This is an opinion piece written by an individual member and was not voted on by membership. Opinion pieces from members do not reflect the opinions of other members and are not chapter approved statements.

The conjunction of Zohran’s victory and the redistricting of CD-1 put the Salt Lake DSA (SLDSA) in a position where it was necessary to relate to and organize around both developments simultaneously. The sudden nationwide interest in the DSA led to a huge influx of members who were willing to organize to elect their own “Zohran in Utah,” and the excitement around CD-1 redistricting presented an obvious opportunity to realize this goal. Though winning a federal congressional campaign is far beyond the objective organizational limits of SLDSA, it was clear that if we did not run a candidate in CD-1, someone else would take advantage of the larger stage and define what a “Zohran in Utah” would look like for their own careerist aspirations. After a difficult period of deliberation (which is interesting in its own right but not relevant to this article), SLDSA activists ultimately decided (and I supported) to run a smaller race, Taylor Paden for State Senate District 13.

Abstaining from CD-1 has had political consequences for the popular understanding of Democratic Socialism in Salt Lake County. Two candidates have chosen to identify with the label to some degree, Liban Mohamad and Luis Villarieal, both of whom sought an endorsement from Salt Lake DSA. Additionally, Nate Blouin secured an early Bernie Sanders endorsement and has secured the strongest “Berniecrat” position in the race. Though he does not identify as a Democratic Socialist, the popular understanding of the aesthetic political brand of the left Democrats is bound to be confused and identified with the politics of the DSA. He has not sought endorsement from SLDSA, likely because he sought endorsement 4 years ago for his state senate campaign and failed. Chapter leaders from the time said simply, “he’s not a socialist.”

It will not be clear to people why there is very little interest in endorsing any candidate in CD-1 from SLDSA activists, nor will we be able to meaningfully communicate why due to our (probable) abstention. After all, if our goal is to further the socialist movement in Utah, how could we not endorse any one of the three “left” choices in CD-1, especially those adopting the label of Democratic Socialist? In this article I intend to communicate my own reasons for advocating no endorsement in CD-1, as well as some of the reasons that I think the average SLDSA member is uninterested. 

(For additional context, here are the candidate interviews for Luis and Liban)

What is the point of candidates and endorsing them?

Running candidates for office is often uncritically accepted as useful on its own merits because this is the hegemonic theory of change. To improve society, well meaning individuals are inspired to run for office, and, by the strength of their capacities and willpower, they use the institutions that are ostensibly designed to empower them to do so. Even when politicians engage with a broader mass movement, they do so assuming they are over and above it, commanding the grassroots to empower their personal campaigns and further their political position. This is not necessarily cynical; they genuinely believe those political positions occupied by “good people” is what results in a linear improvement of society over time. This default understanding of social change is also prevalent amongst the activist base of DSA, who sometimes assume that the steady increase of self identified Democratic Socialists in office will eventually lead to a fundamental change in society.

(This point is probably why most of the activist base of SLDSA is uninspired by Liban or Luis. Neither can win, with or without our endorsement, and so they can’t contribute to the increasing number of DSA electeds in office, no matter what they believe.)

This perspective is a misunderstanding of where power actually lies in society and how the working class can affect meaningful change. As socialists, we understand that all sections of society, both within and without the government, are controlled by the capitalist class. It is not a conspiracy but the natural consequence of class society, wealth, and power. Wealthy and powerful people will, more often than not, choose to concentrate and increase their wealth and power. They use it to shape society for their benefit and collaborate with other powerful people to maintain the systems that serve them. There is no secret plot; it is simply logical for them to do so. 

This means that even on the rare occasions where well meaning, working class people acquire positions of power in the government, they discover that the strength of their argument and their heartfelt appeals to the rights of common people cannot change the basic realities of living in a capitalist society. Any reform which is possible through legislation is inadequate to the scale of the problem, and even occasional consequential changes will be fought by the capitalist class with every tool available to them. This is why the greatest progressive moments in American history, though often resulting in legislative reforms, were at the end of intense social upheaval and mass actions i.e. The Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the New Deal, the Civil War. 

A genuine socialist candidate must therefore have a fundamentally different strategy. They will not view the primary mechanism for change as legislation, but will instead take a class-struggle approach. By their connection to the mass movement and the organized socialist core, they use the position of elected official to reach a larger audience, show the illusions of the capitalist parties, educate people on the nature of class society in their messaging, and contribute to the independent organization of workers outside the government in any way they can. They will not be deluded into believing that the legislative process alone can fundamentally alter class relations. Their success can only be measured by the forces they politicized and organized to fight for reforms in their class interests against the capitalist class, not by the number of bills passed.

It is important to stress that a socialist in office is not useful because of what they believe. Belief in fighting for a better world is useless for the struggle of the working class if it does not result in concrete action. Utah Democrat Party politics shows the uselessness of abstract belief. Because of the conservative supermajority in the legislature, any meaningful progressive reform has no chance of being passed through the legislative process. As a result, Utah Democrats spend their entire careers proposing bills so diluted they’ll pass a conservative legislature, or bills they know will fail for the purpose of performing their virtue on the campaign trail. But without an actual plan to win, there is no consequence of these politicians’ beliefs. Some typical canned responses, “at least they’re trying” or “at least they’re better,” might have a certain narrow truth, but it does not help us advance the organization and consciousness of the working class. It is not wrong to tell people what society should look like. But if you don’t understand and articulate the scientific steps necessary to get there, there is no substance. It is an essentially magical theory of change which assumes that good heartedness has an effect on the structures of capitalist oppression. 

Instead, the socialist in office is just one lever in the process of organized struggle, and demonstrates that role by consistent building of and commitment to that struggle. DSA candidates must prove that they are able to use their position to contribute to mass movements, not for the purpose of securing their next campaign, but by winning genuine reforms. Every left Democrat says they are building a movement; socialists must actually demonstrate they can do so. People are generally not convinced by rhetoric; they learn through concrete struggle. 

There’s two candidates that are using the label of “Democratic Socialist,” doesn’t that make them part of or contributing to the socialist movement?

In order for us to believe a person can contribute to the socialist movement as a candidate, it is helpful if they have to have done so already. To be sure, Luis Villareal and Liban Mohamad have decided to adopt the label of Democratic Socialist to varying degrees. However, both of them cannot demonstrate a commitment to mass movement politics and independent working class organization. This is not because they are bad people or are intentionally duplicitous. Both attested, and I believe, that they do find Zohran’s campaign inspiring and are dissatisfied with the state of politics in the Democratic Party. They both attested they want society to be more equitable and serve the needs of working class people, and I believe them. However, neither can demonstrate a commitment or understanding of the steps that it will take to get there, either by their ideas or their political history. Neither has a history of organizing social forces in struggle against the capitalist class. Neither could contextualize their campaign’s strategy with the organized socialist movement, DSA or otherwise. Neither has a significant describable and specific history of activism in the mass movement. Both decided to run because they think their personal virtue and social position will lend itself to governing, which is admirable in a certain way. But ultimately they cannot have a conception of how to win the reforms they are running on by mass action because they have no experience doing so.

