Minnesota labor and anti-ICE organizers are finding common ground and tools in the fight against authoritarianism in the workplace and on the streets

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It feels like we have all been here before. A massively unpopular president, mass organizing against repressive policies, an electorate that seems primed to opt for a more aggressive combating of the status quo

And then… nothing.

The Illinois primary saw many credible challengers fail to gain enough momentum to break through against a littany of AIPAC-sponsored candidates, old Democratic Party incumbents, and “progressive” but pro-Israel politicians. In a few races, voters had several decent options and coalesced around none. In others, a sea of money flooded them out. In several races, the most credible progressive candidate didn’t even finish second.

Chicago DSA needs to look at what happened in these races and ask two key questions:  how this happened and what we can do to prevent this in the future. And nowhere in the city can we learn more about how things currently stand than in the 9th Congressional District, made up of most of the Lakefront North Side.

We must be honest with ourselves that with three open congressional seats in the city and a plethora of candidates running trying to be the “left” candidate, only one sought the endorsement of Chicago DSA. , And that required some coaxing on our part. In IL-9, where there are hundreds of CDSA members, not one candidate sought out our endorsement.

We had candidates running for Congress that are dues paying members of our chapter who did not seek our endorsement. We can debate how much we should prioritize electoral organizing, but this is a verdict on the power of this chapter to intervene in events in this city. These candidates either did not trust that DSA would endorse them if they applied, did not believe we could meaningfully influence their race, or calculated that our electoral efforts wouldn’t outweigh any downsides of being “DSA-endorsed”

***

Let’s start by taking a step back to look at the electoral terrain.  United Working Families has seemingly imploded, and the Chicago Teacher’s Union and SEIU Illinois found themselves on opposite sides of multiple races in this cycle. There is no one group that leads the left in the city now. Comrades on the Northwest side have shown the ability to build electoral power, allying with local ward organizations to construct a “Commie Corridor” up and down Milwaukee Avenue (overlapping with the territory of Chicago DSA’s Northside Blue Line Branch). There is much to be learned from the process by which they have gained power, even though some of these electeds have not been endorsed by CDSA.

We need to follow through with the priorities we established at the December General Chapter Meeting and encourage members start attending meetings of their local Independent Political Organizations (IPOs). But we should take this a step further. Those of us with children should integrate ourselves into the school communities and talk politics with those people. If we are members of faith communities, we should be present there. It is how we can identify candidates and it’s how we make CDSA a presence in places we currently struggle to reach. A key rule of union organizing is that one needs to build trust with co-workers on the shop floor before one starts to talk about a union. The same is true of political organizing.

A second lesson is that for everything else that may have changed, both showing up locally and having local ties seems to matter. Kat Abughalea’s campaign did very well in the district (winning the Chicago vote), but it was hampered by both the candidates own missteps in blowing off CDSA, Indivisible, and People’s Lobby forums in a part of the city incredibly friendly to the type of politics she was espousing. By not seeking to work with anyone organizing on the ground in the north side of Chicago, Kat’s campaign passed up on a huge apparatus of volunteer organizers and advocates who could have tipped what turned out to be a close race.

There were other problems in Kat’s campaign that we might not have been able to overcome.  Comrades on the ground that were working for various campaigns reported that many potential supporters  had already made up their minds not to vote for Kat due to the short amount of time she had spent in the area prior to running for Congress. She was accused of being a “carpetbagger” by some detractors for that reason. The divide in Chicago between transplants and natives is a well-known dynamic, and it can be an uphill climb for candidates who have few ties to the community they want to represent.

In some ways, Kat’s staff and supporters did a very good job running a campaign. Their social media and communications work was excellent. They raised a surprisingly large amount of money. And they came unexpectedly close to defeating Daniel Biss, finishing in a close second at 25.9% of the vote compared to Biss at 29.6%. However, their efforts did not prove to be enough. Comparisons to Zohran Mamdani fail to take into account that Zohran used his social media prowess to reinforce a strong message. This message proved not only popular, but was also reinforced by his time already spent fighting for working class New Yorkers. Delivering a message that resonated with voters is the area where Kat struggled.

Comms, memes, and social media are valuable tools to a candidate that is telegenic, well spoken, and likeable. But they are not enough to win elections. Voters need to get to know the candidates and trust them to deliver change . Those candidates should have some kind of base where they are running. Kat’s campaign had a great messaging infrastructure that also failed to connect with voters. 

Going forward, with an eye on future elections, we should remember that our strength as an organization is always going to be our members. We have an excellent Comms Team. We have smart theorists. But our key advantage is always going to be a motivated base that is politically educated and skilled in political organizing. Our comrades who worked polling locations on Primary Day for 25th Ward Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez ran into election workers who were almost always paid by our opponents to be there. They often didn’t care about the outcome, it was just another job. How many of us feel personal stakes in the success of the places we work? Many of these paid canvassers want to collect their check and go home, and some won’t even vote for the candidates they are “supporting.” 

