On Tuesday, November 3rd the voters in this country may deal a significant blow to the Trump and MAGA movement by taking away the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. Every vote will be important in these very important elections.

What role will DSA play in this important battle? Tens of thousands of activists across the state will work to defeat the Republicans. Will DSA be there with them? Will DSA be known as an organization that stood up to do what was best for the people in this critical moment of history?

I hope so.

That's why I am proposing that we organize and direct our effort to support the Democrats in the five swing districts across our state.  One way we could do this is by developing a California DSA Congressional Elections Committee

I recorded this short video introducing myself and proposing we build this committee. Please take a moment to watch it. I will expand on it more here in this article, but it will introduce the idea.

Why should we focus on the swing districts? The swing districts are the battleground. Most districts are solidly Republican or solidly Democratic. They are stable territory for either side. The swing districts are where the two parties fight and gain or lose ground.

California has five of them: 

• CA-13 is held by Democrat Adam Gray, who won in 2024 by only 187 votes. The district also voted for Trump. CA-13 includes all of Merced County, most of Madera County and parts of Stanislaus, Fresno and San Joaquin Counties. Our closest chapters are North Central Valley, East Bay and San Francisco. 

• CA-21 is more likely to remain Democratic. Current representative Jim Costa won by 10,065 votes, but that is still close enough to have it make the swing districts list. It includes part of Fresno County and Tulare County. Our closest chapters are North Central Valley, East Bay and San Francisco. 

• CA-22 is held by Republican David Valadao. It includes most of Kings County and parts of Tulare and Kern Counties. The closest chapter to this district is North Central Valley DSA and we also have an Organizing Committee in Kern County.

• CA-45 is held by Democrat Derek Tran, who narrowly won in 2024 by just 653 votes. It is located mostly in Orange County and includes a small part of Los Angeles County. Our Long Beach, Orange County and Los Angeles chapters could collaborate on this race.

• CA-48 is also held by a Republican and it includes parts of San Diego and Riverside counties. We have chapters in the Inland Empire and San Diego.

You can check out maps of the districts and voting results of the 2024 general elections here in this site I put together.

The election committee will include people from chapters across the state.  We will help each other organize members in our chapters to participate in these elections, discuss how things are going and to help each other out and share ideas and resources.  We will discuss successes and challenges getting members involved in the campaigns.

I acknowledge that these Democratic candidates in the swing districts hold positions on some issues that many DSA members may be strongly opposed to. But priority number one right now must be stopping MAGA fascism in its tracks, and one crucial and necessary tool is a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. 

All we as DSA members need to do is show up and participate in the campaigns and we can figure out together how best to do that. 

Participants from a chapter could tell the congressperson’s campaign that they would like to focus on an area where many of the members live or an area that participants want to focus on for some other reason. We can publicize campaign events to our members and encourage them to help. We can look at voter statistics for the areas we choose and become more advanced in our understanding of the voting history of the area we focus on. Some of you will have other ideas about what to do as well and they will be welcomed. We will discuss them openly together!

Working together on this important political event will help us to function in an organized and collective way, like an organization bigger than our isolated chapters, and to learn to work together smoothly, efficiently and with unity.

We need to work that way if we are going to successfully march down the long and difficult road of building socialism. Right now MAGA stands ahead of us, right in the middle of that road. 

Please contact me (lealfaro@protonmail.com) to work together on getting our people to help with any campaign event.  Contact me if you have questions or views on this very important time.

[reprinted by permission from Jacobin]

On a late March afternoon, beneath the vaulted, medieval-revival ceiling of Immanuel Presbyterian Church, more than four hundred members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) gathered in the lingering heat of a citywide heat wave. The air inside the sanctuary was thick and stubborn as members fanned themselves with paper copies of the meeting agenda and shifted in their seats.

The proceedings moved briskly at first. Members discussed strike solidarity with the teachers’ union, upcoming labor actions, and campaign work. But as the temperature held and the room settled, the chapter turned to the main act, a more contentious question: whether to reopen its endorsement process for the 2026 Los Angeles mayoral race. What followed was a three-sided debate, carried out with intensity but also with (mostly) practiced comradely discipline.

More than one hundred members had signed petitions backing housing activist Rae Huang. Another one hundred supported City Councilmember Nithya Raman. Others argued that reopening the process would risk overextending the chapter’s resources and undermine a carefully built electoral strategy. In the end, 54 percent voted to reopen endorsements, but the measure failed to reach the required supermajority.

It was the kind of debate that would have once remained obscure and relevant only to a relatively small organization. As DSA’s LA chapter has grown to five thousand members, and the national organization has become an increasingly prominent force, DSA-LA’s decisions have begun to register as reportable events in the political life of the city. What was once “inside baseball” now carries implications for multimillion-dollar races and the direction of governance in the second-largest city in the United States — part of a broader maturation of socialist politics.

