Donovan Lewis was a son, a brother, a sports fan, and a music-lover. He lived in Columbus surrounded by his family and friends. At 20 years old, his life was stolen from him by Officer Ricky Anderson in the early morning of Tuesday, August 30, 2022. While serving a warrant for his arrest, Anderson opened Mr. Lewis’s bedroom door and immediately fired his weapon, striking Lewis in the abdomen. Officers then handcuffed Donovan and carried him out onto the street. He was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead soon after.

Columbus DSA rejects the notion that there is any possibility the shooting was justified. Columbus Police Chief Elaine Bryant defended Anderson’s actions, saying that it appeared Lewis was raising an object in his hand at the moment police opened the door. In truth, a vape pen was the only object found on the bed after the shooting. Despite being a 30 year veteran of the force, Anderson did not hesitate even briefly before killing Donovan, opening fire in a split-second. Anderson had no opportunity to identify a weapon on Lewis’s person, nor did he afford Mr. Lewis an opportunity to surrender before ending the young man’s life. What the people of Columbus have witnessed—and what the released body camera footage demonstrates—is yet another murder in cold blood perpetrated by law enforcement against an unarmed Black person.

The murder of Donovan Lewis comes as the most recent in a series of local police killings of Black people, commonly young and/or unarmed. Columbus remembers the shooting of 16 year old Ma’Khia Bryant by Officer Nicholas Reardon, the murder of 23 year old Casey Goodson Jr. by Deputy Jason Meade, and the assassination of 47 year old Andre Hill by Officer Adam Coy. The Columbus Dispatch recently reported that of the 62 Columbus police shootings since 2018, 19 have been fatal, and of the 19 people killed, 12 have been Black. Time and time again, local law enforcement have demonstrated that they are unencumbered by any concern for Black life.

The Democratic Socialists of America remains an abolitionist organization, as does its Columbus chapter. We view the prison-industrial complex, including law enforcement agencies, as instruments of racial capitalism: the social and economic system governing American life. We believe that racial justice will not be possible until the white supremacist institutions of police and prisons are replaced by life-affirming alternatives. Columbus DSA reaffirms our commitment—shared with our comrades within and without DSA—to free America from the grip of mass incarceration. Together, we will build a society that respects human dignity irrespective of race and refuses to cage people as a solution to social problems. We will achieve food, housing, education, healthcare, and justice for the people of Columbus and beyond.
Justice for Donovan Lewis. Justice for Ma’Khia Bryant. Justice for Andre Hill. Justice for Casey Goodson Jr. Justice for all human beings who police officers have murdered and abused. Defund and abolish the Columbus Police Department

Milt Tambor, a life-long democratic socialist and trade unionist and the founder of Atlanta DSA, died August 23 in Dunwoody, Georgia at age 84. Born in 1938 to a Jewish family on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Milt was an active trade unionist and democratic socialist for over fifty years. He earned a Hebrew Teachers degree from Yeshiva University in 1957. Milt then went to Wayne State University in the heart of Detroit, Michigan where he completed his BA in Psychology. While working at the Jeffries Housing Project and Dodge Community House, where he fought against school and housing segregation in Detroit, Milt also earned a Master in Social Work degree at Wayne State.

After graduation, he stayed in Detroit to organize youth programming at the local Jewish Community Center. He then became Director of the UAW Retired Workers Center where he became involved in his staff union by volunteering on their local bargaining committee. In 1968 he became President of AFSCME Local 1640, a post he held for 10 years, during which he led a strike of 500 workers. During his years at Michigan AFSCME, Milt became a founding member of the Detroit New American Movement, and later joined DSA during the 1982 merger of NAM with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee. He then returned to Wayne State University and earned a PhD in Sociology in 1991, with a dissertation on bargaining with non-profit agencies.

After over 35 years with Michigan AFSCME, first as a local president and later as a staff representative and labor educator, Milt retired and moved to Atlanta with his wife Linda Lieberman. In 2006, as part of an effort to organize a fundraiser for Bernie Sanders’ senatorial campaign, Milt brought together local DSA members and progressives to establish the Metro Atlanta DSA. Over the next decade, he served as chair of our chapter through a wide variety of different campaigns and fights for democracy and equality. Whether it was opposing the Iraq War, supporting local labor unions, fighting foreclosures during the Great Recession, or marching for civil rights, Milt was always present and taking up a leading role. He was instrumental in rooting our organization in the workplace and community struggles of poor and working class Atlantans, using tactics from public education, to electoral organizing, to direct action.

