We need more leaders, we need less stuff!
Some thoughts on movement building, single-issues, false urgency, and mutual aid.
Author: Anna P.
Everything written here is my opinion and does not represent the views of Cleveland DSA.
In 2023, for the first time in my adult life, an anti-war movement with clear strategy and demands inspired mass participation in the United States. Palestinian activists raised the stakes and demanded attention with deep organizing, education, and consistency at the national level that I had never seen. Locally, I was able to learn and observe trends as a frequent participant in high risk, direct action. I was also able to observe how a coalition gets built from the ground up. I must reflect on what I have done and seen in order to prepare for the long fight towards socialism and learn from the immense efforts of organizers who came before me.
“We keep us safe” is vague and lacks any actionable demand. What we need is an organization capable of keeping people safe by wielding collective, material power. To win the fight for socialism in the United States of America, the delegation of responsibility and power must be clear and consensual to everyone involved in the movement. Our movement must be transparent and accessible, so that power is noticed and discussed. Leadership in any context must be political because giving people what they want and need is inherently political. Now that we are in Trump’s second term, and the opposition tent is bigger than ever, socialist organizations do themselves no favors smoothing over differences with competing political projects. I’m not just talking about liberals, everyone needs to get with the program. From anarchists, to black nationalists, and progressive academics; we cannot simply wish ourselves into agreement and coordination, it must be an honest struggle.
I used to believe that organizing would be so much easier if we could simply give people what they need without saying anything at all, without ever running the risk of alienation. I used to believe that what was “good” or “right” would spontaneously emerge out of individual goodwill, an intention to build a diverse community, coupled with academic or legal reason. Obviously it would be a shortcut to victory if we could manage society with a small group of good people. But the idea that the movement could be led by the people already involved in existing coalitions, was comforting, because that meant I had less work to do, and that most problems had been acknowledged.
Because I believed this, I was frustrated by communists and socialists who struggled hard over the content of collective statements, questions of history and theory that inevitably lead to a delayed response to crises. Why must the statement be a collective effort? Why can’t the chair speak for everyone out of convenience? Why do we include so much nuance in our statements? Why don’t we put boots on the ground immediately?
Through much frustration, I have started learning how to take personal responsibility for the collective will, work, and rhetoric of an organization, regardless of how it impacts my ability to wield personal power. More importantly, I learned that I could only be organizing if I convinced other people to do the same.
Taking responsibility for the safety and material conditions of others is not a decision that should be taken lightly. As an organization’s capacity to meet needs, overcome status-quo authority, and manage society is increased, new members of the working class must feel compelled to participate in more and higher levels of civil service. The organization must naturally encourage this engagement because the more people who know how to wield power and balance contradictions, the greater is their capacity to contribute to the collective project.
Additionally, my capacity for responsibility and service to an organization should not endow me with unchecked power or deference. “Doing the work” or politics dictated by volunteerism easily creeps into socialist organizations, despite most people knowing better at this point. It is worth repeating that the content of one’s ideas and arguments should lead in all exercises of power. Asking that people “do the work” before they are able to criticize anything is a harmful fallacy that has found its way into a lot of political discourse. While someone who engages with politics at high levels is important to retain, it is obvious many socialist organizations rely too strongly on too few people who are able to operate on the level of theory, creating a situation where only a few people always set the ground for debate. This inevitably leads to hidden fractures and contention in the organization. We must escape the paranoid tendency to never train new leaders, never criticize them, never discipline their political aspirations to the will of the organization.
During our local student encampment for Palestine, I learned a lot about the ordinary person’s inexperience with exercising collective communication and decision making in large groups. I believe the lack of centralization in an organization and a deference to the concept of “collective responsibility,” created a leadership vacuum at the encampment that could have been anticipated. There was also a near constant urgency and tendency to focus on the management of “stuff” that drained energy even further. I believe these last two issues are easier to fix so I will address them first.
Movements that benefit the capitalist project seemingly advance on their own thanks to an endless resource pool that includes the bodies and minds of poor and working people. In contrast, our movements for socialism do not have the privilege of coasting on endless, spontaneous momentum. So when the weather gets nice, and protests grow in size and scope, it is actually very predictable that the reproductive and administrative labor available to the spontaneous street takeovers will be insufficient to sustain them against the militarized police. Sure, we might have leaders named in the papers, but who is managing the need to call an assembly, administrate and communicate group decisions? Who is making sure people don’t get sick or hurt in the fight? Who is making sure those people are around?
This work is often assigned the status of “everyone does this” and many assume it is done in some group chat they are not part of. Not everyone can call a general assembly, and not everyone will be listened to when they speak. The existence of group chats as decision making spaces also makes this lack of transparency and indecision additionally frustrating for participants. It does not inspire them to take larger risks for the cause.
The lack of centralised authority created a few different kinds of chaos at the encampment. First, there was simply too much stuff. A collective decision to stop accepting donations would have avoided unnecessary labor and exhaustion for volunteers running the medic tent and food area. Additionally, there were routinely not enough participants willing to get arrested for the sake of the camp at any given time. This is probably because the capacity of the “high risk participants” was not managed appropriately. I was getting called back to the camp constantly every time rumors spread of a potential raid, I never got the chance to tap out. Again, a collective decision to throttle the urgency of the messaging could have extended the limited energy of those willing to take high risk actions.
In the first days of the encampment I was very impressed by the student organizers. These young activists quickly set up formal channels of communication, utilized their organic networks on campus, and brought in the greater community to spread the word about important decisions. The authority in the beginning was well-defined and worked to get everyone on the same page about what needed to happen. One of the ways this manifested was in a “camp basics” document circulated among many, that addressed matters of conduct and jail support.
However, after the camp was established, it began to be run in an increasingly decentralized fashion. The student organizers naturally sought greater buy-in from the camp participants, but without a clear process for doing so. Gossip and constant threat of a raid contributed greatly to the “fog of war” felt by student leaders. Fear and incompatible schedules deterred regular leadership meetings. This fog never allowed for a moment to consider how to establish a general “camp” assembly, abide by the mandate of that assembly, or escalate as a response to police aggression. Every morning I would receive a telegram notification telling me it was urgent people return to the camp. I was bothered by the assumption that it wouldn’t always be the same people willing to haul out, and when I finally arrived there was no reason to have rushed at all.
