On November 27th, 2025, Now This Impact made this post on Instagram: “Karoline Leavitt’s family member was just taken by ICE,” with the caption, “The media war has only just begun … and you thought your family drama was bad …”

I want to talk about this because, as a leftist, no scratch that, as a human being, anytime I hear about these disgusting occurrences of kidnapping by the Trump administration and its army of racist terrorists, my heart breaks and my blood boils. 

You’d think that on a post by Now This Impact, a Left-leaning news and entertainment page, you’d find the same reaction to this; that you’d find people upset that yet another immigrant has been snatched up by ICE. 

Well, to an extent, you and I would be wrong. 

If you go into the comments, you have some reasonable reactions to a situation like this:

But once you start reading more of the replies to this—in my honest opinion, unempathetically captioned—post, you have comments like the following:

Obviously, I think the Trump family is terrible; I believe those serving in the administration are fascists. However, if you are genuinely anti-deportation and pro-immigration, what kind of backward logic is it to cheer for ICE terrorism when it happens to, mind you, the extended immigrant family member of someone in the administration? 

Imagine if you were taken by these masked cowards, thrown into a detention center, and facing deportation. Later, it came out that your ex-partner’s dad voted for Trump. Then, because of that, people said heinous stuff like this and cheered on your deportation. It just doesn’t make sense. 

Even if this person is a Trump supporter*, yes, as humans, we cannot help but feel justified in seeing our points of view and our fears come to fruition, no matter how horrifying (there’s the whole leopards ate my face subreddit), but to all of a sudden be cheering on the deportation of immigrants just to squeeze in an “I told you so!” is bizarre.

*As of writing this, WMUR Manchester has reported that Ferreira, “…has no bad blood with the Leavitt family, and has deep respect and admiration for the White House press secretary…” 

And the worst part of siding with the fascists is that, if we’re being completely honest, there is a 0% chance Karoline Leavitt genuinely cares. Do you really think this hateful person is losing sleep over their brother’s ex-fiancée, an immigrant, may I remind you, being detained by ICE? 

Absolutely not! She’ll just slip into her white robes like any other night and sleep like a baby.

Look, I’m not a conspiracy theorist in the slightest, but you even have people in the comments theorizing that maybe it was even Leavitt herself or someone else within the family orchestrating this so that the ex-fiancée can take full custody of their child.

To be honest, I don’t know whether there’s a custody dispute happening or what that situation is; it doesn’t really matter. We’ve seen that the people serving and supporting this administration have no morals and no empathy for anyone or anything.

I just got a weird, unsettling feeling from some of the reactions to this. It’s similar to people cheering about people losing health care, SNAP benefits, and other crucial social services. Why are we celebrating the dismantling of what little the capitalist elite allows us to have? It’s fair to be outraged, it’s fair to dislike people for their terrible views, but why the need for fireworks and party hats at the expense of the working class?

Leftist YouTuber Kavernacle recently made a video about racism on the left and how some liberals and leftists are fine with being racist as long as it’s toward someone with whom they disagree. If you want to see a different, perhaps more well-organized, point of view toward a similar topic, I’d recommend watching it.

We already know the people voting for conservatives are voting against their own interests, and yes, it is incredibly frustrating. I cannot forgive that a lot of these people do it out of disdain for immigrants, refugees, the native peoples of this land, LGBTQ+ comrades, women, and other marginalized groups, but do we really need to cheer on these horrible anti-human policies?

And look, I’ve taken part in this in the past; at times, I was reactionary to these situations because I thought, “Why should I show any empathy for people who obviously don’t give a shit about me?” But we have to realize this is not how we’re going to build solidarity within the working class. 
This is not me calling for centrism or “compromise”, not even a little bit, but please do not give these horrible people credibility by agreeing with fascism when it’s egotistically convenient!

The post On Liberal Hypocrisy   first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

John Elward, @uniondrip on Twitter, shares his top picks for what to buy this year's worker active in the labor movement.

The post Union Drip gift guide appeared first on EWOC.

Author: Andrew O.

