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.

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.

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.

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.

On Saturday April 12, over 36,000 people braved the heat to Feel the Bern at the Los Angeles leg of Bernie Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy tour. DSA-LA members showed up in full force to table, canvass the crowd, and build our movement. The total attendance for these nationwide rallies is now over 200,000, indicating a major political moment like the one that built the modern iteration of DSA in 2016—one that DSA needs to support and build upon.

Lines at the entrances formed before 8 am. The crowd sprawled out in front of LA City Hall, ranging from elderly folks with dogs to teens filming TikToks. There was even a group of middle-aged goths sporting their black parasols. One family from Fontana left their house at 4 am to make sure they were able to make it inside the event. The dust kicked up in the overflow area while Joan Baez and Neil Young chanted “power to the people.” It all felt fitting for “Berniechella.”

At the DSA-LA table, we sold Dodger-blue t-shirts with our own custom Bernie logo as we introduced our vision to curious folks and asked them to become members. We sold over 100 shirts in the first few hours. Throughout the park, DSA canvassers had hundreds of conversations with potential members as we invited them to upcoming DSA 101s and socials.

Making “Oligarchy” a household term

What was Bernie Sanders doing in Los Angeles? It’s not an election year, almost the entirety of our city council are nominally Democrats, we’re already a sanctuary city, and the county went for Kamala Harris by 1.3 million votes. Why would Bernie spend time seemingly preaching to the choir?

The goal of the tour seems to be to make “oligarchy” a household term. By deliberately calling out the capitalists as the source of our systemic problems, Sanders and AOC are raising class consciousness without anyone ever having to crack open Marx. By leading with the issues that resonate with working people—the rent being too damn high, getting money out of politics—Sanders is able to draw massive crowds from both liberal strongholds like LA to deep red regions like Bakersfield. This project of uniting workers of all backgrounds is critical for DSA to build upon.

“People in all different geographic areas are dealing with increasingly similar conditions, just being ground down by the cost of living, it’s harder and harder to make ends meet,” says Ashik Siddique, DSA National co-chair who canvassed at the LA and Bakersfield rallies. “To fight right-wing authoritarianism, we need mass politics and organizing at a scale to match. We should lean into this political moment by supporting it every place we can.”

The labor unions that attended the rally represented a wide range of workers, from longshoremen, to nurses, to graduate students, to teachers, and more. It was an example of the diversity of workers necessary in order for our movement to be successful.

What’s next?

But what’s next, after a rally? Where does the energy and anger go? Our answer, of course, is DSA.

“The political imagination of the liberal status quo coalition in our city has plateaued,” says DSA LA co-chair Marc K. “Liberals in our city don’t have the political courage to pass more robust renter protection, for example. But the labor movement is willing to go past what the liberals are able to do. DSA has shown that we’re willing to lead the way and labor is coming along with us in that fight. That’s how we got four people on city council and two people on the school board for the nation’s second-largest school district.”

The LA rally was announced with less than two weeks’ lead time; DSA LA’s local convention was scheduled for the same day. Chapter leadership discussed and voted to move convention by a day, a massive logistical lift that nevertheless paid off with the chapter’s growth. At least eighty DSA volunteers canvassed the rally crowd, collecting 235 commitment cards and signing up 53 new members.

One person named Drew had identified as a democratic socialist for years and became a member at our table on Saturday. I asked him what convinced him to finally join. “I believe in universal healthcare, universal childcare, basic human rights. When I lived in Texas, I saw leftists get a lot of harassment from right-wingers with assault rifles, and it is really important for the movement that we stick together.”

Over and over, I heard that what resonated with people was conversations about the issues that affect them: the rent is too high, healthcare is too expensive, schools are being defunded, and so on. And I also saw what didn’t work: one canvasser opened a conversation by explaining that DSA is “building a mass working class political organization.” These sorts of terms may seem totally normal for active DSA members, but in this case, the canvasser was met with a blank stare and an “um, okay.”

It was a great reminder that leading with the issues and their socialist solutions is the most effective way to grow our organization, not fighting about the nuances of caucus discourse on Twitter or explaining our internal committee structures. AOC would seem to agree—in her speech, she emphasized, “This movement is not about purity tests, it’s about class solidarity.”