When it came to matters of camp-keeping and reproductive labor, there was little enthusiasm about being the person who stepped into a leadership role. When I use the term “reproductive labor” what I am referring to is “activities of provisioning, care-giving and interaction that produce and maintain social bonds.” This is how Nancy Fraser describes social reproduction in the Contradictions of Capital and Care. The most upsetting part was that too much food was being brought into the camp, and it was being left behind in the hope that it would get consumed by somebody. A lot of the food went bad. If the University refused to pick up the trash, and locked their bins, I’m not sure we would have been able to keep the camp sanitary for 10 days, especially when the police interfered with clean up efforts. I have work experience managing trash in public places. I know that when people gather in large groups, and live outside full time, it creates an abnormal amount of waste that requires actual labor and logistics to manage. Many people were willing and able to help with the food management and meals, but ultimately with limited leadership, weeding out bad food, resetting coolers, and setting/clearing the big meal exhausted most of the capacity for the day. There was no time to discuss food strategy or best practices, there was no mechanism to do so.
Despite the obvious need, there was a reluctance to take leadership or delegate, especially among people who had never exercised the skill before. Most people were worried about “overstepping” or taking away the individual agency of others who were also trying to help. Attempting to “catch a vibe” from a large group of people seemed to be the most comfortable thing to do if someone assumed a particular responsibility and had to motivate the task. No one wanted to tell other people what to do, so when work was accomplished, it was the result of individual initiative, not collective action.
I am guilty of all of this, especially as days wore on and it felt like we were getting nowhere. Everyone was always waiting on someone else’s direction and that was exhausting. Of course, there is always going to be contradictory information fighting for air, but it was so obvious the student organizers let their own lack of consensus slip out into the whole camp. It wasn’t long before the camp was unable to speak with one voice, and camp participants were calling the police on counter-protestors. Student leaders had wisely announced a rule against that in the previously mentioned “camp basics” document. This useful and important document was never recirculated and was lost to time, buried in a group chat where so much of this organizing took place. By the end of the first week I was completely demoralized, and then shortly after the encampment ended without further escalation.
This is no one’s fault. We are not taught the mechanics of collective decision making, and being overburdened with material support almost seems like a good problem to have. I stood in awe as I witnessed an entire church lobby filled to the brim with protest supplies several days after police, mounted on horses, assaulted Cleveland protest participants May 30 2020. There was so much stuff, I wish someone had told me not to bother driving out to drop off more. Saline solution, water, hundreds of sunscreen bottles, all accumulated for protests that had not even been planned yet. Unfortunately, the hard part isn’t finding people who will donate, but finding the administrative labor required to take the stuff where it needs to go and manage it. Mutual aid, and keeping people safe, is usually the first task of any street movement, so it is shocking how we still struggle so much with the basics.
The truth is, for a highly publicized injustice, it is actually very easy to ask for and receive large amounts of donations and supplies. There is genuine repressed enthusiasm from the alienated working class that comes out, often, in the form of donations. Almost always, the only thing the movement actually needs is momentum, bodies, and leaders. The alienated worker’s lack of time and freedom to participate in collective action is softened by the hope that there are other outlets through which they can participate and hopefully contribute. Resorting too quickly to donations and social media awareness campaigns might even alienate someone further from taking power in their own life because the movement did not win its demands, nothing changed, and the worker does not understand how any of it happened. The movement should, but often fails to, offer participation and genuine opportunity to lead, to its base that is not already committed to the cause. Learning to lead is how people buy into the greater project and stay committed for the long haul.
Unfortunately, for the activists, work needed to maintain occupations, encampments, and riots cannot be done by paid staff. Outside of mass mobilizations like these, community care often does involve paid staff (nonprofit or otherwise) set out with the task of fulfilling a particular need that activists may be organizing around. For example, social workers will come out to support trans activists and self-organize professional support outside of any kind of movement infrastructure. The Cleveland Food Bank still feeds anyone regardless of marginalized status. When administration of “stuff” is done spontaneously, or when activist time is not effectively managed, unpaid activists duplicate the work of paid activists and waste their time relentlessly. I have seen this happen a number of times, but mainly as a response to COVID or environmental disasters like the East Palestine train derailment.
It makes me sad and worried when I consider all the unpaid activist energy and capacity that has gone into establishing brand new mutual aid projects for every tragedy and issue-area. Often the service non-profits (donor/corporate/grant funded NGOs, yes, even small ones) and charity organizations are willing and capable of providing blankets, water, hot meals, clothes, bail, sometimes legal services, sometimes medical services, and basically any and all consumer goods to victims of tragedy and injustice. Often, it is someone’s literal job to raise money for direct support or to provide a service for free. Since the United States does not have a welfare system, these organizations (good/bad, religious/agnostic, government/non government) are the faulty, decentralized safety net that everyone is far too familiar with. Do people fall through the net, and are unable to get what they need to survive? Absolutely. Will we be able to catch them and support them without a complete restructuring of society and universal welfare programs? Probably not. Ultimately it is a political problem, not a problem of charity.
Socialist organizations can and should do charity/mutual aid as a supplement to education and organizing. However, before beginning this work I believe it is necessary to acknowledge two limitations. First, aid and service are the bandaid we use to help who we can when it is not possible for mass mobilization/power shift on a particular issue. We always want to shift the levers of power, and eliminate the root cause of injustice. For example, we should not donate rent money to assist tenants if the tenants themselves can strike and negotiate a lower rent that they can actually afford. Second, the impact of our work will be relatively small compared to the market forces that drive the disparity we are trying to resolve. There will always be more people we need to help than hands available to provide necessary one-on-one attention that every human being deserves.
