By Travis Wayne

Cambridge, MA – On April 24, 2025, the MIT Coalition for Palestine and BDS Boston held a press conference outside campaign target  MIT Museum announcing that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had sent a formal letter cutting its ties with the Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. 

The Industrial Liaison Program at MIT (MIT-ILP) is a program designed to facilitate the relations between MIT campus communities and large corporations with US$500 million or more. That includes strategic recruitment of students into businesses that hold these lucrative ILP contracts with the Institute, one of which was Elbit Systems. 

The termination of Elbit Systems’ contract with MIT is the second victory for what the movement began calling the “People’s Arms Embargo” in late November 2024. Earlier that year, Elbit Systems terminated its Central Square office location a year early after waves of disruptions led by BDS Boston. A coalition of Palestine organizations launched the People’s Arms Embargo with a direct action at Travis Air Force Base in California after the federal government failed to end weapons shipments after a year of continued genocide in Palestine: “if the U.S. government won’t stop shipping arms to Israel, then we will establish a People’s Arms Embargo to stop it ourselves.”

The organizers and press were not alone on April 24. The Cambridge Police Department had assigned an entire squad of ten visible security guards to barricade the press conference. Two organized counterprotesters also showed up, unfurled a Zionist flag, and proceeded to bellow slogans to disrupt the press conference. One filmed while another screamed to drown out the speaker. Three security guards stood between counterprotesters and a Palestine organizer when they began heatedly exchanging words.

One representative from BDS Boston echoed the same words the organization released after the successful removal of Elbit Systems from Central Square: “We have collective power and we will use it.”

The Palestine Youth Movement was also invited to deliver a statement:

This is the moment. This is the moment where people of conscience must take matters into our own hands… this is our community’s time to escalate against this merchant of death and all war profiteers.

The movement coalition also identified a new target: Maersk. The US$55 million shipping company, located in the strategic logistics industry, has been identified as a targeted by Palestine organizers worldwide. In Tangier, Morocco, 1500 dockworkers and supporters at the Maersk-owned APM Terminals 2 organized to refuse to accept a Maersk shipment of US fighter jet parts to Israel – entering a showdown with management. PYM’s Mask Off Maersk campaign posted that Maersk added dockworkers in Morocco to special lists as a repressive response to their organizing on the same day that BDS Boston announced its own Maersk campaign. 

“This is only the beginning,” said one MIT Coalition for Palestine member. 

Travis Wayne is the deputy managing editor of Working Mass and the co-chair of the Somerville branch of Boston DSA.

By Colleen L

In the heart of North Carolina, a storm is brewing once again. Senate Bill 516 (S.B. 516), misleadingly titled the "Women's Safety and Protection Act," threatens to unravel the fabric of inclusivity and respect that binds our communities together. The bill is not just a step backward, it's a direct assault on the dignity and rights of transgender individuals, and it places everyone, regardless of whether or not someone is transgender, at greater risk.​

But the danger doesn’t stop at restroom doors. S.B. 516 is part of a broader political strategy rooted in upholding systems of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism. These types of laws seek to control bodies, especially the bodies of those who resist gender norms, who are people of color (POC), queer, disabled, working-class, and/or poor. By weaponizing fear and moral panic, these bills distract from the real crises facing our communities: lack of access to housing, healthcare, education, and living wages. In doing so, they divide the working class and shift blame away from the systems that actually endanger us.

When the government polices gender, it enforces rigid roles that serve the interests of power, not the safety of people. S.B. 516 does not protect women or children. It reinforces a violent, narrow view of who is “acceptable,” while putting trans people, non-binary people, and even cisgender people at risk of surveillance, harassment, and violence. This bill isn't about safety, it's about control.

What is S.B. 516?

Senate Bill 516 (S.B. 516), also known as the “Women’s Safety and Protection Act,” is a proposed North Carolina law that would force people to use bathrooms and changing facilities in public buildings based on their sex assigned at birth, not their gender identity. The bill would also prevent transgender people from updating the gender marker on their birth certificates or driver’s licenses, legally erasing recognition of trans and non-binary individuals. S.B. 516 does not increase public safety. Instead, it puts transgender people, non-binary people, and even cisgender women and men at greater risk of harassment, violence, and discrimination in public spaces.

A Violation of Privacy and Safety

Studies have shown that transgender individuals face alarmingly high rates of harassment in public restrooms. According to GLSEN, over 75% of transgender students feel unsafe at school due to their gender identity, and restrictive bathroom policies exacerbate this vulnerability.​

Moreover, these policies don't just harm transgender individuals. They hurt all of us.

S.B. 516 is written as though gender is binary and everyone fits neatly into one of two categories. But we know that’s simply not reality. Countless people, non-binary, gender nonconforming, and intersex, exist outside that rigid framework. This bill erases their identities and their humanity by forcing them to choose between unsafe or inappropriate public spaces. 

Harmful policies like S.B. 516 create an environment where anyone who doesn't conform to traditional gender norms, whether it be appearance or mannerism, can be subjected to scrutiny and discrimination. This includes cisgender women who are perceived as masculine, who could also be challenged or harassed when simply trying to use the restroom.​ Cisgender men aren’t safe either. Fathers helping their daughters in public restrooms or caregivers assisting elderly family members may find themselves accused of suspicious behavior.

Consider the case of domestic violence shelters. Transgender women, who are already at a heightened risk of intimate partner violence, could be denied access to these critical resources under S.B. 516. This exclusion not only leaves transgender women without support but also undermines the very purpose of these shelters: to provide safety and refuge to those in need.​

S.B. 516 doesn’t create safety, it invites profiling. And worse, it encourages everyday people to act as enforcers of state control. Much like abortion bans, ICE raids, or anti-trans legislation across the country, this bill relies on surveillance and snitch culture, where suspicion alone becomes justification for confrontation. It deputizes citizens to police each other’s bodies, turning public spaces into battlegrounds of judgment and fear. 

The GOP knows these laws are both harmful and unpopular. But rather than govern democratically, they push these policies through by stoking fear, bypassing public consensus, and using political power to force their agenda, regardless of the lives at risk.

This bill, created under the guise of “protection,” doesn’t protect anyone. It targets the most vulnerable among us, and it empowers the public to do the state’s work.

