Sean O’Brien – A Labor Leader Turns Right
By Reid Jackson
Boston, MA – On April 23, 2025, IBT International President Sean O’Brien tweeted a New York Post article attacking democratic socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the duo continue to draw tens of thousands to their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour.
O’Brien sharing anti-socialist smears is just the latest in a series of steps rightward taken by the leader of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which began cementing with O’Brien’s appearance as a speaker at the Republican National Convention in 2024. He followed that high-profile platform with a succession of Fox News appearances and Republican Senator podcast guests, revealing a new direction for a leader of a union embedded in the strategic logistics industry through 1.5 million rank-and-file members.
O’Brien has repeatedly touted an apolitical attitude towards politicians, press, and workers themselves, but in the era of rising fascism, apolitical means collaboration. O’Brien’s rise to power was paved by Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), a rank-and-file reform caucus within which many socialists are embedded, which organized for his victory. But while O’Brien has hired organizer after organizer, beefing up the organizing department of the Teamsters to take on Amazon and other behemoths, the union president has also swung sharply to the right. O’Brien oversaw the mass firing and “public humiliation” of Black and brown staff organizers, 16 of 20 of total staff dismissed by the union, before bragging about it in an Oxnard union hall. That was before he began cozying up to the Right in appearance after appearance.
Workers and their families are feeling the squeeze of capitalistic greed now more than ever, with rent soaring in every local and anti-union activity rising across society, while one of the most important worker leaders sits side by side with the capitalists busting unions and raising rent. O’Brien using his incredible position of influence as a labor leader to field podcast episodes with adversaries of the labor movement like Josh Hawley, one of the people pushing anti-worker legislation in Congress, is wasteful and harmful.
Sean O’Brien’s impact as a labor leader remains largely to be seen. However, already, there are signs that his turn to the right may have corrosive effects on both the labor movement itself and the rank-and-file membership of the IBT.
O’Brien’s Impact on the Labor Movement
O’Brien’s political leadership could signal to other labor leaders that collaboration is acceptable as long as they employ the framework of “reaching across the aisle” and “finding common ground.” United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain also met with boss-friendly Hawley in February 2025, possibly as a result of O’Brien’s repeated encounters with the Republicans. Gavin Newsom, Governor of California, has begun entertaining guests like Charlie Kirk from conservative think-tank Turning Point USA. Kirk has played a prominent role in radicalizing young men to the far right, including substantial numbers of workers. If this is the start of a growing trend of playing nice with the opposition party, O’Brien’s participation is an embarrassment.
Does O’Brien’s failure of optics directly translate to a failure as a union leader? Does the average Teamsters member care where O’Brien is appearing on TV next as long as their contracts are being accepted? One New England member of the Teamsters reported anonymously to Working Mass:
Sean is really great at the local stuff… he used to show up to all these different sites, help us secure contracts and enforce them, but lately he’s been on this odd media crusade. Spending all this time with Republicans is helping no one … speaks to a very out-of-touch relationship with national leadership.
The rank-and-file Teamster cited the current political climate and the growing pressure that unions and their members face every day in the workplace as reason enough for any union president to buckle down and get to work.
However, there are rising examples of other labor leaders with constituencies similarly numbering in the millions of workers not named O’Brien pivoting towards defense against the Trump Administration. For example, SEIU International has joined their Local 509 in fighting to bring union member Rümeysa Öztürk back from ICE detention. The president of the largest private sector union came out to a rally on April 2nd in downtown Boston to call for her release and spoke to thousands of union members and supporters. This kind of solidarity is what is necessary from labor leadership at this time of capitalist attack.
O’Brien’s Impact on the Rank-and-File
When asked if they would support O’Brien, the Teamster said:
I probably will still campaign for him, he’s done a lot of great things for us in labor as a leader. But these stunts with Fox News and the like are upsetting to the people like me who helped him get elected. If he keeps it up, he’s probably going to lose a portion of his volunteer base.
O’Brien argues that his political approach is mirrored by the membership of the Teamsters itself and will not be punished by membership. So far, that has remained true. The Teamsters’ internal survey shows that almost 60% of Teamsters supported Trump in the 2024 election. Statistics like these can be confusing as well as depressing, but it’s important to note that even if support for Trump is a widely held sentiment for the Teamsters, that doesn’t mean that fighting for progressive causes is hopeless in the organization. The Teamsters for a Democratic Union remain highly active organizing for progressive reform at every level of the Teamsters’ structure. However, they do so far without any public opposition to O’Brien.
If one anonymous New England Teamster who spoke to Working Mass is to be believed, that’s not likely to change:
If there was another candidate to come out in the next election for President [of the Teamsters], it would likely be a moderate urging the union to return to more conservative policy… so even given his current attitude towards Republicans, it’s not worth abandoning O’Brien over.
However, O’Brien’s status as unassailable at the helm of the Teamster rank-and-file movement also means members are robbed of the necessary leadership they need in the face of the Trump Administration. His shift to the Right normalizes the Right within a union of over a million. While organizing may increase, and the relationship between the Teamsters and the Democratic Party at last severed, the cost is a leader who will not defend members from abduction.
Sean O’Brien’s continued support for Republicans in the face of their egregious anti-worker attitude does not signal that Republicans are secretly a good party for labor movements, but that Democrats have hopelessly lost their labor messaging. O’Brien’s collaboration with the Right, including its organized forces and institutions, is a consequence of a true vacuum in the political space. There remains no substantial labor party grounded both in labor and mass organizations capable of representing workers as political subjects.
The task remains: build the workers’ party.
Reid Jackson is a contributor to Working Mass and a former member of the YDSA at the University of Rhode Island.
Boston University YDSA Chapter Suspended in Crackdown on Sanctuary Campus Movement
By Travis Wayne
BOSTON, MA – On April 16, 2025, approximately forty autonomous organizers wrapped in keffiyehs, masks, and sunglasses appeared in the whipping wind on the steps outside of Boston University’s Booth Theatre. Three police cars were parked nearby and two security guards watched from inside.
After rallying in front of Booth Theater, students marched down Commonwealth Avenue to the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) building, which is centrally located on BU campus. They roared slogans outside the Tsai Performance Center, pasted fliers tagged with sharpie on the walls, and read their demands aloud to the administration. On one building, the organizers pasted the word into which all demands were crystallized across nine floor-to-ceiling windows: “SANCTUARY.”
