From April 20th to May 11th, comrades in MADSA completed a reading and discussion of Vladimir Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Originally written in the first half of 1916 and published as a pamphlet in mid-1917, Lenin’s work analyzing how and why imperialism emerges under capitalism remains a vital resource in developing a stronger understanding of key Marxist concepts and analyses.

For most members of the group, it was their first time ever reading any literature written by Lenin. Most members felt the language of Imperialism was easy to understand and the text was a decent length with a good amount of content to analyze. Imperialism is backed up by quotes from other scholars Lenin was familiar with at the time of writing, as well as tables of data and other evidence for his claims that imperialism is the final (inevitable) stage of capitalism. 

After reading Imperialism, the reading group members felt it was helpful to see how capitalism evolves into imperialism in phases. For some, it was helpful to see with clarity how capitalism evolves into imperialism, and it was easy to make comparisons with how the world functions in 2025. 

As for the logistics of running the reading group, members felt it was great to have a member lead the discussion with key questions or main thoughts to get conversation started. Meeting in person was nice for interacting with comrades, but having it remain hybrid is best for engaging more members in the discussion and allowing flexibility for members who could not join in person. The length of Imperialism was ideal and it was easily divided into 30-40 page readings every week, which was manageable by everyone. 

As for the future of chapter reading groups, members floated the idea of doing more political theory and history discussion in the Slack, so members can ask clarifying questions about topics, answer each other’s questions, or engage in friendly debate about readings. Having discussion questions assigned ahead of time could potentially help structure readings as well.

Overall, the reading group went well and members were excited to continue reading anything in general. Members also felt keeping the reading group casual would allow for other members to explore things to read that aren’t just Karl Marx. 

An important takeaway from reading Imperialism is Lenin’s theory that imperialism is the final stage of capitalism, that it was the natural final stage that arises out of the formation of monopolies, and that capitalism is at that stage has reached a dead end. As socialists, we were able to map out Lenin’s ideas neatly along the problems of the United States, which left us with a burning question: if we are living under the final dead-end stage of capitalism, what happens next? This question inspired us to seek out another work by Lenin, State and Revolution, to hopefully gain more insight into what Lenin believed would occur next. 

With the MADSA chapter steadily growing in membership over the past few months, there has been talk about developing more chapter education initiatives, whether that be more Socialism 101 events or events designed to help people understand specific areas of political theory. It is important that comrades who have the time and energy to read and discuss theory also take the time to educate others, either through book/discussion group reports, posts to Red Madison, or helping to organize educational events. 

We commend our comrades in the chapter for achieving the gargantuan task of completing a reading of Karl Marx’s Capital, as this work serves as the most fundamental basis for our understanding of capitalism and frames our beliefs as socialists. Comrades in the Imperialism reading group have expressed an interest in continuing to read fundamental works from European socialists like Marx, Lenin, Luxembourg, and others. We also agree that we should be taking time to source important works from non-Western/non-European points of view. We would like to invite our comrades to engage more in the chapter reading groups, whether that be posting in Slack to ask questions about our readings and findings, or joining the readings whenever they can.

We were able to access Imperialism for free using the Marxists Internet Archive. A free PDF of Imperialism can be found here.
An annotated version of Imperialism edited by MADSA’s own chapter member Phil Gasper can be found here for purchase.

How Zohran Mamdani’s campaign used positive messaging to inspire a broad coalition of support

Throughout my life, when it comes to politics, no one in my personal life would describe my outlook as especially positive. I am a product of the times, and the times haven’t seen a lot to be very happy about if you’re interested in leftist politics, or the environment, or generally the well being of humanity. 

Something began to change my outlook this past year though, and it wasn’t that Donald Trump got re-elected, in many ways cementing the complete degradation of our two-party system which has been decaying for generations. What changed for me personally was that after several years of being a mostly inactive to passive member of Democratic Socialists of America, I decided to truly engage in community action and get involved in ways that were, at first, pretty uncomfortable for me. 

When I finally decided to show up to an event, I was quite literally immediately welcomed with open arms by several different comrades. The first social I joined, I was introduced to one of the most remarkable things about DSA, it is an inherently friendly cohort of people open to learning and hearing others tell their stories and share their experiences. Once you get your bearings, there is an immense sense of joy in coming together to debate and solve problems, facilitate events and organize community members around issues you care about. 

In public meeting rooms, on zoom calls, and in streets all over our country, there are volunteers giving their time, passion, energy and expertise to building a mass movement to make their communities stronger, more equitable, more diverse and more healthy, and that is an unbelievably inspiring thing to witness and be a part of.

In an era of violently divisive politics, Zohran is showing that there is not only space for positive messaging, but this approach to leftist politics resonates with a diverse coalition of voters. Mamdani’s campaign, bolstered by the work of New York City’s DSA chapter, was a flawlessly executed campaign that not only educated people about his policies, but about the wider socialist theory that informed them.

This week I’ve been inundated by messages from politically disengaged and dismayed friends all expressing an unfamiliar feeling; hope. Their disbelief that Mamdani could win even in the face of corporate PAC’s and lobbyists lining up behind Cuomo, and even in the face of mass media working against him. 

Democratic Socialists of America members all over the country this week are rejoicing as this win gives more proof to our theory of change; when we activate our organizational muscle and bring our message to the people in our communities, we can win elections and we can help to bring about the change we want to see.

Let this victory be a launching pad for a million more activists who are seeing, likely for the first time in their lives, a truly generational moment for socialist politics in the United States. Join us, let’s continue to build this movement. 

By: Jade DeSloover

Rabbit Hole: v.001 was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Rob Switzer

On a cool Sunday evening this past June, I did a shift canvassing a neighborhood on the west side of Detroit, knocking on doors for a candidate for the City Council’s Seventh District: Denzel McCampbell.

After navigating through a traffic jam in the parking lot, I located our meeting place in Rouge Park. One thing I noticed immediately was how many friendly faces I saw. Of the roughly two dozen volunteers I saw that day, at least half seemed to be fellow members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). In talks before my shift, I learned that DSA members had already helped knock on 5,000 doors for this campaign. (That number now exceeds 7,000.)

One of them was Lila Brickner. She has only been a DSA member for about six months, but she has thrown herself into this campaign. Despite working full-time, she spends about four days a week on what has essentially become her second job. She has knocked on well over 500 doors; she also does phone-banking, helps at events, and supplies other support as needed.

“I was drawn to this because it gave me a chance to start taking immediate action,” Brickner told me. “Having socialists in office is critical to driving change and getting the policies we want implemented. I was behind all of Denzel’s initiatives and really respected his background in community organizing. It’s obvious he genuinely cares about his city and his district.”

Also present was Aaron Bager, chair of our local DSA’s Electoral Committee. When asked why he’s so passionate about electoral work and this campaign, he said, “To me this is where the big changes happen. Absolutely unions change things. Tenant organizing changes things and I wouldn’t dismiss that. But a lot of widespread changes you want start here, with the city.”

Denzel has deep roots in this city. He is a lifelong Detroiter. He has been an activist since his college days at Michigan State University. He is a founding member of Black Youth Project 100, an organization that fights against the “school-to-prison pipeline” that undermines the futures of young people of color. Denzel was also an elected Detroit City Charter Commissioner, and served as communications director and advisor for U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.

DSA has already backed him in the past, in his run for Detroit City Clerk in 2021. This time DSA members are pouring a lot of resources and time into his campaign, in the Electoral Committee and beyond. Denzel is a self-identified and unapologetic socialist, and a lot of us are looking at the current political climate as an opportunity to elect such candidates, a climate which is reflected in our growing membership in the last year.

Americans are crying out for representation that openly addresses their economic anxiety instead of gaslighting them that everything is just great, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did in 2024. Voters want something different. And many of them are open to listening to someone willing to say, for example, that billionaires shouldn’t exist, and that immigrants are a vital part of our community who should not be rounded up like dogs. Denzel is one of these candidates.

And where are people most open to a more progressive — or even radical — message? In the great American cities. This is being demonstrated right now by the underdog campaign of DSA member Zohran Mamdani, candidate for Mayor of New York City, who just shocked the nation by winning a tight primary race against the billionaire-funded Democratic establishment candidate, Andrew Cuomo.

Aaron Bager agrees. “To me, Denzel is just the beginning. When we win — when, not if — I do want to basically get a bloc on the city council. I do want to run somebody like Zohran,” he said. “But you don’t just jump to that. You build to that … What’s going on over there in NYC, they built that over … I want to say over the past decade. So it all starts here in my eyes.”

As they say, “all politics is local.” And particularly in local elections, voters want someone who will address the needs of their community. And Denzel’s campaign is focused on this. The campaign has even been telling volunteers to focus less on selling the candidacy, and more on just asking people what they need. And Denzel is listening.