Milt Tambor was a long-distance runner for Democratic Socialism. You can read more about Milt’s life and work in his memoir A Democratic Socialist’s Fifty Year Adventure or read the final chapter A History of Atlanta DSA. In addition to his wife, Linda, he is survived by his two sons, Alex and Jonah and a host of grandchildren and extended family. The funeral will be held at 4:30 pm this Friday, August 26th at Temple Sinai at 5645 Dupree Drive, Sandy Springs, GA 30327 if anyone wants to come to pay respects.

Today, in an unprecedented and historic move, Governor Charlie Baker’s MBTA will shut down the entire Orange Line for thirty days of emergency maintenance. This, the severs a vital transit artery for hundreds of thousands of greater Boston residents, and forces riders to pay the price for decades of disinvestment from public transportation by corrupt politicians from both parties. The T closure will snarl traffic, cut people off from whole neighborhoods, make it more difficult to get to work, and take away time that people can spend with their families. 

The Boston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America condemns the Massachusetts political establishment’s abandonment of the T. We stand in solidarity with our neighbors and fellow commuters, the riders and frontline T workers who will bear the brunt of this crisis.

The T is falling apart. For the past decade, delays, derailments, service cuts, garages collapsing, unstable tunnels, leaking cars, rusted-out stairways, fires in tunnels and across bridges, and tragic and preventable deaths have undermined trust in the political institutions that are tasked with managing it for the public good. This doesn’t have to be the case – the T once stood as a point of pride for the city and its residents, a symbol of progress, and we must work to get there again. 

Yet the collapse of the T was not caused by mere governmental incompetence, or an inevitable failure of public institutions. It’s the result of years of hard work by politicians like Charlie Baker and leaders in the Massachusetts legislature to undermine those public institutions. We condemn the failure of elected leadership and their abandonment of the public good that is mass public transit. We appreciate the legislature’s $400 million appropriation for the T in a recent transportation bond bill, although bond bills still leave a lot of the power in the hands of the Governor whether the money is even spent. We call for this full amount to be appropriated as fast as possible. But this is not enough. The T’s debt exceeds $8 billion, requiring a serious commitment to long-term funding from the state. 

We call:

• For the legislature to come back into session to forgive the T’s unjust, inherited debt and create a dedicated, long-term sustainable source of funding for the T. 
• In solidarity with Senator Markey, Representative Pressley, and others, for Governor Baker to make the MBTA’s entire system free during the Orange and Green Line extension shutdowns. 
• For cities along the Orange and Green Line shuttle routes to install temporary protected bus and bike lanes so that commuters and residents utilizing alternate modes of transportation can travel safely, as we know the streets are not completely safe for non-car uses without these measures. 
• For Maura Healey, the presumptive next Governor of Massachusetts, to resist attempts to privatize the T and undermine its unionized workforce, who work every day to protect commuters and deliver a public good, and to appoint a Secretary of Transportation with experience. 
• For voters to vote yes on 1, the Fair Share amendment, this November to fund the T in a more comprehensive way. 
• For DSA members and interested readers, to join us in canvassing at Haymarket station TODAY at 5 pm to circulate these calls to action with commuters! 

Resist privatization! Fund, Fix, and Free the T! 

Boston DSA is the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America for the Greater Boston area. We are an activist organization — not a political party — that works against oppression in its many forms. DSA’s members are building mass movements for social change while establishing an openly socialist presence in communities and politics in the Greater Boston Area, from the South Shore to the Merrimack Valley

Where we left off

Five years ago I was at the counterprotests to Unite the Right, the fascist gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, that culminated in a car attack that killed Heather Heyer and wounded many others, some quite seriously. I wrote about this for the PEWG Blog four years ago. I don’t need to rehash all the same things here, but I do want to reflect on the five years since.

I wrote that post from four years ago in part to promote the antifascist action that was coming up on August 18, 2018, and the educational panel ahead of it. As the post itself mentions, I was a speaker on that panel: Boston DSA’s speaker. It was a strange experience. I was used to protecting myself by being unnoticed. Being a speaker effectively made me a sort of VIP, one of the people that the security team – headed up by a dear friend and comrade who had been punched and stabbed at an antifascist action two weeks earlier – was there to safeguard. Some fascists did indeed show up and try to get in, albeit for apparent reconnaissance purposes more than mayhem. I didn’t know about it until the panel was over, because the security team did a great job. One guy that we’d never seen before did get in and record audio, but he wasn’t able to take video because, by his own admission, he knew that the security team would notice and bounce him.

