This is a special meeting of the GRDSA Chapter to consider a proposal to endorse and support several ballot initiatives.

We will have reps from each campaign to give a brief presentation and answer any questions. Then chapter members will present a proposal to endorse and circulate these petitions as a chapter.

Michigan for the Many (M4M) is an alliance between the MOP Up Michigan (Money Out of Politics) and the Invest in MI Kids (wealth tax to fund education).

Rank MI Vote (RMV) would amend the Michigan Constitution so that we would use Rank Choice Voting (instant runoff) for elections.

Join us Sunday, October 19, 4pm, on Zoom to hear how these initiatives can empower the working class of Michigan.

The post Special Chapter Meeting: Campaign Proposal Town Hall appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

The following article is the result of a visit to the People’s Republic of China to participate in celebrating China’s 80th Anniversary of its victory over Japanese fascism. Dee Knight and DSA China Working Group coordinator Anlin Wang were part of a five-person self-organized delegation of DSA members.

Beijing buzzed with excitement on September 3, as leaders of friendly countries poured into the city from around the world. They came to celebrate China’s 80^th anniversary of defeating Japanese fascism in World War II and to participate in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) Summit meeting. It was an impressive display of “unity in multi-polarity” featuring Russian President Putin and Indian Prime Minister Modi, as well as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, among about two dozen others.

With participation of most southeast Asian members of ASEAN, as well as the “stans” of central Asia, China was literally surrounded by the representatives of countries representing well over four billion people and nearly half the world economy. Another prominent participant was President Pezeshkian of Iran, which maintains close economic and military partnerships with both Russia and China.

The New York Times called Beijing’s Victory Day parade on September 3 “a defiant warning to its rivals.” The awesome display of China’s military might at the V-Day parade lent “a menacing tone” for Western leaders and media. CNBC said Xi Jinping made “a thinly-veiled swipe at Trump’s global tariff campaign” when he said “shadows of Cold War mentality and bullying have not dissipated, with new challenges mounting.”

CNN offered a more measured tone, quoting Xi: “I look forward to working with all countries for a more just and equitable global governance system… We should continue to dismantle walls, not erect them; seek integration, not decoupling.” CNN added that “Xi’s vision pushes back against the foundations of a US-led world order, opposing alliances like NATO.”

Russian President Putin commented to Russian media after the summit that “The SCO is not designed to confront anyone. We do not set ourselves such a task. And… during the discussions and bilateral meetings, there has never been anything that could be described as a confrontational beginning during these four days.”

In kicking off the SCO Summit, Xi said “We should advocate an equal and orderly multipolar world, and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, and make the global governance system more just and equitable.”

How defiant is that? (Strange that advocating “universally beneficial and inclusive economic organization” can actually be considered a death threat for the US-led “rules-based” system.)

The massive military display at Beijing’s V-Day celebration left little doubt that China would never allow itself to be bullied again. More than 35 million Chinese were killed in Imperial Japan’s invasion and occupation of their country from the early 1930s to the end of World War II in August 1945. That’s even greater than the USSR’s loss of 27 million from the German Nazi onslaught. Together those numbers prompted Trump to say “Many Americans died in China’s quest for victory and glory. I hope they are rightfully honored…” 

Through the summit, we can see the past and future in contention for a world that’s striving to break away from overwhelming U.S. domination and unipolar rule. 

The “American Century”

The US lost about 420,000 soldiers in World War 2, according to the National WW2 Museum. But it assumed the role of overall victor, launching “the American Century” along with a global war against communism. It has maintained occupation troops in Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Guam and other Pacific islands – all of which are deployed today against China, just as NATO (and its “defensive alliance” against the Soviet Union) continues to threaten Russia. Which side is threatening and destabilizing? It depends largely on your point of view.

During the Korean War, from 1950 to 53, the US slaughtered millions of Koreans, and flattened all buildings of more than one story, in a massive bombing campaign. Its threats to extend the war into China were repelled by the mobilization of half a million Chinese to fight alongside the North Koreans. The US war against Vietnam began shortly after the French colonizers were routed in 1954 and lasted until the US too was finally defeated in 1975, at a cost of additional millions of Vietnamese victims and tens of thousands of US troops. Some estimates put the total number of Vietnamese dying from the U.S. war there at over 3 million, a staggering amount of human loss. Both wars were also aimed at China, and China provided troops and weapons to support their allies in both, staving off further ruin and destabilization within their own territory.

