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By: Vanessa B

BOSTON – On Sunday, February 22, postal workers gathered for a rally in front of South Station. Agitated by growing managerial bloat and stagnant starting wages, postal workers affiliated with the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) are looking to win a contract in 2026 that will make the postal service a sustainable place to work for years to come. 

In speeches, workers repeated the call for “30/30”, demanding a $30 starting wage and a ratio of 30 workers to 1 manager.

“If this job is going to survive, if we’re going to recruit and keep people, $30 an hour should be the floor, not the ceiling,” said a rally speaker. “The cost of living didn’t freeze in 2006; housing didn’t freeze, gas didn’t freeze, groceries didn’t freeze. The only thing that froze was us on the streets, and our starting wage.”

Rally speakers outlined a list of demands, such as an all-career workforce, as well as shorter timeframes for moving up the pay scale and overall pay scale reforms, which postal workers hope will help increase retention rates for newly hired letter carriers. 

The fight illustrates an upsurge in letter carrier rank-and-file organizing locally – but why? What brings rank-and-file postal workers together amidst a bad contract, tensions within the union over its bargaining process’s (dis)empowerment of members, and a hostile federal environment?

2024 NALC Conference Opens the Door to Democratic Reforms

Rank-and-file worker organizing has been steadily accumulating into a nascent reform movement within NALC. Workers brought proposals for constitutional reforms to bargaining to the national NALC conference in 2024, aiming to increase transparency around the process. 

Prior to a national NALC convention in 2024, NALC’s constitution empowered just one person to negotiate contracts between the union and USPS: NALC’s national president, Bryan Renfroe. Much of the ire about the lackluster contract campaign that emerged in 2025, following the 2024 conference debates, has been directed at Renfroe.

The anger of many rank-and-file members towards their union president over the contract stems from the ways in which 2024 reforms did not go far enough. At the NALC Conference, membership won some bargaining reforms. For example, rather than solely having closed-door meetings between the union’s president and management, there will be an appointed group of worker leaders from across the country invited to give input on bargaining. 

Despite improvements, members of NALC still have not won a fully transparent open bargaining process. 

According to Read Wilder, a young letter carrier and shop steward in Cambridge, the lack of transparency, slow negotiations, and a disappointing contract last year have all led to an upsurge in rank and file organizing amongst postal workers in the greater Boston area. 

“The same activists who got open bargaining passed are also looking for a better contract campaign this time around,” Wilder said. 

2025 Contract: Too Little, Too Late, Say No

Adding to the urgency organizers feel around the 2026 contract fight is a widely-held feeling that the recently settled 2025 contract was ‘too little, too late’ for many. The contract was voted down by members following a nationwide vote no campaign. The final vote tally: 63,680 no votes to 26,304 in favor.  

The contract went to arbitration before a judge, where a deal was reached between the postal service and NALC virtually identical to the one that was rejected by membership. Despite leadership’s promises to “fight like hell,” NALC wrapped up arbitration with the US Postal Service after just two days spent in mediation.

NALC’s 2026 contract fight comes only a year after the previous contract was settled in March 2025. Letter carriers went on working under an expired contract for 700 days. Boston postal worker Harman said:

I was on the phone with my steward when he found out that we got a new contract. It was pouring rain. We were both working a 12-hour that day, but finding out that we got the same contract that we voted down was just like a punch in the gut… It killed any morale, finding out that they took 700 days to negotiate, but only a few days in arbitration to give us the same thing we said no to.

The Movement of Building a Fighting NALC (BFN)

For those committed to building a rank-and-file reform movement within NALC, the focus isn’t toppling the establishment overnight. Their priorities lie in strengthening locals and empowering union members to take ownership of their union, their work, and their contract fights. 

In a July statement, NALC reform caucus BFN stated that:

Build a Fighting NALC (BFN) aims to build a national rank and file reform movement to transform NALC into a democratic, fighting union that engages with and mobilizes the membership to fight for better wages, working conditions, and a high quality public postal service.