The upcoming political cycles around the 2026 midterms, the 2027 Chicago mayoral race, and the 2028 presidential elections are likely to be particularly tough one. There are going to be massive sums of money spent on convincing people that the corporate interests and real estate developers of this city have the best interests of working class Chicagoans at heart. We have decided we will challenge those who have chosen to put the interests of corporations over the people. We have decided to be more dedicated in trying to find candidates. But we also must be clear about where we are strong.

If we want the kind of power and influence that allows us to push citywide narratives, we have to win elections. We must not just serve as the tail end of a larger movement, but as an organization capable of putting on our own candidates in office. We are never going to be an organization that is able to build political power by spending money or gaining media space. But with strategic focus on contesting elections, by seeking partners in the struggle, and by finding candidates suited to run where they are, we can build working class power in this city that can withstand AIPAC, crypto billionaires, and whatever else the capitalist class throws at us.

The post Lessons from the 2026 Primary Season appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

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By: Vanessa B

BOSTON – On Sunday, February 22, postal workers gathered for a rally in front of South Station. Agitated by growing managerial bloat and stagnant starting wages, postal workers affiliated with the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) are looking to win a contract in 2026 that will make the postal service a sustainable place to work for years to come. 

In speeches, workers repeated the call for “30/30”, demanding a $30 starting wage and a ratio of 30 workers to 1 manager.

“If this job is going to survive, if we’re going to recruit and keep people, $30 an hour should be the floor, not the ceiling,” said a rally speaker. “The cost of living didn’t freeze in 2006; housing didn’t freeze, gas didn’t freeze, groceries didn’t freeze. The only thing that froze was us on the streets, and our starting wage.”

Rally speakers outlined a list of demands, such as an all-career workforce, as well as shorter timeframes for moving up the pay scale and overall pay scale reforms, which postal workers hope will help increase retention rates for newly hired letter carriers. 

The fight illustrates an upsurge in letter carrier rank-and-file organizing locally – but why? What brings rank-and-file postal workers together amidst a bad contract, tensions within the union over its bargaining process’s (dis)empowerment of members, and a hostile federal environment?

2024 NALC Conference Opens the Door to Democratic Reforms

Rank-and-file worker organizing has been steadily accumulating into a nascent reform movement within NALC. Workers brought proposals for constitutional reforms to bargaining to the national NALC conference in 2024, aiming to increase transparency around the process. 

Prior to a national NALC convention in 2024, NALC’s constitution empowered just one person to negotiate contracts between the union and USPS: NALC’s national president, Bryan Renfroe. Much of the ire about the lackluster contract campaign that emerged in 2025, following the 2024 conference debates, has been directed at Renfroe.

The anger of many rank-and-file members towards their union president over the contract stems from the ways in which 2024 reforms did not go far enough. At the NALC Conference, membership won some bargaining reforms. For example, rather than solely having closed-door meetings between the union’s president and management, there will be an appointed group of worker leaders from across the country invited to give input on bargaining. 

Despite improvements, members of NALC still have not won a fully transparent open bargaining process. 

According to Read Wilder, a young letter carrier and shop steward in Cambridge, the lack of transparency, slow negotiations, and a disappointing contract last year have all led to an upsurge in rank and file organizing amongst postal workers in the greater Boston area. 

“The same activists who got open bargaining passed are also looking for a better contract campaign this time around,” Wilder said. 

2025 Contract: Too Little, Too Late, Say No

Adding to the urgency organizers feel around the 2026 contract fight is a widely-held feeling that the recently settled 2025 contract was ‘too little, too late’ for many. The contract was voted down by members following a nationwide vote no campaign. The final vote tally: 63,680 no votes to 26,304 in favor.  

The contract went to arbitration before a judge, where a deal was reached between the postal service and NALC virtually identical to the one that was rejected by membership. Despite leadership’s promises to “fight like hell,” NALC wrapped up arbitration with the US Postal Service after just two days spent in mediation.

NALC’s 2026 contract fight comes only a year after the previous contract was settled in March 2025. Letter carriers went on working under an expired contract for 700 days. Boston postal worker Harman said:

I was on the phone with my steward when he found out that we got a new contract. It was pouring rain. We were both working a 12-hour that day, but finding out that we got the same contract that we voted down was just like a punch in the gut… It killed any morale, finding out that they took 700 days to negotiate, but only a few days in arbitration to give us the same thing we said no to.

The Movement of Building a Fighting NALC (BFN)

For those committed to building a rank-and-file reform movement within NALC, the focus isn’t toppling the establishment overnight. Their priorities lie in strengthening locals and empowering union members to take ownership of their union, their work, and their contract fights. 

In a July statement, NALC reform caucus BFN stated that:

Build a Fighting NALC (BFN) aims to build a national rank and file reform movement to transform NALC into a democratic, fighting union that engages with and mobilizes the membership to fight for better wages, working conditions, and a high quality public postal service.

BFN organizer Derek Liehmon, a Boston-based postal worker, said that he hopes the caucus will “give people an opportunity to learn how to do union democracy.” He continued:

BFN is not doing something because one person or some leader who’s three or four levels of bureaucracy above the rank and file, decides we’re doing it. We vote on stuff, we decide together.