The war zones of today, in Eastern Europe, West Asia and the Far East, are continuations of eighty years of US unipolar domination, both militarily and economically. But the way the US is protecting its interests in all three areas has exposed a blunt reality: the constant official refrain that “America is protecting democracy and human rights” is nothing but war propaganda and mythology. For most of the world’s population, America’s leadership has only meant invasion, coups and more death. 

The US: Sponsor and Protector of Fascists

While China and the USSR achieved major defeats against fascism, the US sheltered and rehabilitated Imperial Japan’s fascist rulers, helping them form and maintain the country’s far-right Liberal Democratic Party which has ruled virtually non-stop for 80 years. (The US CIA did the same for the fascists of Ukraine, and have since sponsored them against Russia.) Japan’s rulers have been obstinate in acknowledging their role in the horrors their empire had perpetrated across Asia, refusing  to apologize for slaughtering millions in their invasion and occupation of China. Ditto for Japan’s 35-year colonial hold on Korea, from 1910 to 1945. In both countries the Japanese imperialists were notorious for setting up systems of “comfort women” – sex slaves for Japan’s occupation forces (not very different from the hospitality enjoyed by US occupation forces across Asia today, but a significant contrast to the status of women in China today).

In South Korea, a country formed by Korean collaborators with the Japanese empire,  the U.S. has sponsored a series of military dictatorships in South Korea, until democracy finally broke through in the 1990s. Such dictatorships were aimed at threatening China, most notably in the so-called Korean War, that resulted in an armistice in 1953 but never officially ended, which has kept Korea split in two and maintained a kleptocratic U.S. client state in power in the south for generations to come. In fact, through the armistice deal, the US working with its anticommunist counterparts in South Korea, awarded itself a forever military presence there, guaranteeing “operational control” of the massive Korean military in case of war against the Democratic People’s Republic of [North] Korea (DPRK), China, or both. Such belligerence underscores the significance of DPRK leader Kim standing next to Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi at the V-Day event. It would seem that America’s network of alliances is now being faced with a counter-alliance of groups and nations no longer willing to accept its rule. 

Even the internal politics of South Korea has been scrambled over the last few months. Its new president, Lee Jae Myung, came to power last June, following six months of intense popular struggle to oust the US puppet President Yoon, who was impeached and jailed after declaring martial law, and trying to provoke a war with US backing. When President Lee visited Trump in August, he resisted US pressure for him to join US escalation against China, which is South Korea’s number one trading partner.

The friendly leaders from around the world who joined both the SCO summit and the Beijing V-Day celebration showed that US efforts to surround and threaten China are failing. Most of the southeast Asian countries that make up ASEAN, notably Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia, attended after recent visits to their countries by Chinese President Xi. The significant exception was the Philippines, where the US maintains a military alliance aimed at China. But like in South Korea, the popular movement against US domination is strong, with serious efforts to force the US bases out, and to help US soldiers refuse to engage in a hopeless war that can only lead to needless suffering and death.

The American century, part two, is in a phase of serious reckoning, as China does what the U.S. has never done, which is build alliances rather than simply imposing its will on other nations. 

Remembering When the US Helped China Against Fascism

The week before China’s national V-Day celebrations, there was a special event in the southwestern province of Guizhou, honoring doctors and nurses from the US and European countries who formed an International Medical Rescue Corps. As this Xinhua article reports, “Dozens of foreign medical workers worked alongside thousands of their Chinese counterparts from the Chinese Red Cross Medical Relief Corps to save lives and provide medical training under harsh conditions. Today, these foreign medical workers are collectively remembered as the International Medical Relief Corps (IMRC).”

On August 26, a delegation of the descendants of these volunteers attended a commemoration in Guiyang, the capital of Guizhou province, “to pay tribute to their forebears and mark the 80th anniversary of the victory in the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War,” the Xinhua report said.

“As descendants of the International Medical Relief Corps, we are incredibly grateful to you for keeping our ancestors’ memory alive,” said Peter Soyogyi, whose father served in the IMRC. “For them, as international anti-fascists, this was not just China’s war; it was their own. It is essential for future generations to understand the fight against fascism and the struggle for freedom,” he added.

Following the commemoration ceremony, the descendants’ delegation and a group of solidarity activists from the US traveled along the famous “24-Zig Road” – also known as the Stilwell Road – which served as a supply line from Burma (now Myanmar) and India for medical supplies to the US-supported Chinese resistance to Imperial Japanese aggression. The road was a joint project of US and Chinese forces, and a symbol of their united efforts against Japanese fascist forces at the time.

US commanding General Joseph Stilwell had many conflicts with Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) leader Chiang Kai-Shek, who called for his ouster. Stilwell argued for unified efforts of the KMT and Red Army forces, which led to his replacement.

