Post-World War II anti-communist hysteria hit Puerto Rico through legal assaults and J. Edgar Hoover’s clandestine tricks. Although the FBI met unexpected resistance, the strategy cemented Puerto Rico’s status as a powerless “commonwealth.”

The post Red Scare in Puerto Rico: A Hidden History appeared first on Democratic Left.

by Greg B.

Many people in Rochester DSA have asked whether the chapter should release a voter guide for the 2026 elections, and we’ve debated it in our Electoral Working Group. Unlike other organizations, DSA’s endorsements are highly selective and usually go to candidates who are members, agree to join, and help grow DSA; members often view a voter guide as a way to guide non-member supporters on our perspective on an election. Others think it’s a waste of time and misleading since people often confuse our “recommendation” for an actual endorsement. After examining the 2026 general election ballot, I’ve decided to recommend the chapter not make a voter guide. The results in Rochester were already decided in the primaries, and most of them weren’t even competitive. No Republican has a realistic chance to win the governorship, attorney general, comptroller, or congressional seat. The question shouldn’t be whether these candidates are better than their Republican opponents; it should be what their records are and what it would take to create conditions for future elections with meaningful stakes.

Even though these races are uncompetitive, I will still vote out of an odd sense of obligation or ritual. I’ll still vote for State Senator Samra Brouk and Assemblymember Harry Bronson even though they’re not socialists and don’t currently co-sponsor several pieces of legislation from the Democratic Socialists in Office Committee. They’re progressive on many issues, and I’d like to talk with them when there are things we absolutely need to push for. The only politicians I could not vote for, however, are Governor Kathy Hochul, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, and Congressman Joe Morelle.

Kathy Hochul – Governor
Kathy Hochul stepped into the governorship after Andrew Cuomo was chased out by scandal, and has largely operated in a similar manner, as a defender of the rich, the well-connected, and specifically, the fossil fuel industry. Governor Cuomo was the biggest obstacle to progressive legislation, but when Democrats overcame Republican majorities and the Independent Democratic Conference, Cuomo gave in, signing multiple pieces of progressive legislation he previously opposed while claiming credit for their passage. Similarly, the NY Senate and Assembly recently passed a Data Center moratorium bill that would have stopped the construction of environmentally destructive data centers, but Hochul refused to sign it, instead issued a weakened Data Center Moratorium executive order, and has received national credit for doing so.

Hochul’s issues are wide and far-reaching, but her rollbacks of climate action this year have been particularly destructive. It’s also been personally infuriating to me as someone who previously worked on NY state climate issues in 2022-2023.

To start, Hochul rolled back the All-Electric Buildings Act, which she signed in 2023, that requires new buildings to use electric heat instead of gas. Her administration previously spent two years defending it in court, and told a judge that delaying it would cause New Yorkers irreparable harm. A month later, she agreed to delay it anyway. She also shelved the carbon pricing program she had promised, and after talks with Trump, she approved an underwater gas pipeline that state regulators had previously rejected. Also, in this year’s budget, she pushed through changes to the state’s landmark climate law, the CLCPA, including changes to how emissions are counted so methane appears less harmful on paper as a handout to climate polluters. It doesn’t matter if Hochul is doing this as a favor to the fossil fuel industry or because she’s under pressure from Trump. She has followed the Cuomo model of defending the rich and powerful, and posing as a progressive when she’s forced to give in to pressure from the left.

Tom DiNapoli – Comptroller
I imagine most of us don’t know what a comptroller is, but Tom DiNapoli wields enormous power as the sole trustee of the NY State Common Retirement Fund worth billions of dollars. With that power, DiNapoli has purchased over $100 million more worth of Israeli bonds since October 7th. The state owns over $340 million in Israeli bonds. That’s more than the NY State Common Retirement Fund holds in all other foreign government bonds combined. This is extremely odd considering Israeli bonds are not the most reliable or high-return investments. To be clear, the main issue is not how good or bad of an investment these are, but the fact that it’s helping support a state that has committed genocide according to the UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and many other human rights organizations.

DiNapoli’s insistence on purchasing and holding Israeli bonds is only one issue. According to his primary challengers, the state fund also owns $430 million worth of Palantir stock, a company that serves ICE and the military-industrial complex in more efficiently kidnapping and assaulting our neighbors, and killing families overseas. DiNapoli says the stocks are held passively through index funds, but he said he will make no effort to divest from them. DiNapoli is little talked about, but tremendously powerful and has used his position to protect Israel and US imperial interests.

Joe Morelle – Congressman
Joe Morelle is seeking his fifth term after easily defeating progressive candidate Robin Wilt in June’s primary, her third challenge against him. Like Hochul and DiNapoli, Morelle will criticize Trump and espouse progressive values, but he is far more conservative than this district’s politics. On January 22, 2025, he was one of 46 House Democrats who voted with Republicans to pass the Laken Riley Act, which empowered ICE to kidnap and detain people with no conviction required. He opposes the construction of a federal ICE facility in Rochester’s federal building, which is odd, since he voted to allow masked ICE agents to take people off our streets.

