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.

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

From the Buffalo DSA Healthcare Work Group:

Today’s Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturns the right to abortion which is supported by the majority of the people in country.

People have to fight back. But the abortion fight has been taken over by professionals with a clever legal strategy and a polished PR campaign for politicians, nonprofits, and individualistic aid efforts that all distract from the class war destroying working people and American public life. 

These “experts” have failed. We cannot trust their institutions or politicians to wage a fight for what little we have left of abortion rights. Their apologetic arguments emphasize individual “choice,” privacy, and worst case scenarios, rather than plainly stating that abortion and birth control have a central role in the freedom of working people. 

Let’s learn from socialist countries, the first and best on abortion, who went up against the established church and valued women as workers and comrades, starting with the Soviet Union providing free abortion in public hospitals and clinics in 1920. When Western Europe won legal abortion in the mid- to late 70s, it was simply included in the national health systems that the labor movement and left parties had already instituted. Irish feminists in their 2018 referendum didn’t just talk about the situations in which abortion might be needed to save lives. They said “free, safe, legal” and organized to bring abortion into their healthcare system by publicly and plainly telling the truth about it.

In America’s post-war labor compromise, it was decided that we would get healthcare through our jobs rather than a universal system – so when we won abortion legally, we still had to figure out how to pay for it. Roe v. Wade protected the private right to buy an abortion procedure on the healthcare marketplace.

Never forget that these compromises were made to discipline American workers through horrible working conditions – including reproductive working conditions: we are not guaranteed universal childcare, healthcare, or paid leave. We are tied to our employers in the marketplace, and fear agitating for more.

Today’s decision is possible because of our minoritarian political system and class domination. We can’t let the same undemocratic forces continue to absorb movement politics. We can’t mobilize for one day in the streets, then move on. We can’t let establishment defenders of the Roe-status-quo continue to tell working class people that private healthcare and abortion is the solution to our bad working conditions and insecure, expensive healthcare and childcare!

Abortion is healthcare, and must be: Public. Free. Safe. Legal.

linktr.ee/buffalodsa ~ protectabortion.org

Show up. Meet people mobilizing in outrage about the Supreme Court Decision, wherever they are in your community.

• Become a part of an organization to structure and amplify your decisions and demands.
• Have real conversations with people about their experiences and what they care about. Make sure to get their contact information so you can channel your rage into organizing and durably change our political-economic system.

Follow up. Organize for universal, public healthcare that includes reproductive care as an essential, and normal, service.

• Collectively, we must refuse to vote for or donate to politicians that do not fight for Medicare for All on the federal level, or New York Health Act on the state level: legislation that would institute a public, single-payer healthcare system.
• We must fight and organize together. Strategize, provide political education, knock doors, and make calls with a democratic membership organization like DSA about single payer healthcare.
  • Buffalo DSA has a militant, badass Healthcare Committee: Meeting, July 5

Work it out. Radicalize your coworkers and union into the fight for universal, single payer healthcare.

• Your union can extract wins from your boss, but we can all fight back against the boss class making these decisions. Politicize your coworkers. DSA union members can use this guide to organize their co-workers and unions.
• Union members are strongly encouraged to work with our Healthcare Committee to provide political education on how American healthcare disciplines labor and families, as well as how we can fight back together.

The Senate Must Take Action

The Colorado Springs Democratic Socialists of America condemns the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade. We strongly believe that all people have the right to reproductive freedom and to practice bodily autonomy. This ruling is an extreme overstep by an authoritarian Supreme Court and is an attempt to reassert patriarchal social norms and thwart women’s liberation. 

We will not let this move go unchallenged. We call on Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper to end the filibuster, codify the right to an abortion, bring forward and vote to pass legislation that would end lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court, to add additional seats to the Supreme Court to end partisan supermajorities that threaten our democracy, and to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that guarantees peoples’ right to reproductive freedom. Safe abortion access is a human right and we call on all Colorado and Colorado Springs legislators to declare it so.

In the face of rising authoritarianism, we must champion the principles of democracy and organize to defend our democratic and human rights. The Colorado Springs Democratic Socialists of America is committed to pushing back against the threat of fascist and patriarchal rule in these critical times for democracy. 

Emergency Protest – Friday, June 24, 6:30pm at State Capitol
Mass Meeting – Saturday, June 25, 4pm at 711 Catherine St SW

Abortion is healthcare and a human right, fundamentally tied to the principle of bodily autonomy. We condemn the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, which will harm and criminalize working people. This decision is an act of class warfare, and we must oppose this undemocratic assault on our human rights.

This decision shows further proof of what we’ve seen for decades: that the Supreme Court has become a rogue institution uninterested in protecting the constitutional rights of the people and more focused on fulfilling the interests of major corporations and far-right Christian nationalists. 

