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 initially 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.

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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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Rank and file bewildered as questions abound over rushed, narrow dissolution vote of powerful United Auto Workers reform caucus

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 itself 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 from 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 much smaller UAWD will undoubtedly remain, to its critics, unacceptably focused on political goals and on what they view as insular left-wing priorities that 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, class struggle, and the role of unions 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 UAW Reform No More? appeared first on Working Mass.

Events & Actions

Tuesday, June 24 (6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Ecosocialism Office Gardening (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, June 25 (6:45 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.): Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (Zoom & in person at Radical Reading Room, 438 Haight)

Wednesday, June 25 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Screening of ‘They Live’ (In person at Roar Shack, 34 7th St)

Thursday, June 26 (5:50 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Socialist in Office + Electoral Board Meeting (Zoom)

Thursday, June 26 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Immigrant Justice Working Group Meeting (Zoom)

Friday, June 27 (3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): No Appetite for Apartheid Consumer Pledge Canvass x Trans March (Meet at the Dolores Park tennis courts)

Monday, June 30 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Tuesday, July 1 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (Zoom)

Tuesday, July 1 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Reading Group: The Housing Question by Friederich Engels (Part 1 of 2) (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, July 2 (6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): New Member Happy Hour at Zeitgeist (In person at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia)

Saturday, July 5 (12:45 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Outreach and Outreach Training (Meet in person at 1916 McAllister)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates. Events with a are especially new-member-friendly!

Ecosocialism Gardening

Come garden with our Ecoscocialism Working Group to talk socialism and get to know our garden! We’ll start with a discussion of the history of native plants in the Bay Area and then identify the native plants in our office garden. Join us Tuesday, June 24th at 6:30 p.m. at 1916 McAllister.

Summer Social(ist) Events!

Mark your calendars for our Summer Social(ist) event series!

• June 25th @ 7:00 p.m. – Screening of They Live at Roar Shack (34 7th Street) – Let’s watch the classic monster movie inspired by the scariest monsters of them all (Ronald Reagan and Capitalism)!
• July 6th @ 11:00 p.m. – Screening of The Room at the Balboa Theater! We’ll meet outside at 10:30.
• July 11th @ 7:30PM – Comrade Karaoke at the Roar Shack (34 7th Street) – Come hang out and do some FREE karaoke with your fellow DSA SF comrades or cool people you want to impress with your incredible singing voice! No songs refused, no entry denied! Suggested Donation: $10. Drinks: Wine + Beer Available / BYOB
• July 27th @ 1:05PM – Oakland Ballers vs Northern Colorado Owlz baseball game + “Halloween in July Night” (at Raimondi Park) – RSVP here by July 13th so that we can put in a group order of tickets! Group tickets are are $15 per ticket, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds!

Apartheid-Free Bay Area Canvassing @ Trans March

Celebrate Trans Pride and build public support for stores that have pledged to go apartheid-free this Friday, 6/27 from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.! We’ll meet at the Dolores Park tennis courts.

You will receive basic training, and then you will put that training into practice by collecting signatures at the Trans March. RSVP and then sign up for a 1-hour shift. Bring a tote bag and make sure to wear your DSA merch. New members encouraged to join!

Reading Group: “The Housing Question” by Friedrich Engels

Join us in reading the seminal text on the political economy of housing. Written in 1872, “The Housing Question” is Friedrich Engels’ critique of the housing market and the solutions promoted by his contemporaries. 150 years later, his work resonates just as much, if not more, with tenants’ current struggles.

This two-part series will have readers discuss the various historical attitudes and debates around housing and apply those lessons to our modern housing crisis.

Join us for session 1 at the DSA SF office at 1916 McAllister St. on July 1st at 7:00 p.m. A full PDF of the book can be found here.

EWOC: How to Talk About Organizing

EWOC (Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee) is a project of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) and DSA working to build a distributed grassroots organizing program to support workers organizing at the workplace. To learn more about the work EWOC does, come by the DSA SF office to pick up a copy of Unite and Win or tune into the Labor Board’s weekly meetings every Monday at 7 p.m. on Zoom.

The next EWOC event hosted by DSA SF features EWOC staff members conducting a training on generating workplace leads and conducting organizing conversations on July 16th from 6:30 p.m to 8:30 p.m. Let us know if you can make it! Hope to see you there!

People’s Conference for Palestine: Gaza is the Compass

Come one, come all! We’re hoping to have a DSA SF delegation at the People’s Conference For Palestine: Gaza is the Compass from August 29-31 in Detroit, Michigan. Interested? We’re gauging interest, so please fill out this form by June 19th at 11:00 p.m. Limited financial aid may be available.