For years, DSA-LA has pursued a disciplined electoral strategy focused primarily on city council races, with massive districts that each encompass over 260,000 residents — but where, when the Left concentrates its forces, it can still meaningfully shift outcomes. This strategy flows from both ongoing campaign work and the chapter’s political program, and has delivered results on the council.

Shake Up City Hall Slate

Nithya Raman’s 2020 victory marked a breakthrough, and in the years since, DSA-backed candidates have steadily expanded their presence. Today multiple members or allies of the organization sit on the fifteen-member city council, and the chapter has built a reputation for running serious, field-heavy campaigns rooted in tenant organizing and alliances with labor unions.

In the current cycle, DSA-LA has endorsed the Shake Up City Hallslate of six candidates. DSA-LA’s 2026 slate includes both incumbents and challengers, with councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, a Highland Park organizer advancing tenant rights and advocating for improving public safety through better social service and mental health provision, and Hugo Soto-Martínez, a former hotel worker and union organizer who has delivered legislative wins for renters, immigrants, and labor.

The challengers include Estuardo Mazariegos, a South LA organizer running on social housing, tenant power, and a Green New Deal, and Faizah Malik, a tenants’ rights attorney focused on housing affordability and land use reform on the Westside.

Beyond council races, school board member Rocío Rivas is seeking reelection as a defender of public education against privatization. And Marissa Roy is mounting an insurgent bid for city attorney to reorient the office toward civil rights and corporate accountability.

The Other Citywide Race

That last race represents something new. The office of city attorney has historically been low-profile, technocratic, and largely insulated from ideological contestation. Roy’s campaign, by contrast, seeks to transform it into a site of democratic accountability, raising questions about prosecution priorities, tenant rights, and the legal architecture of inequality in Los Angeles.

“The city attorney is one of the most powerful and least understood offices in LA, and the current city attorney is using the office to obstruct the pro-tenant, pro-worker agenda our DSA electeds are trying to implement in city council,” said Sydney Ghazarian, cochair of DSA’s Marissa Roy Working Group and a former DSA National Political Committee leader. “We’ve learned the hard way that the policies we pass don’t matter if the city attorney refuses to enforce them. ”

Roy’s candidacy is not just another race. It is a test of whether democratic socialists can expand their project beyond legislative bodies into the legal machinery of the city itself. It’s one thing to pass legislation; it’s another thing to enforce it and have the city devote its legal might to supporting tenants and workers.

“Right now, we have a city attorney who wastes the office’s resources defending indefensible LAPD misconduct instead of prosecuting slumlords, bad bosses, and polluting corporations,” added Ghazarian. “Marissa will use the power of the office to defend tenants, workers, and millions of working-class Angelenos, not just the powerful few.”

The Mayor’s Race Enters the Room

The debate over the mayor’s race sits uneasily alongside this strategy. Before Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York City mayor last November, the question of intervening in the race wasn’t on the minds of many LA chapter members. But that upset election rippled out in energizing waves across the country.

On one side were those who saw a mayoral endorsement as a natural next step. With DSA-backed candidates now holding multiple council seats and with the deep polling weakness of LA’s current mayor, Karen Bass, the prospect of a democratic socialist mayor no longer feels entirely out of reach. A mayoral campaign, in their eyes, would bring visibility, attract new members, and potentially consolidate the gains of the past decade.

“I want our chapter to be able to seize this moment and demonstrate to thousands of working-class Angelenos that DSA-LA is an organization worth joining, and I want a movement that understands 2028 is not just about returning to corporate Democratic policies but rather reshaping the fabric of American society,” said chapter cochair Leslie Chang, who supported a Nithya endorsement. “Supporting Nithya for mayor is our chance to build a movement here in Los Angeles that is ready to support a democratic socialist for president in 2028.”

On the other side were those who view such a move as premature or even counterproductive. The chapter’s strength has been its disciplined allocation of resources, particularly volunteer labor for phonebanking and canvassing. A citywide race could absorb enormous capacity, potentially weakening the campaigns where DSA has its clearest path to victory.

There are also political considerations. Raman, despite her history with DSA and her strong record on tenant protections and advocacy for the homeless, has at times diverged from the organization on key issues, including Palestine, housing policy, policing budgets, and the implementation of the city’s “mansion tax.” Raman has drawn heavy fire at times from DSA members nationally for being accommodating to local pro-Israeli groups. For instance, she was censured by the chapter in 2024 for accepting the endorsement of Democrats for Israel–Los Angeles. At the recent chapter debate, some members active in housing fights raised concerns about her being an inconsistent ally to the housing left in the city and criticized her efforts to rewrite Measure ULA, the city tax on top-tier property sales that flows directly into the city’s affordable housing programs, to exempt apartments, condos, and mixed-use housing. Raman contends that it is a tactical move to keep lobbying groups opposed to the measure from gutting the law with a statewide ballot initiative..

