by Elizabeth Henderson

As temperatures seesaw and heavy rains cause Lake Ontario levels to swell, Rochester is releasing the final draft of the revised Zoning code for public scrutiny. How humans behave in each little locality adds up for the whole planet. The city of Rochester has high hopes that the new code will enable Rochester to meet the 2034 Comprehensive Plan goals for positive “Placemaking,” resilience and sustainability. Rochester 2034 is the city’s future land use plan with detailed maps and written policies on how land should be managed and how development should occur within the City. The new zoning code is supposed to take this policy as its base, and provide a set of development regulations. There are many complex issues involved in zoning – I only feel competent to reflect on how the zoning relates to community gardens, urban farms and city-wide landscape maintenance.

Reading through this ZAP draft, I was pleased to discover that the definition of community gardens matches up with the comments submitted by the Urban Agriculture Working Group. Earlier drafts took the word gardening hyper literally to mean only the activities of seeding, planting, nurturing and harvesting plants, leaving out anything else that went on in a garden – gardeners sitting at a table to chat, children playing in a sand box. The new definition recognizes the full scope of what a garden can be: “Community Garden. An operation in which residents grow food and/or ornamental plants and create community-building spaces. Produce is consumed by local households or donated to community organizations. Community gardens may offer a small amount of their product to be sold to support garden operation costs, but no onsite permanent structure is used for sales. Community gardens may include small-scale composting systems, low tunnels and temporary season extension equipment, water barrels, and other catchment/irrigation systems.” Now we just have to push to make sure that ZAP classifies gardens as permitted in all residential neighborhoods.

The new definition of Urban Farm is similarly comprehensive.

Where the ZAP falls short is in the restrictions on what gardeners or farmers can use to extend the season. From out of some hat, the zoners pulled the limit for greenhouses at 144 square feet (12 by 12).  All existing greenhouses on community gardens would be out of compliance. ZAP similarly restricts the space allocated for greenhouses, high tunnels (also known as hoop houses) and even low tunnels to 25% of the lot size.  With climate change, in the Northeast rains are more frequent and come down much harder.  Using high tunnels is a way to protect crops from pounding rain, so gardeners or urban farmers might justifiably want to cover as much as 75% of their land in order to have a crop.

The ZAP should also distinguish between greenhouses and high tunnels on the one hand, and low tunnels and row covers on the other. None of these structures is permanent. They are production aids that help growers extend the season. A greenhouse or high tunnel requires significant effort to erect and stays up for a few seasons or more. But a skilled gardener can erect a low tunnel or put row covers over plants in a very short time and might leave them up for only a few days to protect tender plants from a frost or an invading pest or disease. The ZAP should get rid of these arbitrary limits.

Oddly, the ZAP allows urban farms to keep fowl and goats, but no other animals.  It is reasonable to restrict livestock to smaller breeds, but why not rabbits, guinea pigs and other small mammals? While allowing aquaculture, ZAP does not list fish. The ZAP only allows chicken manure in compost, but no other animal manures.

There is extensive research on the environmental injustice that low-income people are exposed to way more toxins in their living environment than wealthier people.  Lead paint, dust, contamination from incinerators, and factories located deliberately in neighborhoods where residents have fewer resources to defend themselves. Scientific studies associate exposure to pesticides with asthma, cancer, developmental and learning disabilities, nerve and immune system damage, Parkinson’s disease, liver or kidney damage, reproductive impairment, birth defects, and disruption of the endocrine system. Infants, children, pregnant women, the elderly, people with compromised immune systems, and chemical sensitivities are especially vulnerable to pesticide effects and exposure. Pesticides are harmful to pets, wildlife, soil microbiology, plants, and natural ecosystems. 

The ZAP section on landscaping offers the opportunity to limit the use of toxic herbicides and pesticides in the city. Section E, on maintenance states: “All landscaping must be maintained free from disease, pests, weeds, and litter.”  This is the place to insert – “without the use of carcinogenic or endocrine-disrupting herbicides or pesticides.”  The Monroe County Parks, including city parks, already have strict limits on the use of toxics only for invasive species or serious diseases. The know-how is local! The Parks Department can offer technical assistance.

The current garden permit also limits toxics: “I/We agree to not use pesticides, including Round-Up, without a current New York State Pesticide License and that all New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Monroe County laws must be followed.”

Rochester 2034 devotes a section to community gardens and urban farms which includes (p. 321) a fine list of the positive qualities beyond growing plants that gardens provide. The plan also quotes emphatic comments from residents who filled out a survey and attended community discussions (full disclosure – I was one of them), calling for more community gardens and reduced regulatory burdens on gardeners (p. 323). The Action Plan (UAG 1b) states: “Make changes to the Zoning Code that allow urban agriculture as a principal use within specified parameters.”

Along with amending the zoning, the city needs to change the system for garden permits.  Despite the enthusiastic charge from the public in 2034, city garden permits include the right of the city to revoke the permit to sell the land to developers. The permit includes the clause: “I/We acknowledge and agree that said permit may be revoked by the City of Rochester at any time, and agree that notice by certified letter addressed to the address set forth in this Permit shall be sufficient notice of such revocation.”

To better align with Rochester 2034, the city should adopt zoning that clusters development more densely along transit corridors, then the city can designate vacant lots that are not on these corridors for use as greenspace and gardens. Each quadrant should get some. Half the city’s 5000 vacant lots are city property which it spends $260 a piece each year to keep “clean and green.” The city saves money when residents take over. The city can divide lots into two distinct categories that are clearly labeled as reserved for future development or reserved for use as gardens, farms or green space. Gardeners will know that if they put in a lot of work and investments, their garden won’t face a city bulldozer.

In June, there will be one last chance for people to submit comments before City Council adopts the finalized zoning code. The City Planning Commission will host two informational meetings: June 8 and June 10 at 5:30 at City Hall where people can offer comments or submit them in writing to PlanningCommission@CityofRochester.Gov in advance of either meeting.

The post Getting Grounded: Comments on ZAP (the Rochester Zoning Alignment Project) first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Expression of Disapproval – Burbank City Council Budget Flock Inclusion

On June 2nd, after receiving a multitude of constituent comments objecting to the renewal of the City of Burbank’s $250,000 contract with Flock Safety, the Burbank City Council voted unanimously to pass the city budget unamended, resulting in the renewal of the contract with Flock. This included DSA endorsed Socialist in Office Burbank City Council Member Konstantine Anthony.

DSA-LA and many other chapters of DSA have opposed Flock contracts in our cities, and the DSA-LA Immigration Justice Committee currently has an ongoing campaign to end Flock contracts in Los Angeles. Flock routinely shares data with DHS and ICE, breaking sanctuary ordinances and California State Law in the process, and has a proven track history of extreme data vulnerabilities and violations of their own privacy policies. Flock cameras have been used to track immigrants, women seeking abortions, and even in one instance to access cameras in a children’s gymnastics room. The bottom line: “Flock Safety” is not safe.

DSA Los Angeles strongly disagrees with the council member’s vote. As an avowed socialist, Council Member Anthony should have cast a vote of principled opposition to the use of public funds to surveil working class residents. At the same meeting, the council member was targeted for censure for organizing opposition to a Moms of Liberty, a hate group’s, anti-trans event in Burbank. We understand that this motion put him in a difficult position to take a position of courage – however, the expectation of our SiOs is to take positions of conviction, especially when the community demands it.

The struggle for socialism, multiracial democracy, and immigration justice continues. We are in communication with Council Member Anthony about actions to make amends going forward, and will work with him in the future to build a Burbank for all.

The post Metro DC DSA Statement on Trump’s Threats to Revoke DC Home Rule appeared first on Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America.

by Gregory Lebens-Higgins

The following remarks were delivered by Co-Chair Gregory Lebens-Higgins at Speak to Council on June 11, 2026.

My name is Gregory Lebens-Higgins and I am speaking today as a Co-Chair of Rochester DSA and as a public defender in our community. 

We know policing is a broken system. This is demonstrated by the data, and confirmed by my experience in the courtroom. Increased police spending doesn’t correlate with lower crime. The most heavily policed communities are the same that have been systematically impoverished by decades of segregation, redlining, and unequal employment opportunities. 

On a daily basis, I see families being torn apart, defendants rendered homeless, and those with limited job opportunities being further stigmatized. Drug addiction is still criminalized, and users are often jailed or imprisoned for their disease. Every interaction with police risks unnecessary escalation by officers too willing to enact violence.