Reports

Immigrant Justice Working Group x East Bay DSA Know Your Rights Training

About 30 attendees filled the DSA office for a KYR training hosted by the Immigrant Justice Working Group (IJWG) and East Bay DSA Migrants Rights Working Group on Tuesday, June 17. A highlight from the training included roleplay scenarios which allowed participants to practice exercising their rights at work and during a traffic stop, among other scenarios.

Special thanks to comrades Caroline G., Cielo, Rashad X, Eric (EBDSA), Kevin (EBDSA) for helping present and facilitate the breakout sessions.

Stay tuned for future trainings. Join the #immigrant-justice channel on the DSA SF Slack for more information.

Behind the Scenes

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

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

How DSA Members Can Help Save Regional Services

In the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area, public transportation is in existential crisis. Many of our transit agencies are racing toward fiscal cliffs: By mid-2026, projected revenue for Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Caltrain, Muni, and others will not be enough to cover operating costs. Though our transit systems have faced structural deficits before, this time is different: Losing one-time COVID relief funds while struggling to regain pre-COVID ridership has blown a combined $800 million-dollar hole in budgets that have already survived multiple rounds of austerity measures.

To avoid financial collapse, these agencies anticipate massive service cuts that will leave more than one million working class people without safe and reliable routes to work, school, shopping, and loved ones. We previewed this “new normal” on May 9 when a small malfunction shut down BART and stranded 170,000 weekday commuters all around the Bay. Those who couldn’t find a bus turned to predatory ride-share companies, whose services cost 10-20 times more than the usual transit fare.

The financial precarity of Bay Area public transit is the logical result of decades of systemic disinvestment, intentional fragmentation, and unabashed NIMBYism. Each of our 27 transit operators must plan its own infrastructure and negotiate its routes in 101 municipalities, with every project subject to unilateral changes and at risk of last-minute cancellation. Bedroom communities on Peninsula DSA’s home turf are specifically at fault for refusing to participate in regional transit planning. From San Mateo County’s withdrawal from the full BART network in 1961 to filthy rich Atherton’s attempt to weaponize CEQA to block Caltrain's electrification in 2015, our local leaders rarely miss an opportunity to subsidize and normalize car dependency. (Thankfully, their latest pet project, a highway-widening scheme connecting Highway 101 to SR 92 / San Mateo Bridge, is facing stiff public opposition because it would remove homes without reducing traffic or commute times.)

The only way forward is securing sustainable new sources of revenue for the public transit ecosystem as a whole. The state Senate passed Senator Scott Weiner (District 11) and Senator Jesse Arreguín (District 7)’s five-county regional funding measure (SB 63) that would go to voters in November 2026. The measure would rescue transit agencies in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco by levying a sales tax of at least 1/2 cent over 10–15 years, though the revenue still wouldn’t be enough to preserve the current level of service. 

Though we support any solution that prevents transit apocalypse , this “pragmatic” solution repeats two historical mistakes. First, although San Mateo County and Santa Clara County have the highest median incomes and home values in California, SB 63 allows either county to choose a lower tax rate (1/4 cent) or simply “opt out” of participation, denying access to their robust tax base. Second, no matter how noble the cause, adding yet another sales tax to everyday items will hit working class people the hardest. Adding insult to injury, we’d end up paying more for less service because even the maximum sales tax wouldn’t keep pace with rampant inflation and arbitrary tariffs.

For months, San Mateo County’s transit agency, SamTrans, has declined to support or oppose the regional funding measure that would preserve local BART and Caltrain service. (SamTrans has structural deficits too, but not until fiscal year 2027.) Though the nine-member Board of Directors (BOD) has approved another round of polling, they seem fixated on just how much tax “the public” might accept rather than what awful consequences their riders will face should SB 63 fail. Their hesitancy isn’t surprising: No SamTrans board members regularly ride public transit, let alone depend on it. And some live in communities such as Hillsborough (median household income $250,000+), which is accessible only by car, and Redwood Shores, which has a single bus route that runs only during school dropoff and pickup hours—and takes summers off!