Everything, from the anonymous nature of organizers’ dress to the purposeful pasting to the fact that every cop was greeted with the same slogan of “no justice, no peace, fuck these racist-ass police,” showed the context of the moment: BU students responding to the administration’s crackdown on campus activism with escalation. The latest attack from the administration that led students to respond was on a longtime nucleus of student organizing: YDSA at BU.
The Sanctuary Campus Campaign
The 2025 Sanctuary Campus campaign was launched by Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), the youth section of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), across the nation once Trump took power.
Students had raised the demand before. A previous generation of student organizers had fought for Sanctuary Campuses while attending classes during Trump’s first term. Students from campuses across the country led local walkouts as part of a coordinated “National Walkout for Sanctuary Campuses” to protect undocumented classmates in late 2016. Locally, Boston University’s 2017 student government endorsed the demand and urged the college president to declare Boston University a Sanctuary Campus.
The 2016-2017 Sanctuary Campus movement achieved a mishmash of results. Some universities declared themselves sanctuary campuses eight years ago only to backtrack now. Others gave in with symbolic statements designed to placate the students until they graduated. Others still did nothing. Most campuses remained vulnerable to ICE attacks, just waiting for an administration to sign off to turn a public agency into a secret police overnight.
Although the Sanctuary Campus campaign of today faces an even more emboldened ICE, the mass organization of students in YDSA has become more robust since its 2017 heyday. The campaign quickly gained traction around the country after its relaunch. At Colorado State University, YDSA gathered 3000 signatures for the demand within weeks of launch; at the University of North Carolina, Asheville, protests led by YDSA organizers broke out in late February; at Arizona State University, YDSA organizers discussed banner dropping the demand the week before YDSA at BU joined the campaign.
YDSA at BU joined in the call for a Sanctuary Campus on March 24. ICE abducted Rümeysa Öztürk the next night – March 25.
On April 3, 2025, hundreds of Boston University students and faculty walked out of classes to meet at Marsh Plaza to demand Boston University become a Sanctuary Campus. The assembly, which occurred in a location that Boston University lists at the top of its own Events and Demonstrations Policy as a free speech zone and that ironically was once supposed to be designated a “physical sanctuary” for the undocumented, was organized by YDSA after meetings with BU administrators about protecting immigrant students failed. The rally was organized in coalition with a spectrum of activist organizations including the Boston University Prison Outreach Initiative, the largest Latine student organization, Alianza, and the Boston University Grad Workers’ Union (BUGWU).
After the Sanctuary Campus rally in Marsh Plaza, autonomous students previously at the rally began a sit-in outside the office of the Dean of Students. Some students posted flyers on undesignated walls and surfaces. Despite no evidence of YDSA involvement in organizing the sit-in, administrators called in YDSA leadership for a hostile meeting six days later on April 9. According to sources present in the meeting, as well as reporting by BU’s student-run campus newspaper, the Daily Free Press, administrators attempted to convince YDSA leaders to say the chapter organized the sit-in in violation of university policy without directly alleging involvement.
Margaret Babson, Director of Student Activities, sent a follow-up email to YDSA on April 11 that lists “potential violations” by individuals “on behalf of YDSA” with no accusation or allegation against YDSA itself. Despite no evidence of YDSA official involvement, Boston University suspended YDSA.
Working Mass obtained a copy of the letter sent by Margaret Babson to YDSA, posted below:
The organization, taking to its Instagram, alleged that Boston University’s manner of handling the suspension makes one truth clear: the suspension was political.
YDSA wasn’t the first organization targeted.
One month earlier, on March 3, Boston University also shut down the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine for the same crime of pasting fliers. That followed the earlier shut-down of Students for Justice in Palestine at other campuses – like Tufts. The fact that Boston University administrators weaponized the same rule against pasting fliers to shut down two movement organizations was apparent on April 16. When autonomous organizer after organizer pasted one sticker after another on pole after wall after administrative door, righteous fury infused with joy in the air. One flier that was defiantly pasted by one participant read “No Justice, No Peace.” Another read “Your crimes will haunt you.”
Higher Education Under Attack: A Potential Elite Bargain
Boston University is cracking down on student organizers even as the Trump Administration’s gaze sits upon other institutions of higher education. The context of the move makes Boston University’s actions seem preemptive in an environment in which universities have been forced to take sides between Trump and academic freedom. Columbia University has become a collaborator with the regime’s agenda, from facilitating student deportations to surveillance of every department with even a trace of Palestinian rights. Columbia also pointedly did not sign on to a letter calling for freedom from fear of deportation organized by 200+ higher education institutions. Boston University signed on even as its crackdown on student organizations continued unabated, showing the limitations of the institutional “resistance” of higher education.
Harvard University took a different approach than either Columbia or Boston University.
The same day that Boston University sent BU YDSA their suspension letter, on April 11, the Trump Administration’s lawyers sent their own wide-ranging and revealing letter to Harvard University. Beyond the dismantling of DEI systems, retroactive targeting of Palestine student encampment organizers in 2024, and vast surveillance apparatuses to end academic freedom at Harvard, there’s one highly specific and notable demand: “reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty.” Targeting students and untenured faculty shows that the Trump Administration views the student body and the most precarious academic workers as its largest opposition to its agenda in the ivory tower.
The regime’s strategic analysis is not wrong. Students organized the Palestine encampments and occupations, high-profile actions for Palestine, and now represent an activist edge of the campus community. On April 23, Yale students relaunched their occupation in response to a visit from arch-Zionist Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose genocidal maniacism has made him one of the most extreme figures even within the Israeli government (once, he brandished a gun toward Palestinians while declaring “I am your landlord!” in Sheikh Jarrah, but most recently he has called for bullets to the head of Palestinian women and children and total Nakba in Gaza). Untenured faculty, meanwhile, are more likely to be union members than tenured faculty and have been at the center of the militant wave spreading through higher education and the labor movement.
Harvard University refused the Trump Administration’s demands, unlike Columbia. For the crime of standing up for its own institutional academic freedom, the richest university in the country now faces $2 billion in cuts in what Harvard lawyers have called a “gun to the head.” Trump not only seeks to punish Harvard with draconian cuts that threaten thousands of workers with jobs directly or indirectly funded by Harvard across the Greater Boston area; his regime even threatens to seize, by unnamed means, the institution’s tax-exempt status.
The Trump Administration is placing its thumb on the scale of class struggle on campus. The federal government is pressuring institutions to shift power away from the most progressive campus sections and return it to the most elite: tenured, appointed, institutionalized, free from popular pressure. Under this program, student organizing is to be viewed suspiciously and its organizations crushed when daring to organize for taboo causes – like ending genocide.
