“Nobody cares, work harder.” 

I watch my parents work themselves to the bone, while they are constantly exploited by the people for whom they work, and the capitalists who are oh so nice enough to afford them a place to live, while taking every opportunity to take more without reason and say, “That’s just how it works.”

My people sacrifice their bodies to erect buildings for companies that will exploit and discriminate against them. They leave their homeland, ravaged by corporations, corruption, colonialism, and imperialism, to build homes they may never be able to afford themselves.

I came across a forum post in which users were venting about their frustration, no, their hopelessness, in not being able to find a job in a system that requires you to have one to afford the most basic human necessities. 

I sat back and read as many admitted they just don’t see an end in sight, and were looking at heartbreaking alternatives to ease the suffering.

But we’re told we just need to “work harder.”

“Work.” Rich, coming from those who don’t seem to understand its meaning.

“But you don’t understand, if you work hard enough, you too will one day own capital. You, too, will one day be a big shot!”

Okay, even if that were true, then what?

What happens when we’re all filthy rich CEOs? At the expense of exploiting other countries, mind you, but that’s a whole other story.

Who will perform the labor?

“You just hire others to do it for you! Better yet, you can replace them all with AI or overseas laborers and pay THEM pennies on the dollar.”

But I thought the capitalist dream was that we all become big shots?

Do you see how that’s an inherently flawed “plan?”

Our participation in this capitalist system leaves us with two options: sell our labor at a tremendous loss, monetary and quality-of-life-wise, or exploit our fellow humans.

What kind of a choice is that?

We work ourselves to death, and for what? Low wages, maybe some benefits, and to be tossed aside at any given moment while CEOs rake in the fruits of our labor.

We’re then, if lucky enough, forced into gig work, meaning even longer hours, less pay, no benefits, and still, the company giving you the wonderful privilege of “being your own boss” takes their unfair cut of your labor.

And if you manage to start your own business free of these parasitic owners, congratulations, you are now in competition with them. 

Do you see how hard we’ve been working and continue to work? Do you see how easy these corporations, these capitalists have had it at YOUR expense?

You know what, maybe we do need to work harder.

We need to work harder to take back our labor.

Our time

Our dignity

Our lives.

The post The Capitalists Are Right: We Need to Work Harder first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

If those deploring "political violence" are serious about stopping it, let's start with abolishing ICE.

Central Indiana DSA’s Fully Funded, Fully Public Committee unequivocally stands with educators in the face of state repression of their free speech.  In recent public posts to his Facebook page, […]

by Ida Bly

David Rovics and Kamala Emanuel sang a concert in Madison on September 4^th.They call their duo “The Ministry of Culture.” Madison DSA and WORT-FM helped sponsor this performance. This evening of folk-style music offered abundant moments of truth-telling and authenticity.

There were about 35 people in attendance, in a range of ages, at Muso on Winnebago Street. Muso hosts acoustic music events without amplification. In this case, the pleasing harmonies contributed by Kamala Emanuel greatly enhanced the songs David sang while playing guitar. Attendees responded warmly to Rovics’ songs, including his most well-known song, “St. Patrick’s Battalion,” with driving rhythm and a refrain containing the lyrics: “we witnessed freedom denied…we fought on the Mexican side.” It’s the story of Irish immigrants who switched sides during the Mexican-American war of the 1840s. Having recently faced the choice of “death, starvation or exile” in Ireland, they found the Mexicans’ cause more compelling, staving off an invading army, in a parallel to their struggle against the British.

Rovics and Emanuel also sang the tongue-in-cheek “I’m a Better Anarchist than You,” encouraging us to poke fun at ourselves, and to work across sectarian lines. Another popular song with a singable chorus was “If Only it were True,” which recounts the absurd right wing charges against Obama as being a tree-hugging, socialist, immigrant-loving, peace-loving Muslim. DSA members can identify with the song’s sentiment, given the bizarre, fact-free accusations of socialism slung as an insult toward various and sundry figures who are anything but.

There were also new songs about Gaza, including “From Auschwitz to Gaza.” Another brand new song was “Zahid” about a US Veteran who is a beloved long-time local resident of Olympia, Washington, and uses a wheelchair, lingering now in ICE detention in solitary confinement in Tacoma. The concert also included the song, “In Wisconsin in 1854 (Song for Joshua Glover)” (see sidebar article).

Prior to the main act, local singer Tom Wernigg opened the night with his country-tinged, humanistic, singable, and informative songs that have a deep vein of humor. He sang, “I don’t like genocide…under any guise”. The sarcastic “My Minivan…it’s my best friend” included the line, “I like my burgers with freedom fries.” We hope Tom in his signature hat will perform more often in Madison.