The past and the present

On August 9 of last year, I was in Nashua, NH, hanging around outside a school board meeting with a handful of other people, including three other Boston DSA comrades. We were there in case fascists tried to crash or intimidate it. More than an hour into the meeting, the Nationalist Social Club (NSC-131) marched in, identically dressed and chanting in a group. The subset of people there who were active antifascist activists, including the four of us from Boston DSA, got in front of them. They came in shoving, grabbing one guy by the collar. We were able to arc their march to the other side of the street, so that our whole group was between them and the building. As we faced each other from across the street, one of their chants – presumably in recognition of it being two days before the anniversary of the A11 torchlight march – was “Jews will not replace us.” This was all pretty jarring for me, a direct reminder of being afraid that I would be dragged into a torch-wielding mob and mauled or killed. It brough up that same feeling of needing to be innocuous. But however unpleasant a walk down memory lane that was, it was still a memory rather than a repeat. I’ve put in a lot of work to prevent a repeat.

When I say that I’ve put in a lot of work to prevent a repeat, I mean some weeks where I spent 40+ hours doing antifascism (on top of my normal job). I mean time behind the scenes, time spent doing outreach and education, time spent in the streets. I mean getting in between our people and a guy swinging a hammer. I mean taking injuries and pepper-sprayings from both cops and fascists.

Which makes it all the more demeaning when people exclaim “Why isn’t anyone doing anything?” in response to a 4^th of July weekend march by Patriot Front (see an actual antifascist comrade’s statement on that), or in response to rallies from NSC. It also makes it all the more demeaning when people imply that commitment to antifascism is measured by whether you talk tough online or in street propaganda, whether you put “punch all the nazis” in your Twitter display name, or whether you have the right aesthetic. Or when people imply that because I don’t dress in black, that I owe a non-mutual gratitude toward those who do, or that my antifascist work is inherently lesser than theirs. Or that you need to be able to win a fight – something that’s always going to be unlikely for me for disability-related reasons – in order to properly be an antifascist.

NSC has gotten a lot of attention lately, in Boston and nationally, after they protested a Drag Queen Story Hour in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood, and their founder and leader Chris Hood was arrested for attacking a counterprotester. They recently protested another Drag Queen Story Hour in the Seaport as well. A lot of people seem to think NSC is a new player (they aren’t – they started as the New England Nationalist Club in 2019 and have been active monthly for nearly a year and a half) and indicative of things “getting worse” in the Boston area vis-à-vis the far right. The transphobic threat aimed at drag queens has escalated over the last several years alongside a far-right obsession with hunting “pedophiles.” We badly need to develop effective means to address that threat as escalation manifests locally. But in a more general sense of how the Boston area is faring in the face of fascism, the alarmism is wrong on more than one level. I remember what Chris Hood was doing in early 2018. He was building the Boston-area chapter of a different neo-Nazi group, Patriot Front (which he founded). He was part of an alliance that included Proud Boys, militias, American Guard, and a future 1/6 Capitol Riots arrestee who helped beat up counterprotesters in Portland later that year. That alliance was aiming to be an East Coast version of the ones centered around Patriot Prayer that caused so much damage to so many people in Portland (if you look closely at the ThinkProgress article, you can see that infamous Portland-area goon Tiny Toese was in its chat). Its goals never came to fruition.

A theory interlude

I see a lot of confusion and debate about what antifascism is and what its role in the left is. Whether it needs to take on a wider range of evils in order to be justified. My position is that antifascism is reproductive labor for liberatory movements that the far-right would attack and disrupt, and for the multiracial, multiethnic, multigender working class to which it would lay waste. It’s the shield to the sword, and it’s okay that it’s not the sword. Antifascism is also unusual (though not unique) in our organizing, in that it pits organizer vs organizer, rather than organizer vs existing system. That necessitates different, if overlapping, strategies and tactics, compared to what’s needed to take on the status quo. That’s okay too – it’s part of being “the shield.” I sometimes see people devalue antifascism precisely because they see far-right organizers as small potatoes. But as organizers ourselves, who believe in the power of organizing to literally remake society, we of all people should understand why far-right organizing, in all of its ideological and strategic tendencies, is dangerous. Fighting it is a specific, highly detailed task, and it needs no larger justification.