That means Trump’s agenda, in some respects, dovetails with the interests of the existing campus elite. Administrations have faced millions of dollars in endowment losses, individual careers in the higher education administrative class unsettled, as a result of the student movement for a free Palestine in 2024. The material interest that campus authorities have in quieting student disruption at institutional and individual levels poses a far greater incentive for repression than top-down orders from the White House alone.
In their April 12 statement, BU YDSA summarized their perspective on the relationship between the Trump administration and “bourgeois academia,” the day after receiving the letter suspending the organization from the Student Activities Office:
The administrative class which formed around these academic institutions is panicking, threatened from above by the capitalist state and threatened from below by increasingly class-conscious students. As a result the universities are lashing out wildly in the only way they can.
One BU YDSA member who asked to remain anonymous pointed to BU’s choice to cut PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences in response to BUGWU’s victory and new contract following their historic 2024 seven-month strike. Boston University then “asked departments to basically crowd-fund themselves” as austerity cuts hit departments across the university.
“They’re in an impossible situation,” the YDSA member said. “The bourgeoisie aren’t able to hold academia anymore. For the ruling class, it’s just fat that needs to be cut out. So the administrative class assigned to run things is clearly panicking, and at the same time, there’s a student movement that neither the university nor the government likes that they’d like cut.”
Under these conditions, repression becomes an elite bargain.
Forward Stronger
“Mahmoud Khalil,” were the first words from the first speaker’s megaphone, before the crowd marched down Commonwealth Avenue on April 16. Then: “Rümeysa Öztürk.”
The Sanctuary Campus campaign shows no sign of faltering as a result of YDSA’s suspension. “We aren’t gonna let them do this to us!” said the first anonymous orator on April 16, after invoking the names of just a few students kidnapped by the secret police.
Another anonymous Boston University YDSA member pointed to a student leader uninvolved in the core of the organizing project raising the Sanctuary Campus demand to administrators at the annual Student Leaders’ Dinner. Administrators were embarrassed enough to censor the student leader’s presentation. “Clearly the campaign is effective enough that the university feels compelled to ban us from waging it,” said the BU YDSA member. “They feel the need to retaliate against us as an institution.”
Evan Caldwell, national YDSA organizer, noted to Working Mass that administrative repression often strengthens YDSA chapters. Guerrilla tabling is one method students can use to overcome tabling restrictions caused by suspensions. Other organizations can also support YDSA in booking meeting spaces. On campus, that can look like coalition partners; off campus, DSA chapters can book physical space close to the university for YDSA members to strategize from. “So many chapters have gone through this and emerged stronger,” said Caldwell.
The Sanctuary Campus demand seems poised to only grow as the Trump Administration continues its attacks on undocumented students and workers. More and more administrative classes will be forced to choose a side. For one BU YDSA member, the eventual decision of the universities stuck between Trump and the student movement is obvious:
They’ll pretend as long as they can that they’ll protect students. But in the end, they will capitulate to the threat from above.
Travis Wayne is the deputy managing editor of Working Mass and the co-chair of the Somerville branch of Boston DSA.
You lost your union election. Now what?
You’ve come up short in a union election. It’s painful, but it happens. Where do you go from here? First, you mourn — then you organize!
The post You lost your union election. Now what? appeared first on EWOC.
Peninsula DSA Votes Unanimously Against Zionism and for Palestinian Liberation
Socialists oppose all forms of colonialism, imperialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Palestine cannot be an exception!
On April 27, 2025, Peninsula Democratic Socialists of America (Peninsula DSA) unanimously adopted a resolution affirming our chapter’s anti-zionist stance in both principle and practice. Following the leadership of chapters like Silicon Valley, Seattle, Twin Cities, Las Vegas, San Francisco, San Diego, Colorado Springs, Inland Empire, Boston, Philadelphia, Austin, Tidewater, Greater Baltimore, Houston, Connecticut, Boise, New Orleans, Northwest Ohio, Salt Lake City, NEPA, Tampa, Denver, Long Beach, North Texas, Spokane, Syracuse, Orange County, Tacoma, North New Jersey, Champaign Urbana, Orlando, Greater Lafayette, and others, we join a growing movement within DSA standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their struggle for liberation.
Zionism is a settler-colonial ideology that has enabled the violent displacement, dispossession, and oppression of Palestinians for over 75 years. Today, the Zionist project continues through an ongoing genocide against Palestinians, particularly in Gaza and the West Bank, carried out with the full financial, military, and political backing of the United States. Israeli forces have bombed hospitals, schools, refugee camps, homes, and entire neighborhoods, targeting civilians and vital infrastructure. They have imposed mass starvation as a weapon of war, destroyed Gaza’s universities and cultural institutions, and deliberately cut off food, water, medicine, and electricity to millions. As socialists, we oppose all forms of colonialism, imperialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Our commitment to international solidarity demands that we reject Zionism in all its forms and actively work to dismantle systems of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, military occupation, and settler colonialism.
We affirm that opposing Zionism is not antisemitic. Peninsula DSA stands firmly against antisemitism and all forms of racism and bigotry. We recognize that many Jewish comrades — within DSA and beyond — are leading voices in the fight against Zionism and in the struggle for the liberation of all oppressed peoples. Peninsula DSA reaffirms our solidarity with the Palestinian people and upholds the full right of return for all Palestinian refugees. We oppose the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and reject any framework that denies Palestinians their full human rights, freedom, and sovereignty.
We expect our Anti-Zionist resolution will make us an even stronger ally in the struggle for a free Palestine, and commend the work of several local organizations and coalitions fighting towards this end, including:
- Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)
- Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC)
- Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)
- CA15forPalestine
- Vigil4Gaza
- Stanford Against Apartheid in Palestine (SAAP)
We look forward to working more closely with our allies, who have made it clear that DSA National must explicitly connect the fight against Zionism with our socialist and anti-colonialist principles.
We call on DSA chapters and the national organization to take a clear, principled Anti-Zionist position, and to help build an internationalist, anti-colonial, and anti-racist socialist movement.
A better world is possible — a world without colonialism, apartheid, or genocide.
Free Palestine.
We need more leaders, we need less stuff!
Some thoughts on movement building, single-issues, false urgency, and mutual aid.
Author: Anna P.
Everything written here is my opinion and does not represent the views of Cleveland DSA.
