In moments of historical consequence, everyday people can rise as a chorus that shakes the foundations of power–or be intimidated into silence. Today, we stand at such a crossroads. The pillars of democracy tremble not from natural disaster but from calculated erosion. This is not politics as usual but the dimming of lights that have guided our journey toward justice.

When power concentrates in fewer hands, when dissent becomes dangerous, when truth bends to serve the powerful—these warning signs demand our attention. Democracy dies in silence, withering through a thousand small concessions, each seemingly reasonable alone, catastrophic together.

The Democratic Socialists of America represent a vision where power rests with the many, not the few. In this critical moment, this vision becomes necessary. We offer a framework for resistance that is both principled and practical, understanding that true freedom requires both political rights and material security.

Participating in resistance means recognizing democracy is not a spectator sport. Voting is just the beginning of our civic responsibility. True democratic participation happens in community meetings, mutual aid networks, labor organizing, public demonstrations, and countless daily acts of solidarity. Democracy is a thing that becomes real when we engage in it.

When we join DSA chapters, we declare our commitment to a democracy that works for all. We assert that healthcare, housing, education, and dignified work are not commodities to be rationed by the wealthy but human rights to be guaranteed by society. These rights are not privileges to be granted or withheld at the whims of parasitic wealth extractors and bloodless billionaires.

Collective action transforms fear into courage. Alone, we feel overwhelmed by state and corporate power. Together, we know that no system of control can withstand the sustained resistance of ordinary people determined to live in dignity.

The path forward requires courage to stand firm when intimidated, to speak truth when lies become policy, to protect the vulnerable when targeted. It requires care to build relationships across differences and create spaces where democracy is practiced.

In joining DSA, you become part of a living tradition stretching from abolitionists to suffragists, from labor movements to civil rights struggles, from environmental justice to queer liberation.

The question isn’t whether history will judge our actions—it already is. The question is whether we’ll tell our children that when democracy was in peril, we did more than watch. That we stood with our neighbors. That we chose solidarity over cynicism. That we helped bend history toward justice.

The time for that choice is now. Join us.

The chaos induced by Musk and friends is already causing mass outrage. Millions of ordinary people affected can become allies of workers and unions. Here's how to join the fight.

The post How Federal Workers Can Organize for Defense Against DOGE appeared first on EWOC.

Upcoming Events

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

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

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

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

Friday, March 7 (12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, March 10 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Wednesday, March 12 (6:45 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): March General Meeting (In person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate)

Friday, March 14 (4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Education Board Open Meeting (Zoom)

Saturday, March 15 (1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti Imperialism Reading Group: Ten Myths About Israel (Zoom)

Sunday, March 16 (1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): DSA SF Socialist Job Fair (In person at 215 Golden Gate)

Monday, March 17 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

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

Events & Actions

Board Game Night

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

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Socialists in Office Hours

Socialists in Office Hours will be 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. this Friday, March 7 instead of our usual 3:00 p.m. time! Join us to look ahead at Jackie Fielder’s hearing on the ‘Four Pillars’ and other Supervisors’ anti-harm reduction solutions to the drug crisis. Does this sound like jargon to you? No worries! Join us to find out and ask questions, no experience required.

Behind the Scenes

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

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

Depending on where you work, you may be covered by the NLRA or other federal or state laws. See what covers you and how to use it.

The post Am I covered by the NLRA? appeared first on EWOC.

Every year the chapter conducts a census of the members and creates a report on how the dynamics of the chapter function along with vital information about demographics. Read the report here.

The post 2024 CNJ DSA Chapter Census appeared first on Central NJ DSA.

“We are attacking the cynics and the oligarchs who are trying to drive wedges into our community. This is not new. This is what they do.” Last night at the […]

By Henry McKeand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialists in office make the difference

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

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

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

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

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

No ignoring Trump’s mass deportations pledge

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

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

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

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

Not just in words

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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