The following is an interview conducted by San Francisco Bay Area labor and social movements authors and organizers Robert Ovetz and James Tracy. They spoke with Daniel Gross about his new book Unions of Our Own: Eight Building Blocks to Change Work and the World (Haymarket Books, 2026). This interview has been edited for structure and clarity.

How did you get involved with the workers movement?

I worked at Borders Book and Music when I was really young. The pay, the hours, and the disrespectful treatment from some managers aggravated me. I figured the thing to do was reach out to unions, which I did.

My coworkers and I started doing meetings, but all the while I was fighting with management solo, which of course was a mistake. No plot twist here, Borders soon fired me. So I didn’t get very far in my first effort, but it holds a great significance for me. It gave me my start in unionism. And it planted the seed to become obsessed with what causes victory in union campaigns.

Fast forwarding a bit, I started working at Starbucks in 2003. I got to take part in the formation of a powerful labor union there, the IWW Starbucks Workers Union, which changed my life and many others. It also helped break new ground in the labor movement in two ways: one, workers organizing themselves, and two, the campaign demonstrated that those who had called the fast food and retail sectors “unorganizable” were mistaken. The seeds we contributed in both those respects have sprouted greatly in the last ten or so years. That campaign was high-profile, and it started a process which continues to this day of connecting with workers from diverse industries and accompanying them on their campaigns.

I also started writing with my late mentor, Staughton Lynd, with whom I co-authored Labor Law for the Rank & Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law (PM Press, 2008) and Solidarity Unionism at Starbucks (PM Press, 2011), the latter along with the great labor artist Tom Keough, also now departed. And I worked for well over a decade as a founding organizer of Brandworkers, a worker center of immigrant food manufacturing workers and one of the founding organizations of the Food Chain Workers Alliance. Those experiences again contributed to this blessing of having many liberatory workers get in touch with me and getting to be in movement with them.

Twenty-five years of organizing at my own jobs and being in close movement with many others at their jobs helped lead to the lessons and analysis of Unions of Our Own— along with careful study of historical campaigns. During this time, I learned that it is coworkers in workplaces and industries who are best positioned to design and refine unions to meet their needs. And it takes a complete model to win, which consists of eight fundamental building blocks. 

There are the four foundational building blocks. The first is “Constituency,” which is the scope of coworkers you will organize among as well as secondary constituents who can help you come together and amplify your power when you do. Constituency is one of the most fiery questions in labor history and remains so today. The “Problem” building block deals with the issues or unmet needs weighing on you the most, on the job and beyond it. “Solution” is the type of union you’ll build, the affiliation choice you make, and the benefits you’ll create through your solidarity to take on the identified problems. “Strategy” is the 800-pound gorilla of a union model, the power to win your union solution.

Once you have that foundation, you turn your attention to the four structure and growth building blocks. “Mechanism” is how you hold or codify your gains. It’s a building block with huge importance for the character and performance of a labor union, and for social change as a whole. “Structure” is about having a union that coworkers control. “Funding” is what your union needs and you can get it; how you get it matters a ton for the responsiveness and fighting spirit of your union. Finally, the “Metrics” building block measures what matters most in your model to learn what’s working and to help ensure you are honoring your union’s values.

The book helps readers use the building blocks to maximize the chance at union victory, through bullet-pointed decision-making factors, many examples from contemporary campaigns, colorful and often hidden labor history, as well as my own stories.

What is the main argument about the state of the workers movement in your new book Unions of Our Own?

I’ve surprised some folks when I’ve said I’m optimistic, that this is a far greater time for unionism than when I came of age in the economy at Borders around the turn of the century. While uneven, there’s been tremendous working class activity and a turn towards unionism in the last ten or so years in the United States. It is amazing, and there is much to celebrate. At the same time, unionism has not grown overall in that period and the collective worker power it takes to take on oligarchy and fascism is nowhere near sufficient.

One of the things the book argues against is the tendency to say there is a method or technique that exists and we just need to execute the hell out of it with great discipline and then we can win in every geography and in every industry. Method and technique are very important and there are some great ones which I do share in the book. But the truth is that there is no cookie-cutter recipe that exists for workers to be able to meet their needs in full, honor their values, and advance their vision of the world in all contexts. 