Rovics and Emanuel concluded their performance to applause. Returning to the stage for an encore, they sang “Behind the Barricades“ [2001] acapella with the passage: “As the movement grows there will be hills and bends—But at the center of the struggle are your lovers and your friends—The more we hold each other up the less we can be swayed—Here’s to love and solidarity and a kiss behind the barricades.” It was a tremendous and satisfying finish to a great night.

Muso performance space

Muso created a magical and whimsical backdrop for the event. The proprietors have roots in the Act 10 uprising and long-running Solidarity Sing Along at the Wisconsin Capitol since 2011. Muso puts a strong emphasis on pure musical experiences, especially participatory events. The venue has continued to improve over the last year. We enjoyed comfortable seating augmented by luxurious sofas piled with comfortable pillows, a bookshelf-lined wall, fanciful stenciled woodwork and colorful paper mobiles. There was even a break between sets to enjoy refreshments and visit with others at the event. Muso has great potential for more political and socialist-themed gatherings.

Music in Social Movements

David Rovics is a singer with anarchist politics, connecting many movements over the decades. He describes his “songs of social significance” as being “about life on earth” or, variously, as “songs to fan the flames of discontent.” His works touch on dozens of contemporary struggles including immigration, war, labor, gentrification, capitalism, environmental struggles, high rents, and so on. He is particularly notable as a prolific song writer. Never shying away from difficult subjects, he also writes about bicycles, bonobos, and visions of a better world we can create.

One of my favorite songs is “We Just Want the World” [1998]. It speaks to our fondest wishes: ”closing down munitions plants…shutting down the oil rigs/ And turning towards the sun…we don’t want your dead-end highway/ We just want the world.”

His pieces have been called “song stories,” and in many cases use a specific event to symbolize a much larger issue. Rovics’ historical references have also been compared to what folk singer Utah Phillips called The Long Memory, a connected view of history that can help us see where we want to go. In this moment especially, we need singers and cultural workers to help illuminate our history because it is intentionally obscured by the ruling elites. David Rovics has a large catalog of music on Palestine, dating back at least twenty years but particularly voluminous in the last few years, with new songs coming out regularly on the topic.

For his troubles, Rovics has suffered the demonetization of his YouTube channel in the last year, a major threat to a performer’s financial stability. Just this week, YouTube removed his song “I Support Palestine Action.” His events have been cancelled for political reasons, and he has endured government surveillance during his stops, even in New Zealand and Scandinavia. This reminds us of something we know very well from TV’s top comedians lately: cultural workers put themselves at risk. If our enemies know how powerful cultural workers can be, why don’t we?

I first saw David Rovics perform in Madison at the First Congregational Church on the corner of University Avenue and Breese Terrace in the early 2000s, as part of the Earth Day to May Day events. He also performed at Wil-Mar Community Center around 2009 — on that visit his friend and legendary labor troubadour Anne Feeney was in the audience (his tribute to her: “I Dreamed I Saw Anne Feeney”). On August 25, 2024, Rovics and Kamala Emanuel played on the Madison Labor Temple lawn, with sponsorship of the Family Farm Defenders, with the Raging Grannies as an opener (See the Grannies’ video clip and lyrics listing from that event here).

David Rovics was interviewed by Brian Standing on the WORT-FM show, The 8 O’Clock Buzz in 2024, touching on the role of music in protest gatherings, and that interview can be heard here:

More recently, host Martin Alvarado interviewed David Rovics on Global Revolutions on WORT-FM radio on Mon. Sept. 1, 2025, in the 3rd hour, minute 2:04-2:27. The archive of this brief interview is still available for a while. In this interview, David reported witnessing a Labor Day Parade in Rockford, Illinois, on their way up to Madison to perform this year. Although it was a massive nationwide day of protest with the theme “Workers over Billionaires,” these cultural workers did not get invited to participate, enjoying it instead as spectators.

It was a notable omission, especially because Rovics has made remarkable contributions to the labor movement’s songbook, writing original songs on topics such as Mother Jones (“Pray for the Dead and Fight Like Hell for the Living”), May Day (“The First of May,” and “When the Workers of the World Unite”), “The Battle of Blair Mountain,” the IWW “Ballad of a Wobbly, the Depression (“Union Makes Us Strong” [2010]), the Wisconsin Uprising “We Will Win (Song for Wisconsin)” [2011], and “Tax the Rich” [2011]. Rovics’ bluegrass classic, “Minimum Wage Strike,” is at least as relevant today as when he wrote it in 1998. His song “Joe Hill,” (written on the 100^th anniversary of Joe Hill’s death in 1915) is about a labor organizer who was condemned to death by the state of Utah, and was executed by a state firing squad. How strange it is that the state of Utah may again execute someone by firing squad, if recent events at Utah State University play out as expected. The Death Penalty Information Center wrote a post about this. The current case is nothing like Joe Hill’s, and yet it is amazing how history echoes!