Another misconception that I see frequently about antifascism is this idea that if enough people in a community just mobilize and say they don’t want fascists in their community, the fascists will go away. A radical version of this is the idea that if you go hard enough against one fascists rally, really shut it down, they’ll never come back. I suspect that many of my readers are leftist organizers. Would you stop organizing because a bunch of people expressed opposition to you one time? Would you leave a city that you had goals for, and never come back, or abandon a campaign that resonates with the people you’re trying to organize, because your opposition shut down a single rally? This is not to say that there’s no value in individual mobilizations (a sustained effort, after all, is made up in part of individual mobilizations). But to successfully undermine, disrupt, and even eventually break fascist organizing, antifascism requires sustained, multi-pronged work. Sometimes daily work.

It requires understanding the far right, too, in its many ideological and strategic forms. How do you analyze, prioritize, predict trends, when you don’t understand what you’re fighting? No more “we don’t need to know anything about our enemies or what they think” nonsense dressed up as antiracism. No more trying to fit every far-right group into the mold of either the Klan or the National Socialist Movement, or pretending for the sake of 101-level online talking points that all far-right groups have the exact same orientation (either pro or anti) toward the state and/or police. And I am begging everyone to please read about the multiracial far right, its dynamics and its gender politics, and then to stop pretending that everyone on the far right has the same primary motivating chauvinism. Or worse, that queerphobic and transphobic groups are merely using queerphobia and transphobia as a cover for their true evil, white supremacism, as though viciously reactionary gender politics were not also far-right ideology.

Onward, redux

Reading through this reflection, it feels a bit like a litany of complaints. But I mean to end on a hopeful note. There’s no happily ever after, and the last few years have unfortunately brought a lot of new people into the far right. But I’ve seen new people join the work to fight the far right, become organizers, build their skills, and do a great job. I’ve seen people do things they never believed that they would be able to do. And I’ve seen the impacts of that – the crumbling of fascist organizations, coalitions, and actions, the gradually-increasing public awareness, the interest and involvement from people I never would have expected to join in antifascist work. In 2018, we contained fascists who tried to disrupt a trans youth rally and pro-immigrant rallies. This year I’ve seen both those events happen without incident. In 2017, I saw a torchlight march end in a brutal attack, saw hours of street brutality, saw Heather Heyer die and a lot of other people get badly hurt. Now, many of the fascist groups that participated in those events, and even the ones that rose in their wake, have declined or disappeared thanks to the hard work of antifascists.

If there’s any message that I’m trying to convey here, it’s that that this work matters, and that people can learn to do it. You don’t have to be some kind of stereotypical badass (I’m not!). You just need to be willing to put in the work, to think through what you’re doing and why, to learn and develop and reflect. To quote the comrade whose statement on the 4^th of July Patriot Front march I linked to above: “Our work is amplified when we work together, and to do that takes the sort of trust built only by shared struggle and shared vision of a better future. I have spent many years working with Boston DSA. Here, and in other organizations, is where you can find the people you can work with to make a difference.”

Donate to the fund for survivors in Charlottesville who still have ongoing medical and psychological needs.

The membership of the Champlain Valley Democratic Socialists of America votes on the chapter’s endorsements. You can see three candidates’ responses to our questionnaire here. But since we didn’t endorse a candidate in every race, our electoral working group put together this guide to offer some unofficial recommendations and guidance on harm-reduction voting to help fill up the rest of your ballot if you’re so inclined. (Several candidates running for the Democratic nomination are members of the Vermont Progressive Party, whose own ballot does not feature any competitive races.)

US Senate

• We give Isaac Evans-Frantz credit for stepping up, when no one else would, to offer some kind of left-wing challenge to Peter Welch’s all but inevitable accession to the Leahy throne. Though he won the endorsement of the Progressive Party, Evans-Frantz’s campaign, based on a grab-bag platform of progressive policies, didn’t appear to find a popularly compelling point of focus or make any inroads with organized labor. Still, many of us may prefer to cast a ballot for an anti-war activist than for a longtime recipient of defense contractor donations.