The Supreme Court has made barbaric decisions in the past, upholding segregation in the 19th century and overturning labor protections in the 1920s. These undemocratic rulings were only overturned with the power of mass working class movements that challenged instituted powers at their core. We urge people to make their voices heard and reject all politicians who oppose the right to control one’s own body.

On May 14th, the Tops market on Jefferson Ave in Buffalo suffered a mass shooting motivated by conspiratorial, racist hate.

We’re heartbroken, and mourn the victims.

White supremacy and all racism is antithetical to our core values.

We believe in and work toward a world where all are free and all needs are met. The forces of division, whether race, national origin, ability, gender, or religion, are our enemy.

These divisions aren’t essential or accidental, but reinforced by class society. Capitalism reproduces poverty and the segregation that allowed Masten Park to be targeted.

Efforts against racism and right-wing radicalization must be anti-capitalist.

Democrats and Republicans approve funding for war, policing, and corporations, while everyday people suffer. Their platitudes don’t teach us skills, or build a high-participation democracy.

President Biden’s visit to Buffalo offered sympathy, if only symbolism to a population marred by real inequality. Without public goods, care for the planet, and living-wage jobs, the employing class’ parties don’t provide for or keep us safe.

Some far-right Republicans and their media mouthpieces even gesture to the conspiracy that motivated this shooter to murder 10 community members, like “Great Replacement” theory that states immigrants and demographic change are the causes of American economic distress and resource scarcity.

The solution to scarcity and competition is not racist violence to win the battle against each other. It is struggle against the exploitation of the employers and politicians already winning the class war against all working people.

Without anti-capitalist struggle to educate young people in patient, faithful work alongside members of our multiracial class, they’re facing a world of shocking inequality, flatlined wages, pollution, and addiction – and instead are radicalized to hateful, apocalyptic conspiracies.

It is out of deep love that we organize our workplaces and neighborhoods in support of an alternative, so that the power of everyday people will replace the bureaucracy of a few.

We must unite as a class in the struggle to elevate people across all backgrounds. Our fight is against prejudice in all forms, and against the minority rule of capitalists who only drive people toward hate and violence.

Denver DSA has been fighting for over a year alongside frontline communities to shut down Colorado’s coal plants and make the just transition to clean, renewable, community-owned electricity. The dirtiest of these coal plants is now officially slated to close no later than January 1, 2031. It’s a huge victory and a testament to the power of mass organizing.

The Coal Plant That Never Should Have Been Built

The Comanche 3 coal plant is the largest polluter in Colorado. Offensively named after an indigenous nation that extractive capitalism itself waged genocide against, this plant has been met with opposition since it was proposed back in 2004.

Despite protests, lawsuits, outcry at public hearings, and the clear scientific evidence that a new coal plant would worsen the already serious climate crisis mounting, Xcel Energy moved forward with construction, with the blessing of the Public Utility Commission (PUC).

The plant went online in 2010 and Xcel hoped to run it until 2070. The massive facility has been pumping tons and tons of carbon dioxide and toxins into the atmosphere. The nearby working class, Latinx community in Pueblo bears the worst of the effects with many residents suffering from respiratory diseases.

The fight to close this plant has never let up. Over the past year, the EcoSocialist committee has been fighting in coalition with others to have the PUC do what it should have done from the beginning – shut this coal plant down.

People Power Forces Xcel to Concede

Thousands of Colorado residents wrote into the PUC demanding that the coal plant be shut down as soon as possible. Dozens of Pueblo residents testified at a public hearing. Over 100 people testified at the final statewide hearing demanding the same.

Xcel took notice. First they offered a 2040 closure date. Then, following the Pueblo hearing, tried making a backroom deal for a 2035 date. We kept fighting, insisting that the plant be closed by at least 2030, if not sooner.

The PUC expressed skepticism around the 2035 Xcel proposal. Another rally kept the pressure on the PUC to do the right thing.

Finally, on April 26, 2022 Xcel came back to the negotiating table and agreed to close the coal plant no later than January 1, 2031.

The Fight Continues to Close the Comanche Coal Plant As Early As Possible

While the newest deadline is great news and could not have happened without thousands of people standing up to Xcel’s profiteering, the fight is not over. This coal plant never should have been built in the first place. We’re experiencing unprecedented drought, wildfires, and heatwaves. Frontline communities still breath the poisoned air and every day more carbon is added to the atmosphere we’ll then need to draw back down.

We’ll take this opportunity to celebrate together with the many others fighting to get to this point. Then we’ll regroup and decide the best path forward to shut down coal once and for all and usher in a new clean and affordable energy system.

To get involved, email the EcoSocialist Committee at ecosoc@denverdsa.org