The Las Vegas Democratic Socialists of America (LVDSA) recently responded to a community crisis at Hebron apartments in Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. Local organizers were outraged to learn that Hebron’s vulnerable residents had been abruptly served eviction notices despite having made timely rent payments. Hebron, a once beautiful neighborhood dedicated to the mission of helping those of low income find affordable housing, formerly adorned with local art and flourishing community garden, has turned into a tragedy as many Las Vegas tenants are looking to their friends and community members asking a vital question: “What is going to happen to us?”

Hebron, “a 124-unit complex”, was originally owned by the nonprofit Caridad to support those who are disabled, unhoused, and unable to work. The complex originally received funding via Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project Initiative in 2015, prior to the CEO’s unexpected passing, since facing serious financial concerns that led to the nonprofit disbanding its efforts. Hebron apartments are currently managed by Advanced Management Group (AMG) under the supervision of YSBM Investments, and, in our community’s opinion, their management of Hebron has been “inhumane and cruel” toward this vulnerable population. During LVDSA’s involvement, tenants have shared their stories, showing that property management is clearly attempting to push them out of their homes by any means necessary. They have posted illegal eviction notices without following proper due process, locked tenants out of kitchens and laundry services, and removed the nonprofit and community services at the property that were attempting to help tenants facing financial insecurity. Members of our Mutual Aid campaign have been on the property, attempting to provide groceries and community resources, only to be regularly asked to leave by security despite the community’s desperation for food, water, and essential toiletries. Some tenants remarked that the food our Mutual Aid program has provided was their, “only regular access to food.” Most tenants are disabled, without income or transportation, and without the support of the former nonprofit. Many tenants shared with LVDSA that the whole process was “humiliating” and “without dignity”, remarking that their home at Hebron was “the only one (they) knew” and that they had been subjected to “unsafe and unsanitary conditions,” including “going weeks at a time without toilet paper.”

Advanced Management Group recently made a statement to local news in an attempt to maintain positive PR stating that their “priority is stability and support” and that they are “…actively working with local assistance programs, including Help of Southern Nevada…(as they) also continue to provide on-site resources, including a fully stocked pantry that tenants may access as needed,” claiming that “residents who are able to meet standard rental requirements will have the opportunity to remain at the property.”

However, LVDSA has personally been following up with those affected in the past few weeks, and a lot of these claims from management appear highly exaggerated. Help of Southern Nevada, for instance, can only accept clients who are actively living on the street and cannot intervene in individual cases of eviction due to their personal capacity. AMG is also raising the rental requirements to remain at the property. Base rent that was closer to $500 a month per room at Hebron is being swiftly raised to over $800 despite most tenants qualifying for SNAP, placing their economic position to ~130% under the poverty line. Another resident shared with us that the food pantry mentioned “was never restocked” and that the “resources” they were given were simply instructions to The Las Vegas Courtyard, while an essential area of shade for the unhoused, is the socio-economic equivalent of a multiple million dollar company saying to a disabled vet, “We’re so sorry about your situation, but we are buying your home and if you cannot afford it please do go sleep outside and best of luck.” 

We are deeply concerned about what happens to the tenants of Hebron if nothing changes. Many tenants shared with us that they are severely disabled, and many are waiting over a year for their Social Security benefit applications to be reviewed. In the meantime, they have no income and are unable to work; many are in need of mobility aids, essential medical devices like oxygen tanks, and expensive medications. Without regular housing, they will likely be completely unable to survive on the street. Most tenants are unable to afford bus passes or walk long distances to reach a shelter at night. Summer is around the corner, and brutal heat waves are already hitting the valley. Extreme desert weather is especially hard on those living on the streets.

Our current economic system not only refuses to hold this kind of systemic genocide of the unhoused and low income accountable, but enables it. This is another situation where, if you are rich enough, lucky enough, and privileged enough, you get to survive, and if you’re not, the elites will take advantage of the opportunity to pinch every last dollar from you until you face death on the street. While this ideology is bleak, I urge you, to paraphrase Timothy Synder’s manual on resisting tyranny-do not look away. Do not look away at the signs of hate in the world that you cannot bear to watch, instead face them, do not allow them to be normal and resist, resist, resist.

The beauty in tragedy like this is the potential for the community to come together and make change. We can do something by getting involved, and we invite you to do the same. Our chapter recently proposed a petition that granted temporary rental assistance to those struggling at Hebron, and we are not finished. Our Mutual Aid campaign is working tirelessly to organize meals, distribute water and hygiene supplies, raise funds to support the tenants, and offer a listening ear to those in need. We will continue to write and share about this issue. Please show the tenants of Hebron that we have not forgotten about them. Below is a list of ways to get involved, make a difference, and send the message: We win together, we cry together but at least we know we’re together. 

Please get involved today by visiting: https://lvdsa.org/working-group/mutual-aid/ 

 

April 5th, 2026 Update: LVDSA received word from our Mutual Aid Campaign that we were able to coordinate rental assistance and replacement housing for almost every resident left in Hebron Apartments in addition to groceries and hygiene kits. While the community itself  may be closing, we are incredibly proud of the response by our community, our organizers and every person who was able to respond to this crisis. Let this be an inspiration that a better world is possible when we respond to the call to action!

 

River T.F is a local mental health social worker and activist within the community

 

Sources

Biswas, Akash. 2025. “SNAP Eligibility Criteria 2026: Income Limits & How to Qualify.” Snap Calculator. November 15, 2025. https://snapbenefitcalculator.com/snap-eligibility/.

Carrillo, Jhovani. 2026. “Tenants in Limbo after Nonprofit Operating Las Vegas Low-Income Apartment Complex Is Evicted.” Channel 13 Las Vegas News KTNV. February 26, 2026. https://www.ktnv.com/news/tenants-in-limbo-after-nonprofit-operating-las-vegas-low-income-apartment-complex-is-evicted.

City of Las Vegas. 2026. “Homeless Services.” Www.lasvegasnevada.gov. March 28, 2026. https://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/Residents/Resident-Services/Homeless-Services.

HSNV. 2026. “‘See If You Qualify.’” Help of Southern Nevada. March 24, 2026. https://www.helpsonv.org/.

King, James. 2026. “Hebron Residents Fear Eviction, Uncertainty as Fallout from Management Change Continues.” KSNV. March 3, 2026. https://news3lv.com/news/local/hebron-residents-fear-eviction-uncertainty-as-fallout-from-management-change-continues.

Ohio State. 2026. “Caseworkers: Overworked and on the Decline | EPIC.” U.osu.edu. March 24, 2026. https://u.osu.edu/epic/2020/12/07/caseworkers-overworked-and-on-the-decline/.

Shelley, Berkely. 2026. “Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2026 Budget.” Lasvegasnevada.gov. LVNV. https://files.lasvegasnevada.gov/finance/2026_Fiscal_Year/CLV-FY2026_Final_Budget.pdf.

Snyder, Timothy. 2021. ON TYRANNY GRAPHIC EDITION : Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. S.L.: Ten Speed.

Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority. 2026. “Open Section 8 Waiting Lists in Las Vegas, Nevada.” Affordablehousingonline.com. 2026. https://affordablehousingonline.com/open-section-8-waiting-lists/Nevada/Las-Vegas.

T.F, River. 2026. “Discussions with Residents.” In person interviews, March 20, 2026.