Too often, instead of confronting these limitations, DSA chapters and similar organizations will try to be everything to everyone. Routinely, the social movement wants to take on more than it is capable of handling, assuming responsibility for an entire issue-area, positioning itself as an alternative to traditional nonprofits/service providers, and doing so with a deeply misguided sense of urgency. They duplicate the work of organizations which are both increasingly failing to address the problems of capitalism, and which are far, far better positioned to address them than unpaid activists are. In doing so, they misunderstand that the purpose of political organization is to change the balance of power, and the purpose of progressive political organization is to win socialism. This “everything at once” approach sidelines leadership development and collective decision-making, all in order to “do the work” with the “proper” amount of commitment and on an accelerated timeline. Too often, committed activists are compelled to prove their moral integrity on every issue in order to present as properly intersectional and radical. Attempting to prove the moral integrity of an organization or individual is not a path towards justice, and it certainly isn’t the way to win socialism. Instead, we are tasked with the hard work of motivating ordinary people to our cause, slowly and deliberately. The people we need to win are not already running their own projects, and they are not toiling to maintain the decaying social safety net either.
Instead of starting a brand new mutual aid or service project, I believe it is better to keep logs of references and research to share, and provide aid to people who ask for it explicitly. As a socialist, I cannot be everything to everyone, but I can try to build a plan for someone who comes to me and asks for help. There are times when DSA, and myself by extension, have actually filled a gap in services that the NGO industrial complex had not accounted for. Cleveland DSA spent two years knocking on the doors of people facing eviction and encouraged them to go to their hearing, shared resources, and followed up afterwards. There were times when the notice did not come and I was telling someone for the first time that they were getting evicted. Sometimes I drove tenants to their hearing. Sometimes I helped someone stay in their home, and sometimes there was nothing I could do. Regardless of the outcome, providing the door-knocking service was never my job, it was always something I did out of obligation to our organization’s priorities and goals. The eviction canvassing could only reach about 43% of all cases being filed in a year and it was very difficult to organize tenant unions while tenant leaders were in an active crisis. We were not moving toward our ultimate goal of building a city-wide tenants union, so the work had to be abandoned. In fact, a $20,000 grant was created by United Way to fill this gap in eviction-related outreach, and they offered it to DSA. When we denied the money, it was offered to another organization who hired two people to do the work part-time. There is nothing about this exchange of work that is wrong or morally compromised. The service work is being done by an employee paid for their time, and we don’t need to mobilize 20 volunteers on a biweekly basis. Our leaders of the project at the time explained how there was only so much of themselves they could extend to a service-based project, acknowledging it was never mutual aid because we could not get the tenants we canvassed to come out and knock doors for others after their eviction was over.
If DSA can provide a necessary service to people in crisis and organize ordinary people into powerful leaders at the same time, I am so happy to do both. If I must pick one, then I must try to find some people who are not in active crisis or are not already self-selected, highly-involved activists. I need to find people with the free time to read, debate, and practice leadership in a collective body. I must be able to reproduce myself for the sake of having socialists to live another day. I have trouble acknowledging the very real opposition many working class people feel towards the idea of a collective society. I have trouble acknowledging that our “mid size” DSA chapter has less yearly income, and moves less money per-year, than a single Ohioan making minimum wage. At the same time, it frees my ego when I consider how truly devastating the situation really is. Looking ahead, there is so much work that needs to be done.
I believe the ease of our mass communications (through social media/ group chats) and easy access to material goods have made our movement lazier and less deliberate about what we say and what we think we need. We should not be naive, and understand when we receive “stuff” “attention” or “useful data” from capitalists and their institutions, it is a pity prize.
During the tenth and final day of the Palestine encampment my nails were packed with dirt, several pounds of taco meat spilled in my car, I had bruising from handcuffs, and three parking tickets sat on my dash. I’m unemployed without any means to pay them.
Looking in the mirror, I realized that the people I need to radicalize the most, were not going to be able to do this work. I was as self-selected as they come, and just telling someone to copy my imperfect time/resource sacrifice was not going to motivate or empower them to build power in their own life. If anything, the example I set was predicated on giving so much of myself, that there was no way I could be supporting someone else in their development as a leader. Solidarity is not self-sacrifice and it is wrong for a socialist to put themselves in this position. It is especially wrong to expect others to do the same. The people we need to lead the movement don’t already identify as activists and don’t have time to “prove themselves” through constant, selfless acts of charity and sacrifice. Ordinary people often stay the course on one long term project that directly affects their material conditions. Ordinary people bring others into the work instead of doing everything themselves, often this is a skill that needs to be taught and fostered in groups accustomed to individualist competition.
If we are trying to build a mass movement, by teaching people how to exercise power and organize themselves, then we should only be engaging in single issues to the point that they radicalize new socialists and not beyond that. If the single-issue project is actually collective it will move itself, if it was always a couple people making every decision, it will fizzle out. As an activist, I do not have the capacity or strength to die on every hill. I don’t always need to be the thing standing in between a stranger and some horrible fate. The cycle of suffering is endless and expansive, but if everything is urgent then nothing is. Before it is too late, we must build a self-critical and leadership-heavy democratic organization that is able to hold the contradictions of the multiracial, American working class. And I don’t want these new socialists obsessed with the idea that more stuff in the hands of more people is the ultimate mission of mutual aid. It is important we do not assume that every participant is already a leader capable of driving strangers to action or subordinating themselves to the will of the collective body. Lastly, without formal organization at the core of our movement, the self-selected ones lose their way, giving too much of themselves and their collective capacity to an endless amount of work that will never be properly done.
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May Day solidarity — Your National Political Committee newsletter
Enjoy your April National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 18-person body (including two YDSA members who share a vote) which functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, join May Day actions, protect trans rights, get involved with our national Convention, and more!
And to make sure you get our newsletters in your inbox, sign up here! Each one features action alerts, upcoming events, political education, and more.
- From the National Political Committee — May Day Solidarity
- National Electoral Commission Announces Two New Candidates — Your Support Can Put Them in Office!
- Help Pass Vital Trans Rights Legislation Today!
