Articulating Revolution Through Art: A Review of Georgie’s Scratching At The Door Until It Opens And Running Outside And Rolling In The Grass
by Jean Allen
Scratching At The Door Until It Opens And Running Outside And Rolling In The Grass is the first full length album of Rochester’s local folk supergroup, Georgie. Founded by Claire McClusky in 2022, the band consists of an activist and a group of musicians involved in other Rochesterian bands (the rock band Comfy, the acoustic folk Garden of Evil Doers and Bugcatcher, Rochester’s very own Pavement Kitchen, indie darling Shep Treasure, Star Bby which is definitely good but which I do not know enough about to know the genre of) and has become an organizing nucleus of Rochester’s DIY music community (which, I think, designates a punk sensibility applied to an aesthetically broad set of bands). Three elements of Georgie’s live shows bear stating. The first, in as segregated a city as Rochester is, as divided into micro-sub-communities as its music scene is, Georgie shows have been intentionally mutli-genre and multiracial. This has led to the second thing about Georgie, the increasingly large Georgieverse of collaborative bands and fans from various parts of Rochester’s radical community. The other is that the ‘folk’ label I gave Georgie obscures what’s fully going on here.
Georgie’s live music has shown a consistent desire for experimentation, for pushing past the boundaries of some banjoes and fiddles into music that can emotionally meet the moment we are in. Songs that seem tame on the record become rock anthems in rooms filled with cheering fans, songs that are 5 minutes recorded can become 20 minute jam sessions, new instruments are added and experimented with, puppet shows are incorporated. This album is similarly expansive, with the production leaning towards an acoustic wall of sound at moments, while providing perfect clarity for the vocals at others.
McClusky writes Georgie lyrics through automatic writing, a method designed to avoid conscious intention, and that leads to songs that are deeply radical while being partially opaque. The choruses of Georgie songs are often a repeated simple phrase, like a thought the mind’s gotten hung up on and cannot fully process. For instance, “What’s Legal Now?”, the lyrics describe a person whose human ineffableness is reduced to nothing by the label of perpetrator, by people who look away from conflict or look to conflict in order to establish categories of human and non-human. The question “Did you know? I’m a crime? Did you know? How I died?”, ends with the band repeating “What does it mean to make a mistake” over and over, through into a next song that features a Silvia Federici sample, back to the chorus, back to the conclusion:
“Teach shame. I hold it, I carry it every day, hold it inside my body, you know I don’t talk to nobody. But I left it on the table, where I couldn’t quite read your face. It’s not that I’m unable, I just choose to look the other way. Cause babe you make me wonder what it means to make a mistake, babe you make me wonder, why I can’t quite define rape”.
This gets at, could be about, so many things. Interpersonal relations, international relations, the way our society treats homeless people to constant debasement to allow for their further dehumanization, the way we ourselves become smaller when we start accepting our society’s dehumanization of our peers. It could be about all of these things, and because of that it draws our attention to how all of these problems stem from the same issue.
The ineffable quality of Georgie’s lyrics are, to me, a tremendous advance over the tendency towards didacticism we’ve seen in radical music lately. There are any number of bands who speak-sing lyrics that could double as event slogans. As an example, take Mr.Dinkles’ newest song, Socialist Ditty, which repeats
“You don’t need to be that rich, just give it to me, I can pay off my loans and my mouth to feed, cause you don’t even know what to do with it, just give it to me, cause you don’t need to be that rich!”
To be clear, this song is a bop and I’ve listened to it constantly since it’s come out. Further, from Joe Hill to Pete Seeger our movement is always going to need artists who provide us with agitation in the form of songs. But to give the humble opinion of a cultural dingdong, we should aim for higher horizons in radical art. The desire for art to act solely as agitation reduces art and reduces ourselves. We do not experience the world through the easy rationality that agitational didacticism cloaks itself with. I am a literal socialist pamphleteer and MY experience of life is not reducible to an aesthetic frustration with the way the rich dominate us. I’ll leave a pin in this, but I will say now that the problem of domination – of a ruling class which has infantilized us by disallowing us from making choices about the direction of our lives – has a blast radius. Domination transforms the dominator and dominated, dehumanizing both of us in ways that are often complicated and painful to fully uncurl. If radicals are going to make truthful art about our current condition they need to use the full range of emotion, the full spectrum of rhetorical affect. There is a desire right now for art or theory to be simple and surface-level, just expressing simple goals, but the world is not just a series of surfaces. Just as in this album, my brain repeats images I’ve seen, images or arguments that are incomprehensible or horrific, trying to understand them. I turn to theorists to structure my thinking of the world, I try to act in it.
To listen to Scratching At The Door Until It Opens And Running Outside And Rolling In The Grass is to feel a sense of dread and a desire to understand that dread. The song where McClusky reads Bookchin talking about the intimidating and physically overwhelming structure of an institutionalized city turns to “Canyon”, a wail at a left that hasn’t gotten strong enough, hasn’t stayed principled enough, has given itself too easily to too many fights over nothing while the world burns up and bodies pile up:
“I can’t take it anymore, I can’t look at us flailing on the floor, will you still love me when I kill our landlord? Won’t you be on the same side of the barricade? Won’t you help me pour sand in these machines? Let’s strike, the earth is still alive.”
The failure of the radical left to intervene meaningfully in the last decade, despite the tremendous amount of work we have all done, despite a series of protest waves culminating in the largest protest wave the country has ever seen, coming to nothing, that’s not something people only process in a rational way. That a series of protest movements for Black lives has achieved nothing more than more cameras everywhere has given us all a new knowledge of the society we live in, a society where life is cheap and fights against each other are the only thing that will show meaningful change. This comes up in the conflicts shown in “What’s Legal Now?”, in the author’s desire to stop dreaming that “the world didn’t end” in “Lathe of Heaven”, and like everything else in the album it culminates in “Contamination”.
