(Fallujah, 2004; Minsk, 1942)

Barbara Epstein tells this story in her book about the Minsk ghetto

There is smoke on the horizon
but the fire is far away.
From here, we can’t hear the explosions.
We see the ruined houses only on TV 
but the fat man who works at the Post Office can’t quit smoking this year
because his son is in Fallujah.

Who can explain what is going on?
Is this worse than what has happened before?

In Minsk, in 1942, the Nazis occupied the city.
The Communist leadership had fled east to Moscow, abandoning the city, disbanding the Party.
There were therefore officially no Communists in Minsk.
Citizens, by which we mean Jews and non-Jews, Byelorussians, could not believe that no leadership had been left behind and authorized to organize a resistance.

At first they waited, expecting to be contacted.
Eventually, they formed their own underground, naming it, out of respect, 
the Second City Committee, in case a First Committee came forward.

Nothing came forward. 
The Second Committee saved thousands, Jews and non-Jews, 
transporting them to the partisan units in the forests to the east.

But this is the lesson: No one came forward. Nothing came forward.
They waited, and eventually formed their own committee.

The forever war by socialists and other progressives continues against the ruling corporate wing of the Democratic Party. 

The latest battles were fought at the more-or-less annual state party convention in San Francisco in February, which focused on 1) endorsements in legislative and statewide races; and 2) the party platform for the next two years. 

The endorsements rarely involve close contests in more than one or two races, but this year, as an elected delegate from Sacramento County I received a huge number of mailers and calls over the preceding weeks from candidates for open statewide offices – governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, insurance commissioner and superintendent of public education.  (Incumbents sailed through for attorney general, controller, secretary of state.)

62 candidates for governor

The race for governor comprises 62 candidates, mostly unknowns, from many parties or no party. Ten are generally considered serious by mainstream media – and recent polls indicate that most likely to advance to November’s general election are the two Republicans among them, with about 15 percent each, not much but well ahead of several Democrats at around 10 percent. With June 2 fast approaching, none of the eight top Democrats is blinking, despite pressure from party leadership on those polling poorly to drop out. Ironically, even if a few did it might not make much difference unless voters consolidate in backing one of the Dems. There’s no sign of it yet. 

A lot of folks are also taking a curious look at Tom Steyer, the self-funded billionaire who is ostensibly renouncing his past and repurposing his riches for a couple of decades, while embracing progressive positions on multiple issues. Another enticing aspect of his candidacy is that unlike all the other Democrats, he seems notably unbeholden to the party heavies. His answers to my questions about Palestine at the convention and at a recent Sacramento town hall were sympathetic but not well-informed. (When I offered to meet with him together with a Palestinian comrade he publicly accepted and staff rushed to take my contact information. We’ll see.)

The irony of a Republican governor with a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature could make for pundit heaven. It might highlight a stark contrast between relative progressives who manage to pass some decent bills and centrists who use the “impropriety” of refusing to override gubernatorial vetoes to maintain the status quo.

Meanwhile, the most well-known non-duopoly candidate, Green Party’s Butch Ware, is going to court to fight for his ballot spot after being disqualified over a technicality.

The possibility cast a pall over the convention; panic had not yet set in, and maybe it will still somehow be avoided. 

Several candidates did better among delegates than in voter polls, but no one came close to the 60 percent needed for official party endorsement. The same held for all the other contested statewide posts, all with multiple candidates. It’s unusual to behold such division in the party, perhaps in part reflecting increasingly large ideological differences, but also the smell of opportunity with Republican prospects seemingly tanking – though surveys show the Democratic Party less popular than almost ever.

Amid the chaos, progressive entities at the convention were not in a position (or not allowed) to make endorsements in these contests, but several candidates made positive impressions: California DSA-endorsed Oliver Ma for lieutenant governor (not on the party ballot due to late entry but very present), Jane Kim for insurance commissioner (came in a close second), and Nichelle Hengerson for superintendent of public instruction (topped a field crowded with several more well-known, termed-out legislators).

Most state legislative and congressional race endorsements were settled or ruled out before the convention at “pre-endorsement” conferences where local delegates and some others could vote for candidates in their districts. But in several cases, the results enabled further voting in San Francisco. And one – the seventh district (disclosure: where I mounted a last-minute campaign in 2024 against incumbent Doris Matsui due to her refusal to meet opponents of the Gaza genocide or call for a ceasefire back when that meant something) – had some real drama. 

DSA-backed congressional candidate denied endorsement

DSA-endorsed Mai Vang, a Sacramento city councilor, won enough support in the local process to force a further caucus at the convention – itself an extremely rare occurrence. Countering were 1) re-appointment of a number of loyalists as “delegates” in the district by party chiefs and Matsui’s fellow Congress members, a legal but despised maneuver; and 2) the sudden appearance of Nancy Pelosi and two other congressional colleagues at the caucus, meant to comprise delegates from the district. Votes are recorded and made public. It’s widely assumed that some were made under presumed fear of consequences had they voted for Vang.

The result: Vang fell one vote short of what would have enabled her to collect delegate signatures to force a full vote of the entire convention on the last day. In my 12 years as a delegate, I’ve seen that happen exactly once – and it was successful.

It was not to be, but as the Sacramento DSA chapter and many others mobilize, we know the vote that will count is still to come – on June 2. A top-two finish will take it to November. The race includes no other progressives. Beating an incumbent is tough under the best of circumstances, but two relatively unknown Republicans could conceivably split the MAGA vote and enable Mai to advance.

Contention on Palestine 

More drama occurred over the party platform. In a comparatively open process, the committee responsible heard testimony and received written proposals from many delegates on a plethora of issues. But it also declared its intent to shorten the 40+ page prior document and make it more of a statement of principles with fewer specific policy planks. 

A December draft did that, but to a minor degree, and progressives were not surprised that many of the deleted sections were among those they had successfully achieved in the recent past. A backlash ensued on a number of environmental issues, Native American matters and anti-corruption principles. There was a short-lived campaign of unknown origin, rife with speculation, to vote the whole platform down. But it petered out, and advocates succeeded in having much of what they wanted restored.