Torres-Cortez, Ricardo. 2026. “Officials Rush to Rescue Las Vegas Tenants from Sudden Rent Hikes, Evictions.” Las Vegas Review-Journal. March 21, 2026. https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/las-vegas-and-clark-county-officials-rush-to-rescue-hebron-tenants-from-sudden-rent-hikes-evictions-3727689/.

Urban Institute. 2017. “Public Welfare Expenditures.” Urban Institute. October 20, 2017. https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/public-welfare-expenditures.

Atlanta DSA Interest Meeting Held in Lawrenceville

In July of 2024, the metro-Atlanta county of Gwinnett officially became the second county in the state of Georgia to cross the mark of one million residents, behind only Fulton County, home to Atlanta itself. This growing population indicates that Gwinnett needs an Atlanta DSA branch of its own to promote socialism and to act as a vehicle for the voice of Gwinnett’s working class in metro Atlanta’s political sphere. Thus, on the afternoon of Sunday, March 7^th, 2026, Atlanta DSA organizers, with the help of Georgia Gwinnett College’s YDSA (GGC-YDSA), held a Gwinnett branch interest meeting, which was attended by well over 60 people at GGC. A petition to formalize a Gwinnett branch has been underway since.

The meeting began with attendees sharing what drew their interest in the DSA and a few common sentiments rang throughout the 60+ gathered. Some of those sentiments included healthcare costs, taking political action for Palestinian liberation, wanting to act against growing right-wing power, and making life affordable in Gwinnett. Another common sentiment was that of a previous desire to be involved with Atlanta DSA, but distance to the city made that desire difficult to actualize.

Following introductions, the meeting changed gears to explaining the DSA structure to attendees. Much of the emphasis was put on the DSA’s nonprofit, volunteer-run system and how it functions bottom-up rather than top-down, as is the status quo for political organizations in this country. The meeting leaders also highlighted the DSA’s electoral strategies, with focusing on grassroots level matters, as exemplified by the recent successes of Kelsea Bond and Gabriel Sanchez in the state of Georgia. Following that, information about Atlanta DSA’s different committees (labor, political education, electoral, etc.) and identity-based sections (Afrosocialists and socialists of color, feminist socialists) was shared with the attendees.

As the meeting came to its conclusion, the group discussed how DSA works with other working-class organizations in the Atlanta area to advocate for the improvement of working class life, emphasizing DSA’s collaborative structure, especially during this period of right-wing fascism attacking the working class and the country’s minorities. Finally, at the meeting’s end, the petition to start a Gwinnett branch of the Atlanta DSA was introduced.

I spoke to two members of GGC’s YDSA leadership, co-chair Josue EC and membership chair Hannah B, who both worked to host the Gwinnett interest meeting. Josue worked to arrange the meeting location, design the flier, and to promote the meeting on the GGC campus and through social media. When asked about what he hopes to see happen through a Gwinnett branch of Atlanta DSA, he expressed that he feels that the current system of elitist American politics pushes members of the working class away from engaging politically. Thus, through a Gwinnett branch of ATLDSA, he hopes to energize leftists across the county to become politically engaged and bring about positive change in the lives of Gwinnett’s working class. Hannah B, who also helped in organizing the interest meeting, spoke about how she hopes a Gwinnett branch will work to bring socialism locally to Gwinnett, not just limited to the city of Atlanta. One specific goal she she shared is for a Gwinnett branch to push for low cost/free public transportation in Gwinnett, which would include the expansion of MARTA. 

The meeting had a very positive and optimistic outlook to it, as the people of Gwinnett are hungry for real, meaningful change and are excited to engage with DSA to bring about such change. The people of Gwinnett are hopeful that in the face of right-wing fascism and elitist politics, a future Gwinnett branch of ATLDSA will advocate for immigrant rights, affordable housing, free healthcare, and local support for Gwinnett’s working class.

May the future of the DSA in Atlanta be prosperous and may the people of Gwinnett carry their hope towards a future of well-being, safety, and health.

The post Gwinnett Begins Organizing! appeared first on Red Clay Comrade.

Building the resilience to productively work through conflict is one of our most important tasks in building DSA into a real party – one that many leftist organizations struggle with. Without a healthy democratic culture and structure, political disagreements metastasize and become intertwined with personal grievances, a toxic cocktail that can boil over and implode chapters (including our own in 2022-23).

Selecting leadership can require navigating divides within a chapter that may not always be entirely reconcilable. Leaders have to be able to build some level of ideological or strategic unity to collectively execute a shared direction for the chapter, or risk gridlock and inertia that blunts our organizing momentum. On the other hand, operating too hegemonically risks alienating or marginalizing others within the chapter to a degree where they feel their only recourse is to leave, which, for an organization like DSA which prides itself on its big tent politics, would be robbing us of one of our greatest strengths.

There’s no formulaic approach for striking the right balance here. It requires rigorous and frequent analysis of the current conditions surrounding the organization (i.e. a muscle that needs to be regularly exercised), being structurally flexible enough to meet those changing conditions, and strong leaders capable of facilitating those tasks and meeting the moment.

In 2023, we stepped up as leaders in a disorganized, demobilized chapter lacking cohesion and stretched across siloed working groups. Our analysis then was that the primary task was to re-establish a healthy chapter culture and organizing practice. We emphasized general meetings as a social and political hub for the chapter and built consensus with leaders across the chapter for a collective campaign, with the mindset that the politics of the campaign was secondary to building a shared democratic muscle where the chapter collectively executed and debriefed this campaign together. 

We believe this approach was generally vindicated by the growth and maturation of the chapter over 2024-25. That trajectory has not changed since, and we’re now taking on projects larger than ever before. Some of the challenges we’re working through or likely to hit in the coming years are new, others are familiar territory for veteran DSA organizers – maintaining political cohesion with so many chapter projects without stifling new organizing, the presence of more politically developed and organized factions within the chapter, etc. 

Sustaining our social practice and chapter culture is still a priority (and mostly outside the scope of resolutionizing), but we now believe structural changes to our leadership election process are also needed to better facilitate this over the next few years, as Madison Area DSA becomes a chapter over 1000 members strong and we reckon with how to most effectively wield that growing power at the city and state level. From observing how larger chapters have already been wrestling with these questions, we want to tackle these changes proactively rather than reactively.

In that context, we’re bringing this proposal to the 2026 Chapter Convention to change how we elect executive committee officers from row elections for single seats to at-large elections. Here’s a brief summary of the actual changes in our proposal, followed by additional context and rationale for why we’re motivating this.

• The executive committee this year will prioritize building out committees to delegate more of their current administrative work (e.g. budgeting, general meeting coordination) where appropriate..
• Starting in 2027, the five non co-chair officer positions on the Executive Committee are elected at-large from a single pool of candidates, rather than by individual election for each position. The newly elected executive committee will vote on their officer roles after the chapter election. 
• Exec elections will be required to use Single Transferable Vote, a ranked-choice voting system that preserves proportional representation.
• The Administrator position shall be renamed to Secretary, in line with other chapters.
• Provisions where branches automatically receive an additional voting representative on Exec shall be removed.

What does the executive committee do?

In order to understand how these changes will affect the composition of Exec, we need to discuss what the executive committee actually does.

The bylaws (specifically Articles V and VI) give a brief overview of what Exec’s basic scope entails, as well as the duties of each officer. While that description is not inaccurate, it doesn’t capture the full scope of leadership responsibilities, and the influence they have on the political direction of the chapter as a whole.