All this would be fine if it was possible for SLDSA to turn their campaigns into movement oriented campaigns anyway. If we were deeply involved from the beginning, the candidate forefronted their Democratic Socialist identity, committed to a Socialist in Office Committee relationship, and we had the organizational ability to realize those movement goals, the specific beliefs and experiences of the candidate would be secondary. It is helpful to use our current campaign as a counter-example, from an organizational perspective. If Paden had no previous experience union organizing or was not a member beforehand, but committed to the organizational relationship we have with him now, the campaign would probably have the same political character. It is helpful that he has those personal qualities, but they are secondary to the organizational relationship.

Why not just endorse the “most left” candidate, even if they cannot win, because the campaign will attract people to DSA?

A DSA electoral campaign should have two goals. Primarily, the campaign should clearly articulate a socialist politics and move people to action on those ideas. This does not mean adopting the “left wing of possible,” as most left Democrats do i.e. identifying the most acceptable left positions that will still probably get you elected. It means using the platform and attention to make connections between the present struggle and the socialist horizon in the minds of the public. Plainly explaining the illusions of the two party capitalist political system, the need for people to organize to improve their lives, the actions necessary to do so, and the basic reality of class society, even if it reduces the chances of the candidate’s victory.

The second goal is to develop the sophistication, ability, size, reach, political consciousness, and leadership of the DSA. We lend credibility to the campaign’s message through strong organization and coalition building. Most people will not seek out and respond immediately with action to even the best articulated socialist positions. If this were true, we’d have a revolution by now. The organization which builds the campaign must demonstrate its capability by extending the reach beyond the activist base and into the general public. This does not necessarily mean a winning campaign, just one that the public must take seriously. Our goal as a socialist organization is to win the confidence of the masses as leaders of the struggle for their own liberation. If we endorse and organize unserious campaigns, it will only serve to perform some rhetoric for the tiny minority of people who already agree with us. 

Luis and Liban’s campaigns can do neither of these things, for our organization or for the broader movement. They developed their platform, branding, strategy, and communications as individuals before seeking endorsement, resulting in a muddled political outlook and a lack of clarity. Though they assure us they are Democratic Socialists in private conversations, their messaging does not convey that either in substance or explicit mentions of the word socialism. It gives the (perhaps mistaken!) impression they adopted it to the extent they could get the endorsement of Salt Lake DSA and branded as Utah’s Zohran, but did not want the word “socialism” to affect their chance to win. It’s almost more frustrating, personally, that they don’t understand that these tepid capitulations are not worth making for our endorsement. SLDSA is a small organization; our endorsement and participation is not going to outweigh the political costs of actually adopting a socialist platform in a capitalist party primary.

Obviously, neither campaign is credible, whether or not we organize to support them. I don’t think it’s helpful to list reasons why I think neither campaign can make it to the ballot because it is a secondary question. Though it must be said that although Liban has taken a more serious approach to campaigning and appears more viable, this is due to his history of working inside Washington DC with and amongst capitalist politics, not because of an understanding of organization. His background working at TikTok gives his campaign the aesthetic of a professional and serious campaign, similar in “vibe” to Zohran’s. However, it is very important to understand the relationship in NYC-DSA’s strategy between communications and organizing the field. The purpose is not to look flashy and get clicks, it’s to create a narrative that clearly communicates the politics of the campaign, a politics which motivates people to get involved on a deeper level. Aesthetics can help deliver a message, but they do not make up for a weak message and an inability to turn that flashy messaging into organized action. Though he appears to be doing an admirable job of collecting signatures, he stated in the interview this is because he is paying for signature gatherers, not because the campaign is organizing volunteers.

(Additional listening on the Zohran campaign strategy, The Dig episodes “Three Million Doors” “Zohran’s Message” “How Zohran Won w/ NYC DSA”)

For these reasons, this means that an endorsement in the present conditions would be nothing more than our logo on their campaign websites. Over time, DSA activists are becoming more critical of their use of the endorsement and are shying away from “paper” endorsements, meaning one which just exists as a rubber stamp on the campaign website and isn’t associated with any action from activists. This is how endorsements from most non-profits, unions, and Democrat aligned groups work, perhaps with a cash donation. Instead, a DSA endorsement means that we are going to move people to action, both inside and outside the activist base of the chapter. We’ll do that difficult work because we think the campaign can increase class consciousness and working class organization, which is the primary goal of a socialist campaign. This is an important part of the scientific approach to socialism; actually fighting for something in the world, not just writing down an endorsement statement on a page that almost nobody will read all the way through. If we do paper endorsements, it teaches our base that we think rhetoric alone is an effective form of political action. To those outside our base, it teaches them nothing, because they won’t have reason to care.

Then what are the next steps for SLDSA?

All of these arguments are not being made to the public, because we abstained from the race. It is not persuasive to the public to abstain from struggle, especially in the current situation of generalized disorganization, lack of left leadership, and low level of class-consciousness. I don’t believe I’m making a sectarian argument for no endorsement, rather an acknowledgement of our objective limitations as an organization in relative infancy taking its first steps. If we were more organized and identified a stronger candidate for CD-1, then the best course of action would have been to run in CD-1, but I agree with the direction we chose. SLDSA should continue to organize to create the strongest possible campaign in State Senate District 13, develop new connections, widen our activist base, qualitatively change our organization to a real power player (however small), and then use the campaign as a springboard to a struggle for a concrete reform. I believe the Paden campaign has already demonstrated that the Salt Lake DSA is capable of taking on a bigger fight for a specific reform. It is hard to say the precise form that will take, an evaluation in June after the primary ends will be necessary before we can say. But an endorsement in CD-1 would be a distraction with no obvious positive outcomes.

The post A Case for No Endorsement in CD-1: Some assertions about socialist electoral campaigns in DSA first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

[[{“value”:”

By: Mitch Gayns

This was originally published as video footage for Working Mass digital on Instagram.

LYNN – On March 21, hundreds took to the streets to defend their neighbors from ICE raids and deportations. Lynn organizers are among the most impacted– and they’ve looked to Minneapolis for inspiration on how to defend themselves. 

“When you see it in the WhatsApp, you blow the whistle!” said the rally organizer.

Rally attendees all blew the whistles as if on cue. 

After organizers launched the rally, immigrants directly impacted by ICE were the center of the Lynn demonstration. One woman, dressed for the brisk weather holding her speech, told the crowd “immigration kidnapped my brother in front of my children’s school.”

One community organizer, Ampara de Pad, told us in Spanish:

This is our city. We love it. And they say we only come to do wrong, that we come to destroy everything. But no. We come to improve ourselves.