“Theory” may be the most misused and misunderstood term on the left today. The popular understanding of theory, as simply things written in books, is deeply harmful to our movement. This understanding leaves the impression that theory is an object locked behind the elitist walls of academia, to be known of and kept only by those with the training and time to learn it. Frequently, this idea becomes an insistence that action is superior to theory, rather than the two not only being inseparable, but actually being one in the same.

This faux-debate seeks to make a distinction where none exists. Engaging with this debate at all limits our ability to organize and blinds us to the ways in which theory and action inform one another. When we give preference to action and minimize theory, we may occasionally hit on something that works, but we will have a limited understanding of why it worked or if it will work again in the future. On the other hand, preferencing theory and minimizing action limits our ability to effect change on the world around us. We must instead build a theoretical framework of the world to instruct our actions. This is essential to participating in a socialist movement.

All of us have an instinctual understanding of action or “the work”. It can take many forms, whether canvassing, protesting, writing proposals, debating and deliberating, doing turnout, organizing mutual aid, the list could go on forever. This “instinct” is actually a theoretical understanding of our world. Theory is simply the way we connect our abstract ideas of the world with our concrete reality so we can hold an understanding of it within our heads. We use our theoretical framework of the world to build our personal politics. When we analyze this theoretical basis for our worldview, we are able to give greater strategic reasoning and direction to our work and actions. If our personal politics are the house we build out of our ideas, theory is the foundation we build our house on. 

To ensure our foundation is strong, it should be constantly inspected, analyzed, critiqued, and updated both by ourselves and via discussions and arguments with our comrades. Each of us are perfectly capable of building and writing our own theory–our own understanding of the world–by living within it, but that doesn’t mean we need to start from scratch. Many great political theorists have done the heavy lifting already. We should study their work critically, rejecting some elements, and embracing others. In a very real way we can place our own ideas into debate with theoretical giants like Marx, Lenin, Gramsci, Luxemburg, Nkrumah, and countless others.

Reading theoretical texts from those who came before us will allow us to build our own method of analyzing the world. With practice, we can more easily and readily share our understanding and politics with others. Our theoretical frameworks will not and cannot identically reflect anyone else’s. Each of us has lived a wholly unique life. It is our responsibility as socialists to build our own political theories and drive ourselves, our organization, and our movement forward. We, as socialists, must seek to politicize all of our decisions, particularly those within DSA.

It is up to each of us to ensure theory is not the arena of academics, dead socialists, or our nerdiest friends. Many people have written theory, and many of those theories are good, important, and relevant today. However, most theory ever written was not widely read or remembered.  It is not impossible to write theory, I am doing so right now. In fact, it is a certainty that I am writing ideas that have already been written and shared. 

Academics and nerds are not the arbiter of theory, much less of your own theory of politics. For our movement to win, theory cannot be used to gatekeep the movement. You do not have to have read any specific work to enter debate. Rather, you are responsible for doing what each of the great theorists have done before; you must analyze the world around you. No one will hand us a map to socialism, we must draft our own by constructing our own personal theoretical framework for our politics. This can, of course, be made easier by reading the writing of those that came before us.

The second major flaw with the understanding of theory within our movement are our methods of teaching and learning. The too common and dismissive refrain of “read theory” leads us to believe that we should go read a boring and difficult book by ourselves. Frustratingly, this is frequently what a person telling us to “read theory” means. This sort of attitude is unacceptable. To put it bluntly, you cannot learn theory this way. This is not a critique of your intelligence, rather, this is a comment on the reality of what theory means to the socialist movement. We all bring unique perspectives, catch different things, and we all benefit from sharing these perspectives with each other. Collective action is a strength to us in all aspects of our movement. We should not limit ourselves in this area by learning individually. Collective and mutual political education is socialist education.

So is the answer then to read with as many comrades as possible? In the long term, yes! But, if we try to introduce too many people into one reading group, we find many pitfalls. It is great to get a lot of passionate people in a room, but the discussion, debate, and deliberation suffer from the necessity to get in line to speak in groups this large. Conversation, explanation, and deliberation become confusing, disjointed, and ultimately counterproductive. Worse, if it is not well organized, it turns into a lecture where the most vocal people dominate the discussion to the exclusion of all others.

