So it seems these new Dietary Guidelines are continuing the theme of taking existing problems in our government and cranking them up to 11. The exact effects on programs like WIC haven’t been seen yet but they’re not likely to help struggling families. However, these guidelines aren’t meant to help them. They are meant to help the wealthy cattle ranchers who will destroy our environment, government, and health if it means increasing their own wealth.
The post My Beef with RFK Jr.: The Problem with the New USDA Dietary Guidelines and Who Really Benefits appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.
Daniel Gross and Unions of Our Own
Labor organizer Daniel Gross's new book, Unions of Our Own, helps workers build progressive, militant, and sustainable unions driven by the rank-and-file.
The post Daniel Gross and Unions of Our Own appeared first on EWOC.
If Chicago DSA were a union, could it pull off a successful strike?
I’d wager not.
In a union campaign, the way to answer a question like this is through a structure test. Before going on strike, organizers know that they’ll need a supermajority of workers to authorize the strike, given that a vicious anti-union drive by the boss will likely reduce their numbers. Some campaigns might have a mobilization where workers do something like wearing pro-union attire in order to gauge support. Ideally, this would be one of several escalatory structure tests meant to evaluate a worker’s risk tolerance as well as how effective the channels of communication are in terms of getting the word out. In other words, a structure test measures the strength of an organization and its ability to mobilize towards a specific goal.
Chicago DSA (and the DSA in general) is not a union. However, as a prospective mass-membership party that anyone can join, our level of organization is low. We should think and act more like a union fighting a campaign. Amidst conversations of leadership burnout, tremendous uncaptured membership growth, and increasing need for urgency in the political landscape (no source needed), Chicago DSA is at an impasse. What we do next will shape the organization for years to come. While we are poised to become a major player in the labor movement and Chicago politics, failing to build our organizational cohesion risks souring newcomers and leadership to the movement. Instead, it’s time we seize the moment and live up to our vision.
CDSA Vision – What are we organizing towards?
When discussing strategic choices for the direction DSA will take, it is important to center the conversation around our shared vision. We are working towards democratic socialism, or the demand that “our economy should be run to meet human needs for all, not to make profits for a few” (https://chicagodsa.org/). Different people have different ideas of what this might look like. Many of us will think of universal healthcare, a Green New Deal, or of recent national and local politicians in the limelight, but being a democratic socialist and a member of CDSA is more than a positive feeling towards items on this agenda, as laid out on our chapter’s website:
“Our primary tasks are to organize the working class, make more socialists, and lay the foundation for an independent mass party capable of conquering political power and transforming our society” (https://chicagodsa.org/).
As socialists, we care about a lot of issues, from protecting our trans and immigrant comrades who have been the latest targets of the Trump administration’s attacks, to issues like environmental justice, prison abolition, overpolicing, and countering American imperialism. We need to be fighting on all of these fronts. However, as emphasized by our tasks above as an organization, we need to continue asking the question: “how are we building power?”. Without the crystallization of short-term mobilizations such as the “No Kings” protests into long-term organizational capacity, we will forever be putting out fires and responding to crises rather than proving that a better world is possible and leading the fight.
How do we build working-class power?
Working-class power is our ability to force elected officials, the government, and the owning class to meet our demands. This power comes from the fact that we, the working class, work the jobs that make society run. Also, as workers comprise a huge majority of the population, we can vote to elect people to represent our interests in government. However, the nature of these two sources of power is not the same.
First, let’s start with the weaker of the two: electoral power. Elected officials are–in theory–held accountable to their constituents through their desire for reelection. This power is diluted by the fact that elections are increasingly decided by spending and fundraising. This gives capitalists a decisive advantage in influencing and subverting democratic elections. Given the current lax campaign spending laws and skyrocketing levels of wealth inequality, elections are increasingly determined by the sheer volume of money poured into a given campaign, which is a losing position for the working class. Nevertheless, recent campaigns have found success with a grassroots or “Mass Movement Electoralism” approach. For example, Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 Mayoral campaign managed to mobilize 100,000 volunteers to knock doors thanks in large part to NYC’s DSA chapter as well as its active left ecosystem. The problem is, no matter how a working-class-friendly politician is elected, two things remain true: there are certain things an elected official cannot do (especially with regards to challenging capital’s interests), and there is little recourse for working people to hold them accountable.