New Polling Provides Hope for Progressive Tax Solution

Fortunately, pro-transit organizations and activists across the Bay Area are uniting to pressure San Mateo County and Santa Clara County to pay their fair share. Our new demand is a gross receipts tax on all business activities, similar to San Francisco’s GR tax. Bay Area Forward, a group of transit unions (including SEIU), operators, and activists, just surveyed likely 2026 voters and found that 61% would support a gross receipts tax. The race is on to build enough public support to pressure other San Mateo County decision makers—San Mateo County Transit Authority (SMCTA), the Board of Supervisors, C/CAG—into advising SamTrans to “opt in” to SB 63 by the August 11 deadline.Once our county is confirmed to be in play, Peninsula DSA and our coalition partners will have a more than a year to boost public support through canvassing, flyering, and more.

Peninsula DSA now organizes with Transbay Coalition, as part of its San Mateo County cadre, and with Seamless Bay Area. Our chapter has promoted regional socials and led flyering events at BART and Caltrain stations to inform riders of proposed cuts. (The coalition’s next big event is a rally for public transit at the Millbrae BART/Caltrain station on July 1.) Every month, we mobilize to make public comments—whether in person, by Zoom, or via email—at the SamTrans BOD meetings. Transbay Coalition members now hold three of eleven seats on the SamTrans Citizens Advisory Committee and are actively recruiting like-minded folks for four vacant seats. 

We call on our fellow socialists to join our fight for public transit in four ways:

1. Push your chapter to use public transit. Like public libraries, public transit budgets rise or fall with public demand. If the coordinated Montgomery bus boycott ended racial segregation, a coordinated bus-riding effort by California DSA chapters could force more public investment. A great place to start is making all chapter meetings, socials, and events fully accessible by transit!

2. Join your local transit coalition so we can fight on a unified front. There are pro-transit organizers already at work near you; see this joint letter that Move California sent to Sacramento legislators for 100 different organizations!

3. Make public comments at agency board meetings. Because the monthly BOD meeting of your local transit agency is probably underattended, your public comment can directly influence decision makers. Use your two or three minutes to air socialist perspectives and solutions! You can show solidarity with Peninsula DSA by commenting in person or via Zoom in favor of SB 63 at the next SamTrans meeting on Wednesday, July 2. (Details at peninsuladsa.org/public-transit.)

4. Support your local transit workers (e.g, ATU, SEIU, TWU AFL-CIO). Santa Clara County’s Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) workers proved so essential that a Superior Court judge ordered them back to work on March 26, 2025. Imagine the transit we could win when we stand in solidarity with the workers who provide it.

Transit coalitions

Bay Area

Bay Area Safe Routes to School

People’s Transit Alliance

Seamless Bay Area

Transbay Coalition

Voices for Public Transit

Transit Riders Unions

East Bay Transit Riders Union

San Francisco Transit Riders (includes Transit Justice Coalition)

Silicon Valley Transit Users

Bicyclists

Bike East Bay

California Bicycle Coalition
Marin County Bicycle Coalition

Napa County Bicycle Coalition

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition

Silicon Valley Bike Coalition (includes San Mateo County)

Sonoma County Bike Coalition

The biggest city in America will be choosing its next mayor this month on June 24, when the Democratic primary election for the New York City mayoral race takes place. But with summer heating up on the west coast, and our chapters facing a slew of local issues and conflicts, some of us might not care too much about what happens in the Big Apple. However, this race has the potential to be one of the most important events for DSA and American socialism in years. It’s the first time in over one hundred years an open socialist is running for mayor in NYC. Zohran Mamdani—DSA member and representative for New York’s 36th State Assembly district—has built a fiery campaign that has catapulted him to a close second in recent polling. He has a real chance of winning this mayoral race, and California democratic socialists should take notice.

Incumbent mayor Eric Adam’s first term has been fraught with scandal, corruption, and working class antagonism. His rule saw the return of several ‘tough on crime’ policies like renewed plain-clothes policing and adding two police officers to every subway train at night. With calls for a ceasefire in Gaza ramping up across NYC over the past two years, Adams has also maintained firm and uncritical support of Israel while refusing to call for a ceasefire. 

Adams and big money corruption

Last year, Adams was charged with taking bribes and soliciting illegal campaign contributions, including from foreign nationals. This made him the first sitting NYC mayor to be indicted on federal criminal charges. But while the investigation was on-going, Trump—who Adams refused to call a fascist—instructed prosecutors to end the corruption case. The same month Adam’s case was dropped, he joined the Independent party and told critics at a town hall that “all those who are just saying ‘just fight him, resist, resist’ — I’m not part of the resist movement.’ Adams now cooperates with HSI and ICE to kidnap the same undocumented migrants he has long housed in his sanctuary city. 