The swirling thoughts throughout the album all point towards “Contamination” – in “The Propaganda and the Pesticides”, Georgie sings the refrain which was once “Contamination”’s opening (you have to understand, I have to make my money, I have to be the man) while Shola raps about the wages we struggle for which make us enslaved. “Limits”, the first introduction to Canyon, quotes Bookchin describing the way the personal forces which dominate us are transformed by the cityscape into a seemingly impenetrable System of institutions. We see throughout the album the way our broken society makes broken individuals, and it can be easy to generalize this, to imagine we are totally dominated by faceless beings who we could never affect. But we know better.
“Call it what it is, it’s not a disease, it’s that motherfucker upstream, and I’ll find him and I’ll kill him. It’s your cigarettes and orange juice, cigarettes and orange juice, it’s your cigarettes and orange juice, that woman who takes care of you.”
Again we are transposed between all the situations this can refer to. There’s the case worker’s misogyny, where any failure in someone’s health has to emerge from someone incorrectly performing gender, but there’s also the truth at the heart of this whole album and this whole society – that our domination by institutions is also a domination by particular people, who are empowered to make choices about our lives and whether we die. Cigarettes and orange juice is a deeply evocative image. It’s two things associated with poverty and food deserts – cigarettes in lieu of a meaningful meal, orange juice in lieu of fresh fruit and vegetables; but there is also something childish about this deadly combination. Orange juice, the thing advertised to us from childhood, cigarettes, the addictive and deadly symbol of adulthood sold to generations which couldn’t afford it. Our society offers all sorts of addictions and brain-killing pastimes in lieu of active participation in its direction, and that domination has made us all childish, a toxic and addictive smallness in lieu of child-like-ness. We cannot afford financial independence, we cannot move our society the way we want, and so we are left with these adolescent pleasures instead of the responsibility an ‘adult’ who has to make decisions for themselves is given. The song’s end flips the script, imagining us killing the capitalists with the same empty and cheap luxuries they kill us with. The album ends with a gleefully childlike song about swimming, depicting perhaps the kind of relaxation and freedom we will only find when we understand that the best way to take care of our loved ones is to upend our masters.
What strikes me throughout the album is a sensitivity to pain, a sensitivity to the ways we are transformed by pain, and a genuine curiosity about the world. Earlier on I compared this album to a variety of (also good) agitational bands which traffic in cocky pamphleteer writing. The cockiness in left art today does not speak to me because it feels just as much like a product of our infantilization as these cigarettes and orange juice. It’s the attitude of a newly awakened youth who realizes that their adults do not follow the rules they lay down, who then thinks that there are no rules whatsoever, that it is all a matter of will. We have a world to govern, or perhaps win, or perhaps defend, or perhaps just survive in, but none of these are easy tasks. We will need people who have been made deeply imperfect by the cruel, violent, and colonial society we live in to succeed in any of those efforts. The attitude of humbly sorting through our existence, parsing through our personal experience and the theories we adore, trying to understand how to strike while the earth is still alive, is something I wish more of the left took up.
Scratching At The Door Until It Opens And Running Outside And Rolling In the Grass is a genuine advance in radical DIY music and Georgie is the best band to come out of Rochester since Machine Girl left the city a decade ago. It is at times tough and at times torrential but I would recommend it, and Georgie’s live shows, to any reader of this publication with an appreciation for folk music.
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Solidarity is Not a Crime
This is an opinion piece written collaboratively by the Immigrant Solidarity Working Group and was not voted on at a general membership meeting. Opinion pieces from sub-bodies do not reflect the opinions of all members and are not chapter approved statements.
It is with no stutter and no hesitation that Salt Lake DSA stands with the 15 defendants facing charges for anti-ICE organizing in Minneapolis. Their stance is part of a proud, long-standing tradition of resistance against law enforcement overreach in this country. Faced with the indiscriminate violence of this winter’s ICE/DHS activity in the Twin Cities, these neighbors banded together in an inspiring and powerful model. After these feral agents murdered two and celebrated their own impunity, the regime attempts to contort law and morality to punish their real enemy: our unwillingness to submit.
There is risk in taking a principled stance. It is in that spirit that we also condemn the charges faced by two former court clerks in Logan that allegedly helped individuals evade ICE agents at the courthouse. When faced with an opportunity to perform the moral, righteous act, these clerks took it—at their own personal risk. They acted against a vindictive and thoughtless regime intent on tearing apart families, and for that we salute them.
It is not enough to point out the blatant hypocrisy of the Trump regime, as it is not only painfully obvious, it is expected and routine. They decry the “weaponization” of the law while also rewarding loyalist felons with pardons. The hypocrisy and double-dealing are markers of a system in a permanent tailspin. Trump and his cronies find themselves in the criminal trough of our economic system, resorting to merely demanding submission and collecting bribes. They are rapidly running out of distractions, and soon, the lid will tighten yet further.
As the administration criminalizes dissent in America, we implore all Utahns: do not consider yourself exempt from this assault on your civil liberties. Stand with us, or stand beside us, but at least stand up and be seen in opposition to this continued erosion of freedoms. In this capitalist system, law is merely a weapon in the hands of the powerful, completely divorced from morality and righteousness. As a weapon of the powerful, once you stand crosswise to their goals, the law will be used to hammer you back into place. It is time for us to seize the hammer.
We know we stand firmly on the right side of history, because between solidarity and hate, we will always choose the former. In time, we will win; the only question is, for how long will we all need to suffer until we can put an end to this madness? How many of us will be caught up in the gears? When the working class has unified to fight this fight together, we will no longer have to wonder. We will have already won.
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ROC DSA Statement on the Murders of Eryka Caldwell and Juniper Blessing
Adopted June 15, 2026
Eryka Caldwell, a waitress and event planner in Brooklyn, is the most recent murder in the continuing onslaught against the trans community. Eryka was caring friend and sister who always saw the good in people, and loved “everything sappy & mushy”.
Juniper Blessing, a graduate of the New Mexico School for the Arts in Santa Fe, was murdered the week before Eryka. Juniper was a remarkable person, a gifted vocalist and is described as truly loving weather, intending to study Atmospheric and Climate Science at the University of Washington, along with Music and Philosophy. Videos of Juniper’s remarkable vocal work have been shared widely to honor her.
Their murders are an immense loss for us all.