We’ve Seen This Before: HB2

We don't have to look far back to see the repercussions of such discriminatory legislation. In 2016, North Carolina passed House Bill 2 (HB2), which mandated individuals to use restrooms corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates. The backlash was swift and severe. Major corporations halted investments, leading to significant economic losses. The NBA relocated its All-Star Game, and numerous entertainers canceled performances. The Associated Press estimated that HB2 would cost the state over $3.76 billion in lost business over a dozen years.​

The public outcry and economic impact were so profound that the legislature eventually repealed HB2. Yet, here we are again, with S.B. 516 threatening to repeat history.​

Infringement on Fundamental Rights

Beyond the tangible harms, S.B. 516 strikes at the very core of individual freedoms. Denying transgender individuals access to facilities that align with their gender identity is a blatant violation of their rights. It's not about safety; it's about codifying discrimination. The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina has aptly described S.B. 516 as a bill that "erodes fundamental rights and dignity by enforcing rigid definitions of sex and gender in state law."​

But this bill is about more than restrooms. It is part of a larger strategy to maintain systems of control. Policies like S.B. 516 reinforce patriarchy by policing gender roles, white supremacy by disproportionately harming POC trans people, and uphold capitalism by criminalizing the poor while denying them access to safe public space. These systems rely on strict hierarchies of power and punishing those who refuse to conform.

In the face of this institutional violence, LGBTQ+ communities have built alternative systems of care. Many rely on mutual aid networks to meet their most basic needs: hormone therapy kits, gender-affirming clothing swaps, safe housing resources, and fundraising support for legal, medical, or survival costs. These acts of collective care are not charity. They are acts of survival.

S.B. 516 seeks to sever these networks by increasing stigma, limiting access to public life, and pushing people into deeper precarity. It targets the very communities that have always had to build their own safety. When the state abandons these communities, or actively legislates them out of existence, the communities are the ones who respond. Mutual aid is a reminder that real safety doesn’t come from the state. It comes from each other. And that is exactly what this bill is trying to dismantle.

The Urgent Need for Compassion and Understanding

To those who support this bill under the guise of protecting women, consider the real-world implications. Policies like S.B. 516 don't make spaces safer; they make them more hostile and divisive. True safety comes from fostering environments of understanding, respect, and inclusivity.​

Taking Action: Preventing the Passage of S.B. 516

There are so many ways to show up in this fight, and not all of them require being physically present at a protest. Activism is strongest when everyone participates in the ways they’re able.

1. Show up for trans and non-binary people: That means listening, believing, and advocating alongside them.
   
   

2. Contact your legislators: Contact your state senators and representatives. Express your opposition to S.B. 516 and explain how it harms the community. Personal stories and well-reasoned arguments can be particularly impactful.​
   Find your NC legislators here: https://www.ncleg.gov/FindYourLegislators
   
   

3. Support local organizations doing the work: In addition to national advocacy groups, grassroots organizations here in North Carolina are building power for reproductive justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, and working-class liberation, such as:

The NC Triangle Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) – Socialist Feminist Working Group

The Socialist Feminist (“SocFem”) Working Group of the NC Triangle DSA envisions a world rooted in reproductive justice, bodily autonomy, and dignity for all people, values that stand in direct opposition to S.B. 516.

Their work connects the fight for trans rights and reproductive freedom with broader struggles for labor rights, housing justice, and free, accessible healthcare. They organize for systemic change, not just defensive actions.

Their past efforts include:

• Rallies in response to the overturn of Roe v. Wade

• Picketing anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy centers”

• Teach-ins on abortion care and bodily autonomy for trans people

• Active participation in the chapter’s Priority Campaign for Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy, which challenges the state government through civil non-compliance and organizing.

To learn more or get involved:
Website: https://triangledsa.org/working-groups/socialist-feminist-working-group/
Instagram: @triangledsa

Other organizations include: ACLU of NC, Equality NC, and the Campaign for Southern Equality (and more!)

1. Attend protests and community events: Show public solidarity. Visibility matters. If you can’t attend physically, raise awareness digitally.
   
   

2. Educate others: Use your voice on social media and in your local communities. Help people understand that this isn’t about safety. It’s about control and discrimination.
   
   

3. Vote: Remember this moment during election season. Support candidates who champion inclusivity and oppose discriminatory legislation.​
   
   

Let's not be a state that legalizes discrimination. North Carolina can champion the rights and dignity of all its residents. S.B. 516 is not the path forward. It's a regression that North Carolinians cannot afford morally, socially, or economically.​

It's time to stand together, to uplift every member of our community, and to ensure that our laws reflect the values of equality and respect. Reject S.B. 516. Embrace compassion. Champion justice.

By Nathan K & Dan C

In the wake of October 7th, another round of Israel’s genocidal actions towards the Palestinians in Gaza has begun, pushing Zionism and antisemitism to the top of American public consciousness. While Israel has been engaged in brutal repression towards the Palestinians for decades, what has made this moment so different from previous ones has been the sharp outcry against Israel’s actions from a wide swath of western capitalist society. In an effort to suppress these newly dissenting voices, Zionist affiliated organizations have turned to a tried-and-true method in their playbook: conflating anti-zionism with antisemitism. Criticism and even awareness of Israel’s actions are positioned as antisemitic smears by the left, juxtaposed against a rational and palatable “Liberal Zionism”. The waters are only muddied further with the arrival of far-right groups inadvertently bolstering this effort, attempting to hijack the narrative to insert actual anti-semitic rhetoric into criticism of the Israeli state.

So what is antisemitism, why and how is it being conflated with Zionism, and how do we push back against the narrative of “Liberal Zionism”?

Antisemitism is rooted historically in Europe’s conversion to Christianity, though there were certainly discriminatory actions levelled at Jews in the classical era, such as expulsions and slavery in the wake of conquest or revolt, the prejudices we are familiar with grew out of the perception that Jews were “killers of christ”. Restrictions on where Jews could live, bans from certain occupations, and everyday racism were all part of a systematic campaign of persecution with the goal of forcing conversion. These pressures led Jews to practice in secret, flee their homes, or take up socially inferior jobs such as moneylending, peddling wares, or tax/rent collecting. The latter resulted in representations of Jews as “greedy” or untrustworthy and made them scapegoats in times of crisis, despite Jews in these professions working on behalf of Christians who could not practice usury.