In 2023, for the first time in my adult life, an anti-war movement with clear strategy and demands inspired mass participation in the United States. Palestinian activists raised the stakes and demanded attention with deep organizing, education, and consistency at the national level that I had never seen. Locally, I was able to learn and observe trends as a frequent participant in high risk, direct action. I was also able to observe how a coalition gets built from the ground up. I must reflect on what I have done and seen in order to prepare for the long fight towards socialism and learn from the immense efforts of organizers who came before me.
“We keep us safe” is vague and lacks any actionable demand. What we need is an organization capable of keeping people safe by wielding collective, material power. To win the fight for socialism in the United States of America, the delegation of responsibility and power must be clear and consensual to everyone involved in the movement. Our movement must be transparent and accessible, so that power is noticed and discussed. Leadership in any context must be political because giving people what they want and need is inherently political. Now that we are in Trump’s second term, and the opposition tent is bigger than ever, socialist organizations do themselves no favors smoothing over differences with competing political projects. I’m not just talking about liberals, everyone needs to get with the program. From anarchists, to black nationalists, and progressive academics; we cannot simply wish ourselves into agreement and coordination, it must be an honest struggle.
I used to believe that organizing would be so much easier if we could simply give people what they need without saying anything at all, without ever running the risk of alienation. I used to believe that what was “good” or “right” would spontaneously emerge out of individual goodwill, an intention to build a diverse community, coupled with academic or legal reason. Obviously it would be a shortcut to victory if we could manage society with a small group of good people. But the idea that the movement could be led by the people already involved in existing coalitions, was comforting, because that meant I had less work to do, and that most problems had been acknowledged.
Because I believed this, I was frustrated by communists and socialists who struggled hard over the content of collective statements, questions of history and theory that inevitably lead to a delayed response to crises. Why must the statement be a collective effort? Why can’t the chair speak for everyone out of convenience? Why do we include so much nuance in our statements? Why don’t we put boots on the ground immediately?
Through much frustration, I have started learning how to take personal responsibility for the collective will, work, and rhetoric of an organization, regardless of how it impacts my ability to wield personal power. More importantly, I learned that I could only be organizing if I convinced other people to do the same.
Taking responsibility for the safety and material conditions of others is not a decision that should be taken lightly. As an organization’s capacity to meet needs, overcome status-quo authority, and manage society is increased, new members of the working class must feel compelled to participate in more and higher levels of civil service. The organization must naturally encourage this engagement because the more people who know how to wield power and balance contradictions, the greater is their capacity to contribute to the collective project.
Additionally, my capacity for responsibility and service to an organization should not endow me with unchecked power or deference. “Doing the work” or politics dictated by volunteerism easily creeps into socialist organizations, despite most people knowing better at this point. It is worth repeating that the content of one’s ideas and arguments should lead in all exercises of power. Asking that people “do the work” before they are able to criticize anything is a harmful fallacy that has found its way into a lot of political discourse. While someone who engages with politics at high levels is important to retain, it is obvious many socialist organizations rely too strongly on too few people who are able to operate on the level of theory, creating a situation where only a few people always set the ground for debate. This inevitably leads to hidden fractures and contention in the organization. We must escape the paranoid tendency to never train new leaders, never criticize them, never discipline their political aspirations to the will of the organization.
During our local student encampment for Palestine, I learned a lot about the ordinary person’s inexperience with exercising collective communication and decision making in large groups. I believe the lack of centralization in an organization and a deference to the concept of “collective responsibility,” created a leadership vacuum at the encampment that could have been anticipated. There was also a near constant urgency and tendency to focus on the management of “stuff” that drained energy even further. I believe these last two issues are easier to fix so I will address them first.
Movements that benefit the capitalist project seemingly advance on their own thanks to an endless resource pool that includes the bodies and minds of poor and working people. In contrast, our movements for socialism do not have the privilege of coasting on endless, spontaneous momentum. So when the weather gets nice, and protests grow in size and scope, it is actually very predictable that the reproductive and administrative labor available to the spontaneous street takeovers will be insufficient to sustain them against the militarized police. Sure, we might have leaders named in the papers, but who is managing the need to call an assembly, administrate and communicate group decisions? Who is making sure people don’t get sick or hurt in the fight? Who is making sure those people are around?
This work is often assigned the status of “everyone does this” and many assume it is done in some group chat they are not part of. Not everyone can call a general assembly, and not everyone will be listened to when they speak. The existence of group chats as decision making spaces also makes this lack of transparency and indecision additionally frustrating for participants. It does not inspire them to take larger risks for the cause.
The lack of centralised authority created a few different kinds of chaos at the encampment. First, there was simply too much stuff. A collective decision to stop accepting donations would have avoided unnecessary labor and exhaustion for volunteers running the medic tent and food area. Additionally, there were routinely not enough participants willing to get arrested for the sake of the camp at any given time. This is probably because the capacity of the “high risk participants” was not managed appropriately. I was getting called back to the camp constantly every time rumors spread of a potential raid, I never got the chance to tap out. Again, a collective decision to throttle the urgency of the messaging could have extended the limited energy of those willing to take high risk actions.
In the first days of the encampment I was very impressed by the student organizers. These young activists quickly set up formal channels of communication, utilized their organic networks on campus, and brought in the greater community to spread the word about important decisions. The authority in the beginning was well-defined and worked to get everyone on the same page about what needed to happen. One of the ways this manifested was in a “camp basics” document circulated among many, that addressed matters of conduct and jail support.
However, after the camp was established, it began to be run in an increasingly decentralized fashion. The student organizers naturally sought greater buy-in from the camp participants, but without a clear process for doing so. Gossip and constant threat of a raid contributed greatly to the “fog of war” felt by student leaders. Fear and incompatible schedules deterred regular leadership meetings. This fog never allowed for a moment to consider how to establish a general “camp” assembly, abide by the mandate of that assembly, or escalate as a response to police aggression. Every morning I would receive a telegram notification telling me it was urgent people return to the camp. I was bothered by the assumption that it wouldn’t always be the same people willing to haul out, and when I finally arrived there was no reason to have rushed at all.