Luckily, working people have another, more reliable, source of power: the ability to withhold our labor. To build working class power, we need to organize workplaces into fighting unions. This is the crux of the left’s emphasis on organized labor and the recent excitement surrounding the idea of a general strike. It is not just a commitment to fairness and equality in the workplace, but an understanding that working people as a class are the only ones who can transform society. Work stoppages hit the capitalist class where it hurts: their profits. This is what gives the working class its greatest leverage and transformational power.
Then, to answer our question of what it takes to build working class power, it is clear that we must organize workplaces and unions to be capable of militant strike action, using their political power to aid the working class in electoral politics and thus building power independent of state institutions.
What is organizing, really? Where does the DSA fit in?
At its core, organizing is bringing people together into a long term structure to “mobilize” for certain tasks and work towards a bigger goal. Almost any organization can build a hierarchical structure to accomplish a goal, but as democratic socialists, we must accomplish our goals while simultaneously modeling and prototyping the kinds of radically democratic structures we are fighting to build and sustain. In line with the Labor Notes tradition of democratic organizing this means relying on a “leadership-dense” model. Carla Villanueva and Michael Belt, organizers with UAW, define a leader of a union drive as someone, a worker:
“…who is willing to fight for the union, receptive to feedback on how to speak with coworkers, and capable of moving their coworkers into action. Leaders are those who are public and willing to speak to their coworkers when the time is right. Throughout the campaign, leaders are given a steady flow of training and tools to better answer their coworkers’ questions. This approach is grounded in a belief that workers in any industry can understand and make complex strategy decisions and are able to have difficult organizing conversations with their coworkers.”
A leadership-dense model of organizing depends on finding workers willing and able to build a union, and developing them into organizers. The more leader-organizers that can be developed, the better. Furthermore, we need to trust that average workers are capable of organizing themselves when given access to structure, resources, and guidance. This requisite belief in the competency of workers is more than a principle; it’s foundational to our strategy and is essential to winning. Any worker can be a leader. The benefit to this orientation is that worker-organizers are constantly training new organizers, building the project’s capacity. Also, after a certain point, there is no single organizer or identified “leader” who is carrying the bulk of the work on their own; the campaign is self-sustaining and can recover and succeed even if a key organizer needs to take a step back from the work..
Another way to think about organizing is as an ideal. Just as there is no way to achieve “democracy”, there is no such thing as a “perfectly organized” workplace, either. There are certainly workplaces and institutions which are more organized or democratic than others, and what sets those apart is the strength and number of connections between people. Put differently, what we are organizing is a network of people, within which each node has a varying number of connections with varying levels of strength. To build the network, existing connections must be strengthened or new connections added. To do this more effectively, individual “nodes” must be trained and developed.
At last, we can see how our definition of “organizing” can be applied outside the workplace and to our work with Chicago DSA. Many of those reading this may be among the most active in the chapter and already fill leadership roles in various committees and working groups. We are the DSA’s version of the worker-organizer, the “member-organizer” or cadre. As member-organizers we may already have this orientation; we view our chapter as a network of relationships and are willing to fight for its vision. But are we using tried-and-true fundamental organizing skills to get there? Are we developing new member-organizers to apply those same skills and build further organizational capacity? Our ability to strengthen and expand this network depends on our utilization of fundamental organizing skills.
Conclusion
With recent wins nationwide like Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, the wave of left flank democrats bringing excitement to primary elections, our own local DSA chapter’s worker organizer job fair and successful bid to get Byron Sigcho-Lopez on a ballot, the future of democratic socialist politics is brighter than ever. Despite this, we need to seriously reconsider our organizational structure and strategy if we expect to contend for power and build the foundation for our aspired-to independent mass party.