Starting in the Enlightenment, race as a “science” gained popularity as attempts to retroactively justify the religiously motivated prejudices of the past. The rising nationalist movements of the day viewed Jewish identity as inherently oppositional to national identity and Jews as conspirators against national rejuvenation. To fight their oppression, Jews in turn began flocking to revolutionary movements, leading to further tension. Jewish and gentile intellectuals alike debated whether Jews could assimilate or would always face discrimination. In the pro-assimilation camp, various movements to secularize Jews and fight for their rights within society were founded. Among Jews from the anti-assimilationist camp, a new political ideology emerged: Zionism.

Political Zionism began with Theodore Herzl and his manifesto Der Judenstaat written in 1896, though its existence as an aspirational religious goal predates that. Unlike assimilationists, Zionists did not necessarily reject scientific racism and accepted the formulation that Jews were a distinct and separate race from their European counterparts, requiring a homeland of their own. The British Empire saw Zionism as an opportunity to expand influence in the Middle East and offered patronage through the The Balfour Declaration, and Zionists in turn encouraged activity in Mandatory Palestine due to its religious and historical significance in Judaism.

Following the Holocaust and the death of six million Jews, assimilationist positions seemed absurd. How could Jews possibly turn around and attempt reintegration in a society that had just planned their mass extermination? The Zionist position seemed like the obvious way forward: to settle in a new land, far from Europe,and  establish a Jewish nation-state with complete political control. The words never again etched their way into Zionist lexicon as their strongest argument. This is the common refrain of the Liberal Zionist, that the Holocaust uniquely proves the necessity of a Jewish Nation-State — that it is a given fact that without a Jewish Nation, a genocide will occur again.

According to this mindset, the "excesses” of the Israeli state boil down to bad policy or bad actors. Following this line of thought, Liberal Zionists, argue that the right politicians or the right policy can create a Zionism that is palatable and free of such “excesses”. The problem is this outlook refuses to see the settler-colonialism at the heart of the Israeli project, which will cause those “excesses” to occur again and again. Benjamin Netanyahu’s Nationalist Likud Party, the ones currently conducting the campaign of slaughter in Gaza, wasn’t always the ruling party of Israel; the first governing coalition was composed of Liberal and Labor zionists. That didn’t stop Jewish settlers and soldiers who had just fled persecution and suffering turn around and inflict that same violence against the Palestinians. As negotiations broke down into war in 1948, the Israeli paramilitaries that would eventually become the core of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing known as the Nakba. Over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from the land they called home, 16,000 Palestinains were killed,and land and property were expropriated by the nascent Israeli state.

No matter how much liberal or socialist window dressing takes place, Zionism is an ideology of settler-colonialism, and nothing can change that. Its rallying cry, “A land without a people for a people without a land” erases the personhood of Palestinians, leading to its atrocities being buried or ignored. Zionists believe, implicitly or otherwise, they are on a “civilizing mission” for the Levant. When media outlets and politicians push rhetoric like “Israel is the only stable democracy in the Middle East,” the implication is clear: Israel is a western democracy, it has European founders, it is stable like us.

That also doesn’t change the fact that many Jews support Israel out of fear of antisemitism, with a true conviction that Israel serves as a bulwark against it. Zionism itself proudly claims this to be true, but history paints a different picture. Israel, through its material actions, has no issues with antisemitism aimed at the Diaspora. It materially supports evangelical “Christian Zionists” who support the Israeli State out of perceived fulfillment of biblical prophecy, a prophecy that ends in genocide: with all Jews either dying in the apocalypse or converting to Christianity. Christian Zionism and American backing leads to widespread acceptance of Israel on the ideological Right, even among groups who perpetrate antisemitism against Jews in their home countries. That’s how a party like the AfD in Germany can advocate for tearing down Holocaust Memorials and laws outlawing Kosher slaughter but be a vocal proponent for Israel in the German legislature.

Israel does nothing to protect those who are victimized by these groups and their supporters. There is no material support, and no amount of “soft power” actually helps the people trying to live their day-to-day lives. At most, Israel’s claim of being a shield against antisemitism amounts to cynical invocations of the Holocaust to justify its own existence through methods like the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which notably includes:

“Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

These alliances between Zionists and antisemites are a feature, not a bug. Theodore Herzl once noted in his diary that “The antisemites will become our most dependable friends, the antisemitic countries our allies.” This remains the strategy of Israel to this day, and why not? It’s of material interest to the Israeli project. Antisemitism against the Jewish diaspora means more Jews emigrating to become Israeli citizens. There is still the implicit understanding of Herzl’s internalized antisemitism in policy: that the “weak” diaspora must be transformed into a “proper” Zionist nation. This is to say nothing of the destruction of traditional Jewish culture within Israel, the eradication of local practices in the name of stamping out the “ghetto culture” of the diaspora (Ashkenazim, Sephardim, etc) for the homogenized monolith of the Hebrew-speaking Israeli.

This brings us back to the question of antisemitism. Is anti-Zionism antisemitism, like so many politicians would have us believe? No. Just from the Nakba alone, there are clear political reasons to oppose the Zionist project that have nothing to do with the hatred of Jews. Definitions like the one used by the IHRA obscure this, framing the discussion of Israel around Jewish self-determination as opposed to the suffering and dispossession of the Palestinians.

That doesn’t mean critiques of Israel can’t still cross the line into antisemitism, such as when those critiques cross the line into targeting Jews who have no connection to the Israeli state. Other offensive tropes include invoking claims of sinister conspiracies headed by the Rothschilds or George Soros,  implicating Jewish individuals and institutions as part of some secret cabal for Israeli power, and implying a dual loyalty across an entire people. Baseless accusations like these are just the old tropes of antisemitism given a new coat of paint for the world Jews find themselves living in today.

DSA is against all imperialist and colonial ideologies, including Zionism and anti-Muslim racism. We reaffirm that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism! We stand with the oppressed peoples of Palestine and work with them in solidarity and support through actions like our No Appetite for Apartheid campaign and by working on the ground with Palestinian organizations. We do this while fighting antisemitism in our communities at the same time. Freedom for the Palestinian People and safety for the Jewish diaspora are not in any way mutually exclusive. Recent events have made people more conscious of this, but it is only through action and education that we can make sure it is a reality.

By Nathan K

When an American hears Labor Day, what comes to mind? The end of Summer? barbecue, beers, and the flag? Not wearing white? It seems kind of odd that, besides getting a day off on the calendar, labor itself is put on the backburner, and agitation is conspicuously absent from America’s ostensible worker holiday. To those wondering why, it should come as no surprise that the first Monday in September is an aberration compared to Labor days across the world, a holiday in the United States and Canada, but meaningless to the more than 150 countries around the world that instead recognize May 1st as International Workers Day. You may know it by another name: May Day.