Fired up

After Bernie was finished speaking, I expected we would break down our table and start packing up. But the table was busier than ever with people fired up and wanting to become members. One person walked up to me and said, “I want to join DSA. How do I get involved?” A canvasser’s dream!

I asked another new member, Jaiden, why they had decided to join DSA today. “Actions speak louder than words,” they said. “I can preach about it all day, but I need to get my feet on the ground and make it happen.”

These rallies are a critical recruitment opportunity for chapters nationwide, whether they’re in liberal cities like LA or deep red towns in the Midwest. The overwhelming enthusiasm for two democratic socialist politicians demonstrates that there is energy for our movement, and we just need to harness it.

Benina S, DSA LA’s co-chair along with Marc K, says, “We’ve been a Democratic supermajority state for a long time, but there’s no political will to undo things like Prop 13 [a limit on property taxes] or the statewide ban on rent control and actually help working class people. Socialism provides an imagination for the future, and 36,000 people are here because they were moved by class struggle messaging.”

On Saturday, April 5, millions hit the streets in 1,200 cities and towns across the country demanding “Hands Off” our federal programs, rights and workers. Unlike mass actions of the first Trump resistance, this one was backed by many unions and by the Federal Unionists Network, or the FUN. The FUN, a self-organized network of rank-and-file federal workers, is a significant focal point in the struggle against the billionaire takeover of the federal government. 

The FUN’s strategic role in the fight against the oligarchy

Federal workers are a highly strategic group in this struggle. They are a massive workforce, of some 2.3 million civilian employees, with large concentrations in every city in the U.S. – think federal office buildings, postal facilities, social security offices, VA hospitals and research facilities, among many other federal worksites. Nearly 150,000 federal workers live in California, with tens of thousands in the larger cities where DSA chapters are strong.

Beyond their size and broad geographic distribution, federal workers have drawn a compelling connection between their  immediate interest in saving their jobs and their union contracts and the interests of working people in saving public services and protections we all depend on. They did so very effectively in a March 13 livestream, which got 200,000 views. 

In other words, as noted in a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, “By going after the federal work force, Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk are radicalizing the very people who can best explain how the government does so much good for so many.”

The Federal Unionists Network has been organizing since 2023, but since Inauguration Day its ranks and leadership have swelled to a level that has allowed it to set the resistance agenda for its union hierarchy. While the dozen or so unions representing federal workers litigate and lobby, top union leaders recognize that the real organizing to build the mass power it will take to win is happening at the rank-and-file level. As AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said on a webinar the FUN held on March 30 to train its members to organize their co-workers, “Yes, we’re filing the lawsuits, yes, we’re fighting back in Congress, but most importantly,” she said, referring to the FUN, “we’re mobilizing in the streets.”

“All this,” as the Times op-ed concluded, makes federal workers “uniquely well positioned to lead a new kind of resistance — more mainstream and grounded than the last one, and powerful enough to mobilize millions of Americans under its banner.” 

DSA, May Day and Beyond

DSA’s National Political Committee has adopted a May Day resolution that proposes that chapters ally with the FUN; and a number of DSA and YDSA chapters in California are already involved in planning May Day rallies and marches. We are well-situated to bring along our labor and community allies and connect their struggles with that of the federal workers. Getting our local unions and labor councils mobilized shouldn’t be too heavy a lift. After all, they recognize that the threat to federal workers and their union contracts is just the beginning of a wider war against workers and unions in every sector. As one labor scholar put it, “the Trump order [to cancel collective bargaining agreements] threatens to produce a veritable nuclear winter in U.S. labor relations” well beyond the federal sector. 

Looking beyond May Day, East Bay DSA’s Labor Committee adopted a resolution creating a working group to plan a longer-term campaign to fight the Trump/Musk oligarchy in solidarity with federal workers and the FUN. Our aim is to bring a priority campaign resolution to our chapter convention in May. The first meeting of the campaign planning group drew over fifteen comrades, who brainstormed goals for the campaign. 

One of the proposed goals was getting the word about the FUN out to federal workers in the East Bay, for instance, by heading to the federal office building in Oakland at lunchtime to talk with them. (One of our members works at a federal research facility and is already spreading the word there.)