The murders of Eryka and Juniper are not one-off events. They are sparks from the wildfire of hatred towering over us all. Turning Point USA chose to cancel their event at the University of Washington scheduled to take place just days after Juniper was murdered. This event would feature Chloe Cole, a right-wing detransitioner who actively opposes access to gender-affirming care and whose work has been described as ” [a] political touchstone for conservative groups pushing against transgender rights…”. Events like these serve as a wellspring for hatred and dehumanization, which tour across the country propagating violence.
Rochester is no stranger to this violence: this time last year, we were still reeling from the murder of Sam Nordquist, one more life lost to what seems like an inescapable waterfall of anti-trans hostility. We’re continuing to see rampant violence against trans people across the country, in particular trans people fleeing red states to our cities where they hope to be safe. But it is only by recognizing our collective strength and organizing together that we can keep all of us safe in the face of increasing repression.
“Seattle must serve as a refuge for our trans neighbors who are fleeing regions trying to erase their existence, which is why today’s news is so devastating and horrific,” Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck said in a statement on the murder of Juniper.
Until this murderous, genocidal intent is swept from our nation, we have a responsibility to organize and overturn the unjust systems that lead to this violence. There still exist threats to trans lives even in Seattle and Rochester which are both considered deep-blue cities. The entirety of New York State passed the Trans Safe Haven Act to protect gender affirming care and to protect trans lives. However, work continues at the federal level to strip away these protections. Work still continues to dehumanize trans lives and eradicate trans existence from our nation and from the world by any means available. That means we must continually work to uphold and protect trans lives, dignity, and freedom in the face of these attacks.
Trans people are simply trying to live their lives, gain acceptance and equal treatment. We must recognize in the trans experience a universal struggle against the patriarchal gender binary, and for human freedom. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. No one is free until all of us are free.
ROC DSA is organizing working class people to fight for trans liberation and freedom from capitalism. You can join ROC DSA by signing up at dsausa.us/join. A better world is possible, and together we can build it
The post ROC DSA Statement on the Murders of Eryka Caldwell and Juniper Blessing first appeared on Rochester Red Star.
River Valley DSA Opposes Rent Control Compromise Legislation
On Self-Replication in AI and Capitalism
by Gregory Lebens-Higgins
The rapid mechanization of the world has inspired a wealth of fiction with the theme of machines acting without human impulse and beyond human intention. These depictions speak to the real fears of workers confronting their displacement by machines in an unfamiliar world. With the advance of computational intelligence, the threat of sentient machines overtaking humanity is a common feature of movies, including The Terminator (1984), The Matrix (1999), I, Robot (2004),and most recently, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2025).
Does this fear have grounding in reality? Will sentient machines reprogram themselves without the knowledge of their human creators, pursuing tasks for their own ends and actively interfering in human affairs? Or perhaps decide to eliminate humans entirely? Maybe we should just start worshipping our future overlords now to avoid later retribution?
Like the AI of fiction, capitalism seems to self-replicate, expanding and recreating itself on a global scale and sucking all exchange into commodification. Capitalists are propelled by competition to reach new markets and cheaper inputs or be put out of business. In those regions not yet infected by capital, the tools of economic and physical violence do the work of displacing people from their land and creating a propertyless laboring class that must depend on the capitalist system to survive, by selling its labor and purchasing necessities from the market. The surplus value of these transactions accumulates to a wealthy ruling class, structuring class relations:
“Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time, accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.’ And to expect any other division of the products from the capitalistic mode of production is the same as expecting the electrodes of a battery not to decompose acidulated water, not to liberate oxygen at the positive, hydrogen at the negative pole, so long as they are connected with the battery,” comments Engels (quoting Marx).
Competition results in winners and losers. Resources and power are centralized in a shrinking ruling class, while precarity metastasizes among a surplus population. “Capital grows in one place to a huge mass in a single hand, because it has in another place been lost by many,” says Marx. Even before AI, the incentive to reduce costs meant the replacement of workers by machinery.
Unlike AI, it is clear that capitalism does not have a mind of its own. The individual decisions that maintain the system are made by humans. Capitalism is not a natural state of affairs, but an economic system established by businessmen and bankers to perpetuate their social status. Capitalism does not exist for its own ends, but to profit and empower these capitalists.Challenges to the system, whether from labor solidarity or corporate regulation, are fended off by capitalists protecting their class interests.
The threat of AI exists not in its self-replication, but from a ruling class empowered with tools to discipline labor and increase surveillance (alongside its environmental impact). Computer programs, like traditional machines, do not have independent motivation but serve the interests of their creators. It is not robots who desire to dominate humanity, but Silicon Valley CEOs.
These CEOs hype up the potential of AI in order to encourage investment. The myth of a coming “Artificial General Intelligence” acts in service of the latest tech bubble. Sci-fi scenarios of AI overtaking humanity reinforce these expectations. Meanwhile, the shift in focus to the machines themselves, rather than their capitalist creators, shields the relationship from class analysis.
Those involved in the Luddite movement (1811 – 1817) are often thought of as irrational actors fighting against the inevitable turn of history. Their tactic of machine-breaking is depicted as opposition to all technological advancement. In fact, direct action only followed the exhaustion of legal attempts at redress against their displacement by machinery. Their fight was not against machines, but for survival.
Our understanding of society’s relationship with machines necessitates a class analysis. Who does the machine benefit? Is it designed to meet actual human needs, or primarily to extract additional surplus value? How can the working class take ownership of machines to repurpose them toward the elimination of drudgery? The confrontation is not one of humanity vs. machines, but of class struggle.
The post On Self-Replication in AI and Capitalism first appeared on Rochester Red Star.
Why Did Democratic Socialists Vote ‘No’ On Rochester’s Budget?
The following remarks were delivered by councilmembers Mary Lupien, Stanley Martin, and Chiara “KeeKee” Smith in explanation of their votes against the proposed budget, which dedicates more than 25% ($160 million) to the Rochester Police Department.
Mary Lupien; East District: I view budgets as moral documents. The staff did a great job putting it together, it’s a lot of work. My not supporting the budget has nothing to do with the amount of work that was put in, it’s the policies and decisions that come from the top. This budget does not go fast enough or far enough, and it does not meet the moment. I recognize that we’re facing a difficult fiscal reality, and that resources are limited, and that hard choices had to be made. But if every department is being asked to tighten its belt, to reduce staffing, and do more more with less, why does that expectation seem to apply to everyone but the Rochester Police Department?