The roots behind the choice of May 1st as an international holiday for labor come specifically from the fight for an eight hour workday in the 1800s. Prior to the First World War, most countries had laws for 10 hour days, usually 6am to 6pm, if they had any laws regulating working hours at all. This brutal state of affairs had workers spending over half their waking hours on the clock, with little spare time before needing to sleep after a shift. As the labor movement consolidated through the 1800s, the fight for an eight hour day became a crucial centerpiece of worker demands.

In the United States, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions, a precursor to the AFL, set May 1st 1886 as a deadline to make the eight hour day standard. 500,000 workers turned out in force to fight for workers rights, and as the strike progressed into its 3rd day strikebreakers and police in Chicago caused the death of two workers. Retaliation against this act of police violence led to a further 3,000 gathering in Haymarket Square the next day to rally in solidarity, and the clashes with Police that followed as they attempted to forcibly disperse this peaceful rally led to a further 15 deaths and 70 injuries.

The men behind the “Haymarket Affair” were sentenced in a rigged trial. Four were executed and the remaining three were given lengthy prison sentences. Capitalists across the world hoped that workers would learn their lesson, and Haymarket would fade into history.

But the workers didn’t forget.

Those killed, either at the riot or at the hands of the state, became Martyrs for the cause of an eight hour day. At the meeting of the Second International in Paris in 1889 a great demonstration, the first “International Workingmen's Day”, was planned for May 1st of 1890 in honor of those who died fighting for the cause of work hour reduction. The success of this event around the world led to the establishment of the May Day we all know and love.

Of course knowing the history of May Day, and how inextricably it is tied to the American Labor movement, makes the “Labor Day” recognized by the US in September all the more cynical. Anxiety over the explicitly political and socialist meaning behind May 1 led President Grover Clevland to push the first Monday of September as a moderate alternative. This date had already been discussed in some AFL-affiliated circles as a potential “holiday for labor”. The American government’s attempts to suppress awareness of May Day continued into the 1950s with the establishment of “Loyalty Day” on May 1st as a nationalist celebration, though laughably few people know about this holiday to commemorate “American history and declaring loyalty to the United States”.

Though the eight hour workday has been won in the global north, the worker’s struggle for control of our economic and political agency is far from complete — especially for our comrades in the global south. This May Day, we should remember our forebears, who fought for eight hours between backbreaking 12 hour shifts. If they could win eight hours, what could we win?

Upcoming Events

Tuesday, April 29 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Maker Tuesday (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, May 1 (4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): May Day March and Rally — Immigrant & Workers’ Rights: One Struggle, One Fight (In person at SF Civic Center Plaza)

Thursday, May 1 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): May Day Happy Hour (In person at Tempest Bar & Box Kitchen, 431 Natoma)

Friday, May 2 (1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, May 3 (11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.): Comrade Doggie Social (In person at Marx Meadow, Golden Gate Park)

Sunday, May 4 (5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Capital Reading Group (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

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

Monday, May 5 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (Zoom)

Monday, May 5 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Tuesday, May 6 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Reading Group for “The Destruction of Palestine is the Destruction of the Earth” (Zoom)

Wednesday, May 7 (6:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): New Member Happy Hour (In person at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia)

 Thursday, May 8  (5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.): Education Board Open Meeting (Zoom)

Saturday, May 10 (1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Outreach and Training (In person at 1916 McAllister)

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

Events & Actions

May Day Events

Join us in celebrating May Day 2025! Labor Board and Immigrant Justice Working Groups kicked things off on Sunday with a Know Your Rights canvass. We’ll be keeping the ball rolling with a Maker Tuesday event tonight to craft buttons and flyers for the May Day Rally on Thursday.

• Tuesday, April  29 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Maker Tuesday (In person at 1916 McAllister)
• Thursday, May 1 (4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): May Day March and Rally — Immigrant & Workers’ Rights: One Struggle, One Fight (In person at SF Civic Center Plaza)
• Thursday, May 1 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): May Day Happy Hour (In person at Tempest Bar & Box Kitchen, 431 Natoma)

After May Day we’ll be assembling hygiene kits with the Homelessness Working Group and learning about salting opportunities in SF with a Socialist Night School on Salting!

For more information and to RSVP to these events, check out https://dsasf.org/mayday2025/

Oppose SFPD Overtime Abuse!

Join DSA SF and ACLU, Critical Resistance, and Harvey Milk Club to oppose the SFPD and Sheriff Overtime Abuse!

Send a letter to the Board of Supervisors to tell them that you oppose additional overtime funding to SFPD and the Sheriff’s department.

Rally with us on Wednesday, April 30 at 1:00 p.m. then join the Budget & Appropriations Committee Hearing at 1:30 p.m. to give public comment in opposition to this proposal.

Capital Reading Group

DSA SF has started a Marx’s Capital reading group! We’ll be meeting every other Sunday from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister St. and also on Zoom. We’ll meet on Sunday, May 4th to wrap up our discussion of chapter 1 and cover chapter 2 and the afterword to the second German edition. We’re reading the new translation published by Princeton University Press. You can also join the #capital-rdg-group-2025 channel on the DSA SF Slack for additional information and discussion!

Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing

The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) is running a Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing course weekly in May (see below for schedule). We’re getting a group to take the course together and benefit from in-person discussions and activities,. If you’re interested, fill out the form here and join the #ewoc-fundamentals-2025 channel in Slack! The goal is to have more people learn organizing skills, both for your own projects and for organizing with EWOC.

Sessions run every week from 6:00-7:30 p.m. on:

• Wednesday, May 7
• Tuesday, May 13
• Wednesday, May 21
• Wednesday, May 28

The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) is a project of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) to build a distributed, grassroots organizing program to support workers organizing at the workplace.

New Member Happy Hour

Join us for our New Member Happy Hour starting at 6:30PM at Zeitgeist (199 Valencia Street). Learn more about DSA SF’s upcoming projects, find out how to plug in, or just socialize with socialists! Also open to old members, regular folks and the socialism-curious. Members running for DSA National Convention delegate will also be there to answer questions about their questionnaires, so members should come through, too!