Rovics’ song “Everything Can Change,” about organizing, has a valuable message. We need our organizations of course, but these are just part of larger movements. Our organizations ebb and flow, and only partly contain our capacious aspirations. We need art, music, feasts, festivals, and culture that can carry us from one organization, movement, and phase of life to the next. We need to build deep community that can sustain us for the long haul.

It’s a mistake when our organizations forgo art and music. We deprive ourselves of the succor of music and poetry when our protest events do not include them. Author Barbara Ehrenreich, who was active in DSA, made the point that movements are more than their organizations, and need vital cultural elements to make them strong. The Poor People’s Campaign has made art and music an important component of their work. Preaching to the choir is not pointless, and even left-brained people need encouragement, connection, and learning –- preferably in handy formats to integrate into daily life, such as songs you can sing in the shower or while cleaning the house, as well as before the city council, at a protest, or on a picket line.

Hearing Difficult Truths

One of the motivations for listening to Rovics’ music is that hearing the truth brings cleansing release, even when it is challenging. Particularly now, one longs for the truth, as science is being sidelined, and the gains of the Enlightenment erode. One’s mind and senses feel polluted, as the disgusting residue of falsehoods accumulates. The obsequious worship of power pervades our airwaves and hardens our souls. There is also a struggle to make meaning of our experiences, living here in the heart of Empire, passing people sleeping on the street, taking in the horrors on TV and the crossing of red lines around the world. It is helpful to gather together to seek shared understandings.

While cringing at the sorrows, we reach for the serenity of wisdom. I often think if I understood better how things got so bad, it might help me know how to move forward. This is why learning about socialism is so important now.

David Rovics’ culture work includes essays published in Counterpunch and other places. David’s archive of music is accessible for free at www.davidrovics.com. He also has a presence on Blue Sky, Tiktok, X, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, Substack, YouTube and Songkick. You may tune into his podcast “This Week with David Rovics” – with music, history and current events here. He also has a new memoir out in the form of an audiobook, called My Life as a Protest Singer. To get full access to this and other special material, there is a subscription-based Community-Supported Art program available through his website.

The morning after his performance in Madison, Rovics and Emanuel left for Woodruff, far in the north of Wisconsin, to continue to bring this music to new places, and new people. Rovics often performs for free in parks, at protest gatherings, and on picket lines. Having wrapped up the Midwest tour for now, the next stop is a tour of New York and New England starting in October.

Sidebar: Song for Joshua Glover

Rovics’ and Emanuel’s concert included a song written last year about Wisconsin history, “In Wisconsin in 1854 (Song for Joshua Glover).” It is about the Fugitive Slave Act period when the federal government forced local police to cooperate with slave catchers. But it is also a triumphant tale of rebellion by the local population against this unjust law. After a mob of Wisconsinites helped Glover escape from jail and leave the country, the state of Wisconsin declared the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 unconstitutional in 1854. The people of Wisconsin made a singular, definitive pushback, and effectively ended this law through this one instance of cross-racial solidarity, and public collective disobedience. It usually takes more than one.

Phil Busse (a Madison native) wrote a guest column that ran in the Wisconsin State Journal on May 5, 2025, “Arrest of Milwaukee judge hearkens back to 1850s” explaining how the Joshua Glover incident has important parallels to the immigration struggle embodied by the Judge Hannah Dugan case, set to go to trial in Milwaukee in December.

In 2021, the city of Toronto commissioned a statue of Joshua Glover for a city park. The design is well worth looking up online, and includes Glover in a top hat and with Afrofuturist elements. After escaping the US, Glover lived out the rest of his long life in Canada but also suffered a short bout of imprisonment there, and was denied a proper burial. There have been recent tributes to Glover, including a commissioned song called “Freedom Heights” with a video version spliced with images of Toronto’s pro-basketball Raptors team members. There is also a new mural to Joshua Glover on the I-43 underpass in Milwaukee. There is a new mini-documentary film (“Liberty at Stake”) too. The Republican Party intentionally highlighted the Joshua Glover incident during their convention in Milwaukee in 2024, aiming to claim the abolitionist roots of their party’s founding in Ripon, Wisconsin. But it is an open question whether the Party would make the same effort today, less than one year later. In any case, it is an important historical incident that is too little known, even here in Wisconsin.

Also relevant is David Rovics’ song “In Between Milwaukee and Chicago” written in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha.