Individual exec members have additional administrative and political leadership duties beyond the scope of the bylaws, including tasks like liaising with working groups, committees, and other chapters; adjudicating grievances and conflict; and developing new leaders to replace them. Political leadership here is not limited to ideological positions, but encompasses other dimensions of organizing leadership such as how they show up in the chapter’s internal political life, organize others to accomplish projects, and model skills like delegation.

While the chapter may vote to take specific actions or direct broad strategy, it is often Exec that is tasked with implementing that broad mandate (or steering other chapter bodies in doing so).

Exec has wide latitude in how to prioritize these decisions, strategizing and implementing (which can have significant political consequences in terms of what sort of infrastructure or power that builds for the chapter long-term), how much outreach is performed to membership or coalition partners, which chapter bodies are brought into planning, etc.

Exec also plays a key advisory role for the chapter, and has been a primary force for bringing proposals to the general membership. Unlike other chapter bodies though, Exec has authority to define the terms of discussion to general membership that can potentially tip the scales, deciding such things as what items (such as proposals, resolutions, or bylaw amendments) are agendized, how much time they are given, what the format of discussion looks like (alongside the decisions of the meeting chair), and some hand in the degree of announcement given to the general membership prior to the meeting. Exec also is empowered to make some political decisions on behalf of the chapter between general membership meetings. 

All of the above can in theory be overwritten by a vote of the general membership, but this is a right that often goes uninvoked. In the past few years, we can recall very few motions brought forward by Exec (as a whole body, not individual members) that have failed to get approval by the general membership. While there are other factors such as pre-selection of motions for ones that are most likely to pass when brought to the chapter, having a good understanding of the collective political vision of the chapter, and being personally developed enough to write and present a winning proposal, the powers of the chapter’s highest offices does confer potential to put an often unintended thumb on the scale. 

If the executive committee is tasked with the responsibility of steering the chapter and executing its will, then that committee should be broadly representative of the chapter’s collective will and political currents, which often form loose collections or tendencies. “Factions” is the most useful term for speaking to these distinct collections of members.

What is factionalism, and why are we engaging with it?

Factionalism is a bit of a dirty word, especially in the context of liberal democratic forms. However, factions are any collectivity of our membership that are bound by common goals, generally directed towards internal (within DSA) organizing ends. If you have ever spoken to other members in favor of or against a contentious motion prior to a meeting with the intent of building support or identifying opponents, then you have engaged in a sort of factionalism. 

Most internal organizing that meets some level of opposition can be described in factional terms, though such factions are usually short-term. There is a natural tendency to gravitate towards others within the chapter who share similar vision, which can take many forms: a group chat, an affinity for specific chapter projects, or perhaps something more formal like coalescing around an ideological caucus.

This is a normal, generally healthy expression of political conflict, and addressing those conflicts productively is in part how we resolve the contradictions inherent to a big-tent organization like DSA. A lack of such conflict might indicate a failure to engage in impactful political action, preserving the big-tent at the expense of building/wielding power, or that the membership has consolidated around a singular, all-encompassing political vision, collapsing the big-tent; something that our organization in its current form would be unlikely to structurally survive.

Regardless of whether such a conflict is acknowledged or not, factionalism is a reality that is already present within the chapter, has been for some time, and will continue to evolve as we grow. Rather than bury our heads in the sand, it is important that we address the potential pitfalls of factional conflicts before they can grow to proportions with dire organizational consequences (splits being the primary concern).

As our chapter grows, questions and disagreements on political strategy will have greater stakes, which increases the pressure and incentives for members to make tradeoffs that might secure short-term political victories at the expense of our long-term organizational health.

Returning to the substance of our proposed bylaw amendment, one way we can place guardrails is by making Exec more likely to proportionally represent the range of political currents within the chapter. Our current election system, while effective in previous stages of chapter development, is less well-equipped for our potential future trajectory. We believe that changing to an at-large voting system places some guardrails against factional excesses, and also allows membership to better consider candidates on the basis of their leadership rather than just for the specific position they’re contesting. In the event our chapter doesn’t develop beyond our current level, we think it unlikely to have a major impact on our elections as currently run.

One weakness of row elections is a reduced ability for membership to weigh in on the collective makeup of the body, instead having each race be a separate first-past-the-post election. This can result in a leadership body not representative of the chapter, and organized political pluralities or slim majorities able to win disproportionate voting power on our highest leadership body. An example of this is in New York City, where the two largest political factions won about ⅔ of members’ votes in last year’s convention delegate elections (using STV), but represent almost 100% of seats on the chapter’s steering committee, since candidates from those factions can win a simple majority in almost every row election. This is not inherently a bad thing on its own and not an indictment of the chapter’s other successes, but we believe it presents real contradictions and limitations for NYC’s internal democracy. 

Structural changes on their own are of course insufficient for resolving political and organizing problems. Our chapter has had the same row election system for years and vastly different political cultures over that time; some chapters with steering committees elected at-large have a healthy internal democracy, but others do not. 

As such, our other priority with this bylaw amendment is to shift the focus of elections towards that of electing the strongest leaders overall. This is increasingly important as the scope of officer roles exceeds the ability for all tasks to be completed by any single person, before considering other leadership responsibilities on Exec’s plate.

Over the last three years we’ve made major strides in our membership work, going from most tasks being handled directly by membership coordinator (or other exec members), to a standing committee led and overseen by the membership coordinator. This has also helped create a leadership development pipeline where people running for membership coordinator have been able to build more direct experience before running. To a lesser extent we’ve seen similar success with our Communications Committee. Regardless of the vote on the larger proposal, we believe it should be a priority for Exec to set up similar structures to delegate other areas of work, e.g. budget and finance, general meeting coordination, and other common administrative processes.

To make this a reality, we want to set the expectation that organizing leadership is the primary requirement for these roles, something we’ve already emphasized to candidates for Exec this year. We want the chapter to elect the members best suited to lead those roles, recruit other members and delegate work as necessary, and believe at-large elections allow us to more effectively consider that long-term.

Baseline technical skills are still needed for certain roles, but in the past few years many officers have come in without extensive prior experience and develop these skills after taking office. Our long-term growth requires elected officers understanding their role as overseeing particular areas of work rather than being solely responsible, and have resources and guidance built in to ensure that future terms of the executive committee are able to take on those roles from all levels of baseline experience. 

This, alongside the expansion of committees aiding individual offices in performing many of their expected tasks, including more technical roles like treasurer, leaves us confident that we can continue what has already been standard practice of electing officers whose primary qualifications are in more generalized organizing skills. This is in line with the trend away from the main historic selection criteria for Exec, which has been based entirely on whoever has been willing to run, resulting in a 4-year stretch of conventions (2021-2024) with uncontested elections. 

We’ve heard concerns that running in an election whose technical responsibilities are not definitively listed at the time of the election might discourage members from running, and that the post-election sorting of roles is too much of an open question. In our experience, this sorting process is already happening, but prior to elections – members considering running for Exec typically talk with others informally beforehand and we see at least 1-2 cases a year of people adjusting what positions they run for based on what others are running for.

The natural expectation written into this bylaw amendment is that most people will likely join exec with a “preferred” role they might want to pursue, with mechanisms to resolve irreconcilable conflicts between exec members over the same desired role, opportunities for exec members to rotate roles as needed (though we don’t expect this to need to be invoked often), and the option for exec members to resign and trigger a new election if they find an assigned technical role to be personally intolerable. If the capacity to fill these roles exists in the current moment, it will continue to exist under the new structure. In all, it formalizes, democratizes, and makes transparent processes that are already happening.