- Fight Oligarchy This May Day! Mass Call Sunday 4/29, Marches Monday 5/1, Thursday 5/3
- Monthly Convention Update: Volunteering Opportunities, Proposal Submissions, and Convention Programming Submissions Open!
- Sign Up for Housing Justice Commission’s May Meeting Wednesday 5/7
- Protect Socialist History! Join Our DSA Archives Workshop Thursday 5/29
- The Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus is Stronger and Building!
- Apply for DSA’s National Communications Committee
From the National Political Committee — May Day Solidarity
May Day is a uniquely international holiday, where workers of the world unite to celebrate our history and demands for our future — and it’s a holiday with deep American roots. A May Day 1886 protest demanding 8-hour work days (something we so often take for granted) led to the Chicago police brutalizing a crowd of protestors in Haymarket Square, and a series of violent events which led to the unjust state executions of 7 “Apostles of Labor.”
Socialists must remember these roots. This fight has never been easy, but we stand on the shoulders of giants, arm in arm with our comrades across our own organization — over 70,000 strong — and our siblings in the labor movement, the renters’ rights movement, the Palestinian liberation movement, the migrants’ rights movement, and so many more.
Because of this solidarity, we have incredible opportunities to organize and exert our collective strength, working locally and nationally in unison with mass movements around the world, to pick big fights against the boss class, and to win. We are stronger every day, even as the forces of capital work to slow us down, because we continue to build this solidarity.
We’ve witnessed the strength of this solidarity in the last few weeks, as hundreds of thousands of people have come out to the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour to see democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speak out against the system that oppresses us, even in deep red parts of the country like Idaho and Bakersfield, California. The rallies feature labor organizers representing people who form the backbone of our economy, from rideshare workers to farmworkers, and socialist electeds building the bench downballot, like DSA city councilmember Eunisses Hernandez in Los Angeles. The message is clear: a better world is possible, and we need class solidarity to win it. DSA members are showing up in force at local stops of this tour to canvass attendees and show how we are ready to give people the chance to be protagonists of their own history and build the working class power we need at scale to take on the oligarchy.
DSA chapters all across the country are planning May Day events, and we have officially joined the May Day Strong movement, organized with the Chicago Teachers Union and Bargaining for the Common Good. We’re encouraging DSA members everywhere to plug in — check out our May Day toolkit for ways to get involved. You can find your nearest chapter and their contact info here, and check the May Day Strong Map to find an event near you!
This year, mobilizing on May Day is even more urgent:
- In spite of the objections of the Supreme Court, members of Congress, and millions of working class people, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a father and union worker, is still being detained illegally in El Salvador.
- Pro-Palestine organizer and former UAW member Mahmoud Khalil is being held illegally in ICE detention in Louisiana.
- Over two hundred thousand federal workers have lost their jobs and nearly a million more have been told that their right to bargain over working conditions no longer exists.
And before you hit the streets on May 1, please join us for a mass call on April 29. On this call — Fight Oligarchy: Build to May Day 2025 — you’ll hear from labor organizers, immigrants’ rights activists, and DSA chapter leaders on how you can fight back this May Day against attacks on our unions, rights, and essential services.
Need more ways to plug in? Please scroll down for a number of exciting ways to organize today — several of our national committees are seeking new members, we have a call to action from comrades in Colorado against an anti-trans bill, there’s more info about DSA Convention 2025 (to be held in Chicago, the Haymarket Martyrs’ resting place), and lots more ways to tap in and fight for a better future.
This is a difficult moment in our history, but the bosses are scared. They haven’t seen an organized left of this strength and caliber in their lifetimes. The stakes are high, and it’s on us to organize with even more strength and purpose, to exploit the contradictions that open up in uncertain times like these, and to win. May Day is a day to remind each other that together, organized people make history.
In Solidarity,
Megan Romer and Ashik Siddique
DSA National Co-Chairs
National Electoral Commission Announces Two New Candidates — Your Support Can Put Them in Office!
This year, DSA’s National Electoral Commission has an exciting new project. We’re supporting a rotating slate of candidates with nationwide fundraising throughout the year — and in our first 30 days, we’ve already raised over $20,000!
We couldn’t be prouder of this slate of socialist candidates. All of them represent DSA and our vision for the future so well, including our two latest new endorsees, Tammy Honeywell and Michael Westgaard. Tammy Honeywell, a union leader and founding member of Syracuse DSA, is running for a seat in the Onondaga County Legislature in upstate New York. And in Washington State, Michael Westgaard of Seattle DSA is running for Renton Common Council. Your donations can help put them and our socialist candidates across the country in office!
And do you want to help out with phonebanking? Sign up for the NEC email list for more info!
Help Pass Vital Trans Rights Legislation Today!
URGENT ACTION NEEDED! The Kelly Loving Act (HB25-1312), a bold package of pro-trans changes to Colorado law backed by Colorado DSA chapters, has passed the State House and is currently before the State Senate. However, far-right opposition is mounting, and we need your help to get this vital trans rights legislation across the finish line! Click here to write to Colorado legislators and demand they take action to protect trans people.
Fight Oligarchy This May Day! Mass Call Sunday 4/29, Marches Monday 5/1, Thursday 5/3
The Trump administration continues to target federal workers, immigrants and the institutions that provide basic support for working people in our country. On May 1st, chapters across the country are joining the call to fight back and build a movement that can fight for the world we deserve!
Join us this Sunday, 4/29 at 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT/6:30pm MT/5:30pm PT to learn how you can be part of this fight. On this call, you’ll hear from organizers fighting for immigrant rights, defending our federal services, and building cross-union structures to build to May Day 2025!
Monthly Convention Update: Volunteering Opportunities, Proposal Submissions, and Convention Programming Submissions Open!
Our DSA Convention is coming up in August, and preparations are going on now. To start, we have openings on Convention Planning Subcommittees! The Convention Planning Subcommittees are looking to fill a few open spots. Interested members can view more information and apply to join a Convention Planning Subcommittee here! The application deadline is Friday, 5/2.