On the topic of statues and murals, it is truly remarkable how many long-overdue historical markers went up only after the protests spurred by George Floyd’s death in May 25, 2020. I saw three examples of this on a recent visit to Jackson, Tennessee. Historical markers were recently put up there to the late-1800s lynchings on the courthouse lawn, the 1960’s Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-ins, and to honor their native son, Gil Scott-Heron, the world famous jazz poet and spoken word artist (“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”). This history languished, ignored in plain sight, until the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd forced local communities to rectify their long silencing of history.

NNJ DSA Fights Landlords In Elizabeth With Freelizabeth Campaign On July 28th 2025, the Freelizabeth campaign clenched victory in the first of two initiatives in Elizabeth, NJ by reinstating the […]

After an action packed September General Meeting, two important shout-outs are in order:

First, we voted to kickstart a No Appetite for Apartheid Campaign here in Madison. No Appetite for Apartheid is a DSA National campaign launched by the Palestine Solidarity Working Group to pressure grocery stores to become Apartheid Free Stores by dropping companies and products that participate in Israeli apartheid and theft of Palestinian land. The campaign is powered by a number of chapters and coalitions across the country, and the Madison Area chapter will now be engaging in that work as well! As socialists, we stand in solidarity with all those facing settler-colonialism, and as Americans it is our duty to work from within the empire to end American imperialist violence around the world. At the September General Meeting, the chapter voted overwhelmingly to reaffirm this commitment by being the force for change in our own city. We look forward to an apartheid free Madison – and we need your help to get there. To get involved in this important work, join the #palestine-solidarity channel on Slack, check the chapter calendar for upcoming No Appetite for Apartheid (NA4A) planning meetings and events, and read more about the national campaign here.

Second, we voted to charter an Electoral Working Group to formalize the work already being done by the Power Mapping Committee as we prepare for local elections and work towards a statewide electoral strategy. If electoral work is your jam, you’ll definitely want to check out an upcoming EWG meeting, help canvas our neighborhoods with your MADSA comrades, and mark your calendars for the members-only town hall with Rep. Hong on September 29. Why a town hall with Rep. Hong? Well if you haven’t heard, Francesca Hong – a MADSA member and endorsed state legislator – is running for governor! We are excited to see where this campaign goes and to working with Fran on building the democratic socialist movement in Wisconsin. To that end, we must now engage in the process of democratically deciding if and how to get involved in the gubernatorial race. The town hall will be the first step in this process, where members will have the opportunity to ask Fran any and all questions – so don’t miss out! If you’re not yet a member, join DSA today to be able to attend.

If all that isn’t enough action for you, we have so many more exciting events and opportunities to get involved in our growing movement for a better city, state, country, and world, so get your calendars out and read on for all the details.

In this newsletter:

• Thu. September 25, 6-8:00pm: Beyond the Two Party System: A Socialist Way Forward
• Sat. September 27, 10:00am-12:00pm: Coffee with Comrades!
• Sun. September 28, 11:00am-12:30pm: Wretched of the Earth Reading Group
• Mon. September 29, 6:30pm: Members-Only Town Hall with Rep. Francesca Hong
• Sat. October 4, 2-3:30pm: October New Member Orientation
• Tue. October 7, 6:30pm: Copaganda Book Talk with Author Alec Karakatsanis
• Sun. October 12, 5-9:00pm: Halloween Carnival & Queer Liberation March Fundraiser
• Wed. October 15, 6:30-8:30pm: October General Membership Meeting

San Mateo County Opts In to Regional Funding Measure

Follow-up to Get on the Bus: Retaking Bay Area Public Transit

Bay Area public transit notched a generational win for operational funding thanks to grassroots organizers and transit advocates. Throughout 2025, Peninsula DSA (PDSA) in suburban San Mateo County engaged transit riders and activists to save light rail Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART, 178,000 weekday riders) and commuter rail Caltrain (37,000 weekday riders) from looming fiscal cliffs and severe service cuts. 

In partnership with Transbay Coalition, PDSA organizers reached people via many channels, including PDSA’s social media; flyering BART and Caltrain stations and talking to riders; posting to r/BART and r/Caltrain on Reddit; mobilizing PDSA chapter members via email, text messages, and our own Discord server; and a successful coalition rally during rush hour at a major transit hub in Millbrae. Our underlying message to transit riders? Demand San Mateo County opt in to SB 63!

PDSA identified SB 63, Senator Scott Weiner (District 11) and Senator Jesse Arreguín (District 7)’s 2026 five-county regional funding measure, as a priority campaign for our chapter. The Senate bill authorizes a 2026 citizens ballot initiative campaign to raise new funds to sustain BART, Caltrain, Muni (San Francisco), and other transit agencies in the Bay Area as they continue to recover their pre-COVID ridership. The tens of millions of dollars in new dedicated revenue would save these fixed-rail operators from massive service cuts that would render them virtually unusable.