US House of Representatives

• A few weeks ago, CVDSA endorsed the 27-year-old former congressional staffer Sianay Chase Clifford, based in part on her willingness to work directly with DSA to fight for socialist priorities on the federal level. Unfortunately, Sianay ran into fundraising challenges and dropped out on July 19, setting up a contest where outgoing  VT Senate Pro Tem Becca Balint gets to play the “progressive” against Molly Gray’s moderate. Since we tend to believe that either would end up a stock-standard Democrat in Congress, we’re not inclined to rescind our commitment to Sianay’s defunct campaign.

VT Lieutenant Governor

• Former Lt. Gov. David Zuckerman has represented the Progressive Party and, for better or worse, the left flank of Vermont politics for the past three decades. An organic farmer with a crunchy ideology to match, he is not a vocal socialist, but he has been endorsed by every labor union in the state. Patricia Preston and Kitty Toll are both candidates backed by the Dean-Leahy-Burlington Business Association faction of the Vermont Democratic Party that has previously fostered shining stars such as Molly Gray. Representative Charlie Kimbell is an ex-Republican and by far the most right-wing candidate in the race. CVDSA recommends Zuckerman.

VT Secretary of State

• While no candidates in the race have a left-wing or working-class ideology behind them, Montpelier City Clerk John Odum is pushing for the most good-government progressive reforms, such as ranked-choice, non-citizen, and 16- and 17-year-old voting. Odum also brings a fresh and rarely seen electoral perspective as an advocate for open-source technology and public ownership. Deputy Secretary of State Chris Winters has also voiced support for things such as ranked-choice voting and public financing of elections — as has Representative Sarah Copeland Hanzas, though while a chair of the State House’s Government Operations Committee, she has stood in the way of those reforms being passed.

VT Attorney General

• We have no real preference in this race. Charity Clark, chief of staff to former Attorney General and current Roblox employee TJ Donovan, seems likely to continue her boss’s policy of zero accountability for law enforcement in the state. Washington County State’s Attorney Rory Thibault at least has some detailed plans for police oversight in the state, but remains a skeptic of life-saving measures such as safe injection sites for opiate users. If you are the protest vote type, former DSA endorsee Scott Pavek and VT ACLU chief Jay Diaz’s names have both been thrown forward as possible write-ins.

Chittenden County State’s Attorney

• We’ve heard that Republicans are pulling Democratic primary ballots specifically to vote for Ted Kenney, who represents a local instantiation of a nationwide fascist surge of carceral politics, focused for now on punishing and removing reformist prosecutors for often largely imaginary post-pandemic upticks in violent crime. In reality, Sarah George is not the reformer we’d like her to be — she has refused, for instance, to take a stand against solitary confinement — but Ted Kenney should be stopped.

Vermont State Senate - Chittenden central

• State Representative and DSA member Tanya Vyhovsky has been one of, if not the strongest voice for the interest of the working-class in Montpelier. Now running for the State Senate, it is critical that she continue to do the work. Erhard Mahnke has been a longtime advocate for affordable housing in the state and is a staunch Progressive. CVDSA ENDORSES TANYA VYHOVSKY and recommends Erhard Mahnke.

Vermont State House  - Chittenden 16

• Asked why she joined the race in Chittenden 16, first-time candidate Kate Logan told us that she is “running for office because I believe that working class and/or oppressed people need to run for office and serve as policy makers. Running for office is one of the things I am doing to cope with how hard it is to live in the status quo and build movements for a complete transformation of society and economy.” She’s running against a hand-picked ally of House Speaker Jill Krowinski, who proved herself an enemy of Vermont’s public sector workers in the last legislative session. CVDSA ENDORSES KATE LOGAN.

Vermont State House - Chittenden 15

•  DSA member and incumbent State Representative Brian Cina is running in a non-competitive race, but we hope that his supporters will show up to demonstrate that he has a strong base of support in Chittenden 15. Brian is a true Champ of Socialism™ who has fought in the legislature for public banking, reparations, and drug decriminalization. He supports mustache champion Troy Headrick, the only other candidate in Chittenden 15, for the district’s other seat.  CVDSA ENDORSES BRIAN CINA.

Last Wednesday, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted to uphold the “Heartbeat” bill, signed into law by Brian Kemp in 2019, which effectively bans abortions after 6 weeks in Georgia. Atlanta DSA condemns this undemocratic, abhorrent assault on the right to healthcare and bodily autonomy for working-class people across the state.

The court’s enforcement of this 6-week ban represents a larger authoritarian campaign waged by a tiny right-wing minority against the American people, who overwhelmingly oppose abortion bans. We must demand that the US government take action to defend abortion rights for all, in addition to the right to universal healthcare, paid parental leave, living wages, childcare, college and more.