On the other hand, it doesn’t make sense to attempt to start with a blank slate. That cuts you off from other working class wisdom and denies you a framework to your insights to the surface and test them. In conjunction with that framework, the tools to use it, and the validated moves our forbearers have made, my hope for the book is to make a small contribution to help coworkers maximize their chance of victory.

What is your analysis of the role of unions in capitalism? 

Let me start with the two poles on either end. One is that unions are either never able to take on capitalism, they’ll always stabilize it to some extent. The other pole is that unions are always a meaningful check on capitalism.

One of the essential points in the book is that there is a back-and-forth relationship between union visions and union models. If you have a liberatory vision, but your model is not in accord with it, the model will drag it down. Sometimes this will happen right away, sometimes it takes place over time. On the other hand, you can have a model that nourishes and advances a liberatory vision.

One of the groups of readers whom Unions of Our Own is resonating with so far are workers who want to challenge capitalism and empire via a union. The book unpacks model choices that were made in the 1930s and consolidated in 1950 that tend to go against that. Workers have the right to make different choices, and I try to open up the field so they can consider doing so with confidence.

My reading of history combined with what I’ve come to understand about the “structural and material basis” of unions gives me a strong conviction that some types of union models can help achieve a society that is led and operated by workers and communities and that can get us past capitalism. But without intentionality, it’s easy for a union to become an “agent of capital”— to borrow a phrase from a union staffer I quote in the book.

What are the fundamental threats to and weaknesses of the workers movement today?

The oligarchy is piling up more of our resources than ever. As neoliberalism unravels, large capital, led by tech capital and other segments of the capitalist class, is positioning fascism as an alternative that many are finding compelling. AI is sucking up all the knowledge workers have produced and subordinating workers with it. All the while it is piling up more capital for a small number of oligarchs. The main use of AI currently is to control, extract, kill, surveil, disinform, and disrupt. So there are many threats.

Still, era after era it is workers on job sites, at companies, and in industries and communities who come up with union forms that work. This happens not in spite of, but because of challenges in the big picture economic, political, social, and technological environment. A weakness in the movement is not having enough space where workers have the opportunity to bring their collective wisdom to the surface and test it through struggle. The book, and even more so the growing community of people doing rank & file union building together, is an effort to expand that space. It is beyond inspiring to be part of that.

What are the roadblocks standing in the way of union organizing in the U.S.?

I’ve already mentioned the concentrated power of the oligarchy, so let me go elsewhere. One roadblock is that while many folks are trying to advance a liberatory labor movement, there are other forces in labor doing the opposite. Unions that are trying to grow their density via deals that disempower workers and shore up the power of capitalism. This is happening via legislative or other schemes between top union officials, company executives, and politicians to exchange bargaining rights for the right to strike, the right to meaningfully choose your union, and the right to democratically govern your union. 

Major visionary initiatives are being steamrolled by these efforts and many more will not be able to get off the ground in the first place because of this maneuvering.  Those need to be called out and opposed. They need to be outmaneuvered and the only way to do it is a deep coworker to coworker solidarity structure in union models that work.

One last thing is that it takes literally a single worker sitting down and starting to make a list of their coworkers to start the exploration of a union campaign. Any blockage, friction, or missing link for that worker to get started with confidence is a roadblock.

None of these roadblocks is insurmountable by any means. This, again, is a superb time to consider the union-building journey.

What needs to be done to reinvigorate the workers movement?

More space and support of all kinds for workers is needed to design and refine their own union models. Solidarity Union Network (SUN) members and community participants have been hard at work on that. There is more union integration with movements and rank-and-file connection, as we saw during the successful effort to repel the ICE invasion of Minnesota in early 2026. We need more deep integration with each other as a global working class rather than as a national project, like we’re seeing among workers at Amazon.

For folks in establishment unions, more work is of course needed to organize caucuses and boot out reactionary leaders, and that work is happening. But that’s not enough to avoid reverting to the status quo. You’ve got to collectively document and challenge the regressive parts of the union. Take the reform effort at the United Auto Workers (UAW) and at many other unions I could cite: these movements didn’t just organize a base and vote in a new leadership, as important as that is. It whittled down the management prerogatives clause to preserve strike rights to prevent plant closure. It changed the union constitution for direct elections of the president. It expanded the scope of autoworkers to seriously organize to include those in the American South. Its 2023 work stoppage innovated on the classic “whipsaw strike” to great effect, as I analyze in the labor strategy canon part of the book. Respectively, those are changes to the mechanism, union structure, constituency, and strategy building blocks of the UAW model. Those union model changes should inspire folks in other traditional unions just as much as the change of leadership.