Most contentious, unsurprisingly, were sections on Palestine and Israel, in which I was actively involved. Hundreds of delegates and other Democrats signed a set of amendments we proposed accurately describing and calling for party opposition to genocide in Gaza, escalating settler/military violence on the West Bank – and for a freezing of arms transfers to Israel. Some improved language – see the final platform – came out of negotiation between leaders of Democrats for Justice in Palestine (see the previous California Red report on its founding) and the head of Democrats for Israel (recently renamed “Jewish Democrats,” offensive to those of us whom it describes but absolutely doesn’t represent). 

In an underhanded move, an outside Israel lobby official was allowed to plead with the committee to abandon the initial compromise, and a somewhat worse one eventually emerged – but still better than the previous platform and the committee’s original proposal, which would have deleted a nod, in generic terms, to various elements of international law, including people’s right to leave and return to their country, and condemned genocide – again generically, without mentioning Gaza. But it does describe the horrors that have occurred there. 

Especially grating to supporters of Palestine is the retention of language supporting a “secure, democratic Jewish state” and upholding the “two-state solution” mantra. The next chance to seek change will come in 2028. Meanwhile, it’s both exasperating and reassuring that elected Democrats are not even required to read the platform, let alone follow it in their legislative or executive pursuits.

When the era of capitalism comes to an end, and it will, it will not be because we socialists engaged in utopian methods of organizing based on blind guesswork. Instead capitalism will be overthrown because we engaged with the theory of scientific socialism and converted our theory into practice. The struggle against capitalism has a long history. The benefit of this is our ability to learn from socialists of the past. It’s from these observations and analysis that I argue the path forward does not lie inside the Democratic Party. It lies in the creation of a workers’ party dedicated to the interests of the working class.

Third Party Viability

I don’t suspect many will disagree with the eventual necessity for a workers’ party, instead disagreeing with the current viability of one. There is currently no viable workers’ party, or third party of any sort, in the United States. However, it would be fallacious to then say third parties can never be viable in the US. Two examples of third parties breaking through the established two party system come to us from Latin American, Uruguay and Venezuela. Regardless of opinion on the actions taken by these third parties, their success serves as a positive indicator in support of future third party viability in our own country. 

The third party prospect is only further enhanced by the fact that more than half of all Americans are dissatisfied with both Democrats and Republicans. America’s own history shows us examples of third parties coming into power when a large enough gulf exists between goals of politicians and desires of voters. Some will argue American third parties are a thing of the past, that the period of possibility has ended. This line of thinking falls prey to the same fallacy committed by Francis Fukuyama when he said we are at the end of history. Today only seems like a finality because we have not seen what comes next. DSA’s slogan “a better world is possible” isn’t something we say because it feels good; it’s something we say because it is true, and it can only be achieved if we demand it.

Moving Democrats Left

The strategy of electing better Democrats, putting socialists in office, is often cited as the route by which socialists will be able to drag Democrats left. Recent victories of DSA-endorsed figures like Mayor Zohran Mamdani have renewed enthusiasm for this approach, but how has the Democratic Party changed for the better following the election of such candidates? Regarding Mamdani, the entire Democratic establishment organized itself to shut Mamdani out, most notably House and Senate minority leaders Hakim Jefferies and Chuck Schumer. This is reminiscent of how the Democrats organized internally to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the 2016 presidential nomination, or how they held a closed-door secret ballot to elect then 74 year old Gerry Connoly to the House Oversight Committee instead of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most popular Democrats in recent history. Maybe those candidates just weren’t socialist enough, maybe a strong socialist slate could make the changes we need. 

Luckily for us, this also happened recently. The Las Vegas DSA chapter won on a progressive slate in 2021. They received no communication from the Nevada State Democratic Party, no support, nothing except a vote from the state representatives to condemn the “horrors of socialism”.. We understand that individual action alone cannot overcome systemic injustices. Similarly, we should not expect individual personalities within the Democratic Party to be capable of completely changing the party’s direction.

The 2024 US presidential election is the most glaring example of the Democrats’ unwillingness to shift left. In the face of a second Trump term, which was correctly identified as a fascist movement and touted by the Democrats as the greatest threat American “democracy” has ever seen, how far did they move to the left to garner our support for this critical election? Not a single step. Instead of hosting a free and open primary, Democratic Party officials unilaterally selected Kamala Harris, the spineless, genocide-enabling, right wing establishment plant who threw trans people under the bus, only ever grew more unpopular the longer she remained in the public eye, and said the only way she would differ from Biden is by putting more Republicans in her cabinet. The Democrats have shown us time and time again that they would rather hand Republicans victory on a silver platter than move an inch to the left. It’s time we stop pretending we can build an effective socialist platform within the party.

Some point to the Tea Party’s success in moving the Republican Party further right as evidence of our potential ability to move the Democratic Party left through mass popular support, but a class analysis shows this is not as analogous as it may seem. The Republicans and Democrats are both bourgeois parties dedicated to the service of the ruling class. The Tea Party movement was also a bourgeois movement attempting to move the Republicans further right; the Republican Party was already racist, already chauvinist, already dedicated to increasing working class exploitation to benefit the capitalist class; the Tea Party simply wanted them to be more explicit and more extreme in these regards. The Democratic Party is also racist, also chauvinist, also dedicated to increasing working class exploitation to benefit the capitalist class. Any attempt to move them left is in direct opposition to their goals and to the class interests of those they serve. This is an exercise in opportunism, the false belief that working with capitalist interests will produce results favorable to the working class. History has demonstrated that any cooperation with the ruling class necessitates the working class must subjugate itself, as cooperation requires the continuation of class relations.

Minimizing harm, voting for the lesser evil

This is the primary argument for supporting the Democratic Party among leftists. However, evidence has shown this is not effective as a strategy. The general argument is that Democrats, however bad they may be, will be less harmful in office than Republicans. If people who would have voted Democrat instead vote third party, this takes votes from the Democrats and makes it more likely Republicans will win elections. Therefore, voting Democrat is the preferable option because it minimizes harm from politicians.

For my response, it’s important to reiterate that the Republicans and Democrats are both bourgeois parties, they both exist to serve the interests of the ruling class. The role elections play in our society can be analogized to instances of imperialism and US intervention. From the Revolutionary Communist Party’s publication, The Communist, we have this observation of imperialist action:

However, the horrors of imperialism are not due to bad people or bad policies. They flow from the class divisions endemic to capitalism, the market economy, and the nation-state. They cannot be understood in the abstract or done away with in isolation. Moreover, an analysis not rooted in class leads inevitably to class collaboration and illusions in the trap of lesser evilism.