Instead, we should read with many small and varied groups of comrades. We open the ability for free flowing discussion and debate. This will give us the best opportunity to understand and digest the texts we have read. This method still is not perfect, and while free flowing conversations and arguments are great for learning, they can still be monopolized by the most confident and opinionated people in the group. As socialists, we must ensure that everyone is able to participate as much as they are willing and able. It is our collective responsibility to redirect conversation towards people who are seeking to speak, and to give space for everyone’s ideas to be heard. This is hard to do and takes constant practice and reflection to achieve. Even with these pitfalls, small discussion groups are the best method for reading and learning theory.

Socialists were able to learn, teach, and argue about theory when the literacy rate within the United States was under 70%. One third of labor organizers in this period (and likely much more) were unable to read. Still, they were able to build personal politics and deep understandings of political theory. Reading together and arguing about books helps us build our own theories and politics through having to listen to other perspectives as well as having to sharpen our own arguments. It is more engaging and more fruitful than a lecture can be, and it keeps us more accountable and engaged than reading alone will. 

We are all already forming and applying theory whether or not we realize it. We have all read theory, and have been inundated with liberal theory for our entire lives. What is important now is to analyze our own theoretical frameworks, our own politics, and ask why we believe what we do, how we got here, and if our frameworks are still accurate and useful to who we are and where we want to go. 

There is not a difference between building your theoretical frameworks and your personal politics. Your politics are downstream of your theoretical base, and they will be built, changed, and updated simultaneously. This is not a process that can or should be completed, we should always be working to learn and update our theories and politics as often as we are able. There is no shame in being wrong. Learning, growing, and changing our minds are all parts of engaging in politics, and engaging in the world.

We should not seek to create identical political theories or politics. It is not possible and it would hinder our movement. We must, instead, find ways to resolve these differences through principled and good faith debate. As long as everyone is accurately and honestly representing their viewpoints and perspectives, we should be able to engage in debate regarding ideas, actions, and arguments with anyone. “Good faith” simply means we have all come to the table with honesty and integrity. Being dishonest about the why behind your argument is just as destructive and harmful as any other dishonesty to our movement. The concern about honesty within our debates is not just high-minded idealism. Dishonesty functionally and materially holds back our ability to make decisions, learn, and grow as individuals and as a collective movement. Debate, discussion, and deliberation will build our movement and is just as much action as canvassing or protesting.

As socialists, we seek to make every person a leader in the movement. If we are organizing effectively, the movement will not notice if we need to take a break or step away temporarily. As a result, all people within a socialist movement must be an active participant within building democracy whether that is our chapter, the national organization, or in the broader world. Finding the direction of our movements and our actions, finding the common ground between our personal politics, and finding the principles we must uphold are only possible through debate.

It is imperative for each person in the socialist movement to build their own understanding of theory and their personal politics. It is equally important to build our movement via debate and deliberation with our comrades. We are not individualists. We are a collective movement of individuals. If the working class is to build itself into a class ready to lead itself, into the worker class, we must all take the responsibility to build our theoretical framework, our personal politics, and to build each other into these leaders.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of DSA Cleveland as a whole.

The post Theory and Individual Politics in a Collective Movement appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

Events & Actions

Events with a are especially new-member-friendly!

Tuesday, December 2 (8:00 AM – 4:30 PM): ICE out of SF courts! (In person at 100 Montgomery St)

Tuesday, December 2 (4:00 PM – 6:00 PM): Public Comment: Keep Market Street Car-Free (In person at San Francisco City Hall, 1 Dr Carlton B Goodlett Pl)

Tuesday, December 2 (6:00 PM – 7:30 PM): Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Wednesday, December 3 (6:30 PM – 9:00 PM):  New Member Happy Hour at Zeitgeist (In person at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia St )

Wednesday, December 3 (6:45 PM – 8:30 PM): Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Thursday, December 4 (5:30 PM – 6:30 PM): Education Board Open Meeting (Zoom)