Huang, by contrast, is seen by some members as more closely aligned with socialist principles but faces questions about electability and citywide recognition. “She’s not on the Shake Up City Hall slate, but she’s here to shake up city hall,” says Gabbie Metheny, a DSA-LA chapter member and volunteer community manager for the campaign.

Democracy Is Good, Actually

These are not superficial disagreements. They reflect a deeper tension within democratic socialist strategy: whether to prioritize ideological clarity or electoral viability, and how to balance the two in a political environment still largely hostile to socialists.

What stands out, however, is not the existence of disagreement but the form it takes. The debate inside DSA-LA is structured, participatory, and transparent. Petitions circulate. Members argue openly. Votes are taken, and decisions are respected even when the margins are narrow or the outcome frustrating. The result is messy, sometimes slow, and occasionally anticlimactic.

Members also sometimes vote with their feet in a mass organization where democratic socialism spills out into a broader movement not always contained by DSA. Formal endorsement or no, over 120 DSA-LA, Long Beach, and Orange County members (mostly new recruits) are volunteering for Huang’s campaign (out of 1,110 volunteers total), taking up organizing roles in canvassing, digital outreach, policy, and more. Many DSA members active in the United Auto Workers have been pillars of support for the Nithya campaign. But messy or not, DSA-LA’s internal debates provide a rare example of large-scale democratic practice in an era when most political organizations operate through top-down decision-making or informal influence networks.

The stakes extend beyond Los Angeles. As democratic socialism becomes an ever more powerful force in American politics, questions of strategy, scale, and internal democracy will only become more pressing. DSA-LA offers one possible model: a mass-membership organization capable of contesting elections, organizing in social movements, and still arguing, in full view of its own members, about how best to proceed.

Brooke Pinto wants to represent the District in Congress. What does her policymaking history tell DC voters?

While the initiative to implement ranked-choice voting in DC purported to give voters more power, its implementation may do the opposite.

With Earth Day coming up this week, Seattle DSA’s Ecosocialism Working Group sat down and answered some questions about the environmental impact of Data Centers, A.I. and how our chapter is working to educate the public about this important issue and how you can get involved!

Question: Last year the Ecosocialism Working Group held a series of Forums on AI. Can you tell us what the specific focuses of those events were and what some of the biggest takeaways were? 

Ecosocialism Working Group: We held three People’s Forums on AI, each centered on different aspects of the AI conversation. The first focused on Data Centers, Water, and Energy; the second on Power, Labor, and Control; and the third was a workshop-based session geared toward developing strategies for regulating, resisting, and reimagining AI and data centers. Highlights included a testimony from the former mayor of Quincy, Washington on the impacts of the data center buildout on her town and its water, air, and electric grid; a rousing speech from Adrian Reyna Chavoya of the People’s Tech Project on building data center resistance across the country; and a presentation from DSA Ecosocialism’s own Raj Mirpuri on what the technology marketed as AI actually is and does and why we don’t need to let Big Tech determine our collective future.

There were many informative and revealing facts and perspectives shared at the forums, some of which you can watch here. But the biggest takeaway came from the numbers and enthusiasm of people who showed up and engaged with the sessions. There is a clear energy—including among tech workers—to first understand what the industry has planned for data centers and AI and second to challenge the idea that we should wait passively for them to have their way with our communities, ecosystems, jobs, and society. 

Question: There has been a lot of news nationally about the impact of data centers, can you give us some insight into how and where data centers are affecting Washington State?

Ecosocialism Working Group: Currently, there are 107 data operating in Washington state, with the majority in Seattle and Quincy, followed by Wenatchee. There are also several more being built or proposed throughout the state, including larger hyperscalers in Walla Walla, Spokane, and Richland-Kennewick. Big Tech is also eyeing parts of the state to build small modular reactors or nuclear fusion to power data centers both here and in Oregon. 

The colocated traditional data centers in Seattle add up to 270 megawatts across 50 or so data centers. These traditional data centers are the ones that run our internet and cloud services—we’re less concerned about these ones. However, news just broke this month that four tech companies approached Seattle City Light about building five large data centers that would have a maximum demand of 369 MW, approximately one-third of the city’s average daily energy usage. This raises obvious concerns about where the power will come from as Seattle continues to grow and electrify, and what the impact will be on ratepayers.