***

People fed up with work and imagining something different can find Unions of Our Own, free digital tools from the book, trainings, book talks, and confidential one-on-one support from SUN at unionsofourown.org.

The post Building Our Own Power: An Interview with “Unions of Our Own” author Daniel Gross appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

Perspectives on base, superstructure, and nonhuman exploitation.

The post Animal Liberation and Capitalism appeared first on Democratic Left.

Note: posts by individual GMDSA members do not necessarily reflect the views of the broader membership or of its leadership and should not be regarded as official statements by the chapter.

Photo Credit: Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Eighty of our neighbors, including fifty-five hard-working members of Teamsters 597, are losing their jobs.

On June 17th, the Dairy Farmers of America announced plans to “idle” their Saint Albans City facility. The effects of this idling will be catastrophic and will ripple out across Vermont and the Northeast: dairy farms will be forced to shoulder the financial cost of transporting their raw milk to facilities in faraway New York or Massachusetts where it will be mixed with milk from other farms during processing; markets will see distribution and supply of their dairy products change; local companies that produce dairy products, including Ben and Jerry’s, will grapple with supply chain alterations and changes in milk quality; the plant itself on Federal Street will sit empty save a skeleton maintenance crew; and most importantly, eighty employees will become jobless. The decision follows years of DFA slowly undermining farmer co-operatives throughout the Northeast with anticompetitive, antitrust monopolization that’s left local farmers struggling to break even while DFA reaps the spoils. Now we’re all hung out to dry. 

Franklin County deserves better. Vermont deserves better. Our friends and neighbors, the hard-working members of Teamsters 597, deserve better.

This isn’t the first time that DFA has engaged in antitrust action: a 2020 lawsuit filed against DFA by Food Lion LLC and the Maryland and Virginia Milk Producers Cooperation Association claims that “DFA’s conduct threatens to and will result in antitrust injury as it tends to and will substantially lessen competition.” A lawsuit filed closer to home in Vermont two years later, S.R.J.F Inc vs. DFA, argues that “over time, DFA has taken predatory and exclusionary actions to position itself as the sole conduit for Northeastern dairy farmers to get their raw milk to market, and to control Northeast raw milk processing capacity, the only market into which Northeast dairy farmers can sell their perishable product.” Other examples of DFA seizing regional dairy industries abound, and a dairy processing plant in Connecticut currently faces similar unexpected closure.

This also isn’t the first time that DFA has proven itself a bad neighbor. Poor working conditions and unfair treatment from management led Teamsters 597 members to strike in October 2025, picketing on Federal Street late into the night. And ongoing discussions with Saint Albans City Council regarding rotten smells coming from the facility hit their most contentious note days before announcement of the plant's idling. DFA has proven itself more concerned with controlling our industry for their own gain than in supporting us, the dairy farmers, employees, and community members that call Vermont home. 

We all deserve better than an idling plant and hard-working union members without work, and we can’t allow monopolistic corporations with no regard for Vermont to strangle our dairy industry. We need legislators that use statute to create an economy where we can all succeed. We need laws that protect employees, to build strong participatory unions with greater investment from employees, and a pivot to co-operative worker-owned businesses over monolithic corporations without accountability. Our farmers and dairy workers deserve fair pay for the dairy products they produce instead of scraping by. Franklin County deserves better than a vacant DFA plant and the disruption of our dairy industry. And DFA needs to amend for the harm they’ve caused to our community and to the members of Teamsters 597.

On Wednesday, July 8, on day 54 of the National Peace Walk, two of us headed down Bradford Quarry Road in Alamance County, NC, toward Saxapahaw. The heat was oppressive. We had made a morning stop already at a church to refill our water reservoirs, taking a minute to tell a passerby about this nationwide pilgrimage that began in Brooklyn almost two months earlier. He remarked, as most tend to, that it seemed like a lot of walking. I tried, as I usually do, to downplay the physical challenge, as it is always made worthwhile by the spiritual nourishment of meeting with community at our destinations. Still, I had just bought a new set of insoles to replace the ones that I had walked to tatters, and I wasn’t sure how far this new two liters of hose water would get us. 