Thursday, December 4 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Organizing Immigrant Defense Initiatives (In person at 1916 McAllister St)

Friday, December 5 (8:00 AM – 4:30 PM): ICE out of SF courts! (In person at 100 Montgomery St)

Friday, December 5 (7:00 PM – 9:00 PM): Maker Friday (In person at 1916 McAllister St)

Saturday, December 6 (4:00 PM – 5:00 PM):  Cuba Reportback (In person at 1916 McAllister St)

Sunday, December 7 (10:00 AM – 2:00 PM):   No Appetite for Apartheid Training and Outreach (In person at 522 Valencia St)

Sunday, December 7 (1:00 PM – 2:00 PM):  SF EWOC Lead Generation Strategy Session (In person at 1916 McAllister St)

Sunday, December 7 (3:00 PM – 5:00 PM):  Our Time to Win: Power Mapping Session (In person at 1916 McAllister St)

Sunday, December 7 (5:00 PM – 7:00 PM):  Capital Reading Group (Zoom)

Monday, December 8 (12:00 PM – 1:00 PM):  Muni Forever Rally (In person at San Francisco City Hall, 1 Dr Carlton B Goodlett Pl)

Monday, December 8 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM): Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Monday, December 8 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Wednesday, December 10 (6:45 PM – 8:00 PM): DSA SF General Meeting (Zoom and in person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Thursday, December 11 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Immigrant Justice Working Group Meeting (Zoom)

Friday, December 12 (6:30 PM – 9:00 PM): DSA Movie Night: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, presented by EcoSocialists (In person at Roar Shack, 34 7th Street)

Saturday, December 13 (10:00 AM – 11:30 AM): Free Muni Vision Discussion (In person at 1916 McAllister St)

Sunday, December 14 (11:00 AM – 1:00 PM): Physical Education + Self Defense Training (In person at William McKinley Monument)

Monday, December 15 (5:30 PM – 6:30 PM): Social Committee Meeting (In person at 1916 McAllister St)

Monday, December 15 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Labor Board x Divestment Priority Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates.

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Join DSA SF in Demanding Equitable Transit Funding

In response to Mayor Lurie’s office considering a parcel tax to address the Muni funding crisis, we joined Muni Now, Muni Forever, a coalition of community advocates and organizations, in demanding that the measure:

• Generate enough revenue to expand Muni service by 10%
• Be structured fairly, with a variable rate so smaller properties pay less and larger properties pay more
• Protect tenants from additional costs
• Scale with inflation and rising costs to prevent a similar crisis in a few years

Read the full letter here.
Make your voice heard by joining us in these demands: muniforever.org/speak-up

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ICE Out of SF Courts!

Join neighbors, activists, grassroots organizations in resisting ICE abductions happening at immigration court hearings! ICE is taking anyone indiscriminately in order to meet their daily quotas. Many of those taken include people with no removal proceedings.

We’ll be meeting every Tuesday and Friday from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM at Immigration Court at 100 Montgomery. We need all hands on deck. The 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM window is when we most need to boost turnout, but if you can’t make that please come whenever works for you. 1 or 2 hours or the entire time! We’re also holding orientation sessions for folks, but that is not required to attend. See the Immigrant Justice Court Action Orientation event in the calendar for more details.

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Today: Stop the Privatization of Market Street!

We are disappointed to learn MTA staff are recommending to give Waymo, Uber, and Lyft full access to Market Street at the SFMTA Board of Directors hearing.

Join us Today, Tuesday, December 2 at 4:00 PM in Room 400 of City Hall to demand Market Street prioritizes public transportation and sustainable transportation by giving public comment on this issue.

RSVP here! 

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  Maker Friday

Come make with us on Friday, December 5 from 7:00 – 9:00 PM at 1916 McAllister St! We’ll be making buttons and zines. Masks required and provided. All are welcome, no experience necessary, see you there!

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Cuba Reportback

Come to hear about the 2025 DSA delegation to Cuba. Our comrades will tell us about what they did and you’ll get to learn a little more about the history and present of Cuba! We’ll be meeting Saturday, December 6 from 4:00 to 5:00 PM at 1916 McAllister St. See you there!