The descendants’ delegation, and the solidarity group from the US, got a close-up view of the challenges faced by US troops, as well as US and European medical workers, in helping the Chinese resistance to fascism during World War II.

Official US support during World War II for Chinese resistance to fascism was a major factor in defeating global fascism. But the switch to supporting fascism after the war, including up to the present day, poses a challenge to the world’s progressive forces. The existence of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization constitutes a giant bulwark in that fight. But the struggle continues, as challenging as ever, as can be seen in the US-backed genocidal assault on Palestine. Just as the world’s progressive forces united to stop fascism in the 1940s, history calls on us to unite even more strongly today. Victory against fascism today may spell the end of imperialism and capitalism, and usher in the common prosperity and shared future the world needs now. China, clearly, in its honoring of U.S. medical teams from the past, and in its willingness to bridge divides between itself and other countries, some who have been less than sympathetic to China such as India, should be taken seriously by those of us studying world events and the trajectory of history. So far, a new world order appears to be possibly forming right before our eyes, a world order promising far more diplomacy than explicit warmaking, a world order led by China and countries emboldened to try a different route than what had been the norm under U.S. unipolarity for generations. The recent summit exemplifies this new possible path that China and other countries are now willing to risk against the terrorism of the West. 

Photo: General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea Kim Jong Un, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and President of Indonesia Prabowo Subianto at China’s Victory Day military parade in Beijing. Courtesy of the government of Indonesia.

When did prisons become the primary method of justice? What future should abolitionists be working towards? In her short but powerful book, Angela Davis carefully maps out the origins of the prison system, explains the haphazard merging of interests that created the Prison Industrial Complex, and uncovers the inner workings of its racist and misogynistic structures that continue to evade reformation.

Join us for a collective conversation using this landmark book! This will be an open discussion. So bring your unanswered questions, your concerns, and your personal stories. Feel free to join even if you didn’t get the chance to read.

The post Greenville Book-Talk: “Are Prisons Obsolete?” by Angela Davis appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

Author: Julie C

The purpose of this piece is to notify Cleveland DSA members that there are now two local caucuses in our chapter and to give some brief history of internal politics in our chapter from a personal and limited perspective. These caucuses do not hold any formal positions of power within our chapter, and in fact are not “officially affiliated” with DSA Cleveland, but they were created in order to bring comrades together based on shared identities and vision.

The Black and Brown (B&B) Caucus was announced at or around the time of the June 2025 General Meeting. Inspired by Detroit DSA’s Black & Brown Alliance, as well as DSA’s national Multiracial Organizing Committee, the purpose of the B&B caucus is to bring together members of color and focus on ways to increase our diversity within the chapter, and working class power in Northeast Ohio’s communities of color. The caucus is not exclusive to members of color and there is no formal leadership or approval process for planning events for the B&B Caucus. If you are interested in this caucus, please reach out to Shay or Emma B on our member Slack.

The Praxis Caucus was announced at the September 2025 General Meeting and its Points of Unity can be found here. This caucus was formed with the intention of bringing members together to form a long-term and proactive vision for DSA in Cleveland and the surrounding areas. While the founding members have ideas on where to start, the current goal is to bring more members together to help develop the vision for our chapter in a way that aligns with our Points of Unity. All Cleveland DSA members are welcome to join meetings and events held by Praxis. If you are interested in this caucus, please reach out to Justin E or Julie C on our member Slack.

Background

When I joined Cleveland DSA (fall 2020), our chapter was very focused on local issues and local organizing. We were not fully plugged into the national org structure or any particular working group/committee in any serious or noticeable way. Also, from my perspective, while there were some political differences among comrades, our membership seemed rather homogeneous and came to consensus regularly. The most obvious difference was the approach to electoral politics and our biggest political “battle” was whether or not to endorse Nina Turner in 2021. This issue drew our largest General Meeting crowd at that time (over 60 members) and the motion failed with about 63% of the vote (it needed 66%).

Since then our chapter has experienced sizable growth in our membership which has naturally magnified the differences in perspective of how to achieve our shared goals. The national organization is more visible and connected to the work that we do through the use of resources available to us as well as some of our members being plugged into the work of different national committees. We also have at least close to a dozen members who belong to various national caucuses. At our October 2024 General Meeting, we passed a much more rigorous endorsement policy and that policy was put to the test this year. A substantial amount of work was put into a project proposal that would see a local DSA member endorsed in their run for city council. That proposal failed 64 nay vs 51 yea after a zealous debate at our May General meeting (5/8/25). The Praxis caucus formed with core members who voted yea on endorsement.
During and after the May General meeting, the political strategies among Cleveland DSA members have been more clearly outlined through internal debates and discussions. To be clear, DSA is a socialist organization. We believe in transitioning our society from capitalism to socialism and our “political” differences stem from what is the best way to do that. And even more specifically at our chapter level, what should our focus be in order to contribute to that outcome. While the differences in political opinion at times seem great, we are very much working towards the same goal.