Office Hours

Co-work with your comrades! Come to the DSA SF office and get your DSA work or work-work done, or just hang out. We’ll  be at 1916 McAllister from 12:00 p.m to 5:00 p.m. on Fridays.

April 22 Maker Tuesday Reportback

We made nearly 200 red cards at the last Maker Tuesday as part of ongoing efforts to keep the chapter resupplied with Know Your Rights material. Homelessness, Labor, Tenants Rights, and Palestine Solidarity are among some of the working groups that have enjoyed distributing these around various neighborhoods in the city.

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.

May Day 2025 will measure the broad left’s strength vis-à-vis the Trump Administration and the MAGA Republican Party here in Maine and across the country. It won’t tell us everything, but it will tell us a lot. 

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”—Sun Tzu

Know your enemy. Trump had a bad week. Even Fox News had to admit that “Americans are not overly thrilled” with Trump as his approval rating slumped into the low 40s. Hegseth keeps on Signaling, Putin doesn’t seem interested in a ceasefire, Netanyahu is ratcheting up his genocide machine, he fell asleep at Pope Francis’s funeral, and, worst of all, his trade war has rattled the markets. “He’s tanking,” as Rachel Maddow put it this week. I hope she’s right. 

Yet it’s Maddow, not Trump, who is being pushed aside, reduced to one show per week starting May 5 by MSNBC’s new CEO who is encouraging producers to take a more “measured” tone towards Trump. Meanwhile, the Republican Party is moving in lockstep towards its single most important goal this year: slashing $1.5 trillion from the federal budget. They will hand hundreds of billions in tax breaks to corporations and the rich and they will gut social programs, most likely tearing the first pound of flesh from Medicaid. Republican Congressmen may face angry crowds at constituent meetings, but compared to the millions of dollars pouring into their campaign coffers, they just don’t care. 

[Read next: Thousands say Hands Off! in Maine]

The one group that may have the power to back Trump down at this point are the big banks. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citibank are collectively worth $10 trillion. Trump’s tariffs may trigger a recession—which he clearly doesn’t mind—but if stagflation threatens the bond market and the status of the US dollar as the global benchmark currency, the Lords of Finance might try to get him to move on. But even if they do put their thumbs on the scales, it will only be to save themselves. Remember, Occupy taught us who gets bailed out and who gets sold out.

To my eye, Trump looks happy. He loves this. He may—or may not—believe his plan will bring manufacturing back, but his real goal is to Make his American Great Again. Meaning, make the rich richer. The elite and their hangers on are going to make out like bandits and they love him for it. The MAGA upper middle classes—the managers, big landlords, medium size businessmen, wealthy lawyers and professionals, tech bros—love him for telling them that they will get rich too. Deeper down in the MAGA-inflected sections of the working class, decades of betrayal and swindles from bipartisan union busters, insurance company pirates, and devious banksters have enraged millions of people. And in the absence of a powerful labor movement or a party willing to fight for workers interests, millions have thrown their lot in with Trump because almost anything is better than the status quo. 

Trump doesn’t need 50% approval ratings. He needs a ruthless Republican Party willing to gerrymander and intimidate, a loyal base of 35 to 40% of the electorate, and a Democratic Party leadership that has no idea how to fight. As of today, he’s got the trifecta and he intends to run with it.

Know yourself. The working class in the United States has been bruised and battered by neoliberalism. Unions represented about 30% of workers in 1970, today less than 10%. The rich, the very rich, and the ultra rich have scraped an unprecedented share of the national wealth off the rest of us and are—literally—sending their fiancés into space. Meanwhile, holes in the social safety net grow by the day and grocery store inflation hits the lowest paid the hardest. LGTBQ+ workers suffer escalating harassment at work, Black workers endure double-the-average unemployment, women still earn less than men for equal work, and immigrant workers face a terrifying escalation of hatred and repression. Basic democratic rights are under attack to a degree not seen since McCarthyism. In sum, we’re in rough shape. 

[Listen to the Maine Mural podcast: Camp Hope, Bangor, Maine]

Throughout the grim neoliberal period, unions and social movements have put up a fight: Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, Bernie’s presidential campaigns, mutual aid during COVID, education and healthcare workers organizing and strikes in Blue and Red states alike, the UAW stand up strikes, Amazon union drives, and too many more to name. Each of these struggles proved that there are two sides to the class war. Chief among these was UAW president Sean Fain’s call for unions to align their contracts to expire on May Day 2028 and to lead a general strike to make working-class power visible. In fact, the UAW proposal—alongside the living legacy of the 2006 mass May Day marches and strikes by immigrant workers—is an important motivation for this year’s May Day mobilizations.  

Despite all this, we remain far weaker than our enemies. There is no shame in recognizing this fact. Nor is there any point in dwelling on it. If we want to defeat Trump and to change the social and economic conditions that gave him a mass base to begin with—Democratic leaders only care about the former—we will have to find ways to accomplish things that only seem possible in history books. How did we get unions in the first place? Factory occupations, mass picket lines, and defiance of pro-corporate courts. How did Black people win the right to vote? Civil disobedience in defiance of racist police and politicians. What brought the Vietnam War to an end? Courageous resistance by the Vietnamese people, campus and urban revolts, postal wildcat strikes, mass marches in the U.S., and soldiers refusing to fight. 

The scale and power of these events can seem impossible to reproduce. Too often, people attend a protest or two and despair that the monstrous policy they marched against remains in place. But this is to misunderstand history. The unions fought for seventy-five years before they beat General Motors. African Americans struggled for hundreds of years for freedom. Nothing important changes easily. 

However, that truism can lead to a certain kind of fatalism. The trick to bringing history to life is to understand the following. Those decades-long struggles moved in fits and starts, leaps forward and costly setbacks. Success always, in every instance, emerged from 1/ sharp strategic and tactical debates, which 2/ were only possible because hundreds of thousands of people joined political and social organizations, who in turn 3/ created local and national leaders, active and informed rank-and-file members, and skilled organizers. Whether they were called political parties or community organizations or unions or caucuses or churches, no examples of progress towards social justice were won outside the reality of mass membership participation. Why does this matter? 

Because we are weak and we must become strong. And the only way to do so is to practice democracy and politics by joining a political, community, student, or union group and dedicating time to building it into something powerful enough to defend yourself and those close to you. Root yourself locally and then link up with other groups and communities in mutual defense pacts, organizing campaigns, and united fronts. This will not be done online. It will require hundreds of thousands of people learning how to listen and how to persuade and participate..