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No Appetite for Apartheid Training and Outreach

No Appetite for Apartheid is a campaign aimed at reducing economic support for Israeli apartheid by canvassing local businesses to boycott Israeli goods. Come and canvass local businesses with the Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group!

On Sunday, December 7th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM, we will be doing a training on how to talk to stores in your neighborhood, then going out and talking with stores together! Meet at 522 Valencia St.
RSVP HERE.

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Rally for Equitable, Sustainable Muni Funding

Join us in support of the “Muni Forever Proposal” on Monday, December 8th at 12:00 PM in front of the City Hall steps. We will be rallying to urge the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor to support our proposal.

The “Muni Forever Proposal” plans to raise enough money to improve transit service while keeping San Francisco affordable for residents.

More details about the proposal here. RSVP here!

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DSA Movie Night: Who Framed Roger Rabbit, presented by EcoSocialists!

Who killed the electric streetcar? Come watch a cartoon classic with DSA SF’s Ecosocialist working group and friends around the Bay Area on Friday, December 12 at 6:30 at the Roar Shack (34 7th St). We’ll be watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, highlighting the often forgotten sub plot, and exposing the dark history behind it. Together, we’ll learn about the real transit history behind where Disneyland’s famous streetcar comes from. 

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NYC 2 SF Reportback

On Thursday, November 20th, DSA San Francisco organized an event to celebrate the victory of our DSA comrade and NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, and to speak about how we can continue to achieve similar victories in SF and in other parts of the Bay Area. The event was held at the Mission Cultural Center For Latino Arts, where the energy was palpable, with nearly 200 attendees (a majority of whom were new DSA members) packing the room.

The event featured a presentation on NYC-DSA and Zohran’s success, how NYC DSA’s electoral program was crucial in building the campaign infrastructure for Zohran to succeed, and a presentation on our own chapter’s electoral successes over the years.

It also featured a candid panel discussing Zohran’s victory and how socialism can win in San Francisco (and the Bay!) featuring our DSA San Francisco electeds Jackie Fielder (District 9 Supervisor) and Dean Preston (District 5 Supervisor) and East Bay DSA member and Richmond City Councilmember Claudia Jimenez. 

This event is the first in DSASF’s series of Our Time To Win events, where we hope to learn from the successes of the NYC-DSA, and train the organizers and build the infrastructure in SF to run and win socialist electoral races in San Francisco to win material outcomes for the working class. The next event is Sunday, December 7, 3:00 – 5:00 PM at 1916 McAllister St, and will involve an interactive session diving deep into the power players and structures of San Francisco. We’ll learn the landscape together so we can mobilize the working class across the city! If you’re interested in winning a socialist SF, please join and RSVP!

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 publishing the weekly newsletter. Members can view current CCC rotations.

Interested in helping with the newsletter or other day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running? Fill out the CCC help form.

By a Comrade

This article is written by a DSA member and does not formally represent the views of MADSA as a whole or its subgroups. 

Welcome to Vol. 4 of the monthly round-up! The content in this publication overlaps significantly with our DSA newsletter and monthly General Membership Meetings. To sign up for the newsletter or check out an upcoming General Membership Meeting, visit: https://madison-dsa.org/events/

Behind-the-Scenes in a Growing Org

Over the past year, the DSA has had a huge boom in membership nationally, a surge in membership here in Madison, and an increase in name recognition after Zohran Mamdani’s recent high-profile win in NYC (as well as other wins across the nation!). MADSA saw several new work groups form throughout 2025, as well as new projects, book clubs, potential candidate endorsements, and events for members and the community at large. These efforts all remain underway!

As MADSA has scaled up, we’ve also contended with more mundane operational questions– How do we handle marketing and social media posts, now that there are so many more events? How are we feeling about our electoral endorsement process when it’s for re-elections? How can we keep developing comradeship among members? What is a good venue for our monthly meeting?!