And proposals have been flying into our Convention Hub on the DSA Discussion Forum. These include new Bylaws, Platform Changes, and Resolutions, all of which are looking for signatories. Head on over to the Convention Hub to see what’s being submitted and sign on to things you want to see debated on the Convention floor! The deadline to submit proposals is Sunday 5/11.
You must be a member in good standing to view and sign on to any proposals. If you need to sign up for the DSA Discussion Forum account, go here to make your account today!
Having trouble getting on the forum? Reach out to the NTC at ntc@dsacommittees.org.
We’re also excited to open our call for submissions for programming sessions at this year’s DSA National Convention. You can submit your ideas here until Saturday, May 31. Sessions can include workshops, panel discussions, seminars, and creative displays or performances. This year, we are aiming for diverse, engaged, and energetic programming that connects to our theme, “Rebirth and Beyond: Reflecting on a Decade of DSA’s Growth and Preparing for a Decade of Party-Building.”
And finally, DSA’s National Fundraising Committee is calling for new members to help us raise a boatload of money to support DSA’s work at the 2025 DSA National Convention. We’re particularly looking for help organizing a live fundraiser event on Saturday, August 9. This includes soliciting donations of auction items for our live auction. If you have chapter fundraising experience, that’s all the better, but anyone can help contribute to this work. Apply here today! Applications are open on a rolling basis.
Sign Up for Housing Justice Commission’s May Meeting Wednesday 5/7
Join the Housing Justice Commission’s May meeting on Wednesday 5/7 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT! On this call, you’ll hear about our consensus resolution for the 2025 DSA convention, and our new and improved Emergency Tenant Organizing Committee project. If you’re interested in starting a new tenant union or you want to talk about housing work in DSA, come on through!
Protect Socialist History! Join Our DSA Archives Workshop Thursday 5/29
DSA Archives Workshop is BACK! When socialist education is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back… by taking care of our history and records! After a long hiatus, NPEC is excited to bring back the DSA Archives Workshop, co-sponsored by the DSA Fund. Chapter secretaries, political educators, comrades with old stuff, and anyone interested in the importance of archives for the left are welcome to join! The call will be held on Thursday, 5/29 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT. RSVP here today.
The Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color Caucus is Stronger and Building!
Thanks to everyone who joined our 4/10 General Body Meeting — our first since relaunching with the new Executive Committee! We’re now forming Working Groups and Committees to kick off organizing efforts and internal support structures.
Want to plug in? Fill out the interest form to help lead or join a group. Groups with the most engagement will be prioritized.
Apply for DSA’s National Communications Committee
The National Communications Committee is expanding! We are looking for DSA members with experience in video editing, livestream production, social media strategy, graphic design, media relations, and more to expand our national communications work. The National Communications Committee’s NPC members and at-large co-chair will appoint the new members, and will be accepting applications on a rolling basis. Apply here today!
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Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America condemn FBI arrest of Milwaukee County judge
The Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) condemn the FBI’s arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, accused of obstructing ICE agents from taking a man into custody at the federal courthouse during the recent escalation in arrests of immigrants and minorities throughout the country at the behest of President Trump and his backers.
“ICE’s presence in our courthouse is an unconscionable assault on our public safety,” Milwaukee DSA leader Andy Barbour said. “We must all oppose this administration’s efforts to harm the immigrants in our community, as well as this administration’s attempts to intimidate those who fight for justice.”
The chapter will continue to support Dugan and others targeted by oppressive government forces in the days ahead.
Milwaukee DSA is Milwaukee’s largest socialist organization fighting for a democratic economy, a just society, and a sustainable environment. Join today at dsausa.org/join.
The risks vs. rewards of unionizing
Should you organize your workplace? Consider these risks and rewards, then talk with an organizer to get started.
The post The risks vs. rewards of unionizing appeared first on EWOC.
2025 GNDCC Priority Committee Resolution
Whereas the existential threat of the global climate and ecological crisis we face, unlike any in human history, requires socialists to make this a central terrain in our struggle for a better world and against a racialized capitalist system profiting from extraction, exploitation, and domination.
Whereas the Green New Deal (GND) is a flexible and popular framework for transformative state climate and environmental action, not a particular bill or predetermined set of policies.
Whereas, DSA adopted resolutions in 2019, 2021, and 2023 to prioritize fighting for an ecosocialist Green New Deal as defined by DSA’s democratically adopted GND Principles;
Whereas in 2023, the GNDCC launched the Building For Power (B4P) campaign to train and support DSA chapters to fight for state and municipal GND-style reforms in coalition with unions and other mass working-class organizations behind a common vision of an emancipated, democratic, and sustainable society;
Whereas, the GNDCC has provided dozens of trainings, workshops, mass calls, webinars, and policy briefs for at least 85 chapters in support of the B4P strategy;
Whereas, chapters around the country have adopted B4P campaigns and successfully built significant relationships with organized labor and propelled socialists in office, including Milwaukee’s Power to the People, Chicago’s Fix the CTA, Louisville’s Get on the Bus, NYC’s House the Future, and more;
Whereas, the GNDCC, as all national bodies, has submitted a report going into further detail on activity within the past two years;
Whereas by coaching chapters to run B4P campaigns, the GNDCC can help build DSA’s capacity to respond to a second Trump administration by developing strong chapters that can execute strategic campaigns;
Be it therefore resolved the GNDCC is rechartered as a national DSA priority commission until the 2027 DSA Convention, and is tasked with continuing its work training, coaching, and supporting chapters with Building for Power campaigns.
Resolved that the GNDCC will continue to train and organize DSA chapters to run and win legislative campaigns and labor and ballot demands for reforms that shift structural power to the working class by building public sector and organized labor capacity—like expanded mass transit, democratized and decarbonized public energy, green social housing, and green public spaces and facilities.
Resolved that the GNDCC will continue to support the development of chapter capacity by providing campaign-oriented training, coaching, resources, and educational materials and facilitating cross-chapter coordination as part of a larger unified strategy.