What will May Day teach us? May 1st will show us how many people we can bring out to protest Trump. But May 2nd will show us how many people joined the fight to better our chances in the hundred battles to come.

[Read next: Solidarity against Trump means joining an organization]

The post What will May Day 2025 teach us?  appeared first on Pine & Roses.

By Reid Jackson

Boston, MA  – On April 23, 2025, IBT International President Sean O’Brien tweeted a New York Post article attacking democratic socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the duo continue to draw tens of thousands to their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.

O’Brien sharing anti-socialist smears is just the latest in a series of steps rightward taken by the leader of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which began cementing with O’Brien’s appearance as a speaker at the Republican National Convention in 2024. He followed that high-profile platform with a succession of Fox News appearances and Republican Senator podcast guests, revealing a new direction for a leader of a union embedded in the strategic logistics industry through 1.5 million rank-and-file members.

O’Brien has repeatedly touted an apolitical attitude towards politicians, press, and workers themselves, but in the era of rising fascism, apolitical means collaboration. O’Brien’s rise to power was paved by Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a rank-and-file reform caucus within which many socialists are embedded, which organized for his victory. But while O’Brien has hired organizer after organizer, beefing up the organizing department of the Teamsters to take on Amazon and other behemoths, the union president has also swung sharply to the right. O’Brien oversaw the mass firing and “public humiliation” of Black and brown staff organizers, 16 of 20 of total staff dismissed by the union, before bragging about it in an Oxnard union hall. That was before he began cozying up to the Right in appearance after appearance.

Workers and their families are feeling the squeeze of capitalistic greed now more than ever, with rent soaring in every local and anti-union activity rising across society, while one of the most important worker leaders sits side by side with the capitalists busting unions and raising rent. O’Brien using his incredible position of influence as a labor leader to field podcast episodes with adversaries of the labor movement like Josh Hawley, one of the people pushing anti-worker legislation in Congress, is wasteful and harmful.

Sean O’Brien’s impact as a labor leader remains largely to be seen. However, already, there are signs that his turn to the right may have corrosive effects on both the labor movement itself and the rank-and-file membership of the IBT.

O’Brien’s Impact on the Labor Movement

O’Brien’s political leadership could signal to other labor leaders that collaboration is acceptable as long as they employ the framework of “reaching across the aisle” and “finding common ground.” United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain also met with boss-friendly Hawley in February 2025, possibly as a result of O’Brien’s repeated encounters with the Republicans. Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, has begun entertaining guests like Charlie Kirk from conservative think-tank Turning Point USA. Kirk has played a prominent role in radicalizing young men to the far right, including substantial numbers of workers. If this is the start of a growing trend of playing nice with the opposition party, O’Brien’s participation is an embarrassment.

Does O’Brien’s failure of optics directly translate to a failure as a union leader? Does the average Teamsters member care where O’Brien is appearing on TV next as long as their contracts are being accepted? One New England member of the Teamsters reported anonymously to Working Mass: 

Sean is really great at the local stuff… he used to show up to all these different sites, help us secure contracts and enforce them, but lately he’s been on this odd media crusade. Spending all this time with Republicans is helping no one … speaks to a very out-of-touch relationship with national leadership.

The rank-and-file Teamster cited the current political climate and the growing pressure that unions and their members face every day in the workplace as reason enough for any union president to buckle down and get to work. 

However, there are rising examples of other labor leaders with constituencies similarly numbering in the millions of workers not named O’Brien pivoting towards defense against the Trump Administration. For example, SEIU International has joined their Local 509 in fighting to bring union member Rümeysa Öztürk back from ICE detention. The president of the largest private sector union came out to a rally on April 2nd in downtown Boston to call for her release and spoke to thousands of union members and supporters. This kind of solidarity is what is necessary from labor leadership at this time of capitalist attack.

O’Brien’s Impact on the Rank-and-File

When asked if they would support O’Brien, the Teamster said: 

I probably will still campaign for him, he’s done a lot of great things for us in labor as a leader. But these stunts with Fox News and the like are upsetting to the people like me who helped him get elected. If he keeps it up, he’s probably going to lose a portion of his volunteer base.

O’Brien argues that his political approach is mirrored by the membership of the Teamsters itself and will not be punished by membership. So far, that has remained true. The Teamsters’ internal survey shows that almost 60% of Teamsters supported Trump in the 2024 election. Statistics like these can be confusing as well as depressing, but it’s important to note that even if support for Trump is a widely held sentiment for the Teamsters, that doesn’t mean that fighting for progressive causes is hopeless in the organization. The Teamsters for a Democratic Union remain highly active organizing for progressive reform at every level of the Teamsters’ structure. However, they do so far without any public opposition to O’Brien.

If one anonymous New England Teamster who spoke to Working Mass is to be believed, that’s not likely to change:

If there was another candidate to come out in the next election for President [of the Teamsters], it would likely be a moderate urging the union to return to more conservative policy… so even given his current attitude towards Republicans, it’s not worth abandoning O’Brien over.

However, O’Brien’s status as unassailable at the helm of the Teamster rank-and-file movement also means members are robbed of the necessary leadership they need in the face of the Trump Administration. His shift to the Right normalizes the Right within a union of over a million. While organizing may increase, and the relationship between the Teamsters and the Democratic Party at last severed, the cost is a leader who will not defend members from abduction.

Sean O’Brien’s continued support for Republicans in the face of their egregious anti-worker attitude does not signal that Republicans are secretly a good party for labor movements, but that Democrats have hopelessly lost their labor messaging. O’Brien’s collaboration with the Right, including its organized forces and institutions, is a consequence of a true vacuum in the political space. There remains no substantial labor party grounded both in labor and mass organizations capable of representing workers as political subjects.

The task remains: build the workers’ party.

Reid Jackson is a contributor to Working Mass and a former member of the YDSA at the University of Rhode Island.

By Travis Wayne

BOSTON, MA – On April 16, 2025, approximately forty autonomous organizers wrapped in keffiyehs, masks, and sunglasses appeared in the whipping wind on the steps outside of Boston University’s Booth Theatre. Three police cars were parked nearby and two security guards watched from inside.

After rallying in front of Booth Theater, students marched down Commonwealth Avenue to the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) building, which is centrally located on BU campus. They roared slogans outside the Tsai Performance Center, pasted fliers tagged with sharpie on the walls, and read their demands aloud to the administration. On one building, the organizers pasted the word into which all demands were crystallized across nine floor-to-ceiling windows: “SANCTUARY.”