BFN organizer Derek Liehmon, a Boston-based postal worker, said that he hopes the caucus will “give people an opportunity to learn how to do union democracy.” He continued:

BFN is not doing something because one person or some leader who’s three or four levels of bureaucracy above the rank and file, decides we’re doing it. We vote on stuff, we decide together.

Establishing union democracy internally has involved electing leadership for the caucus, and drafting a constitution for the reform group to follow. Liehmon said the group has looked to other reform caucuses, such as UAW’s Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) and Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), for guidance as they start the process of reforming the letter carriers’ union from within.

“We are trying to apply the last 50 years of reform caucus history in our context, and this is something that really hasn’t existed in the postal unions. From my understanding there aren’t reform caucuses in the other ones,” said Liehmon.

Growing concern about the future of USPS

While union leadership are under increased pressure from members to win a stronger contract this time around, questions remain about the USPS’s ability to remain afloat financially. In their financial report for fiscal year 2025, USPS reported a loss of $9 billion.

At a House subcommittee meeting about the financial future of the USPS, Postmaster General David Steiner testified that the USPS may not be able to provide the current level of service a year from now. Steiner cited decreased usage of the service and high labor costs as factors in the current crisis, and asked that Congress increase the service’s borrowing authority while they “determine what the Postal Service should do to best serve the American public.” Rather than a government that wants the massive funding the USPS requires to fully succeed as a public service, the USPS faces a government deeply invested in its disinvestment. 

According to the Office of the Inspector General, USPS spent over $800 million from 2022-2024 on grievances, which are typically related to violations of the collective bargaining agreements between unions and employers.

In a statement published on NALC’s website, the union agreed with the Postmaster’s call for Congress to extend USPS’s borrowing limit, but pushed back on Steiner’s suggestions related to the workers who deliver the mail. 

“We will fiercely fight limiting letter carriers’ workers’ compensation benefits in any way or increasing usage of non-career employees in our craft as some in the hearing suggested. Even suggesting such foolish actions are insulting to America’s hardworking letter carriers,” said NALC president Renfroe.

Liehmon told Working Mass:

If you listen to how Renfroe and the union admin talk, they’re really worried that pushing management too hard is going to destabilize the Post Office, that pushing too aggressively is going to create a target for our union and for the postal service, that trump is going to DOGE us. But he might just do it anyway. What happens when they do to us what they’ve done to everybody else?

“The answer to this is not austerity or lower wages,” Liehmon said. “It’s a political decision. Where do we want to spend our money? Do we want to spend it on this public service that mostly funds itself, or do we want to spend money on the military? We (NALC) have to be left wing, and have left wing politics because at the end of the day, it’s a political question.”

That political question may be solved beyond the shopfloor of the Post Office, but NALC faces its own political decision in engaging the question. NALC can work within the broader labor and reform movements to create the political conditions needed for its needed survival. But without leadership from below, there’s no guarantee.

The future of NALC, in other words, relies on the workers. As always.

Vanessa B is a member of Boston DSA and contributor to Working Mass.

The post Postal Workers Demand 30/30 Amidst Organizing Surge Among Rank-and-File Letter Carriers appeared first on Working Mass.

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DSA proudly endorses Andrea Parr in her race for Louisville Metro Council District 9. We’re fighting for Andrea because she fights for us: She knows the working class needs a transparent budget process and a city that working people can afford!

Andrea and Louisville DSA are working together to bring socialism to the Metro Council. We are excited to stand with the chapter as they fight for a government that is truly accountable to the will of the people. Can you help build our movement with a donation today??

Andrea is part of a slate of candidates in the Socialist Cash Takes Out Capitalist Trash fundraising project!