Conclusion

It is important that, when a DSA chapter is altering its bylaws, that such changes are not intended to be overly prescriptive. The goal should not be to fundamentally change the nature of our organizing work through the changes, but to more subtly adjust existing practices to fit the current conditions. Additionally, changes to bylaws should be utilized to give formal recognition to informal practices that have proven useful for the body at large, designating a mandate that such practices continue or simply acknowledging that said practices are unlikely to cease given current organizing needs. This philosophy is reflected in another proposal we authored to rewrite our bylaws with guardrails against that process being used as a vehicle for major political changes, and it informs our thinking behind this proposal as well.

We believe this change helps codify leadership expectations we’ve contributed to shifting the last few years. And though we don’t expect it to have a significant immediate impact, we believe it sets up long-term scaffolding whose positive effects will be increasingly felt as we continue to grow and tackle new challenges in the coming years.

Purpose

This procedure is intended to assist Milwaukee DSA in effectively responding to and promoting actions and events when there is not time to meet beforehand. 

Procedure Steps

1. Within two days of notification of a new event:

• Someone (in membership) alerts the rapid response body (Outreach Officer), who will determine whether we will promote DSA attendance or decline to promote.
• If Outreach decides to promote, proceed. If Outreach declines to promote, announce in discord that we are declining to promote this event for DSA attendance. Announce that this does not mean DSA members shouldn’t attend, it only means that we are not showing up organized as DSA.

2. If vote is to promote:

• Create a thread in discord (under #emergency-actions) to coordinate people, title this thread as descriptively as possible to this one event (Event title + date).
• Announce in #general-announcements that we are promoting DSA members attendance and link the event coordination thread in this announcement.
• Assign an event coordinator who will be responsible for performing setup and communications for the event.

3. Before the event:

• Event coordinator will pick up supplies from Zao MKE:
  • DSA banner or flag
  • Sign-in sheet (if possible)
  • Sign-up QRs, petitions, etc. in rapid response bin (will need to be put together)
  • Five clipboards for canvassers
• Event coordinator will transport the supplies to the event and arrive at least 15 minutes prior to the event start time.
• Event coordinator will announce a meetup point in the event discord thread.

4. During the event:

• Event coordinator will stay at the meetup point for at least 15 minutes after the event start time.
• Event coordinator will assign and distribute literature/petitions to members who are willing to canvass.
• Event coordinator will be responsible for carrying DSA banner/flag.
• Event coordinator will maintain a unified body of DSA members that moves together, the exception to this rule will be the assigned canvassers.
• Event coordinator will monitor the discord thread for the event for the duration of the event.

5. At event close:

• Event coordinator will collect all materials from canvassers.
• Event coordinator will take a photo of the DSA group.
• Event coordinator will return materials to Zao MKE.
• Event coordinator will separate filled-out petitions and label them with the event title and date on a scrap piece of paper folded around the petitions.
• Event coordinator will return sign-in sheet to chapter secretary.

Capping rent increases, increasing the minimum wage, and banning corporate money in politics are just some of the issues two democratic socialists are advocating for in their campaigns for state Assembly.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) received national attention due to Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral race in November 2025, as the schism between the progressive and establishment wings of the Democratic party deepens over how to engage with working class voters after failing to defeat Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Mamdani openly described himself as a democratic socialist throughout the primary and general election and is a member of the New York City DSA.

Here in Nevada, Assembly candidates Shaun Navarro and Val Thomason do not shy away from the label. Both are members of Las Vegas Democratic Socialists of America, or LVDSA, which is a political activist organization, not a political party..

“Rich people tell us what to do at our job, they write our laws,” Thomason said. “We don’t even have control of our own tax money.”

Democratic socialism to her is taking control from the rich and giving it to the working class.

Read the full article

At the March 2026 General Meeting, RVDSA adopted the electoral strategy below, along with amendments to our endorsement process. Introduction The purpose of our electoral work is to build the confidence and organization for the working class to seize political power, radically democratizing our society and transitioning toward social control of the economy. When working […]

High Peaks DSA voices our complete opposition to the United States and Israel’s February 28 decision to initiate an illegal war against Iran, a sovereign nation. We emphasize that this war is both catastrophic and unjustified. We stand unequivocally with the Iranian people in their fight for freedom and self-determination.   

Iran posed no imminent threat and was in the midst of negotiations when the United States abandoned any attempt at a peaceful resolution to join Israel in a war of choice. This war has only begun because of the arrogance of the Israeli government, the ignorance of the American government, and the complete collapse of the international rules-based order. 

The early attacks on Iran in the first few days of this war have already killed at least 1,800 civilians, including a horrific strike on a girls’ school that killed 168, most of them children between the ages of 7 and 12. Much of the Iranian leadership has been assassinated or incapacitated, most notably the assassination of the supreme leader,  Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei. The assassination of a head of state is a dangerous precedent and a brazen violation of international law. 

A rapidly expanding war has since grown throughout Southwest Asia, as Iran is responding with an onslaught of missiles that are seriously testing the Israeli defense systems in Israel proper, along with strikes on nine other countries in the region. Iran has already attacked energy infrastructure and is greatly impacting maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical corridor that accounts for a quarter of the world’s oil trade. Iran has also retaliated by striking several U.S. military bases in the region, resulting in seven soldiers killed at this point and many more wounded. Israel has further escalated its targets with additional attacks in Syria and Lebanon, where hundreds have been killed, and a mass displacement crisis has unfolded. Israel has also closed off humanitarian aid, again, to Gaza. 

Israel and the United States have further escalated their onslaught on the Iranian capital of Tehran, a city of more than 10 million, with additional strikes that have hit residential targets and social infrastructure, including hospitals and schools. The bombings of oil sites near or in Tehran’s city limits have covered the city in a black sky, an ecological disaster that will have alarming health ramifications for the population long after this war is over. A reminder that war itself and the United States military are one of the single greatest contributors to the worsening of the climate crisis.

Trump may have felt that Iran would be like Venezuela, a short bombing campaign, kidnap the President, and work out a deal with the Vice President to take the oil. This short-term success itself is unlikely to hold up in the long run. Iran is a vast mountainous country with a large and diverse population, and it has a substantial military that has been preparing for a war with the West for 40 years. The leadership structure is greater than one individual, and a new Ayatollah, the son of the old Ayatollah, has been selected. He is considered a hardliner and has strong ties to the Iranian Revolutionary National Guard, the state’s military body. 

Iran is not Iraq or Libya either. In each of these prior wars, efforts were made by the Obama and Bush administrations, on false pretenses in Iraq, on false promises in Libya, to sell these wars and garner coalition support from European allies. Following the approval of Congress with votes in favor from 3 of the next 4 Democratic nominees, Bush and Blair launched their illegal invasion of Iraq. The war killed at least hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and became an unmitigated disaster for the reputation of the United States. 

Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi ruled their countries with less public support than the Iranian Regime, and while their governments fell quickly, each war turned into a years-long quagmire. The Iranian government will be harder to topple, and the country much harder to stabilize. If regime change is successful, an outcome worse than Afghanistan is most likely, given that Iran has similar mountainous terrain and is a more important geopolitical state. 

Donald Trump, who, in part, won the 2016 Republican nomination by being seen as an outspoken critic of the Iraq War, was then able to successfully position himself on a platform of no new wars as the peace candidate when contrasted with Hillary Clinton in the general election. 