Here is a small behind-the-scenes look at some changes as we expand:

• The Communication Committee (Comms) is working on appointing “liaisons” within each working group and project, so that Comms can stay better oriented to the chapter’s marketing/posting needs;
• Comms and Executive Committee are also working on increasing direct posting access for various Working Groups so that they are not solely reliant on Comms for posting information about events and actions;
• The Electoral Working Group has been exploring endorsement for several candidates running in state and local races, as well as discussing and reviewing the endorsement processes themselves;
• Various members continue their efforts to revitalize Red Madison for internal and public readership – this has included identifying people who are open to contributing, as well as making calls for submissions at our general meetings;
• The chapter will be publishing a resource to prepare for the 2026 Chapter Convention, where members will continue shaping the direction of MADSA;
• The chapter has been experimenting with a few different venue options for GMMs to accommodate our new numbers and the geographical distribution of our membership.

It is our hope that these changes will support the continued growth of the chapter, both in scope and in activity levels. 

Social Events

Our chapter had two reading groups wrap up in November:

• Skyscraper Jails, discussed in the Abolitionist Working Group meetings;
• Wretched of the Earth, discussed on Sundays, in a hybrid virtual/in-person format.

We continue hosting recurring social events – New Member Orientations, Coffee with Comrades, Crafting with Comrades, MADSA Run Club, and the Rosebuddies program. 

As the year comes to an end, we’ll be reaching out to members and asking about their experiences in MADSA this year, and their socialist resolutions for 2026. We’re also planning a New Year’s party on New Year’s Eve, details forthcoming!

Protest Song of the Month

For a November protest song, I’d like to highlight an artist from an indigenous background and ties to the Midwest – John Trudell. John was a Santee poet, musician, actor, speaker, veteran, and activist, at one point chairing the American Indian Movement (AIM). Here is the Listening / Honor Song, a spoken word piece over traditional music. The lyrics can be found here. 

And that concludes our monthly round-up!

Chapter and Verse: a Summary of Chapter News for November 2025

The post Election Victories Across U.S., Socialist Caucus Coming to Minneapolis and More appeared first on Democratic Left.

Author: Barbie A

Day in and day out, more and more people are disappearing off of the streets of our communities. From migrants going in for routine immigration check ins and being detained, being targeted in traffic stops, being sought out on their way to work, or out right having their paperwork revoked from them and hunted down like animals. All across the United States, including here in Cleveland, people who call this place their home are having their lives destroyed by the racist and inhumane Trump administration. A country that once guaranteed safety and sanctuary is now trapped within a shifting system in which anyone could find themselves entangled with ICE or DHS, including U.S. citizens. 

Living in the most diverse country in the world, with a long history of immigration, racism, colonization, imperialism, and injustice, as democratic socialist, it is our duty to show up for the marginalized groups of our community and stand up against fascism. During Trump’s campaign for presidency there was a lot of talk about expanding ICE operations and abilities to go after criminals, or “the worst of the worst” as he put it. For those of us familiar with the immigration system and the terminology around immigration, we understood clearly that they were going to use this opportunity of power to abuse their authority and go after undocumented migrants, child U.S. citizens, and various documented legal immigrants. A majority of immigrants who are undocumented did not come into the United States without being vetted first. Most immigrants enter the United States with legal status and end up falling out of status because of expiring paperwork, financial barriers, changes in their life situations, or for most it being that they do not have a legal way to obtain permanent residency or citizenship from the status they do have. 

For example, those with temporary protected status (TPS), and people with other statuses of immigration, do not have a pathway to citizenship despite being legal documented migrants who must obey the law, pay taxes, and are excluded from social welfare, unemployment, social security benefits, and other rights afforded to US citizens. In most cases of immigration the only way to obtain citizenship is by being sponsored for a green card by an employer or by marrying a U.S. citizen. TPS holders and others are having their paperwork revoked or denied under the Trump administration. Migrants come to the United States seeking refuge and they have created lives with families, jobs, homes, businesses, and more, and yet they could lose everything they have paid and sacrificed for because this administration would rather punish the innocent than negotiate fair immigration reform. Migrants being deported who have U.S. born children have to decide between figuring out living situations for their kids here in the United States or bringing them to the countries where the parents are from but are of no familiarity to the children. This disenfranchises child U.S. citizens from having access to medical care, education, food, and many more opportunities.