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By: Jake S

WORCESTER COUNTY – On Thursday, March 26, UMass workers organized within the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) — the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth with over 26,000 members — held informational pickets for their contract fight across five hospital campuses: in Worcester, at Memorial, University, and Hahnemann; in Clinton, at UMass Memorial Health-Alliance; and in Marlborough, at UMass Memorial Medical Center.

Nurses have been in contract negotiations since as early as June 2025 with many forced to work without a ratified contract for nearly a year.

Hundreds of nurses gathered, marched, and chanted — some with children in tow, others staying out for as long as their 15-minute shift break would allow, but all bursting with energy. The message to UMass was clear: MNA members are ready to fight.

Negotiations with UMass

Bonnie S is an operating room nurse at UMass Memorial and the treasurer of her bargaining unit. She has worked at UMass Memorial for twenty-eight years, after a previous stint in the NICU. 

Bonnie told Working Mass:

We’re here because we’ve been trying to negotiate our contract for many months, coming up on a year. UMass hasn’t moved much at all in negotiations. Anything that has to do with what we’re really passionate about has gotten nothing. We just want to give our patients the best quality and safest care that we can – we need these things in order to do that. Management hasn’t really worked with us. A lot of talk, but not a lot of movement.

The escalation by workers arrived as Worcester approaches the five-year anniversary of the historic MNA strike at Saint Vincent’s Hospital, which launched in April 2021 and extended, uninterrupted, for 301 days. Nurses who served as co-chairs of the Saint Vincent’s bargaining unit during their strike walked alongside UMass nurses for their picket. Nurses with decades-long careers — some long enough to recall UMass hospital strikes of the past — held their signs and their heads high.

Passers-by on the streets and sidewalk of each and every one of the five campuses cheered, honked, and waved.

Ben P, vice chair of the Hahnemann Campus bargaining unit and an operating nurse of seventeen years, told Working Mass that safer staffing levels and working conditions, fair wages, and limits to shift rotations are top concerns for MNA members which UMass has yet to address at the bargaining table.

Safe Staffing Levels and Retention

“Number one is safe staffing and patient care,” said Phil B. 

Phil works in a recently-constructed building on the University campus. He’s worked for UMass for eight years as a nurse and now operates in his third year of acute care nursing. 

We have contract language about staffing now that isn’t even respected. The hospital doesn’t follow through on any of their staffing policies. Resource nurses — the ones that are meant as all-around support on their floors, especially in emergencies — have upwards of half a dozen patients at a time, which is more than a regular floor nurse should have. The whole unit becomes strapped. Care doesn’t get done; things get missed; we have negative outcomes.

We file unsafe staffing reports, and UMass just sits on stacks of them until their staffing committee just writes them all off at once. So, you could be in an emergency, but staffing problems haven’t been resolved when you really need them to be. There’s all kinds of red tape around it.

Beyond the hospital’s lack of follow-through and overload on staff, rank-and-file nurses report that Worcester County hospitals can’t retain nursing staff in the long haul. A lack of “new blood” to take on their roles leaves an older, aging staff pool to take on increased burdens at work, and low wages at UMass force younger nurses to seek opportunities elsewhere. At the time of writing, the bargaining unit at University has been offered annual wage increases as low as 1% by management. 

Since 2022, when many MNA nurses ratified their last contract with UMass hospitals, electric bills in Massachusetts have increased by about 30%.

Heather J, a registered nurse of twenty-seven years in the maternity postpartum unit at UMass Memorial, said:

We need new, young talent in the hospital because we’re all getting older. Some of us are going to be retiring soon, so we need new nurses to come along and pick up where we leave off.

Heather L works in Marlborough’s cancer center. She told Working Mass:

I became a nurse twenty-five years ago so I can sit there to hold their hands in the worst of times, and to celebrate with them in the best of times. That’s what I want to continue to do, but in order to do that, we have to retain our staff — we lose seasoned and specialized workers to other areas where the prospects and the wages are better and the hospitals are safer.