Resolved that the GNDCC will continue to emphasize collaboration with other DSA national bodies on overlapping campaign and policy areas, especially via mass political education events. Specifically, GNDCC will work with the NPC’s Trump Administration Response Committee (TARC) to incorporate, where strategic, B4P and the GNDCC’s ongoing work into the messaging and tactics of DSA’s national response to the Trump administration.
Resolved that the NPC will appoint the 11-member GNDCC within 60 days of the start of the NPC term, to serve a term of two years until the 2027 National Convention. The outgoing GNDCC will solicit applications and the NPC will appoint candidates based on the capacity, skills, and knowledge needed for carrying out this campaign.
Resolved that the GNDCC will maintain such subcommittees and processes as needed to fulfill the campaign’s objectives.
Resolved that the NPC will commit resources to the work of the campaign, particularly coaching, training and growing DSA chapters engaged in work within its umbrella. Such resources shall include, at least, the following:
- Staff, technical, and other support for campaign fundraising and merchandise, as reasonably needed and requested by the GNDCC;
- Budget funds necessary to support digital tools and resources for campaign organizing;
- Access to DSA member data and other resources as reasonably needed and requested by the GNDCC.
From April 5th to May Day
Illustration by Jos Sances
Organizing is ramping up for May Day demonstrations against the rise of American fascism.
The turnout for more than twelve hundred “Hands Off” demonstrations around the country, in every state of the union, beat even the most optimistic predictions on April 5. Depending on whose estimates you accept, somewhere between a million and three million came out to express their deep displeasure with Trump, Musk, and the crew of fascist billionaires they have installed at the top of the federal government. DSA members across California lifted up a socialist message within the day’s events.
The original organizers of “Hands Off”, the liberal electoral group Indivisible, had little previous experience in putting together this type of event. Many other organizations, however, hopped on board as the date drew near, including organized labor. Things were a bit chaotic at the Oakland demonstration I attended, with a muddy sound system and spontaneous marches heading off in various directions. But there was no missing the angry spirit uniting the crowd, and the opportunity to vent brought out at least five thousand people and made up for the gaps in organizing.
Creative energies spawned a forest of colorful signs on a myriad of issues. Immigrant and trans rights, free speech, the decimation of federal programs in order to fund tax cuts for the rich, elimination of federal worker collective bargaining, Palestinian liberation, democracy under attack, the unlawful nature of Trump’s executive orders and Musk’s stealing of personal data—there was no lack of problems to be angry about.
On to May Day
The crowds could grow even larger on May 1. The traditional day of international working class protest, solidarity and celebration of spring renewal will provide a platform for discontent against the right wing assault. National DSA has called for all chapters to mobilize members for the day.
This year the symbolic power of May Day has taken on greater urgency due to the Trumpist onslaught and the labor movement’s growing alignment with United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain’s call for unions to line up their contracts to expire on May Day 2028. Between now and 2028 the International Workers Day demonstrations will function as a barometer of working class strength and ability to gear up for a general strike.
In Los Angeles, former County Federation of Labor leader and current state senator Maria Elena Durazo, looking toward May 1 says, “Resist, resist, resist. That's a pledge that more and more organizations and just individual people in this country are taking up. This is another moment… to demonstrate that we oppose all of these steps frankly that are in the direction of fascism. And we won't stand for that in this country.”
Here are three things you can do to help build May Day 2025:
Work with your DSA chapter to organize a big contingent at your local event
Organize a screening with comrades, co-workers, family and friends of the award-winning thirty-minute documentary We Mean to Make Things Over: A History of May Day to learn about the background of International Workers Day. Stream it here.
Go to your local event on May 1. Find it, along with a toolkit for publicity, here.
Where to go:
Los Angeles: 8:30 am, DSA LA is assembling at Olympic and Figueroa for the rally and march
Oakland: 3 pm, Fruitvale Plaza to San Antonio Park, rally, march and resource fair
San Francisco: 4 pm, Civic Center Plaza
San Jose: 2:30 pm rally at King and Story, 4 pm march to City Hall
Ventura: 11 am – 1 pm, rally Ventura County Government Center, 800 S. Victoria Avenue
Don’t see your location in this list? Go here.
Bernie is Naming and Shaming the System that Oppresses Us
On Saturday April 12, over 36,000 people braved the heat to Feel the Bern at the Los Angeles leg of Bernie Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy tour. DSA-LA members showed up in full force to table, canvass the crowd, and build our movement. The total attendance for these nationwide rallies is now over 200,000, indicating a major political moment like the one that built the modern iteration of DSA in 2016—one that DSA needs to support and build upon.
Lines at the entrances formed before 8 am. The crowd sprawled out in front of LA City Hall, ranging from elderly folks with dogs to teens filming TikToks. There was even a group of middle-aged goths sporting their black parasols. One family from Fontana left their house at 4 am to make sure they were able to make it inside the event. The dust kicked up in the overflow area while Joan Baez and Neil Young chanted “power to the people.” It all felt fitting for “Berniechella.”
At the DSA-LA table, we sold Dodger-blue t-shirts with our own custom Bernie logo as we introduced our vision to curious folks and asked them to become members. We sold over 100 shirts in the first few hours. Throughout the park, DSA canvassers had hundreds of conversations with potential members as we invited them to upcoming DSA 101s and socials.
Making “Oligarchy” a household term
What was Bernie Sanders doing in Los Angeles? It’s not an election year, almost the entirety of our city council are nominally Democrats, we’re already a sanctuary city, and the county went for Kamala Harris by 1.3 million votes. Why would Bernie spend time seemingly preaching to the choir?
The goal of the tour seems to be to make “oligarchy” a household term. By deliberately calling out the capitalists as the source of our systemic problems, Sanders and AOC are raising class consciousness without anyone ever having to crack open Marx. By leading with the issues that resonate with working people—the rent being too damn high, getting money out of politics—Sanders is able to draw massive crowds from both liberal strongholds like LA to deep red regions like Bakersfield. This project of uniting workers of all backgrounds is critical for DSA to build upon.