As mentioned previously, we struggle to retain both leadership and new members, something which costs us institutional knowledge, skills, and growth. In “Middle-Level Organizing: The Key to a Successful CDSA”, Monk lays out this problem in detail as well as its solution: organizing fundamentals. We conduct political education for new members, yet struggle to convey skills like organizing conversations, making asks, and how to run a meeting. These things are just as important as understanding our long-term vision and past. The history of social movements is the history of organizers.
One of the important lessons Monk reminds us of is to “Clarify Your Goals”. With changing leadership and a flux of new membership, it’s fair to say that we might not all be on the same page. In fact, we can prove it. We should conduct a survey of every member in Chicago DSA. Surveys are used in union drives as structure tests to gauge support. Rather than texting out a form for people to fill out, a proper structure test requires being systematic and having one-on-one conversations with everyone. In these conversations we can gauge members’ understanding of our vision, hear about their theory of change and power, invite them to action in a specific way, and simply get to know them.
As a collective, we can struggle with the questions of how we actually contend for power. Do we recruit people to organize workplaces and the labor movement where so much of our power resides? Do we run our own candidates or support others who match our vision to communicate our politics to a broad base and win non-reformist reforms? How do we weave the fights that are already happening across the city into something cohesive? Together, we can find out. Together, let’s organize Chicago DSA!
The post If Chicago DSA were a union, could it pull off a successful strike? appeared first on Midwest Socialist.
Delaney Hall Statement of the DSA Abolish ICE Commission
We stand in full solidarity with the nearly 300 detained immigrant community members who began a hunger and labor strike in protest of profoundly inhumane conditions at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey on Friday, May 22, and echo their demands:
- An immediate in-person meeting with Governor Mikie Sherrill at Delaney Hall to directly observe conditions and hear testimony from detained individuals.
- Immediate medical attention for detainees in units 2/2b beaten and attacked by ICE.
- The immediate release of vulnerable detainees including elderly individuals, pregnant women, young people, and those with serious medical conditions.
- Meaningful review of immigration cases and habeas filings.
- An end to what detainees describe as coercive pressure to sign deportation or voluntary departure documents.
Delaney Hall is located on a designated superfund site known as “Chemical Corridor.” It opened illegally in 2025 with no public notice, never passed minimal safety inspections and is not even structurally sound; a massive wall collapsed shortly after its opening. Inside, detainees are served inedible food in filthy facilities, and our neighbors are subject to constant verbal and physical abuse by both guards employed by the for-profit prison company GEO Group, as well as ICE agents. Delaney Hall is only the most recent setting within the unspeakably cruel and fascist landscape of ICE detention.
Immigration is driven by the impoverishment of billions in the Global South due to the systematic global theft of US imperialism. Those who live in these nations are forced to migrate to survive, or to seek better prospects for themselves and their loved ones. ICE exists to make migrants’ existence as desperate as possible, creating a maximally exploitable workforce unable or afraid to seek recourse for exploitation by their employers. In turn this serves to disempower the working class as a whole. ICE exists to spread fear, because that fear equals profit.
At Delaney Hall, DSA has worked in partnership with other organizations to simultaneously support families impacted by ICE detention at Delaney Hall, and work to shut it down. Members from throughout New Jersey and neighboring states are on the ground right now working to amplify the voices of the strikers and keep people safe as protests continue.
Thousands of DSA members in chapters across the US have been active in the fight against ICE. DSA recognizes that ICE serves to divide and repress the working class. In contrast, we stand with the multiracial working class and understand that only together can we defeat capitalism.
Shamefully, Republican and Democratic politicians have supported this fascistic tool of nakedly racist class exploitation. Donald Trump has accelerated funding for ICE while Governor Mikie Sherrill has deployed State Troopers to crack down on anti-ICE civil disobedience.
We are proud of our nationally endorsed leaders Joel Brooks and Jake Ephros for joining us in solidarity at Delaney Hall. Please take action by sending a letter to Congress and the New Jersey state government. Together, we demand that the Delaney Hall strikers’ demands are met immediately! We demand the immediate shutdown of Delaney Hall, and all immigrant detention centers! We demand the abolition of ICE, and free movement of all people everywhere!