The Political as Personal

For Heather L, there was also a personal element to the contract fight. Unions are most successful when people see the individual texture of their dreams in the organization’s.

My daughter is a nursing student. I want this to be a great profession for her to join. She’s my baby, I want it to be safe for her and I want her to be able to pay her loans off.

Phil B also focused on the impact of student debt. 

It makes more sense for new nurses to eat the cost of a commute than to stay here, especially when you need to get a Bachelor’s degree to work at UMass. You’re telling us we need to take on huge amounts of student debt, then pull ourselves up by our bootstraps — all while we’re trying to pay outrageous rents in the city!

Roughly 1 in 6 households in Massachusetts spend more than half their income on housing.

I have coworkers who have families and kids, and they’re having trouble making ends meet in a dual-income household! People can’t afford their basic necessities.

Working Mass asked Phil how UMass justified new building projects, recent hospital acquisitions, and large administrative pay packages in contract negotiations while offering nurses no meaningful improvements to wages or working conditions.

Phil laughed: “they don’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. It doesn’t look very good for them. There’s never a conversation about executive pay or where they’re going to get the staff for all these new developments. Did you know our CEO has a stable of horses at home?”

Dr. Eric Dickerson, President and CEO of UMass Memorial Health, owns 9 horses and a 35-acre ranch in Princeton, Massachusetts. 

In 2023 — not long after many UMass nurses had ratified their most recent agreement — Dickerson was paid a total of over 3 million dollars, placing him as the highest-paid nonprofit chief executive in Central Mass for his third year in a row. His pay has more than doubled since he was hired. Including Dickson, UMass Memorial Health executives accounted for 6 of the 18 highest-paid nonprofit executives in Central Mass that year.

As Phil indicated:

We’ll have a real healthcare desert in our community if we can’t fill these roles with new nurses. Hundreds and hundreds of us are getting close to retirement. There’ll be a lapse in nursing care, and patients will suffer.

Solidarity from Within and Without

Members of other unions representing thousands of non-nursing staff workers across UMass — the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) whose members had a contract fight of their own with the University hospital just last summer, the State Healthcare and Research Employees Union (an affiliate of AFSCME), and the United Auto Workers — joined the picket. So too did MNA nurses working at Saint Vincent’s.

Marlena P has been a nurse at Saint Vincent’s for thirty-nine years. When asked why she and her coworkers showed up at the UMass pickets, she said:

You know the old saying: an injury to one is an injury to all. Our sisters and brothers are hurting out here, they’ve been fighting for a fair contract — better wages, safety, staffing — for many, many months. When their needs aren’t being met, it means all of our patients aren’t being cared for. That affects our whole city. UMass Memorial is one of the premier hospitals in the city, and we’re their sister hospital, and it’s important that we all show solidarity and our power in numbers. It’s not just a cliche, it works, and these big corporations who make billions of dollars off of our hard work need to know that. So it’s very important to stick together. It’s that simple: stick together.

The Steering Committee of Worcester DSA issued the following statement supporting the rank-and-file nurses:

Central Mass and Worcester DSA stands in complete and unwavering solidarity with nurses at UMass. 5 years ago, our chapter was built around the historic MNA strike at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Many of us work in these hospitals as nurses ourselves. By our own lived experience, we know that the purpose of the healthcare industry in this country is not to provide quality care, but to line the pockets of executives and investors. We will commit ourselves wholeheartedly to the working-class struggle until that’s no longer the case. On the hospital floors — not in the C-suites or boardrooms — are where we find some of the strongest and most dignified human beings in our communities.

When asked what their union meant to them, UMass nurses responded.

“My union? My union, it’s our family, it’s our support, it’s our strength, it’s the soul of everything that we have.”

“We can be stuck with things as they are, or we can push for something bigger, together.”

“Oh, it means solidarity, it means pride, it means honor. The honor to stand up for our patients, for our profession — it really means everything.”