1.  There are many lists and articles about the national caucuses but I am not linking any here since there is no “official” list that broadly summarizes them.

The post Caucuses in Cleveland DSA appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

The Colorado Springs DSA strongly believes in the power of public education to empower and to liberate. We believe that the best people to decide how and what to teach are professional educators. We have been deeply troubled at the consistent interference from the extremist school board in District 11 of Colorado Springs as they deprive teachers of the very agency that allows them to excel. Their decisions are becoming ever more concerning. No novels in high school English classes. Pages physically cut out of health textbooks. And just last week we understand they cut from the curriculum the incredible abolitionist, writer, and orator Frederick Douglass.

Instead of cutting Douglass from the curriculum, we choose to live by his words, “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.” We choose to unite with Charles Johnson, a union-endorsed candidate for the school board in D11. We know that he is trying to do right, even as the allies of the extremists now vying for seats on the board play into the shameful, racist tradition of painting Black men as criminals by sending out a mass text showing the mugshot from Charles’s 2020 arrest. True to what we know of him, he was guilty only of, as John Lewis loved to say, making good trouble.

In 2019, a good friend of Charles, De’Von Bailey, was shot in the back and killed by the Colorado Springs Police Department. Charles organized for greater accountability for the department. At COS DSA, we know that Black history is fundamental to American history. Maybe if these extremists spent more time studying it instead of erasing it, they would know how predictable it was that Charles was then singled out for arrest by CSPD. But they don’t know, and we suspect they just don’t care.

We stand in solidarity with Charles Johnson. Charles has been a friend to many of us who are organizers and activists in Colorado Springs, and we know him to be kind and insightful. A product of D11 himself, his commitment to teachers and students in the district is an inspiration. As the Colorado Springs Education Association prepares to strike on October 8th, we call on everyone able to show teachers their support by joining them on the picket line and by standing with Charles and the rest of the union-endorsed school board candidates come the November election. Their only goal is one we all surely share; outstanding public education in this city we love.

On 10/1/2025 the Global Sumud Flotilla was intercepted by the IDF while trying to deliver life saving aid to the Palestinians living under a blockade in Gaza. A coalition of organizers, humanitarians, doctors, artists, clergy, lawyers, and seafarers across 57 countries were just off the coast of Gaza, intending to break Israel’s blockade with much needed humanitarian aid, when they were violently intercepted by the IDF. 

We condemn this act of violence against a group of peaceful humanitarians working to end the man-made famine imposed upon the Palestinians in Gaza. While Israel continues to actively and mercilessly bomb the Gaza strip to complete its goal of genocide and ethnic cleansing, the Global Sumud Flotilla was a beacon of hope to those waiting for much needed relief. The Global Sumud Flotilla poses no threat. They are unarmed and only carrying supplies needed by the population of Gaza such as baby formula, medical supplies, and food. 

To meet a peaceful convoy of humanitarian aid with such violence and little regard for human life is appalling. The response from Italy to try and force the Global Sumud Flotilla to turn away, siding with the IDF and betraying their own citizens, is shameful. The United States is turning a blind eye to the U.S. citizens that have been kidnapped from the convoy while it continues to be involved with and enable the illegal and immoral actions of the illegal occupation known as Israel. 

We are living in a moment which, when looked back on, everyone will say they have always been against these violent acts. We must keep hope, because to keep hope is to believe truly and honestly that Palestine will be free.

Israel must release all the hostages they have kidnapped from the Global Sumud Flotilla, they must ensure their safety, and they must allow aid into Gaza. As activist and arguably one of the most famous members of the Global Sumud Flotilla, Greta Thunberg, has said, “I'm not scared of Israel. I'm scared of a world that has seemingly lost all sense of humanity.” We must not lose our humanity and continue to uplift the Palestinian cause as it is just, it is moral, and it is freedom, not just for the Palestinians, but for all of us. Because none of us are free until all of us are free. We stand with the Global Sumud Flotilla, we condemn the violence and kidnapping, and we stand with the Palestinians in their hope to someday soon be truly free.

Zoelle Lane is running for Fort Collins Council. Zoelle is an immigrant, union member, and renter running to tackle Fort Collins’ cost of living crisis and to empower its residents. One of her goals for office is to raise the minimum wage, which is long overdue!

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