We are watching the Trump administration abuse their power. The escalation is something we must be prepared for as we know anti-immigrant agencies have been rewarded $170 billion dollars via the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”. It’s imperative that all people in our country and region understand their rights under the constitution and what they’re lawfully protected to exercise. 

So far we have seen Donald Trump use executive orders to try to revoke birthright citizenship (14th amendment) from people. We have seen the attacks on the fifth amendment by blatantly denying people their rights to due process, including denying people their rights to a fair hearing, to challenge deportation, or to their rights to challenge their unlawful detention (habeas corpus). Regardless of any person’s status they’re guaranteed the rights to the first amendment, in which we have seen the invasion of these protections and discriminatory practices used to target people for their rights to freedom of speech, rights to protest, rights to assemble, rights to petition the government, freedom of press, and the freedom to practice whatever religion they choose. Across the country we have also seen an overwhelming amount of evidence showing violations of the fourth amendment, which protects all people from themselves and their personal belongings illegally being searched or seized without a judicial signed warrant that would prove that there is substantial evidence to have this protection breached. 

Recently the Supreme court has ruled (6-3) in favor of Noem (Kristi Noem) v. Vasquez Perdomo, in which it allows for racial profiling and discrimination. This opens the door to allowing immigration, and other enforcement, to violate the rights of all people. Agents are now permitted to bother people based on their appearance and ethnicity, language and accent, location and occupation, and other suspicionless stops. This has led to the arrests of U.S. citizens who are being treated inhumanely and having their rights violated. Cleveland DSA has vowed to commit to helping prepare the community and support immigrants during these turbulent times.

Cleveland DSA’s mission with our immigrant solidarity priority project is to show up for the communities of people who are many times forgotten about. Through preparation of our comrades to take part in our rapid response network, building and participating in extensive coalition efforts in greater Cleveland and surrounding areas, and showing up to support our communities in courtrooms, check ins, their places of employment or business, worship, and social activities; we want to meet people where they’re at and show them our commitment to justice and solidarity. 

First we will start by preparing all comrades through various know your rights (KYR) training so that they can help our community to observe and document people’s interactions with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and/or local law enforcement. When our chapter is prepared we will begin canvassing through Greater Cleveland’s businesses and organizations, churches, and public spaces, to prepare them for potential illegal raids. We will support the immigrant community by showing up in solidarity during court proceedings and check ins, time spent in detention centers, rapid response networks, protesting, and various mutual aid efforts. During this period we will build trust within the community and build our reputation to prove that democratic socialists care about the real issues facing the people in our neighborhood. 

No matter anyone’s race, sex, age, language, origin, or status here in the United States, this fight impacts us all. To challenge the structural injustices that divide workers and communities, we must recognize that affirmation of the rights and humanity of immigrants is inseparable from the struggle for socialism and justice, because it confronts the very systems of exploitation, exclusion, and inequality that a society must overcome in order to truly be free. We must fight to dismantle the entrenched structure of the injustices that constrain human possibility, forging a path towards a society rooted in collective ownership, democratic empowerment, and genuine social equality!

The post Immigrant Solidarity Priority Project appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

Monthly Newsletter of the Rochester Chapter of Democratic Socialists of America

Welcome to the December issue of Rochester Red Star. This month, you can read statements from candidates for ROC DSA Steering Committee and Hearing Grievance Officers, notes from our outgoing Steering Committee, and a report from our Genesee County branch.

The issue also includes essays on topics including Democratic Party structure and strategies, farmers confronting the elimination of SNAP benefits, American exceptionalism, and more. Our newsletter contains upcoming events and coverage of chapter activities.

Interested in contributing? Send submissions to bit.ly/SubmitRedStar, or get involved with our Communications Committee. Reach out to steering@rocdsa.org and join DSA today!