He was also a cheerleader for Israel’s genocide, refusing to cosponsor a simple humanitarian aid resolution for Gaza, and refusing to sign a letter saying he opposed Israel’s use of starvation tactics. On July 15th, 2026, after there was no more denying what Israel had done, 104 Congress members voted for the Massie Amendment, which would have eliminated $3.3 billion in aid to Israel. Joe Morelle was one of the 98 Democrats who wanted to continue giving military aid to Israel, despite the pleas of his constituents.

How Should We Vote
ROC DSA will likely not make a voter guide for the 2026 general election. If you asked me who you should vote for, these politicians or their Republican opponents, I’d say we’re asking the wrong question. It doesn’t matter if you vote for them or withhold it. They’ve already won. The political reality is that they had the election locked down before the primary.

I’m not saying to despair, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t vote. Instead, I am saying we need to do more. The stakes are so high. The climate crisis is deadly and will accelerate at an alarming rate in our lifetime. Israel will never stop until it is forced to stop. Instead of waiting for elections and weighing our options, we need to act now. We are too weak to defeat Joe Morelle, who raised over $1,580,000 for his re-election and had a Silicon Valley billionaire-funded Super PAC spend $624,734 on his behalf. Instead, we need to develop a serious strategy, organize now, with what we have, and build victory upon victory so we can win real power that will stop Israel’s actions and build a sustainable energy future, with public healthcare for all, a good jobs guarantee, housing for all, and more.

The post Can We Continue to Vote Blue No Matter Who? first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Slot wagering at the Wynn Resorts (NASDAQ: WYNN) property fell more than 20%, while gaming revenue at Massachusetts’ two other casinos held steady.

UNITE HERE Local 26 released this statement as a press release on October 20, 2026.

EVERETT, MA – Gross gaming revenue at Encore Boston Harbor, owned by Wynn Resorts, Limited (NASDAQ: WYNN), fell 22.1 percent in September 2026 from September 2025, according to data released today by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission. More than 1,300 Encore workers represented by UNITE HERE Local 26 and Teamsters Local 25 have been on strike since September 4.

Key figures, September 2026 vs. September 2025:

• Gross gaming revenue: $46.1 million, down 22.1% from $59.1 million.
• Slot coin-in, the total amount customers wagered on slot machines: $354.4 million, down 20.3% from $444.4 million.
• MGM Springfield and Plainridge Park Casino, the state’s other two casinos: gross gaming revenue fell 1.2% and rose 2.4%, respectively, while slot coin-in rose 4.7% and 4.2%.
• Encore’s lowest monthly gross gaming revenue since February 2021, when COVID-19 restrictions were still in effect.

Slot coin-in measures how much customers wagered, not how much the casino won, so it is much less affected by month-to-month swings in hold than gross gaming revenue. From July 2024 through August 2026, Encore’s slot coin-in never fell more than 9.7 percent year over year, and in all but one of those 26 months it declined no more than 3.5 percent. September’s 20.3 percent decline was more than twice the largest drop in that period. Over the same period, Encore’s largest year-over-year decline in total gross gaming revenue in any month was 10.5 percent, in March 2025.

Encore Boston Harbor reported operating revenues of $209.3 million and Adjusted Property EBITDAR of $56.1 million in the second quarter of 2026, about 11 percent of Wynn Resorts’ total operating revenues and 10 percent of its Adjusted Property EBITDAR. Wynn Resorts is expected to report third-quarter results, which include September, in early November.

In a statement published October 1, a Wynn Resorts spokesperson told Casino.org that Encore was “open, operational and welcoming guests.”

Methodology

September 2026 is compared with September 2025 to account for seasonality. MGM Springfield and Plainridge Park Casino are included as a comparison group for statewide market conditions. All casino figures are as reported by licensees to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, which notes that operators may revise prior months.

UNITE HERE Local 26 represents more than 14,000 hospitality workers across Massachusetts and Rhode Island, in hotels, airports, universities, school cafeterias, and casinos. Contact Seth Ogilvie, UNITE HERE Local 26.

The post Encore Boston Harbor Gaming Revenue Falls 22% in First Month of Strike, State Data Shows appeared first on Working Mass.

Many countries recognize rights to housing, healthcare, and other components of a dignified life in their governing documents. The U.S. should follow suit.

The post Positive Rights and the Worldwide Working Class appeared first on Democratic Left.

by Douglas Dollinger

Marx argues this case in his discussion of colonization (Chapter 33, Kapital, Volume 1). According to Marx, Wakefield, a prominent 19th-century writer on colonization, had discovered that capital is not just a thing but a social relation. Wakefield stumbles upon this revelation by accident. It is not a theme that features prominently in the political economy of Marx’s time or ours. It is, however, a central theme in Kapital and is pivotal to his notion of human emancipation. I want to explain what Marx means by this in simple terms. Students of Marx might find this note a bit too basic for Socialism 101, so maybe it is best to see it as a contribution to Socialism 100.