“When I think about being a socialist” — quoting McCampbell at a recent fundraising event — “I think about being someone who is running a campaign that is saying, we’re done with giving money for them to build playgrounds downtown while folks in our neighborhoods don’t have funds to repair their homes.”

Just before a recent fundraising event, I witnessed Denzel get stopped in the parking lot by a woman who told the story of her son’s bike being stolen by another boy in the neighborhood. She confronted the other boy’s mother, who told her, “I can’t get help from anybody, and I just want something for my son to do. He has nothing to do.” She was essentially telling the story of how her son resorted to crime because he has no diversions in his largely neglected and forgotten neighborhood.

Denzel recounted this story when he spoke that evening, stating, “Our government system is failing our kids in this district and across the city. We are done catering to billionaires. We’ve been told folks should be happy for scraps, while folks get everything they need downtown. That’s over.”

He continued: “This campaign is about lifting up the demands of workers. Being true to Detroit being a union town. A city government that makes sure we put workers first. A city government that says that we’re not going to continue to fund overpolicing, the surveillance and the militarization in our communities. A city that pushes back on folks in our city being snatched away, and folks being disappeared when it comes to immigration. A city government that actually works hand-in-hand with community with co-governance.”

Denzel is endorsed by many organizations, including local chapters of AFL-CIO, UAW, AFSCME, IBEW (Electrical Workers), and many others. And he is supported by us. With our collective work, he can and will win. And this election could be a model upon which we can build.

Primary voting is fast approaching: Election Day is August 5 and ballots for early voting are in the mail as of this writing. Now is the time to get involved. You can knock on doors like I did; you can phone-bank; you can donate. Let’s do this; let’s follow New York’s example and put our comrade on the City Council!

Denzel McCampbell for Detroit City Council: An Opportunity for the Local Movement was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Taina Santiago

Back in April, Metro Detroit DSA members congregated inside UFO Bar in Corktown with the tunes of problematicblackhottie, internet boy, and Tom McBride beating on the walls of the dive bar. In May, comrades headbanged to the rock songs of the band Prostitute in a mosh pit that formed near the stage. In this small space, we came together to chat, laugh, and best of all, dance.

These Dances Against Fascism are put on by our fundraising committee, with the next event happening at 9PM on June 27 at Northern Lights Lounge (you can buy tickets here: https://ra.co/events/2197928).

Dance as a tool may not come to mind when folks think of fighting against an oppressive force, but it’s an essential part of many resistance movements like the one DSA is building. Throughout history, marginalized people have used dance to maintain hope, organize their communities, and express their humanity. MDDSA’s recent dances have followed in this spirit: members come together and dance unapologetically.

Dancing with a crowd of people who shared my anti-fascist, anti-capitalist views left me feeling hopeful that those in power cannot break us. A resistance movement needs to keep that feeling alive in the face of daunting oppression.

Ghost Dance

One such movement was called the Ghost Dance Movement, a popular spiritual dance used by Native Americans during the 1800s. It came about through a prophecy from a Northern Paiute religious leader named Wovoka, who told of the ghosts of ancestors returning and an end to the white settlers’ occupation of Indigenous land. Wovoka preached that a ritualized dance would help this future come to fruition sooner. It consisted of a ceremony where offerings were made to ancestors before followers sang and danced in an energetic circle. Some people entered trances during ceremonies, seeing visions of their ancestors as they danced with their present-day relatives.

The dance acted as a rebellion against the forced assimilation imposed on Native Americans by white settlers, which was erasing their way of life. It reconnected them to their roots, giving them the power to dream of what could be again.

The hope that the dance inspired in Indigenous people provided communities with strength and, in response, the colonizers stamped it out with military force. The Ghost Dance Movement was at the center of the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, where the Lakota chief Sitting Bull allowed people to participate in ghost dancing and was ultimately killed by the U.S. Army for it, along with 250 other Lakota men, women, children, and elderly people.

Ghost dancing gave Native Americans a ritual to put their hope into, a sacred ceremony they could do in harmony with their communities and in resistance to genocidal policies and practices.

Building Community

A lot of my enjoyment of our DSA dances came from mingling with fellow socialists and getting to know why they joined the organization. I felt an instant camaraderie with everyone. This was a community I wanted to be a part of and fight with. A movement like DSA is trying to build–one of solidarity with the most vulnerable members of our world and action-driven organizing–needs intentional community building. And few things build community like dancing together.

In Puerto Rico, the batey — a word from the Taíno natives meaning community space–was where this mingling and dancing took place. It was here that bomba–a previously banned dance that involves skirted dancers and drummers who modify their beats based on dancers’ improvised moves–developed. It was brought to the island by enslaved Africans who used it as an escape from the grueling labor on plantations and as a connective force between enslaved people who spoke different languages. This form of dance has been used for centuries to bring Puerto Ricans together to defy and organize against colonizers.

Presently, people in the neighborhood of La Perla in San Juan gather every Friday to dance bomba in the batey, bringing new generations into the enduring tradition. The free-flowing movements of the dancers along with the conversation they have with the drummer are a beautiful symbol of people in sync with each other. When we are in sync, we can more easily rise up in larger, more united numbers.

The Body’s Humanity

For three hours at the first Dance Against Fascism I moved my limbs and swayed to the beat, connecting to my body and therefore my humanity. Celebrating that humanity through dance keeps what we are struggling for at the forefront of our minds, making it more likely that we will keep fighting.

Dancing also pushes against the dehumanization tactics fascists use on marginalized people. The Stonewall Riots of 1969 marked another point where dance was at the center of a resistance movement. This critical moment in the LGBTQ+ liberation movement began at a gay bar called The Stonewall Inn in New York, where folks could express themselves and dance with each other in a time when they could not live openly in peace. An artist who participated in the riots, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, said in this Vice article, “It was the only bar where we could slow dance…That was totally revolutionary. Being able to dance with someone of the same sex changed everything in the way you felt about yourself. Because you were having an affectionate moment, you felt totally humanized.”

When the bar was raided by police, it marked a breaking point for a community that was under constant persecution. Clashes with police and a demonstration in the streets of Greenwich Village followed and lasted for six days. It was a show of strength, solidarity, and a reclamation of the humanity that police had tried to strip away. The riots and the Rockette-style kick lines that formed during them kicked off the modern gay liberation movement and demonstrated how places of dance and the freedom they represent can be environments that inspire people to fight for their right to exist.

History demonstrates how dance gives people a sense of agency to rise up against oppressors. Events like MDDSA’s Dance Against Fascism follow in this tradition and help us keep our inner light alive through dark times. Fascists want antagonism between people. Dance brings folks together. Fascists want to demonize individuality in the name of nationalism. Dance celebrates unique creative expression. Fascists don’t want us to dance, and that is exactly why we will continue to do so.

Join MDDSA’s next dance at 9PM on Friday June 27 at Northern Lights Lounge. Tickets are $10.

RSVP using this link: https://ra.co/events/2197928

Dance Against Fascism: A History of Rhythmic Resistance was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Democratic Socialist Willie Burnley, Jr. carries the torch in bid for Somerville Mayor

“I’m going to be a pro-union, pro-worker mayor”

By Maxine Bouvier

SOMERVILLE, MA – With the backing of DSA, Somerville City Councilor-at-Large and democratic socialist Willie Burnley Jr. is challenging two-term incumbent Mayor Katjana Ballantyne.

Burnley’s campaign comes as Zohran Mamdani’s upset in the New York City mayoral race stunned the world. Mamdani made international headlines on June 24th by defeating a powerful ex-Governor born into a political dynasty and backed by the entire Democratic Party establishment.

Mamdani and Burnley are DSA-endorsed members of their local chapters, and their political styles are similar. They are both self-described organizers. Both have employed creative campaign techniques and developed robust field operations on a scale that addresses the needs of two very different cities, while tackling broadly felt working-class issues. For Zohran, it was freezing the rent, making buses fast and free, and universal childcare. For Burnley, it’s affordable social housing, uplifting union rights and tenants’ rights, and increasing resources for K-12 students. The campaign has hosted creative events like a cannabis-infused fundraiser, and its volunteers are already knocking on doors five days a week.

Working Mass spoke with Willie over video call to ask him about his background, his historic campaign, his work on Somerville City Council so far, and – of course – his views on what is most important for Somerville’s future.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

WM: In 2021, the Boston Globe published a story about the victory of the Democratic Socialist slate in Somerville that year, the moment you became a city councilor. At the time, prominent local labor activist Rand Wilson quipped that “the socialist takeover of Somerville is going to be a little disappointing if nobody runs for mayor.” When did you first start thinking about running for Mayor?