“It means sisterhood and brotherhood, standing for and with each other and making sure that the big corporations and the hospitals aren’t taking advantage of us or our patients. You know, not looking at our patients or our coworkers like they’re just a profit margin. It means everything.”

Jake S is a member of Worcester DSA and a Working Mass correspondent. Interviews were conducted by Worcester DSA members and Working Mass correspondents Jason M, Lewis L, Lily L, and Jake S.

The post UMass Nurses Sound Alarm of Depraved Working Conditions Amidst Contract Fight appeared first on Working Mass.

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by Comrade Drake

It is an unfortunate reality in our capitalist society that divisiveness is endemic in our daily lives. Despite our best efforts such divisiveness can enter our organizing spaces, manifesting in sectarianism and compromising unity and impacting our ability to effectively organize our workplaces and our communities. 

The rich history of our movement grants us the privilege of looking to the past to determine our path forward, and in this vein I’m reminded of a phrase from the Chinese socialist period: “Cure the sickness to save the patient”. In context:

Finally, in opposing subjectivism, sectarianism and stereotyped Party writing we must have in mind two purposes: first, “learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones”, and second, “cure the sickness to save the patient”. The mistakes of the past must be exposed without sparing anyone’s sensibilities; it is necessary to analyse and criticize what was bad in the past with a scientific attitude so that work in the future will be done more carefully and done better. This is what is meant by “learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones”. But our aim in exposing errors and criticizing shortcomings, like that of a doctor curing a sickness, is solely to save the patient and not to doctor him to death. A person with appendicitis is saved when the surgeon removes his appendix. 

So long as a person who has made mistakes does not hide his sickness for fear of treatment or persist in his mistakes until he is beyond cure, so long as he honestly and sincerely wishes to be cured and to mend his ways, we should welcome him and cure his sickness so that he can become a good comrade. We can never succeed if we just let ourselves go, and lash out at him. In treating an ideological or a political malady, one must never be rough and rash but must adopt the approach of “curing the sickness to save the patient”, which is the only correct and effective method.

There was a comrade in my old organization who would show up consistently late to meetings and events and forget to complete tasks they had volunteered for. Perhaps understandably, this was incredibly frustrating for not only me but for the other members in the organization as well, and this frustration ultimately came to a head when they were an hour late to an event we were tabling at they had committed to bringing supplies for. In our debrief meeting we brought this up, and they apologized for it, saying that they had a variety of personal issues that made it difficult for them to keep on top of a schedule, and also correctly criticized me for being undisciplined about planning events ahead of time. 

My own frustration blinded me to not only the underlying issue behind their truancy but also to my own unprincipled behavior. Had I approached the issue as “curing the sickness to save the patient” then perhaps I would’ve also seen the sickness within myself that needed curing. With this in mind, we reengaged from a place of mutual best interest. They committed to showing up on time, and I committed to being more disciplined about event planning.

The analogy isn’t exact in the sense that all of us hold some mix of correct and incorrect ideas and in practice they are often rarely as clear cut as something like appendicitis is. However in today’s “rough and rash” political environment where debate amongst the broader left tends to be fought in the heavily polemicized social media thunderdome we should actively work within ourselves to approach disagreement with the understanding of mutual interest. Like an immune system fighting off an infection we are all constantly waging a struggle between bourgeois and proletarian ideas within ourselves and it would be a disservice to ourselves, our movement, and our comrades to be unnecessarily harsh during periods of ideological conflict.

The post Curing the Sickness to Save the Patient appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

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Pro wrestlers face dangerous conditions without basic protections or representation. See how close some wrestlers have come to winning more than the belt.

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Smile, Las Vegas! You’re on Camera.

Imagine you’re driving to work and stop at a red light. Without your knowledge, a camera on the street pole has taken a picture of your license plate, your car’s color and make, your tire brand, any dents, and even your bumper stickers. This data uploads immediately to a searchable nationwide database. Officers in other states you have never visited can pull it up without a warrant, without suspecting you of anything. These assaults on our privacy are already happening, and they are victimizing our most vulnerable.