While this decision is horrific, working people have the power to win back our rights by getting organized! For this reason, we have worked alongside our progressive allies to resist the Supreme Court’s decision since its initial leak. We are mobilizing for pro-abortion protests, hosting workshops and trainings, and building public support for establishing a $300,000 city abortion fund in Atlanta to ensure that all who need abortion care can get it.

In order to win abortion rights for all people we must fight back against the extremist right wing and the capitalist class that supports them. Not only should we fight for bodily autonomy, but we must fight for a world where working-class people have real democratic power to shape policy and society around the needs of the many, not the few. Join us in the struggle for abortion rights and a democratic socialist society. We stand for free abortion on demand without apology, nothing less.

Fight back for abortion rights:

• Donate to ARC Southeast and Feminist Women’s Health Center.
• Sign on to demand Atlanta City Council create a $300,000 abortion fund and speak at a City Council meeting.
• Sign up to canvass for a city abortion fund this Saturday in Cabbagetown.
• Join DSA and organize with us!

On July 2^nd 2022, a large force from Patriot Front, the largest Neo-Nazi group in America, marched through downtown Boston. They assaulted an onlooker, but the situation was deescalated by FBI agents on the scene. The Nazis proceeded to ride the MBTA Orange Line to Oak Grove, where they were confronted by antifascists. They were protected by police and allowed to exit without incident. As a Boston antifascist, I say this shit sucks.

There have been a few writings published about this incident. Some are in the genre “Oh my gosh Boston is better than this!!! WTF?” Boston is not better than this. Another common genre is “Oh my gosh look at these scary Nazis why won’t somebody do something! Here’s a bunch of descriptors to make them look tough!” Boston antifascists need to set the record straight and make sure well-meaning liberals don’t end up just reproducing Nazi propaganda for Patriot Front. Patriot Front is actually very shitty, and not even in the “they’re dangerous Nazis” sense: they’re a bunch of angry children trying to look tough. They are not tough. 

Moreover, their display on July 2nd does not represent the amount of force that Patriot Front can reliably bring to bear in Boston or anywhere in the Northeast. Patriot Front locally is much more of a “stickers and graffiti” type of organization, not a marching one. 

What is Patriot Front?

PF grew out of the ashes of Vanguard America, after one of VA’s members committed a vicious car attack at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. This left Heather Heyer dead and many others wounded and traumatized. This was a turning point in the alt-right movement. It was a public relations disaster and many alt-right and alt-lite organizations fell into infighting. Patriot Front sprung from the remnants of VA and appeals to the same demographic of angsty fascist teen boys and their desire to feel like big men.

Patriot Front has been active in Massachusetts for years. Their appearance is not new. Chris Hood, their original main organizer locally, showed up to protest Mark Bray (author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook) at the Harvard Coop in 2017, alongside members of Boston Free Speech. After that, Hood showed up to several local fascist events, trying to network with, organize with, ally with and recruit from the likes of BFS and Resist Marxism.

The first time I ran into Patriot Front they were attempting to disrupt the Boston Anarchist Book Fair in 2018. Likely, the local PF had chosen the book fair as a target because PF in Texas, where it originated and has typically had its largest concentration of members, had more successfully disrupted a similar event weeks earlier. But the attendees of the BABF quickly mounted up to eject the fascists, and we chased them off without further incident.

In early 2019 Patriot Front stirred up intimidation and anxiety by flyering East Boston, a largely immigrant neighborhood. After what seemed to be great success the first night they went out and flyered again the next night. This led to a police officer confronting PF, and one of them panicking, which then forced the cop to search them. Several of them (including their local leader, Chris Hood) were carrying illegal knives and were arrested. The lesson here is that oftentimes, a fascist has to make a mistake—like annoying a cop—before the cops will arrest them. Ultimately, the charges against these PF people were minor. Catching a charge did not deter Chris Hood, who is still a fascist organizer (although not with PF, since he was later ejected for stealing money that was supposed to go toward sticker printing and instead buying weed with it).

Patriot Front’s modus operandi is to spread Nazi propaganda and deface things. As I said before, Patriot Front is the largest Nazi organization that exists in America. But it’s also important to note that the vast majority of their work is putting up stickers and going out into the woods to hit each other as “training.” Members of Patriot Front only tend to get violent when they think they can win, and in Boston we have out-organized them and left them too afraid to directly confront the “scary antifa communists.” 