And yet there is a refusal to be held accountable. In 2019, Rochestar voted overwhelmingly for a Police Accountability Board with investigatory and disciplinary powers, which has now been defanged by a Rochester Police Department which refuses oversight. The PAB now faces cuts in this budget. 

Rochester Police have no city residency requirement, and their paychecks represent money leaving our community. In 2022, City Newspaper announced that Rochester had entered the “era of the $250,000 police officer,” as officers pad their paychecks and pensions with overtime.

Given all this, it is absurd that the City budget dedicates more than one-quarter – nearly $190 million – to this broken system. We know there are better alternatives available. We know that if we provide adequate housing, food, and other necessities; when we implement robust mental health and crisis interventions, that crime will be reduced. Not every public safety issue requires a response from an officer with a gun.

The Community Input Report surveyed Rochesterians about their priorities. Seventy-four percent listed safety as ‘essential’ or ‘very important.’ But only 53% listed policing services and crime prevention as ‘essential’ or ‘very important.’ This demonstrates that policing and safety are not correlated in the minds of our residents. What people want to see is mental health outreach (82%), and alternative first response models (75%).

A budget is a moral document. Let’s demonstrate to Rochester residents – and by residents I mean everyone living here – that they matter, by funding programs that address their material needs, rather than prioritizing a dysfunctional system associated with violence, oppression, and the reinforcement of inequality. Let’s inspire with transformational investments in our community, rather than sinking more costs into the mistakes of the past. A better Rochester is possible. Fund our community, not cops.

The post Fund Our Community, Not Cops first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Billionaire donors, votes for corporate handouts, lack of socialist ID, and last-minute effort make a Donavan McKinney endorsement the wrong move

By Anthony D.

Metro Detroit DSA members will be asked at the June 13 General Meeting to vote on the endorsement of current State Representative Donavan McKinney’s campaign for U.S. Congress, just two weeks before absentee ballots go out for the August 4 primary. McKinney has had no significant prior relationship with the chapter. His track record as a State Representative includes voting for billions of dollars in corporate handouts and accepting campaign donations from billionaires and corporate PACs.

McKinney is not running as a democratic socialist and a DSA endorsement this close to Election Day would be a significant backslide into the pre-Bernie era of our organization, when our chapter routinely endorsed progressive Democrats whose campaigns we played no major part in building.

What Are We Building?

As DSA evaluates candidates for endorsement, we should consider how they fit into our broader electoral project and its goals. While consensus is rare in DSA, the various political tendencies within it seem to agree that we want DSA to act like a party. We want DSA’s infrastructure and identity to be clearly independent from the Democratic Party. We believe this is necessary to distance ourselves from politicians who would argue that capitalism is not the problem. We want DSA to be a vehicle towards the transformation of society in which the working class has full democratic control of our government, economy, and workplaces.

The type of party and its character remain up for debate, but DSA members expect the candidates that we run will differentiate themselves from Democrats by being clear that our goal is to win socialism. To that end, the 2025 and 2026 election cycles have seen an unprecedented number of DSA-endorsed candidates around the country running for office and publicly identifying as democratic socialists in their campaigns, after having spent many years organizing inside DSA.

DSA endorsements are unlike those given out by individual politicians or nonprofit organizations that simply act as a rubber stamp of approval based on personal relationships or the policies the candidates are running on. Instead, DSA endorsements are material commitments to run members of our party for office. Rather than relying on progressive candidates to come to us with campaigns that are already fully formed as we did during DSA’s pre-Bernie era, the best DSA candidates’ campaigns are conceived of within DSA and engage members to run them themselves. These campaigns are driven by DSA members who fundraise, write the platform, determine the messaging, run the canvasses, build a social media presence, phonebank, knock doors, and design the flyers we hand out. Through this process, the candidates we run remain rooted in DSA and act as an extension of the movement.

Unfortunately, McKinney and his campaign are none of these things. He has no experience organizing in or with DSA. His campaign did not grow out of the chapter and is not being run by DSA members. His social media and campaign literature include no mention of being a democratic socialist and his website was updated sometime since May 31 to add it.

Track Record

McKinney has served as a State Representative since 2023, so it’s useful to review his past campaign donations and how he’s voted while in office. During his 2022 and 2024 campaigns, he accepted donations from various billionaires, corporations, and corporate PACs including:

• $1,000 in 2022 and $500 in 2023 from billionaire Matthew Moroun, a prolific Republican Party and Trump campaign donor as well as the owner of the Ambassador Bridge who allegedly conspired with the Trump administration to attempt to block the rival Gordie Howe International Bridge from opening
• $1,250 from Ida Byrd-Hill, CEO of Automation Workz, whose company created SenseiiWyze, “an AI-powered behavioral intelligence platform that predicts warfighter and front-liner technology readiness under pressure”, according to her LinkedIn page
• $500 from JC Huizenga, who created National Heritage Academies, a for-profit company that runs 103 charter schools in nine states
• $1,000 from Jim George, whose development company was awarded a $5 million grant in the state budget for a housing project without any competitive bidding
• $2,000 from Realtors PAC of Michigan, whose top contributor is Morgan Stanley
• $1,750 from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan
• $1,050 from billionaires Tom and Theresa Preston-Werner. Tom Preston-Werner, the founder of GitHub, was forced to resign in 2014 over allegations of harassment by a former employee.
• $500 from Detroit Regional Chamber PAC, who shaped polls to promote former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan for Governor, then endorsed him. The Detroit Regional Chamber recently joined a coalition to promote data centers.

In the state legislature, McKinney has voted for billions of dollars in corporate handouts. This included a vote to send $1.4 billion into the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve (SOAR) Fund, a corporate slush fund administered by a public-private partnership agency that requires lawmakers to sign non-disclosure agreements and has produced only 1,846 jobs as of October 2025. A separate vote sent $630 million to the site of Ford’s battery plant in Marshall and another $170 million into the SOAR fund. Ford’s battery plant has created just 100 jobs thus far and the SOAR fund has been killed entirely. McKinney has voted with Helena Scott, opponent of DSA-endorsed candidate Chris Gilmer-Hill, 99% of the time. He has not endorsed Chris Gilmer-Hill despite their overlapping districts.

McKinney, to his credit, said all the right things during his interview with the Electoral Committee to try to move us to action on his behalf. During the Q&A, he committed to coordinating on votes with Rashida Tlaib, if elected, and to identifying as a democratic socialist on his campaign literature, website, and social media.

However, McKinney launched his campaign in April 2025, making it more than a year old, and there has been nothing stopping him from identifying as a democratic socialist before now, without our endorsement. It seems unlikely that just a few weeks before absentee ballots go out, he would revamp his campaign, literature, and website, with very little time to reach voters with brand-new messaging. If he’s had a sudden change of heart, that’s admirable, and would be indicative of DSA’s progress. But his track record in Lansing should concern us about whether or not he’s ready to meaningfully change course on his politics. His actions weigh stronger than his last-minute words.

It’s Too Late

With more time, these shortcomings could be overcome by developing a relationship with McKinney and moving him closer to our politics. But Metro Detroit DSA has never endorsed a candidate this close to Election Day in its post-Bernie era. Absentee ballots will arrive to voters just two weeks after our June General Meeting. With two-thirds of voters voting by absentee in Michigan, there’s no opportunity to do anything other than knock doors for an already set-in-stone campaign, with its literature already printed and ads bought. At best, a few thousand doors knocked may translate to a few hundred votes in a primary election that saw 81,125 votes in 2024, which would equate to less than 0.25% of the total votes cast. DSA’s endorsement will be essentially irrelevant to the outcome. Endorsing now and claiming a DSA victory if McKinney wins would be lying to ourselves and to our base.

Table 1 below shows how the timing of our potential endorsement would compare to that of our past endorsements dating back to 2020. McKinney would be the latest we have ever endorsed a candidate, just seven days before absentee ballots are mailed out and 129 days later than our average endorsement date. Compared to the timing of congressional candidate endorsements by other DSA chapters around the country, McKinney’s endorsement would be 89 days later than the average of the 18 candidates.

Changing our approach to endorse a campaign that is more than a year old would indicate to future candidates that they do not need to get involved in DSA and our organizing work in order to win our endorsement. It limits us in the future to reacting to candidates that come to us with a fully formed campaign — including campaigns that do not share DSA’s politics — rather than bringing the candidates into the organization and developing them into lifelong socialist organizers who we then run for office as an extension of our party. It signals that it is acceptable for DSA-endorsed candidates to act individually, deciding to run for office and building their campaign and its messaging on their own without our organization and its collective process behind them.