Quincy is an example of the impacts of larger hyperscaler or AI data centers, where around 53 centers add up to 1 gigawatt (or 1,010 MW). A 100 MW data center uses more electricity than all the homes in Everett combined. The tech industry wants us to believe that these new, large hyperscale data centers are necessary for running the internet, and we know that’s just not true. We’ve been getting by with these smaller data centers just fine. What has changed is the rollout of AI and its demand for energy.

Quincy has emerged as one of the largest data center markets in the country, and is a good example of the unadvertised effects of data centers on communities. Many members of the community support the data centers, which have been built over the past 20 years, as they have generated tax revenue that has funded a new high school and hospital. However, there are signs of growing frustration. Quincy once generated surplus electricity via hydropower, but now Grant County PUD wants to build a new transmission line and methane gas pipeline to power current and additional planned data centers. To build the new transmission line, it is condemning private land impacting 120 homes and 449 acres of farmland, sparking outrage among farm- and homeowners who say the route through their properties was chosen behind closed doors.

In general, the statewide data center buildout threatens Washington’s hydropower supply, already diminished by the impacts of climate change such as drought and reduced snowpack, and then risks exacerbating those impacts when utilities rely on methane gas to make up the difference. At the same time, the buildout could undermine the state’s climate commitments and further raise energy bills amid an affordability crisis. 

Question: It seems many of the issues around data centers tend to hit rural communities first and hardest. As residents of Washington’s biggest city, what can we do to support our rural neighbors in these fights?

Ecosocialism Working Group: Out of the planning process for the AI forums, a new network emerged known as Washington Artificial Intelligence Resistance (WA-AIR), of which Seattle DSA is a founding partner. This network is reaching out to communities across the state where data centers are active or planned to support local communities and struggles and help them in building local power and capacity to push back against the extraction of our state’s land, energy, and water resources.. This includes the landowners in Quincy as well as community members in Walla-Walla, whose port recently sold land to Amazon for a data center despite widespread opposition. 

That said, the news this month that major data centers are now planned for Seattle indicates that we can’t assume our more urban communities are safe. With our community partners, we have launched a letter-writing campaign calling on the Seattle City Council and Mayor Wilson to implement a moratorium on new data centers in Seattle. You can add your name here. If you are interested in getting more involved with the fight against data centers, both in Seattle and statewide, you can sign up here.

Question: During the last state leg session, Seattle DSA member and WA State Rep. Shaun Scott helped to pass HB2089, a bill which will help fund Wildfire Mitigation. Are there other victories like this we’ve seen locally?

Ecosocialism Working Group: Seattle DSA Ecosocialism focused most of its legislative energies around bills regulating data centers and AI. While the main bill that would have regulated data centers, HB2515, did not pass, a small victory emerged with the passage of SB 6231, which removed a tax exemption for the replacement of data center equipment. This will save the state $155 million through 2031 and gives us something to build on for further regulating and taxing Big Tech. 

Rep. Scott’s bill also helped, by stripping away tax incentives from financial institutions that lend to big development projects like data centers, redirecting those funds to wildfire mitigation. But we still have more work to do. We still give millions per year of taxpayer money to some of the wealthiest corporations in the world to build out new data centers across our state, when instead we should be requiring them to support our communities with energy affordability or renewable and distributed energy systems to mitigate the strain these companies and their data centers are placing on our grid. 

Question: With the escalating climate crisis sowing chaos in the natural world, can you tell us about current efforts to protect wildlife in Washington State?

Ecosocialism Working Group: The data center buildout could threaten Washington’s efforts to help salmon recover and thrive, as further strain on hydropower usage could lead to the waiving of provisions to help migrating salmon cross dams. At the same time, the water used to cool the data centers could be released back into watersheds at higher temperatures and with added contaminates, further threatening fish and other wildlife. Data centers can also contribute to the heat island effect, which means nearby plants have to work harder to retain water, increasing wildfire risk. DSA Ecosocialism plans to collaborate with local environmental and land defense partners to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Question: Are there some specific types of environmental legislation you’re hoping to see introduced in the upcoming legislation such as a data center moratorium? 

Ecosocialism Working Group: Seattle DSA Ecosocialism has signed a national call for a moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers. We are interested in any and all legislation that addresses the big threats posed by the unique tech industry in our state, including any efforts to expand nuclear power.

With WA-AIR, members of our group are currently drafting an AI Bill of Rights that is designed to be used as a springboard for future campaigns and legislation, which will focus on fairness, transparency, and privacy. That will be up on our website soon—stay tuned!

Minnesota labor and anti-ICE organizers are finding common ground and tools in the fight against authoritarianism in the workplace and on the streets

The post How to organize against authoritarianism appeared first on EWOC.

Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition offered a model for success for today's Left, writes an author who helped build DC's Rainbow.

The Iran War sends the world a stern warning about neglecting food systems transformation.

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

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

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

by Comrade Drake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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