The Las Vegas Democratic Socialists of America (LVDSA) have a new target on our radar: Flock Safety. This private company has quietly built one of the largest mass surveillance tracking networks in American history. Controversial for racially profiling targets and making grave algorithmic errors, this company has recently become notorious for its integral collaboration with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In Las Vegas, a city built by immigrants, ICE actively and secretly scours Flock data to target and arrest them, destroying lives. While some states have taken measures to protect people from this abuse of power, Nevada has not. Flock has covered our city in cameras– a “gift” from elite powers who seek oppression and control. Whether used to track innocent people’s movements, instill fear in diverse urban areas, or hunt down our immigrant neighbors, Flock cameras have no place in Las Vegas. We, the LVDSA organizers, are sounding the alarm.

What is Flock?

Flock Safety is a private tech firm that sells AI-powered surveillance systems to police departments, homeowners’ associations, and private businesses. Their Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) is a camera mounted on poles at busy intersections and neighborhood streets that photographs every passing car, 24 hours a day, every day.

All of that data gets channeled to a central database that police across the country can search. With over 1 billion data points collected per month, 99.5% of the vehicles scanned belong to people who have done nothing wrong.

Why We Care, Even Though We Have Nothing to Hide.

Our daily movements tell an intimate story about who we are, and Flock captures it all. Here’s what their own contract states they can do with our data:

“For clarity, Flock may access, use, preserve, and/or disclose the Footage to law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or third parties…”

Third parties–that means companies and advertisers.

More urgently, we care about our Black and brown neighbors disproportionately targeted by ALPRs. In Oak Park, Illinois, for example, 84% of people flagged and pulled over by Flock cameras were Black–despite Black people making up 19% of the population. Flock uses AI to bolster a system already corrupted by decades of racist police enforcement, and it’s not that intelligent.

Flock’s Many Mistakes Take a Devastating Human Toll. 

The historic brutality of the police against people of color underscores Flock’s many disastrous errors. These ALPR glitches also create traumatic encounters for young people who are innocently going about their day. Here are just a few examples:

In Baltimore, 16-year-old Taki Allen was sitting outside his high school, waiting to be picked up after football practice, eating Doritos. An AI gun-detection system misidentified his bag of chips as a firearm. Eight police cars arrived. Officers with drawn guns approached him, forced him to the ground, and handcuffed him. Taki said the first thing he thought was, “Am I about to die?” When shown the image that triggered the alert, Allen explained: “I was just holding a Doritos bag – it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun.”

In Aurora, Colorado, a mother and her children were pulled over at gunpoint and forced to lie face down on the hot pavement. An ALPR system mistakenly matched their license plate to a stolen motorcycle in Montana. After a loud public outcry, the family was awarded a $1.9 million settlement from the city.

In Espanola, New Mexico, police officers held a 12-year-old girl at gunpoint because an ALPR camera misread a number on her sister’s license plate–a 2 that the system read as a 7. One month later, in the same region, a 17-year-old honors student was held at gunpoint on his way home from school after officers mistook his vehicle for one associated with an individual sought in connection with a string of armed robberies.

Cops are Using Flock to Stalk their Exes and Enemies.

Flock’s marketing materials don’t mention that the technology gives officers full rein to weaponize it against anyone they want. They have been brandishing this power against ex-romantic partners and personal rivals.

• One Kansas police chief used Flock to track his ex-girlfriend and her new partner over 160 times.
• A Wisconsin officer used Flock to run his ex-girlfriend’s plates five unauthorized times in a single month.
• A Milwaukee officer ran a personal target’s plate 55 times and another’s 124 times over two months.

This is what happens when we allow unlimited, warrantless access to technology that can track anyone’s movements anywhere in the country, with no oversight. We cannot trust police officers to use it properly; what can we expect from ICE agents?