The importance of maximum funding

But of course there’s a catch: Politicians chose to give both Santa Clara County and San Mateo County, the two wealthiest counties of the five, the option to decline to participate in the group project or opt in at a lower tax rate than the other three counties. Transit riders like us immediately understood exactly how important it is to get maximum funding for our county, which relies on Caltrain for more than just Giants games and has six BART stations, including an essential stop at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). 

But transit riders aren’t the decision makers in San Mateo County. That’d be SamTrans, the county-wide bus system, or more specifically, the nine members of the Board of Directors. To save BART and Caltrain, PDSA members and allies attended the monthly SamTrans Board of Directors meetings to push them to think beyond San Mateo County’s borders and invest in regional transit for the people through SB 63. Our consistent pressure tactic—whether in person, via Zoom, or by email—was making well-coordinated public comments in support of opting in to a progressively funded regional funding measure. 

Comrades and allies used our time at the podium to share personal transit stories and educate the Board members, most of whom never use transit, on how transit cuts would negatively impact local SamTrans riders and San Mateo County residents. We also took the opportunity to push for funding SB 63 with a gross receipts tax (0.112% tax on the top 2% of businesses) instead of a regular regressive sales tax (of ¼ or ½ cent) that would hit low-income SamTrans riders the hardest. 

Final Showdown with SamTrans

The August 6 SamTrans Board meeting, when the Directors voted on SB 63, was highly unusual. Chair Jeff Gee refused to hear or discuss any public comments focused on the gross receipts tax, despite the hundreds of emails on that topic that we had encouraged transit riders to send to the Board of Supervisors and other influential political bodies. PDSA member Marc S used his public comment to gesture to gross receipts anyway: “The proposed sales tax, compared to other tax options, might not even prevent all cuts. Participating in SB 63 today is the bare minimum [to] address the San Mateo County residents' need for affordable, safe, and equitable transit both within the county and around the Bay Area.”

In the eleventh hour, California Assemblymember Diane Papan was given the floor and used her time to advertise her own overreaching amendment to SB 63 that called for “accountability” regarding how other counties would spend the funds at their transit agencies, while repeating misinformation about how BART operates and railing against “taxation without representation”—the Boston Tea Party was mentioned. (Note: San Mateo County would already have a seat on BART’s Board of Directors, and the vote and oversight Papan desires, if politicians hadn’t opted out of the network in the 1960s!) “The fiscally conservative rhetoric came from the fact that none of these board members seem to know there are citizens of San Mateo County who rely on transit to get around,” said Becca W, a PDSA member who publicly commented. “But now with this public pressure, they are well aware.” 

Even so, PDSA’s s organizing efforts paid off. The SamTrans Board voted 8-1 to opt in to SB 63 to raise new revenue to fund the transit agencies in the five-county Bay Area: Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and San Francisco. (The one dissenting vote was Jackie Speier.) SamTrans opted in at the higher ½ cent sales tax rate, a huge win considering they had been leaning toward opting out of the measure before our campaign kicked into gear. The public records of their official correspondence shows SamTrans received more than a hundred emailed public comments specifically in support of SB 63, exceeding their average inbox haul by a factor of ten.

Coordinated Public Transit Is the Way Forward

Assuming the citizens’ ballot measure is approved by a simple majority of voters in November 2026, the five-county Bay Area will have a new shared revenue source for maintaining current levels of service for public transit. Because Bay Area residents and visitors cross county borders all the time, it only makes sense that we plan and fund projects together. Robust public transit networks will be key in building a green future where a polluting private car is no longer the only viable option for getting around San Mateo County. 

Of course, with inflation and tariffs, even more money will be necessary if transit operators are to deliver faster, rider-friendly, affordable, and coordinated service around the region. Though the gross receipts tax didn’t make it into the final bill, keeping Bay Area transit operational with an assist from wealthy San Mateo County allows PDSA organizers the space and time to plan our next strategic move to win better (and eventually free!) transit for all.

Coordinated banner drops at 25+ sites escalate DSA boycott targeting Chevron’s Israel portfolio

DSA chapters from Seattle to San Diego joined dozens of autonomous pro-Palestine and Climate Justice groups on August 29 to stage a coordinated banner drop at more than 25 locations across the West Coast. The action grew out of the escalating boycott of Chevron, linking everyday fuel purchases to the company’s role in enabling human rights abuses in Gaza.

“The genocide in Gaza involves many actors,” said Tim Husarik, a San Diego DSA member. “Chevron is among the most complicit—profiting from destruction—so building support for boycott, divestment, and sanctions is essential in the imperial core.”