Every year the RPD gets their biggest budget ever. Which, to be honest, doesn’t even matter, because every year they overspend their budget, so they really just get unlimited money. We continue to budget for vacant police positions that have gone unfilled for years, even as other departments that provide direct services to residents are forced to make cuts. We know that nearly half [of] the police department is eligible to retire in the next five years. At some point we have to ask whether budgeting for these positions that we cannot fill, is the best use of our limited dollars.
Meanwhile, we continue to underinvest in violence prevention programs, like Advance Peace, that have already demonstrated success. Pathways to Peace, Advance Peace, and our other non-police interventions, in cooperation with the police department, have helped to significantly reduce violence. Yet we still treat these investments as secondary rather than essential.
And we also continue to underinvest in housing during a housing crisis. Every year that we postpone the investments that would help us repair underlying problems, the challenges grow harder to solve and the costs grow higher.
There are many positive elements in this budget, and I appreciate, again, the work that went into it. But I cannot support a budget that continues to prioritize maintaining the status quo, over making the investments necessary to meet the dire challenges in front of us.
Stanley Martin, At-Large: So, I’d like to start by saying thank you to the administration, Director Warren, all the different departments that work together to put this budget together. And of course, a huge thank you to our staff, James, Jenn, Dacy, Adrien, Clerk Washington, everyone who helped to this work and who continues to take care of this city.
It’s not surprise what my vote will be tonight. It is going to be a no. As many of my colleagues before me have mentioned, I am deeply concerned with the amount of money we spend on policing. This year, we are spending $190 million on policing. That includes pensions, that includes positions that are vacant with no reasonable expectation to ever fill those positions. To me, it’s hard to understand how in one breath we’re saying we have a budget deficit, we’re struggling to make ends meet; and in the next breath we fund police at the highest amount they have ever been in the history of this city.
My no vote is also because I feel that this budget fails to take care of some of the people who keep us safe. We heard a lot of the issues around safety when it comes to security guards need for certain equipment to feel safe. When I walk into this room and I see security guards around, I feel extremely safe. I see how they de-escalate. And I would like for the folks who are on the front lines to be paid equitably in the same way other departments on the front lines are getting paid.
Finally, it is my deepest hope that within my time on this council, I will see a budget that equitably invests in alternative responses, rent supports, supports for people who simply can’t make ends meet because of inflation and all the other issues we’re seeing in this country. My no vote does not critique, again, any of the important work so many folks in this city are doing. But for me, this budget just fails to meet the majority of the needs of our community.
Chiara “KeeKee” Smith, At-Large: Like my colleagues, I also want to acknowledge all the great work that everyone in this city does every day to make things run smoothly, especially the work that was done around the budget – Again, Jen, James, Dacy, Adrien, Clerk Washington, and the rest of the staff. Thank you guys so much for being available and for answering questions as needed. Budgets are more than numbers; as Mary said, they are moral documents. And they tell a story of what we value as a city. They show our residents who we invest in, what challenges we are willing to confront, and what kind of future we’re working to build. They are records that will tell stories of what we held important.
I have heard a consistent message from residents across our city. People want safe neighborhoods, but they also want stable housing. They want mental health support for those in crisis. They want opportunities for young people. They want clean neighborhoods. They want violence prevented before it starts. They want us to address the conditions that create crisis, not simply react when someone gets hurt.
When I was running for office, people were not asking for larger police budgets. They were asking why families were struggling to keep a roof over their heads. They were asking why young people lacked positive opportunities. They were asking why neighbors facing mental health challenges have nowhere to turn. They were asking why the same communities continue to carry the heaviest burdens of the city’s drug crisis, while being ignored when they asked for help.
I support public safety and I respect those who have chosen a career in law enforcement. But public safety is bigger than policing. Public safety is when a child has a safe place to sleep; when a family can afford to stay housed; when someone in crisis receives care and support. It begins when young people have access to hope. Residents have been clear – they want greater investment in prevention. They want stronger support for programs like violence prevention initiatives such as the PIC program, such as the Action Team, and trusted community organizations already doing the work of healing, the escalating conflict and supporting families before emergencies happen.
I am also concerned that this budget does not provide a clear path forward for Peace Village, or another meaningful alternative for our unhoused neighbors. Our communities are strained. Residents are frustrated. The people living there deserve dignity, and the surrounding neighborhoods deserve solutions.
As elected officials, our responsibility is not simply to fund systems. It is to listen to the people we serve, especially those whose voices are often overlooked. When I look at this budget through that lens, I cannot support it. I’m asking us to have a broader vision of public safety. One that includes housing, mental health prevention, intervention, and community. One that recognizes enforcement alone cannot solve challenges rooted in poverty, trauma, disinvestment, and a lack of opportunity. I respect those who may vote differently, and I remain committed to working with my colleagues to move Rochester forward. But my first obligation is to the residents who have trusted me with this role, and those whose needs are the greatest. For this reason I will be voting no on this budget.
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The DSA difference means prioritizing people’s needs over the maintenance of class order and pursuit of profit. Investments in affordable housing, accessible food, and adequate mental health resources are investments in public safety. A better world is possible.
Make a difference with DSA. Join today: dsausa.us/join
The post Why Did Democratic Socialists Vote ‘No’ On Rochester’s Budget? first appeared on Rochester Red Star.
Fiume o Morte: Anti-Fascist Memory Making
by Rich J.
In a small municipal park at the corner of South and Alexander, there is a statue of city namesake Nathaniel Rochester. The space itself is more of a neighborhood garden, a place where residents hang out, and the bronze statue of Nathaniel Rochester hangs out with you. He is seated, though his legs are a little too long for his body, resting on his cane, and smiling as if at a private joke. It’s a bronze you could imagine sidling up next to and listening to amusing stories of early, rapidly-growing Rochesterville.