Learning From The Past

Admittedly, we would not have endorsed Rashida Tlaib in 2018 according to the criteria that I’m advocating we apply to McKinney in 2026. But DSA has matured, our organizers are far more experienced, and we are eight years removed from the lessons learned in a pre-Bernie era. That era saw our chapter hand out numerous endorsements to various liberal and progressive candidates like Kat Bruner James and Abraham Aiyash that did not pan out.

In 2019, Kat Bruner James, running for Ferndale City Council, said during our endorsement interview process that she would run on a slate with our other two endorsed candidates. She later turned heel and instead ran on an opposing Democratic establishment slate when it opened a better lane to victory. The chapter voted unanimously to pull her endorsement and she was elected ahead of our candidate.

In 2020, Abraham Aiyash, running for State Representative in Hamtramck, said during the endorsement interview process that he “was not going to Lansing to make friends.” In 2022, when Michigan Democrats took full control of the state legislature for the first time since 1984, Aiyash became the Majority House Leader and used the position to pressure other Democrats to vote for billions in corporate handouts.

We’re lucky to have Rashida, but she was a rare exception back then, within a flawed approach to socialist electoral politics in which we took too many unfamiliar candidates at their word.

Looking Forward

When Dylan Wegela ran for State Representative in 2022 and applied for our endorsement, our Electoral Committee voted against moving his endorsement forward because he had no prior relationship with the chapter and was running in a district in which only five DSA members resided. We asked him to prove himself in the state legislature and to keep showing up to DSA events. Immediately after taking office, he was the single hold-out vote (McKinney voted yes) for a tax policy bill that included $1.4 billion in corporate handouts. Dylan publicly held firm against Democratic Party leadership even as they threatened to punish him (by undoing the cancellation of public school debt for one of the cities in his district).

The chapter later endorsed Dylan in part due to this principled stance. He became an active member of the chapter and has been a leader in recruiting and training more socialist organizers in his district, creating a model of what legislators can do when they strongly identify as socialists and see themselves as organizers.

As DSA grows, more candidates and elected officials will want to join our movement. We should welcome them, but endorsing someone with a questionable track record that very few of us have any relationship with is antithetical to our strategy for winning socialism. We should take the same careful approach with McKinney that we did with Dylan, by declining to endorse him and asking that we maintain an organizing relationship. If he wins, we could revisit the endorsement in 2028 when he’s become involved with the chapter and we can meaningfully shape his re-election campaign and the outcome.

Anthony D. has been active in the chapter’s electoral and labor organizing work since 2019 and is a member of the Bread & Roses caucus. He previously served as the chapter’s co-chair during the 2021–2022 term.

He’s currently active in Socialists Organizing Western Wayne (SOWW), a geographic working group that was created to organize locally alongside our Socialists in Office (SIOs) — Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, State Representative Dylan Wegela, and Westland City Council President Mike McDermott — where their districts overlap in Westland, Romulus, Inkster, and Garden City.

Too Little, Too Late: Against a Donavan McKinney Endorsement was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Rashida Tlaib needs a socialist partner in Congress. Reject idealist notions of movement building.

By Charlotte G. and Aaron B.

What does it mean to be a socialist? Is being a socialist defined by what exists inside one’s mind alone? No. This is idealism, a framework lacking in a material analysis of the structural forces that truly move political agents and the masses through history. Socialism, we assert, is the action one does, through the construction of a left pole that will pull the working masses into its orbit.

This does not preclude the internality of any individual who moves through liberal democracy from having any effect whatsoever on their choices, but the question is: can you actually rely on that to build a mass movement? Can you rely on ideologically refined individuals to escape marginality and be a hegemonic political force in the world that can actually abolish the present state of things?

We assert that Donavan McKinney is a socialist both through the position he occupies in politics and what exists within his mind’s eye.

Who Is Donavan McKinney?

Donavan McKinney is a lifelong Detroit resident, having grown up on the northeast side with his grandmother while his mother worked to keep their family together. Despite the hard work of his family, they moved 13 times primarily due to evictions, which often included couch surfing with extended family and stints of living in their car. As a child he spent upwards of five hours a day on public transit just to get to school. This level of immiseration is all too common in Detroit, especially among its internally colonized black population, but ultimately what does any of this mean? Many people who grow up impoverished end up becoming traitors to their class, but is that the direction Donavan chose? No.

Donavan, coming from this working class background, put it into action by pursuing a degree in public policy, working as a legislative director, doing community engagement through a nonprofit, and then becoming an organizer for Service Employees International Union Healthcare Michigan (which is composed primarily of low-income black and brown workers). This is a career path indicative of someone who believes in organizing for the betterment of his community, so it makes sense that since becoming a State House Representative for the 14th district (now 11th since redistricting), he has been consistently taking on the monetary influence of entities like DTE in our politics, pushing bills to protect victims of police abuse, winning millions of dollars for violence prevention programs, securing more than half a billion dollars to replace lead pipes, and calling for a ceasefire in Gaza since November 2023. But even so, one might say “any progressive liberal can do these things!” “Economism!” Donavan’s history and character prove otherwise.

Not only has he been a DSA member since before the COVID pandemic, he has described himself as a democratic socialist prior to seeking endorsement on multiple occasions, including an appearance on the For the Sake of the Argument podcast. He has shown interest in attending our GMs independent of the endorsement and joining a socialist congressional caucus, has committed to attending our SIO meetings, is enthusiastic about learning more about the intellectual aspects of socialism, and has expressed a belief in eventual class independence through the party surrogate. These are not the marks of an opportunist; they are the marks of someone who is dedicated not only to improving the conditions of Detroiters, but to learning and building a movement that can birth a socialist party for the masses.

What is the Current Electoral Situation?

Donavan McKinney is running in the 13th Congressional District against incumbent Shri Thanedar, a member of our chapter before we overwhelmingly voted to expel him for his support of Indian Prime Minister Modi and AIPAC. Afterwards, Shri chose to attack and “disavow” our chapter after October 7th, to build better relationships with the Zionist lobby and to cynically use our image and past relationship (especially after we disavowed him) to build his own political career. Donavan, on the other hand, supports a single democratic Palestinian state, Medicare For All, a Green New Deal, a powerful labor movement, and rights for all people regardless of their citizenship status and location in the world. He is already working closely with Rashida Tlaib, calls himself a democratic socialist in person and on his website, and has already planned an event with the nationally DSA-endorsed candidate from Colorado, Melat Kiros.

All of Donavan’s opponents have dropped out save for Shri, who has the advantage of being an incumbent. Shri has money from AIPAC and other corporate PACs for TV ads, mailers, and billboards, all just to make meaningless symbolic moves to impeach Trump while knowing he doesn’t have the votes. All Shri has is name recognition, which is why every time someone answers a door and hears Donavan’s message they are immediately on board. This is not an unfamiliar situation to our chapter and many other chapters across the country. Where other organizations struggle to take on candidates with this kind of backing, our chapter has excelled at it in the recent elections of Denzel McCampbell and Chris Gilmer-Hill. When our opponents have leaned on the establishment and their capital, our chapter has managed to beat the odds.

In this case, we would be doing work we are already doing. There is about an 80% overlap between Chris Gilmer-Hill’s district and the one in which Donavan McKinney is running. If our chapter focused our efforts on that 80% overlap, we would be able to handily deliver this election to Donavan with minimal lift. This is a close race but as history has shown us, people power can overcome corporate capital.

How Would this Endorsement Build the Movement?

When endorsements come up, there is always a fear of opportunism. Shri Thanedar is someone who came to our chapter, and while not endorsed, was able to cynically use our organization to elevate himself and then throw us aside (after we had expelled him) when we no longer suited his needs. There are opportunists who come to our chapter, but Donavan is not one of them. With Donavan, we have the ability to remove Shri from office, sending a powerful message to electeds and candidates who would try to use our chapter to advance their political career — we are capable of unseating any candidate, even incumbents, who do not adequately represent the needs of their constituents and the larger working class, and our political vision is to be respected because we have the means of enforcing it.