As socialists who stand against imperialism, conversations regarding the recent indefensible aggression from the American capitalist class toward Venezuela and Iran has brought renewed discussions. We understand that no act of imperialism can be analyzed in isolation because they do not exist in isolation; they exist within a broader system of global exploitation wherein any success achieved by imperialist powers serves to bolster future interventions. Similarly, elections are not isolated events that happen every however-many years. Elections exist within the broader context of the political struggle. It is misguided to look only at the short term regarding harms stemming from elections.

The Democratic Party capitalizes on people’s tendency toward short term harm mitigation. We see this in the rhetoric they employ. Every new election is the most important election of our lifetime, the selling point for almost every Democrat is they’re not Republican. In some ways these arguments are true; every election we face is against a Republican Party farther right and more openly fascistic than the one before. What’s left out of Democratic messaging is that the Democrats are also farther right and more fascistic than before. Democrats who are called radicals today, people like Mamdani, AOC, Bernie, not too long ago would have been called mainstream progressives. Free buses, universal healthcare, higher taxes on the wealthy:  these were mainstream Democratic positions a few short decades ago. In many cases these policies that existed in the past have been repealed to the detriment of the people. The reason these ideas are considered radical now is because the Republican Party has been dragging our country further and further right, year after year, and the Democrats have been complicit. The trend of Republicans and Democrats moving further right every year will only continue in the years to come. We know the Democrats won’t change; they’ve made that very clear. Continuing the trend of minimizing harm in the short term will change nothing. The goal of socialists should not be to elect Democrats, it should not be to elect better Democrats; that’s the job of the Democratic Party. Our goal must be to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism, and that goal will not be achieved by voting for politicians in a bourgeois party.

Effect on Socialist Organizing

A foundational concept of socialism is that of dialectical materialism: no two forces can act on each other and come out unchanged. When analyzing the effects socialist organizing within the Democratic Party has on the party, we would be doing ourselves a disservice to not also analyze the effects the party has on socialist organizers and candidates.

Too often do I see self-identified leftists bending over backwards to defend candidates whose actions are very deserving of criticism. Two examples come to mind. Bernie Sanders has shown imperialist tendencies in his support for the bombing of Yugoslavia, Kosovo, and Libya under Clinton and Obama while condemning US withdrawal from Syria. AOC voted in favor of providing Iron Dome funding to Israel, freeing up their pocketbooks to continue the genocide in Palestine. These actions don’t undo the good they’ve done, but to say the good they’ve done ought to shield them from criticism would be ridiculous. We do not support socialist politicians for clout, we must not engage in politician worship as others do. Critical support for politicians must be just that, critical of the politician. To defend politicians or candidates when they act contrary to the socialist project is necessary to prevent ourselves from being co-opted and absorbed into the “kinder version” of the neoliberal movement. We learn through practice; if we practice defending concessions to capital then the only thing we learn will be how to concede to capital, leaving us unable to meet the revolutionary moment when it arises.

Conclusion

The Democratic Party is a dead end for the socialist project. We cannot expect to realign a bourgeois party to proletarian interests; we cannot allow the Democrat’s strategy of focusing on the short term to blind us to the long term results; and above all we cannot allow ourselves to believe this—the Democratic Party—is the best we can hope for. The process of building a working class party will be difficult; it will take time; but we can’t afford to continue in the status quo much longer. In working to build a workers’ party today we are making things easier for ourselves tomorrow. It’s regrettable that we have to start from almost nothing, but that’s no reason to avoid starting now. The best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago, but the second best time is today. 

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, and the same is true for all future societies. Our future will not be written by any ruling class or their parties. Our future will be formed by the will of the masses—by the proletarian class who possesses revolutionary potential—and we are not powerless in this formation because we are them.

by Kevin N

Sometime in my early twenties — way, way back in the early 2010s — for reasons I’m still not entirely sure about, I suddenly stopped being a nihilist apolitical punk who couldn’t be bothered with activism because he had more important things to drink. I was first radicalized around the issue of campaign finance reform, and got involved with a national organization called Wolf-PAC. I spent a few years lobbying Ohio’s state representatives regarding campaign finance laws — they were invariably bemused each time I walked into their offices with long hair and a patchy leather jacket. In spite of my ratty appearance, I did manage to personally convince a Republican State Representative to change his stance on campaign finance laws after a series of meetings at the Mentor Public Library, although he still wouldn’t sponsor our Wolf-PAC resolution for fear of political backlash. I learned a lot about political advocacy through that experience, but that’s another story.

At some point, I got an email from a group dedicated to campaign finance reform that called itself Democracy Spring. They were organizing a protest in DC, with the intention of having as many people as possible perform an act of civil disobedience by willingly getting arrested for protesting without a permit on the steps of the Capitol Building.

I was absolutely thrilled at the idea. I had romanticized 1960s images of crowds of protestors in my head, and they had convinced me that this was the sort of direct action that would affect real change (that was, indeed, the depth of my analysis). So I threw everything I had into the organization. After months of working with the Democracy Spring organizers in DC, I was able to organize a small contingent of Clevelanders to travel to DC by train and participate in the protest. All in all, there were some 1,300 people who were arrested on the first day of the protests, the largest number of arrests at the Capitol since the Vietnam Protests. More would be arrested in the week that followed.

I spent a week in DC protesting, and it was one of the most exciting weeks of my life. I marched, chanted, and commiserated with like-minded activists. I have a picture somewhere of me getting my hands zip-tied behind my back, but I have no idea where. Rosario Dawson and Cenk Uygur got arrested with us. One of my favorite political commentators at the time, Lawrence Lessig, spoke at the rally. Bernie Sanders gave us a shout out on social media. Cory Booker and John Lewis came out to speak with us and encouraged us to continue. Elizabeth Warren admonished the rest of the Senators for ignoring us during a speech she made on the Senate floor. I even made my first semi-viral Twitter post. It truly felt like the beginning of something important — I left DC feeling downright euphoric.

But that was it. Nothing changed.