Another goal we discussed is linking the struggles of local unions and community groups to the larger fight against the oligarchy that the FUN is quarterbacking. The federal unionists are in every agency, connected with funding and policy implementation on every imaginable issue – from education to housing to transit, from environmental protections to national parks to veterans’ healthcare, from Social Security to Medicaid to public health, and so much more. That means there is virtually no issue DSA is involved in that cannot be connected back to the oligarchy’s threats. In particular, cuts at the Department of Education, if not its complete elimination, are hitting our K-12 public schools, and our colleges and public universities are threatened with cuts both there and in other agencies (along with an attack on basic rights of free speech and association). Similarly, cuts to Medicaid would decimate our public health system. Connecting our local teachers’ unions, academic workers and university staff, and healthcare workers to the national struggle of the FUN, and vice versa, will not be hard.

Engagement by socialists is critical to building the movement

Socialists played critical roles from the earliest days of the Civil Rights Movement, and we may be in an analogous early stage of a new mass movement today. We are also discussing the importance of our chapter joining local organizing committees that will plan future mass actions, like the ones on May Day. Our role is crucial, not only because we can reach so many workers who did not learn about the April 5 rallies, but also because our experience of direct member democracy in DSA suits us well to building a democratic culture that ensures that working class people are driving the campaign. In the longer term, building broad, democratic local alliances across the country will be critical to a potential 2028 general strike, and to the eventual creation of a workers’ party in the U.S.

There is a real possibility that the actions the FUN is organizing with its partners, like the mass “Hands Off” actions across the U.S. on April 5, and the more left-leaning actions planned for May Day, signal the birth of a true, sustainable mass movement such as the U.S. has not seen since the Civil Rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Socialists can’t bring such movements into being by an act of will; but when the conditions are right for them to emerge, our strategic organizing and tactical intervention can play an outsized role in their success. Allying with the Federal Unionists Network to connect their struggle within the federal apparatus with regional and local struggles in our states, cities and towns should be a priority in all our chapters. We are hopeful that East Bay DSA’s membership will agree when we bring our priority campaign resolution for a vote on May 14.

On April 5, 2025, tens of thousands of traumatized human beings took to a thousand different streets to tell the temporary inhabitants of the White House and their nazi-saluting cronies to keep their hands off the imperfect aspirations of American benevolence. 

I was not one of them. 

Instead, I was at home, high on tramadol, waging mortal combat with a recalcitrant body and a wheelchair that refused to turn left (my preferred direction). Which got me thinking: how does one promote universal social justice in the face of the banal cruelties of a sociopathic billionaire elite when one can barely get out the front door? 

On April 5, 1977, forty-eight years to the day before the Hands Off protest, over a hundred disabled activists and their allies occupied the San Francisco offices of what was then called the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now Health and Human Services) for its failure to enforce Section 504 of 1973’s Rehabilitation Act, which plainly stated that: “No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States shall solely on the basis of his handicap, be excluded from the participation, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."  

While the word “handicapped” has vanished from the justice lexicon over the years, thankfully the ideas detailed in the above paragraph have not, and the credit for that rests solely on the arthritic, scoliotic, slippery-jointed shoulders of those brave disabled freedom fighters who for 25 DAYS found ways to not only avoid arrest on their way to government capitulation, but, perhaps more amazing to me, did so despite an algorithm of existence that included catheter use and an inability to sleep on the floor. 

On March 12, 1990, a thousand disabled activists and their allies marched from the White House to the US Capitol in support of the stalled Americans with Disabilities Act. When they got there, nearly four score (plus or minus seven) shed their assistive equipment and dragged their reluctant bodies up the hundred steps that barred their path to power in an all-too-human feat of endurance known as the Capitol Crawl, which helped push the bill into law four months later. 

On June 22, 2017, ADAPT (American Disabled for Attendant Programs Today) staged a die-in outside Mitch McConnell’s office to protest Republican-led efforts to kneecap Medicaid and eliminate the Affordable Care Act, resulting in indelible images of police tearing people from their wheelchairs and otherwise abusing fragile bodies—a surprise to no one who has ever sat between a cop and their even-more-fragile ego. Weeks later, John McCain shot his famous thumbs-down on the Senate floor in a last gasp of right-wing spinefulness, vindicating yet another self-sacrificial battering of disabled bodies.  