When it came to matters of camp-keeping and reproductive labor, there was little enthusiasm about being the person who stepped into a leadership role. When I use the term “reproductive labor” what I am referring to is “activities of provisioning, care-giving and interaction that produce and maintain social bonds.” This is how Nancy Fraser describes social reproduction in the Contradictions of Capital and Care. The most upsetting part was that too much food was being brought into the camp, and it was being left behind in the hope that it would get consumed by somebody. A lot of the food went bad. If the University refused to pick up the trash, and locked their bins, I’m not sure we would have been able to keep the camp sanitary for 10 days, especially when the police interfered with clean up efforts. I have work experience managing trash in public places. I know that when people gather in large groups, and live outside full time, it creates an abnormal amount of waste that requires actual labor and logistics to manage. Many people were willing and able to help with the food management and meals, but ultimately with limited leadership, weeding out bad food, resetting coolers, and setting/clearing the big meal exhausted most of the capacity for the day. There was no time to discuss food strategy or best practices, there was no mechanism to do so.
Despite the obvious need, there was a reluctance to take leadership or delegate, especially among people who had never exercised the skill before. Most people were worried about “overstepping” or taking away the individual agency of others who were also trying to help. Attempting to “catch a vibe” from a large group of people seemed to be the most comfortable thing to do if someone assumed a particular responsibility and had to motivate the task. No one wanted to tell other people what to do, so when work was accomplished, it was the result of individual initiative, not collective action.
I am guilty of all of this, especially as days wore on and it felt like we were getting nowhere. Everyone was always waiting on someone else’s direction and that was exhausting. Of course, there is always going to be contradictory information fighting for air, but it was so obvious the student organizers let their own lack of consensus slip out into the whole camp. It wasn’t long before the camp was unable to speak with one voice, and camp participants were calling the police on counter-protestors. Student leaders had wisely announced a rule against that in the previously mentioned “camp basics” document. This useful and important document was never recirculated and was lost to time, buried in a group chat where so much of this organizing took place. By the end of the first week I was completely demoralized, and then shortly after the encampment ended without further escalation.
This is no one’s fault. We are not taught the mechanics of collective decision making, and being overburdened with material support almost seems like a good problem to have. I stood in awe as I witnessed an entire church lobby filled to the brim with protest supplies several days after police, mounted on horses, assaulted Cleveland protest participants May 30 2020. There was so much stuff, I wish someone had told me not to bother driving out to drop off more. Saline solution, water, hundreds of sunscreen bottles, all accumulated for protests that had not even been planned yet. Unfortunately, the hard part isn’t finding people who will donate, but finding the administrative labor required to take the stuff where it needs to go and manage it. Mutual aid, and keeping people safe, is usually the first task of any street movement, so it is shocking how we still struggle so much with the basics.
The truth is, for a highly publicized injustice, it is actually very easy to ask for and receive large amounts of donations and supplies. There is genuine repressed enthusiasm from the alienated working class that comes out, often, in the form of donations. Almost always, the only thing the movement actually needs is momentum, bodies, and leaders. The alienated worker’s lack of time and freedom to participate in collective action is softened by the hope that there are other outlets through which they can participate and hopefully contribute. Resorting too quickly to donations and social media awareness campaigns might even alienate someone further from taking power in their own life because the movement did not win its demands, nothing changed, and the worker does not understand how any of it happened. The movement should, but often fails to, offer participation and genuine opportunity to lead, to its base that is not already committed to the cause. Learning to lead is how people buy into the greater project and stay committed for the long haul.
Unfortunately, for the activists, work needed to maintain occupations, encampments, and riots cannot be done by paid staff. Outside of mass mobilizations like these, community care often does involve paid staff (nonprofit or otherwise) set out with the task of fulfilling a particular need that activists may be organizing around. For example, social workers will come out to support trans activists and self-organize professional support outside of any kind of movement infrastructure. The Cleveland Food Bank still feeds anyone regardless of marginalized status. When administration of “stuff” is done spontaneously, or when activist time is not effectively managed, unpaid activists duplicate the work of paid activists and waste their time relentlessly. I have seen this happen a number of times, but mainly as a response to COVID or environmental disasters like the East Palestine train derailment.
It makes me sad and worried when I consider all the unpaid activist energy and capacity that has gone into establishing brand new mutual aid projects for every tragedy and issue-area. Often the service non-profits (donor/corporate/grant funded NGOs, yes, even small ones) and charity organizations are willing and capable of providing blankets, water, hot meals, clothes, bail, sometimes legal services, sometimes medical services, and basically any and all consumer goods to victims of tragedy and injustice. Often, it is someone’s literal job to raise money for direct support or to provide a service for free. Since the United States does not have a welfare system, these organizations (good/bad, religious/agnostic, government/non government) are the faulty, decentralized safety net that everyone is far too familiar with. Do people fall through the net, and are unable to get what they need to survive? Absolutely. Will we be able to catch them and support them without a complete restructuring of society and universal welfare programs? Probably not. Ultimately it is a political problem, not a problem of charity.
Socialist organizations can and should do charity/mutual aid as a supplement to education and organizing. However, before beginning this work I believe it is necessary to acknowledge two limitations. First, aid and service are the bandaid we use to help who we can when it is not possible for mass mobilization/power shift on a particular issue. We always want to shift the levers of power, and eliminate the root cause of injustice. For example, we should not donate rent money to assist tenants if the tenants themselves can strike and negotiate a lower rent that they can actually afford. Second, the impact of our work will be relatively small compared to the market forces that drive the disparity we are trying to resolve. There will always be more people we need to help than hands available to provide necessary one-on-one attention that every human being deserves.
Too often, instead of confronting these limitations, DSA chapters and similar organizations will try to be everything to everyone. Routinely, the social movement wants to take on more than it is capable of handling, assuming responsibility for an entire issue-area, positioning itself as an alternative to traditional nonprofits/service providers, and doing so with a deeply misguided sense of urgency. They duplicate the work of organizations which are both increasingly failing to address the problems of capitalism, and which are far, far better positioned to address them than unpaid activists are. In doing so, they misunderstand that the purpose of political organization is to change the balance of power, and the purpose of progressive political organization is to win socialism. This “everything at once” approach sidelines leadership development and collective decision-making, all in order to “do the work” with the “proper” amount of commitment and on an accelerated timeline. Too often, committed activists are compelled to prove their moral integrity on every issue in order to present as properly intersectional and radical. Attempting to prove the moral integrity of an organization or individual is not a path towards justice, and it certainly isn’t the way to win socialism. Instead, we are tasked with the hard work of motivating ordinary people to our cause, slowly and deliberately. The people we need to win are not already running their own projects, and they are not toiling to maintain the decaying social safety net either.