Aside from CNN showing a single 30 second clip of the protest, no mainstream news media covered us. Someone at Vice wrote a piece on us, but nobody ever really took them seriously anyway. After it ended, nobody in the government ever referenced the protest again. I’m quite certain most of you reading this have never heard of the protest in the first place. It was like we had plowed the ocean.

After I got home, I was undeniably elated by the experience, but in the back of my mind I was still somewhat conflicted. It seemed like we hadn’t actually accomplished anything, despite all that effort.

Luckily, I learned from the organizers that there would be a coordinated follow-up effort: the country would be divided into smaller regions, and local organizers would recruit supporters (there was no formal membership process) by staging smaller protests at local political events. Then after two years of building support, we would return to the Capitol and stage a repeat of the original protest, but larger.

This was promising! Again, I threw everything into the effort. I drove to Columbus once a month to meet with Ohio’s organizers, and got another small contingent of Clevelanders to go to protests in an effort to build support for our nonpartisan campaign finance reform movement. 

Then Trump got elected.

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The Spring Dries Up

Suddenly, all of the emails from Democracy Spring stopped talking about campaign finance reform and were just focused on “resisting” Trump. Okay, that’s fine. But how? Are we still meeting in Columbus to coordinate efforts? No, those regional meetings around the country stopped pretty abruptly. Are we trying to organize another big protest in DC? No, the communications were just filled with vague calls to “Resist!” and unoriginal, unremarkable statements about the gravity and urgency of the political threat posed by Trump. Lacking any formal structures, the organizational movement in Ohio and around the country dissipated faster than it came together.

But emails from Democracy Spring’s leadership (the only remaining form of communication they sent out) kept coming. I wasn’t clear on what they were doing now, but I continued to read them since they had been such a big part of my life for nearly half a decade. On Trump’s inauguration day, I went to DC to protest — although, admittedly, I ended up disgusted and depressed by the whole spectacle and spent the day in the Holocaust Museum instead.

I touched base with some of the Democracy Spring organizers who were in DC as well. They said they had something big planned for the inauguration, and I was confused as to why there hadn’t been a more concerted effort to recruit people. Regardless, I hadn’t planned to get arrested again, so I declined to participate.

Later that day, I got this email:

The email went on to detail the efforts of “six brave democracy defenders” — a far cry from the 1,700 who joined them just two years prior — and they claimed it as a massive victory. In the weeks and months that followed, similar emails with subject lines like “Trump Disrupted!” and “Two Democracy Spring Leaders Arrested at Sit-In!” followed, each containing photos of the same handful of participants engaged in various innocuous acts of “resistance” — and typically accompanied by a request for donations. The emails eventually stopped.

The Democracy Spring organization (if you can call it that), once able to mobilize thousands of people across the country, had dissolved into a vanity project for its leadership clique. All it took was a single political crisis (Trump’s election, in this case), and the structureless network of dedicated activists from across the country fell apart into a harmless, toothless display of performative “Resist!”-ance.

I was devastated. I felt like I had totally wasted those years of my efforts with Democracy Spring. I dropped out of activism altogether and probably (definitely) started drinking too much. I got into activist journalism instead, and made a few locally-focused documentaries about homelessness that won some awards at some film festivals around Ohio. But I stopped engaging in direct political activism, for the most part, aside from attending one-off protests or local community-building events.

I’d occasionally talk with the organizers of these events, and when I asked them what their long-term strategy was, they would invariably offer vague, starry-eyed platitudes about “building the movement” and “Resist!”-ing without offering anything concrete. It was always too reminiscent of the empty rhetoric I heard from Democracy Spring’s leadership for me to buy into their passion again.

Luckily, I had also been a convert of Bernie Sanders in 2014, and canvassed for him in 2015. Exclusively thanks to him, I spent the following years reading and unlearning all of the misconceptions that I didn’t know I had held about the word “socialism” (on my own, since I still mostly liked to hang out with nihilist apolitical punks who all thought I was annoying for being “political” and reading). It took a long time! Anti-socialist propaganda dies hard. I’m still unlearning stuff. At some point in 2023, I saw a post made by an old college friend (shout-out Julie) about a DSA event and decided that I’d better attend if I were going to be calling myself a socialist. It was my socialist “put up or shut up” moment, if you will.

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Democracy In Action

In Cleveland’s DSA chapter, I found tons of committed members working together in an organization that was structured in its composition, serious and thoughtful about its rhetoric, deliberate about its strategy and tactics, intentional about political education, and focused on efforts that did not just consist of protests and petty acts of civil disobedience. But most importantly, it was democratic, directly accountable to its membership, and committed to building its members into leaders — instead of having them orbit around an insular group of self-proclaimed leaders who lead through force of personality alone.

The chapter’s model of organizing, as opposed to just mobilizing and advocacy, was nothing short of inspiring. According to what a given situation demanded, the organization’s goals were both long-term and short-term, widescoped and narrow, national and local, and with a calculated strategy to achieve all of them — with the right kind of deliberate and thorough organizing, of course. Most importantly, the chapter had a priority structure that allowed its membership to pivot and focus their limited capacity on issues as needed, so the organization wouldn’t crumble if the national political situation demanded a change of course.

In short, DSA was everything that Democracy Spring wasn’t.

I want to clarify that I don’t expect or even want you to be disillusioned by protesting. It was a real bummer of a process to go through, and I’m happy for folks who don’t feel the same way I do. I’m also not trying to use my personal experience as a demand for deference — although if you’re someone who is shallow enough to grant political weight to this sort of activist credentialism, feel free to defer to me if you want to — nor am I trying to say “I know better than you, so you should think like I do.” My intentions are solely to give an example that illustrates the clear limitations of protest-based activism. The trend I laid out in my personal story about one protest movement is observable in varying degrees across all protest movements.

Protesting is an acceptable way to “fight back” precisely because the ruling class thinks protesting is ineffective. And without a deep commitment to organizing, it is. The word “demonstration” is suggestive of the performative nature of protests — which there is a time and place for! But protests are by no means the most important tool in our toolkit. Without clear follow-up, without a commitment to building ourselves and each other into leaders, without a plan to build working-class power — in other words, without organizing — protests achieve little beyond making the attendees feel good about themselves. And to amplify the social standing of the self-proclaimed “leaders” in liberal activist circles, of course.