WB: It’s hard to pin it exactly to one moment because as a city councilor, I have a front row seat to the city’s budget, to initiatives that are started and don’t get off the ground, and to the ways in which I think our current administration has mishandled a lot of the demands of the community. I’m thinking particularly about the transformation of public safety, as one.

Five years ago before I was a councilor, I pushed to re-allocate local police funds into public services that address community safety and wellness at the root – rental assistance, food assistance, bilingual youth specialist for public school – and five years later, our current mayor, is actually doubling down on the same broken system of policing that led us to take on that fight in the first place.

So, there’s been a lot of frustration over my time on the council. There have been many times when I’ve thought, If only we had someone who could take on this role and actually steer the city in the direction I know most residents want it to move.’ I feel that now is the time to have that person, and I believe I’m the best person for the job at this moment. 

WM: Tell us about your background. What was growing up like for you?

WB: I grew up in Southern California, in San Diego specifically, in a lower middle-class family – a single-parent family, single-father family. I grew up in a place that’s a lot like Somerville, in some ways: a place where working-class people struggle to survive, with a lot of diversity.

In the case of my part of San Diego, most of the kids that I went to school with were people of color, most of whom were low-income, and, you know, where I grew up, we all had the sense that government was not on our side. The government was not there to protect us. I grew up with undocumented folks who felt like the government was going to tear apart their families. 

For folks like me, who the carceral system has impacted, we felt like the government was there to undermine us, to harm us. That informed a lot of my relationship with politics, frankly. We were underserved, underinvested in, and targeted by the government. And it’s precisely why I think we need to demonstrate that government can be a force for good in people’s lives by actually serving their material needs, helping them deal with the crises of medical debt and housing unaffordability.

I came to Boston for college. I moved to Somerville right after I graduated from college and have been here for about the last nine years. I see so much in this community that is built upon people caring about their neighbors and about the world they live in, and wanting to make it better. And I think we deserve leaders who will fight just as hard as our neighbors are fighting at this moment to secure our safety and our futures. 

WM: What led you to your politics?

WB: There are lots of things that are wrong in the world, lots of things that I feel like have been radicalizing me. Like a lot of people, it took me a bit of time to start identifying as a socialist. I didn’t grow up idolizing money, and I could see the fundamental flaws of capitalism, so my politics could be described as “anti-capitalist.” However, I recall reading an article in 2015 from Jacobin titled “Against Charity.” And it was about how our fundamental human rights, and things that we all need to live – food, water, shelter – will not be guaranteed by capitalism, and fundamentally cannot be guaranteed by capitalism. 

At the time, I was living in Washington, DC, on a program from Emerson College. DC was undergoing some of the most drastic and stark gentrification I’d ever seen. I lived within walking distance of the Capitol, where Congress was meeting, and where some of the most powerful industries in the world were centered to lobby our government. I saw many people who were unhoused, struggling to get by. There was so much poverty. And it was infuriating for me because – I’ve lived in cities all my life and I’ve seen poverty, so much of it, but to see it in our nation’s capital, where some of the richest people in the world were, and some of the wealthiest industries in the world were, was just – infuriating.

The article kind of just locked it all into place for me. I believe in human rights and in doing the things that you need to do to accomplish your values, and capitalism just fundamentally cannot sustain what I’m hoping to create in the world. That pushed me to become a socialist. It was a deep moment of radicalization for me amidst the Black Lives Matter movement. Getting involved with people-powered movements, in protest with thousands of people, really showed me how to view power: built from the ground up.

WM: What inspired you to organize? 

WB: The Black Lives Matter movement was the first time where I felt the true power of people-powered movements – 2014, 2015, 2016, 2020 – each of these years, being part of mass movements in the Boston area. In one of the first Black Lives Matter protests in Boston, we tried to shut down a highway with tens of thousands of people. I specifically say that because there was a call from some organizers at the time that white people should put their bodies on the line, go to the front, be that barrier between the police and people of color. I respected that, but I also wanted to be on that frontline. So, I put myself in that position. 

That was the moment when I realized: I want to be a part of this. There is a difference between supporting a protest and being a part of a movement, and organizing protests and organizing movements. So that was the start.

In 2017, I joined If Not Now, an almost entirely Jewish organization. I’m not Jewish, but I was a part of it. We organized people, primarily young American Jewish people, to call out the support of AIPAC. We protested outside the Boston consulate of Israel. I organized one of those protests because, at the time when Trump was first in office, they were trying to expel all Black immigrants from Israel back to Africa, where they would have been punished for going to Israel. The movement for people of color and for a just foreign policy really motivated me to not only join protests but also help lead the logistics and get people involved myself. 

WM: You have now served for four years as a city councilor in Somerville. How have the political dynamics of the Somerville City Council changed since your election in 2021? Do you think they become more or less favorable to socialist policy? 

WB: Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s a difficult question because I have been, I think, incredibly effective and productive with my time on the council. As far as legislation, I’ve passed thirteen laws in three and a half years on the council. Most other councilors have served in the same number of terms, perhaps two or one. There are not many people who have been around for the same amount of time as I have, because some of those people have already left. And most folks who’ve been around for twice as long have passed four, maybe five laws. So I feel confident in my ability to get things done. 

Some of my colleagues have been less inclined to support more aggressive action. When you can show that clear divide and demonstrate that socialists can be effective at legislating and governing, it sheds a negative light on those establishment elected officials who are not doing as much as they could for the people. It puts them in awkward positions. 

There are a lot of votes that my colleagues, frankly, have not wanted to take.

For example, when Somerville became the first municipality in Massachusetts to pass a ceasefire resolution in January of last year, many colleagues were hesitant to take that vote. They didn’t want to express an opinion or take a stance. Ultimately, we had that vote, and we were successful, but there was a lot of resentment from the elected political class in Somerville for having to take a stance on that issue. That’s frustrating from my standpoint, but it’s one of the kind of drawbacks, frankly, of having that successful insurgency, that all of a sudden the people who might have thought, “Oh, these people, they’re not going to be that effective, they’re harmless, we can just, you know, do whatever,” all of a sudden, when they really see it that you can be effective, they have to take stances to challenge your power.

That is essentially where we are now, and that’s why I think taking on a Mayor’s role in a strong mayor system like Somerville’s is so important. They’ll have a choice of whether to work with me or not, and then we can actually push for the material support that people need.

WM: You have spoken about being displaced from Somerville a decade ago. In what ways has the tenants’ crisis changed in Somerville since then? 

WB: I was displaced from Somerville in 2017, before the city had what we have now, which is the Office of Housing Stability. When I was displaced, I didn’t know who to talk to. And I know, frankly, because I talk to constituents who ask me these questions, a lot of people still don’t know who to talk to. But at the time, I didn’t feel, even as someone who was an organizer, like there was someone in our local government whom I could talk to about how to stay in my apartment when my landlord was drastically raising the rent. 

I felt incredibly isolated, unprotected, and, frankly, afraid of what it would mean to not be able to pay my bills, what it might look like to be evicted, what it might look like to have to end up on the street. Coming from California, if I were going to get kicked out, I didn’t necessarily have somewhere to go long-term in Somerville or the state of Massachusetts. Ultimately, I had to return to California after the landlord displaced me. I decided to come back because I care about this place that much. But, to your question, we now have an Office of Housing Stability, which is one of our most important and vital resources for residents. 

We now also have a fully formed Community Land Trust. It’s now slowly acquiring and proposing to build permanently affordable housing in different parts of the city. 

But, of course, we need to do more. That’s why one of the things I want to do as Mayor is do what former Mayor Curtatone did with the Office of Housing Stability: hire one person to help build out the department, figure out what we need to practically do as a city to stabilize people’s housing, when the city lacks the right or the power to establish rent control. If I’m elected mayor, I’m going to do the same thing with an Office of Social Housing – figure out what Somerville could do to try to build up social housing, by municipally owning housing in the city that’s set as deeply affordable for residents, and, long-term, producing social housing for residents in the city. 

WM: What do you think is the role of labor unions in municipal governance? How about tenants’ unions? How can you involve workers and tenants in Somerville governance?

WB: I’m a former union member. I was a Teamster. Unions play a crucial role, both in helping to clarify issues for elected officials and in advocating for broader solidarity from below. For example, in Somerville, Tufts is currently building a dorm with non-union labor. I’ve been on the picket lines multiple times with some members of SEIU and other trade union members, discussing with the workers why Tufts needs to use union labor to build. That’s important because it’s safer for the workers themselves and the people ultimately living in those buildings. Our labor unions also advocate for other issues. For example, the trades unions are very interested in how cities implement legislation to build resilience around climate change. 