The banner drop
Chapters unfurled banners and handed out flyers urging neighbors to join the boycott and to ask Chevron franchise owners to press corporate leadership to end business in Israel. Local actions were autonomous, but timing and messaging were coordinated to maximize visibility and underscore a sustained, multi-chapter campaign. “The banner drop was a good tactic,” said Bonnie Lockhart, an East Bay DSA member. “Small groups could pull it off with a few people, and larger groups could span multiple sites or draw a crowd on an overpass to create drama and space to plan next steps.” These banner drops are part of the broader #StopFuelingGenocide campaign, of which our national DSA International Committee is a leading coalition member. The coalition has staged protests in more than 20 U.S. cities at Chevron gas stations, refineries, and corporate offices. At stations, volunteers have asked drivers to fill up elsewhere and sign the boycott pledge—an effort that has drawn tens of thousands of consumer commitments since launch.

Why Chevron and why now
According to the American Friends Service Committee, after acquiring Noble Energy in 2020, Chevron became the operator of the Tamar field and a major partner at Leviathan, making it Israel’s largest natural gas producer. In 2023, the company earned an estimated $1.5 billion from these projects while Israel collected roughly $820 million in royalties and fees. About 71 percent of Israel’s electricity that year came from fossil gas, with roughly two-thirds supplied from Tamar under contract to the state-owned Israel Electric Corporation through 2030. Chevron also operates and partially owns the East Mediterranean Gas (EMG) pipeline, which links Israel and Egypt. The Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement has since elevated Chevron as a strategic boycott target in light of its role in operating Israel’s gas fields and exporting to regional markets. Electricity generated from Chevron-supplied gas powers military bases, prisons, police, and illegal settlements via the Israel Electric Corporation. Control over generation and transmission has repeatedly been used against Palestinians through exclusionary service and punitive restrictions. Offshore, the Israeli Navy has tightened Gaza’s maritime blockade in part to secure the Tamar rig and the nearby EMG pipeline—further devastating coastal livelihoods.

One of the boycott’s innovations is to tie the human rights abuses in Palestine to the growing devastation of climate change. Chevron’s investment in Israel not only enables genocide, but it also contributes to the broader degradation of the planet. Long-term supply contracts and new pipeline capacity lock in fossil dependence through at least the 2030s, crowding out renewables and delaying decarbonization. The same chains that power military bases and settlements in Israel also contribute to the heat waves, wildfires, and floods facing communities around the world.

Franchisee strategy
The campaign focuses on Chevron’s franchise network as a locally rooted pressure point. Petitions delivered to station owners make a neighbor-to-neighbor ask: sign a letter urging Chevron to exit Israel and post a statement condemning the company’s role in genocide. Franchisees who sign the letter and post a notice will not be picketed, keeping pressure focused on Chevron’s corporate decision-makers rather than small business owners. A parallel sign-on letter from franchisees frames the issue as brand and revenue risk—boycotts and protests harm independent operators—pressing corporate leadership to end the practices that generate that risk.

What’s next

The boycott will continue until Chevron ceases operations in Israel and ends business practices that enable human rights abuses in Gaza. That means sustained station outreach, more franchisee sign-ons, and visible actions that grow the boycott’s base. Since October 2023, Chevron has repeatedly shut the Tamar field and scaled back exports; expansion at Leviathan and proposed pipelines have been halted or postponed, and Egyptian buyers have sought alternatives. The company’s own filings warn that future impacts on production and revenue remain uncertain—uncertainty we aim to leverage through neighbor-to-neighbor organizing. To build momentum, the coalition is coordinating additional action that links Palestine solidarity groups with climate-justice, labor, and Indigenous organizers—using station-level outreach to pressure corporate, fighting for a more just and sustainable future.

West Coast coordination of actions will continue, and we urge CA DSA comrades to get involved. As Eddie Vcelikova of DSA Los Angeles put it, “I found it really inspiring to think that a car could drive from Orange County to Bakersfield and hit four banner drops, all about how Chevron is complicit in genocide. I think these organized actions show power. The unified message is hard to ignore.”

To learn more about DSA’s Stop Fueling Genocide campaign and to join the West Coast Boycott Chevron coalition, contact climate-action@eastbaydsa.org

Enriching the wealthy owners of for-profit companies at public expense is central to the current administration's vast, inhumane, racist, frequently illegal, and economically reckless deportation machine. Among those receiving this federal largesse are private charter airlines, which appear to be profitably relocating individual ICE detainees up to twenty times each, all over the country, for no apparent reason other than to immiserate them and thwart their legal representation.   

But in a huge victory for a national boycott campaign undertaken by multiple DSA chapters and other organizations, one ICE-sub-contracted deporter, budget flyer Avelo Airlines, is abandoning all of its normal commercial flights on the West Coast, previously a core part of its business. 