From Minneapolis to the North Shore

Adam Kaszynski of the North Shore Labor Council, hands thrust in his pockets, spoke to the tactics that have drummed up militancy against ICE in Lynn. Techniques like whistles, he indicated, were inspired by Minneapolis.

What we learned from Minneapolis is that they had set up these verifier networks, mutual aid networks, organizing beforehand is the key to that, and having those networks already there, the phone trees already there, for if ICE is banging on our doors, we know we have enough people that we can make serious interventions to get them out of our community.

The role of labor to fight ICE is necessary, but underestimated. Labor unions – alongside tenant unions – are memberships capable of taking direct action strategically and effectively against ICE. For example, unions can shut down production, transit; labor can freeze cities.

When the North Shore Labor Council puts up LUCE flyers and materials, that means that labor isn’t just against ICE; they are actively building the network from below to defend communities beginning in vulnerable community members’ own workplaces, since many unions consist of immigrant workers and leaders themselves. Labor in doing so joins the long tradition of bargaining for the common good, which has included not only political causes but also has historically included the building of cooperative housing by unions, to fight the deadliness of rising rent. Now, labor forms also a bulwark advancing tactics from Minneapolis in Boston.

Over the din of whistles, community organizer Jessica Rivera argued:

People are scared, but we know it’s actually when we’re in together like this, when I can look at my neighbor and know who they are, that’s when we are safest, when we keep each other safe.

Mitch Gayns is a digital creator and campaign organizer based north of Boston.

Transcribed By: Travis Wayne is the managing editor of Working Mass.

The post Lynn, MA Organizes ICE Resistance appeared first on Working Mass.

“}]] 

by Richard P

Why do we protest? In a recent blog post, comrade Kevin N spoke of how his “romanticized 1960s images of crowds of protestors” transformed eventually into a commitment to “organizing, not just mobilizing,” and on both points, I agree with him. However, his argument that protests are “cathartic, empowering, and publicly visible” but ultimately “will accomplish … little” misses a few key points.

Kevin suggests that protests are simply tools to mobilize people to show up, and that organizing, which has “a deep commitment to developing one another into leaders both inside and outside the organization,” is fundamentally different and unrelated to this mobilization effort. I would instead argue that if we want to “organize people into DSA and build it into a formidable political force that can leverage its power from below,” we must engage with them where they are, and that includes through endorsing and attending protests. Thousands of people showed up for the No Kings rally last October, and the numbers increased in March. These protests are thus an excellent opportunity to meet potential comrades, and show left-leaning Clevelanders that Cleveland DSA cares about the issues that they care about enough to march in the streets about it.

As a chapter that says we are informed by labor organizing strategies (shout-out to No Shortcuts), we recognize that the foundation of that organizing is solidarity. The working class acting together in solidarity has ended authoritarian governments, improved the lives of millions of union workers, and spurred some of America’s most necessary changes such as civil rights legislation, expanded healthcare coverage, and child labor laws. Protesting, too, just like those romanticized 1960s marches in the civil rights and anti-war movements, is an act of solidarity.

But what does solidarity look like in 2026? The socialist theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in his upcoming book Solidarity: The Work of Recognition, makes the argument that we need a “solidarity of the shaken,” that is, “a radical human togetherness formed out of an acceptance of our shared vulnerability and reliance on each other in a fallen world.” To protest, then, is not just to have a shared moment of catharsis, but to stand in solidarity with those who are feeling vulnerable. Our current moment, brought on by the failed capitalist state that is the United States of America, has left too many people vulnerable and marginalized. It is an outward and visible sign of our inward emotions, worries, and hopes, being present in physical space and taking on risk to support the marginalized (especially when they may not be able or willing to take on that risk themselves), not just posturing “allyship.”

This solidarity requires urgency and discernment in where that urgency is applied. Not everything is a five-alarm fire, but these emergencies do exist. When the next Tamir Rice or Tanisha Anderson is brutally killed by the police, the next bomb is dropped on a country we do not want to be at war with, the next ICE action crosses yet another line, or some fresh hell that we cannot begin to imagine occurs, our solidarity is important. We can’t just ignore what other organizations and people think about us – they, as our fellow humans and potential comrades in collective struggle, deserve our solidarity and for us to be in solidarity together. When we remember the civil rights movement, we remember the titanic work of Black-led organizations like the NAACP, the SCLC, and the SNCC, but there were white people and groups who showed up in solidarity too, from Dwight Eisenhower’s personal physician Paul Dudley White to the lawyer Jack Greenberg, who argued over 40 civil rights cases in front of the Supreme Court. When we recognize that we are all vulnerable and hurt by the system of capital, we then realize that it is incumbent on each other to be in solidarity and support – including at protests.

In the last verse of that great union anthem, “Solidarity Forever,” we sing that “In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold, / Greater than the might of armies, multiplied a thousand-fold. / We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old / For the union makes us strong. / Solidarity forever! / Solidarity forever! / Solidarity forever! / For the union makes us strong.” 

Our union comrades show us what this means every day – even when their union isn’t on strike, members show up to other protests, teach others about the power of the picket line, and support union organizers that are helping other people get the same protections they have. There is no reason we shouldn’t want to do the same for everyone suffering under the boot of capital and fascism, especially when we are discussing building towards a General Strike in 2028. That takes organizing, from conversations, to strike votes, to picket lines. But it also includes collective action, i.e. a protest on May Day this year.

If you consider the prototypical protester, the “liberal wine mom,” if you will, there are avenues available to us to welcome them into our movement. An avowed democratic socialist with the NYC-DSA endorsement won a plurality of all white women in the 2025 New York Mayoral election. Even amongst older white women, he still got over a third of their support last November. They’re not turned off by democratic socialism and might even be interested in our work – but what have we done to recruit them and get them to join our movement? We need to show up in the places where they gather, including protests. Protesters are already agitated and will know something about our organization or democratic socialism because of figures like Zohran, Bernie, or Rashida – that’s a lot of our organizing conversation already done! Cori Bush, a phenomenal fighter for the working class in Congress, came out of the movement in Ferguson. Our comrade, Cleveland City Councilman Tanmay Shah, as well as many other electeds, have come out of the labor movement.

The more than twenty DSA members who were at the Cleveland No Kings protest at the end of March saw a moment that encapsulated the issues we’re dealing with. State Senator Nickie Antonio, who gets to be considered “progressive” in part because of her sexuality, despite her fundraising with senior Republicans, stopped the speech of a Latina activist speaking in Spanish about the fight for immigration rights. A video of something similar happening to a pro-Palestinian speaker in Pennsylvania has gone decently viral. Antonio, like current Flock employee and former Cleveland City Councilman Kerry McCormack, benefits from a system where, as Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò argues in Elite Capture, identity politics has been twisted to serve the elites and their interests, not those of working class people.