The post Delaney Hall Statement of the DSA Abolish ICE Commission appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Forming the Skeleton: May Day 2026 and the Work Ahead
By Rodney Coopwood
On May 1, 2026, Metro Detroit DSA rallied at Roosevelt Park as part of the city’s labor coalition for May Day. From the first planning meetings at the IBEW Hall through the day-of march and the debrief that followed, MDDSA (led by members of the Mobilization and Labor Working Groups) sat at the table with Teamsters Local 337, SEIU Michigan, IBEW Local 58, UAW Local 600, UAW Region 1, Moratorium NOW!, Michigan United, and other unions and organizations of the Detroit left. Being in those rooms was the most instructive part of the work.
We were invited in because of the history our members carry in this city’s labor and left movements, and because our chapter has spent the last year building the capacity to show up. A seat at the planning table is not given for free; it is the product of contingent discipline at previous actions and the steady labor of people who have made themselves useful to the broader left. The Mobilization Working Group, formalized at convention, was the structure that let us convert that capacity into coordinated participation and it did so as a genuinely cross-tendency effort, with members from across the chapter’s committees, caucuses, and coalitions working under the MWG’s coordination.
What the Room Looked Like
The most striking thing about the planning process was watching unions sit across from each other under the AFL-CIO umbrella and actually deliberate. These are organizations with different memberships, different cultures, and different relationships to militancy. The fact of them being in the same room, working through speaker order, route logistics, and messaging — that, on its own, was not nothing, and reminiscent of our own practices in DSA.
Still, sitting through those meetings as someone from the organizing side rather than the unionist side, I was struck by how much of the work became institutional rather than political. Speaker order became a question of which body’s position carried what weight, not which voice the day most needed. Logistics bent toward what city authorities would permit and protect rather than toward who the event was for. Parts of the program felt divorced from the meaning of the day itself. May Day belongs to the rank-and-file and in many respects to workers outside unions entirely, and that fact deserved more weight in the room than it fully received.
The People Who Made the Day
What made this May Day special for me was not what happened in the planning room. It was what happened on May 1st itself. We had volunteers from MDDSA across every role the day asked for: tabling, banner bearing, flag bearing, marshaling, medic, day-of flyering, and back-end logistics. New members standing alongside members who have been doing this work for years. People taking on new roles for the first time. People who had never carried a banner or been to a planning meeting walking up on the morning of May 1 ready to be useful.
That is what a chapter looks like when it is functioning. It is also what May Day is supposed to look like. The holiday is not just its program; it is its people. The shape of any given year’s coalition matters less than whether the bodies on the street are organized, prepared, and politically conscious. By that measure, what MDDSA put in the street this year was something we should take seriously, and every member who showed up — for the first time or the fifteenth — should know the chapter saw them.
What Worked
The march itself was phenomenal. Speakers connected the labor question to immigration, to racialized policing, to U.S. imperialism, to the specific intersectional realities of the working class in this city — the working class as it actually exists, not the working class as it appears in a 1950s photograph. That part of the day did the work May Day is supposed to do. It said out loud that the labor movement and the broader struggle against capitalism are not separate fights with separate constituencies.
The fact that the unions came together at all is the bigger story. The goal of this year’s May Day, as I understood it from inside the planning room, was modest and correct: get the relevant Detroit unions into the same physical space, working on the same calendar, talking to each other about something concrete. That goal was met. Relationships do not form in the abstract. They form when people have to figure out together how a rally works.
This rally took place under AFL-CIO sponsorship, something that, by accounts inside the planning room, had not happened in Detroit in a very long time. For most of the twentieth century, mainstream American labor kept its distance from May Day’s radical origins, favoring the September Labor Day that Congress established in 1894 in the wake of the Pullman strike. The AFL-CIO returning to May Day is a real shift, and one that creates room for a fuller program in the years ahead.