One of Patriot Front’s primary tactics, which has been adopted by other Nazi groups such as Hood’s PF Spinoff, The Nationalist Social Club, is to suddenly arrive at a location in force, do a photo op to prove they went to the location, and then leave. This has the advantage of looking very scary, while also having extremely limited risk for the Nazis doing it. It’s not easy to counter events that are not announced ahead of time. But the risk level for this sort of action is not zero, as Patriot Front discovered when they attempted this trick in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. Thirty-one of their members ended up arrested, including their Texas-based founder and leader, Thomas Rousseau. Nationalist Social Club found this out, too, last summer, when their attempt to march around Manchester, NH was countered: antifascists found their rally point, and the Nazis fled without any hesitation. 

What happened July 2^nd

At about 12:45pm a large group of Patriot Front Nazis appeared near Haymarket in downtown Boston. From there they marched toward the Boston Public Library in Copley. One thing is clear: two FBI agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force managed to catch up to them in short order, and followed along with them.

I have to be a little bit coy discussing the details here. Fascists do not like that we resist them. Likewise, we know Boston antifascists are under surveillance by state forces. The state doesn’t necessarily like Nazis, especially ones who call for the overthrow of the government. But they treat Nazis very differently from how they treat antifascists. Often, if a Nazi is caught with an illegal weapon, their charges will go up in smoke very quickly, while just as often an antifascist who has the temerity to stand against white supremacy can very easily end up in a years-long cycle of court dates on trumped-up charges. Indeed, the JTTF agents have convened grand juries to harass local antifascist-sympathetic filmmaker Rod Webber and his family and friends. It’s also very interesting that the FBI agents from the JTTF managed to catch up to the march so quickly. Interesting and very lucky indeed, because agent and Boston cop Andy Creed was seen calming Patriot Front while they assaulted an innocent bystander.

From various news articles it appears that calls to 911 from bystanders fell on deaf ears. If the role of police in society were to protect people from violence you would expect them to come as quickly as possible and dissuade the Nazis from committing acts of violence. Instead 911 operators ignored and disconnected calls from people who saw these Nazis. For those wondering why emergency services didn’t respond to Patriot Front assaulting people on the streets, remember that when fascists organize openly in Boston the police always operate as their private security team.

The Patriot Front march was all over Twitter. Unfortunately, Twitter is a terrible source of real time information. For my part, I jumped on the Orange Line, came to the conclusion they were going toward Copley and made my way to Back Bay. By the time I reached Copley they were already long gone. By that time, there were images of them at Back Bay station on Twitter, so I jumped back on the Orange Line. I assumed they were traveling north (where they came from). Patriot Front ended up on a train which went out of service at Community College. It’s unclear if the MBTA’s rotting infrastructure is to blame or if the T wanted time to make sure there was a police welcome for the Nazis at their destination. Regardless, I managed to confirm their presence at Community College. It was still unclear exactly what their destination might be: the last three stops on the Orange Line all have large parking lots, convenient for out-of-town fascists and their cars. 

It turned out they were going to Oak Grove. When they arrived, there was a significant police presence at the station to ensure the safety of Patriot Front. There were also many counter protesters at Oak Grove. Widely available videos give a bit of a false impression that it was only Rod Webber shouting at them, which is not the case. This is because Rod has a semblance of operational security and does not want to aid the police and Nazis in their attempts to doxx antifascists. But even so, it is very difficult to organize enough people to travel to and confront a march of 75 or so Nazis with zero forewarning. That’s why Patriot Front uses this tactic.

The cars that drove Patriot Front away from Oak Grove were largely from out of state. Patriot Front is indeed active in Massachusetts, as it has been since late 2017, but this particular event was an attempt to give a false sense of scale and power. The Patriot Front marchers came from all across the country, with a few positively identified as coming from as far away as Texas (such as Thomas Rousseau himself). Patriot Front has done similar actions in other cities on past July 4th weekends, and they have been more active lately. Incidents of stickering, flag drops and other stealthy propaganda distributions have increased nationally. But unlike with other fascist groups that get less mainstream attention, this was a one-time attempt to project power, rather than part of an ongoing campaign aimed at the Boston area. 