Suppose you are a capitalist and that you show up with your capital – machines, factories, patents, etc. – in a land called Manuland. A bit about Manuland. In Manuland income earners work for themselves either in small manufactories or on small farms. A small manufactory is a one-person or several-person shop of some kind, a shoe shop, say. The people in the shop make the shoes, hence the “manufactory”. Let assume, too, that they own the means of production. We have here a small, self-sufficient college of cobblers. Suppose similar colleges of clothiers. Etc. Now assume the farmers in Manuland are one-family farms and that they own their own means of production. Let us finally assume that the cobblers and farmers are all getting by; sure, there are some bad years but, barring bad accident or ill health, they all get by. Both can afford to exchange a bit of their produce, should they enjoy a surplus, but neither can amass the surplus that drives capital accumulation. You show up now as a proud and ambitious capitalist in Manuland, but just before putting the shovel to the ground to build an industrial facility of scale, you discover something troubling: Manuland has no proletariat. Capital therefore has no place in Manuland. Why? Workers in Manuland do not have to depend on the capitalist for work; they have their own work and their own means of production.

The political economy of capitalism, unlike the political economy of Manuland, necessitates a class of dependents; the dependency of this class moreover is a direct function of its having no ownership over the means of production. It is the limited privilege of ownership, and specifically ownership of the means of production, that separates the dependency class from the capitalist. Manuland has no capitalist conception of private property; capital as yet has no social significance in Manuland. In other words, capitalism cannot work if the laborerlabourer is free of capitalist dependency. The point deserving emphasis here is that capital itself is a social relation in the simple sense that it establishes a relation of dependency between those who own and those who do not. Those who do not own must work for those who do; given the reality of surplus value (Mehrwert) – workers create much more value than they get paid for – it is virtually guaranteed that their level of pay will not free them from the dependency. Nor of course is it designed to. On the contrary.

Capitalism produces a proletariat of necessity; and dependency becomes a permanent feature of capitalist society. Most of us are aware of this dependency; we live it day by day; economists of a capitalistic bent, however, seldom mention it. If it registers at all in the thinking of these economists, it tends to be seen as simply rooted in the nature of human society itself. Capitalism requires that private property in the means of production be restricted to the few; workers by contrast are expected to sacrifice any claim to owning the means of production, an outcome that perpetuates the condition of dependency that constitutes and defines the proletariat.

Understanding this notion of dependency opens the door to Marx’s conception of emancipation. Marx was of course keenly aware of the fundamental antagonism between capitalist dependency and the reality of human emancipation. How is it exactly that we can regard people as free who are in fact dependent for survival on a privileged few? Note, again, this few cannot become the many. A world of capitalists is a world without workers. Someone has to do the work, and it is best that this individual be compelled to do it; a free individual may opt not to do it. For capitalism to work, then, a large majority of people must be placed in a condition of dependency and kept there. Abe Lincoln called it wage slavery. Note here that unions can modify the conditions of such dependency and render them less onerous for workers, but they cannot eliminate the basic social relation of dependency that characterizes capitalism. This will require an organized political effort to overcome the exclusive privileges of ownership of private property in the means of production. Human emancipation in its fullest sense awaits the completion of this task.

The post A Brief Note on Marx: Capital as a Social Relation first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s controversial new film "Digger" implicates us all in the climate crisis.

The post A Call to Action in a World of Inaction appeared first on Democratic Left.

By: Jonathan Cohn

The most dangerous words in the English language are: “we’re from private equity, and we’re here to help.” 

When private equity swoops in to “help” a struggling business, that typically means worsening labor conditions and worsening product quality—but increasing the money of those private equity executives. That’s exactly what private equity executives are trying to do with democracy in Massachusetts with this year’s Question 3, making it a place where they can more easily buy candidates and forestall progressive victories at the state and federal level. These donors are seeking to curb the rise of more populist messaging and policy that centers working people rather than the rich and large corporations. The fact that jungle primaries are detrimental to workers’ interests is why labor unions and progressive groups across Massachusetts are united in urging you to vote NO on Question 3. 

Question 3 would change MA’s electoral system to a jungle primary system like California and Washington. Proponents have been saying that this is about democracy, accountability, choice, competition, but a quick look at where the money comes from says otherwise. 

According to campaign finance disclosures, 70% of the money raised for Question 3 comes from private equity, with most of that from Bain Capital or Berkshire Partners. Indeed, just six private equity executives account for half of all the money raised by the campaign. These are overwhelmingly donors to conservative Democrats (like MA’s Jake Auchincloss and Seth Moulton) and Republicans (like Susan Collins and Bill Cassidy) who are friendly to the corporate centrism that the financial industry loves.

These donors have a long history of funding education privatization ballot questions, and not a lot of history caring about democracy. 