(By the way, the French word for “protest” is “manifestation,” which is more befitting of their culture of resistance; the average French protest would be called a “riot” if it took place in this country. But that’s a separate discussion.)

Again and again, when I see a political crisis emerge in this country, I watch the liberal activist groups in this city circle their wagons and start mobilizing for protests. I see the same people attending every time. And when the crisis passes, the mobilizing stops. There’s good work being done by these liberal activists, for sure. But every time a new issue emerges as the crisis du jour, the same pattern plays out: new coalitions with catchy names (but composed of the same people), emergency protests, vague calls to “Get organized! Join an org!”, and then — once public perceptions of “crisis” and “urgency” have faded — nothing. That sort of Sisyphean ambulance chasing is not organizing for change — it’s just performative “Resist!”-ance.

I often hear that we have a bad reputation among liberal activists in this city. Quite frankly, I don’t care. I’m not really all that impressed with those groups. That’s why I’m in DSA instead. Our DSA chapter is one of the largest, most coordinated, and most capable independent political organizations in the city, so let’s act like it. Liberal activist groups should be more worried about what we think of them. There’s nothing to be gained from deferring to liberal activists and giving undeserved weight to their criticisms of our chapter. We should absolutely work with them where our interests align, but at the end of the day, they need us more than we need them. After all, they wouldn’t be so desperate for us to endorse, support, and attend their events if that weren’t the case. Let them work for our approval instead.

I’m in DSA because I think it’s the organization best poised to stage a serious, coordinated, and multifronted resistance against capitalism and fascist reaction — not because it just happens to be “one progressive org out of many” that I happened to join. But if we treat this organization like it’s just one of many generally progressive orgs, it definitely will be.

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Organizing, Not Just Mobilizing

I have nothing against attending protests. I attend and will continue to attend protests. People should attend protests; they’re cathartic, empowering, and publicly visible. But we have to recognize the strategic limits to endorsing and attending protests just for the sake of endorsing and attending protests. And if we do endorse a protest, we need to be deliberate about turnout.

The March 28th No Kings protest is coming up and there are questions over whether we should endorse it or not. Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter. Unless we’re doing something tangible at it like collecting signatures for our Gender Freedom Policy Petition, simply showing up, as good as that might feel, will accomplish as little as any other protest.

If we endorse a protest and only about 10 people show up, that misrepresents the actual power in this chapter and perceptibly brings our nearly 700 member org to the level of the myriad small, disorganized activist groups in the city. So, there is a potential cost associated with the optics of being present at these protests as well as the potential benefits to which folks are appealing; but those benefits only manifest if our turnout is strong.

Protesting alone isn’t going to stop Trump, Zionism, or ICE — it won’t stop any form of fascist reaction, for that matter. What will stop these things is organizing people into DSA and building it into a formidable political force that can leverage its power from below. As long as we’re not making a concerted effort at doing the latter, the former holds.

On a positive note of what can be possible at protests: at the last anti-ICE protest I attended, I connected a group of student activists at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) with the state Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) coordinator, and they’re currently organizing a new YDSA chapter on Case’s campus. This, in my opinion, is the sort of thing we should be aiming to do at protests.

Without organizing — and I mean organizing — mobilizing attendees for protests has an inherently limited impact. I think many comrades think “organizing” simply consists of getting people to show up at events, direct actions, canvasses, and training sessions; but that’s only mobilizing, not organizing. Without a deep commitment to developing one another into leaders both inside and outside the organization, we are not organizing.

Internal organizing is just as crucial a part of “the work” as our outward-focused efforts in the community. Without either, we stagnate.

To be clear, nothing should stop us from attending, endorsing, or supporting protests when they’re aligned with our values, but we need to be deliberate and calculated about what we’re doing when we go. Otherwise we’re just chasing the tail of the liberal activist movement — and I don’t know about you, but I joined DSA because I found that movement lacking.

We can attend these protests, demonstrate resistance to ICE and fascism, participate in direct actions/responses, and be serious about organizing people into DSA at these events — all at the same time. As one of our comrades likes to say, “We can walk and chew gum at the same time.” Another likes to say “We just have to do it.”  Again, I fully agree — we just have to be deliberate and strategic about it. The urgency of the situation demands nothing less than a principled and coordinated organizational effort, not just blind faith that “Resist!”-ing at protests is enough to change anything on its own.

Solidarity, comrades.

The post Why Protesting Isn’t Enough: The Limits of Protest Activism appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

Recently, Central Indiana DSA (CINDSA) has received inquiries about our relationship with the Socialist Party of Indiana. Central Indiana DSA is a big-tent organization with members who hold a broad […]

Labor activists are front and center in today’s fight against ICE and for the dignity and rights of immigrants and workers of color. 

The post Hate injustice? Join the labor movement.  appeared first on EWOC.

The 2006 “Day Without an Immigrant” offers urgent lessons for beating ICE today.

The post We’ve had a nationwide immigrant strike before. We can do it again. appeared first on EWOC.

by Alexandria R

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become infamous, particularly in the past year, for brutal tactics, intimidation, and even murder. In 2025, 32 people lost their lives in ICE-related incidents. Some of the agency’s more lethal crimes have drawn major headlines – particularly the most recent killing of two US citizens in Minnesota. While ICE as an agency has gathered a popular reputation as a secret police force, the agency and its activities date back to March 2003, when it was formally created and mobilized as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002. Its tactics, including infiltration and disruption activities akin to COINTELPRO, have not changed. ICE has acquired Israeli-manufactured spyware known as Graphite, developed by Paragon Solutions. The software is capable of hacking encrypted drives and phones, including live location data, photos, and encrypted messages. Additionally, the agency embeds itself within local law enforcement, often making use of Flock license plate readers and shot spotters to target migrant families and coordinate its operations. Officially, Flock denies that this cooperation exists. 