In short: Patriot Front in the New England area sucks, both in our terms because they are Nazis, and in their terms, because they are weak. This was a puffed-up attempt to show strength, and we all can see through it once we know the facts. 

Antifascism is a long game

Fighting fascism is a long, slow process and it’s a bigger problem than just Patriot Front. Throughout late 2017, 2018, and early 2019, Resist Marxism tried to turn Boston (and then, as they started losing ground here, Providence) into an East Coast version of what Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys established in Portland, Oregon: a place to go to beat up “commies” with reckless abandon. Through the work of Boston DSA and many other organizations and comrades, we successfully repelled their efforts. Resist Marxism’s successor org, Super Happy Fun America, will now rarely show their face in Boston because they know they’ll be humiliated. I have been involved in this work since 2018 and spent many hours disrupting fascists and protecting leftist groups and events from far right attempts at disruption. It takes a lot of effort and organization, but it is worth it.

Boston DSA has been deeply ingrained in the struggle against fascist organizing for years, of which the struggle against Patriot Front is only one very small part. Social media is not nearly the whole story here. To those who weren’t at Oak Grove on July 2nd, who posture online about what they would do if they saw PF, now is the time to stop posting and start organizing. Antifacism works in numbers, and we need those numbers in the street.

Moreover, most of the media sources who have seen fit to opine on the Patriot Front march have been less than helpful to local antifascism. The editorialist in the Globe who made the July 2nd march more about the use of masks than about the violence and fascist beliefs of the marchers seems to have missed the last two and a half years entirely. I thought we were past the “masks are for cowards” thing. DigBoston requested in their “annoyed Starbucks customer” way for someone else to make an early warning system for fascist actions…but the editors have made a policy of not covering antifascism in Boston for years. Antifascist organizers, including some who have written for DigBoston in other capacities, have offered to write about antifascism for the paper, and to offer inside access to Dig reporters, and the editors have consistently rebuffed them for vague reasons pertaining to their “not naming fascists” policy. If the media would like to cover fascist stunts like the July 2nd march, they should be careful to put these events in context, and use local antifascists as their sources.

For the sake of our safety, many antifascist organizers must work anonymously. The state meets us with tremendous violence for the crime of protecting our communities, far more harshly than they come down on the fascists for terrorizing those same communities. Anonymity is important, but only goes so far. Our work is amplified when we work together, and to do that takes the sort of trust built only by shared struggle and shared vision of a better future. I have spent many years working with Boston DSA. Here, and in other organizations, is where you can find the people you can work with to make a difference. 

If you were horrified by the display Patriot Front put on, that’s the right response. The next step is to join up with comrades, find an organization in the struggle, and get involved in the work. 

Vinnie M

The most immediate and useful thing you can do is give your money to an abortion fund – WHO/Ohio (@whoohio) Midwest Access Coalition (@midwest_access_coalition), Preterm in Cleveland (@pretermclevelandohio), the Aggie Fund in Toledo. They all facilitate people getting abortion care that they need as abortion care that is now more difficult to access than ever.

Remember that we have known – with certainty – that this was coming for six weeks. Organizers, clinic defenders, clinic workers, and other folks on the front line have known for much, much longer. Roe has been a line in the sand, allowing state level restrictions to pop up rapidly and prevent many, many people from accessing abortion services despite the theoretical right.

What is a Right without Access?

Every day of the six weeks prior to the court’s decision was a blessing for those who sought abortion care, because every day the Supreme Court delayed their decision – however cowardly it was to do so – people were able to get that care.
Abortion is older than the state.

Abortion providers have historically been witches, midwives, rootworkers, herbalists, people on the margins who serve the health of our communities, and people from who power has been withheld.

Legality hasn’t been the norm for most of human history. Stripping away the legal right to abortion will not deter us from owning and celebrating our bodies and holding our community close.

There is no pithy statement, quip or hot take that wouldn’t immediately undermine the severity of what has happened. People are suffering.
There is no usefulness in being content with our moral superiority, pointing out hypocrisy and shortcomings of the “other side.”

It is now time to dive deep within ourselves to take care of our people and to do for us what the state cannot or refuses to do.

The people in power do not care about us. not the GOP, not the Democratic Party – but there are more of us than there are of them.
It is time to join a mass movement that takes care of others and will fight back for the right to do so.

You can join ours at columbusdsa.org. It will take all of us.

We’re always looking for ways to increase engagement from our membership. Let us know what you’d like to see us do more of by sending us an email.