The post Rochester Red Star | December 2025 | (Issue 20) first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day.  When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have  talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice  of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind. Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not. So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things. What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance. And all music is.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Tacoma seemed to bloom on November 11th, 2025. Beautifully painted clouds permitted plenty of sunshine to cast down on city streets. A lively crowd numbering just over one hundred trickled into the plaza bringing flags, or signs, or wearing a reminder of service. They all brought their fears, hopes, gripes, and their ideas about themselves and the land they grew up walking. It was a gorgeous backdrop for the city to recommence the annual observation of Armistice Day. The crowd respectfully encircled a motley group of tattooed, long-haired, sometimes bearded, always opinionated veterans wearing fatigues and patches. No dress uniforms, no military drills. It was about leaving all that behind.

Armistice Day opened with a land welcoming ceremony led by veteran Toby Joseph, Sr. He performed a moving rendition of his father’s love song and reflected on militarism from an indigenous perspective. Veterans spoke to pressing problems such as Veterans Affairs and LGBTQ+ medical care, the right to refuse illegal orders, and the history of active duty resistance. In one of the more memorable moments a physician and current conscientious objector spoke poignantly about his courageous decision to choose peace. Flanked by veterans stoically holding large pictures of Zahid Chaudhry in uniform and with family, Melissa Chaudhry delivered a tour de force keynote about her husband, moving me and many others to tears. Melissa sharply defended Zahid, elucidated the militarism that led to his detainment, and articulated beautifully the meaning of Armistice Day.

Zahid is a disabled veteran and immigrant; he is the President of Veterans for Peace 109 and for years has been an immovable fixture of the peace movement. He didn’t get to see the beautiful sky that day. He has been a comrade of mine for over a decade, going back to when I began organizing against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Zahid is wrongfully detained in the concentration camp known as the Northwest Detention Center on the Tacoma tideflats, two miles and a world away from city hall. As I write this, Zahid is experiencing cruel medical neglect and risks blindness if he is not released for required medical procedures soon. We would agree every person deserves excellent healthcare. It’s just especially cruel that a disabled veteran, with private health insurance in Olympia, risks blindness in the unnecessary custody of the U.S. government.

The day concluded with a memorial ceremony led by Pastor Shalom of First United Methodist Church. It was a wholly dignified ceremony that seemed to me life-affirming, peace-affirming, and inclusive. The enhancement of the remembrance ceremony to include not just our WWI veterans but all victims of militarism was beautiful, and only natural, given the armies can’t seem to keep the wars to themselves. The ceremony honored the original purpose of the day as imagined by folks like Kurt Vonnegut, while maintaining the universality that so many must have felt in the wake of the Great War. It is a high standard that future remembrance ceremonies will be based upon.

The weather was great for Armistice Day. The political climate was another matter; we gathered on stolen Puyallup land against a backdrop of hegemonic struggle, military belligerence, terror campaigns, genocide, and the rise of the authoritarian right across the breadth of the international system. At home we face surveillance, extra-constitutional policing, mass deportations, wanton nuclearisation, and the militarization of our streets. Political assassinations are on the rise. There is a massive military build up off the coast of Venezuela and already western operatives on the mainland. Domestically, our coffers are ransacked and public institutions are seized. Homeland Security has been allocated an unprecedented wartime budget to terrorize immigrants and urban dwellers for the delight of an increasingly openly white nationalist base. Trans rights are being ripped away. Peace is questioned as a value, human rights as a cause, and the worthiness of empathy itself is mocked by our leaders. The U.S. regime foolishly stokes dormant embers in the Caribbean and saber-rattles in the Pacific. The United States has funded, provided intelligence and abundant material support, and suppressed public knowledge of Israel’s genocide. We face a very real and imminent threat of ethnic cleansing and a collapse of LGBTQ+ and women’s rights. We face war.

So we celebrate peace. But we cannot simply enjoy the peace there is; we are without peace. It is only through resistance that we can create peace. It is only through solidarity that we can resist. And it is through love that we find solidarity. So we celebrate Armistice Day: Peace through Resistance.

by Eric Ard