We need to demonstrate to our workers, both municipal workers and those in the city, that the local government has their backs. Somerville needs to be a union town, and I don’t think we can achieve that if we have a mayor who will be hands-off or allow projects that will reshape the city without utilizing union labor.

We have some tenant unions in Somerville, but I think we should have many more. Tenants’ unions are vital for our community, especially in Somerville, which is incredibly dense. It’s the most densely populated municipality in New England, one of the most densely populated municipalities in the world. Knowing your neighbors is not just important for housing stability, but it’s also important for addressing all kinds of issues. When we have neighbors getting snatched off the street by ICE, the people who are best suited to support us are our neighbors, the people who live near us, the people who can keep track of what’s going on in and around our neighborhoods. Often, other tenants.

It’s important, obviously, to negotiate with landlords – that’s something that the Office of Housing Stability has been really helpful with. They’re able to work on getting whole buildings in a position to negotiate rent hikes with landlords collectively. We need more tenants’ unions, and we need them to be in communication with the city, so we can collectively advocate for our rights. People power is real, and it matters even to the slumlords. If they act in a disproportionate or unethical manner towards their tenants, they will have to empty entire buildings in the long term and face negative press about the buildings, which will lead to no tenants signing their leases at all.

WM: How do you plan to support Somerville city employees as Mayor?

WB: That’s a great question, and something I’ve already tried to do as a councilor. I’ll give two examples of things I have done and an example of something I would do. First, Massachusetts has a law called the Paid Family and Medical Leave Act, which offers up to twelve weeks of paid leave to workers when they take medical leave, or when they or someone in their family has a serious medical issue. That’s a law passed years ago that impacts workers across the state. However, one exempt group was municipal workers.

Municipalities can opt into the system and provide workers with twelve weeks of leave. The cities pay some of it, but not all of it. Not a single municipality in the state of Massachusetts has opted into the program. Not a single one. So, one of the things that I did as a councilor was I brought forward that law to Somerville and asked, “Hey, should we adopt this law that would drastically increase our benefits for our municipal workers?” 

Can we afford to do it? Do workers want it? [The Ballantyne administration] obfuscated; they delayed. They even said, “No, well, what we are doing now is better than that.” What they didn’t mention at the time was that they offered two weeks of paid leave for our municipal workers. They claimed that two weeks was better than twelve weeks. I kept pressing them on it for over a year and a half. Finally, they said: You know what? We’re actually creating a municipal version of it – eight weeks. We’re not going to do twelve weeks, but we’ll do eight weeks, which is four times what we were doing previously, which we already said was better than the twelve weeks. They won’t admit it, but the city council could have opted us into a much broader program, and chose not to. But they nonetheless responded to pressure. And now, today, in this part of the fiscal year, workers in Somerville have four times as much paid family medical leave as they did when I became a city councilor.

That’s one win my advocacy contributed to for municipal workers. Another is an ordinance, a year ago, maybe two years ago, to require that when a Somerville municipal worker experiences sexual or domestic violence, they receive paid leave. In the state of Massachusetts, all employers are required to give at least fifteen days of leave for someone who experiences sexual or domestic violence, but employers can choose whether that’s paid or unpaid. Survivors end up brutalized and then also often lose their income for the time that they need to find new housing. They’re losing wages they would otherwise be making. That is fundamentally unjust, to financially punish someone for being subject to violence. 

I brought forward that ordinance. Again, our administration obfuscated and delayed. RESPOND, which is one of the largest anti-violence, anti-domestic abuse, and anti-sexual violence organizations in Massachusetts, wrote a letter supporting the ordinance. However, the administration still isn’t trying to support legislation. As mayor, we will pass that law, and Somerville, as far as I’m aware, will become the first Massachusetts municipality to say by law that anyone who experiences this form of violence deserves paid leave, not just leave. A city in Kentucky passed the law, you know. Somerville should not be behind anywhere in Kentucky on these types of issues.

As mayor, I’ll also ensure that we’re not in a situation similar to the one we recently experienced, where our mayor kept our largest union out of contract for over two years while negotiating with them. During that time, we lost people: “Why would I work for a city that’s not even going to respect my union and give me a contract?” But we also lost people who would have applied to these jobs, but were like, “Why would I apply to a city or a workplace that’s going to treat its workers like this? Or treat its unions like this?” I respect unions enough to negotiate fairly and urgently with them. So, I’m going to be a pro-union, pro-worker mayor of the executive body.

WM: As a city councilor, you led efforts to use ARPA funds to pay off the medical debt of Somerville residents. How much medical debt is held by Somerville residents? What can you do to prioritize this issue as Mayor? 

WB: How much debt is owed is complicated. It’s also not a one-to-one relationship between the amount of debt and the amount we would have to pay, which is part of why I wanted to do this program. The way that buying debt works, at least medical debt in this country, is that you can essentially buy, for one dollar, $100 worth of debt. After a hospital holds a debt for so long, a couple of years, they eventually sell to collectors for pennies on the dollar: “Hey, this person owes $5,000, you give us $50, We’ll give you their portfolio debt, and then you can try to collect it from them.” 

No rule says a city can’t buy that debt and just forgive it. That’s what I was opting to do. We can’t with just direct municipal funds, under current laws, which is why I was pushing for ARPA funds. However, I still believe that there’s a way to build a stabilization fund to alleviate medical debt on a recurring cycle so that, every three years, Somerville residents’ medical debt is wiped away for pennies on the dollar. That’s something I’m very interested in pursuing as mayor. However, since ARPA funding is being phased out, we’ll need a different iteration. Unfortunately, our mayor refused to accept this offer when it was presented to her. 

WM: What’s your plan as Mayor for the troubled Winter Hill PK-8 school?

WB: At the Winter Hill School, in the summer of 2023, a piece of concrete from one of the ceilings fell. Thankfully, it happened while school was not in session, with no one in the building. But it was the result of decades of neglect and a lack of investment in our buildings, which the teachers’ union had warned about literally the year before, during budget season. But even though the union warned the building was falling apart, that it was unsafe and unsanitary, our mayor said, “Hey, we’re doing a buildings study, give us some time, give us a year or two. We’re going to have a plan for the buildings.” And in that time, the buildings fell apart. We had to relocate hundreds of students into existing schools and then effectively convert a building slated for city staff offices into a school for children aged five to thirteen. 

That’s the current status of the Winter Hill School. The actual building itself is unoccupied. Just a month ago, some individuals entered the building and set fires within it. Since it’s in a residential neighborhood of Somerville, that was incredibly dangerous. However, it happened because the city was not focused on keeping the building up to date and safe while it was open, nor on ensuring it was secure enough when it was unoccupied. As mayor, I’ll make sure the city moves urgently to build a new school for Winter Hill. We have to figure out where, a legitimate question because we’re, again, the most densely populated city in New England, but there are a few options on the table.

Another complicating factor: we have other schools that are likely to deteriorate in the near future. The question to answer right now is: will we rebuild the Winter Hill School with enough space for just Winter Hill? Or will we rebuild it with enough space for the children from Brown, another school in the city, currently inaccessible to anyone who has physical disabilities? Will we build a building big enough to accommodate both schools’ worth of children? And if we do, where will it go when we don’t have a massive amount of space in Somerville to begin with? 

I can promise that in my first year, we will make that decision and move with urgency to implement it. In contrast to the current mayor, who has not provided any definitive statement about our direction in two years, we will move quickly. 

Willie Burnley, Jr. has served Somerville as a city councilor-at-large endorsed by Boston DSA since his initial run for office in 2021.

Maxine Bouvier is a member of Boston DSA and a contributing writer to Working Mass.

The post Somerville’s Zohran appeared first on Working Mass.

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By: Maxine Bouvier

SOMERVILLE, MA – Since March, 2025, Somerville City Councillor-at-Large Willie Burnley Jr.’s campaign for the city’s highest executive office has been endorsed by Boston DSA. In April, the Somerville branch of the organization also chose electing Willie Burnley, Jr. as its sole external priority. Burnley, a former Teamster, is challenging incumbent Mayor Katjana Ballantyne. The current mayor is seeking a third term.

Willie Burnley, Jr. is running for executive office in Somerville at the same time that another democratic socialist for mayor stunned the world in New York. On June 24, 2025, state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani made international headlines by defeating an ex-Governor born into a political dynasty in the Democratic primary. Already called “the greatest political upset” in the history of New York City, Mamdani’s mayoral run has galvanized huge swathes of working class voters, mobilized small armies of canvassers, changed the cultural trends of the city itself, and created new political constituencies for the socialist movement at local and national levels.