In practice, much of this perception was always false. The budgetary priorities of campaigning for massive tax cuts and large increases in defense spending inevitably would lead to direct actions taken by the Trump administration in its first term that were never going to be peaceful. The implementation of these policies contributed to the events of October 7, the ratcheting up of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank, and more than two years of genocide in Gaza that followed, and laid the groundwork for the War with Iran. 

Trump unilaterally pulled the United States out of a six-nation nuclear agreement with the Iranian government that was working to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapons program. Toward the end of his first term, he recklessly assassinated a top Iranian general, and we only avoided war because of Iran’s restraint with a narrow and orchestrated response. 

The annexation of the Golan Heights, the moving of the embassy to Jerusalem, the implicit support through inaction on the further expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, and the pursuit of the Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and the countries of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and later Morocco and Sudan all were major factors in the continued isolation of the Palestinians and contributed to the rationale behind the October 7 attacks by Hamas. 

A brief discussion of the historical context in which the current war arose is helpful. In 1953, the United States and the United Kingdom initiated a successful coup to oust the democratically elected government in Iran by strengthening the powers of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to stop the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry. The monarchy ruled with an iron fist and an indifference to the suffering of the Iranian people. Decades of political instability in the country ensued, culminating in the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The monarchy was abolished, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was formed, initially with popular support following an anti-imperialist revolution. 

For the last 47 years, Israel and the United States have been deliberate in their efforts to shift the Arab states from a position of adversarial opposition to the brutality of the Zionist apartheid state to client states that now consistently work for the interests of the Western powers while having to appease the sympathies of their populations, who remain with the Palestinian cause. Like the Shah’s rule in Iran, Israel has calculated that they benefit from having an Islamist opposition in Hamas, and has done everything in their power to weaken all secular Palestinian alternatives. 

Iran is viewed by Israel as one of the last remaining states in the region that is providing real economic assistance and military support to the Palestinians through Hamas. Much of this is overstated, as the Iranian regime is primarily invested in remaining in power, and like the other autocratic regimes that dominate the region, has little interest in liberation that could threaten their legitimacy if a viable democratic state were to be formed in Palestine.

The continuation of the Trump polices under the Biden administration, about Israel and its ongoing support as Israel conducted its systematic genocide in Gaza, along with its failures to adopt a more humane approach to immigration, depressed the Democratic party’s voting base and helped Trump win the 2024 election. Once again, Trump presented himself as the peaceful anti-war candidate, in contrast to Kamala Harris, who refused to distance herself from Biden on these issues. The dye had been cast, and this time, Trump retook the presidency, now having complete control of the Republican party, and surrounding himself with a cabinet of sycophants willing to go along with his worst impulses.

On immigration, he has been more draconian in the targeting of all immigrants regardless of their status, detaining many who were engaging in the legal process by revoking previous legal protections like temporary protection status, deferred action for childhood arrivals, student visas, and ignoring the international right to seek asylum. The overwhelming majority of immigrants who have been detained have no violent criminal record and are being held indefinitely amidst squalid conditions in concentration camps, awaiting deportation or court proceedings. He has used the violent arm of the state to occupy major U.S. cities, violate people’s rights to lawful protests with mass arrests on dubious charges that are almost always later dropped, and has killed protestors. 

Trump has brought the same cruelty and disregard for the rule of law he exercises domestically to the international stage, murdering Venezuelans in fishing boats without evidence to support his accusation of drug trafficking, kidnapping the Venezuelan president and his wife, and starving the people of Cuba through an oil blockade. He has also threatened to annex Greenland and Canada.

The failures of the political opposition in the United States and Israel, the absence of accountability from both the domestic and international institutions for the unlawful actions, have neutered our ability to confront the aggression and illegality of Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine, or the violent suppression of protests in countries like Iran, where a theocratic regime has been able to escape from under the boot of U.S. imperialism, only to stifle the aspirations of its own people.

For Iranians, whose liberation is long overdue after decades of oppression from both ends of the imperialist boomerang, history has shown us that no foreign military force can ever lead a people to freedom. This war is only being fought to serve the interests of capital and the imperial powers. Wars are often promoted and fought under the guise of liberation for the marginalized, but in reality, they suppress all ability to achieve social progress. For the bravery of the dissidents in Iran who have never stopped fighting for their rights over the years, only to be killed and imprisoned, this war will only make their struggle harder and the collective suffering greater. 

The oil barons of yesteryear stand in the way of a sustainable clean energy future. The tech oligarchs of today use algorithms and surveillance tools to censor our dissent and determine our fate with targeted strikes, like the one on the girls’ school in Tehran that further separate us from our humanity. These masters of war, the old and the new forces of capital, can only be defeated when the working classes, the oppressed in all corners of this world, can recognize our shared morality and begin to organize ourselves to build a better world, one without artificial hierarchies and violently enforced borders.

The post High Peaks DSA Statement on Iran appeared first on High Peaks DSA.

The war in Sudan has lasted for over two years, pitting state forces against foreign-backed paramilitary group that has been waging a genocidal campaign throughout the country.

Enjoy your March National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 27-person body (including both YDSA Co-Chairs) which functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, find out how chapters are melting ICE and improving their communities, stand against war, get involved with DSA labor work, 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 — Melt ICE, Stop War, Build Labor
• Tonight, Thursday 3/12 — Join Our International Migrant Rights Working Group ICE OUT Training Call
• Union Members: Organize Against the War on Iran! Here’s How
• RSVP for National Electoral Commission: Standing Up to ICE Call Tonight Thursday 3/12
• Save the Date — DSA National Organizing Conference This Summer!
• Help Support DSA! Sign Up for Development Phonebanks Sunday 3/15 or Sunday 3/29
• Learn Fundraising Skills for Your Chapter — Join Our Sunday 3/22 Training
• Join Our Workers Organizing Workers Salt Training Series this April! Sessions Begin Monday 4/13
• DSA National Labor Commission May Day Organizing — Get Involved!
• Religious Socialism News and Events — Calls Starting Friday 3/20
• Join Our National Labor Commission Today
• Welcome New DSA Organizing Committees and YDSA Chapters!

From the National Political Committee — Melt ICE, Stop War, Build Labor

“They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. That is too much, even for a joke. Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.” — Eugene V. Debs, Speech at Canton, OH, 1918

These words, pulled from the speech which famously got Comrade Eugene Debs thrown in jail (where he carried on his 1920 campaign for President on the Socialist Party ticket), are a universal truth. This truth could not be more evident as Trump and the Republicans, with the complicity of far too many Democrats, march us into yet another deadly forever war, this time with Iran, while continuing to starve and saber-rattle in their siege against Cuba. sell weapons to Israel, and use sanctions and violence to destabilize countless other people. Who suffers? The working class, always. Who benefits? The ultra-wealthy. 

But we aren’t backing off from the fight for working class power here or abroad, and we know that all of our fights are connected. For every new union contract we win, every tenant we organize to protect, every wealth tax we pass, every privatized good we make public, every socialist we put in office, we chip away at the power that the ruling class holds over us and consolidate it for the working class. It’s easy to feel hopeless when things seem so bleak, but we draw our strength from these wins, knowing that each one builds toward true working class power and total liberation.