The agency’s effective infiltration and lethality is concerning, especially when their official mission is taken into account. DHS effectively functions as an organ of the state dedicated to mass internal surveillance and policing. ICE has a mandate to use children to draw out their parents, and detain people based on their outward characteristics. 2026 is a little over two months old, and in that time, ICE has murdered more than six people. Some of them are activists. Other American citizens have been threatened with detention or death for interfering with ICE business. Of particular concern are reports from activists in Minnesota, which echo strange occurrences reported by other activists since at least 2020. Judy and Noah Levy were stopped by ICE agents while observing agency operations in St. Paul. The couple noted that their license plates were photographed. Jarringly, the agents addressed Judy by her name when they came to speak with her. Recalling the incident, Judy said that she was shaken, but continued to follow the agents and their caravan. That’s when ICE vehicles turned onto Levy’s street. 

“Our street is off the beaten path,” said Noah, “You don’t go down our street to get to anywhere. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t intimidating.” 

In September, ICE spent millions on technology to surveil social media and the dark web. The software, called “Tangles,” creates a daily life profile of the people it surveils by mining social media for their posts, contacts, locations and events they attended, combining it with any information leaked about them online. While the agency has been using AI to “crawl” social media apps and sites, ICE is also putting together a surveillance force for 24/7 social media monitoring. DHS wants your data, but surveillance of public information is not where ICE stops looking.

The Guardian first broke the story of DHS/ICE’s acquisition of Graphite. Stephanie Kirchgaessner’s report details the capabilities of the software, noting that Graphite can “hack into any phone. By essentially taking control of the mobile phone, the user – in this case, ICE – can not only track an individual’s whereabouts, read their messages, and look at their photographs, but also open and read information held on encrypted applications, like WhatsApp or Signal. Spyware like Graphite can also be used as a listening device, through the manipulation of the phone’s recorder.” The agency’s contract with Paragon Solutions dates to late 2024 under the Biden administration. ICE’s mandate to spy on members of the public originates with the founding of its parent organ, DHS. 

Infiltration via spyware is not the only point of entry into personal and private data. It has always been important to be aware of your safety when disclosing personal information online, such as location “check-ins” and specific information about shops or restaurants you frequent. Securing information that can be used to track you and your activities can be difficult when you don’t know what people are looking for. The many different ways that federal agents gain access to sensitive details about ICE observers and their affiliates certainly don’t make it easier. Agencies often infiltrate group events and Signal chats by posing as a concerned member of the public or as an activist. This can be mitigated by ensuring that people are who they say they are via connections to the community, but informants and state collaborators could be anyone. I do not encourage readers to start viewing their comrades with suspicion – only to be wary of sharing specific, personal information, even among friends or comrades, as much as possible.

Internal policing and surveillance have always been the mandate of DHS. Though the agency’s tactics have shifted recently to become more ruthless, the existence of ICE has been maintained and expanded upon by every administration since George W. Bush. The contradiction is glaring. Internal policing and anti-migrant policies such as forced deportation of asylum seekers have no place in a society that calls itself a nation of immigrants, and we as citizens have an obligation not only to inform the public of the tactics and goals of these entities, but also to actively work against them.

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How do you put pressure on key people in your workplace, build up natural leaders, and disrupt the status quo? Consider a work action.

The post What is a work action? appeared first on EWOC.

When members of Chicago DSA arrived at 3201 S Millard in late September last year, they were confronted by a startling question: did you hear about the helicopter? Leon, a worker at Mauser and a steward for Teamsters Local 705, shared a video that another striking worker had taken with one of the Labor Branch steering committee members. In the video, a Customs and Border Patrol helicopter could be seen circling the site of the picket for a few minutes, just above the treeline. To the workers there, it was clear that CBP had gone to Little Village to intimidate the workers, immigrant and native-born alike, as their strike against Mauser entered its twelfth week.

When people talk about unions, it’s easy to think only of their economic benefits. In posters, social media posts, and TV ads, locals for the various building trades advertise the union wage premium; non-workers make this much, while union workers make this much more. In Kenny Winfree’s “I’m a Union Card,” he sings about how the union card “could have been a Visa/could have been a MasterCard,” and how it protects workers from getting fired.

For the Teamsters who struck Mauser, unions and collective bargaining agreements offered something more than better compensation and safer working conditions (which themselves can be life or death concerns). They sought guaranteed protections against ICE raids from management. With “Operation Midway Blitz” in full swing in Chicago, this was an essential stipulation sought by the bargaining team alongside long-standing demands for higher wages and better PPE when dealing with hazardous chemicals. Their struggle, like many labor struggles, encompassed not only economic justice, but also immigrant rights, racial justice, healthcare, and the environment. For so many working people, these issues are most salient in the workplace, and the workplace is where they have the greatest power to change them. 

Members of the Chicago DSA, led by solidarity captains from its Labor Branch, continued to show support for Mauser workers, walking the picket line and cooking meals. We did so because we cannot build our movement without other working people, and because we, like the Teamsters at Mauser, believe that labor is an economic justice issue; it is an immigrants’ rights issue; it is a racial justice issue; it is an environmental and health justice issue. In short, labor is the foundation which unites our struggles, and it deserves a central position in our organization. 

Why unions?

While organized labor in general may have broad appeal, trade unions in particular have been a site of theoretical contestation on the left. Going back to Marx and Engels, the idea of a problematic ‘labor aristocracy’ has complicated the relationship between socialists and trade unionists. Setting these theoretical concerns aside, for the Steering Committee of the Labor Branch, our commitment to unions is grounded in the long term project to achieve socialism in the United States. 

We need a dedicated place for unions and workplace organizing in Chicago DSA because of their promise for organizing workers into radical political actors. Historically, socialist and communist organizations maintained strong organizing ties with unions. Even when unions were not explicitly socialist, significant numbers of organizers and rank-and-file members were. For many unions, only the height of McCarthyism in the early 1950s led to purges of socialists and communists from their ranks. More recent union drives have seen a resurgence of left-wing politics, from the brief formation of the American Labor Party in the 1990s to union support for Bernie Sanders in 2016. 

Elsewhere, in Europe social democratic and labor parties maintain strong or even institutional ties with their labor movements. Even today, as union density in Europe stands at its lowest point in decades, several European countries maintain higher union density than the U.S. had at its peak¹. In contrast, as of 2025, union density in the U.S. sits at 10% for all-workers, down from a high of roughly 34% in the late 1940s. In the public sector, 32.9% of workers are unionized, compared to only 5.9% of workers in the private sector. And the influence of working people over policy and politics at both the national and local levels has fallen in proportion to the labor movement’s decline.