Chapter capacity is a strange thing — if you don’t use it, you lose it. People come to our chapter to be engaged in work and to change the region and make real differences. With the low number of elections in 2027, we will have the opportunity to find work in other areas. We propose that 2027 be the year of the SIO — deepening the work we do with our SIOs and focusing our efforts within their districts. With Chris Gilmer-Hill, Rashida Tlaib, Denzel McCampbell, and Donavan McKinney, we will have at least one elected in every part of Detroit, which opens up tremendous organizing opportunities within the city. There is no shortage of fights our chapter can take on — ICE, Flock cameras, and divestment are just some of the ongoing issues where our chapter can intervene. Having the team listed, we will have the reach to educate and activate every Detroit zip code, not only to bolster our chapter’s ranks but the larger socialist movement.

By adding MI-13 to our territory, we have the potential to reach people and communities that have been long forgotten and left behind by the current economic and political system. Donavan has shown great enthusiasm in using his platform as a congressman to educate his constituents about the ways that capital dominates their lives in order to bring politics to them. Not only will this boost our membership, it will help boost the capacity for the poorest Detroiters to self-organize to reshape their communities into bulwarks against capital. For too long American socialism has been dominated by the downwardly mobile white middle class and Donavan can be a key ally in the diversification of our movement.

Towards Hegemony and Building THE Party

Looking at the larger picture, our chapter should take a step back and assess how it wishes to engage candidates and pull them into our orbit. Often we ask that our candidates come into our organization with a perfect understanding of how our organization functions and our ideology, a full commitment to all of that with complete selfless intent. It is unfettered, ineffective idealism.

We have an opportunity to pull someone into our orbit and contribute to building a national DSA presence the likes of which has never been seen before. We do not accomplish this by sitting out elections. We as socialists and communists must intervene if we are to create a left pole in Metro Detroit that can actually make a change. Our interventions must be comprehensive and encompassing if we are to win the battle for hegemony. We must accept and develop not only those who exist at the center of our gravity but those who are pulled into it. The masses and history will move without us. The question is whether or not we want to have a seat at the table.

We took Shri’s membership, we took his office — now let’s take his seat.

Charlotte is an American Communist and member of the Membership Engagement and Political Education Committees. Aaron is the former Co-Chair of MDDSA and later Electoral Chair. Aaron is one of the leaders on the Chris Gilmer-Hill for State Rep being run by our chapter. Both are members of Groundwork — a caucus dedicated to building a mass socialist party governed by all of its members.

Building Hegemony and Socialism Through Action: Vote Yes to Endorse Donavan McKinney was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Nicholas W

BOSTON – On May 8-9, 2026, the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) held its 181st Annual Meeting at the Hynes Convention Center.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) is the largest union in Massachusetts and the state affiliate of the National Education Association.  Alongside 36 fellow delegates elected from the Cambridge Education Association, we met over 1500 delegates from across the state representing K-12 and higher education workers. 

I have organized as a rank-and-file educator ever since I became a teacher over ten years ago. In 2019, I joined Educators for a Democratic Union (EDU), a militant rank-and-file caucus within the MTA,  after learning about their involvement in the Dedham Education Association’s strike the same year. Not only was this my first time attending the annual convention as a delegate, it was my first time as a member of a caucus that was competing to maintain leadership in my statewide union. 

Contentious Politics – Organizing for Palestine

The Annual Convention is the highest decision body of the MTA, where we elect our leadership, including both President and Vice President, as well as the Executive Board and Board of Directors. Membership utilizes Roberts’ Rules to debate and vote on resolutions, elect the President and Executive Board, budgets and operations. The Convention  is where the magic happens outside of the shopfloor: which political path our union should take and what priorities our union should organize around.

This year’s convention was packed with resolutions and bylaw changes, along with a very contentious leadership election. 

The MTA Rank and File for Palestine (MTA-RFP) introduced six New Business Items (NBIs), which included endorsing the #DropTheADL campaign and protecting the freedom of speech of rank-and-file educators who speak up against genocide and war. NBIs are the last items to be voted on at the convention; because of that, many of them do not get to be voted on by the delegates and get assigned to the incoming Executive Board to decide. 

This year was no different.

Seeing that time was running out to vote on the MTA-RFP NBIs, a delegate decided to make a rule change that allowed members to vote in a straw poll in an effort to move through the items quicker. The results of the straw poll would then be given to the incoming leadership to guide them in whether to adopt specific NBIs not formally voted on by the membership. As the straw poll began, many teachers, tired and exhausted from two days of deliberating, began to leave the convention hall. A tiny Zionist contingent with  support from outside organizations, such as Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, called for quorum three times to end the vote of the straw poll and ultimately had their way before members were allowed to vote on the MTA Rank and File for Palestine backed NBIs. 

Other contentious battles revolved around the budget. One central question involved increasing dues to expand our organizing budget for 2026/2027 year, as well as changing our bylaws to allow for a direct vote of all MTA members for the office of president. Currently, only elected delegates to the annual meeting are allowed to vote for union leadership, but this would open up the election to all rank-and-file members. Concerns over the integrity of the election, such as lack of guardrails to block outside groups from taking advantage of our democracy, and the cost of setting up a brand new election system animated the debate. 

Battle for Leadership

By far the most contentious battle was over the MTA  presidency and vice presidency.

Three candidates ran for president with running mates for vice president. Representing the old guard of union politics was John Sullivan of Belmont Education Association and Gayle Carvalho, of the Quincy Education Association. The old guard has historically played a non-confrontational role with the state and has shied away from taking a stance on political issues. This year was no different, as both Sullivan and Carvalho’s campaigns highlighted going back to “bread and butter issues,” and not getting entangled in controversial political fights, such as solidarity with Palestine.

In the middle was current Vice President Deb McCarthy of the Hull Teachers Association running for president and Dean Robinson, of the Massachusetts Society of Professors running as VP. McCarthy, who has a history of union militancy throughout her career as an educator, largely highlighted her experience as the Vice President of the MTA and the accomplishments she and the outgoing President, Max Page, worked on. This included passing the Fair Share amendment, which imposes a 4% surtax on annual income exceeding $1 million that funds public education and transportation and the elimination of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) exam as a high school graduation requirement through a ballot initiative in 2024. Robinson focused on his contributions to policy, such as expanding Mass Health and working on single payer initiatives in the state. Their supporters made up a mix of former EDU members and MTA-RFP members which demonstrates that they had support from other left factions within the MTA.

To the left were Matt Bach of the Andover Education Association and Deb Gesualdo of the Malden Education Association running for President and Vice President respectively, who are also members of Educators for a Democratic Union (EDU).  

Educators for a Democratic Union (EDU)

 EDU members have a record of winning positions in leadership. Barbara Madeloni was first — she won the presidency unexpectedly in 2014 to take the first step in ousting a largely moribund and undemocratic business union leadership that ran the MTA for decades. Merrie Najimy and Max Page were Madeloni’s successors. Each election brought a stronger slate of EDU members to push the union left and focus on issues that members most cared about. Since 2019, under EDU leadership, Massachusetts educators have gone on strike multiple times, despite  Massachusetts state law prohibiting any form of work stoppage, and won large concessions from their bosses. 

In 2019, Dedham teachers became the first local to strike since 2007. They were followed by Brookline, Haverhill, Andover, Woburn, Malden, Newton, and, most recently, the historic and coordinated strike of North Shore educators in Beverly, Gloucester and Marblehead. All of these strikes were substantial victories for their members, including increased pay, especially for the lowest paid education workers, such as paraprofessionals, smaller class sizes and contract language that protects students and staff from ICE. Throughout these outbursts of increased worker militancy, EDU has led the charge by transferring their strike program to different MTA locals throughout the state.

Importantly, the Dedham, Brookline, Andover, Malden, and Haverhill strikes were led by presidents who were also members of EDU. 

Internal Divisions of EDU

During each MTA election cycle, EDU endorses candidates from their membership to run for office. While there is no hard rule within the caucus barring candidates to run for leadership within the MTA who did not receive an EDU endorsement, usually, EDU members accept results and campaign for their union sibling.

That was not the case this year. While Matt Bach and Deb Gesualdo won the endorsement from EDU after a lengthy runoff election, outgoing MTA VP Deb McCarthy and college professor Dean Robinson decided to run for office even though they lost the EDU endorsement. This effectively split the “left” vote and gave room for the old guard, represented by John Sullivan and Gayle Carvalho, a stronger chance of winning at the Annual Meeting. Max Page, EDU member and outgoing president, stayed true to his EDU commitments and endorsed Bach and Guasaldo despite working alongside McCarthy over two terms. 