Here are just a few of the blows against the capitalist class that are bringing us strength this month:

• Twin Cities DSA co-hosted an incredible Melt the ICE Week of Action, which included rallies, marches, trainings, and more, to share lessons learned from standing with immigrant neighbors on the frontlines of occupation by ICE. That included much discussion of the massive strike against ICE that recently took place on January 23, when many workers withheld their labor and almost 100,000 people took to the streets despite subzero temperatures. People in Minnesota are letting the ruling class know that a moderate step-down of ICE forces is still unacceptable — they want ICE gone, and they’ll keep organizing to kick them out from every part of civil society until that happens. 
  • For more reportbacks and reflections about the 1/23 mass actions against the ICE incursion in Minneapolis, join organizers from Twin Cities DSA and our National Labor Commission for a mass call on Tuesday 3/31 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT!
• Chapters across the country, from New Orleans to Philly to Seattle and beyond, hit the streets the day after the bombing began. Our National No War With Iran Rapid Response Committee mobilized members to send over 30,000 letters to Congress saying NO to war with Iran and YES to the War Powers Resolution, and held a mass call for over 1200 people to talk about the context and next steps for this mobilization. Watch the recording here if you missed it!
• NYC-DSA and chapters from around the state met up in Albany for a day of action demanding that Governor Kathy Hochul TAX THE RICH and spend that money on public goods — protecting New Yorkers from devastating SNAP and Medicaid cuts, instead of co-signing President Trump’s $12 billion giveaway to millionaires and billionaires. Meanwhile in the city, our socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani has set out to seize buildings from bad NYC landlords in order to improve life for tenants — and City Council is exploring a legal pathway to do it. 
• Symbolically, we love to see Zohran as NYC’s first Muslim mayor observing Ramadan side by side with workers — sharing a pre-dawn suhoor meal with sanitation workers about to take on a citywide blizzard, breaking fast with delivery workers — and hosting Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil for an iftar dinner at Gracie Mansion, a public show of solidarity after the ordeal of his prolonged detention by ICE under Trump’s crackdown on campus protests one year ago.
• Seattle DSA threw down to support socialist-in-office Assembly Member Shaun Scott in passing an amendment that successfully axed a massive tax break for corporations as part of a new state tax bill — more money out of the hands of the ruling class and into the goods and services the working class demands.
• New Orleans DSA, along with coalition partners at the BDS National Movement and elsewhere, successfully pressured the world-famous French Quarter Festival to drop Chevron as their title sponsor, connecting our national Stop Fueling Genocide campaign with their vibrant local arts scene and snatching away a primeaux reputation-laundering opportunity for one of the world’s worst (and wealthiest) companies.
• Atlanta DSA member Kelsea Bond motivated the Atlanta City Council to vote unanimously to support their first resolution in office as a socialist city councilmember, to prioritize pre-arrest diversion and examine the arrest procedures of the Atlanta Police Department as the FIFA World Cup nears, playing a critical role in preventing further jail overcrowding and punishing low-level offenses, and shifting toward community-based care.

This is just a taste of the work that our members are taking on. We are organizing from coast to coast and we’re not stopping! 

Later this month, DSA chapters across the country will be joining the No Kings mobilizations on Saturday 3/28 to say No Kings, No Cuts, No Billionaires! Over the past year, millions of Americans have turned out to these massive rallies against the Trump administration’s authoritarianism and horrific, cruel policies. We’re showing up in solidarity with everyone getting politicized right now, when we must show mass opposition to Trump’s power grabs and the rise of fascism. We need an opposition that isn’t funded by billionaires and special interests, who often stand against meaningful reforms like universal healthcare and working-class institutions of power like unions. Powerful opposition requires organization that keeps building through moments of mass mobilizations — and DSA is ready to keep building powerfully and democratically, as our organization of over 100,000 is funded by member-dues, and accountable to the working-class, not the billionaire class.

On the same timeline, we’re looking ahead to May Day this year, where we’re joining with the May Day Strong coalition and workers across the country to plan for May 1, 2026 as a day of action to rally, march, and plan for a day of no school, no work, and no shopping! When the billionaires break every rule, it’s going to take more than rallies to stop them. An upsurge of working class resistance is happening across the country against the violent repression by the Trump administration, most clearly on display in Minneapolis. We have to keep flexing our collective muscles and show our power to hit them where it hurts economically — it’s workers over billionaires!

If you’re not engaged with your local chapter’s work, we challenge you to connect with them today. Join your comrades for a rally, a canvass, or even just a fun social event, and get involved. Nothing helps combat despair like being an active part of this movement for the better world we know is possible. 

In Solidarity,

Megan Romer and Ashik Siddique
DSA National Co-Chairs

Tonight, Thursday 3/12 — Join Our International Migrant Rights Working Group ICE OUT Training Call

287(g) agreements allow ICE to deputize local law enforcement and embed ICE into jails, police departments, and even university campuses. ICE relies on local collaboration to create the neighborhood-to-prison pipelines for mass deportation, and we can and must organize to stop our local government and resources from being hijacked by Trump’s anti-worker and anti-immigrant agenda.

Join DSA’s International Migrants Rights Working group tonight, Thursday 3/12 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT to learn how to map and expose local collaborations with ICE and build coalitions to end them.

Union Members: Organize Against the War on Iran! Here’s How

If you are a union member, DSA’s National Labor Commission calls on you to talk to five of your union siblings about the war and begin organizing your union to take anti-war action!

• Contact Congress and demand they pass a War Powers Resolution on Iran to require congressional approval for any continued intervention in Iran.
• Take direct action with your union siblings by attending or organizing a mobilization against the war. DSA has endorsed the following ANSWER Coalition actions.
• Ahead of May Day 2026, talk to your coworkers about what labor actions they’d be willing to take in the face of prolonged war or election interference.
• Consider organizing a solidarity school or joining your local May Day coalition as a socialist unionist.

Stand with the people of Iran and take action today as a proud union member!

RSVP for National Electoral Commission: Standing Up to ICE Call Tonight Thursday 3/12

Tonight, Thursday 3/12 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT, hear from DSA Socialists in Office Robin Wonsley (Twin Cities) and Alex Brower (Milwaukee), as well as chapter electoral leaders in New York and Los Angeles as we discuss the role our electoral efforts have played in the response to ICE’s siege of our cities across the country. This is a members-only event!

Save the Date — DSA National Organizing Conference This Summer!

DSA is hosting a National Organizing Conference in Chicago, July 31–August 2. Save the date if you’re interested in attending — application details will be shared in the coming weeks.

Help Support DSA! Sign Up for Development Phonebanks Sunday 3/15 or Sunday 3/29

Join the Growth and Development Committee for an upcoming phonebank!

• Solidarity Dues Phonebank on Sunday 3/15 at 5pm ET/4pm CT/3pm MT/2pm PT
• Recommitment Phonebank on Sunday 3/29 at 5pm ET/4pm CT/3pm MT/2pm PT

Training will be provided at the beginning of each call. We’ll see you there!

Learn Fundraising Skills for Your Chapter — Join Our Sunday 3/22 Training

Join the Fundraising Committee for a training on chapter fundraising on Sunday 3/22 at 5pm ET/4pm CT/3pm MT/2pm ET. RSVP today!

Join Our Workers Organizing Workers Salt Training Series this April! Sessions Begin Monday 4/13

Are you looking for a new job? Want to join the labor movement and build power on the shop floor with your co-workers? Join our Workers Organizing Workers (WOW) Salt Training Series! This three-session series will be held Mondays in April beginning 4/13. All sessions will be held at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT.

Salting, or getting a non-union job and organizing your workplace, is a key tactic that organizers have used for decades to build the labor movement. Join a historic tradition today! We’ll cover organizing basics, share information about our priority industries, and help you get a job you can organize. No organizing experience required.