If you are unconvinced by the establishment’s choices, you can either sigh and return to being apathetic, or you can work with an organization that is actually trying to challenge the Democratic status quo that self-aggrandizes itself as “brave” while simultaneously snatching the mic from a Latina discussing immigrant rights. A protest isn’t the end of our anger and frustration – it’s the beginning. Being present and using that presence to invite someone to consider joining DSA and enter our membership pipeline gets them into a structured mass party-like movement that takes them away from the unstructured progressive movement that, in the immortal words of Jo Freeman, isn’t “very good for getting things done,” a take echoed by Vincent Bevins in If We Burn.

Our transformation into a mass party does not need to be slow and incremental – as comrades in New York showed us last year and as our comrades in Wisconsin are showing us right now with Francesca Hong. The voters supporting her and putting her at first place in the polling aren’t just members of Wisconsin DSA chapters. When we present our message, as Oliver Larkin is doing in his primary against Jared Moskowitz in Florida, we see voters joining with us. Mass action, be it electoral work, protests, public comments, community response networks, or encampments, helps people get to know us better by meeting them where they are and on the issues they care about – and that’s the core of solidarity.

The word “solidarity” comes to us from the French solidarité which is rooted in the Latin solidus – Firm. Whole. Undivided. Entire. What transformations might we see in our work and our world if we lived into those four words as a goal for who we are fighting for and the type of movement we have to build? Every time we turn up and show out, a new organizer grows in their skills and learns even more what solidarity means, not just with each other as comrades, but with the marginalized who we continue to fight for. Let us be firm on our beliefs and what we are called to do, but with the understanding that we are seeking an improved life for the working class of the entire country, and indeed the world. Together, the people must be undivided – no matter where or how we meet them.

The post “Solidarity Forever”: The Need for Protest Activism appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

DSA proudly endorses Val Thomason in the race for Nevada’s State Assembly, District 10! Val is a long time DSA member and a pillar in Las Vegas DSA’s fight for rent control, health care, worker’s rights, and more!

We look forward to continuing to fight alongside Val and Las Vegas DSA and bring Democratic Socialism to the Nevada state government and beyond!

We stand with Val, Las Vegas DSA, and our comrades across the nation as we elect more socialists to public office. Let’s carry the torch for our comrades! A little bit of your socialist cash will help us take out capitalist trash!

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

DSA is thrilled to endorse Richie Floyd and wholeheartedly supports his re-election to St. Petersburg’s city council! Richie is one of the most historic DSA candidates of our time, and we will fight alongside him once again!

A few years ago, Richie Floyd became the first openly self-identified socialist to win an election in Florida since the early 1900s, and he became St. Peterburg’s youngest council member!

While many of Florida’s elected officials remain openly hostile to socialists and insist on pushing red-bait culture war hysteria, Richie held his ground fighting for tenant’s rights, reproductive rights, and the entire working class of his city and state.

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

Hello again, comrade!

When we last spoke, we were witnessing the opening salvos of the US assault on the people of Iran, carried out on behalf of the genocidal apartheid regime that is our overseas Israeli colony. Over the last four weeks, the world has remained on the precipice of widespread destruction and economic collapse. But, things here in the United States sometimes feel… surreally mundane.

That awareness — that sense that while we watch unbelievable imperialist violence unfold, the routine of life goes on as usual domestically? That capitalist value extraction continues unabated? That’s what it is to live in the imperial core.

The contradiction can make you feel as if you’re losing your mind. But, that’s the distilled, mad logic of capitalism at work. Stripped of the platitudes about human rights and democracy, liberal capitalism is a cold and unfeeling machine — a vise, designed to crush life from the world and extract value for the ruling class. Citizens of the imperial core will be the last fed into the press, but with time, the machine comes for all of us.

The only thing that can disrupt this mad machine is for people to throw their weight against the gears and make it stop. Not with grand, spectacular gestures, but by carrying on with the day-to-day business of building a better world in every corner of the imperial core in which they find themselves. Combined, our efforts will make the gears stop.

More and more people hear the call to build a better world everyday. Read on and see how we’ve answered here in our corner of Florida!

March Highlights

This month, our members mobilized for emergency demonstrations to voice opposition to the war against Iran. We stood beside our comrades in Tampa to say in one clear and unified voice: NO to war! NO to imperialism!

We also organized a film screening to share inspiring moments of Cuba’s revolutionary cinema, and to raise money for medical devices that are desperately needed by the Cuban people as they withstand the US’s brutal embargo and military threats. In one evening, we raised more than $1,000 to help our comrades on the island!

Our members knocked hundreds of doors to help re-elect Richie Floyd to St. Petersburg City Council. Richie was the first socialist elected to public office in Florida in a century, and with our ongoing, continued efforts, he will be the first of many!

Our Health Justice Working Group hosted a self-managed abortion information session, sharing facts about how self-managed abortions are administered safely, and how to pass on life-saving information and resources without being subject to state reprisal.

We also brought out a contingent of DSA members to table at the No Kings demonstration in St. Petersburg. We distributed literature to get the word out about our ongoing campaigns, circulated ballot petitions for congressional candidate (and DSA member) Oliver Larkin, and called in neighbors desperate for a way to strike back against the present state of affairs.

Working Group Spotlight: Ecosocialism

The Ecosocialist Working Group exists to help DSA organize around the reality that ecological, economic, and climate crises all stem from the same capitalist system. Our purpose is to build campaigns that challenge corporate control of energy, expand democratic ownership of essential systems, and support working‑class communities most affected by pollution, rising costs, and climate disasters.

The core goal of our working group is to advance a vision where people and the planet come before profit, achieved through collective action and democratic control over the systems that shape our lives. This is why the working group is currently focused on the Dump Duke campaign to bring public power to Pinellas.

Check out the full report back from the Ecosocialism Working Group, written by Jason S.

CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Re-Elect Richie Floyd

The campaign to re-elect Richie Floyd continues to gain traction.

Richie and the campaign team took a break for their weekly canvassing efforts to table at the No Kings Day rally on March 28. Richie was able to talk with dozens of St. Pete voters, hear their concerns, and share information about the campaign. But, we’re already back to our regular canvassing schedule — be sure to come out Saturday, April 11, because after we knock some doors, we’ll host a post-canvas barbecue (address to be provided at the canvass)!

We’re closing in on the number of petitions needed to secure Richie’s spot on the ballot. But, the deadline is coming up next month, so anyone able to lend a hand for the weekly Saturday morning canvassing would be greatly appreciated!

CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Dump Duke

In March, the Dump Duke campaign marked its one‑year anniversary with a canvass and poster raffle, celebrating a major milestone: collecting our 4,000th petition! The posters featured at the raffle will also be available for purchase at the next general meeting.