What is Q3?

Question 3 makes several noteworthy changes to Massachusetts elections. It’s important to understand the risks of all of them. 

The marquis part of Question 3 is the all-party primary system, often called a jungle primary, in which all candidates run on the same ballot and the top two candidates of any party advance to the general election. More on that in a moment. 

Question 3 also changes how MA elects Lieutenant Governors. Currently, MA has a system with the perhaps inartful moniker of “shotgun marriage”: Governor and Lt. Governor candidates run separately in the primary, and then are paired together in the general election. Under Question 3, gubernatorial candidates would pick their running mates upon formally filing as a candidate with the Secretary of State. Vetting possible running mates is a major hurdle for grassroots and less institutionally connected candidates, and if people don’t think you can win (grassroots candidates often peak late), why would anyone want to bet a year of their time on your campaign? It’s a very clear way to limit the possibility of who can consider running. 

Question 3 also changes ballot design in Massachusetts. In a bastardized version of fusion voting, it allows multiple minor parties to endorse the same candidate on the ballot. Fusion voting in states like New York strengthens democracy by enabling voters to choose minor parties’ ballot lines and help them to build a base. They earn that ballot line by having actual voters. By contrast, in Massachusetts, you can get minor party status with only 50 people petitioning the secretary of state. With such a low threshold, any slumlord can create a minor party (say, “Massachusetts Housing for All”), and start endorsing candidates on the ballot with deceptive names. The SuperPACs that flood your mailboxes in election season have to disclose their donors, but imagine if they can just get their endorsements printed directly on your ballot.

A Warning From California

California’s recent gubernatorial primary should be a warning to anyone thinking about voting YES on Question 3 this November. 

This year, given the diverse Democratic field and narrow Republican field in the gubernatorial race, polling consistently showed that two conservative Republicans would advance to the general election, denying voters real choice. 

Out of fear of such a lockout, the CA Democratic Party started pressuring candidates to drop out of the race, and the two dominant candidates became a self-funding billionaire and the candidate backed by every corporate PAC in the state. Actual policy debate was sidelined, and party elites and big money donors were empowered.

Whenever there is a push for consolidation, those with power, money, and privilege will always claim a right to stay in a race, regardless of whether they have the best ideas (often, they don’t). 

One of the biggest advocates for California’s jungle primary system has been the California Chamber of Commerce. They have touted its ability to help them get more corporate-aligned Democrats elected on the basis of lots of outside special interest money, conservative crossover votes in Democrat vs. Democrat general elections, and the loss of cues through which people typically understand the differences between candidates. And they are right, with the emergence of a new bloc of corporate-backed Democrats more loyal to Uber, Chevron, Meta, and crypto than to any constituencies or values.

That’s not a solution to any problem we have in Massachusetts; it will make the ability to pass policies to help working people even harder.

Getting Diverse, Working-Class Candidates to Run

I have worked for many years to try to recruit more candidates to run for office and support them when they do. When I talk with prospective candidates, the two biggest barriers for them when considering running for office are time and money. Running for office takes up a lot of time. It might require you to take an extended leave from work, or balance a full-time campaign and a full-time job. 

It also costs a lot of money to run for office, and most people don’t start out with a readymade list of high-net-worth donor prospects. 

If we want to see more working people run for office, then we need to find ways to rein in the time and financial burdens of running for office. 

Question 3 makes both of them worse, increasing both the time and money involved in running for office–benefiting incumbents and wealthy candidates for whom neither poses a true obstacle. 

Ranked Choice Voting vs. Jungle Primaries 

Although Massachusetts voters unfortunately rejected Ranked Choice Voting in 2020, there has been a robust and inspiring push on the local level to adopt Ranked Choice Voting on the local level. The push for a top-two primary system takes the wind out of those sails. 

New York City’s mayoral race last year showed us the wide-ranging benefits of ranked choice voting. Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic primary was due to an amazing field operation and a compelling message, for sure, but NYC’s Ranked Choice Voting system was essential to how the campaign played out. 

When voters can pick multiple candidates and register their preferences accordingly, progressive candidates aren’t in a fight to the death: they want each other’s voters to also rank them. We saw that dynamic in 2025’s greatest bromance: the cross-endorsement between Zohran Mamdani and former Comptroller and current Congressman-elect Brad Lander and the positivity and goodwill surrounding it. When progressive candidates lift each other up, the ideas and the movement benefit. 

In a ranked choice system, voters also don’t need to be afraid that voting for their top choice could lead to their least favorite choice getting elected. If you were a voter who did not want to see Andrew Cuomo become governor, you didn’t need to spend hours agonizing about how others might vote: you just vote for multiple progressive candidates and leave Cuomo off your ballot. 