Everything, from the anonymous nature of organizers’ dress to the purposeful pasting to the fact that every cop was greeted with the same slogan of “no justice, no peace, fuck these racist-ass police,” showed the context of the moment: BU students responding to the administration’s crackdown on campus activism with escalation. The latest attack from the administration that led students to respond was on a longtime nucleus of student organizing: YDSA at BU.

The Sanctuary Campus Campaign

The 2025 Sanctuary Campus campaign was launched by Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), the youth section of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), across the nation once Trump took power. 

Students had raised the demand before. A previous generation of student organizers had fought for Sanctuary Campuses while attending classes during Trump’s first term. Students from campuses across the country led local walkouts as part of a coordinated “National Walkout for Sanctuary Campuses” to protect undocumented classmates in late 2016. Locally, Boston University’s 2017 student government endorsed the demand and urged the college president to declare Boston University a Sanctuary Campus.

The 2016-2017 Sanctuary Campus movement achieved a mishmash of results. Some universities declared themselves sanctuary campuses eight years ago only to backtrack now. Others gave in with symbolic statements designed to placate the students until they graduated. Others still did nothing. Most campuses remained vulnerable to ICE attacks, just waiting for an administration to sign off to turn a public agency into a secret police overnight.

Although the Sanctuary Campus campaign of today faces an even more emboldened ICE, the mass organization of students in YDSA has become more robust since its 2017 heyday. The campaign quickly gained traction around the country after its relaunch. At Colorado State University, YDSA gathered 3000 signatures for the demand within weeks of launch; at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, protests led by YDSA organizers broke out in late February; at Arizona State University, YDSA organizers discussed banner dropping the demand the week before YDSA at BU joined the campaign. 

YDSA at BU joined in the call for a Sanctuary Campus on March 24. ICE abducted Rümeysa Öztürk the next night – March 25.

On April 3, 2025, hundreds of Boston University students and faculty walked out of classes to meet at Marsh Plaza to demand Boston University become a Sanctuary Campus. The assembly, which occurred in a location that Boston University lists at the top of its own Events and Demonstrations Policy as a free speech zone and that ironically was once supposed to be designated a “physical sanctuary” for the undocumented, was organized by YDSA after meetings with BU administrators about protecting immigrant students failed. The rally was organized in coalition with a spectrum of activist organizations including the Boston University Prison Outreach Initiative, the largest Latine student organization, Alianza, and the Boston University Grad Workers’ Union (BUGWU). 

After the Sanctuary Campus rally in Marsh Plaza, autonomous students previously at the rally began a sit-in outside the office of the Dean of Students. Some students posted flyers on undesignated walls and surfaces. Despite no evidence of YDSA involvement in organizing the sit-in, administrators called in YDSA leadership for a hostile meeting six days later on April 9. According to sources present in the meeting, as well as reporting by BU’s student-run campus newspaper, the Daily Free Press, administrators attempted to convince YDSA leaders to say the chapter organized the sit-in in violation of university policy without directly alleging involvement.

Margaret Babson, Director of Student Activities, sent a follow-up email to YDSA on April 11 that lists “potential violations” by individuals “on behalf of YDSA” with no accusation or allegation against YDSA itself. Despite no evidence of YDSA official involvement, Boston University suspended YDSA. 

Working Mass obtained a copy of the letter sent by Margaret Babson to YDSA, posted below:

The organization, taking to its Instagram, alleged that Boston University’s manner of handling the suspension makes one truth clear: the suspension was political.

YDSA wasn’t the first organization targeted. 

One month earlier, on March 3, Boston University also shut down the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine for the same crime of pasting fliers. That followed the earlier shut-down of Students for Justice in Palestine at other campuses – like Tufts. The fact that Boston University administrators weaponized the same rule against pasting fliers to shut down two movement organizations was apparent on April 16. When autonomous organizer after organizer pasted one sticker after another on pole after wall after administrative door, righteous fury infused with joy in the air. One flier that was defiantly pasted by one participant read “No Justice, No Peace.” Another read “Your crimes will haunt you.”

Higher Education Under Attack: A Potential Elite Bargain

Boston University is cracking down on student organizers even as the Trump Administration’s gaze sits upon other institutions of higher education. The context of the move makes Boston University’s actions seem preemptive in an environment in which universities have been forced to take sides between Trump and academic freedom. Columbia University has become a collaborator with the regime’s agenda, from facilitating student deportations to surveillance of every department with even a trace of Palestinian rights. Columbia also pointedly did not sign on to a letter calling for freedom from fear of deportation organized by 200+ higher education institutions. Boston University signed on even as its crackdown on student organizations continued unabated, showing the limitations of the institutional “resistance” of higher education.

Harvard University took a different approach than either Columbia or Boston University.

The same day that Boston University sent BU YDSA their suspension letter, on April 11, the Trump Administration’s lawyers sent their own wide-ranging and revealing letter to Harvard University. Beyond the dismantling of DEI systems, retroactive targeting of Palestine student encampment organizers in 2024, and vast surveillance apparatuses to end academic freedom at Harvard, there’s one highly specific and notable demand: “reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty.” Targeting students and untenured faculty shows that the Trump Administration views the student body and the most precarious academic workers as its largest opposition to its agenda in the ivory tower. 

The regime’s strategic analysis is not wrong. Students organized the Palestine encampments and occupations, high-profile actions for Palestine, and now represent an activist edge of the campus community. On April 23, Yale students relaunched their occupation in response to a visit from arch-Zionist Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose genocidal maniacism has made him one of the most extreme figures even within the Israeli government (once, he brandished a gun toward Palestinians while declaring “I am your landlord!” in Sheikh Jarrah, but most recently he has called for bullets to the head of Palestinian women and children and total Nakba in Gaza). Untenured faculty, meanwhile, are more likely to be union members than tenured faculty and have been at the center of the militant wave spreading through higher education and the labor movement. 

Harvard University refused the Trump Administration’s demands, unlike Columbia. For the crime of standing up for its own institutional academic freedom, the richest university in the country now faces $2 billion in cuts in what Harvard lawyers have called a “gun to the head.” Trump not only seeks to punish Harvard with draconian cuts that threaten thousands of workers with jobs directly or indirectly funded by Harvard across the Greater Boston area; his regime even threatens to seize, by unnamed means, the institution’s tax-exempt status.