ICE is Already Exploiting Flock.

While Flock Safety does not have an official contract with ICE, federal immigration agencies have accessed Flock data through secretive backdoor deals with law enforcement agencies. This consolidation of power is another tool of terror wielded against immigrants.

In Washington state, researchers found that at least 10 police departments had Flock data accessed by the U.S. Border Patrol through backdoor access—meaning agencies that didn’t explicitly authorize federal immigration enforcement were still having their data searched. ICE has exploited Flock data in cooperating with local law enforcement agencies to locate and detain immigrants–often in cities with policies to protect them.

In Las Vegas, ICE is using Flock cameras right now, with the help of Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD). This is especially problematic, as ICE and LVMPD signed a 287(g) agreement in 2025, enabling Metro cops to execute immigration warrants on people held at the CCDC. The agreement also allows people to be held for an additional 48 hours after their release time, so that ICE may take them into custody. Therefore, Metro officers can use Flock data to track a brown-skinned person, pull them over for a trivial reason–like having a faulty brake light–and act as an ICE agent, detaining the driver in the name of immigration enforcement. Once detained, the victim has little recourse, thanks to the 287(g) agreement. (The ACLU of Nevada challenged the legality of the 287(g) agreement in court, but the case was dismissed on technical grounds. The ACLU of Nevada has vowed to continue the fight.)

While some Nevada leaders have expressed concern over the sinister and pervasive spread of Flock cameras and the vast surveillance machine they feed, none have introduced legislation that would protect our privacy from ICE. Governor Joe Lombardo has already granted ICE permission to enter our schools and churches without a warrant, and he caved to Donald Trump’s insistence that Nevada is a sanctuary state that requires the National Guard’s ICE enforcement support. Now it is more crucial than ever for everyday Las Vegans to protect the safety and dignity of our immigrant neighbors. Every Flock scan, every plate logged, is a potential family separated, a worker missing on the job, a life destroyed.

No Limits in Nevada.

Las Vegas residents are especially vulnerable. Clark County has at least 200 Flock cameras operating right now, and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) signed Flock’s contract without any public discussion–no city council vote, no press release. Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz side-stepped the necessity for public discussion by donating approximately $6.3 million to a private foundation, Friends of Metro, which then gifted the Flock contract to LVMPD. And so far, the reported lack of oversight for this powerful tool is incredible. Nevada is one of 34 states with zero legislation regulating ALPRS. While other states enacted legislation to curb Flock, no bill was introduced in Nevada in 2025. For us, Nevada residents, there are no restrictions on federal sharing and no prohibition on selling our data.

LVDSA organizers are calling on Clark County to immediately suspend the privately-funded LVMPD Flock contract, demand a full public accounting of every search conducted, and pass an ordinance requiring City Council approval before any further surveillance contracts are signed.

The Good News: We Can Get Flock Off the Block.

Solidarity is working. Cities where residents have organized and demanded regulation have won protections, such as mandatory written consent for data sharing, strict limits on which “hot lists” cameras can scan, requirements that data be deleted after 21 days, and absolute prohibitions on sharing data with entities not subject to US law. Two Virginia cities–Charlottesville and Staunton– banned Flock entirely. Las Vegas can follow suit.

Here’s What We Can Do Right Now. 

1. Visit deflock.org– a map of known Flock cameras across the country.
2. Find out if your plate has been scanned – visit haveibeenflocked.com.
3. Sign this petition to demand action from our local officials. Make them answer on the record.
4. Attend our protest outside Mayor Shelly Berkley’s State of the City address on Wednesday, April 22nd, 5 pm at Reynolds Hall (361 Symphony Park Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89106).
5. Spread the word. This technology is expanding because most people either don’t know it exists or don’t understand its reach. Tell your neighbors, post about it, bring it up at work, and at your HOA meeting–because your HOA might be feeding your data to the system right now.