In an effort to undermine support for left-wing politicians and movements in the U.S., some centrist politicians have invoked the monolith of the “white working class” while ridiculing the base for left movements as no more than a mass of “white Bernie bros.” These attempts to use identitarian attacks to undermine class-centered politics are at odds with the reality that unionized workers are disproportionately workers of color and women. While it’s true that some unions do have a greater proportion of white male members than the wider population, this is a reflection of their industry rather than the institution itself. The supposed antagonism between civil rights and unions is anachronistic and out of step with the current base of most unions’ membership. 

Unionized workers are more politically engaged than non-union workers: they vote more often and are more likely to contact their representatives in office. They’re also more likely than non-union workers to blame inflation on corporate greed, as opposed to the supposed inflationary pressures of higher wages. Unions also provide an infrastructure for political mobilization and the dissemination of political ideas. From talking points and trainings to broad social networks and rallies, unions facilitate the development of political agitation. Unions can even influence the political positions of their non-union managers. The push for radical politics in the United States cannot be separated from the struggles of the labor movement.

Recent CDSA Labor Branch Work:

Before detailing some of the recent work of CDSA’s Labor Branch, it’s worth pausing to reflect on the reason for our creation. Returning to the Branch’s manifesto from 2017 (when it was first created as a working group, and was most recently updated in 2020): 

We are an intersectional group of labor militants who are actively rebuilding the labor movement from the ground-up through organizing the unorganized and strengthening the power of the organized rank-and-file worker. We demand a proactive labor movement, both nationally and locally, that can combat worker exploitation and respond to the new economy of fissured workplaces. We believe that in order to overthrow capitalism we need to build a militant movement of labor activists. 

As Democratic Socialists, we bring an alternative vision of what the labor movement can be.  Through socialism, we are determined to win the democratic control of the means of production and democracy in the workplace. We are building a socialist movement topush for broader justice for all workers.

Our work is for the broader socialist movement, which means justice for all workers. This is not just the CDSA Union Branch or CDSA Organized Labor Branch. Our organizing encompasses all working people.

Political Education

We also hold events dedicated to political education and networking. We held a townhall after May Day last year where panelists in unions shared their thoughts and experiences with attendees who were interested to hear about the difference that organized labor makes. From this meeting, CDSA gained many new members who have become active throughout the chapter. Later this spring, Labor Branch will host another meeting around union jobs and organizing which will be advertised to the public, and we hope to gain new members for the chapter as well. 

Helping Members Get Union Jobs

As mentioned above, Labor Branch will be hosting a jobs fair this spring. The event will give unions and reform caucuses within unions the opportunity to advertise employment opportunities for people interested in dedicating themselves to the labor movement, whether in a currently unionized workplace or a site that is yet to be unionized. This will be an extension of the work our branch has already been doing within our chapter. 

CDSA Labor’s jobs pipeline program began 4 years ago, with the goal of getting socialists into strategic union jobs where they can organize for greater union militancy and democracy. With the Rank-and-File Strategy as our guide, we help members connect to steady employment and support them in their efforts to become workplace organizers. Like much of our labor work, the pipeline is a long-term project of building relationships and responding and adjusting to shifting conditions. At upcoming meetings this spring, we’ll also be evaluating the project so far and voting on its direction.

CHIWOC

The Chicago Workplace Organizing Committee (CHIWOC) is our local chapter of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), a joint project of DSA and the United Electric with the mission to organize every workplace in the country. CHIWOC volunteers field requests for support from everyone in the Chicagoland area, from doulas to software developers, looking to solve problems that they’re facing on the job. Those volunteers then pair these workers with teams of trained local organizers who teach them the basics of workplace organizing. Those workers then get the chance to become organizers themselves and support their neighbors fighting for better treatment on the job.

The structure of CHIWOC gives workers of all backgrounds an on-ramp into building the labor movement. It also gives them the opportunity to help us discover the kind of mass organizing it takes to truly bring this movement back, and show the working class that we always had the tools to free ourselves. Over the past year, that has meant doing promotional events, holding open meetings once a month where workers can bring their issues, and hosting live trainings on how to prepare your workplace for a general strike. 

Sharing Strategies and Tactics Across Unions

As mentioned above, unions hold the promise of getting people more involved in radical politics. As an organized force, unions are able to use their collective action in a lot of ways that can advance goals that we as socialists care about, including solidarity with immigrants and calling for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctioning (BDS) of Israel and a ceasefire in Gaza that respects the rights of Palestinians. For years, the Labor Branch has been a place where members of different unions sample resolutions from their locals, discuss tactics for advancing their vision in their unions, or simply commiserate over the challenges they deal with as union activists in a capitalist society. In situations where two unions were in seemingly intractable conflict, Labor Branch served as a place for rank-and-file members of those unions to come together and speak across those barriers to find shared understanding. For unions with more conservative leadership and less-democratic structures, our space has allowed for union activists to learn from each other to better organize within their union.

Strike Solidarity Support

Strike solidarity is probably the Labor Branch’s most public facing work. In support of the Teamsters who struck Mauser, we did more than just provide food and support to the workers at the job site; we made social media videos and posts to turn out more people to the picket line. Our members lobbied their union leadership to stand in solidarity with the Teamsters; we attended morale-raising rallies where co-chair Sean Duffy spoke before hundreds of people alongside Local leaders and elected officials. 

Chicago DSA has been involved in strike solidarity since before 2016, but our first major instance of strike support occurred during UNITE HERE’s 2018 strike, in which workers at 30 hotels walked off the job. Many in the broader labor movement looked to CDSA to lead community efforts, and we put forward our analysis that, in a strike at 30 hotels involving multiple employers, our numbers were most powerful when concentrated on the weakest link. We focused our turnout on the Blake in the South Loop, one of the smallest of hotels, sending members before and after work to build relationships with worker-leaders. The Blake was the first hotel to capitulate to the union’s demands. We then shifted our efforts to the Monaco, the second-smallest hotel, which quickly became the next hotel to fold. The vast majority of the remaining hotels quickly followed suit.