DSA National Labor Commission May Day Organizing — Get Involved!

This year it’s more important than ever for DSA members to take the lead in bringing socialist politics to May Day by organizing May Day actions with their local unions and labor bodies. Whether your chapter is organizing a march, a solidarity school, a political education event, a movie night, or something else entirely, you can help organize successfully for  May Day 2026, International Workers Day! Contact your chapter for details. If you have any questions, please contact the National Labor Commission at nlc@dsacommittees.org.

Religious Socialism News and Events — Calls Starting Friday 3/20

If you are a person of faith, check out the DSA Religion and Socialism Working Group (RSWG). We are unique on the Left as a multifaith socialist group. This month, we have three calls and a new sub-group starting. Get involved today!

• The Black Liberation Socialist Circle is organizing Black Christians who are interested in the Black Radical Tradition and liberation struggles. Join our Discord here for more information. This space brings together political education, fellowship, and strategy rooted in the long tradition of Black freedom movements.
• On Friday 3/20 at 9pm ET/8pm CT/7pm MT/6pm PT, join the Democratic Socialist Episcopal Association (DSEA) for “A Socialist Way of the Cross Service: Who is the Empire Crucifying Today?”. This solemn service places the passion of Christ in direct conversation with the suffering of our own time. At each station, we will reflect on Christ’s journey to Golgotha, and on the systems of political domination, economic exploitation, racialized violence, and carceral control that continue to crucify the poor and marginalized today. This service asks where Christ is being condemned, beaten, and executed in our communities. Through prayer and reflection, we will confront the powers of death while proclaiming a hope rooted in collective liberation. Come prepared to meditate, lament, and recommit yourself to the work of justice. You can sign up for the call through the DSEA’s Discord.
• And help build the Buddhist Circle. What might it look like? How can Buddhist precepts and practices (e.g., meditation, 4 noble truths) deepen socialist ethics and be of benefit to organizers, activists, everyone? Join us Thursday 3/26 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT. Meetings are held the last Thursday of every month. You can find notes here.

For more about the Religious Socialism Working Group, please sign up for our email list to join our monthly online meetup on Tuesday 3/24 at 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT/6:30pm MT.

Join Our National Labor Commission Today

Are you:

• A union member?
• Trying to organize your workplace?
• An aspiring labor writer?
• Active in your chapter’s labor working group?

Join DSA’s National Labor Commission (NLC) and get involved in socialist labor work at the national level! Whether it’s salting your workplace, organizing towards May Day 2028, sharing strike support strategies with solidarity captains in chapters across the country, writing reports about national labor issues, or building up our national listwork, there’s an NLC campaign for you to plug into. Apply to join today!

Welcome New DSA Organizing Committees and YDSA Chapters!

And a warm welcome to our newest DSA Organizing Committees and YDSA chapters!

DSA Organizing Committees

• DSA Maui, Hawaii
• Cadillac DSA, Michigan
• DSA Wooster, Ohio

YDSA Chapters

• Indiana University Bloomington
• Santa Monica High School
• Millersville University
• University of Missouri Kansas City
• Western New England University
• Lehman College
• University of Wisconsin Eau Claire
• St. Mary’s College of Maryland

The post Melt ICE, Stop War, Build Labor — Your National Political Committee Newsletter appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

by R.K. Upadhya

The American Civil War is a key moment of US history. If you grew up in the US, you almost certainly spent a good chunk of time in grade school learning about the Civil War. It is also likely the case that this education was boring and unengaging. This is a tragedy, for in fact the Civil War era had profoundly radical and revolutionary dimensions, and should be a source of education and inspiration for the modern Left and the US socialist movement. Case in point: after Abraham Lincoln’s re-election victory in 1864, Karl Marx himself helped pen a letter of congratulations to Lincoln, celebrating the Union cause as a universal interest of the working class, and encouraged him toward complete victory over the Southern slavers. It is not often that we think of Marx and Lincoln as being contemporaneous – but they were, and while it is unknown if Lincoln actually read Marx’s letter, it is likely that Lincoln read at least some of Marx’s many articles in the New York Daily Tribune.

The Civil War was the culmination of the abolitionist movement, which emerged out of free Black communities of the North, and the slave revolts which rocked the South in the 1830s. And the abolitionist movement is where the US Left was truly born; it was in this fiery struggle against slavery that many of the ideas we hold dear today – anti-racism, democracy, anti-imperialism, and anti-capitalism – went mainstream and became a permanent part of American politics. There is a grand history for how this happened, with many moving parts. But one fascinating thread is the way in which the abolitionist movement in the US was connected with the emerging revolutionary socialist movement in Europe. Abolitionism being the birthplace of the American Left wasn’t just a matter of converging values, but based on a direct exchange of ideas and militants between the US and Europe – and in particular, the cohorts of revolutionary German exiles who immigrated to America in the 1850s.

Historical Context

The abolitionist movement started in earnest in the 1830s, after Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831, which galvanized free Black communities across the North and put an end to any doubts that enslaved people were happy with their lot in life. Over the course of the next few decades, it grew dramatically in popularity, organization, and militancy; its electoral expression was the Republican Party, founded in 1854, while its more revolutionary tendency was expressed via the likes of John Brown, Harriet Tubman, and other insurgent figures. By the 1850s, the question of slavery was the defining political issue in the US, fostering an intense amount of political and civil unrest.

At the same time, Europe was also undergoing convulsions. In parallel to the growth of the abolitionist movement in the US, the revolutionary socialist movement was growing, and founding figures like Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels were coming into the spotlight. The tremors finally erupted into an earthquake in 1848, when a wave of uprisings and revolutions shook the foundations of Europe, particularly in Germany. Workers, peasants, and other parts of a “revolutionary citizenry” assaulted and overthrew centers of monarchical and feudal power. Marx and Engels wrote and published The Communist Manifesto during this tumult; Engels himself was in the streets as a revolutionary soldier.

Unfortunately, the revolution in Germany gets crushed, and millions of Germans escape to Western Europe and beyond, fleeing harsh counter-revolutionary reprisals as well as general economic ruin. Many of these refugees and exiles end up in the United States; about one million Germans emigrated to America in the 1850s. And among this number, roughly 4,000 were hardcore revolutionaries, socialists and communists, organizers and militants, in addition to tens of thousands more supporters, followers, and sympathizers. This cohort was known as the “Forty Eighters”, exiles of the 1848 Revolution. And once in the US, the Forty Eighters immediately bolstered the ranks of an increasingly revolutionary abolitionist movement. This was a natural alliance; the nature of the Southern slaver elites was an uncanny mirror image of the tyrannical aristocrats that they had attempted to overthrow at home. And for the abolitionist movement, these veterans brought military experience, organizational discipline, and expansive ideas about liberty, labor, and capitalism, which coupled well with the parallel works of the leading abolitionist intellectuals.

Colonel Weydemeyer and General Willich

Two figures in particular represent the radical edge of the Forty Eighter abolitionists: Joseph Weydemeyer and August Willich. Both of these men were German communists and revolutionaries, who eventually ended up as high-ranking military officers in the Union Army.