Both Mamdani and Burnley are not only DSA-endorsed members of their local chapters; their political styles are similar. They are both self-described organizers. Both have used creative campaign techniques and developed robust field operations, at the scale of two very different cities, while remaining laser-focused on broadly felt issues. For Zohran, that’s lowering the cost of living by freezing the rent, making buses fast and free, and universal childcare. Willie endorses a longer list of policies but is laser-focused on social housing and expanding workers’, tenants’, and organized communities’ power through city-led reforms. Burnley’s campaign has already been hailed for its creative approach to engaging Somerville community members, including a cannabis-infused fundraiser, and for its rapidly-expanding field presence. Volunteers mobilize to canvass, rain or shine, weekend and weekday, five times a week.

Workers inspired by New York have one looming question: can Willie Burnley, Jr. electrify the Somerville working class in the same way?

Working Mass spoke with Willie over video call to ask him about his background, his historic campaign, his work on Somerville City Council so far, and – of course – his views on what is most important for Somerville’s future.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

WM: In 2021, the Boston Globe published a story about your slate’s victory, the moment you became a city councillor. At the time, Rand Wilson quipped that “the socialist takeover of Somerville is going to be a little disappointing if nobody runs for mayor.” Since when have you been thinking about running for Mayor?

WB Jr.: It’s hard to pin it exactly to one moment because as a city councillor, I have a front row seat to the city’s budget, to initiatives that are started and don’t get off the ground, and to the ways in which I think our current administration has mishandled a lot of the demands of the community. I’m thinking particularly about the transformation of public safety, as one.

Five years ago before I was a councillor, I pushed to move money out of our local police department and into alternative services into life-altering and life- saving services, such as rental assistance, food assistance, bilingual youth specialist for public school – and five years later, our current mayor, is actually doubling down on the same system of policing that led us to take on that fight in the first place, five years ago.

So – there’s been a lot of frustration over my time on the council. There’s been a lot of times where I’ve been like, if only we had someone who could take on this role and actually steer the city in the direction I know that most residents want it to move in. I feel like now is the time that we should have that person, and I feel like I’m the best person for the job at this moment. 

WM: Tell us about your background. What was growing up like for you?

WB Jr.: I grew up in Southern California, in San Diego specifically, in a lower middle class family – a single parent family, single father family. I grew up in a place that’s a lot like Somerville, in some ways: a place where working class people struggle to survive, with a lot of diversity.

In the case of my part of San Diego, most of the kids that I went to school with were people of color, most of whom were low income, and, you know, where I grew up, we all had the sense that government was not on our side. Government was not there to protect us. I grew up with undocumented folks who felt like the government was literally going to tear apart their families. 

For folks like me, who’ve been impacted by the carceral system – we felt like government was there to undermine us, to harm us. That informed a lot of my relationship with politics, frankly. We were underserved, underinvested in, targeted by government. And it’s so much of why I think we really need to show that government can be a force of good in people’s lives, by actually serving their material needs, helping them deal with the crisis of medical debt, of housing unaffordability.

I actually came to Boston for college. I moved to Somerville right after I graduated from college and have been here for about the last nine years. I see so much in this community that is built upon people caring about their neighbors and about the world they live in and wanting to make it better. And I think we deserve leaders who are gonna fight just as hard as our neighbors are actually fighting at this moment to secure our safety and secure our futures. 

WM: You touched on this somewhat with your previous answer, but looking maybe for a particular moment, what is your earliest memory of radicalization?

WB Jr.: Yeah, that’s hard. I mean, there’s lots of things that are wrong in the world, lots of things that I feel like have been radicalizing for me. One of the things that definitely sticks out is the reason I started identifying as a socialist, because I think like a lot of people, it took me a bit of time. I didn’t grow up idolizing money or capital, like some folks did – and I kind of had the politics of what I consider an “anti-capitalist” for a long time. But I remember I read an article in 2015 from Jacobin: Against Charity. And it basically was about how our fundamental human rights, and things that we all need to live – food, water, shelter – will not be guaranteed by capitalism, and fundamentally cannot be guaranteed by capitalism. 

At the time, I was living in DC on a program from Emerson College. DC was undergoing some of the most drastic and stark gentrification I’d ever seen. I lived walking distance from the Capitol where Congress was meeting, where some of the most powerful industries in the world were centered to lobby our government, and I saw so many people who were unhoused, who were struggling to get by. There was so much poverty. And it was infuriating for me because – I’ve lived in cities all my life and I’ve seen poverty, so much of it, but to see it in our nation’s capital, where some of the richest people in the world were, and some of the richest industries in the world were, was just – infuriating.

The article kind of just locked it all into place for me. I believe in human rights and in doing the things that you need to do to accomplish your values, and capitalism just fundamentally cannot sustain what I’m hoping to create in the world. That pushed me to become a socialist. It was a deep moment of radicalization for me amidst the Black Lives Matter movement. Getting involved with people-powered movements, in protest with thousands of people, really showed me how to view power: built from the ground up.

WM: What inspired you to organize, the first time you knocked on a door? 

WB Jr.: The Black Lives Matter movement was the first time where I felt the true power of people-powered movements – 2014, 2015, 2016, 2020 – each of these years, being part of mass movements in the Boston area, physically clashing with police. In one of the first Black Lives Matter protests in Boston, we tried to take a highway and ran our bodies into lines of police with tens of thousands of people pushing us forward. I specifically say that because there was a call from some organizers at the time that white people should put their bodies on the line, go to the front, be that barrier between the police and people of color. I respected that – but I also wanted to be at that frontline. So, I put myself in that position. 

That definitely was the moment where I realized: I want to be a part of this. There is a difference between supporting a protest and being a part of a movement, and organizing movements, and organizing protests. So during that early time – 2014, 2015 – was definitely the start of it.

In 2017, I joined If Not Now, an almost entirely Jewish organization. I’m not Jewish, but I was a part of it. We organized people, primarily young American Jewish people, to really call out the support of AIPAC. We protested outside of the Boston consulate for Israel. I organized one of those protests, because at the time when Trump was first in office, they were trying to expel all Black immigrants from Israel back to Africa, where they would have been punished for going to Israel. The movement for people of color and for a just foreign policy really got me into not only picking up to join protests, but to help lead the logistics and to get people involved myself. 

WM: You have now served for four years as a city councillor in Somerville. How have the political dynamics of Somerville City Council have changed since your election in 2021? Do you think they become more or less favorable to socialist policy? 

Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s a difficult question because I have been, I think, incredibly effective and productive with my time on the council. My measurement of that is with legislation, primarily. I’ve passed thirteen laws in three and a half years on council. Most other councillors have passed in the same number of terms, maybe two laws, maybe one law. They’re not a lot of other people who have been around the same amount of time as me, because some of those people have left already. And most folks who’ve been around for twice as long have passed four, maybe five laws. So I feel confident with my ability to move forward, but I will also note that we’ve lost socialists on the council since I joined. 

I ran on a slate, which prompted some of the takeover language I never personally used. But we had more people in DSA on council in 2022 than we do now. Frankly, the success that I’ve had on the council has prompted some of my colleagues to be less inclined to support more aggressive action. When you can show that clear divide, and show that socialists can be effective at legislating, at governing, it shines a negative light on those establishment elected officials who are not doing as much as they could for people. It puts them in awkward positions. 

There are a lot of votes that my colleagues, frankly, have not wanted to take.

For example, when Somerville was the first municipality in Massachusetts to pass a ceasefire resolution in January of last year, many colleagues didn’t want to take that vote. They didn’t want to say an opinion or take a stance. Ultimately, we had that vote and we were successful, but there was a lot of resentment from the elected political class in Somerville for having to take a stance on that issue. That’s frustrating from my standpoint, but it’s one of the kind of drawbacks, frankly, of having that successful insurgency, that all of a sudden the people who might have thought, “Oh, these people, they’re not going to be that effective, they’re harmless, we can just, you know, do whatever,” all of a sudden, when they really see it that you can be effective, they have to take stances to challenge your power.

That is kind of where we are now, and why I think taking on a Mayor’s role in a strong mayor system like Somerville’s, is really important. They’ll have a choice of whether to work with me or not, and then we can actually push for the material support that people need.

WM: You have spoken about how you were displaced from Somerville a decade ago. In what ways has the tenants’ crisis changed in Somerville since your displacement? 

I got displaced from Somerville in 2017, but before the city of Somerville had what we have now, which is the Office of Housing Stability. When I was displaced, I didn’t know who to talk to. And I know, frankly, because I talk to constituents who ask me these questions, a lot of people still don’t know who to talk to. But at the time, I didn’t feel, even as someone who was an organizer, like there was someone in our local government who I could talk to about how to stay in my apartment when my landlord was drastically raising the rent. 