A jungle primary, by contrast, is what Andrew Cuomo wanted to jerry-rig New York’s election system into. After losing the primary, he insisted on staying in the election, and he wanted to force out other candidates in order to form a cross-party conservative coalition, backed by a lot of money and a lot of racism. Cuomo was able to strong-arm Mayor Eric Adams out of the general election, but failed to convince Republican candidate Curtis Silwa out. Nonetheless, Cuomo still got 73% of Republican voters to vote for him, according to exit polls. With Mamdani pulling 50.78% of the vote in the general election, one can easily see how Cuomo’s theory of the election could have worked if he bullied his way into a two-party race. Democracy and the City of New York would have been worse for it. 

Just Say No

Question 3 is shaping up to be a “Whose side are you on?” question. On the yes side: private equity, venture capitalists, and investment bankers. On the no side: every major labor union and progressive group in the state. 

The yes side, bankrolled by those who have been fighting for years to make working people’s lives worse, and the no side, backed by those who have been fighting to make working people’s lives better. The choice is clear: NO on Question 3. 

Jonathan Cohn is a member of Boston DSA and Policy Director for Progressive Massachusetts, a multi-issue grassroots organization that advocates for state level policy. He has been active in campaigns to expand voting rights, strengthen immigrants’ rights, increase education funding, and make a fairer tax code, among many more. He has also been a volunteer, neighborhood team leader, regional coordinator, or campaign manager for various candidate campaigns and ballot initiatives at the city, state, county, and national level.

The post OPINION: No on Q3 – Jungle Primaries are Bad for Working People’s Interests appeared first on Working Mass.

California is the fourth largest economy in the world, with a growing number of billionaires, and an expanding crisis of poverty due to concentration of wealth and divestment from public goods like education and healthcare. This has been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s HR1 (“the big beautiful bill”), which cut $1 trillion from Medicaid nationally, resulting in a $100 billion cut to Medi-Cal, and a $20 billion cut to Calfresh, public programs that support our most vulnerable neighbors.

After the California Federation of Labor Unions, led by Lorena Gonzalez, voted at its August 4 convention to endorse two ballot measures to tax the rich – Propositions 3 and 40 – California DSA took the opportunity to reach out with a proposal: a California “Tax the Rich Day” on October 10. Gonzalez liked the idea, and the Labor Fed entered into a partnership with California DSA and SEIU-UHW (the proponent of Prop 40). 

In 2012, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and a progressive tax coalition organized across the state in an effort that culminated in the passage of a measure that put a tax on the top 2% of income earners in California in order to fund public education and healthcare. This year, voters will decide on whether to make that tax permanent via Prop 3. It currently generates between $5 to $15 billion annually. If it does not pass, the tax will sunset in 2030, and 1 in 6 public school teachers will be facing layoffs.

In response to HR1’s cuts to Medi-Cal, Service Employees International Union - United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), a labor union of over 120,000 healthcare workers across California, advanced a ballot measure, Prop 40, to create a one time 5% tax on the wealth of billionaires, payable either all at once, or via 1% increments over 5 years. This is anticipated to raise about $100 billion and to provide adequate funding to cover the gap in Medi-Cal’s budget wrought by HR1. This tax applies to any billionaires who were residents of the state at the start of 2026, or who will pay state income taxes for the year (at the start of 2026, around 216 billionaires lived in the state; presently, there are around 240).

California DSA endorsed both measures earlier this year, and has been coordinating canvasses, phonebanks, and communications in the run up to election day as we work to build a stronger left-labor pole capable of taking on the billionaires. 

Coming just a week after Bernie Sanders held rallies in San Francisco and Los Angeles to promote Prop 40, the day of action featured multiple local rallies and canvasses in which DSA members joined their local labor councils and union members to spread the class-struggle message that it was high time for the working class to take on the ultra-rich. In the lead up to Tax the Rich Day, Gonzalez blasted out an email, titled “It's time to Tax The Rich!,” in which she promoted events on California DSA’s landing page, and wrote: 

“I think we can all agree: billionaires have too much damn money. … No matter where you are in California, there is a protest or a canvass event near you this Saturday, October 10, where you can join our fight to tax the rich and pass Prop 3 and Prop 40, and to defeat Prop 41 and Prop 42!”

Actions took place that day across 8 cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, the Inland Empire, and the East Bay. The Labor Federation promoted and celebrated them on social media

https://bsky.app/profile/californialabor.bsky.social/post/3mxkcazz6422v

https://bsky.app/profile/californialabor.bsky.social/post/3mxkco3ub422v

https://bsky.app/profile/californialabor.bsky.social/post/3mxkd5m24vk2v

https://bsky.app/profile/californialabor.bsky.social/post/3mxmvzfrkbs2v

In Hayward, an East Bay city south of Oakland, East Bay DSA joined forces with the Alameda Labor Council for a tax the rich rally and canvass. The Labor Fed posted that “the East Bay did not come to play!” East Bay DSA, since August, has been partnering with the Labor Council to provide volunteers for phone banks and canvasses of the labor council’s 130,000 union members in Alameda County, focused on passing Props 3 and 40 and re-electing DSA-endorsed school board candidates in Oakland.