Later on in the month in St. Petersburg, bids were submitted for the feasibility study RFP, including NewGen Strategies which conducted Clearwater’s study, and from GDS Associates. These bids are now moving through the administration’s selection process. The Tampa Bay Times also published an investigation identifying the consultants behind the Duke‑linked dark money groups and detailing their history of opposing public power efforts in other states, including Maine’s Our Power campaign, where investor‑owned utilities spent more than $4 million fighting against it.

Upcoming Events

We have more than a dozen political events, working group meetings, and social outings scheduled in April. You can always view our full calendar of upcoming events, along with the most up-to-date times and locations, on our website: https://www.pinellasdsa.org/home.

Canvassing at The Morgan Apartments

Monday, April 6 from 6:00–7:30pm. Canvass The Morgan Apartments (2822 54th Ave S. in St. Petersburg) to inform and encourage tenants to attend a tenants meeting, where they can tackle the issues facing their property together!

International Solidary Working Group Meeting

Tuesday, April 7 from 6:00–7:00pm. This will be a virtual-only meeting. The Zoom link will be provided in the Discord.

Health Justice Working Group Meeting

Wednesday, April 8 from 7:00–8:30pm. Meet in the Hybrid Room at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg)

Housing Working Group & St. Pete Tenants Union Joint Meeting

Friday, April 10 from 7:00–8:30pm. Meeting of the Pinellas DSA Housing Working Group and St Pete Tenants Union to decide action on tackling the exploitative capitalist housing system. Meet in the Hybrid room at Allendale UMC.

Canvass for Richie Floyd & BBQ

Saturday, April 11 from 10:30am — 3:30pm. Meet at Gladden Park (3901 30th Ave N. in St. Petersburg), then stick around afterward for a barbecue (address to be provided at the canvass)! RSVP here.

General Meeting & Social

Sunday, April 12 from 2:00–4:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg). To be followed immediately after by the Socialist Social Hour, with food and (non-alcoholic) drinks provided! And bring your favorite board game!

287(g) Committee Meeting

Tuesday, April 14 from 6:30–8:00pm. Location TBD.

Bylaws Committee Meeting

Wednesday, April 15 from 6:30–8:30pm. The Zoom link will be provided in the Discord..

Canvass for Richie Floyd

Saturday, April 18 from 10:30am — 1:30pm. Location TBD. RSVP here.

Boycott Chevron Canvass

Sunday, April 19 from 1:00–2:00pm. Canvassing in Clearwater for our ongoing #StopFuelingGenocide campaign. Meeting location TBD.

Canvass for Richie Floyd

Saturday, April 25 from 10:30am — 1:30pm. Location TBD. RSVP here.

Pinellas DSA Orientation

Saturday, April 25 from 2:30–4:00pm. New to DSA? Or, been around for a while but want a refresher on the basics of organizing in our chapter? Come on out! Meet at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg) in the Hybrid Room. RSVP here.

PDSA Member Social

Saturday, April 25 from 4:00–6:30pm. Join us immediately after the Pinellas DSA Orientation in the Community Center at Allendale for game night!

International Solidarity WG Meeting

Monday, April 27 from 6:30–8:00pm. Meeting at Allendale UMC (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg) in the Hybrid Room.

Socialists in Office Working Group Meeting

Wednesday, April 29 from 6:30–8:00pm. Meeting location will be provided in the Discord.

NOTE: All dates and times are subject to change, so check the website regularly for updates!

As we always say at our general meetings, the real work of DSA is done in our working groups. Each working group is made up of a dedicated cadre committed to advancing the cause of socialist struggle in one specific arena, be it housing, labor, electoral, ecosocialism, health justice, etc.

We wanted to begin spotlighting the important work carried out by each working group, and how it fits into the broader strategy of our chapter. This month, we’ve invited the members of our Ecosocialist Working Group to share a little about what they’ve been up to, what’s coming next, and why this work is important to the broader aims of the chapter.

The Ecosocialist Working Group exists to help DSA organize around the reality that ecological, economic, and climate crises all stem from the same capitalist system. Our purpose is to build campaigns that challenge corporate control of energy, expand democratic ownership of essential systems, and support working‑class communities most affected by pollution, rising costs, and climate disasters.

The core goal of our working group is to advance a vision where people and the planet come before profit, achieved through collective action and democratic control over the systems that shape our lives. This is why the working group is currently focused on the Dump Duke campaign to bring public power to Pinellas.

Over the past year, the campaign has pushed back against misinformation from Duke Energy and its dark‑money groups, applied sustained pressure on city councils to pursue public power, and canvassed door to door to collect thousands of petition signatures. It has also helped expose Duke Energy’s actions at the state level and within the PSC (the Florida Public Service Commission), bringing much needed transparency to how these decisions affect our communities.

To support this effort, please make sure you’ve signed our petition and begin contacting your local council members, as two major votes are approaching.

In June, the St. Petersburg City Council will vote on whether to conduct a feasibility study for public power. Meanwhile in Clearwater, the City Council will decide whether to begin negotiations with Duke Energy for a buyout of their assets or to end their fight for public power. This decision will come down sometime before July. Our voices need to be heard, so use the links below to reach your council members and add your name to the petition.

• Sign the Petition!
• Contact St.Petersburg City Council — Say you support public power!
• Thank Clearwater city officials for standing for public power!

🌹

by Jaime Schneider

The period we are living through is one of profound importance for the workers’ movement across the globe, and in particular for the American socialist movement. Over the last year, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), once near-moribund, have exploded back to life in response to the action of the American regime. 

Madison Area DSA’s number of Members in Good Standing (registered members who pay dues to DSA National) has increased from 402 in February of 2025 to 750 in February of 2026, an 86.5% increase. (Refer to the report of the Membership Committee in the 2026 MADSA Convention Compendium for details.) Ongoing political campaigns, such as the Strike Out ICE campaign, and MADSA’s participation in several electoral campaigns (most notably Francesca Hong’s gubernatorial campaign) continue to draw in more members. 

The conundrum facing the chapter at present is not how to find new members, but how to integrate and retain those who join as a result of our efforts. Historically this has been a major weakness of DSA as a national organization, as highlighted by the article State of DSA Part 2: Lessons Learned by comrades Andrew Dai and Hazel Williams, writing for Democratic Left. DSA chapters which fail to rapidly integrate new members often lose the members they gain within a year, and the authors pinpoint this as both a failure of membership work and a result of a lack of membership engagement infrastructure within chapters. Losing members almost as rapidly as one gains them is precisely how chapters lose institutional knowledge and find themselves “treading water” rather than building workers’ power.

This is an issue which affects every part of DSA’s existence as an organization and touches on every other area of work. If members do not feel engaged and “plugged into” the life of the chapter, then our chapter democracy will become a democracy in name only. If members do not participate in committee work, then the capacity of our committees to conduct party work will be dramatically reduced. If our electoral efforts cannot consistently mobilize members, then our power as a political organization and the weight of our endorsement will collapse. The general consensus of the chapter, as expressed in resolutions and debate, is that we are working towards the goal of a socialist political party. We cannot speak of being a party, let alone a mass party, unless we have an active membership which actively fights to build workers’ power. 