The Trump Administration is placing its thumb on the scale of class struggle on campus. The federal government is pressuring institutions to shift power away from the most progressive campus sections and return it to the most elite: tenured, appointed, institutionalized, free from popular pressure. Under this program, student organizing is to be viewed suspiciously and its organizations crushed when daring to organize for taboo causes – like ending genocide.

That means Trump’s agenda, in some respects, dovetails with the interests of the existing campus elite. Administrations have faced millions of dollars in endowment losses, individual careers in the higher education administrative class unsettled, as a result of the student movement for a free Palestine in 2024. The material interest that campus authorities have in quieting student disruption at institutional and individual levels poses a far greater incentive for repression than top-down orders from the White House alone. 

In their April 12 statement, BU YDSA summarized their perspective on the relationship between the Trump administration and “bourgeois academia,” the day after receiving the letter suspending the organization from the Student Activities Office:

The administrative class which formed around these academic institutions is panicking, threatened from above by the capitalist state and threatened from below by increasingly class-conscious students. As a result the universities are lashing out wildly in the only way they can.

One BU YDSA member who asked to remain anonymous pointed to BU’s choice to cut PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences in response to BUGWU’s victory and new contract following their historic 2024 seven-month strike. Boston University then “asked departments to basically crowd-fund themselves” as austerity cuts hit departments across the university.

“They’re in an impossible situation,” the YDSA member said. “The bourgeoisie aren’t able to hold academia anymore. For the ruling class, it’s just fat that needs to be cut out. So the administrative class assigned to run things is clearly panicking, and at the same time, there’s a student movement that neither the university nor the government likes that they’d like cut.”

Under these conditions, repression becomes an elite bargain.

Forward Stronger

“Mahmoud Khalil,” were the first words from the first speaker’s megaphone, before the crowd marched down Commonwealth Avenue on April 16. Then: “Rümeysa Öztürk.”

The Sanctuary Campus campaign shows no sign of faltering as a result of YDSA’s suspension. “We aren’t gonna let them do this to us!” said the first anonymous orator on April 16, after invoking the names of just a few students kidnapped by the secret police. 

Another anonymous Boston University YDSA member pointed to a student leader uninvolved in the core of the organizing project raising the Sanctuary Campus demand to administrators at the annual Student Leaders’ Dinner. Administrators were embarrassed enough to censor the student leader’s presentation. “Clearly the campaign is effective enough that the university feels compelled to ban us from waging it,” said the BU YDSA member. “They feel the need to retaliate against us as an institution.”

Evan Caldwell, national YDSA organizer, noted to Working Mass that administrative repression often strengthens YDSA chapters. Guerrilla tabling is one method students can use to overcome tabling restrictions caused by suspensions. Other organizations can also support YDSA in booking meeting spaces. On campus, that can look like coalition partners; off campus, DSA chapters can book physical space close to the university for YDSA members to strategize from. “So many chapters have gone through this and emerged stronger,” said Caldwell. 

The Sanctuary Campus demand seems poised to only grow as the Trump Administration continues its attacks on undocumented students and workers. More and more administrative classes will be forced to choose a side. For one BU YDSA member, the eventual decision of the universities stuck between Trump and the student movement is obvious: 

They’ll pretend as long as they can that they’ll protect students. But in the end, they will capitulate to the threat from above.

Travis Wayne is the deputy managing editor of Working Mass and the co-chair of the Somerville branch of Boston DSA.

You’ve come up short in a union election. It’s painful, but it happens. Where do you go from here? First, you mourn — then you organize!

The post You lost your union election. Now what? appeared first on EWOC.

Socialists oppose all forms of colonialism, imperialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Palestine cannot be an exception!

On April 27, 2025, Peninsula Democratic Socialists of America (Peninsula DSA) unanimously adopted a resolution affirming our chapter’s anti-zionist stance in both principle and practice. Following the leadership of chapters like Silicon Valley, Seattle, Twin Cities, Las Vegas, San Francisco, San Diego, Colorado Springs, Inland Empire, Boston, Philadelphia, Austin, Tidewater, Greater Baltimore, Houston, Connecticut, Boise, New Orleans, Northwest Ohio, Salt Lake City, NEPA, Tampa, Denver, Long Beach, North Texas, Spokane, Syracuse, Orange County, Tacoma, North New Jersey, Champaign Urbana, Orlando, Greater Lafayette, and others, we join a growing movement within DSA standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle for liberation.

Zionism is a settler-colonial ideology that has enabled the violent displacement, dispossession, and oppression of Palestinians for over 75 years. Today, the Zionist project continues through an ongoing genocide against Palestinians, particularly in Gaza and the West Bank, carried out with the full financial, military, and political backing of the United States. Israeli forces have bombed hospitals, schools, refugee camps, homes, and entire neighborhoods, targeting civilians and vital infrastructure. They have imposed mass starvation as a weapon of war, destroyed Gaza’s universities and cultural institutions, and deliberately cut off food, water, medicine, and electricity to millions. As socialists, we oppose all forms of colonialism, imperialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Our commitment to international solidarity demands that we reject Zionism in all its forms and actively work to dismantle systems of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, military occupation, and settler colonialism.

We affirm that opposing Zionism is not antisemitic. Peninsula DSA stands firmly against antisemitism and all forms of racism and bigotry. We recognize that many Jewish comrades — within DSA and beyond — are leading voices in the fight against Zionism and in the struggle for the liberation of all oppressed peoples. Peninsula DSA reaffirms our solidarity with the Palestinian people and upholds the full right of return for all Palestinian refugees. We oppose the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and reject any framework that denies Palestinians their full human rights, freedom, and sovereignty.

We expect our Anti-Zionist resolution will make us an even stronger ally in the struggle for a free Palestine, and commend the work of several local organizations and coalitions fighting towards this end, including:

• Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)
• Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC)
• Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)
• CA15forPalestine
• Vigil4Gaza
• Stanford Against Apartheid in Palestine (SAAP)

We look forward to working more closely with our allies, who have made it clear that DSA National must explicitly connect the fight against Zionism with our socialist and anti-colonialist principles.

We call on DSA chapters and the national organization to take a clear, principled Anti-Zionist position, and to help build an internationalist, anti-colonial, and anti-racist socialist movement.

A better world is possible — a world without colonialism, apartheid, or genocide.

Free Palestine.