I felt incredibly isolated, unprotected, and, frankly, afraid of what it would mean to not be able to pay my bills, what it might look like to be evicted, what it might look like to have to end up on the street. Coming from California, if I was going to get kicked out, I didn’t necessarily have somewhere to go long term in Somerville or in the state of Massachusetts. And ultimately, I had to go all the way back to California after the landlord displaced me. I decided to come back because I care about this place that much. But, to your question, we now have an Office of Housing Stability, which is one of our most important and vital resources for residents. 

We have a Community Land Trust now that is fully formed. It’s now slowly acquiring and proposing to build permanently affordable housing in different parts of the city. 

But, of course, we need to do more. That’s why one of the things I want to do as Mayor is do what former Mayor Curtatone did with the Office of Housing Stability: hire one person to help build out the department, figure out what we need to practically do as a city to stabilize people’s housing, when the city lacks the right or the power to establish rent control. If I’m elected mayor, I’m going to do the same thing with an Office of Social Housing – figure out what Somerville could do to try to build up social housing, by initially owning housing in the city that’s set as deeply affordable for residents, and, long-term, produce social housing for residents in the city. 

WM: What do you think is the role of labor unions in municipal governance? How about tenants’ unions? How can you involve tenants and workers in Somerville governance?

WB Jr.: We have some tenants unions in Somerville, but I think we should have many more. Tenants unions are just deeply important for our community, because Somerville is incredibly dense. It’s the most dense municipality in New England, one of the most dense municipalities in the world. Knowing your neighbors is not just important for housing stability, it’s important for all issues. When we have neighbors getting snatched off the street by ICE, the people who are best suited to support us are our neighbors, the people who live near us, the people who can keep track of what’s going on in and around our neighborhoods. Often, other tenants.

It’s important, obviously, to negotiate with landlords – that’s something that the Office of Housing Stability has been really helpful with. They’re able to work to get whole buildings in a position to collectively negotiate down rent hikes with landlords. We need more tenants unions, and we need them to be in communication with the city, so we can collectively intervene. People power is real, and it matters even to the slumlords. If they act in a disproportionate or unethical way towards their tenants, they’re going to have to empty out whole buildings for the long term and have negative press about the buildings that will lead to no tenants signing their lease at all.

I’m a former union member. I was a Teamster. Unions play a really critical role, both from the standpoint of helping to elucidate issues for elected officials and the standpoint of pushing for wider solidarity from below. For example, in Somerville right now, Tufts is building a dorm building without using union labor. I’ve been on the picket lines multiple times with some members of SEIU and some other trade folks, talking with the workers about why Tufts needs to actually use union labor to build. That’s important because it’s safer, for the workers themselves and the people ultimately living in those buildings. And our labor unions also push on other issues. For example, the trades unions are very interested in how cities implement legislation to build resilience around climate change. 

We need to be able to show to our workers, both municipal workers and just workers in the city, that local government has the back of labor. Somerville needs to be a union town, and I don’t think we can do that if we have a mayor who’s going to be hands off or allow projects that are going to reshape the city without union labor.

WM: How do you plan to support Somerville city employees as Mayor?

WB Jr.: That’s a great question, and something I’ve already tried to do as a councillor. I’ll give two examples of things I have done and an example of something I would do. First, Massachusetts has a law called the Paid Family Medical Leave Act offering twelve weeks of paid leave to state workers when they take medical leave, when they get sick, when someone in their family gets sick. That’s a law passed years ago that impacts not just state workers but workers across the state. But the one group that was exempted was municipalities.

Municipalities can opt into the system and provide workers with twelve weeks of leave. The cities pay some of it – not all of it. Not a single municipality in the state of Massachusetts has opted into the program. Not a single one. So, one of the things that I did as a councillor was I brought forward that law to Somerville and ask, “Hey, should we adopt this law that would drastically increase our benefits for our municipal workers?” 

Can we afford to do it? Do workers want it? [The Ballantyne administration] obfuscated, they delayed. They even said, “no, well, what we are doing now is better than that.” Well, what they didn’t say at the time was that they offered two weeks of paid leave for our municipal workers, but at the time, they said that two weeks was better than the twelve weeks. I kept pressing them on it for over a year, probably a year and a half, I pressed them on it. Finally, they said: you know what? We’re actually creating a municipal version of it – eight weeks. We’re not going to do twelve weeks, but we’ll do eight weeks, which is four times what we were doing previously, which we already said was better than the twelve weeks. They won’t admit it, but the city council could have opted us into a much broader program, and chose to not. But, they nonetheless, responded to pressure. And now, today, in this part of the fiscal year, workers in Somerville have four times as much paid family medical leave as they did when I became a city councillor.

That’s one win my advocacy contributed to for municipal workers. Another is an ordinance a year ago, maybe two years ago, to require that when a Somerville municipal worker experiences sexual or domestic violence, they receive paid leave. In the state of Massachusetts, all employers are required to give at least fifteen days of leave for someone who experiences sexual or domestic violence, but employers can choose whether that’s paid or unpaid. Survivors end up brutalized and then also often lose the income for the times that they need to find new housing. They’re losing wages they would otherwise be making. That is fundamentally unjust, to financially punish someone for being subject to violence. 

I brought forward that ordinance. Again, our administration obfuscated and delayed. RESPOND, which is one of the largest anti-violence, anti-domestic abuse, anti-sexual violence organizations in Massachusetts, wrote a letter supporting the ordinance, but the administration still isn’t trying to support legislation. As mayor, we will pass that law and Somerville, as far as I’m aware, will become the first [Massachusetts] municipality to say by law that anyone who experiences this form of violence, deserves paid leave – not just leave. A city in Kentucky passed the law, you know. Somerville should not be behind anywhere in Kentucky on these types of issues.

As mayor, I’ll also make sure we’re not in a situation that we just had recently, where our mayor kept our largest union out of contract for over two years while negotiating with them. During that time, we lost people: “Why would I work for a city that’s not even going to respect my union and give me a contract?” But we also lost people who would have applied to these jobs, but were like, “Why would I apply to a city or a workplace that’s going to treat its workers like this? Or treat its unions like this?” I respect unions enough to negotiate fairly and urgently with them. So, I’m going to be a pro-union, pro-worker mayor of the executive body.

WM: As a city councillor, you led efforts to use ARPA funds to pay off the medical debt of Somerville residents. How much medical debt is held by Somerville residents? What can  you do to prioritize this issue as Mayor? 

WB Jr.: How much debt is owned is complicated. It’s also not a one-to-one of how much debt is held to how much we would have to pay, which is part of why I wanted to do this program. The way that buying debt works – at least medical debt in this country – is that you can essentially buy, for one dollar, buy $100 worth of debt. After a hospital holds a debt for so long, a couple of years, they eventually sell to collectors for pennies on the dollar: “Hey, this person owes $5,000, you give us $50, We’ll give you their portfolio debt, and then you can try to collect it from them.” 

There is no rule that says a city can’t buy that debt and just forgive it. That’s what I was opting to do. We can’t with just direct municipal funds, under current laws, which is why I was pushing for ARPA funds. But I still believe that there’s a way that we could build a stabilization fund to alleviate medical debt on a recurring cycle so that, every three years, Somerville residents’ medical debt is wiped away for pennies on the dollar. That’s something I’m very interested in pursuing as mayor. However, since ARPA funding is going away, we’ll need a different iteration. And it’s unfortunate that our mayor refused to pick up this offer when she had the chance. 

WM: Can you describe the situation at the Winter Hill School? What’s your plan as Mayor?

WB Jr.: At the Winter Hill School, in the summer of 2023, a piece of concrete from one of the ceilings fell. Thankfully, it happened while school was not in session with no one in the building. But it was the result of decades of neglect and a lack of investment in our buildings, which the teachers union had warned about literally the year before during budget season. But even though the union warned the building was falling apart, that it was unsafe and unsanitary, our mayor said, “Hey, we’re doing a buildings study, give us some time, give us a year or two. We’re going to have a plan for the buildings.” And in that time, the buildings fell apart. We had to move hundreds of students into existing schools and then effectively change a building that was slated for being an office building for city staff into a school for children from the ages of five to thirteen. 

That’s the current status of the Winter Hill School. The actual building itself is unoccupied. Just a months ago, some people got into the building and lit fires in the building. Since it’s in a residential neighborhood of Somerville, that was incredibly dangerous. But it happened because the city was not focused on keeping the building up to date and safe while it was open, and apparently not focused on keeping it secured enough while it was unoccupied. As mayor, I’ll make sure the city moves urgently to build a new school for Winter Hill. We have to figure out where, a legitimate question because we’re, again, the most densely populated city in New England, but there are a few options on the table.