East Bay DSA’s posters, signs and banners, designed by David Solnit and fashioned at an EBDSA art build, have been featured at canvasses, like this one on September 19.

Inland Empire DSA heard the call from CA DSA for a Tax the Rich Day on October 10th, and put together a rally in collaboration with SEIU-UHW and PSL at City Hall in downtown Riverside. Over fifty volunteers from Inland Empire DSA, SEIU-UHW, PFP, PSL and Teamsters 1932 as well as Riverside City Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes showed up in support of taxing the state’s billionaires. Volunteer organizers led a march around City Hall and the surrounding area and held a tabling event in front of City Hall to speak to passers-by about how vital passing Proposition 40 (and defeating Propositions 41 and 42!) is to save our healthcare system and provide necessary funding to education and food assistance in the state. Immediately afterward, volunteers headed down to the SEIU-UHW headquarters in downtown Riverside to phone bank for Proposition 40, and IE DSA will be hosting joint phonebanks with SEIU-UHW weekly from now until the election. 

Angelenos turned out to canvasses in South Central and the Eastside to talk about LA City Council District 9 candidate Estuardo Mazariegos and Congressional District 34 candidate Angela Gonzales Torres alongside the need to pass Prop 40 to redistribute power from billionaires to working people. Later that day, a comedy and karaoke fundraiser capped the night off in support of efforts to tax the rich.

California DSA’s statewide working group will be meeting Tuesday, October 20th, at 6pm in order to continue planning and coordinating efforts in support of Props 3 and 40. You can RSVP here: https://www.californiadsa.org/calendar/tax-the-rich-wg-2026oct20 

The California Federation of Labor Unions Prop 40 will be hosting a phonebank in support of Prop 40 on October 21st and 5:30pm: https://www.mobilize.us/caaflcio/event/1056391/

“You can sleep when you’re dead.”

—Benjamin Franklin

There are just two weeks to go before one of the most consequential elections in the history of California. Driving the existential nature of this election is the onset and growth of the fascist cancer within American capitalism, pushed into metastatic overdrive by the election of Donald Trump to his second term in 2024. 

In the two years since, he has checked every box in any rational person’s understanding of what the word “fascism” means. As a result we are facing End Times Fascism— the term (and the title of their new book) coined by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor—meaning that this time around, fascists are sucking us down the chutes of climate destruction, democratic devolution, and rapidly eroding institutional means to reverse the tide. 

While all of DSA’s endorsed election campaigns throughout the state are important and contribute in various ways to the anti-fascist cause, I will go out on a limb to suggest that the campaign that can best serve the anti-fascist struggle is the dual effort to tax the rich via Props 3 and 40.  Why? 

Here we find an unprecedented opportunity—not one, but two tax the rich ballot measures up for a vote in one election. Each is essential to the wellbeing of the working class—one for education, the other for health care. Loss of either would be a disaster and a boon to billionaires.

Conversely, passage of both would send an urgently needed message:  that the wealth of the rich is not invincible, because an organized working class can be the greater force. 

Money shores up the power and power shores up the money 

You recall those two photos of Elon Musk early in 2025: wielding with sick glee a chain saw to demonstrate what his DOGE project was doing to the helping services of the federal government, and his Nazi salute at a MAGA rally? These were accurate signals of an emboldened and newly unified far right sector of capital, melding the formerly antagonistic interests of fossil fuel and big tech, brought together by Trump to supercharge the development of AI and its evil twin, data centers, under the control of corporations. 

The combined resources of these two capital sectors united in support of the fascist program is the reason why political spending hit record levels in the 2024 elections, and why it is on track to break the record again this year.

As Klein and Taylor make clear, mix hitherto undreamed of quantities of capital with Christian nationalism, perpetual war in the Middle East fanning the flames of religious fantasy along with the climate crisis, reckless investment in AI, the Trump administration’s removal of all federal regulatory controls, and you have the perfect cocktail for apocalypse. The richest people in the world think they can escape the dystopia they are consciously unleashing—to island bunkers, to the Rapture, to outer space—as they run the rest of us over the cliff and the earth to the end of its tether.

Here in California the billionaires’ push to defeat Prop 40 will set new spending records for ballot initiatives. That’s pocket change from their bloated portfolios. The campaign to pass Props 3 and 40 directly challenges the fascist program, valuing human need over uncontrolled profitmaking, saying yes to life and to the earth, and reducing the purses of the superrich and thus their power. If we win, we demonstrate that the power of people can outweigh the power of money.  

Time to Overdo it

I’m asking everyone who reads these words to add just a bit of work—something, anything— to election work you are already doing in the next two weeks to help get Props 3 and 40 passed. 