The built environment is our daily background. Our public spaces are places we pass through or hang out in, not regard with deep contemplation. But that very passivity is what makes public symbols so potent. They provide unassuming legitimation for the official history of a place and its extant structures of authority. Nowhere in Nathaniel Square Park will you find mention that Nathaniel Rochester built his town on land recently conquered from the Seneca, or that he did so with the coerced labor of slaves he brought here from Maryland.
In the port city of Trieste, Italy, in 2019, citizens unveiled their own bronze statue depiction of a thoughtful-looking man. Gabriele D’Annunzio was a modernist poet, still highly regarded in Italian literary circles, and the statue captures that facet of the man. It shows him cross-legged, deeply concentrating on reading an open book, while leaning on a pile of still more books. It is exactly the kind of commemoration one would expect to see of a respected author.
For the citizens of Rijeka, Croatia, however, Gabriele D’Annunzio’s legacy is not that of a renowned author. It’s that of a fascist occupier. Or, more accurately, if the citizens of Rijeka remember his name at all, they associate him with a fascist occupation. In the opening scenes of Croatian filmmaker Igor Bezinović’s Fiume o Morte!, which screened at the Little Theater earlier this year, he interviews passersby, and most people on the street don’t recognize the name Gabriele D’Annunzio. Determined to reframe the memory of D’Annunzio, Bezinovic sets out to humorously film a historical recreation of the man and his occupation.
In 1919, D’Annunzio led a few hundred demobilized Italian soldiers in a takeover of the disputed former Habsburg city then known as Fiume. Allied negotiators at Versailles had promised the port to the new Yugoslav state, to the chagrin of the city’s powerful Italian minority. The city’s Italians cheered D’Annunzio’s coup and celebrated him as a man of action who would force the Italian government to take on its nationalist responsibility to annex Fiume. For D’Annunzio and the coterie of young adventurers who gathered around him, however, Fiume was to be the revolutionary center of a utopian society of work and art and generative violence.
D’Annunzio was in the orbit of Italy’s fascist movement and, through his Fiume adventure, framed much of fascism’s aesthetics. Photographers thoroughly documented his 15-month occupation, and the imagery they produced was largely of shirtless young men posing heroically and brandishing weapons. This bravado performance of masculinity was an explicit critique of bourgeois liberalism, which they saw as effete and degenerate. Only strong men, willing to use force, could regenerate the insipid culture of the bourgeoisie.
The images of D’Annunzio and his followers are easy to mock. Bezinovic cheekily restages their historical photographs as filmed tableaux with amateur local actors. He casts a series of men to portray D’Annunzio himself mock-heroically in his uniform, giving speeches, throwing orgies, and working on his poetic constitution. The director’s only criteria for casting his seven D’Annunzios is that they be bald and middle-aged. The effect is to enunciate the buffoonish character of the whole cocaine-fueled occupation. D’Annunzio’s self-conceived heroism dissolves into the ordinary, the boring, the common.
And here the subversive memory-making at the heart of Fiume o Morte succeeds in its goal. The fascists who followed D’Annunzio imagined themselves as supermen bending the world to their will. A few shells from an Italian battleship ended their whole Fiume adventure. Its participants went on to another project to bend the world to their will. A couple of meathooks in a town square ended their Italian fascist project. But, given the continued popularity of D’Annunzio, whose palace is a well-attended tourist attraction in Italy, it is evident that the fascists refuse to remember their failures. In Fiume o Morte!, with its unapologetic lowbrow approach, making art with and by normal Croatian people, Bezinovic makes an antifascist movie about fascist failure. D’Annunzio would have hated it.
The post Fiume o Morte: Anti-Fascist Memory Making first appeared on Rochester Red Star.
Atlantic Aviation Hosts Twice-Weekly ICE Flights While Catering to the Luxury Jet Set
The private jets, limousines, and tanned vacationers coursing through Atlantic Aviation’s exclusive lot mask a grim reality. Every Tuesday and Friday, the private company facilitates the transportation of residents detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in and out of Las Vegas. They sometimes come, and sometimes go, chained at the wrists, waist, and feet, shuffling single file between white caged-windowed buses and unmarked aircraft supplied by major commercial airlines.
Taylor Swift’s $54M Falcon 7X
Canadair Jet ICE plane by @buffysphotography
The members of Las Vegas Democratic Socialists of America (LVDSA) demand that Atlantic Aviation terminate contracts with DHS and immediately end its participation in these flights. With support from the Habeas Flight Watch Network, LVDSA’s Abolish ICE Campaign is taking steps to ensure they do. LVDSA is conducting habeas flight watches and hosting a National Day of Protest against Atlantic Aviation on June 27th.
Located at Harry Reid International Airport, Atlantic Aviation reserves its runways and hangars for the luxury jet set. No doubt, the private company enjoyed a boost in positive press when Taylor Swift chose to park her private jet at Atlantic upon breezing into town to celebrate Travis Kelce’s Super Bowl LVII victory. Today, the company promises to whisk World Cup spectators to games in style, offering gourmet in-flight dining and wrap-around concierge services. Unsurprisingly, it does not flaunt its frequent flying of ICE victims among its first-class services.
While Atlantic Aviation caters to celebrities and sports pros to rake in profits, they are also fattening their bottom line on the injustices our neighbors suffer. People are rounded up based on their skin color, language, and clothing, exploited by the city’s shady 287(g) agreement, and targeted by Flock AI mass-surveillance technology. Denied due process, they are deliberately displaced in the expanding network of concentration camps and the routes that connect them. We are taking action for the victims, their families, and the attorneys who are unable to secure their clients’ habeas rights.
A team of flight watchers from LVDSA and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) meets outside Atlantic’s runways with cameras, documenting the arrival and departure of ICE victims. The goal is to capture footage of the individuals getting on and off buses and planes— their faces, clothing, and shoes—so that their families and lawyers might find them. A Habeas Flight Watch Network volunteer flight dispatcher keeps the team notified of the ETAs for Las Vegas-bound ICE flights, and, just like commercial flights, these schedules are subject to frustrating last-minute changes.