Instead of starting a brand new mutual aid or service project, I believe it is better to keep logs of references and research to share, and provide aid to people who ask for it explicitly. As a socialist, I cannot be everything to everyone, but I can try to build a plan for someone who comes to me and asks for help. There are times when DSA, and myself by extension, have actually filled a gap in services that the NGO industrial complex had not accounted for. Cleveland DSA spent two years knocking on the doors of people facing eviction and encouraged them to go to their hearing, shared resources, and followed up afterwards. There were times when the notice did not come and I was telling someone for the first time that they were getting evicted. Sometimes I drove tenants to their hearing. Sometimes I helped someone stay in their home, and sometimes there was nothing I could do. Regardless of the outcome, providing the door-knocking service was never my job, it was always something I did out of obligation to our organization’s priorities and goals. The eviction canvassing could only reach about 43% of all cases being filed in a year and it was very difficult to organize tenant unions while tenant leaders were in an active crisis. We were not moving toward our ultimate goal of building a city-wide tenants union, so the work had to be abandoned. In fact, a $20,000 grant was created by United Way to fill this gap in eviction-related outreach, and they offered it to DSA. When we denied the money, it was offered to another organization who hired two people to do the work part-time. There is nothing about this exchange of work that is wrong or morally compromised. The service work is being done by an employee paid for their time, and we don’t need to mobilize 20 volunteers on a biweekly basis. Our leaders of the project at the time explained how there was only so much of themselves they could extend to a service-based project, acknowledging it was never mutual aid because we could not get the tenants we canvassed to come out and knock doors for others after their eviction was over.
If DSA can provide a necessary service to people in crisis and organize ordinary people into powerful leaders at the same time, I am so happy to do both. If I must pick one, then I must try to find some people who are not in active crisis or are not already self-selected, highly-involved activists. I need to find people with the free time to read, debate, and practice leadership in a collective body. I must be able to reproduce myself for the sake of having socialists to live another day. I have trouble acknowledging the very real opposition many working class people feel towards the idea of a collective society. I have trouble acknowledging that our “mid size” DSA chapter has less yearly income, and moves less money per-year, than a single Ohioan making minimum wage. At the same time, it frees my ego when I consider how truly devastating the situation really is. Looking ahead, there is so much work that needs to be done.
I believe the ease of our mass communications (through social media/ group chats) and easy access to material goods have made our movement lazier and less deliberate about what we say and what we think we need. We should not be naive, and understand when we receive “stuff” “attention” or “useful data” from capitalists and their institutions, it is a pity prize.
During the tenth and final day of the Palestine encampment my nails were packed with dirt, several pounds of taco meat spilled in my car, I had bruising from handcuffs, and three parking tickets sat on my dash. I’m unemployed without any means to pay them.
Looking in the mirror, I realized that the people I need to radicalize the most, were not going to be able to do this work. I was as self-selected as they come, and just telling someone to copy my imperfect time/resource sacrifice was not going to motivate or empower them to build power in their own life. If anything, the example I set was predicated on giving so much of myself, that there was no way I could be supporting someone else in their development as a leader. Solidarity is not self-sacrifice and it is wrong for a socialist to put themselves in this position. It is especially wrong to expect others to do the same. The people we need to lead the movement don’t already identify as activists and don’t have time to “prove themselves” through constant, selfless acts of charity and sacrifice. Ordinary people often stay the course on one long term project that directly affects their material conditions. Ordinary people bring others into the work instead of doing everything themselves, often this is a skill that needs to be taught and fostered in groups accustomed to individualist competition.
If we are trying to build a mass movement, by teaching people how to exercise power and organize themselves, then we should only be engaging in single issues to the point that they radicalize new socialists and not beyond that. If the single-issue project is actually collective it will move itself, if it was always a couple people making every decision, it will fizzle out. As an activist, I do not have the capacity or strength to die on every hill. I don’t always need to be the thing standing in between a stranger and some horrible fate. The cycle of suffering is endless and expansive, but if everything is urgent then nothing is. Before it is too late, we must build a self-critical and leadership-heavy democratic organization that is able to hold the contradictions of the multiracial, American working class. And I don’t want these new socialists obsessed with the idea that more stuff in the hands of more people is the ultimate mission of mutual aid. It is important we do not assume that every participant is already a leader capable of driving strangers to action or subordinating themselves to the will of the collective body. Lastly, without formal organization at the core of our movement, the self-selected ones lose their way, giving too much of themselves and their collective capacity to an endless amount of work that will never be properly done.
The post We need more leaders, we need less stuff! appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.
The risks vs. rewards of unionizing
Should you organize your workplace? Consider these risks and rewards, then talk with an organizer to get started.
The post The risks vs. rewards of unionizing appeared first on EWOC.
Strengthening Solidarity: Healthcare Organizing in Boston and Beyond
By Maxine Bouvier
BOSTON, MA – In a nation that does not guarantee its citizens healthcare as a right, people are regularly left with the impossible choice of getting the care they need or acquiring vast medical debt. While 90% of Americans have health insurance, many remain underinsured and unable to pay for the care they need. This gap in care leads to worse health outcomes in the long term as people are disempowered to seek preventative care.
Socialist organizers across the nation have taken different approaches to building campaigns to address the systemic injustices in our healthcare system, but those approaches all form a common understanding of universal healthcare as a cornerstone of socialist politics in the United States. In Boston’s DSA chapter, a dedicated healthcare working group collaborates with nonprofit Mass-Care to pass a bill establishing a single-payer Medicare for All healthcare system in Massachusetts that would ensure that patients have access to all healthcare for free at the point of care.
Medicare for All has seen increasing popularity among the American public – particularly since the 2016 presidential campaign of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, who raised the issue as a key policy demand. Beginning in 2016, Boston DSA’s healthcare working group focused on contributing to efforts to pass the measure on a national level alongside other parts of the national DSA organization, working to pressure Representatives and conduct local canvasses to build popular pressure, hoping to see it championed in Congress – but the issue was swept aside. After Biden’s election in 2020, the group shifted their focus to Medicare for All as a bill at the state level.
Movement in Mass
As part of the effort to establish a popular grassroots movement for M4A, Boston DSA and Mass-Care have run non-binding ballot measures in districts across Massachusetts that have consistently passed. Cambridge and Somerville City Councils, for example, both passed resolutions supporting the state-level bill in 2019. Unsurprisingly, people are broadly in favor of everyone having easy access to the healthcare they need. Unfortunately, these measures have not seen the same support on Beacon Hill that they see among the public.