An hour later, Luther Livermon, a friend-to-be, slowed his car next to us and welcomed us to rest and refill at his house, a few yards down the road. When we arrived, we were officially introduced to Luther; his wife, Karen; and the two nurses who are her caretakers. Karen lives with dementia.

 Luther told us about his plan to eventually offer his 75-acre farm to Teepa Snow, a world-renowned specialist in care for those living with brain-change. Luther hoped that this offering would create a sanctuary for specialized care, as well as stewardship of the natural world, which could weather the impending changes of our society. He spoke on all of this unprompted, not aware yet that a core mission of our pilgrimage was to meet with communities working actively to create resilience through mutual aid in the United States. 

Luther also had posted signs along his farm’s frontage for the Preserve Alamance Coalition, an effort by Alamance County residents to halt the clearcutting of mature forest for construction of 1000 units of low-density housing by developers. A local friend and walk organizer, Krysten Voelkner, had coincidentally planned to meet us at the exact time we visited Luther’s farm, giving the two of them an opportunity to be introduced as neighbors and allies in the struggle to protect local forests and water. 

The simple, grounding activity of walking has led to many encounters like these. Our visit with those on Luther’s farm that morning was an affirmation that this project is one of making a path toward continual serendipity, walked by those who are ready to encounter it. 

Last fall, I was part of the organizing committee for the Quaker Walk to Washington, and the work that has continued from this act of public witness now has me on a pilgrimage bound for Minneapolis. Throughout my life, my tendency to be drawn toward egalitarian communities has kept me in overlapping circles of Quaker and socialist groups. 

Since beginning pilgrimage work with Brooklyn Quakers in early 2025, I have literally and figuratively followed a tradition that is older than what is known now as the United States. Quakers have been walking pilgrimages on this continent for nearly four hundred years as an act of peace. This simple act continues to be an effective way to step outside of many oppressive, interconnected systems to meet with friends in true intention. 

Quakerism has always had much to offer fellow socialists. Our historic mode of governance prioritizes long, thoughtful discernment which necessarily resolves in consensus. Quaker governance serves as the basis for the theory of sociocracy. In what was then known as New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant famously banned Quakers from practicing their religion. A 1657 petition called the Flushing Remonstrance was a call by residents of the borough for ratified religious liberty. Over a hundred years later, the petition inspired the Founders to include freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights, connecting Quaker society to this essential feature of spiritual freedom in the United States. 

The National Peace Walk 2026 follows this tradition of publicly expressing faith as an immovable societal foundation, one that weathers all periods of change. Walking to bring this good news to friends extends from a literal and metaphorical lineage that exists both on this continent, and throughout the world. Dozens of folks we have met along the way speak of the Camino de Santiago, currently experiencing the highest number of pilgrims since the 16th century. 

More recently, in our own country, a group of Buddhist monks walked 3,500 kilometers and gained international attention for the cause of peace and understanding. Their walk extended to Sri Lanka after the U.S. phase was finished. The tradition of pilgrimage in the United States in modern times has been upheld by a few notable figures, including Peace Pilgrim, who walked for nearly 30 years, crossing the United States seven times, speaking before crowds and on radio. According to her story, she rested when offered lodging, ate when offered food, and carried nothing except the clothes she wore. 

In the days before the United States. celebrated “America250,” the National Peace Walk finally crossed the North Carolina border, leaving only two days of walking to the next Quaker meeting in Raleigh. Those days in Virginia proved to be a challenge unlike the prior 300 miles between New York City and Washington. The heat and fatigue were factors, but the size and remoteness of Route 1 outside of Richmond were staggering at points. On this section, we could no longer count on a nightly station with Quakers, other faith groups, or communities of people activated toward building peace. We saw instead a kind of cultural blight: towns that had emptied after the dissolution of an unsustainable industry or the construction of I-95/85. In earlier days, when we might have stopped at some center of community for rest and water, there was now just a Wawa store, and then at a certain latitude, a Sheetz. We took our overnight rest on an abandoned porch or in the prohibitively expensive, soulless interior of a hotel room.

The act of intentionally meeting with friends at times can feel utterly inaccessible without acquiescing to a number of oppressive systems, installed by the force of convenience. “America at 250” on its face would like to be a celebration of a unity among states, but the lived reality for most in the Covid-era is an encroaching stasis of isolation, even “post” lockdown. 