Friday, June 12th, is no exception. At 6:44 am, our Las Vegas flight watch team receives an ETA from the dispatch: today’s flight arrives from Fort Hood via Reno on a Canadair CRJ-200 operated by Air Wisconsin; it’s scheduled to land at 12:22 pm. We set up early in case the plane arrives ahead of schedule, which happens. Stationed outside the Atlantic Aviation fence with cameras and tripods, we learn the flight is delayed until 12:51, then 1:13. It is now over 100 degrees.
Buffy Taylor, a member of PSL, sighs and walks under a tiny tree in the lot’s perimeter for a sliver of shade. She’d arrived on her bike, a duffel bag containing several ice-cold water bottles and her Canon T7 strapped over her shoulder. “I’ve been tracking and photographing planes for years as a hobby, and I figured I could help people find their family or friends and expose the illegal actions of the government,” she explains. “Put my skills to good use.” By the time the team receives their final status update – ETA 1:21 pm – their phones are overheating, and Taylor’s waters are hot to the touch.
As with other Las Vegas ICE-related activity, the arrival of the ICE plane is quiet and understated. Our team learns it has touched down on Atlantic Aviation’s Runway 19, the same one used to welcome visiting celebrities. Moments later, a dull gray aircraft, serial number N455AW, devoid of any colors or logos except a tiny US flag, rolls toward us before turning slightly to let a taxiing private jet by. We can’t believe our luck– we now have a clear view of the plane’s stairway, the white prison bus, and the stretch of pavement between them.
When its doors open, four men in neon vests spring to action, neatly setting about 20 bright orange bundles in a row on the ground. “Prison jump suits?” I ask Taylor.
“Nope, their personal belongings.”
Uncertain whether people are held prisoner on the plane, on the bus, or both, and seeing no movement from either, we focus on the four yellow-vested staff bustling about, bounding up and down the airplane stairs. Are they Atlantic ground crew? ICE agents? They eventually form an assembly line between the bus door and the plane’s stairway. Finally, the victims step off the bus, stooped and resigned, shackled at the wrists and feet, a long chain linking them at the waist.
Taylor abandons her tripod and darts around on foot, zooming in on captives, as I dictate a physical description of each man boarding the plane after he is frisked from head to toe. Twenty-two in all, mostly young, 20s and 30s, though one man appears to be old, perhaps in his 70s. Once the last has boarded, a pilot inspects the plane’s exterior as the caged-windowed bus slowly drives off the tarmac. We wonder about the victims, whether they’ve eaten or used the bathroom, and what they must be thinking.
As we spot the white bus exiting Atlantic’s parking lot, Taylor sprints, zigzagging through parked cars, and snaps photos of the bus’s driver and license plate. “It’s astonishing how many people have to be complicit for this to happen,” observes Audrey Hines, a co-steward for LVDSA’s Abolish ICE Campaign.
Not all habeas flight watches are this successful. Some sessions have yielded pictures of the plane or bus—still helpful—but no people. Other times, planes and utility vehicles have arrived unexpectedly, suddenly blocking the view. Organizers leave hot and exhausted, but determined to catch useful images on the next one. “Each new flight watch has the potential to help even one person, help one family be reunited, so it is so worth it,” says Hines.
“Even if we don’t have the best shot, we keep trying— you kind of feel like a spy,” adds 19-year-old Mikey LaFrambois, a lead organizer in UNLV’s Young Democratic Socialists of America.
Hopefully, these ICE flight watches won’t last too long. On Saturday, June 27th, at 6 pm, LVDSA is joining the National Day of Protest against Atlantic Aviation and other airlines abetting ICE activity. We are hosting a protest outside Atlantic Aviation, in a united demand that they cancel their contracts with DHS and the federal government. We stand in solidarity with cities around the country that are speaking up. We salute Dallas, a World Cup host city whose organizers and faith leaders are taking Atlantic Aviation to task for courting wealthy ticket holders while preying on the powerless. As Rev. Neil Thomas, lead pastor of Cathedral of Hope, noted on June 10, 2026:
As people arrive for the World Cup and other major events, we will proudly showcase our city as a place of hospitality and opportunity. Yet, at the very same time, through these very same airports, on these very same streets, within sight of celebrations, immigrant members of our community are being removed from their homes and families. This contradiction forces us to ask difficult but necessary questions about who we are as a city.
Atlantic Aviation caters to the indulgences and excesses of billionaires while actively participating in and profiting from the crimes against our neighbors. All professional athletes, celebrities, and customers using Atlantic Aviation’s services are part of the problem. Pilots transporting victims of ICE arrests, ground staff loading cargo —all are agents in perpetuating this nightmare.
In solidarity with local immigrant rights efforts, we urge readers to demand that Atlantic Aviation terminate these inhumane flights. This company will be held accountable for its actions.
By Jill Glass, LVDSA Abolish ICE Campaign Co-Steward
Images by Buffy Taylor @buffysphotographs
References
American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. (2026, April 8). ACLU of Nevada files notice of appeal to continue challenge of LVMPD 287(g) agreement with ICE. https://www.aclunv.org/press-releases/aclu-of-nevada-files-notice-of-appeal-to-continue-challenge-of-lvmpd-287g-agreement-with-ice/
American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin. (2026, April 2). Racial profiling rampant after Supreme Court ruling. https://www.aclu-wi.org/news/racial-profiling-rampant-after-supreme-court-ruling/
Atlantic Aviation. (2026, June). World Cup. https://www.atlanticaviation.com/world-cup/
Balas, R. (2026, January 17). Inside Taylor Swift’s $54M Dassault Falcon 7X: 2026 Eras Tour & flight tracking controversy. The Flying Engineer. https://theflyingengineer.com/taylor-swifts-private-jet-inside-look/
Immigration Policy Tracking Project. (2025, April 8). Reported: ICE contracts with commercial airlines to facilitate deportation flights. https://immpolicytracking.org/policies/reported-ice-contracts-with-commercial-airlines-to-facilitate-deportation-flights/
Instagram. (2025). Post by @habeasflightwatch [Instagram post]. https://www.instagram.com/p/DYXLGP7AI7E/
Lexington Alarm. (2026). Habeas Flight Watch. https://lexingtonalarm.org/habeas-flight-watch/
Schilken, C. (2024, February 9). Will Taylor Swift be able to park a private jet for Super Bowl? Vegas airports are full. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2024-02-09/super-bowl-private-jets-parking-las-vegas-airports-49ers-chiefs-taylor-swift
Velotta, R. N. (2016, May 18). Jet Suite to offer luxury travel between California and Las Vegas. Las Vegas Review-Journal. https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/jet-suite-to-offer-luxury-travel-between-california-and-las-vegas/
ICE takes 240 from Clark County jail under new pact; ACLU fights deal. (2026, March 11). Las Vegas Review-Journal. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/ice-takes-240-from-clark-county-jail-under-new-pact-aclu-fights-deal-372339
The Wilson Cuts: Somerville Mayor Lays Off Union Organizers, ‘Disappears’ Mental Health Counselors
By: Chris Brady
SOMERVILLE – On May 20, Somerville Mayor Jake Wilson joined the Greater Boston Labor Council (GBLC) for their municipal legislative breakfast at the Somerville Armory. There, he gave a speech supporting unions.