Over the years, Mass-Care has repeatedly submitted bills for Medicare for All to the Massachusetts Legislature that have yet to make it out of committee and come to the floor. That approach reached a new crescendo on April 1, 2025, when organizers gathered at the State House to raise support for Medicare for All. Organizers and supporters shared their experiences as patients and healthcare workers with legislators. Most legislators remained stony on the issue. Attendees told Working Mass that legislators told them repeatedly that their bills “needed work” but without specifics on what required changing.
The April 1 stonewalling is only the latest in obstacles faced by the campaign. Despite decades of effort since Mass-Care was founded in 1995, little has shifted on this issue. Leaders in the State House have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo – many of their wealthiest donors are finance and insurance companies who profit directly from the inequities of our existing system. Aligned alongside these direct donors, the healthcare and life sciences industries are central to the Massachusetts economy with lobbying power difficult to combat with sheer popular support.
The power of industry is not the only force at work, however. The legislative system lacks transparency. Votes on the floor are very rarely recorded, and most state representatives and senators vote to align with leadership and advance their careers rather than take action to make change. The fact that the Massachusetts Legislature is radically untransparent became a key flashpoint in another arena of local socialist struggle even beyond the healthcare working group. Boston DSA’s electoral campaign to seat former Harvard Graduate Students Union (HGSU) and DSA member Evan MacKay on Beacon Hill became a campaign focused on transparency. In the words of Eric L and Siobhan M in the Democratic Left:
[Voters] were shocked to hear about the legislature’s system of private committee votes and their representative’s role in keeping those votes under wraps. Once community members were engaged in conversation about our opaque and undemocratic structures, it was straightforward to pivot to the consequences: tax giveaways for the rich, failure to pass climate legislation, and skyrocketing rent prices unabated by rent control.
The stonewalling of legislators to prevent the passage of Medicare for All in Massachusetts may be another consequence.
Alternative Organizing
As the movement for Medicare for All continues, working people still struggle with the burdens of medical debt. Other DSA chapters have chosen to fight against the injustices of the healthcare system in a more direct manner – buying up medical debts in bulk with nonprofit organization Undue Medical Debt, which functions as a sort of reverse-debt collection agency. The organization buys up debt from collector markets, and using the money they fundraise, pays off mass amounts of debt in bulk.
In Missouri, where nearly half of all residents owe medical debt, Mid-Missouri’s DSA chapter partnered with other DSA chapters in and around their state to raise $1,600. That allowed Undue Medical Debt to pay off $160,000 in medical debt for Missourians. Similar collaborative fundraising efforts have raised thousands in Tennessee. For every $1 raised, Undue can erase $100 dollars of medical debt, freeing people from incredible stress, poor credit, and enabling them to make investments in their future like buying a car or a home.
Buying up medical debt has a much more immediate impact for working people across the country than the fight to pass Medicare For All. It provides vulnerable families with direct relief. However, its impact is ultimately limited to a relatively small number of people when taken in the context of the estimated 100 million Americans struggling with medical debt. The strategy may be a valuable mutual aid effort to help people under our current system, but not a solution that addresses the root causes that perpetuate medical debt itself.
What can be done to push the movement for Medicare for All further?
Building the movement for Medicare for All to adequately pressure leaders who reject the proposition outright will require continued coalition building. Coalition-building with labor is a crucial road. Historically, unions have not always supported universal healthcare. Since the Red Scare and the long decline of labor, unions often defend sectional bargaining for better insurance benefits and shy away from movement-wide wins for the working class. One famous example is UNITE-HERE Local 226 – the Culinary Union, which despite its militancy, fought the Bernie Sanders campaign viciously over Medicare for All in the interest of preserving their private healthcare plan as won by the union by its own members. The ways in which leadership of unions can squash rank-and-file support for Medicare for All also underscores the need for building reform caucuses within our unions to build the bridge with labor needed to win Medicare for All. There remains one important truth: Medicare for All would free up unions to fight for other parts of the contract that aren’t healthcare, including better working conditions and the solidarities we need to win mass movements.
These bridges have begun to be built. The Massachusetts alliance for Medicare for All has allied itself with the Massachusetts Nurses Association and other unions across the state. However, this is not enough. There is a need to foster an even deeper relationship with labor. With continued pressure campaigns and a broad worker-centered movement, there is hope to see this essential right guaranteed across Massachusetts.
Maxine Bouvier is a member of Boston DSA and contributor to Working Mass.
Weekly Roundup: April 22, 2025
Upcoming Events
Tuesday, April 22 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Maker Tuesday: Red Cards (In person at 1916 McAllister)
Wednesday, April 23 (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): DSA SF Tech Reading Group (In person at 1916 McAllister)
Wednesday, April 23 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00p.m.): Presentation: Know Your Rights for Encounters with ICE (In person at 2000 Mission St.)
Thursday, April 24 (10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.): “Recovery First” Ordinance Public Comment at City Hall (In person at 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Pl., Room 250)
Thursday, April 24 (5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.): 
Education Board Open Meeting (Zoom)
Thursday, April 24 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Immigrant Justice Working Group Meeting (Zoom)
Friday, April 25 (12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): 
Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)
Saturday, April 26 (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Food Service (In person at Castro & Market)
Sunday, April 27 (1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.): Know Your Rights Canvassing (In person at San Francisco Botanical Garden, 1199 9th Ave)
Monday, April 28 (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Tenderloin Healing Circle (In person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate)
Monday, April 28 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (In person at 1916 McAllister)
Monday, April 28 (7:00 p.m. – 8:15 p.m.): Screening of We Mean to Make Things Over: A History of May Day (In person at Carr Auditorium, Building 3, 22nd St.)
Tuesday, April 29 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Maker Tuesday (In person at 1916 McAllister)
Thursday, May 1 (4:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): May Day March and Rally — Immigrant and Workers’ Rights: One Struggle, One Fight! (In person at Civic Center Plaza, 335 McAllister)
Thursday, May 1 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): May Day Happy Hour (In person at Tempest Bar & Box Kitchen, 2940 431 Natoma St.)
Saturday, May 3 (11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.): Comrade Doggie Social (In person at Marx Meadow, Golden Gate Park)
Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates.
Events & Actions
Support Harm Reduction and Oppose Bad Drug Policy – Email the Board of Supervisors and Turn Out to Public Comment this Week!