If we are to achieve our goals as socialists, people who believe in the power of collective action, then priority must be given to the work of membership engagement and activation. We must pull new members into the work that we are doing, give them things to do and people to befriend as part of a Madison DSA community. This is at present primarily the role of our Membership Engagement Committee, assisted closely by the work of the Communications Committee, but it is a task which must involve every member of the chapter. We must cultivate a party spirit which encourages every member to do their part.

The confused flailing of the American regime and the fecklessness of much of the opposition has created the conditions necessary to facilitate the creation of a mass American socialist movement for the first time in generations. If we are to fulfill the potential of the Democratic Socialists of America and carry out our world-historic mission as socialists, we must not only improve our membership work, but master it. 

If you are a member of Madison DSA, and you want to help the Membership Engagement Committee, check out our slack channel on the MADSA slack, and consider attending one of our meetings. We meet virtually from 7:00-8:30pm on the first and third Tuesdays of every month.

By: Gumbo V

Late February is a frigid time to visit Minneapolis, Minnesota, but the people of the Twin Cities are no strangers to fending off ICE. I had the honor of visiting Minneapolis from 25 February to 1 March 2026 for their Bring the Heat, Melt the ICE Week of Action, which brought in organizers from across the country to learn firsthand how Minnesotans have resisted the occupation of their cities by federal agents through an inspiring diversity of tactics. There were a variety of activities to participate in each day, from training sessions to ridealongs with ICEwatch patrols; noise demos to blockades on critical facilities; protest marches to Block ICE block parties—a “choose your own adventure” of movement learning. Week of Action organizers acknowledged in the welcome packet that “the strongest movements are made up of well-connected individuals across far reaches of time and space,” and sought to provide as many opportunities as possible for attendees to experience the breadth of their historic resistance.

Days 1-2 – Orientation & Suburban Patrol

My experience in Minneapolis began early Wednesday morning, 25 February 2026, as I left behind the near-90° heat in Texas and stepped out of the airport into sub-freezing winds to meet a comrade from Twin Cities DSA, Brooke B, who would be my host for the week. I briefly interviewed Brooke about her own perspective on the developments in Minneapolis, then we spent the rest of the day in training sessions hosted by Minneapolis rapid responders (many of whom were Twin Cities DSA members). Workshop sessions covered Know-Your-Rights business canvassing with a focus on organizing the workers at canvassed locations, the basics of the neighborhood rapid response model, and a thorough 2-hour session on the bread and butter of rapid response in practice. At the end of the day, attendees were invited to join neighborhood chats based on where in Minneapolis we were staying and get ready to patrol the following day.

On Thursday, I joined a rural/suburban patrol session, which began with a short training led by Tinkerbell and Mama Bear (most folks go by their Signal usernames as a matter of precaution). Brooke then took me and another comrade from northern California out on patrol in the city of Hopkins, a suburb of Minneapolis. We joined a live call on Signal to check in with dispatch, who asked us to check a list of areas where ICE had been seen lurking in recent weeks. The suburban patrol felt very similar to patrolling I have done in Austin—a lot of driving around from parking lot to parking lot, scoping out vehicles with heavily-tinted windows or out-of-state license plates, and trying not to be too paranoid. Border Czar Tom Homan, appointed to replace Nazi fanboy Greg Bovino as head of Operation Metro Surge at the end of January, had announced the “end” of the operation just two weeks prior, and organizers on the ground had noted a slow withdrawal of immigration officers coupled with a change in their tactics. ICE and CBP agents were no longer roving openly in their military garb but had instead shifted to more clandestine, plainclothes tactics to continue carrying out their abductions from a rotating cast of Enterprise rental cars. Comrades noted that this seemed to be a direct result of the strength of resistance efforts up to that point.

Dispatch, Please Advise

Let us pause here to discuss what is meant by patrol and dispatch. I will not go into the system at length, as it has been described in great detail in the piece “Rapid Response Networks in the Twin Cities: A Guide to an Updated Model” on CrimethInc.com, but I will discuss my personal experience with the tool. Patrolling (or commuting, as some in the Twin Cities have taken to calling it) is rather straightforward: get in your car, hop on a bike, or just throw on a coat and some walking shoes and roam your neighborhood looking for potential ICE activity. At first, patrolling was both decentralized and largely disorganized, but it rapidly became highly organized while remaining decentralized, a key to its success. By the time of the Week of Action, there were dozens, if not hundreds of neighborhood groups at varying levels of granularity, from the larger regional channels like Southside Minneapolis, to local and even hyperlocal chats consisting of as few as 3-4 city blocks. Within each geographic unit, people would be out patrolling during the day, or would join each of the respective neighborhoods along their commute to and from work; hence, commuting.

The rapid response networks in Minneapolis scaled up incredibly quickly. Consequently, they needed a better system of coordinating between the various responders on the ground. Enter: the dispatch system. Dispatch started at the Whipple federal building (see below), where initially organizers would stage in vehicles nearby and commute behind ICE agents as they exited the facility to give advance warning to the neighborhoods they entered. Over time, the ICE agents began harassing observers at Whipple more and more, so organizers adapted their tactics in response. By having a dispatcher offsite start a running call on a Signal chat, they were able to take some of the pressure of note-taking off of people on the ground. Instead of having to simultaneously take pictures of vehicles and note their license plates (or lack thereof), observers could call out the plate numbers verbally and a dispatcher would transcribe them. Dispatchers also assisted in directing more people to back up observers who were being harassed by ICE agents.

The dispatch system proved highly effective, so it spread throughout the neighborhood groups as well. Dispatchers began organizing amongst themselves to schedule shifts, train up new dispatchers, and export the system to new areas. Dispatchers would identify themselves using a phone emoji () in their signal name and add a green dot () or an X emoji () when they were on-shift, which led to an ingenious emoji code for quickly communicating one’s role in the wider network.

I was especially fascinated by the dispatch and emoji code aspect of the rapid response network. In my day job, I often act as a dispatcher for field crews to barricade flooded roads; my role is to look at the city from a bird’s eye view, monitor for flooding conditions, and send crews to the areas of concern to take action while I update the public about the hazard. The Minneapolis dispatch system is a powerful mirror of my own job, and one that organizers arrived at organically out of immediate need. Dispatchers are not only tasked with transcribing license plate numbers, but also checking plates against the database to confirm if they are ICE and, crucially, coordinating patrollers across wide geographical areas so that they maintain full coverage of a neighborhood at all times. One training session described it quite simply: if every single patroller converges on the first confirmed ICE activity of the day, that leaves the rest of the entire neighborhood as open season for other ICE agents.