“People in all different geographic areas are dealing with increasingly similar conditions, just being ground down by the cost of living, it’s harder and harder to make ends meet,” says Ashik Siddique, DSA National co-chair who canvassed at the LA and Bakersfield rallies. “To fight right-wing authoritarianism, we need mass politics and organizing at a scale to match. We should lean into this political moment by supporting it every place we can.”
The labor unions that attended the rally represented a wide range of workers, from longshoremen, to nurses, to graduate students, to teachers, and more. It was an example of the diversity of workers necessary in order for our movement to be successful.
What’s next?
But what’s next, after a rally? Where does the energy and anger go? Our answer, of course, is DSA.
“The political imagination of the liberal status quo coalition in our city has plateaued,” says DSA LA co-chair Marc K. “Liberals in our city don’t have the political courage to pass more robust renter protection, for example. But the labor movement is willing to go past what the liberals are able to do. DSA has shown that we’re willing to lead the way and labor is coming along with us in that fight. That’s how we got four people on city council and two people on the school board for the nation’s second-largest school district.”
The LA rally was announced with less than two weeks’ lead time; DSA LA’s local convention was scheduled for the same day. Chapter leadership discussed and voted to move convention by a day, a massive logistical lift that nevertheless paid off with the chapter’s growth. At least eighty DSA volunteers canvassed the rally crowd, collecting 235 commitment cards and signing up 53 new members.
One person named Drew had identified as a democratic socialist for years and became a member at our table on Saturday. I asked him what convinced him to finally join. “I believe in universal healthcare, universal childcare, basic human rights. When I lived in Texas, I saw leftists get a lot of harassment from right-wingers with assault rifles, and it is really important for the movement that we stick together.”
Over and over, I heard that what resonated with people was conversations about the issues that affect them: the rent is too high, healthcare is too expensive, schools are being defunded, and so on. And I also saw what didn’t work: one canvasser opened a conversation by explaining that DSA is “building a mass working class political organization.” These sorts of terms may seem totally normal for active DSA members, but in this case, the canvasser was met with a blank stare and an “um, okay.”
It was a great reminder that leading with the issues and their socialist solutions is the most effective way to grow our organization, not fighting about the nuances of caucus discourse on Twitter or explaining our internal committee structures. AOC would seem to agree—in her speech, she emphasized, “This movement is not about purity tests, it’s about class solidarity.”
Fired up
After Bernie was finished speaking, I expected we would break down our table and start packing up. But the table was busier than ever with people fired up and wanting to become members. One person walked up to me and said, “I want to join DSA. How do I get involved?” A canvasser’s dream!
I asked another new member, Jaiden, why they had decided to join DSA today. “Actions speak louder than words,” they said. “I can preach about it all day, but I need to get my feet on the ground and make it happen.”
These rallies are a critical recruitment opportunity for chapters nationwide, whether they’re in liberal cities like LA or deep red towns in the Midwest. The overwhelming enthusiasm for two democratic socialist politicians demonstrates that there is energy for our movement, and we just need to harness it.
Benina S, DSA LA’s co-chair along with Marc K, says, “We’ve been a Democratic supermajority state for a long time, but there’s no political will to undo things like Prop 13 [a limit on property taxes] or the statewide ban on rent control and actually help working class people. Socialism provides an imagination for the future, and 36,000 people are here because they were moved by class struggle messaging.”
Federal Workers Are Organizing to Fight the Trump/Musk Oligarchy
On Saturday, April 5, millions hit the streets in 1,200 cities and towns across the country demanding “Hands Off” our federal programs, rights and workers. Unlike mass actions of the first Trump resistance, this one was backed by many unions and by the Federal Unionists Network, or the FUN. The FUN, a self-organized network of rank-and-file federal workers, is a significant focal point in the struggle against the billionaire takeover of the federal government.
The FUN’s strategic role in the fight against the oligarchy
Federal workers are a highly strategic group in this struggle. They are a massive workforce, of some 2.3 million civilian employees, with large concentrations in every city in the U.S. – think federal office buildings, postal facilities, social security offices, VA hospitals and research facilities, among many other federal worksites. Nearly 150,000 federal workers live in California, with tens of thousands in the larger cities where DSA chapters are strong.
Beyond their size and broad geographic distribution, federal workers have drawn a compelling connection between their immediate interest in saving their jobs and their union contracts and the interests of working people in saving public services and protections we all depend on. They did so very effectively in a March 13 livestream, which got 200,000 views.
In other words, as noted in a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, “By going after the federal work force, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk are radicalizing the very people who can best explain how the government does so much good for so many.”
The Federal Unionists Network has been organizing since 2023, but since Inauguration Day its ranks and leadership have swelled to a level that has allowed it to set the resistance agenda for its union hierarchy. While the dozen or so unions representing federal workers litigate and lobby, top union leaders recognize that the real organizing to build the mass power it will take to win is happening at the rank-and-file level. As AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said on a webinar the FUN held on March 30 to train its members to organize their co-workers, “Yes, we’re filing the lawsuits, yes, we’re fighting back in Congress, but most importantly,” she said, referring to the FUN, “we’re mobilizing in the streets.”
“All this,” as the Times op-ed concluded, makes federal workers “uniquely well positioned to lead a new kind of resistance — more mainstream and grounded than the last one, and powerful enough to mobilize millions of Americans under its banner.”
DSA, May Day and Beyond
DSA’s National Political Committee has adopted a May Day resolution that proposes that chapters ally with the FUN; and a number of DSA and YDSA chapters in California are already involved in planning May Day rallies and marches. We are well-situated to bring along our labor and community allies and connect their struggles with that of the federal workers. Getting our local unions and labor councils mobilized shouldn’t be too heavy a lift. After all, they recognize that the threat to federal workers and their union contracts is just the beginning of a wider war against workers and unions in every sector. As one labor scholar put it, “the Trump order [to cancel collective bargaining agreements] threatens to produce a veritable nuclear winter in U.S. labor relations” well beyond the federal sector.