The recent work of pilgrimage by NYC Quakers has been a modern effort to transcend these divides and to meet with friends as companions and partners in the realization of a peaceful world. Our intention as walkers is to reach Minneapolis by November, in order to celebrate the work of residents of the Twin Cities to build resilience under the pressure of full-bore state violence. From where we stand now, in Boone, North Carolina, a walk to Minneapolis could seem like an untraversable distance. What is certain, as it has been revealed to us many times over at this point, is that applied faith shared by community will open a way. The serendipity of the journey will be found by those who set out to meet it. 

The post 400 Years of U.S. Pilgrimage: Why This Quaker is Walking Across the Country   appeared first on DSA Religious Socialism.

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Former members of the U.S. Communist Party recount their "Red Lives."

The post Looking Back to Look Forward appeared first on Democratic Left.

Events and Actions

Tuesday July 28 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (1916 McAllister St)

Tuesday July 28 (7:00 PM – 8:30 PM) EWOC Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing (1916 McAllister St)

Wednesday July 29 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM) DSA SF Electoral Board x WFP Happy Hour (Teeth Bar SF, 2323 Mission St)

Wednesday July 29 (6:00 PM – 7:30 PM) Phonebank for the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act (1916 McAllister St)

Wednesday July 29 (6:45 PM – 8:30 PM) Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (1916 McAllister St)

Thursday July 30 (7:00 PM – 9:00 PM) ICE Out Orientation (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Saturday August 1 (1:00 PM – 3:00 PM) Immigrant Justice KYR Canvassing – Pacific Heights (Raymond Kimbell Playground Park, 1901 Geary Blvd)

Monday August 3 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Tuesday August 4 (5:30 PM – 7:00 PM) Social Housing Working Group (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Wednesday August 5 (5:30 PM – 7:00 PM) Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (zoom only)

Wednesday August 5 (6:00 PM – 9:00 PM) Social Housing Happy Hour (MOTHERSHIP, 3152 Mission St)

Thursday August 6 (6:00 PM – 7:00 PM) Education Board Open Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Thursday August 6 (7:00 PM – 8:30 PM) Immigrant Justice regular meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Friday August 7 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Bloody Sugar: the C&H Strike and Justice for Land Defenders in the Philippines (in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Saturday August 8 (11:00 PM – 2:00 PM) Fundamentals of Tenant Organizing [ETOC] (in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Sunday August 9 (5:00 PM – 6:00 PM) Tenderloin Healing Circle Working Group Meeting (zoom only)

Monday August 10 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Tenderloin Healing Circle (Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Monday August 10 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM)Labor Working Group Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Happy Hour with the Working Families Party

New to organizing? Looking to get more involved? Come to our joint happy hour with the Working Families Party TOMORROW Wednesday July 29th at Teeth Bar, 2323 Mission, from 6:00 – 8:00 PM and meet cool people organizing cool campaigns. The event is all ages AND it’s Teeth’s “Wings Wednesday” so you gotta come out — RSVP here!

Immigrant Justice Know Your Rights Canvassing Event & Social

The Immigrant Justice Working Group will be hosting an ICE Out Orientation session this Thursday, July 30 from 7:00 – 9:00 PM at the office (1916 Mcallister) and virtually over Zoom! This is perfect for if you are interested in learning where to plug in with your local community initiatives and learn how to best utilize your skills, or even just to connect with others if you’re already active!

If you plan to attend either in person or on Zoom, please RSVP here!

Immigrant Justice Know Your Rights Canvassing Event & Social

Join the Immigrant Justice Working Group for Know Your Rights (KYR) canvassing Saturday August 1 at 1:00PM at Raymond Kimbell Playground Park!

We will be distributing red cards and KYR materials to businesses and community members in the Pacific Heights neighborhood.

We will meet at Raymond Kimbell Playground Park on the corner of Geary Blvd. & Steiner St. to receive training and materials before canvassing.

Join us after for a social/debrief session at a local spot and grab food/drinks!

New to canvassing? No worries! There will be a brief how-to training before we go out in pairs or small groups.

Bloody Sugar: the C&H Strike and Justice for Land Defenders in the Philippines

DSA SF is hosting a guest speaker from San Francisco Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (SFCHRP) to discuss the recent events that connect the strike against C&H Sugar in Crockett, California to the massacre of 19 land defenders and activists in Toboso, Negros Occidental in the Philippines. We’ll dive into sugar’s bloody history, learn about the links in the imperialist global supply chain that bind us together in struggle, and discuss what we can do here in San Francisco. 