I’m not arguing that anyone should stop their campaigning for a local city council candidate or US congressional seat and replace that work with the Prop 3 and 40 tax the rich campaign between now and November 3. I’m saying something else, and I admit it runs against the grain of the advice that a lifetime of activist labor and socialist politics has led me to consistently offer comrades and other activists, which is, “Don’t overdo it.” Passion for political causes can easily tip over into burnout, which is not helpful for the long run. But we are up against an enemy that is literally attempting to destroy the long run. And so I make an exception this time so that it’s not the last time. 

In other words, for the next two weeks, let’s overdo it. 

Our final California DSA Tax the Rich Working Group meeting of the campaign is this Tuesday night at 6 pm; join us to hear what we’re planning. You could also join the Prop 40 phone bank on 10/21 at 5:30. Here is tonight’s Prop 3 phone bank link. 

It can also be simpler. You can grab a posterboard from an art supply store and make your own sign for Yes on 3, Yes on 40, Tax the Rich and stand on a street corner with a friend or two. You can put a sign up in your window. You can call your friends and tell them to vote yes on 3 and 40 and no on 41, 42, and 43. You can download flyers and pass them out in your workplace. 

With your help taxing the rich is possible. Once we’ve done that we can rest (contra Franklin, we don’t have to wait til we’re dead) recover from burnout, and breathe the air of a world slightly less imperiled by fascism.

In the early 1970s, when many student activists were migrating from campus to industrial jobs to promote working class radicalization, no labor film was more influential than Salt of the Earth.

This pioneering docudrama was made two decades earlier by a producer, writer, director, and several actors who were unemployable in Hollywood, due to McCarthy era-blacklisting.

This left-wing creative team recruited a cast of workers and their families from the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) to play themselves in a fictional account of a long strike at the Empire Zinc Company in Grant County, New Mexico. 

Local 890 members knew something about red-baiting too. Shortly before their 1951 fight for better conditions and an end to wage disparities between Anglo and Chicano workers, Mine, Mill was expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), along with the left-led United Electrical Workers (UE) and west coast longshore union, the ILWU. In 

In real life, and later on screen, the key to the success of this mining community struggle was the militant participation of strikers’ wives, mothers, daughters and sisters after their own mass picketing is enjoined by a local judge.

In Salt of the Earth, this picket-line replacement strategy, which challenged and changed traditional gender roles in a socially conservative company town, is heatedly debated by film’s two lead characters. 

Blacklisted and Deported

Playing the role of Ramon Quintera, Juan Chacon, an actual IUMMSW local president, initially objects to the strike activism of his fictional wife Esperanza, played by Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas (who was deported for making the film). Other members of an entirely male and largely Latino workforce are similarly conflicted about the emergence of a vocal and empowered women’s auxiliary.

When Esperanza and her fellow female pickets are arrested, she takes her small baby behind bars with her. The resulting boisterous jail house protest—which prefigures southern civil rights and peace movement tactics in the 1960s--forces the sheriff to release them all. The miners’ subsequent defense of the Quintera family--when the company tries to evict them--becomes a turning point in the long strike which ends in a contract settlement.

Berkeley journalist and now first-time novelist Barry Bergman was among the many young radicals much inspired by this now iconic depiction of Mexican-American labor struggle.  Before Bergman relocated to California and began a long career as a newspaper reporter, magazine writer/editor, and communications specialist for UC Berkeley and numerous non-profits, he worked for several years in a copper smelter near Tucson.

That experience as a rank-and-file member of the United Steel Workers (USW)--which gobbled up the IUMMSW, after years of raiding it--led to his writing Proles. (Serving House Books). Bergman’s novel is a funny, moving, and historically accurate account of workplace “colonizing”—or “salting” as it’s called today-- told from the point of view of the author’s fictional alter-ego. 

Via a college course entitled “Celluloid and Social Change,” Simon Bussbaum learns about a film called City of Emeralds. He is captivated by its depiction of “dirt-poor Chicano miners in the Southwest” and their humble but charismatic leader, Naldo Galvin.

Art Imitates Life

Simon does further research and discovers that Galvin—like the real-life Juan Chacon in the 1970s—has become a dissident in the Steel Workers. The former strike organizer—and Salt of the Earth co-star-- is now rallying his co-workers against “a class collaborationist union which muscled its way into zinc and copper mines in the Sun Belt” by marketing itself as a labor-management partner, rather than a class struggle foe.

The bookish film buff from Queens (the author’s hometown as well) leaves anti-war politics behind for a very different blue-collar life in open shop Arizona. Arriving for his first shift at Cobra Copper Company (aka “ThreeCo”) near Turcson, Simon walks into a scene lifted from the film that inspired his turn toward the working class.

“Outside the giant garage doors that opened out from the smelter’s shell, hundreds of men clustered in small groups, coveralls gone or dangling at their waist. Some were standing, others lying on bare ground or using their hardhats for seats. A handful were shirtless, glistening in the sun. It might have been a disorderly line at the Fillmore East, save for the work clothes and industrial boots.” 