DSA SF is joining with other community organizations to oppose Supervisor Matt Dorsey’s “Recovery First Policy” ordinance. The proposed ordinance appears benign, but is actually part of a larger assault on harm reduction policy, intent on replacing nuanced solutions with an abstinence-only, one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t address the real issues at the heart of San Francisco’s opioid crisis.
Join DSA SF in speaking out in favor of science-based harm reduction, treatment on demand, and safe consumption sites. Start by sending an email to the Board of Supervisors, then follow up by showing up Thursday, April 24th at 10 a.m. at SF City Hall, Room 250 to give public comment! Email homelessness@dsasf.org with any questions.
No Appetite for Apartheid Outreach Training & Canvassing 
We’ll be holding our next training/canvassing for No Appetite for Apartheid this Saturday! We’ll be meeting at 10:00 a.m. at 1916 McAllister to do training. After the training, we will divide up into groups to visit stores (and maybe restaurants and cafes, too!) in the Russian Hill/Lower Nob Hill neighborhoods and discuss deshelving and boycotting Israeli products!
If you’ve already trained and you just want to canvass, feel free to show up at 11:30 a.m. at 1916 McAllister to get a turf. If you are able to provide transportation for people from the training site to the canvassing location, please indicate that in the RSVP form below.
May Day Events 
Join us in celebrating May Day 2025! Labor Board’s slate of events this year begins on April 27th with a Know Your Rights canvas programmed with the Immigrant Justice Working Group!
We also have:
- an education event on the history of May Day (featuring a discussion with the Education Board)
- a Maker Tuesday night to craft buttons and flyers for the rally
- the May Day Rally at Civic Center (which comrade Hazel W will be speaking at!)
After May Day we’ll be assembling hygiene kits with the Homelessness Working Group and learning about salting opportunities in SF with a Socialist Night School on Salting!
For more information and to RSVP to these events, check out https://dsasf.org/mayday2025/
Come Join the Tenderloin Healing Circle on April 28
All are welcome to attend the Tenderloin Healing Circle. The healing circle is a great way to connect, reflect, and share food with other DSA members and folks in the Tenderloin community. The Healing Circle will be meeting at the Kelly Cullen Auditorium at 220 Golden Gate Ave on April 28th from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Food is provided, and masks are provided and encouraged.
Capital Reading Group
DSA SF has started a Marx’s Capital reading group! We’ll be meeting every other Sunday from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister St. and also on Zoom. We’ll meet on May 4th to wrap up our discussion of chapter 1 and cover chapter 2 and the afterword to the second German edition. We’re reading the new translation published by Princeton University Press. You can also join the #capital-rdg-group-2025 channel on the DSA SF Slack for additional information and discussion!
Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing
The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) is running a Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing course weekly in May (see below for schedule). We’re getting a group to take the course together and benefit from in-person discussions and activities,. If you’re interested, fill out the form here and join the #ewoc-fundamentals-2025 channel in Slack! The goal is to have more people learn organizing skills, both for your own projects and for organizing with EWOC.
Sessions run every week from 6:00-7:30 p.m. on
- Wednesday, May 7
- Tuesday, May 13
- Wednesday, May 21
- Wednesday, May 28
The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) is a project of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) to build a distributed, grassroots organizing program to support workers organizing at the workplace.
Office Hours
Co-work with your comrades! Come to the DSA SF office and get your DSA work or work-work done, or just hang out. We’ll be at 1916 McAllister from 12:00 p.m to 5:00 p.m. on Fridays.
Behind the Scenes
The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and newsletter, etc. Members can view current CCC rotations.
To help with the day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running, fill out the CCC help form.
From April 5th to May Day
Illustration by Jos Sances
Organizing is ramping up for May Day demonstrations against the rise of American fascism.
The turnout for more than twelve hundred “Hands Off” demonstrations around the country, in every state of the union, beat even the most optimistic predictions on April 5. Depending on whose estimates you accept, somewhere between a million and three million came out to express their deep displeasure with Trump, Musk, and the crew of fascist billionaires they have installed at the top of the federal government. DSA members across California lifted up a socialist message within the day’s events.
The original organizers of “Hands Off”, the liberal electoral group Indivisible, had little previous experience in putting together this type of event. Many other organizations, however, hopped on board as the date drew near, including organized labor. Things were a bit chaotic at the Oakland demonstration I attended, with a muddy sound system and spontaneous marches heading off in various directions. But there was no missing the angry spirit uniting the crowd, and the opportunity to vent brought out at least five thousand people and made up for the gaps in organizing.
Creative energies spawned a forest of colorful signs on a myriad of issues. Immigrant and trans rights, free speech, the decimation of federal programs in order to fund tax cuts for the rich, elimination of federal worker collective bargaining, Palestinian liberation, democracy under attack, the unlawful nature of Trump’s executive orders and Musk’s stealing of personal data—there was no lack of problems to be angry about.
On to May Day
The crowds could grow even larger on May 1. The traditional day of international working class protest, solidarity and celebration of spring renewal will provide a platform for discontent against the right wing assault. National DSA has called for all chapters to mobilize members for the day.
This year the symbolic power of May Day has taken on greater urgency due to the Trumpist onslaught and the labor movement’s growing alignment with United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain’s call for unions to line up their contracts to expire on May Day 2028. Between now and 2028 the International Workers Day demonstrations will function as a barometer of working class strength and ability to gear up for a general strike.
In Los Angeles, former County Federation of Labor leader and current state senator Maria Elena Durazo, looking toward May 1 says, “Resist, resist, resist. That's a pledge that more and more organizations and just individual people in this country are taking up. This is another moment… to demonstrate that we oppose all of these steps frankly that are in the direction of fascism. And we won't stand for that in this country.”
Here are three things you can do to help build May Day 2025:
Work with your DSA chapter to organize a big contingent at your local event
Organize a screening with comrades, co-workers, family and friends of the award-winning thirty-minute documentary We Mean to Make Things Over: A History of May Day to learn about the background of International Workers Day. Stream it here.
Go to your local event on May 1. Find it, along with a toolkit for publicity, here.
Where to go:
Los Angeles: 8:30 am, DSA LA is assembling at Olympic and Figueroa for the rally and march
Oakland: 3 pm, Fruitvale Plaza to San Antonio Park, rally, march and resource fair
San Francisco: 4 pm, Civic Center Plaza
San Jose: 2:30 pm rally at King and Story, 4 pm march to City Hall
Ventura: 11 am – 1 pm, rally Ventura County Government Center, 800 S. Victoria Avenue
Don’t see your location in this list? Go here.