Looking beyond May Day, East Bay DSA’s Labor Committee adopted a resolution creating a working group to plan a longer-term campaign to fight the Trump/Musk oligarchy in solidarity with federal workers and the FUN. Our aim is to bring a priority campaign resolution to our chapter convention in May. The first meeting of the campaign planning group drew over fifteen comrades, who brainstormed goals for the campaign.
One of the proposed goals was getting the word about the FUN out to federal workers in the East Bay, for instance, by heading to the federal office building in Oakland at lunchtime to talk with them. (One of our members works at a federal research facility and is already spreading the word there.)
Another goal we discussed is linking the struggles of local unions and community groups to the larger fight against the oligarchy that the FUN is quarterbacking. The federal unionists are in every agency, connected with funding and policy implementation on every imaginable issue – from education to housing to transit, from environmental protections to national parks to veterans’ healthcare, from Social Security to Medicaid to public health, and so much more. That means there is virtually no issue DSA is involved in that cannot be connected back to the oligarchy’s threats. In particular, cuts at the Department of Education, if not its complete elimination, are hitting our K-12 public schools, and our colleges and public universities are threatened with cuts both there and in other agencies (along with an attack on basic rights of free speech and association). Similarly, cuts to Medicaid would decimate our public health system. Connecting our local teachers’ unions, academic workers and university staff, and healthcare workers to the national struggle of the FUN, and vice versa, will not be hard.
Engagement by socialists is critical to building the movement
Socialists played critical roles from the earliest days of the Civil Rights Movement, and we may be in an analogous early stage of a new mass movement today. We are also discussing the importance of our chapter joining local organizing committees that will plan future mass actions, like the ones on May Day. Our role is crucial, not only because we can reach so many workers who did not learn about the April 5 rallies, but also because our experience of direct member democracy in DSA suits us well to building a democratic culture that ensures that working class people are driving the campaign. In the longer term, building broad, democratic local alliances across the country will be critical to a potential 2028 general strike, and to the eventual creation of a workers’ party in the U.S.
There is a real possibility that the actions the FUN is organizing with its partners, like the mass “Hands Off” actions across the U.S. on April 5, and the more left-leaning actions planned for May Day, signal the birth of a true, sustainable mass movement such as the U.S. has not seen since the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Socialists can’t bring such movements into being by an act of will; but when the conditions are right for them to emerge, our strategic organizing and tactical intervention can play an outsized role in their success. Allying with the Federal Unionists Network to connect their struggle within the federal apparatus with regional and local struggles in our states, cities and towns should be a priority in all our chapters. We are hopeful that East Bay DSA’s membership will agree when we bring our priority campaign resolution for a vote on May 14.
April 5: It’s Okay to Sit One Out
On April 5, 2025, tens of thousands of traumatized human beings took to a thousand different streets to tell the temporary inhabitants of the White House and their nazi-saluting cronies to keep their hands off the imperfect aspirations of American benevolence.
I was not one of them.
Instead, I was at home, high on tramadol, waging mortal combat with a recalcitrant body and a wheelchair that refused to turn left (my preferred direction). Which got me thinking: how does one promote universal social justice in the face of the banal cruelties of a sociopathic billionaire elite when one can barely get out the front door?
On April 5, 1977, forty-eight years to the day before the Hands Off protest, over a hundred disabled activists and their allies occupied the San Francisco offices of what was then called the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now Health and Human Services) for its failure to enforce Section 504 of 1973’s Rehabilitation Act, which plainly stated that: “No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States shall solely on the basis of his handicap, be excluded from the participation, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."
While the word “handicapped” has vanished from the justice lexicon over the years, thankfully the ideas detailed in the above paragraph have not, and the credit for that rests solely on the arthritic, scoliotic, slippery-jointed shoulders of those brave disabled freedom fighters who for 25 DAYS found ways to not only avoid arrest on their way to government capitulation, but, perhaps more amazing to me, did so despite an algorithm of existence that included catheter use and an inability to sleep on the floor.
On March 12, 1990, a thousand disabled activists and their allies marched from the White House to the US Capitol in support of the stalled Americans with Disabilities Act. When they got there, nearly four score (plus or minus seven) shed their assistive equipment and dragged their reluctant bodies up the hundred steps that barred their path to power in an all-too-human feat of endurance known as the Capitol Crawl, which helped push the bill into law four months later.
On June 22, 2017, ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today) staged a die-in outside Mitch McConnell’s office to protest Republican-led efforts to kneecap Medicaid and eliminate the Affordable Care Act, resulting in indelible images of police tearing people from their wheelchairs and otherwise abusing fragile bodies—a surprise to no one who has ever sat between a cop and their even-more-fragile ego. Weeks later, John McCain shot his famous thumbs-down on the Senate floor in a last gasp of right-wing spinefulness, vindicating yet another self-sacrificial battering of disabled bodies.
Last weekend, whispers of those three seminal events swayed through my fug of synthetic opioid bliss, suffocating my usual trip of warm love and solidarity with clouds of guilt and FOMO and self-recrimination at missing yet another vital protest. But then I started thinking about the ancillary characters in the high drama of those pivotal days in 1977, 1990, and 2017: the girl with quadriplegia who spent two hours at the San Francisco HEW offices before going home to peg-tube a blended burrito, the autistic man who stimmed out on the way to the Capitol and went to the library instead, the new DSA member named me who opted for Dennison’s chili instead of Domino’s pizza so he could parlay that saved ten bucks into a donation to ADAPT in 2017.
In short, I realized that every single one of us matters to this mass movement just the way we are, regardless of spoons or arrests or protests logged. Whether I make the next one or not, what matters is that I face cruelty with kindness, injustice with defiance, and bilateral neuropathy with 25mg of that sweet peace-and-love potion currently warming my red-blooded veins.
So if you’re feeling bummed out you couldn’t find childcare, or a ride, or a negative COVID test, and had to save your clever sign ideas for another day, know that no excuse is necessary. Your continued existence is protest enough, indeed the most primordial resistance of all.
Or maybe that’s just the drugs talking.