A new co-worker, a “hard-looking Chicano with a missing tooth, a Fu Manchu mustache and a cobra tattoo on his right forearm” tells Simon what’s going on.  “It’s a ‘wildcat,’”  explains Snake, who seems happy to follow the crazy "white dudes” who started it all by “waving their arms, walking out, and shouting, ‘Join us!”. 

Other hard hats in the now idle crowd are pissed off about losing a few hours pay. “Anarchists,” one grumbles. “Commies and agitators. They don’t like it here, can’t blame them for that. But you can’t strike till the contract’s up. That’s the law.”

A manager addresses the crowd with a bull-horn and repeats the same message. “This is an unlawful work stoppage. Your local union has not authorized this action, and joins us in ordering you to immediately cease and desist. This is your final warning.”

A Tactical Error?

The “cadre” organization members--who have inducted Simon into their small circle at a local radical bookstore--are among “the twelve people pegged as troublemakers and fired.” After this “tactical error,” Simon attends his first Steelworkers local union meeting. There, he encounters bureaucratic lethargy and business union routine familiar to many rank-and-file activists, then and now.

Only a smattering of members show-up—at a VFW hall with an “American flag on the pole outside the building and another hung on a wall behind the podium.” Much time is spent on the financial report and a reading of minutes from the last meeting. The biggest agenda item is the e-board’s unanimous decision “not to pursue grievance arbitration cases for employees who were terminated.”

As the union treasurer explains, this will result in “a big savings for the local because we could not have prevailed in defending an action that went against the ‘no strike’ clause in our own contract.” (“Good riddance,” blurts out the local’s business manager, “a pudgy man in a short sleeved white shirt,” who gavels the meeting to a close soon thereafter.)

Bergman’s workplace descriptions are equally on target. Some resemble the best passages in The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s fictional account of job hazards in mid-western meat-packing plants a century ago or in Emperor of Gladness, Ocean Voung’s new novel about low wage work in 21st century New England.

“The smelter, known as ‘Freako,’ was a cavernous, ramshackle Big Top featuring spark-spewing furnaces, splashing cauldrons dangled from the cranes like murderous marionettes, rapids of liquid fire tumbling down in harrowing dayglow ribbons. Danger was everywhere, lurking beneath the dull roar and the rotten eggs stench. Everything black and orange, darkness and firelight, a waking nightmare Halloween that left him in terror of any possible misstep.”

Unfortunately, the hottest shop floor issue is not the threat of being scalded to death or maimed and killed in many other ways.  It’s ThreeCo’s controversial decision to hire its first female laborer, a feisty former high school athlete, who is a half-Latino and a single mother. It’s 1973, after all, and the era of equal opportunity is dawning. 

As the fictional reincarnation of Esperanza, Samantha Tanager is not just showing that she can, in a pinch, take a man’s place on the picket-line; she’s going to join them on the shop floor, in a fire-resistant orange jump suit, aluminum hard-hat, and steel-toed boots. But the sudden arrival of a “fetching copper miner’s daughter,” as a local newspaper describes her, proves to be very triggering for Bullock. 

He’s the big, tobacco-chewing redneck with “a natural talent for cruelty” that Bussbuam is assigned to work with. Already suspicious of Simon’s rather obvious East Coast Jewishness and college boy ways, Bullock views “Tanager’s admission to the sacred sanctum of the smelter as sacrilege, a grievous affront to the Code of the Working Stiff, Nonferrous Division.” 

Besides, he believes that Samantha is a lesbian. (Spoiler alert: much to Simon’s love-struck chagrin, Bullock’s gaydar is right.)

Casual Racism

Simon’s New Left idealism is now further tested amid Freako’s “dark, depraved beauty, which reeked of musty maleness that gave rise to a loose-knit, shambling ‘esprit de corps, wrapped in a kind of casual racism and sexism so expansive, so deeply rooted, it had started to feel—Simon not being of this world, and without standing perhaps to judge his co-workers’ cultural values—like just another flavor of assholism.”

When that “assholism” takes the form of a nasty campaign by Bullock to make Tanager’s life miserable on the job, Simon’s own personal class struggle ends in a parking lot brawl between two “union brothers.” It doesn’t end well for the new hire and little resembles more heroic scuffles, between labor and management, in Salt of The Earth. 

But it does lead Bussbaum to bid blue-collar life adieu and head for the greener pastures of California. (Tanager and her female partner leave for the more tolerant Texas oasis of Austin.)

Proles was definitely not written as a how-too manual for members of the Rank-and-File Project, a present-day effort to “recruit, educate, and support a new generation of activists who will join the fight for working-class power by taking union jobs on the shop floor.” 

But the book should be required reading, in such circles anyway, due to its deft exploration of the nexus between the personal and the political. Any left-wing “salt” trying to befriend un-class conscious (and sometimes weird) co-workers, while dealing with draining night shifts, imperious managers and not much nicer union bosses, will find humorous respite in Barry Bergman’s fictional rendering of his real-life experience with the “salt of the earth” in Arizona fifty years ago.