Adams is another example of how big money corruption and liberal capitulation to fascism has continued to erode the foundations of our democracy. But with Adams condemned to political irrelevancy, there is a new chance for New Yorkers to choose someone who represents their interests.

Mamdani’s program

Zohran Mamdani is known in NYC for his activism and legislation. He participated in a hunger strike with taxi drivers to help them win access to debt relief; years later he joined another hunger strike in front of the White House to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. His “Fix the MTA” campaign saw  a $100 million increase to NYC metro services and the founding of a successful free bus pilot program. 

On top of Zohran’s public transit reform and other progressive policy proposals is a bold initiative for freeze the rent for all stabilized tenants. NYC has long been one of the least affordable cities to live in, with renters paying close to 30% of their income on rent. Zohran is also putting forward a public works project to build 200,000 “permanently affordable, union-built, rent-stabilized homes” over the next 10 years. These policies aim to give the children of NYC today the option of staying in their city tomorrow. Zohran’s campaign promises appear to be gaining popularity, and scaring the hell out of New York billionaires and their candidate Andrew Cuomo.

That’s right, the same Cuomo who was accused by eleven current and former New York State employees of sexual harassment. After a five-month investigation that mounted credible evidence against him, Cuomo resigned in disgrace. Risen once more by his Wall Street backers, Cuomo has been coasting on name recognition back into politics. While leading by double digits for most of the campaign, his checkered past has continued to haunt him on the campaign trail. 

Encouraging polling

During the first Democratic primary debate, Cuomo was at the bottom of a savage dogpile, with Zohran landing some of the best punches of the night. Claiming to be “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare,” Zohran stated that “the difference between myself and Cuomo is that my campaign is not funded by the very billionaires that put Donald Trump in D.C.” Post-debate polling is now showing Cuomo’s double digit lead shrinking to single digits. 

With endorsements from multiple unions, progressive representatives, organizations (including NY-DSA), and a recent tap from AOC, we gotta keep the momentum up. While NYC may be on another planet for us, a socialist mayor in NYC could be the spark that the progressive left desperately needs. Putting an immigrant, Muslim, socialist mayor in the heart of American capitalism—in Trump’s home city—would be a huge blow to the fascist oligarchy gripping our nation.

The first thing was the visceral body-memory of what it felt like the first time this president roiled the nation. The repulsion. The dread. The fear.

I don't want to go through this again, every cell of me said last autumn, as I imagined 2025 and beyond. The temptation to pull up the covers and hide, or stay frozen, doomscrolling, was familiar and strong.

Then I remembered how horrible I felt when I could do pretty much nothing but doomscroll, due to how very sick I was during much of Trump’s first term. I knew nothing would feel worse than doing nothing at all. Better frontline than sideline. 

Good medicine and care had been making me stronger since then. Perhaps I could blow the dust off my at-large DSA membership and do something useful with that?

In Search of a Real Socialist Organizer

So I started looking around, figuring I would just pitch in wherever Real Socialist Organizers had already decided to respond. I combed through national DSA's website and started slogging through a few of the (many) emails I'd previously ignored. The more I read, the more evident it was that working class-focused DSA chapters were core units of necessary political power.

Only problem was, the closest DSA chapter was...five hours away? Gulp.

Surely somebody more capable was forming a chapter nearer to here? I showed up at a few virtual gatherings of California DSA and the national organization to find who they might be. By happenstance, on one of the California DSA zooms I saw someone identify themself as local to my area. I reached out. We connected. We knew some of the same people from the Bernie campaigns. I learned there had been previous efforts to get DSAers organized locally. So I dug out some old contacts, begged for a few more, and started making calls.

I called people I knew who might have a connection to those prior efforts, or might fancy a new one. I asked who else might be interested. I called, messaged, read, asked questions, and tried to take it all in. Doomscrolling would start to seize me again. Then I’d stop and make some more calls.  

Through weeks of this, I kept looking for the Real Socialist Organizer who would SURELY materialize with a poof to assure me that they—competent, valorous, and presumably abled—were already ON IT, making a DSA chapter magically appear.

Meanwhile, as the president's malice befell the world again, something weird was happening. In between doomscrolling relapses, my conversations with all these other people who cared about working class power the way I did prompted a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. In spite of the onslaught of devastating news, I was feeling actually...hopeful? 