Flock Off.

Flock Safety secretly built a nationwide surveillance system that tracks our every move without cause. It does not reduce crime, but it has repeatedly made dangerous errors that result in innocent people being held at gunpoint. It is being used excessively in Black and brown communities, and unstable police officers use it to stalk women. ICE agents use it to hunt and detain working immigrants. In Las Vegas, its reach will continue to expand until we do something to stop it.

We, the LVDSA organizers, proudly stand with all Nevada workers, regardless of their immigration status. We believe in the complete abolition of ICE and entities like Flock that empower them. We advocate for a city where our neighbors don’t fear the drive to work, the grocery store, or home from school. We demand our friends, neighbors, and coworkers not be targeted and silently tracked based on their status–they are our valued community members, not criminals. We deserve a city that safeguards everyone’s 4th Amendment right to privacy. We demand privacy, accountability, and a voice in what happens. For our neighbors, for ourselves, for our future, it’s time to get the Flock off the block.

By Jill G. & River T.F.

References:

Aldrete, I. (2025, Aug. 8). Lombardo to authorize the Nevada National Guard to support ICE operations. The Nevada Independent. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/nevada-national-guard-authorized-to-support-feds-with-immigration-enforcement 

American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada (2025, Oct. 23). LVMPD Ignores Underlying Nevada Court Order in ACLU of Nevada’s 287(g) Challenge and Transfers Detainee to ICE Custody
https://www.aclunv.org/press-releases/lvmpd-ignores-underlying-nevada-court-order-in-aclu-of-nevadas-287g-challenge-and-transfers-detainee-to-ice-custody/

American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma. (2023, Dec. 21). The threat to privacy and civil liberties from automatic license plate readers.
https://www.acluok.org/en/news/threat-privacy-and-civil-liberties-automatic-license-plate-readers

Aurora Police Department bodycam. (2020, Aug.). Officers force an Aurora, Colorado, family of Black girls to the ground at gunpoint after Flock misreads the license plate. The Associated Press.

Chronicle Media. (2023, Dec. 21). South Side.
https://chronicleillinois.com/tag/south-side/

DeFlock. (2026). DeFlock: Find nearby ALPRs. https://deflock.org

Denver7 News. (2020, Aug. 7). Prosecutors reviewing actions of Aurora officers during the mistaken traffic stop of Black family.
https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/prosecutors-reviewing-actions-of-aurora-officers-during-mistaken-traffic-stop-of-black-family

Electronic Frontier Foundation. (2023, Oct. 1). Street-level surveillance and ALPR technology.
https://www.eff.org

Flock Safety. (2026). Technology and services overview.
https://www.flocksafety.com

FOX5 Vegas. (2025, June 9). Nevada governor vetoes bill aimed at protecting students from ICE [Video].
https://www.fox5vegas.com/video/2025/06/09/nevada-governor-vetoes-bill-aimed-protecting-students-ice/

Have I Been Flocked? (2026). Have I Been Flocked? https://haveibeenflocked.com

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). (2020). Predictive policing and racial bias.
https://naacp.org

The Nevada Independent. (2026, Feb. 22). Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department surveillance reporting.
https://thenevadaindependent.com

The Nevada Independent. (2026, Mar. 22). License plate reader cameras abound in Nevada. The state has no laws to regulate them. https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/license-plate-reader-cameras-abound-in-nevada-the-state-has-no-laws-to-regulate-them

U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (2026). Data access and surveillance practices.
https://www.cbp.gov

[[{“value”:”

The Palestine Papers aim to spotlight Massachusetts organizations to increase local engagement, accessibility, and solidarity in the fight for Palestinian liberation. This newsletter is produced yearly by organizers in Boston and has been published by editorial consent of Working Mass.

The post THE PALESTINE PAPERS (2026 Edition) appeared first on Working Mass.

“}]]