Dispatchers thus have to manage several people at once (many or most of them total strangers!), keep them on target in their areas of coverage, and often talk them through difficult situations when they have ICE encounters themselves. A comrade in TCDSA shared during the rapid response training on Wednesday evening that he was the dispatcher on-shift when Alex Pretti was murdered by CBP agents at the corner of Nicollet Ave and 26th St. He had to talk the observers on the scene through the situation, help them navigate to safety, and gather as much information as possible about the incident. Though miles away himself, he was very much on the ground with everyone else. Another comrade told me later that it was the first time he had ever talked about that experience publicly.

Day 3 – Whipple Watch

Friday was Whipple Watch day. The intelligence-gathering operations outside the Bishop Henry Whipple federal building have been instrumental to the rapid response network in Minneapolis, affectionately dubbed “Whipple Watch” by organizers. Interestingly, the Whipple building is part of the Fort Snelling complex, which was historically used as a concentration camp for Dakota and Ho-Chunk people who were forcibly removed from their homelands during the Dakota War of 1862; it was also home to Dred and Harriet Robinson Scott who were enslaved there in the 1830s and whom the U.S. Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott Decision ruled were not extended citizenship by the U.S. Constitution. Whipple now serves as an ICE field office and a detention center for immigrants and citizens alike.

Every day since the start of Operation Metro Surge, comrades have staked out the Whipple building beginning around 5am and often lasting until late in the evening. They log every single vehicle that enters or departs from the building carrying ICE agents, gathering data including license plate numbers, vehicle makes and models, photos, and even directions of travel along Federal Blvd in front of the building. These data are sent to a Signal chat that is recreated anew every morning where offsite organizers compile the information into a database that is accessible to rapid responders across the cities. Noting the direction of travel helps dispatchers know which neighborhoods the convoys of ICE agents are likely to target that day, with southbound convoys headed to southside Minneapolis and northbound convoys likely to target areas near downtown or in suburbs. One vehicle we observed leaving the facility in the two hours we were there was reported as making an abduction just thirty minutes later.

The utility of the intelligence-gathering operations outside of Whipple cannot be overstated. Minnesotans have the “benefit” of a less overtly evil state government compared to Texas under Greg Abbott, which has meant that Minneapolis police, Hennepin County sheriffs, and Minnesota state troopers are not directly collaborating with ICE agents to conduct traffic stops. Thus, ICE agents have to commute to a centralized location (Whipple) to mobilize for their operations, and rapid response organizers are better able to track them. The data gathered at Whipple Watch feeds a decentralized network across the cities that enables rapid responders on patrol in their neighborhoods to verify whether a vehicle prowling their block has been observed in ICE operations and rapidly mobilize a response if the plate check comes back positive, oftentimes before those agents are able to abduct anyone. Without that intelligence, rapid responders would be forced into a posture of constant reaction, rather than being proactive with their neighborhood defense.

As an aside, the conduct of the ICE agents at Whipple was notably abhorrent. I had no expectations of them whatsoever, but I was primed to expect the stony-faced, vacant-eyed stares of cops in riot gear that I’ve seen at protests in Austin. They are law enforcement officers, after all, and there is a certain demeanor that often comes with that position. The ICE agents in Minneapolis, however, were openly belligerent towards people at Whipple. Although Whipple Watch had been ongoing since December, protests began targeting the building directly, sometimes escalating to barricading the exits to prevent ICE agents from departing for their daily toil of kidnapping people off the streets. In response, ICE and Hennepin County sheriff’s deputies erected concrete barricades topped with 8-foot chainlink fencing around the entire complex, which effectively created a chainlink tunnel along Federal Blvd that could only be accessed by car. Ironically, this also blocked one of the three gates that ICE agents would use to come and go from Whipple, limiting the number of gates that observers had to watch to two.

Whipple has since become a site of catharsis for many in the community, who will go to yell at ICE through megaphones to blow off steam after long hours patrolling their own neighborhoods. While we were there for Whipple Watch, others arrived simply to yell at the ICE agents and demoralize them. Rather than take it on the chin, as many cops are trained to do, these agents yelled back, threw water bottles out their windows, filmed protestors, and repeatedly flipped us off while grinning through their fully-masked face coverings. One comrade who helped start Whipple Watch in December told me that she was there early one morning, recording vehicles as they came and went, and agents rolled their windows down to call her a “red-headed cunt,” though she hadn’t said a word to them prior. They just seemed to thrive on the cruelty.

After Whipple Watch, we headed downtown for foot patrolling. Again, we joined a live Signal call with a dispatcher and embarked from the Minneapolis Central Library to crisscross the tightly-packed downtown core. Comrades in TCDSA noted that enforcement operations were less common in downtown Minneapolis because of its proximity to financial centers, and there seemed to be an implicit agreement between federal forces and the instruments of capital that too much disruption to the flow of money was unacceptable. As a result, rapid responders in downtown Minneapolis focused more on business canvassing, both organizing workers and businesses to know their rights should ICE arrive on the property and building support for the 23 January 2026 general work stoppage.

After a break for lunch at a worker-owned, cash-only deli co-op, we met with a protest march and walking tour. Led by a truck loaded down with loudspeakers, we marched past hotels where ICE agents had been staying, CBS News offices, and the headquarters for Target and other complicit corporations. At each stop, a new organizer came up to speak to the crowd about exactly how the corporate targets were wrapped up in the ongoing occupation of the Twin Cities. There was not a single cop in sight for the entire march; protest marshals handled all of the traffic for at least one block on either side and two blocks out ahead of the march, using a combination of bike marshals as a vanguard to seize intersections and foot marshals to leapfrog from block to block keeping the cross traffic away from marchers.

Day 4-5 – Solo Patrol & Closing Notes

I spent most of Saturday at the Twin Cities DSA annual chapter convention. Late in 2025, TCDSA passed a Contingency Plan in anticipation of escalated ICE operations. The Contingency Plan outlined a process by which either a majority of the general membership or two-thirds supermajority of the Steering Committee could declare an emergency and pause all other chapter activities so as to focus all comrades’ efforts on the emergency at hand. TCDSA activated this Contingency Plan in December, shortly after Metro Surge began, and had only just started to revive other sectors of chapter organizing while I was visiting. Saturday morning was also when news broke of the joint US-Israeli war on Iran, and Week of Action organizers were already planning a protest tying together the threads of imperialism abroad and racist, militarized immigration enforcement at home.

I left the chapter convention in the early afternoon to find coffee and a snack. I love all my comrades, but much of the debate at the TCDSA convention was of less interest to me than the resistance to ICE operations in the cities. While walking to a local bakery several blocks away, I asked Week of Action organizers which neighborhood aligned with where I was walking and was quickly added to the Longfellow/Seward neighborhood chat. I got my coffee and a pastry and then spent a few hours on the call with dispatch and other foot patrollers, walking throughout the Long-Sew neighborhood in the single-digit cold checking plates and looking for ICE. Thankfully, all I saw was the kind that freezes hard to the ground and makes you slip if you aren’t careful with how you walk (my hosts, Brooke and Sean, taught me how best to shuffle across slick patches of ice so I wouldn’t fall, something ICE agents would’ve done well to practice).