Another complicating factor: we have other schools likely in the near future to deteriorate. The question to answer right now is: will we rebuild the Winter Hill School with enough space for just Winter Hill? Or will we rebuild it with enough space for the children from Brown, another school in the city currently inaccessible for anyone who has physical disabilities? Will we build a building big enough to accommodate both schools’ worth of children? And if we do, where will it go, when we don’t have a massive amount of space in Somerville to begin with? 

I can promise that in my first year, we will make that decision, and we will move with urgency to do it. As opposed to the current mayor, who has not given any definitive statement about where we’re going in two years, we will move quickly. 

WM: Thank you so much for taking our interview. Take care!

About Willie Burnley Jr: Willie Burnley, Jr. is a former Teamster and has served Somerville as a city councillor-at-large endorsed by Boston DSA since his initial run for office in 2021. He is running for Mayor of Somerville in 2025. You can find his campaign website and canvassing opportunities here.

About the Interviewer: Maxine Bouvier is a member of Boston DSA and a contributing writer to Working Mass.

The post “I’m Going To Be a Pro-Union, Pro-Worker Mayor”: Will Willie Burnley, Jr. Bring Zohran Energy to Somerville? appeared first on Working Mass.

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In 2023, Chicago DSA’s Chapter Convention was on the same day as Pride. This wasn’t planned, CDSA had selected the Convention date months before Pride announced their date. Former chapter Secretary Marcy wrote a great essay for Midwest Socialist about why she preferred attending a chapter meeting than the city’s highly corporate pride event, which you should all read.

There were plenty of queer and trans people in the room, making democratic decisions at the meeting. We also didn’t make quorum, and it was obvious that some members had chosen (or were working at) Pride instead of doing Robert’s Rules for half an afternoon. 

At the beginning of my cochair term, as I was planning out the dates of our quarterly meetings with my fellow cochair, I checked when Pride typically happened each year. After this review, I set one requirement: CDSA’s Convention should not conflict with either Juneteenth or be held on the last Sunday of the month, because that will mean conflicting with the Pride Parade.

I didn’t do this because I wanted to do corporate Pride entryism into the chapter, but rather because Pride brings thousands of people across the Midwest, and we should be embracing opportunities to share our politics with attendees.. Even if the events themselves are depoliticized or corporatized. 

In June 2024, CDSA members fanned out across the Chicago Pride Parade route, passing out Crash the DNC fliers and talking to attendees about the critical importance of an arms embargo. We talked to people about socialism, drank Gatorade, and met many other attendees with left and pro labor signs, and had great conversations with people we otherwise would not have met. Amidst the chaos and uncertainty of the Presidential election, being able to dress up in rainbow and socialist swag while talking about our politics lifted our spirits. 

This year, Chicago DSA is joining the Gay Liberation Network and Organized Communities Against Deportation (OCAD)’s organized contingent in the Pride march. Attacks on LGBTQ people are more intense than ever, and Pride attendees need to see a distinctly queer contingent bringing left politics in support of immigrants, labor, and Palestine. We will also have members doing crowd canvassing in support of trans patients at Lurie Children’s Hospital.

There will still be floats from large corporations, many from industries that actively harm queer and trans people every day (property management companies, banks, union-busting nonprofits and restaurants, the list sadly goes on). Those groups will march, whether or not we participate, so we might as well take up space in the parade. 

This won’t be the first time that Chicago DSA has marched in the Pride parade. The chapter participated in the mid-90’s, when both Chicago DSA, and the Pride Parade were much smaller. 

Early Pride events through the 1970s-2000s were more focused on community groups instead of sponsors, and were much more political – because they had to be. Discrimination and abuse by police were rampant, and legally sanctioned. People were dying of AIDS due to the mass indifference of federal policymakers. There were no corporate sponsors because corporations saw LGBTQ people as a brand threat, not a customer base. 

The demand that Pride become more of a party, complete with freebies thrown from corporate sponsors did not fall out of a coconut tree – it came about because of demands for LGBTQ people. Many people wanted banks, real estate agencies, and politicians to attend Pride and take their dollars and votes. Pride as a party is made possible due to many different legal protections, including basic local ordinances against “indecency”. If we want Pride to be political, we need to engage with people at Pride and make our case. This year is a good time to do that, because so many people are angry at the Trump administration, and angry at corporate cowardice and an end to long-standing sponsorships for Pride events.

There is no shortage of alternative Pride marches and events seeking to directly challenge Corporate Pride, both across the US and Chicago. In 2020 there was both a mass protest that weaved through North Halsted and ended in Uptown, and a “Drag March for Change”, explicitly demanding an end to racist discrimination in drag act bookings by Chicago venues. However, these events have seen less participants since then, and this year organizers of the “Taking Back Pride” march announced that they were cancelling their planned march for Sunday, June 22nd in order to direct people to join the GLN/OCAD contingent at Pride. Alternate marches and events can create a taste of the better world we want, but they rely on a significant amount of volunteer infrastructure, risk more encounters with police, and often don’t serve the purpose of welcoming new people into the movement. 

Join us Sunday, June 29th to either march in the Pride parade or canvass attendees about our Lurie Children’s Hospital letter campaign. If we want to win rainbow socialism, we need to speak to the beautiful rainbow masses at the Pride parade. 

The post Why Chicago DSA Is Marching in the Pride Parade appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

by Vincent L.

A few comrades gathered on Zoom for a workshop titled, “Socialism 101,” on May 10. This was the second iteration of the workshop.

To start, participants listened to part of a talk by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., where he said, “We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

The facilitator, Vincent L., paraphrasing Marx, said we aren’t in DSA primarily to interpret the world, but to change it. We don’t have to immerse ourselves in theory to bring about change. When we do read theory, “we need to keep ourselves grounded in our lived reality.”

The big picture, according to the facilitator, was that the “world is going headlong toward oligarchy and authoritarianism.” He cited the consolidation of power by Trump, Putin, Xi, Modi, Orban, and Erdogan, while noting that Bolsonaro’s defeat by socialists serves as a beacon of hope.

After looking at some figures on wealth and income inequality, participants talked about “What’s the matter with capitalism (and what’s to like)?” They covered workplace issues but also what capitalism does to relationships among working people. They talked about unpaid and unrecognized domestic labor. Some felt small, neighborhood businesses were a force for good, unlike larger-scale or global businesses.

Participants then discussed what a better world would look like. They spoke about a guaranteed living wage, universal healthcare, a dignified retirement, a green energy grid, free education, a focus on goods that people need, an end to endless wars, and less income inequality.

Drawing on the work of Ellen Meiksins Wood, the group discussed the fact that capitalism, unlike trade, has not always existed. It was not inevitable; it is not eternal.

They then turned to the matter of reforms and considered a less-bad capitalism vs. alternatives to capitalism.

This brought the group to DSA’s theory of change: in our effort to replace capitalism with socialism, we acknowledge that non-reformist reforms are actually good: we improve our lives; we show the 99 percent that we have power if we grab it; and we build our power so that we can achieve more.

The group talked about what socialism would look like. For production to be directed at the needs of society—rather than the profit of the few—planning would be needed. What would be the scale of democratic planning? Local enough for local needs to be fully recognized, or very central in the interests of scale? The group also touched on clashes between social needs and individual preferences.

Drawing on Barbara Smith and others, the group discussed the position, “The liberation of all oppressed peoples necessitates the destruction of the political-economic systems of capitalism and imperialism as well as patriarchy.”

After spending some time on imperialism and militarism, and especially the ways entire national economies revolve around the fleeting needs of the imperial center, the session concluded with a reminder from Arundhati Roy that as socialist tactics evolve, so does the billionaire class and its tactics.

One participant, Abigail C., noted that the conclusion was not very encouraging. The facilitator therefore added two codas: first, according to the American Federation of Teachers, 88 percent of people under 30 view unions favorably—a record-breaking level of support from young workers—and 71 percent of Americans overall support unions—cutting across party lines. Second, the facilitator drew attention to a recent panel discussion about how socialists in Brazil, Colombia, and France have successfully combatted the far right.

The post Socialism 101 (May 10) first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

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By: Eric L

BOSTON, MA – On May 21, 2025, Working Mass and Boston DSA hosted a forum to discuss the attempted dissolution of Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a rank-and-file caucus within United Auto Workers (UAW), and the political struggles that preceded that moment. The forum was hosted to open up discussion on an important rank-and-file debate in a context of few open spaces for discussion about the UAWD’s dissolution vote within the labor movement itself. In attendance were members of both DSA and UAW from across the country. These included long-time UAW retirees, plant autoworkers, and members of the Steering Committee who disagreed with the majority move.