What The Numbers Said
Turnout at the rally was an estimated 500 attendees. By my count, roughly half were rank-and-file union members. The rest were politically conscious community members and active organizers, with SEIU showing the most prominent and organized presence. The unions did not turn out their memberships in significant numbers. Michigan’s union membership rate is 13 percent, well above the national rate of 10, and Detroit sits inside one of the more heavily unionized regions in the country. The “No Kings” mobilization earlier this year and last, with broadly anti-authoritarian messaging not specifically tied to labor, pulled thousands into the streets of this same city. May Day, with the city’s organized labor leadership formally behind it, did not. The gap is the question.
Part of the answer is practical. A 4pm Friday start excluded most day shift workers and most service workers whose schedules are not their own, and is worth noting for next year. But timing does not explain the whole gap. If union structures had more time to actively mobilize members for May Day in the weeks leading up to it, a Friday afternoon would have moved more people than it did.
The honest version is the one that came out of the debrief: this was a year of using unused muscles. The apparatus of political mobilization through union locals has been dormant for a generation, and that capacity does not return in a single planning cycle. That is partly an explanation. It is also a question. What would unions themselves have to change for next year’s May Day to actually move their members? Further, where is the current state of class consciousness in the U.S. if unions struggle to connect labor to May Day?
What’s Worth Building On
First, the Detroit left should carry more weight at the table. There is history between labor leadership and the broader left that predates my lifetime, and I will not pretend to fully understand it all yet. But even with that history, the moment demands engagement. Capitalism’s contradictions are visibly tearing at the lives of people in this city, this country, and every country the American empire reaches. A leftist — labor coalition strong enough to meet that crisis needs the organizers, writers, and educators who have spent their lives developing the political analysis the movement needs.
Second, and as has already been agreed to, the planning has to start earlier. Much earlier. The skeleton of next year’s May Day, who is in the coalition, what the political program is, who the speakers are, what the demands are, should be sketched in the fall, not in March. Earlier planning creates space for harder conversations and the programmatic clarity a workers’ rally deserves.
The Debrief
The most important conversation of the entire cycle was the debrief. That sounds counterintuitive, the rally is the visible thing, the debrief is internal, but it is the meeting where the organizers decided what kind of coalition it wanted to become.
The clarity that came out of that conversation was this: the goal of 2026 was first contact, and first contact was achieved. The goal of 2027 is to deepen — to pull in rank-and-file participation at a scale this year’s event did not reach.
Some of that conversation pointed toward the possibility of a general strike in 2028. However, a general strike is not a thing you can just announce; it is a thing that becomes possible after years and years of organizational work most people never see, in sectors of society that have been exploited by capital for decades. Treating 2028 as a horizon can be reasonable, if work of a strategically adaptable and principled nature is achieved prior.
What this May Day did was build one vertebra of a skeleton that does not yet have most of its bones. There is a great deal of work between here and any plausible strike horizon, and the honest version of the optimism coming out of the debrief is that the work is finally beginning to look like work, rather than like a wish.
Beyond the Union Hall
If the labor movement is going to grow into the force this moment demands, DSA, the broader left, and the unions themselves have to take seriously the work that exists beyond the union hall. Detroit no longer looks like the city that defined American industrial labor. Manufacturing accounts for under one in ten jobs across the metro area. Health care, education, retail, food service, logistics, these are where most actually work, and the great majority of those workers carry no union card. The Starbucks Workers United campaign has shown that a young, low-wage, dispersed workforce can build real power against an employer the labor establishment had largely written off as unorganizable. The labor movement that meets this decade is going to be built in workplaces like those, or it is not going to be built at all.
May Day’s politics speak to exactly this work. The holiday does not require a union card. It belongs to anyone who works for a wage, and the power it celebrates is the power of labor itself — the capacity to withhold work, to act in concert, to recognize that the people who do the actual work of running this society can stop running it. May Day started as a revolutionary leftist holiday, built by communists, socialists, and anarchists who understood the workplace was one front of a much larger fight. Keeping that history visible in the present and operative in the future is the work that has to follow. This year, we got into the room. Next year, we have to help change what the room can do — and start building the rooms that do not yet exist.
Forming the Skeleton: May Day 2026 and the Work Ahead was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Thistle