Sunday was spent recovering from the high intensity of the week and visiting a frozen lake with my hosts (a personal first!) before boarding my plane for home in the balmy 85° Austin heat. I never saw an actual ICE operation while I was in Minneapolis, but I felt their presence throughout the cities nonetheless. It was a contradiction I discussed endlessly with my hosts and comrades whom I met: I wanted them to have a good day, with no abductions, but I also felt a responsibility to see those abductions in progress to get an idea of just how bad it might get in Texas (even worse than it already is). Despite never seeing ICE abductions in progress, I felt the community’s eyes on me constantly. There were times when I took a smoke break outside the Week of Action training locations or departed on my own to walk around and explore, and I could feel people watching me. The watching was rarely overt, but it was palpable—a father’s eyes lingering on me as he walked his child home from school; cars slowing down as they passed me by; a second glance from people on the sidewalk. I may have been there for a good reason, but they had no way of knowing; to them, I was a stranger, and a white, male-presenting one in cowboy boots at that. I never felt unwelcome by this attention, I only felt appropriately observed, because for all they knew I could be a plainclothes agent and their priority was keeping each other safe. Driving around in the mornings, I saw huddles of adults chaperoning children to their bus stops, and in the afternoons those chaperones escorted kids from the stops to their houses.

Minneapolis has been a site of struggle for decades, and even more recently as the epicenter of the George Floyd Uprisings in the summer of 2020. The people there are kind, their hearts so warm they could melt the snow that engulfed their streets, but they did not ask to be thrust into the national spotlight once again. To call them resilient feels belittling, much as I take issue with those who label all of us from the Gulf Coast “resilient” and “strong” for weathering the polycrisis of climate disasters, extractive industries, and negligent-at-best governments. Nonetheless, the Twin Cities have fought hard and they are lighting the way for the rest of us in struggle. Truly, the people, united, can never be defeated.

The post Dispatches from Minneapolis: An Overview first appeared on Red Fault.

By Diego Pajuelo

While PSU made headlines in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement when they claimed campus police were disarmed, this was never true. It is less true now that even partial concessions have been rolled back. Since 2023 the police have been fully re-armed.

In the midst of all this, the university still has a mural in the Smith building and a memorial on the street where Jason Washington was killed. In effect, they maintain symbols meant to give a sense of justice and remembrance to Jason Washington, but deny him any actual justice. Students at PSU are left in an oppressive setting, with 57% of BIPOC students saying they didn’t feel safe talking to campus police in a survey in 2020.

PSU Backstabs the Disarm Movement

In 2018, Jason Washington, a black man, veteran, USPS worker and community member at Portland State University was shot at 17 times (with 9 hitting him) by Portland State University campus police after trying to break up a fight.

In the aftermath of his death, a movement to disarm the campus police arose, with a great deal of support from the PSU Student Union (PSUSU), the Students United for Palestinian Equity and Return (SUPER), and from a number of professors working within the Disarm PSU coalition.

A number of demonstrations would be held between 2018 and 2020, including a non-violent occupation of the Campus Public Safety Office in 2018, and marches which blocked traffic. Despite the numerous demonstrations of significant public support, PSU never truly disarmed. However, due to the size and organization of the movement, PSU offered one major concession: campus police would start a few unarmed patrols.

Campus police, even during the unarmed patrols period, kept access to their guns, and the Disarm movement began to suffer loss of momentum. The year after, the PSU Student Union dissolved and SUPER dissolved in 2025. The Disarm coalition shifted focus toward PSU’s ties with the Boeing weapons manufacturer, but the group also became inactive by 2025.

More broadly, the Black Lives Matter movement went into decline after 2020. The economy recovered and a new president was elected.

In Portland specifically the Black Lives Matter movement experienced setbacks, with the re-election of pro-cop mayor Ted Wheeler, and the defeat of a number of progressives on the city council.

Combined, the lack of organization, drop in momentum, and illusion of partial victory resulted in the Portland State University administration in 2023 choosing to completely drop the partial victory of “unarmed patrols” and bring back armed patrols.

The Youth Wing of the Socialist Party

In academic year 2025-26, a number of students started building a YDSA chapter at PSU. Much of our membership comes from a place of fighting against the dictatorship of the capitalists, the oppression of LGBTQ+ people, and the brutality of racist police. Like the rest of DSA, we align ourselves with the Workers Deserve More program adopted by the organization in 2024, and while not everyone in YDSA is necessarily a worker in a classical sense, we all align ourselves with a working-class program: fighting for union power, college for all, and most importantly in this case, against mass incarceration and police brutality.

During the Winter term we set the priority of disarming campus police. Such a task is crucial in our fight for a worker-run society. In the history of the United States, the police have played the role mainly as strike-breakers and scabs, with the most notable example in recent history being the NYPD breaking up the picket line of the Amazon Labor Union strike in December of 2024.

They have also historically played a role enforcing an order of white supremacy, not just during the era of Jim Crow, when segregationist and white supremacy were more open in the law, but also during the modern day, by utilizing the war on drugs as a cover. For many, and especially Black communities, the police are known not as peace-keepers, but as weapons of mass destruction. They keep communities impoverished through the mass imprisonment of Black people, making it harder later in life to find jobs, and through economic exploitation of incarcerated and enslaved workers.

At PSU, the campus police are subservient to a completely unaccountable oligarchy: the Board of Trustees and the President. They serve to protect not students, but the PSU administration from any sort of agitators. Campus police are often hired from the regular police, and they carry with them the norms of structural racism, and enforce it here at PSU. To many at PSU, the murder of Jason Washington remains a reminder that we are not exempt from the racism which plagues the entire country, and which forces Black people into the most exploited sections of the working-class.

Our Demands

As a first step, we call on students at PSU to join us in petitioning to PSU to completely disarm campus police, including so-called “less-than-lethal” weapons. We also demand within the petition for all future decisions regarding the armament and funding of campus police to be subject to a vote by the students, professors and staff at PSU. No decisions on the campus police should be made unilaterally by the President, Board of Trustees, or whatever force acts without the consultation and consent of students.

The petition is itself only a first step, as we know it may not change the opinions of the administration. Furthermore, the administration has an active interest in keeping its own police force, not to protect students but to protect their own interests, to ensure that students fall in line with their rule rather than take any substantial moves to change. 

While we acknowledge limits to this petition, we do not abandon the fight to disarm PSU, but instead fight further on it, and actively organize students and student workers to fight for a program of working-class liberation. We call on those students, who seek action further than a petition, to join PSU-YDSA, and fight for an anti-racist society for the working class.