UAWD was formed as a vehicle for a vision of a more independent, militant UAW in 2019, following several other rank-and-file rebellions within the UAW, such as the 1968 Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, and played a major role in establishing direct election of UAW leadership in 2021 and narrowly electing Shawn Fain in 2023 as the union’s president. However, since this election, tensions had risen between two wings: the majority of the Steering Committee that subsequently became UAW Member Action, supporting dissolution, and the minority “Class Struggle” wing in opposition.

Numerous DSA members were involved with both factions.

The forum was conceived as an opportunity to hear from both the pro- and anti- dissolution figures within the caucus. However, while numerous workers volunteered to speak about their opposition to the dissolution, no pro-dissolution speakers agreed to participate. A Working Mass moderator argued the pro-dissolution talking points, based on public statements released by that faction, as well as public analysis from prominent labor organizers presenting the arguments of Member Action. Nonetheless, there was palpable disappointment that no one from the pro-dissolution side was there to argue that position.

Procedural Controversies Over Dissolution

Much of the discourse in the wake of the attempted dissolution has concerned the procedure followed and the result itself. Based on a narrow vote in favor of dissolution among those in the general body meeting which debated the topic, Member Action has alleged that the caucus was dissolved by its membership. Meanwhile, the Class Struggle wing has argued that dissolution did not take place due to significant procedural discrepancies that undermined internal democracy, including circumventing a ⅔ clause in favor of a simple majority to dissolve the caucus that many organizers poured blood, sweat, and tears into on both sides. 

Other alleged controversies included blocking new members from joining leading up to the vote, disregarding Robert’s Rules of Order by ignoring motions during the meeting, and arbitrarily  removing certain members from the meeting. 

The Strategy of Dissolution 

The legality of the attempted dissolution was also discussed; however, the emphasis was not on whether or not the dissolution had succeeded, but on the political and tactical differences between the two factions that led to the attempt to dissolve the caucus. These differences concerned the approach to the Fain administration, emphasis on political rather than economic issues (and in particular the genocide in Gaza), and the professional makeup of the caucus itself. 

After the UAWD won the 2023 internal election to elect Fain and other reformers, followed by striking the Big Three and setting a north star for a 2028 General Strike, members split over whether the caucus should align closely with Fain or maintain a more independent apparatus that could exert pressure on the Fain administration of the union. This strategic question seems to have resonated more with a slim minority of the UAWD, while the majority continued to focus primarily on building up workplace militancy through rank-and-file training. Before the nuclear move by the majority, disagreement between factions sharpened strongly in response to Fain’s endorsement of the Democratic Party ticket in 2024, Fain’s support for many of Donald Trump’s tariffs, and, of course, the union’s contracts themselves.

One union member critically described the caucus’s relationship with Fain during the forum:

[The majority] thought the answer was to “gold star” everything the Fain Administration does because we endorsed him. That’s when independence came into question, and I think a group of people do not want to be independent of Shawn Fain and the people that were endorsed by the UAWD during the IEB elections. A group of us thought it was important that we maintained our independence and that the caucus was bigger than individuals.

Another, calling in from a Detroit shop floor, criticized the training orientation of Member Action as insufficient. To them, the centrality of the reform movement is not only in building workplace militancy through rank-and-file trainings, but also in creating a political space for workers to become political protagonists: 

(The) Steering Committee majority wanted to become a training center where they are able to have top down control rather than a vibrant democratic or member-led organization that gets to set up political priorities and creates a space for workers to debate these important political questions, like what we’re going to do about the EV transition or tariffs or Palestine.

Palestine – A Central Debate in the UAWD 

Palestinian liberation, as is so often the case, became a defining issue for the caucus’s political split. Majorities of both factions have released statements in favor of Palestine, though there was a visible pro-Israel presence within the majority faction. Nonetheless, emphasizing Palestine programmatically became a major source of contention. At the meeting where the dissolution was voted on, speakers in favor of dissolution spoke against “ultra-left” emphasis on political issues- something that was largely seen as a reference to Palestine. 

A UAW retired auto worker argued at the forum:

The Steering Committee majority—the pro-dissolution group—was not for giving anything beyond very cursory mention to solidarity with Palestine… The chair of the Steering Committee said that ‘if members are working on Palestine solidarity, they’re not reforming the UAW.’ My counter-argument is that the UAW cannot call itself reformed if it’s not able to take a strong stand in solidarity against this horrific genocide that is still going on.

Member Action did not, of course, oppose the emphasis on Palestine because they were militant Zionists; rather, they saw the emphasis on such “political” issues as outside the core union work. Indeed, in the dissolution proposal, the majority stated, “We believe in the need for a reform caucus, but not in one that is constantly engaged in insular debate that distracts from the work of building the union.” They did not believe that their position was less militant, but rather, that the caucus’s energy was misplaced on issues on which it could not directly engage. 

In this argument, Member Action shows a clear political foundation. In 1970, decades before Kim Moody penned the 2000 pamphlet outlining the Rank-and-File Strategy, the socialist leader Hal Draper spoke on the topic of trade unions to the New Left: “Marx, Marxism, and Trade Unions.” To their immense credit, while many New Left radicals took increasingly esoteric or sectarian avenues out of the Sixties, Draper’s tendency embedded themselves in the labor movement in what essentially became many lifetimes spent across thousands of activists to bring socialism closer to the rank-and-file movement. Emphasizing the idea of bringing the working class “into motion,” that the motion of the class itself is what shakes the foundations of society, Draper critiqued “class struggle” socialist orientations in labor unions:.

The class struggle begins on a much lower level than the Marxist program itself, but the Marxist program says that this struggle is revolutionary from the beginning. The basic goal – the primary aim – is to get the class as a whole moving…. the distinguishing feature of [class struggle orientations] is that the split is based on some sort of ideological notion of what trade unions ought to be. They are not the result of movement from below.

To Draper, “leftist unionism” centered line struggle over actual militant action from below – a paraphrase of the same argument used by UAW Member Action.

UAW Member Action and their supporters pointed to lengthy membership meetings, which they alleged were dominated by workers in the education and legal sectors rather than auto workers, bogged down in concerns about political issues on which the union could do little more than take a symbolic position. Supporters of dissolution, including DSA members, complained at the meeting of a cadre of activists, not a part of UAW’s blue-collar base, who dominated proceedings and insisted on debating and voting on numerous topics not pertinent to shop-floor work.

To the Steering Committee minority and their allies, this framing revealed both a myopic vision of who constituted the working class and a disregard for member democracy. Another retired UAW member and opponent of dissolution disputed the insistence that such issues were alienating to workers, firing off: “The majority says, ‘we had to split off because the workers in the plants will run away if you bring up Palestine.’ Well, I’m sorry, it actually hasn’t been brought up in most of the plants. Second off, I’m 78 and I’ve been in the UAW for over forty years. I have brought up everything from Palestine to Libya to Iraq, Iran, et cetera. I was still elected numerous times to the Executive Board.”

Other supporters of the Steering Committee minority took issue with the premise that workers in the education or legal sector taking vocal roles in meetings was inappropriate, arguing such framing was divisive and fed into dated or reactionary perceptions as to the composition of the working class.

A Split Produces Two Directions 

UAW Member Action calls itself “a new, union-wide network of members supporting each other to stand up to employers, grow as activists and organizers, and carry on the transformation of our union at every level.” The governing structures of this new group are unclear. To its promoters, the caucus is now free of dysfunctional conflict and can pursue a reform from below vision that reaffirms the need for workplace organizing across the union at every shop. To critics, the new formation is positioning itself as a traditional union administrative caucus uncommitted to political struggles, without internal democracy, and without a commitment to class struggle or internationalism at a time of genocide.

The Class Struggle orientation, meanwhile, continues to function under the UAWD name. They continue to meet to further their work without access to several crucial UAWD resources, such as the website, which redirects members to UAW Member Action without mention of the ongoing activities of the original organization. This doubtless much smaller UAWD will remain, to its critics, unacceptably occupied with political goals and with what they view as insular left-wing priorities which are not reflective of autoworkers as a whole.

It’s unclear how these two directions will impact the Fain administration.

These competing visions of labor, of class struggle, and of unions’ role in the political arena are far from confined to the struggle over UAWD. They are visible in countless unions, workers’ advocacy organizations, and in socialist organizations, including DSA. UAWD’s successes, failures, and fractures will continue to cast a long shadow over these struggles. 

The quotes included in this article have been lightly stylistically edited for clarity. You can view the forum in its entirety at bdsa.us/UAWD.

Eric L is a member of Boston DSA, UAW Local 2320, and Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD).

The post UAWD Dissolved?: A Report on the Working Mass Forum appeared first on Working Mass.

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