Ultimately, Bach and Gesualdo, who both received the most votes during the initial election and runoff election against Sullivan and Carvalho, were elected to the presidency which means that EDU has continued its streak of winning leadership within the MTA. EDU also maintained a solid leadership on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors. Nonetheless, this election has exposed real divisions within EDU and inside the MTA itself. 

Endless debates over what was actually “germane” to a resolution, cranks punishing their fellow delegates with their endless amendments, and most importantly, serious debate over the strategy and politics of our organization all characterized the MTA Annual Convention. Nonetheless, what made the experience of union democracy feel so much more real was that all of this was happening within the context of my workplace; the location I spend so much of my time and energy teaching my students and organizing my coworkers so we can build a better world for us, our students, and their families.

Under those conditions, the stakes feel — and are — different.

Nicholas W is a rank-and-file member of Cambridge Education Association (CEA) and Educators for a Democratic Union (EDU), a rank-and-file caucus within the MTA. 

The post Militant Rank-and-File Stays in Leadership of Massachusetts’ Largest Labor Union appeared first on Working Mass.

Photo: Governor Tina Kotek and Mayor Keith Wilson toasting champagne with Portland Metro Chamber president and CEO Andrew Hoan.

Like all American cities, Portland has a local ruling class. The exact contours of this class evolve over time, but one institution has served as a pillar of the ruling class’s political aims for decades: the Portland Metro Chamber (formerly known as the Portland Business Alliance). Although the PMC has been around for a long time, Portland’s new form of government and a true left flank of representatives on City Council has forced these corporate hacks out of the shadows and into full public view. Read on to learn about the makeup of the PMC and their 10 most egregious actions since January 2025, and how to take part in an upcoming action against corporate cronyism.

The Corporate Front

The PMC is the smoke-filled room where the ruling class formulates its plans. The PMC staff are the highly-paid mercenaries who, for decades, have shaped the direction of the City of Portland. The PMC also throws money into state and local political campaigns to try and shape the makeup of elected government.

The PMC is where the country’s biggest corporations come together to influence Portland’s politics and economy. A quick glance at its member directory reveals a Who’s-Who of banks, fossil fuel companies, union busters, insurance companies, corporate law firms, technology companies, communications firms, private hospitals, and more. Nearly every mainstream media outlet is also a member, and the President of The Oregonian even serves on the PMC board. The PMC, like all Chambers of Commerce, uses propaganda to try to represent itself as the champion of the small business. But, in practice, only members who spent $12-$17K per year get a seat on the Board and access to the CEO. This means the PMC is a pay-to-play organization, driven by the big corporations, in the interest of the big corporations.

The PMC still holds a lot of influence in so-called “moderate” and conservative political circles, but its ability to operate under the radar has been substantially restricted since we won reform to the City’s charter. The PMC’s political success was for decades a product of its relative obscurity, where it operated most effectively from back offices and annual luncheons. Forced now into the sunlight, the lobby seems ill-adjusted to scrutiny.

In the last months of the previous City Council, the PMC engineered a deal to expand a program called “Downtown Clean & Safe” that, astonishingly, forces property owners to subsidize a substantial portion of PMC staff salaries. This policy was strongly opposed by incoming Portland City Councilors and dozens of community organizations (who wrote a letter calling for a delay of the decision to give a substantial portion of a “$58 million, no-bid contract to the Portland Metro Chamber” until the new council took over). But former mayor Ted Wheeler, along with a then-majority of PMC-endorsed City Commissioners, decided to rush the new program through, effectively securing up nearly half of CEO and President Andrew Hoan’s ~$333,000 salary, and 30-80% of the high salaries of other PMC staffers.

The PMC also lobbies the Portland City Council far more than any other entity, with over 35% of all recorded lobbying instances since 2014. In 2025 alone, PMC reported making 686 contacts with city officials, which represents close to one-third (30%) of all lobbying visits to Portland City Officials that year according to lobbying reports submitted to the City Auditor. As an example of the disproportionate amount of time PMC spends with City Officials, look at one quarter of 2025. Of the 32 entities that lobbied City Officials in the first quarter of 2025, PMC reported 322 visits. The next closest entity as measured by visits is RealPage, the rent-fixing software company that was banned in Portland, and they had a total of 41 visits in that quarter, which is 1.8% of all visits in that quarter. So, in effect, the PMC has managed to secure for itself a massive, publicly-guaranteed subsidy to influence Portland government. On top of receiving public dollars to lobby the City on behalf of business interests, there is also a revolving-door relationship between the PMC and the City: many of the PMC’s current and former employees used to work at the City of Portland.

The Dirty Deeds

With the above overview, here are some of the most egregious PMC actions since January 2025, paid for, in part, with public funds:

10.  The PMC declares war on municipal socialism

Doug Moore, who runs the one of Portland Metro Chamber’s political action committees, United for Portland, told the Willamette Week last year that “socialists are trying to take over the City Council and turn it into an ideological showcase for the rest of the country.” He also said the number one priority of the PMC is to “stop DSA from taking over the council.”

So, in the era of Donald Trump, the number one goal of the local ruling class is not protecting immigrants and other vulnerable communities or preventing a federal invasion, but stopping policymaking that benefits the working class.

9. PMC lobbies to protect ICE detention facility

In January 2026, Portland City Council adopted a Detention Facility Fee Ordinance that declares a public nuisance to use tear gas and assigned new costs to detention facility owners to offset the fiscal impact that these facilities cause for the government. The PMC, along with developers and home builders, opposed this policy because even though it only targets detention facilities like the Macadam ICE facility, they were worried about the precedent of adding new fees to building owners (“victims of protest”) and because the policy did not hold individual protestors accountable. Per their letter, the policy “places the entirety of the financial burden on the business being targeted — regardless of the actions of demonstrators.”

Yes, you heard that right. They want people protesting ICE abductions and detentions to pay for the costs of their protests.

It’s very good to know that there’s someone looking out for the interests of the poor, victimized owners of detention facilities where our neighbors are processed and held after they are abducted and before they are deported.

8. PMC threatens to sue the City of Portland for a proposal to raise taxes on CEOs

Last year during the budget cycle, Councilor Novick proposed a CEO tax to close some of the budget gap. In response, the PMC trotted out an absurd legal analysis to argue that the city can’t raise taxes without voter authority. 

Councilor Novick called the analysis “a joke” in the Willamette Week and pointed out how stupid it was to suggest that the city had been illegally raising revenue for over a century. It’s clear that the PMC went shopping for lawyers to write a legal analysis that fit their ideological desire and purely to try to derail progressive revenue raising plans.

7. PMC threatens to sue the City of Portland for plans to exempt poor people from the arts tax

When Portland City Councilors came up with a reform plan to exempt people who make under $20,000 (or $40,000 for joint filers) and increase the tax to $35 for other filers, the PMC again threatened to sue (and recycled the ridiculous legal analysis it began circulating in 2025).

Undeterred by this weak threat, Portland City Council passed the arts tax reforms.

We’ll see if the PMC’s threats have any teeth! We think it’s pure bluster.

6. PMC lobbyist tries to kill bus lanes… twice

In spring 2025, residents of 82nd Avenue called for Bus And Turn (BAT) lanes on the rebuilt 82nd to speed up buses along the corridor. Over 1400 people responded to a survey where 70% of residents (54% of business owners!) wanted BAT lanes along most or all of 82nd Ave. The Portland Metro Chamber, out of touch as ever, activated against the BAT lanes, with PMC execs Jon Isaacs or Michael Liu testifying at every single public meeting (often both). Though Liu claimed to speak for the tenants at his shopping center, opposition to BAT lanes did not materialize in the monthly public meetings, and Trimet would go on to recommend BAT lanes to the fullest extent possible. In one particularly cringey episode, Isaacs attempted to testify twice as long as everyone else — once as a representative of his Neighborhood Association, and again for the Metro Chamber. Trimet cut him off in the middle of his second testimony.

5. Anti-DSA red scare push polls

In April 2026, Democratic Party voters in Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington County received invitations to answer questions in bizarre polls about left-wing candidates running for office. The polls were “push polls” — a negative campaigning technique used to influence voters by asking loaded or misleading questions to bias the poll-participant against a candidate. The polls attempted to tie candidates to DSA (even candidates not supported by DSA) and asked questions like this:

Many speculated on who was behind these push polls, until Alex Baumhardt at the Oregon Capitol Chronicle found out that it was Jon Isaacs from the Portland Metro Chamber who, through the PMC-run Portland Alliance PAC, spent $43,000 to Chicago-based Elevated Campaigns.