Unusual Commercial Exposure

Before its contract with ICE, Avelo's prior business model had it simply selling individual commercial tickets to willing passengers in over 50 smaller, "secondary" public airports in the normal fashion. It launched service between southern California's Burbank and northern California's Santa Rosa in 2021. By contrast, other airlines colluding with "ICE Air" are little-known private charter companies like Global Crossing Airlines (aka Global X) and Eastern Air Express, which, when they aren't tormenting deportees, quietly fly sports teams and rock bands between gigs. Like extraordinarily profitable immigrant detention center operators CoreCivic and GEO Group, these entities don't exactly appeal to a broad customer base. This made Avelo a unique target. 

In early April 2025, Avelo announced its ICE deportation flights would begin the following month. The backlash was immediate. The Association of Flight Attendants/Communications Worker of America called out the inhumane nature of these deportation flights, which compromise passenger safety, and stated "We cannot do our jobs in these conditions.”

In Connecticut, where Avelo had deep financial ties and reportedly 24% of its operational capacity, the New Haven Immigrants Coalition launched a Change.org petition against the airline that quickly went viral, and began protesting at Connecticut's Tweed New Haven Airport. State Attorney General William Tong expressed alarm in a letter sent to the airline, writing:

"These are flights where people—men, women and children—are shackled in handcuffs, waist chains and leg irons, where [...] people soil themselves because they are denied access to bathrooms. These are flights to dangerous jungle prisons in El Salvador and Guantanamo, where chained, bowed and shaved men are paraded before cameras for propaganda videos. These are flights flown overseas in direct defiance of court orders to return, and operated pursuant to a questionable declaration of war subject to active legal challenge. These are flights carrying terrified international students, snatched off the streets of their college towns for daring to protest. These are flights ordered by an administration that has sought to eliminate birthright citizenship—the core constitutional principle that has given me and so many others our futures in this country."

Avelo refused to confirm to AG Tong that it would comply with court orders, refrain from these human rights abuses, guarantee passenger safety and well-being, or honor birthright citizenship. "It is clear all they intend to do is take state support and make money off other people’s suffering," Tong lamented, noting that in Connecticut (as elsewhere), public funds subsidized the company's presence.

Soon after, DSA International Committee's Migrant Rights Working Group began boycott organizing, toxifying Avelo's brand, creating a useful chapter toolkit and launching a letter campaign to Avelo executives and financiers. Other early adopters of the boycott campaign included Siembra North Carolina and chapters of Indivisible and 50501 around the country.

The West Coast Fights Back

Here's my (Mike’s) take on the events in Burbank:

We knew after that second asteroid strike of an election that fascism was coming to our country, but it was still a shock to see it naked and brazen in our own neighborhoods. It was in early spring, as ridiculous displays of force and cruelty rounded up dozens of our neighbors, when DSA-LA members like me first heard about Avelo's ICE contract. Hollywood Burbank Airport was Avelo's largest West Coast hub. Burbank is a progressive, artsy town full of union stagehands and animators. Like everywhere else cool in America, it has become prohibitively expensive and has produced a robust community of tenant activists in response. It was in a Signal thread on this topic that I pitched my fellow activists, “Y’all, we have to protest against the fascist airline in our backyard.” Three other angry Burbankers agreed with me and we picked the following week for an action at the airport, putting out a general call to the community to stand against a company trying to profit from human rights abuses. We expected a modest turnout. 

On April 18, well over a hundred people came out to the Burbank Airport on a Friday at noon, in the middle of the workday. Local elected officials, DSA-endorsed candidates for office (I’m proud to have been one!) and activists from a half dozen local organizations turned out. We got a constant stream of honks and support to about six middle fingers per hour. Somebody mentioned that we should do it again, so we made it a biweekly protest for Friday at noon. Another community group started an entirely separate regular protest on the weekends; both protests had substantial community attendance. And so it went for months, hammering Avelo, while across town another boycott took on Tesla and Elon Musk. We had a clear demand made against a clear antagonist – cancel the ICE contract or get the hell out of our town.

Meanwhile, following Santa Rosa airport protests by Sonoma DSAers and others, Avelo suddenly announced on May 1 it was ending service there. And in Oregon's capital city, Salem DSA's Labor Working Group developed its own boycott pressure campaign, holding four well-attended public rallies at the airport and town hall, as well as a petition and letter-writing campaign. 

Back in Burbank in June, we watched ICE hurriedly shuttle more victims across the tarmac and onto unmarked charter flights. Protests at federal facilities provoked an absurd and violent overreaction from the LAPD on June 8 (you may have seen the five torched Waymos), and LAPD shot some reporters in the back with “less lethal” munitions that are designed and mandated to be fired at the ground. I helped provide first aid to a man who was shot with a tear gas canister at point blank range while he committed the supposedly threatening act of pulling to their feet someone who had fallen. 