Somerville worker Kate Bossingham testified during a May 28 City Council meeting that after the breakfast, which was presumably paid for with GBLC workers’ union dues, Wilson returned to City Hall to join a layoffs meeting with members of Somerville Workers United (SWU). According to Bossingham, two days later, Wilson notified the City that layoffs had been completed. Thirteen workers were laid off, a majority of which came from the city’s Health and Human Services Department, while sixteen vacant roles were cut.
Two unions stand as both survivor and bulwark of resistance against the mayor’s austerity. Somerville city workers are split in representation between Somerville Municipal Employees Union (SMEU) and recently organized Somerville Workers United (SWU) – AFSCME 93. Both unions are fighting for contracts with SWU fights for management recognition. Even as the mayor cuts union workers, the city has enlisted former Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Steve Tolman to assist with negotiations.
“I cannot say strongly enough that we cut positions, not people,” Wilson said in a statement, citing a $5.4 million budget deficit for the move.
The mayor may cut positions, but it was people with positions who lost their jobs: stability, future, even food on the table.
“We don’t disappear on people” – until we do
Emily Mayernik, a licensed mental health counselor for the city, was in one of those positions cut by the mayor’s decree. In that role, Mayernik indicated to Working Mass, she provided support and community programming to children and families in the social services team.
“I worked with immigrant families. I worked with people experiencing major mental health concerns,” said Mayernik. “I worked with vulnerable people.”
Mayernik was a SMEU member. The process for layoffs, as she understood, was that the city must notify the union before a layoff of a bargaining unit member. A negotiation process would follow; staffing cuts generally adhere to processes outlined in the collective bargaining agreement (CBA).
According to Mayernik, normal procedure was not followed. The city laid off an SMEU colleague on May 20 and notified SMEU only on May 21, the day after, while at the same time informing the union that Mayernik would be laid off the next day. Mayernik reports that SMEU sent a cease and desist letter to the city – which was ignored.
Mayernik was informed on Thursday morning to report to HR that afternoon, where she was dismissed. Despite her requests for time to close out her work, Mayernik said she was forced to go home immediately after that meeting, even though she still had active cases and patients relying on her.
“This is really unethical,” Mayernik said, arguing that the goodbye process is essential given the vulnerable populations that she served.
“We don’t disappear on people. That’s not acceptable behavior.”
She clarified that she did not object to the layoff itself, but specifically the rushed process and norm-breaking ‘ghosting’ that is tantamount to malpractice in her profession. Mayernik believes this endangered some of Somerville’s most vulnerable people.
“I just disappeared.”
Equity professionals were also caught in the mayor’s crosshairs. Luis Q, previously a Strategic Planning and Equity Manager with the city and a worker-organizer with SWU hired during the administration of Ballantyne, was among the laid off. It is unclear if his occupation, with DEI initiatives entering the culture war, or work with SWU contributed to his layoff.
SWU not yet recognized
Back at the breakfast of the Greater Boston Labor Council, according to Somerville sustainability planner Josh Eckert-Lee, the mayor told a SWU organizer he was “excited to meet with [them].”
Wilson had ignored the previous two requests to meet with SWU, effectively dodging requests for voluntary recognition of the nascent union. Later that same day, Wilson initiated layoffs, which included three organizing committee or core organizers of SWU.
Eckert-Lee argued that “a fair amount of these layoffs could absolutely be seen as retaliatory.”
Somerville City Council voted unanimously to recommend endorsing voluntary recognition of SWU at the May 28 meeting.
Eckert-Lee believes that Wilson enjoys the clout associated with speaking highly of labor, but “when it comes time to walk the walk,” the mayor found it easier to cut people, particularly those with more ‘controversial’ roles like Luis’s.
In a statement to Working Mass, Wilson said he met with SWU in late May. The mayor cited competing union petitions filed with the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations (DLR) as the reason he has not yet granted voluntary recognition:
There are currently open petitions filed with the DLR by two unions claiming the right to represent some of the positions involved here. In this situation, we’re required by law to remain neutral as to which union should ultimately represent these employees.
Wilson added that once the DLR resolves the representation questions, meaning SMEU and SWU, the city will engage with workers and their designated representative. Eckert-Lee indicated, regarding the DLR decision, that “this is all new and being actively sorted.”
But the request for the Mayor to meet with workers remains.
The mayor’s comments neglect that his administration has agency outside of deferring to legal bureaucratic institutions, or that it is fairly common for workers to dual-card across multiple unions, meaning a focus on this distinction is avoidance of actual action – like voluntary recognition.
Eckert-Lee said:
We’re organizing because we want to serve the city well. It becomes much harder to do that when we have no agency in advocating for ourselves.
There will be more layoffs in three months, workers believe. In the coming weeks of budget management, and coming days of negotiations with SWU, the mayor has a choice. Will Jake Wilson continue to smile at one labor crowd while cutting the other? Will Jake Wilson actually support the workers he champions to the GBLC or continue his anti-labor austerity till held accountable?
Chris Brady is a member of Boston DSA and an editor of Working Mass.
The post The Wilson Cuts: Somerville Mayor Lays Off Union Organizers, ‘Disappears’ Mental Health Counselors appeared first on Working Mass.