Ultimately, Isaacs wasted tens of thousands of dollars on dirty tricks only to get shellacked by DSA in two high-profile Washington County legislative races.

4. Wasting money trying to protect data centers and polluters in Washington County elections

Consistent with its fear of DSA candidates, the PMC spent big to try (and fail) to prevent Dr. Tammy Carpenter and Myrna Muñoz from winning elected office. One of the big issues for voters in the election was data centers.

As we wrote in our blog post about The Data Centrists of Washington County, the PMC “play[s] a critical role in whipping support for the data centers, and their relationships with the transnational technology corporations are substantial. […] In Portland, firms with substantial data center interests helm the Metro Chamber’s Board of Directors, including Amazon, Intel, Google, Microsoft, Northwest Natural Gas, and Portland General Electric.”

The PMC spent big in support of their data centrist candidates, and despite the Oregonian incorrectly calling the races before all the votes were counted, both Janeen Sollman and Ashley Hartmeier-Prigg were defeated by DSA, unions, and environmental groups.

3. Back room dealing to protect Zenith Energy

Community advocates (and DSA) have been fighting against the expansion of the Zenith Energy oil terminal for years. After repeated backroom deals, the election of DSA Councilors Mitch Green, Angelita Morillo, Tiffany Koyama Lane, and Sameer Kanal in November of 2024 finally signaled that we would have a city council ready to hold Zenith accountable. In fact, in December 2024, Zenith was hit with a historic penalty that gave the new Mayor and City Council the opportunity to act.

However, while Councilors Green and Morillo were readying the paperwork to pause any new permissions for Zenith and to hold the company accountable, there was another backroom deal; this time over sazeracs.

Street Roots (now Portland Mercury) reporter Jeremiah Hayden broke a story that PMC lobbyist Jon Isaacs met with Deputy City Administrator Donnie Oliveira off hours at a bar and discussed the pending Zenith Energy Land Use Compatibility Statement application over drinks. Zenith Energy is a member of the PMC and the PMC publicly opposed any City Council action to hold Zenith accountable.

After meeting with Isaacs, Oliveira rushed to approve Zenith’s new LUCS before the City Council could act, despite telling the Council in a work session that there was no legal reason to rush the decision, creating a clear appearance that Oliveira’s decision was influenced by his personal friend Jon Isaacs.

After these actions, advocates sued the City of Portland and alleged that the LUCS was granted illegally and without adequate public process. The advocates won important procedural victories and this case will soon go to trial. We expect that the PMC’s corruption will be uncovered and that this night out for sazeracs might cost their buddies at Zenith a lot of time and money.

2. Tax flight lies and anti-Preschool for All propaganda

For years, the PMC and their local ruling class allies have promoted a bullshit theory that the wealthy are fleeing Portland because of their supposedly high tax burden. After publicly declaring their intention, the PMC used this false claim to try to kill the Preschool for All program on numerous occasions. The false tax flight claim is also one of the core assumptions behind Governor Tina Kotek’s so-called Prosperity Council that has recommended a Reaganite approach to taxes and regulation in Oregon.

As the PMC and Governor Tina Kotek attempted, again, to attack Preschool for All, Councilor Mitch Green — a Ph.D. economist — and his staff produced a report that debunked the tax flight claims. The press release announcing the report described the findings as such:

“The data shows income gains, not flight: The reported increase in average income of those leaving the county during the pandemic is better explained by massive, nationwide windfall gains from capital gains, interest, and dividends—not an exodus driven by local taxes. This pattern could be seen in major cities across the country, regardless of their tax rates.

No mass exodus of high-income households: The number of households in Multnomah County with incomes over $200,000 has grown by 28.7% from 2021 to 2023. The total number of filers paying the PFA tax increased by 16.5% in the same period.

A flawed use of averages: Opponents’ arguments depend on a “statistical sleight of hand”using mean averages, which are easily skewed by a small number of very high-income individuals. This method is inappropriate for analyzing migration trends.”

Armed with this report, Preschool for All supporters went on to defeat efforts at killing the program and forced Governor Kotek to back away from her attacks on PFA (for the time being).

The PMC and their allies on the Prosperity Council continue to advance myths about tax flight to try and bolster their deregulatory and anti-tax austerity agenda.

1. The Moda Center Billionaire Ball-Room

Earlier this year, the Blazers organization and its new owner, billionaire Tom Dundon (a man who became rich in the subprime auto lending industry), launched a campaign with corporate Democrats in the Oregon State Legislature to scare everyone into appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars in public money for Moda Center stadium upgrades. The Oregon State Legislature approved $365 million in state bonds for these stadium upgrades, with a requirement that the City of Portland and Multnomah County to contribute over $200 million in additional funds. Along the way, we learned that there were series of backroom negotiations between public officials like Mayor Keith Wilson and Multnomah County Commissioner Julia Brim Edwards, which were hidden from the public under the code-name “Project Mt. Hood.”

After signing the bill into law, Governor Kotek attempted to pressure the Portland City Council to quickly appropriate public money for the Moda Center, saying this is “not a time to play politics.”

However, things are not going to be so easy for Dundon and his corporate Democrats. Led by Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane, DSA City Councilors have signaled that they will push back on any attempt to hand public money over to a billionaire without adequate public process and community benefits. They’ve also signaled that they want to have a public vote on the issue.

Just last week, RipCityNotRipoff published a 2024 City of Portland facilities inventory analysis for the Moda Center, which showed that only ~$112 million is required for necessary repairs, far below the over $600 million dollars pledged by the state legislature. The rest of the money is for improvements that would make the Blazers organization and Dundon more profits, like luxury suite renovations, a concourse bar, and a new team store.

At Portland DSA, we say that no public money should go toward making a billionaire even more profits, especially when our schools are being closed and our neighbors go unhoused.

As it happens, the PMC is hosting its annual meeting at the Moda Center on June 24, 2026. Members of the public can pay $350 to meet with billionaire Tom Dundon, Mayor Keith Wilson, State Senators Kate Lieber and Rob Wagner, and other corporate cronies and political hacks. Unsurprisingly this event is sponsored by corporate looters and polluters like US Bank, Comcast, Chevron, NW Natural, Pacific Power, Lyft, The Oregonian, and more.

Join DSA and partners for a community picket and picnic where we will confront Portland’s biggest looters and polluters while they flaunt their access to the Mayor and top Democratic Party leaders!

Wednesday, June 24, 1-6pm, at the Moda Center. We hope to see you there!

by AC

Our chapter is fortunate to be growing and maintaining a high percentage of active members. Folks have taken this to indicate our chapter can expand to take on additional work. In the past few months, I have been deeply skeptical of our ability to expand on our current work largely from my experience on the Trans Rights Priority Project leadership team and observing the trajectory of the Immigration Solidarity Priority Project first term. While our chapter’s growth has led many to believe we can expand our work, I’m increasingly convinced that growth in membership alone is not enough; without significant member engagement across the chapter, we risk projects that are doomed to fail and further burning out our most experienced organizers.

What finally put my nebulous feeling about our lack of capacity into perspective was my recent trip down to Louisville DSA to canvas for their electoral candidates. Louisville DSA is supporting four candidates for local- and state-level offices concurrently in a chapter virtually the same size as Cleveland DSA. They also have a Trans Safe Haven campaign similar to our Trans Rights Priority Project, which is pushing sanctuary city legislation. This project has the support of over 100 local unions and political organizations and has collected at least 3,000 signatures from residents in the two years it has been running. Louisville DSA also has several other active campaigns, a building fund with over $10,000 towards purchasing a permanent office, and several educational projects. Talking with Louisville comrades, I must be honest that my initial reaction was one of embarrassment that our chapter is struggling to succeed in a fraction of the work of our southern comrades. I feel there is a significant barrier in our way to accomplishing what Louisville DSA has, which is a lack of militant engagement across our membership. 