Last weekend, whispers of those three seminal events swayed through my fug of synthetic opioid bliss, suffocating my usual trip of warm love and solidarity with clouds of guilt and FOMO and self-recrimination at missing yet another vital protest. But then I started thinking about the ancillary characters in the high drama of those pivotal days in 1977, 1990, and 2017: the girl with quadriplegia who spent two hours at the San Francisco HEW offices before going home to peg-tube a blended burrito, the autistic man who stimmed out on the way to the Capitol and went to the library instead, the new DSA member named me who opted for Dennison’s chili instead of Domino’s pizza so he could parlay that saved ten bucks into a donation to ADAPT in 2017. 

In short, I realized that every single one of us matters to this mass movement just the way we are, regardless of spoons or arrests or protests logged. Whether I make the next one or not, what matters is that I face cruelty with kindness, injustice with defiance, and bilateral neuropathy with 25mg of that sweet peace-and-love potion currently warming my red-blooded veins. 

So if you’re feeling bummed out you couldn’t find childcare, or a ride, or a negative COVID test, and had to save your clever sign ideas for another day, know that no excuse is necessary. Your continued existence is protest enough, indeed the most primordial resistance of all. 

Or maybe that’s just the drugs talking.

By Gordon Brown

If the government no longer provides services we rely on, why should we pay for them? If the wealthy have avoided paying trillions in taxes for decades, why should the rest of us foot the bill? If our tax dollars fund endless wars and corporate profiteering, is it even moral to pay?

These questions are no longer hypothetical. The current administration has cut government agencies with a chainsaw, leaving gaping holes in the systems designed to keep us safe, healthy, and informed. As a result, we’ll need our tax dollars to pay private contractors to fill those holes.  Meanwhile, the wealthy continue to exploit loopholes.  It’s time to ask: Why pay federal taxes to support a military-industrial complex that provides tools for genocide, enriches the few, and is not concerned with the public good?

The Dismantling of Government Services

The Trump administration, with the help of allies like Elon Musk, has aggressively defunded and dismantled critical agencies and programs. The consequences are already dire:

Public Health at Risk: Thousands of scientists, researchers, and public health experts have been laid off from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This has crippled our ability to respond to health crises and conduct life-saving research.

Environmental Protections Gutted: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have seen massive cuts. This leaves us vulnerable to natural disasters, toxic air and water, and the looming threat of climate change.

Transportation Safety Compromised: The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been understaffed and underfunded, potentially contributing to an increase in airplane crashes. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has also been weakened, putting drivers at risk.

Education and Consumer Protections Under Threat: The Department of Education faces cuts that could jeopardize student loans, while the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been effectively shut down, leaving consumers more vulnerable to predatory practices.

These cuts are not just bureaucratic shuffling—they are a direct attack on the services that keep us safe, healthy, and informed. As the federal government retreats, the burden falls on state governments and private contractors to fill the void. Why should we pay federal taxes when we’ll need that money to pay for privatized versions of the same services?

The Rich Don’t Have to Pay—Why Should We?

As sociologist Matthew Desmond has documented, the wealthy have avoided paying trillions in taxes through loopholes and favorable policies. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has doubled down on tax cuts for the rich, further exacerbating inequality. If the system is rigged in their favor, why should the rest of us play by the rules?

Moreover, the IRS has been gutted, leaving it unable to effectively audit the wealthy. This means the burden of funding government services—what’s left of them—falls disproportionately on the middle and working classes. If the rich won’t pay their fair share, why should we?

A Moral Imperative 

A significant portion of our tax dollars fund military spending and munitions manufacturing, contributing to death and destruction around the world. If your conscience rebels against funding endless wars and imperialistic policies, withholding taxes in a capitalist system, is one way to protest.  At least, it won’t be your hard-earned money contributing to killing and maiming to keep despots in power.

What Now?

The dismantling of government services, the perennial exploitation of tax loopholes by the wealthy, and the gutting of the IRS have created a system that no longer serves the public good. Instead, it enriches the powerful at the expense of the rest of us. If we’re going to pay for privatized services anyway, we need to save our money.

However, this isn’t just about saving money—it’s about demanding accountability. If the government won’t provide the services we need, if it won’t ensure the wealthy pay their fair share, and if it continues to use our tax dollars for immoral purposes, then it is our right, responsibility and duty to withhold our support.

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