Amazon is Bleeding the Post Office Dry
Finn Green works for the U.S. Post Office as a rural carrier associate in Ojai, California. On a typical Monday, Green and other rural postal carriers deliver Amazon packages for hours without overtime pay. When mail volume is higher, such as days following legal holiday weekends and holiday seasons, carriers are ordered to prioritize Amazon parcels over Express and Registered mail, USPS’s most expensive products. Only after completing the Amazon deliveries may carriers return to their regular route to deliver USPS mail.
Amazon’s recent statement about its relationship with the U.S. Postal Service is a carefully constructed narrative. Since 2013, USPS has delivered Amazon packages through a program colloquially known as “Amazon Sundays.” The contract was up for renegotiation this year, and the stakes were high. Amazon brings in $6 billion in annual revenue to the Federal agency on the brink of bankruptcy. The 2026 negotiated contract resulted in the USPS delivering 80% of amazon packages it had previously handled, an outcome USPS had no real power to refuse. Amazon, for its part, calls this a “longstanding partnership.” The relationship is not as mutual as Amazon suggests.
Amazon’s relationship with USPS is that of an independent, dominant tech corporation leveraging a financially strained public institution whose survival depends on the multi-billion dollar contract. Green explicitly pushes back on the idea that Amazon is “saving the day,” and instead suggests that Amazon is also dependent on USPS for rural and last-mile delivery, where private logistics are too costly to replicate. Although Amazon presents as a high‑tech delivery giant, its ability to promise cheap, fast, and near‑universal shipping is absolutely reliant on USPS’s public infrastructure and labor.
USPS provides the tools necessary for Amazon’s success through long-established delivery routes, legally mandated universal service obligations, and a national workforce capable of reaching rural regions. Amazon’s role is not that of a benefactor, but of a dominant customer whose logistical operations are actively reorganizing a public institution through the slow process of death by a thousand cuts. In Green’s words, “Amazon has us by the balls, basically… the system is rigged, where it’s like Amazon sets the metrics of what we have to hit, and if we don’t hit it, they can withhold that money.” These pressures flow downward through USPS operations and dictate how carriers prioritize their workload.
Workers are further exploited through the rural route evaluation system. Under this system, rural carriers are assigned a fixed number of paid hours for a given route, based on standardized assessments of expected workload. Actual working time often far exceeds the hours assigned to an evaluated route, particularly during periods of high mail or Amazon package volume. Rural carriers work many additional hours beyond their evaluated time and do not receive corresponding pay or lunch breaks. Carriers are not allowed to return to the post office with any undelivered mail, meaning they must complete their full route no matter how long it takes. Delaying the mail is a federal violation. A carrier who does not complete an assigned route risks a fireable offence.
USPS maintains records of both evaluated hours and actual hours reported by carriers. While carriers are required to complete full delivery routes under penalty of discipline, compensation is only addressed under specific thresholds instead of actual working hours. This means that although labor law requires hourly workers to be paid for every hour worked, the reality of combining the rural route evaluation system with delivery enforcement normalizes unpaid labor.
Union leadership allegedly delays addressing any structural problems. When Green raised concerns with the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association (NRLCA), representatives acknowledged that the rural route evaluation system can result in carriers working unpaid hours without breaks. While NRLCA representatives admit the system is unfair, it is nevertheless authorized by the union contract and tied to the rural carrier’s pay structure.
Carriers are disillusioned with the union’s perceived complicity in these exploitative practices, and the working conditions for a rural carrier makes participating in union activities or holding management accountable practically impossible. The immediate labor crisis is a bureaucratic nightmare, and feeds into a growing sense among workers that privatization is inevitable. “Here is a workforce that is unionized, but the unions aren’t strong enough,” explains Green. And Amazon knows it.
In 1970, postal service workers won protections after initiating a strike without leadership approval, but striking against the Federal government remains illegal for USPS workers to this day. Alongside the 1970 workers strike, the postal system was restructured to operate more like a self-funded business, largely cutting off taxpayer support and relying instead on revenue from postage and services. USPS kept its public mandate to deliver mail to every address in the country, including rural and remote areas, six days a week. This created a contradictory system: USPS must remain financially independent while still delivering to addresses that private carriers won’t touch because they aren’t profitable.
Rather than being dismantled outright, USPS is repeatedly pressured through funding cuts, declining mail volumes, and a unique congressional requirement to pre-fund retiree health benefits. The breakdown of USPS isn’t by accident. Recent reports of USPS suspending pension contributions and projecting bankruptcy are presented as evidence of institutional failure, even though these crises are engineered by policy choices. Today, Trump claims there is no money to properly fund USPS while allocating billions of tax-payer dollars into the war in Iran and overall military spending.
Trump has repeatedly signaled support for privatizing the USPS. If this happens, Trump could use Federal pressure on private postal operators to influence mail-in ballots. According to a recent report, nearly 1 in 3 Americans voted by mail in 2024. If mail-in ballot responsibilities became dispersed within the corporation, Amazon could use the opportunity to control and influence elections. This is not outside the realm of possibility. In an Amazon facility in Alabama in 2021, security guards were seen unlocking a USPS mailbox where employees were casting union election ballots. The Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union accused Amazon of controlling the “mechanics of the election,” including pressuring workers to use the company-requested USPS mailbox to submit their ballots.
If the USPS were to shut down, millions of people across the country would lose a universal public communication system that delivers mail, ballots, stimulus payments, and essential goods to every address at a flat rate. Without the USPS, private carriers will lose money delivering to remote rural areas, and won’t have any incentive to do so. This will disproportionately affect rural communities and people living below the poverty line, particularly Indigenous peoples and Tribal Nations already dispossessed by U.S. colonial structures.
Amazon’s integration into USPS operations is not a good faith partnership. The agency is expected to function as both a universal public service and to prioritize efficiency and optimization set by Amazon, at the expense of its workers. “People can see it coming,” warns Green. “They can see that if Amazon takes priority, it turns a federal workforce into a private workforce for a for‑profit, multibillion‑dollar company.”
Image: The USPS headquarters at 475 L’Enfant Plaza, Washington, D.C. Photo by Tony Webster and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.