We deserve real justice for these sickening abuses of force, and we certainly deserve justice for the state-sponsored terrorism hiding behind masks, Oakley sunglasses and government-issue rifles, but such justice is some distance away. Avelo Airlines, in contrast, was right there. So we kept protesting.

Surprise From Behind the Redwood Curtain

California Redwood Coast Humboldt County Airport (ACV) is a small commercial airport notable for its fog, lush and verdant scenery, and alternative to driving three to five hours on winding rural roads to get to a city larger than the Eureka/Arcata "metropolitan" area, population roughly 40,000. Only Avelo and United offer flights here. 

Humboldt DSA was still a tiny pre-Organizing Committee, and had never even held a public meeting or tabled at an event, when our anger at the southern California ICE abuses prompted us to vote on June 13 to join the Boycott Avelo campaign as our very first...anything. Part of our reasoning was strategic: we were meeting in a sanctuary city in a sanctuary county in a sanctuary state, so surely here of all places we could find some foothold on the issue? And another part was practical: the toolkit, training and friendly coaching from the International Committee's Migrant Rights Working Group were resources we needed to learn how to do DSA pressure campaigns.  

Local DSAer G. Mario Fernandez, a Eureka city councilmember, confirmed that a couple thousand dollars in city funds had recently gone to Avelo tickets for staff travel. Along with other locals, including the more established Humboldt Democracy Connections (HDC), Humboldt DSA began pressuring the council to join the boycott. We contacted them as concerned voters, spread the word personally, online, and while tabling at local events, and wrote an organizational letter to the city council that was picked up and published on July 7 by a local news blog, prompting additional local media coverage.

The next night, on July 8, we waited for hours at a Eureka City Council meeting alongside HDC members until public comment was called on Item I.2, "Use of Avelo Airline". All nerves, uncertainty, and moral clarity, 8 DSA members and soon-to-be members provided half the public comment that night. 

Even though the city attorney had expressed liability concerns about the city council voting to join the boycott, after hearing from all of us, Councilmember Fernandez put forward a motion to "Discontinue use of Avelo as a vendor until such time that they are no longer in contract with the Department of Homeland Security to operate deportation [flights]." Then we watched in amazement as councilmember after councilmember publicly declared their disgust at the grotesqueries of the current administration's deportation policies. They ultimately voted 5-0 to pass the motion.

The City of Eureka had just become the first public jurisdiction in the country to join the boycott.

Avelo’s West Coast Retreat 

Less than a week later, Avelo announced it would be withdrawing from Humboldt, and ultimately all of its West Coast service by early December. This meant not only Humboldt County and Burbank, but Salem, Eugene, and Medford in Oregon; Pasco and Redmond in Washington; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Kalispell, Montana. After all the public investment in the company by many of these places, Avelo was taking the money and running, as it had done before.

While the company would only attribute its decision to vague economic factors, multiple news outlets connected it to the boycott. One industry publication called it "a major strategic shift away from a geography that has comprised a significant share of its flying". On July 17, its competitor Breeze Airways, under a "Seriously Nice" slogan, announced it would be adding service to Humboldt and several other locales just abandoned by Avelo. 

These events galvanized the boycott movement elsewhere. After a relentless campaign where it all began, the City of New Haven finally joined the boycott July 28, prohibiting staff from spending public funds on Avelo tickets or marketing. Its mayor noted, "Travel should be about bringing people together, not tearing families apart." Avelo then dropped service it had only begun providing between New Haven and Portland, Maine three months before.  

At DSA's August Convention in Chicago, thirty chapters attended the Boycott Avelo Summit. The work continues all over the country. Marilia M., co-chair of DSA IC's International Migrant Rights Working Group notes: 

I've felt really energized by the DSA members leading the Avelo Boycott in their chapters. People are getting really creative with the tactics they are experimenting with. It feels really good to be engaged in a campaign that has a clear path to victory, even if it's only a small win in the bigger picture of dismantling the ICE apparatus. It'll be all of the small victories together that ultimately take down the machinery that profits from the detention of our communities.

On September 17, over sixty DSAers working on chapter communications nationwide attended a communications training focused on the Avelo boycott. An additional victory came the next day when, after continued pressure, on September 18, Humboldt County residents learned Avelo was withdrawing even sooner than previously announced, effective October 20. On September 30, a power mapping workshop will further equip chapters working on the boycott.

As the movement grows within DSA, it is complemented by The Coalition to Stop Avelo, groundavelo.org, groundice.org (which targets aviation fuel providers), and Who's Profiting from ICE, which identifies other deportation machine companies. 

We are too rarely afforded opportunities in life for triumph. When it happens, we must savor it so we can draw strength and determination when we face inevitable setbacks. We earned this West Coast victory together, and so shall we earn the next, and the next, and the next.