Our work requires militancy; not in the sense of posturing or burnout, but in the sense of disciplined, collective commitment to carrying out democratically decided work. To be militant socialists, we must be dedicated and principled in our organizing. That means showing up to meetings on time and prepared, to be uncompromising in our pursuit for liberation of the working class. It also means taking responsibility and initiative to carry our democratically decided work forward – even when we might have our own personal reservations – and thinking critically and strategically about all projects as we design and deliberate on them. As a brand new member in late 2024, I sometimes took it for granted that every project the chapter took on would build power for the working class, even if only a little bit. At the time, that little bit was good enough for me and I was often frustrated when experienced comrades pushed me to articulate explicitly how certain work would build power for the chapter and/or the working class as a whole. Now, over a year in with some leadership and organizing experience under my belt, I can see more clearly how this is the critical question that should inform every action we do as DSA. 

Newer members often have understandable hesitancy and insecurity about entering into political activism and organizing work, which is counterintuitive to the rugged individualism and liberalism under which we have been indoctrinated our entire lives. Experienced organizers must cultivate an environment of support and empowerment to overcome this capitalist indoctrination. Newer members must also be willing to challenge themselves and take the leap into the unknown. They will encounter failures and make many mistakes, but that is a critical and unavoidable part of the learning process. 

Outside of DSA, I teach for a living. My own teaching philosophy, based on the science of teaching and learning, rests on a foundation of practice and feedback. Whether it is learning in a classroom or in a conference room, it makes no difference; personal growth and development are iterative processes. Few of us are thrilled by the notion that trial and error involves error, and many “baby leftists” are understandably risk averse – they want to avoid letting their comrades down or sounding dumb. In our current internet age, social media cancel culture and purity testing within the leftist spaces that radicalize so many of us also infect us with the fear that holds us back from meaningfully engaging. Still, this is what the role of a militant member of a collectively run organization asks from us. Sharing your opinion in a meeting can be nerve-wracking, but participation is both something every member is entitled to and something the organization desperately needs from its members.

When I talk about doing the work, I don’t just mean actions like canvassing for a petition, bottomlining an event, or organizing a new member. Doing the work is also voicing your opinion during a project meeting, commenting on proposal drafts, and speaking for or against proposals during the general meeting. All members in good standing are entitled to participate in all of these activities and are responsible for doing so. We cannot defer to the oldest, loudest voices in the room. It allows for personal biases and cliques to dominate the governance of the chapter, and it robs members of their own political development. Often in meetings I observe the same people dominating conversation, including myself. When I try to pull back and make space for others, often the void remains unfilled. I find this both personally frustrating and concerning with respect to the long-term health and viability of the chapter. Our work is one of collective, participatory democracy, after all.

I feel an aspect of militancy that is especially important to our chapter as of late is the act of showing up when it is inconvenient or hard to do, or when the project isn’t your personal favorite thing. No matter how much or how little someone has on their plate, organizing is hard work. It will take all of us and so many more to bring about the socialist future we dream of. Of course, there must be a balance between maintaining militancy and avoiding burnout. This balance is something I personally struggle with. I like to joke that I suffer “chronic volunteering disease” and often catch myself internally asking some version of “If not me, then who?” I know I’m not the only one who feels this way; in one of my all-time favorite books on organizing, Dean Spade describes what sounds an awfully lot like my own chronic volunteering disease:

“For years I had a pattern where whenever I was in a meeting and the group identified a task that needed to be done, I would feel a strong impulse to volunteer for the task. It stemmed from my unconscious desire to be seen as useful, and to secure my place in the group by being of service. It also often included a tinge of anxiety that the work either wouldn’t get done, or wouldn’t get done in what I thought was the ‘right’ way. This pattern sometimes resulted in overwork, exhaustion, and neglect of other parts of my life.”

Chronic volunteering disease contributes to unsustainable relationships with the movement that create the conditions that stoke resentment and organizer burnout. Objectively my brain knows this, and yet I continually return to “If not me, then who?” It isn’t a fully rhetorical question– someone really has to do the tasks of maintaining the movement, whether that is creating an agenda, writing a proposal, throwing a social, or showing up to canvas on a Sunday morning. As the Trans Rights Priority Project likes to say, “It’s YOUR project, it doesn’t work without YOU!”, where “you” is everyone in the chapter, from the most seasoned organizer to the comrade who signed up to pay dues yesterday. 

One additional observation that informs my opinion is that many of our most experienced, long-term organizers are currently sitting on the “burnout bench”. This situation obviously arises from a variety of factors: some have other life obligations or obstacles, some are dealing with interpersonal conflicts, and some have a necessary and well-earned break after intense service to the chapter. In my discussions with Louisville DSA comrades, I wondered about whether they were able to carry out their large amount of work sustainably, and asked if each project was successful due to an unreasonable amount of work put in by senior organizers. There was a telling pause in the conversation, before the comrade acknowledged several of the projects were relying on several members pushing themselves to the brink of burnout – potentially a cautionary tale for us to consider as we grow here in Cleveland. It is expected that individuals’ capacity ebbs and flows throughout their tenure in the movement. Therefore, we have to ensure that our work continues when members need to take a step back. This requires other members to step up and support their comrades and the work of the movement. 

Overall, I do have faith that our chapter can continue to build power for the Cleveland working class and should be able to grow the work we are engaged in, but only if we approach our current and future work with intention to build power, increased militancy, and care regarding membership capacity. My ask to the “oldheads” – practice pausing for others to speak and to intentionally ask newer comrades what their thoughts are. Be mindful about how you respond, especially if you disagree. Check in with yourself about your capacity. If you need to take a break, actually take it! It is difficult to feel restored when ruminating on chapter work, even if you aren’t actively showing up. But also, ask yourself about whether a situation calls for militancy. My ask to newer comrades – take a chance and challenge yourself to become comfortable with the inevitable mistakes that will and must happen. Seek out information from comrades you respect and trust (and some you might not yet!). Volunteer for a small task at a meeting. Connect back to the reasons you joined DSA in the first place – hopefully to become meaningfully engaged in the socialist movement!

The post Capacity and Militancy appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

By: Matt Wolfinger

LOWELL – In the Sacred Heart neighborhood, a massive black box looms over the surrounding homes. The building, called ‘the Dungeon’ by some locals, is the largest data center in Massachusetts.

Lowell residents have been living in the shadow of Markley Group’s 352,000-square-foot data center for more than a decade. The center’s cooling towers emit a constant hum less than 100 feet away from the surrounding homes on Otis Street, while its backup diesel generators spew fumes into the air. Lowell resident Jake Fortes told Working Mass that on hotter days, the center’s AC units work overtime and “sound like jet engines.”

“I’m just trying to live quietly,” he said. Fortes is the founder of Honest Future For Lowell, a grassroots group fighting back against Markley’s plans to further expand their data center.

In March, Lowell became the first city in Massachusetts to impose a moratorium on the construction and expansion of data centers. The one-year moratorium is part of a nationwide pushback from local communities against the rapid spread of artificial intelligence and the data centers needed to sustain it. While Lowell’s data center wasn’t created with AI in mind, larger and more power-hungry hyperscale versions used to power AI have sprung up in small towns across the country.

The Public Responds to Data Centers

These centers need massive amounts of water and energy to function, but municipalities are placing the burden of the consumption onto local taxpayers. Tap water is drying up, and utility bills in the vicinity are skyrocketing.

Lowell is no exception. At the city hall hearing on the moratorium, resident Alex Solange claimed his winter electricity bill, once $40, has risen to $177 per month as a result of Markley’s data center.

While the moratorium passed unanimously, local opinions are more divided. Lowell residents supporting the measure faced opposition from members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 103, who showed support for the data center by holding signs and wearing “Stand with Markley” shirts. 

The union members have their own economic concerns, namely the high-paying construction jobs that stem from building data centers. These contracts are enticing for trade workers looking for fair compensation and the unions seeking to keep their workers employed.

“Markley is a great partner of ours,” said Local 103 Business Manager Lou Antonellis in an emailed response to Working Mass. “They’ve always been committed to hiring Local 103 contractors and paying livable wages to their employees. It was a no-brainer to support a business that stands with us.”

Many data centers in the U.S. are built with unionized labor. As the scope of these projects expands, the interests of unions have been placed in opposition to local residents forced to live with the consequences. Pitting members of the working class against each other takes attention away from the real culprits – hyperscalers and the lawmakers who created these conditions.

$75 million of Governor Maura Healey’s proposed Mass Wins Act would be spent “to expand the application of artificial intelligence across key industries.” Healey signed a law in 2024 granting sales tax exemptions for data center sales in Massachusetts, hoping to “retain and attract top AI talent” to the state.