Eventually, I had to face facts. The local Real Socialist Organizer I sought was not going to materialize at my convenience. Improbably—absurdly even—it was going to have to be mostly-housebound, introverted, middle-aged, cranky, chronically ill, disabled me. Not because I was an ideal person for the job nor particularly wanted it, but because sometimes, I could do some part of this work somewhat competently, and it so very much needed to get done. I was the organizer now. 

All Hail the Real Socialist Organizers

All those calls and messages brought me into contact with actual Real Socialist Organizers who lived far away. Each time I found one, I begged them for help. No dignity here! This is fascism, not a drill.

They said, absolutely! We'll help! Because, after all, that's what a Real Socialist Organizer does. They get people doing socialist organizing -- that's the whole point! California DSA leaders were particularly gracious and helpful, and as I got better plugged in I found folks at the national org were, too. 

Next thing I knew, DSAers and DSA friends were regularly meeting locally, because I, of all people, invited them to! We were quiet and loud, new to politics and multiply burned out, young and not-at-all young. Everybody brought something different to the room, and it felt fresh, somewhat scary, invigorating, comradely and rich. I managed to revive a few useful skills from my pre-sick political life and started sharing them where I could. I drafted agendas, cooked meals, got others doing both, and kept making calls. Little by little, others stepped up and together, as a group, we started to bloom.

Not a Glide Path

As we get to know each other, we identify our shared political dreams, what we are into, and what we aren't. We keep gathering and a sense of coherence slowly emerges, keeps emerging. We start out a hodge-podge of isolated, worried, interested, idealistic folks, and gradually become comrades. When it felt like we had enough of this groupness together, we applied to be a DSA Pre-Organizing Committee.

Do we know what we're doing? Sometimes! A little! We are learning. We've had challenges around matching our skills and experience to the very big lift of building local working class power. Five of us spent a weekend in a DSA leadership training and came out with renewed cohesion and resolve. Now we're an interim steering committee! So much to learn, connections to make, campaigns to lead. 

Sometimes it seems harder than it should be to figure out the obvious things we need for this process. Like, where is the universal, easy-to-read introductory DSA literature for tabling, flyering, and working the ever-growing protest crowds, which could make it so much easier for a new DSA group like ours to rapidly grow? We had to look high and low to find materials to adapt for our purposes, hindered by the fact our local members aren't very experienced creating such lit. Meanwhile, in California, 28% of adults struggle to read English at the most basic level. This is the working class we all say we care about, and people marginalized in this way need power -- and accessible materials -- even more than those of us who take reading for granted.  

The deadliest places in California

The deadliest places in California for people aged 15-44 are all up here in the fabulously gorgeous rural north, and none have DSA chapters. "Deaths of despair" here are commonplace. According to a December 2024 state Legislative Analyst's Office report, "The counties with the highest young adult death rates are all in the rural northern part of the state." The untimely deaths correlate to our widespread poverty and have been on the rise, particularly for people of color and for men. We are lucky to have many strong Native Tribes in the region, but life can be exceedingly difficult because of the genocides and ongoing trauma brought by settler colonialism, and hard for other working class folks too in the wake of the collapse of multiple extractive industries. Yet Shasta is currently the only county in this region with a DSA Organizing Committee (shout-out and huge props to them!).

Many of our communities have either no broadband Internet, or its availability is very uneven. On-camera zoom meetings can only get us so far (not to mention spotty public transit and our landslide-prone rural roads). Where is the network of other DSA organizers who are also overcoming these things? How can we easily find, get to know and support each other?

So many rural people share our socialist values but don't come with a background (or interest) in dense political theory and jargon. Some are too busy cobbling together a living, caregiving and generally staying alive, to be interested in fractious online DSA spaces. Meanwhile, we are constantly weathering climate and economic disasters together. The same face-to-face community relationships that hold small places tightly together through thick and thin are also essential to the power-building work socialists believe in. Marginalized rural peoples' shared connections are as valuable as any other kind. Calloused hands hold precious keys to our collective freedom.

I find myself wondering what we can do to keep every new and aspiring DSA organizer and group from having to navigate daunting challenges in isolation. It would be great to have a DSA Rural Network and Skill-Share!

Coming Together

In spite of the challenges, earlier this month nine members joined together to submit an Organizing Committee Application for Humboldt DSA! We know it's a humble start but we're proud of it, because every single name on that application reflects trust we've earned with and extended to each other amid frightening times.

Now, just a few months after I first paused my doomscrolling habit, a whole room full of determined Real Socialist Organizers gather regularly here. We draw on the moral and practical support of our comrades afar. Our movement is only beginning. Our solidarity is strong and is deepening. Onward we grow.