Join us on the evening of Friday, August 7th in the office at 1916 McAllister St. (RSVP link coming soon!).

Reportback: Tenant Organizing Working Group Provide Support for Socialist in Office Jackie Fielder’s Town Hall

On Thursday, our Socialist In Office Supervisor Jackie Fielder hosted a Town Hall at La Fénix on Mission as part of a D9 listening series. Last Tuesday, DSA members posted flyers throughout the Mission inviting residents to the Town Hall and the Citywide Tenant Assembly in August, and providing information to help tenants know their rights when facing eviction. DSA’s Tenant Organizing Working Group was joined in tabling the event by the Eviction Defense Collaborative, and DSA SF members were in attendance to support and listen to ideas and concerns from working class residents in the Mission.

The room was packed with constituents who shared questions and comments to a panel including Jackie and representatives from the Mayor’s Office, the Department of Emergency Management, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, SFPD, and SFMTA. Mission residents took the floor and advocated for many important community needs such as funding for peer counselors, mental health and substance use treatment, housing-first policies and funding for affordable housing, and against recent shelter closures and surveillance by Flock cameras. The departments took notes and responded to questions directed at them, including requests for greater transparency and regular reporting. Jackie’s team followed up with residents who still had comments after the event to make sure their concerns were noted.

If you’re interested in showing up to support our Socialist in Office, Jackie’s next Town Hall will be in Portola on Thursday, July 30 from 6:30 – 7:30 PM at the Family Connections Center, located at 2565 San Bruno Ave!

On Wednesday, July 22, four Madison Police Department officers surrounded and executed Corey Ruiz on the corner of Williamson and South Baldwin streets, mere blocks away from where Tony Robinson was murdered by Matt Kenny in 2015. We condemn in no uncertain terms the murder of Corey Ruiz by the Madison Police Department. Regardless of the events leading up to the murder, there is no situation where this is justified. For days our members have participated in demonstrations, protests, and vigils in solidarity with our community.

This is not the first time Madison Police officers have taken a neighbor’s life;  the police continue to use excessive force and perpetuate racism and classism with absolute impunity. In March 2015, Madison Police officer Matt Kenny shot and killed 19-year-old Tony Robinson. Despite widespread protests and calls for accountability, Matt Kenny has faced no charges and is still employed by the Madison Police Department more than ten years later. He even trains new officers. Even Tony Robinson was not the first victim of police murder in this neighborhood—in 2012, Paul Heenan was murdered by police on South Baldwin Street, and in 2006, Victor Montero-Diaz was murdered by police at the gas station on Williamson Street. 

We stand behind the community’s demands for:

1. The immediate arrest of Kiel Baitinger-Peterson and all those accessory to the murder we witnessed on Wednesday afternoon
2. That all information found in the investigation conducted by the Department of Criminal Investigation be turned over to the Office of the Independent Police Monitor and Civilian Oversight Board
3. Community control over the police.
   

We demand accountability for Corey’s murder, and for the systems that have led to this point— systems that value property over human life. We demand full transparency, including the immediate release of the names of every officer involved and all available squad car camera and surveillance footage.

These common-sense demands only address this most recent harm done to the community and ensure accountability follows. If we truly want to stop further violence, we must not treat this as an isolated instance but rather a part of a larger structure that perpetuates violence. Instead, we must focus on the kinds of reforms that will prevent future police violence against our communities. 

We must demilitarize police departments, redirect funding to public services, and strengthen the Office of the Independent Police Monitor and Civilian Oversight Board to have real community authority over the police. These changes, among others, are steps that will bring us closer to changing the violent carceral system that destroys communities and takes lives. We need to recognize that any reform that does not decrease the power of the modern punishment bureaucracy is no reform at all.

Time and again we’ve seen politicians break promises, make compromises that lead to half measures, and roll back reforms. We’ve seen momentum toward progress stall as soon as the news cycle moves on. Non-profits are limited by their mandate, structure, and fundraising, and advocate but do not deliver. To win our demands, members of the community must get organized and work together.

Support and attend the vigil, connect with your community, and be ready to take concrete action in the coming days and weeks to ensure true accountability and justice for Corey Ruiz.