According to Pew Research Center, there are more than 3,000 operational data centers in the U.S. and over 1,500 in development. Tech billionaires like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman want to go even further, saying we may have to cover the entire world in data centers to keep up with the demand for processing power. Healey has openly bragged about her historic partnership with OpenAI, making Massachusetts the first state to do so.

Maine passed a statewide ban on data center construction in an effort to prevent the harm data centers would cause to the local environment. It was vetoed by Governor Janet Mills. Healey has refused to support a similar ban in Massachusetts.

“We need to have data centers of some sort for the kind of … innovation economy we want to have,” Healey told the New England Council business group in April.

The Cities Vs. Data Centers

Without state-wide protections, cities have largely been left to fend for themselves against the data centers springing up in their backyards. Even as they continue to be built and expanded, lawmakers warn that Massachusetts does not have the power capacity to support these data centers. Markley’s data center consumes so much energy that National Grid had to upgrade nearly 200 utility poles to keep up with demand.

Healey’s support for data centers in recent years makes more sense when you follow the money. According to data from the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance, Markley Group CEO Jeff Markley has donated a combined $24,000 since 2022 between Healey, Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll and the Democratic State Committee.

Markley Boston LLC contributed an additional $150,000 to PACs running ads in support of Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll and Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell leading up to the 2022 election.

Also of note is the $250,000 the LLC donated to the “Coalition to Stop the Tax Hike Amendment,” which ran ads to oppose a 4% surtax on those earning more than $1 million a year. The “Fair Share” tax narrowly passed and is expected to bring in $2.7 billion next fiscal year to help fund public transit and education.

Markley has donated thousands more to politicians like former Governor Charlie Baker and former Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito during their terms. It’s clear Markley has no problem spending money to get officials in office and stay on their good side.

While Markley’s Lowell data center received a $77 million tax break, dozens of city employees have been laid off amid budget cuts. Residents may also face increased property taxes, sewage payments, and water payments.

“We’re not winning from this,” Fortes said. “What are we gaining from this place being here?”

AI Boom Divides Workers

Depending on who you ask, the AI boom is either a blessing or a curse.

For some trade unions, the boom is a dream come true. Data center contracts pay well, there’s always a new one that needs building, and many commit to union labor. Nonetheless, good jobs do not guarantee welfare for the working class overall. Some workers take home wages while generative AI devastates workers everywhere else.

The claim from data center supporters that they’re boons for local job creation also doesn’t match the reality. While data centers may provide an influx of short-term jobs during the construction phase, the skeleton crews that maintain them don’t facilitate long-term job growth.

A recent study from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business found that on average, the workforce of a data center reduces by 78% once construction is complete. Antonellis shared with Working Mass that IBEW 103 currently has “at least a dozen journeyman [sic] and apprentices in [Markley’s] Lowell & Boston locations doing daily maintenance… we had about 120 in Lowell a few years ago for their expansion.”

While trades like construction are currently more resistant to automation, other labor leaders have sounded the alarm on the threat AI and data centers pose to both blue and white-collar work.

In the words of a spokesperson for SAG-AFTRA, in an emailed statement to Working Mass:

Generative AI has profoundly affected our members because it allows companies to replicate voices, likenesses, and performances in ways that were not previously possible at scale. Our members are rightfully concerned about unauthorized copying, replacement, and manipulation of their work and identities,

VFX artists are being laid off in the hundreds as studios look to cut costs in favor of using AI to replace human labor and create digital replicas. Screenwriters have found their scripts are being used to train AI models without their knowledge or consent

A study from the American AI Jobs Risk Index revealed Massachusetts has the highest risk of AI-induced job loss of any state, with up to 535,000+ jobs on the chopping block in the next five years. But AI has been taking much more than jobs – it’s taken a toll on local ecosystems and their residents who had no say in these decisions. A recent Gallup poll found that seven in ten Americans oppose the local construction of data centers. Ignoring majority opposition, municipalities across the country are forcing them onto locals. The political capital for data center construction is not primarily coming from labor, when Chambers of Commerce are often major organized interests of support with direct lines to government.

Markley’s expansion in Lowell shows no sign of stopping. Fortes alleges that Defense contractor Draper Labs, who, “among other things, helps develop weapons systems from the U.S. Navy,” moved into the data center in August 2025. By October, according to Fortes, security cameras lined the center’s walls and armed guards were stationed at the gates.

While neither Markley or Draper have disclosed the latter’s involvement with the data center, Draper is an “anchor tenant” of the ongoing Lowell Innovation Network Corridor (LINC) project, an $800 million partnership between the city of Lowell and UMass Lowell. The ‘university pipeline to war profiteering’ known as UMass Lowell identifies Draper as a ‘premier’ partner alongside Raytheon, as reported previously in Working Mass.

The Weight of Powerful Interests

At a meeting last June where Lowell’s City Council approved Markley’s request to build four more diesel generators, chair of the UMass Building Authority Mary Burns said LINC wouldn’t be possible without Markley’s data center. “In order for LINC to happen, we need Markley,” said Burns. Markley then doubled their ask to eight generators, which was also approved. Then, last October, Healey pledged $25 million to assist Draper with the construction of their new center in Lowell.

Despite residents appealing the decision, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) allowed Markley to go ahead with building new generators behind the backs of Lowell residents. Honest Future For Lowell members filed a lawsuit against both parties, the first of its kind in Massachusetts. They claim MassDEP unlawfully approved Markley’s expansion into a heavily congested area during an ongoing appeal.

The lawsuit, filed on April 27 on behalf of 10 residents, alleges that “Markley has chosen to subject its neighbors to intrusion, disruption, and serious health dangers—all without transparency and meaningful community engagement, and with little oversight by State regulators charged with enforcing state air pollution control laws.”

Markley and his associated LLCs have spent millions buying up residential buildings surrounding the center. He has yet to give a reason, but Markley’s website has been changed to indicate they’re “now available for your generative AI workloads.” To accommodate AI, Lowell’s data center would need even more space to grow.

Healey refusing any sort of statewide legislation and tech CEOs cozying up to the Trump administration places the responsibility on the shoulders of the working class to fight back. While billionaires and their allies loot the planet and its people for all their worth, they’ve manufactured a state of affairs that pits the interests of working people against one another. They insist without evidence that anyone opposed to these data centers being built in their backyard must be misinformed or funded by China. Implementing similar tactics to Markley on a larger scale, big tech is pouring millions into politics, hoping to sway the midterms in their favor.

Markley’s Lowell data center gives us a window into the existential threat they may pose to the planet if the AI craze continues to spread. The hyperscale versions needed to power AI dwarf that center in comparison  – consuming up to 5 million gallons of drinking water each day.

‘Half-Finished Husks Without Purpose’

Some experts warn the AI bubble could pop any day now – just like with NFTs, crypto, and the dot-com bubble. But unlike the dot-com bubble, which had a comparatively clearer path to recovery, it won’t be as easy with data centers. They’ll sit as half-finished husks without purpose after the damage is already done.

Wells have dried up, property values are plummeting, and companies are building power plants to meet the immense energy demands.

Tensions remain high between unions and Lowell residents as they spar in social media comments. The incitement of working class infighting distracts from the damage the ruling class is inflicting to the planet and its people. As long as the interests of the working class remain in conflict, this will only continue. Environmental activist Erin Brockovich has launched a tool to map data centers as they appear in local communities. While incomplete, it’s a useful resource to keep track of where they’re springing up or to report one in your own backyard.

Beyond Lowell, other cities in Massachusetts have won their own battles against data centers. Mansfield is the first city in Massachusetts to pass a near-total ban on data centers, the community taking preemptive action before any could be built. Monterey Park, California just became the first city in the country to pass a permanent ban.

The technocracy surveys the plains of America through the serpentine eyes of a predator. They strike, sink their poisonous fangs into the earth, then move onto their next target while the venom seeps into the water and air of the local community. The billionaire class will not be satisfied until, as Altman proclaimed, they’ve marked the entire world as their territory. The working class has been left to fight for survival against one another, wasting precious time that could be spent working on an antidote.

Don’t wait for a data center to come to you. Stand in solidarity with your neighbors and take collective action against their construction before we’re robbed of our safety, our health, and our dignity.

Matt Wolfinger is a data journalist, Northeastern University graduate, and a contributing writer to Working Mass

The post The Dungeon Over Lowell: How the Data Center Boom Divided One City’s Working People appeared first on Working Mass.