The initial trajectories of the two men were similar. Both were Prussian military officers in the 1840s, who became radicalized by Marx’s writings about capitalism, class, and revolution. They rebelled in 1848 on the side of the Revolution, and fled west when the revolution was crushed. They made personal acquaintance with Karl Marx in London, and joined the Communist League and helped further develop revolutionary socialist politics in Europe. After a few years, both men emigrated to the United States, where they planted themselves among fellow Forty Eighters and made a living via political organizing and radical intellectual writings. And when the Civil War began, they enlisted along with large numbers of fellow Germans, and quickly rose up the ranks due to their previous military experience and their political fervour.

Compared to Willich, Weydemeyer was more of an intellectual type. He was a friend of Marx and Engels; in fact, it was Marx who directly suggested to Weydemeyer that he emigrate to New York City. Once there, he quickly got to work in left-wing journalism and organizing, joining a growing cohort of revolutionary Marxist voices that joined the abolitionist movement. He was a co-founder of what was arguably the first socialist organization in the United States, the American Workers League (which, despite its broad name, was almost entirely an organization of radical German immigrants). This group would later become the New York Communist Club.

When the Civil War began, Weydemeyer enlisted and quickly ended up as a technical aide to General Fremont, an abolitionist and a radical rival to Abraham Lincoln. Within a year, Weydemeyer was a Lieutenant Colonel and in charge of a volunteer artillery regiment. Later on in the war, he served as a Colonel of the 41st Missouri Infantry Regiment. Amusingly, throughout his active duty service, Weydemeyer kept up his intellectual pursuits, exchanging letters with Marx and Engels about the war, writing opinion pieces for local newspapers near his posts, and engaging in local debates. In 1864, when Marx helped found the International Workingmen’s Association (a.k.a., the First International), Weydemeyer printed out copies of the inaugural address and passed it out to his men (it is unclear how many of these Missouri infantrymen subsequently joined the cause of international communism).

After the war, Weydemeyer remained in politics, winning an election for the St. Louis County auditor. He ran the office as a Marxist, using his powers to strengthen tax laws and chase down war profiteers. Unfortunately, his tenure was short-lived; Weydemeyer passed away in August 1866 from cholera.

August Willich led a similarly colorful life, albeit one more oriented around military affairs.

An excellent book on his entire life, only a tiny fraction of which can be discussed here, is Radical Warrior: August Willich’s Journey From German Revolutionary to Union General.

Like Joseph Weydemeyer, Willich also knew Marx & Engels; indeed, Engels was Willich’s right-hand man during several battles in the final stages of the 1848 Revolution. But unlike Weydemeyer, Willich did not like Marx at all. Willich led the left-wing faction of the Communist League, and thought Marx was too conservative and was not eager enough to wage revolutionary struggle; for his part, Marx was not impressed by Willich’s intellectual standing. There may have also been some more personal animosity at play; Willich apparently was quite interested in Marx’s wife, Jenny, and would regularly come visit her at their home in London and engage her in long conversations about theory and politics. As Jenny Marx described, “He would come to visit me because he wanted to pursue the worm that lies in every marriage and coax it out.” It’s not clear if Willich ever coaxed out the worm; within a few years, he emigrated to the United States, engaged in radical writing, and organized among other German immigrants and Forty Eighters in the midwest.

When the Civil War began, Willich played an important role in recruiting fellow Germans into the military; he would become a Colonel, and then a General in command of an all-German infantry unit, the 32nd Indiana Infantry Regiment. Willich and his men quickly distinguished himself on the battlefield, helping win one of the few Union victories in 1861 at the Battle of Rowlett Station in Kentucky. This battle saw about 500 German infantrymen defeat over 1,000 Texas Rangers and assorted Confederate infantry. This battle is also commemorated in what is the oldest surviving Civil War monument, the Bloedner Monument, which was carved by a member of the regiment a couple of weeks after the battle. It’s a remarkable piece of history, since it’s likely that this battle is mentioned in many Civil War textbooks – but the radical historical context, that this victory was one of a revolutionary communist veteran and other revolutionary exiles, is papered over or ignored.

Willich and the 32nd would go on to fight in other major Civil War battles, including the 1862 Battle of Shiloh, the 1863 Siege of Chattanooga, and General Sherman’s “March to the Sea” in 1864. After the war, just like Weydemeyer, Willich went into government service and was elected as a county auditor in Ohio. In his later years, he went into academia. August Willich passed away in 1878.

Forty Eighters in Texas

The legacy of the Forty Eighters is also present right here in central Texas, where many Germans settled in the 1850s. San Antonio and the Hill Country were particularly popular – a legacy that still continues today, with cities like New Braunfels and Fredericksburg remaining centers of German culture, as well as smaller towns like Boerne and Comfort. Despite being in a southern slave state, just like their brethren in the midwest and the north-east, German immigrants to Texas were generally anti-slavery and pro-Union. In 1854, Germans in San Antonio caused a major political firestorm when they held a convention and passed a resolution condemning slavery. In 1861, during the Referendum on Secession, the counties with the most Germans tended to vote against secession.

As the war progressed, repression against Unionists escalated, with Germans being a major target. In 1862, the Confederacy passed a conscription law to mandate military service, which provoked German Texans Unionists to escalate into armed resistance – which in turn, brought martial law across the Hill Country and waves of violent reprisals. The struggle culminated in August 1862, when a band of Germans gathered up arms and attempted to escape to Mexico. Unfortunately, the Confederates caught wind and chased them down, eventually cornering them on the banks of the Nueces River, and defeating them after a pitched battle. Despite being right at the border, the German Unionist rebels were captured, and 34 executed on the spot. The dead were buried at a cemetery in Comfort, Texas, where after the war a monument was erected – the Treue der Union Monument, or, the “Loyalty to the Union” Monument – to honor them and the pro-Union beliefs that they died for. This monument remains in Comfort to this day.

Conclusion

These stories – of German Texan rebels, communist commanders, and the surprise emergence of Marxism in antebellum America – should make us recognize the importance of tracing back our own political lineage to this period. It was the abolitionist movement that established a long and unbroken legacy of socialist politics and struggle in the United States. Abolitionists went on into different movements after the war, expanding the struggle into labor organizing, civil rights, anti-imperialism, and feminism. After the abolitionist movement, came Radical Reconstruction; veterans of that went on into the Knights of Labor, and then the Industrial Workers of the World; then emerged the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Party, and so on. We should look at abolitionists as our own political ancestors, and with the connection to radical German immigrants, appreciate that revolutionary socialist politics has been in this country for a very long time.

And to draw a final parallel to then and now: the Civil War didn’t start out of nowhere. It was preceded by years of civil unrest, violence around elections, and collapsing legal boundaries. And one dynamic in particular, was the escalation of violence in the 1850s by federal agents against Northerners. After the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, federal agents and southern bounty hunters and slave catchers had free legal reign to indiscriminately hunt down Black people to kidnap and enslave. This enraged public opinion across the North and galvanized abolitionists and their allies, who organized Vigilance Committees to track and disrupt federal operations, preventing arrests, staging jailbreaks, and engaging in pitched battle against the feds.

And it is a remarkable parallel today, when we have federal troops engaging in indiscriminate violence with impunity, hunting down immigrants, assaulting and murdering protestors, kidnaping people and whisking them off into a growing network of concentration camps. And in response, just like over 150 years ago, people are organizing and mobilizing, forming rapid response networks, tracking and disrupting federal operations. It is a beautiful thing, and shows how our political ancestors can echo through us today, even without our conscious knowledge. The struggle has been going on for a long time; and if there is to be another civil war, let us make sure we finish it for good this time around.

The post Between Marx and Lincoln: German Communists in the American Civil War first appeared on Red Fault.