CDSA built on this experience in the following year as we prepared for the 2019 contract fight in Chicago Public Schools. Four months before a strike was likely to start, we held a preparation meeting and came up with a plan. We engaged in community education, making sure Chicago’s broader working class knew about the contract fight and was ready to support these workers if they had to walk out. We came up with a plan to support a set of strategic picket lines across the city through our relationships with CTU and SEIU 73 members. The most elaborate of our plans was our commitment to feed strikers, students, and community members. Modeled after the Bread for Ed project East Bay DSA organized during the Oakland teachers’ strike that March, we raised and spent tens of thousands of dollars hiring food trucks for rallies. Working with local food banks, we provided groceries and assembled thousands of bagged lunches for teachers and students across the city. The strike, which ultimately lasted nearly three weeks, successfully won common good demands for libraries and nurses at more schools, and housing assistance for students. 

Like all of the branches of CDSA, as well as many of the other working groups, Labor Branch allocates a significant amount of time at most branch meetings for political education. We have invited guest speakers to speak on issues past and present. We read and discuss articles written by our own members and other labor organizers. Our space facilitates conversations among union and non-union members alike to understand issues of labor, immigration, political organizing, and more.  

More recently, chapter members took a variety of solidarity actions on behalf of striking Starbucks Workers United (SBWU) workers, organized by our solidarity captains. Our members held informational pickets at non-struck stores to educate the public on the No Contract, No Coffee campaign. They walked the picket line at stores on strike. They textbanked for No Contract, No Coffee and encouraged their own unions to adopt resolutions supporting the campaign. They raised money for (and donated to) the SBWU regional strike fund. They prepared meals for striking workers. They engaged in flying pickets to enlist Teamster support and the refusal to deliver products to stores in the Loop and River North. Our work has engendered genuine support for CDSA, and it even led to recruitment of new members from among SBWU members.

All of this time, effort, and money raises the question: why do we support strikes? While it may seem intuitive to some, it still merits a robust answer. For one, we want unions to succeed. Although the life and death of the International Brotherhood certainly did not rest on the success of the strike at Mauser, the battle for SBWU is quite literally existential. Starbucks is among the largest fast food chains in the world, by both revenue and number of locations. While workers have signed cards to be represented by SBWU at only a few hundred locations, there is a reason that C-suite executives at the company have fought against the union drive so viciously. DSA at the national level has asked for all of its chapters to support SBWU where union efforts took place, and with good reason. If SBWU is able to obtain a master contract, it would be a game changer. 

Beyond this, we want strikes to succeed to uplift the struggle of militant workers against the complacency of conservative union leadership. For decades, across industries, union leadership has been happy to function as a backup campaign fund for Democratic candidates and as a type of employment insurance for its workers: ‘Pay your dues so we can fight against your termination.’ Labor peace was seen as a productive compromise to ensure decent wages and benefits, and avoid the risks of more militant action. If workers in Chicago go on strike and fail to win meaningful concessions, it would only embolden the opponents of strikes in other industries. However, when strikes succeed, the chorus of agitation can spread as workers become inspired by the victories of others. Militancy begets militancy, and militancy reinforces radical politics.

Lastly, what should concern socialists most about supporting striking workers is that our work can connect the struggles of workers across identities and unions. SBWU called for the support of Teamsters Local 710, and their members at QCD (the truck drivers for the logistics company that supplies Starbucks stores) honored the picket line for the unfair labor practices (ULP) strike. This meant that during the flying pickets organized by SBWU in Chicago, and in other parts of the country, stores did not get the breakfast sandwiches, cake pops, and milk that they need delivered every day to turn a profit. This February, drivers and warehouse workers at Sysco, who are also represented by Teamsters Local 710, authorized a strike. Through our leadership, dual SBWU/CDSA members have called for their fellow union members to support the Teamsters and pledge to walk the picket line if they do walk out. By developing these connections, our efforts have fostered lasting bonds of solidarity among the working class. 

Our struggle is to get workers to identify with the broader Labor Movement — those in organized labor and the unorganized; those in white-collar and blue-collar jobs; private sector and public sector; immigrant and native born; across racial, ethnic, and religious lines; and across the gender and sexuality spectrum. Our aim is to raise the political consciousness of the one and only identity group which has the power to bring about a permanent change to our political economy: the working class. Our task is vital to the struggle for socialism and it needs to have its own place within CDSA in order to flourish.

Why You Should Join the Labor Branch

Although the above is a good summary of the Branch’s recent work, it is only a part of the work that our members do and have done since its creation. Our steering committee members, solidarity captains, and other leaders in the branch have many more ideas that we hope to bring to fruition in 2026 and beyond. While many of us are union members, it bears repeating that it is the Labor Branch and our long-term struggle, as socialists, is conducted on behalf of the whole working class. 

We will continue to struggle on behalf of immigrant communities, and help train our members to educate their co-workers and union siblings about ICE-proofing their jobsites. We will continue to struggle alongside our trans siblings by standing strong with strike-ready nurses who fight for the continued provision of trans healthcare, including those at Howard Brown. Our members will continue to share strategies on how to democratize their unions and agitate for more militant action so that the socialist struggle can advance through more than just electoral politics.

If you have ever had the thought, “I shouldn’t get involved in Labor Branch, I’m not in a union,” or “I shouldn’t get involved in Labor Branch, I’m not that interested in unions or workplace organizing,” as the Steering Committee of Chicago DSA’s Labor Branch we are asking you to reach out to us directly or come to our monthly meeting on the second Tuesday of every month at 7:00 PM. Chicago DSA members who attend our meetings, union or not, can vote on our priorities, elect our leadership, hear reportbacks of the work being done by our members throughout the labor movement, and bring ideas of projects that the organized force of workers could support. 

Labor Branch is an onramp and home in the chapter for people involved in organizing as workers. If you’re building and exercising your power as a worker, or you want to help your comrades who are, Labor Branch is for you. If there’s something that you think the Labor Branch of Chicago DSA should be doing that we aren’t yet, anyone can request for time to speak at the meeting by contacting the Steering Committee or bring a resolution for consideration. We hope to see you there!

1. Union density in the US peaked at 33.4% in 1945. https://www.epi.org/publication/as-union-membership-has-fallen-the-top-10-percent-have-been-getting-a-larger-share-of-income/ 7 European-OECD countries have higher 33% union density, but many countries with lower union density have more extensive collective bargaining rights. 
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