Establishing union democracy internally has involved electing leadership for the caucus, and drafting a constitution for the reform group to follow. Liehmon said the group has looked to other reform caucuses, such as UAW’s Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) and Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), for guidance as they start the process of reforming the letter carriers’ union from within.

“We are trying to apply the last 50 years of reform caucus history in our context, and this is something that really hasn’t existed in the postal unions. From my understanding there aren’t reform caucuses in the other ones,” said Liehmon.

Growing concern about the future of USPS

While union leadership are under increased pressure from members to win a stronger contract this time around, questions remain about the USPS’s ability to remain afloat financially. In their financial report for fiscal year 2025, USPS reported a loss of $9 billion.

At a House subcommittee meeting about the financial future of the USPS, Postmaster General David Steiner testified that the USPS may not be able to provide the current level of service a year from now. Steiner cited decreased usage of the service and high labor costs as factors in the current crisis, and asked that Congress increase the service’s borrowing authority while they “determine what the Postal Service should do to best serve the American public.” Rather than a government that wants the massive funding the USPS requires to fully succeed as a public service, the USPS faces a government deeply invested in its disinvestment. 

According to the Office of the Inspector General, USPS spent over $800 million from 2022-2024 on grievances, which are typically related to violations of the collective bargaining agreements between unions and employers.

In a statement published on NALC’s website, the union agreed with the Postmaster’s call for Congress to extend USPS’s borrowing limit, but pushed back on Steiner’s suggestions related to the workers who deliver the mail. 

“We will fiercely fight limiting letter carriers’ workers’ compensation benefits in any way or increasing usage of non-career employees in our craft as some in the hearing suggested. Even suggesting such foolish actions are insulting to America’s hardworking letter carriers,” said NALC president Renfroe.

Liehmon told Working Mass:

If you listen to how Renfroe and the union admin talk, they’re really worried that pushing management too hard is going to destabilize the Post Office, that pushing too aggressively is going to create a target for our union and for the postal service, that trump is going to DOGE us. But he might just do it anyway. What happens when they do to us what they’ve done to everybody else?

“The answer to this is not austerity or lower wages,” Liehmon said. “It’s a political decision. Where do we want to spend our money? Do we want to spend it on this public service that mostly funds itself, or do we want to spend money on the military? We (NALC) have to be left wing, and have left wing politics because at the end of the day, it’s a political question.”

That political question may be solved beyond the shopfloor of the Post Office, but NALC faces its own political decision in engaging the question. NALC can work within the broader labor and reform movements to create the political conditions needed for its needed survival. But without leadership from below, there’s no guarantee.

The future of NALC, in other words, relies on the workers. As always.

Vanessa B is a member of Boston DSA and contributor to Working Mass.

The post Postal Workers Demand 30/30 Amidst Organizing Surge Among Rank-and-File Letter Carriers appeared first on Working Mass.

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By: Jake S

WORCESTER COUNTY – On Thursday, March 26, UMass workers organized within the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) — the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth with over 26,000 members — held informational pickets for their contract fight across five hospital campuses: in Worcester, at Memorial, University, and Hahnemann; in Clinton, at UMass Memorial Health-Alliance; and in Marlborough, at UMass Memorial Medical Center.

Nurses have been in contract negotiations since as early as June 2025 with many forced to work without a ratified contract for nearly a year.

Hundreds of nurses gathered, marched, and chanted — some with children in tow, others staying out for as long as their 15-minute shift break would allow, but all bursting with energy. The message to UMass was clear: MNA members are ready to fight.

Negotiations with UMass

Bonnie S is an operating room nurse at UMass Memorial and the treasurer of her bargaining unit. She has worked at UMass Memorial for twenty-eight years, after a previous stint in the NICU. 

Bonnie told Working Mass:

We’re here because we’ve been trying to negotiate our contract for many months, coming up on a year. UMass hasn’t moved much at all in negotiations. Anything that has to do with what we’re really passionate about has gotten nothing. We just want to give our patients the best quality and safest care that we can – we need these things in order to do that. Management hasn’t really worked with us. A lot of talk, but not a lot of movement.

The escalation by workers arrived as Worcester approaches the five-year anniversary of the historic MNA strike at Saint Vincent’s Hospital, which launched in April 2021 and extended, uninterrupted, for 301 days. Nurses who served as co-chairs of the Saint Vincent’s bargaining unit during their strike walked alongside UMass nurses for their picket. Nurses with decades-long careers — some long enough to recall UMass hospital strikes of the past — held their signs and their heads high.

Passers-by on the streets and sidewalk of each and every one of the five campuses cheered, honked, and waved.

Ben P, vice chair of the Hahnemann Campus bargaining unit and an operating nurse of seventeen years, told Working Mass that safer staffing levels and working conditions, fair wages, and limits to shift rotations are top concerns for MNA members which UMass has yet to address at the bargaining table.

Safe Staffing Levels and Retention

“Number one is safe staffing and patient care,” said Phil B. 

Phil works in a recently-constructed building on the University campus. He’s worked for UMass for eight years as a nurse and now operates in his third year of acute care nursing. 

We have contract language about staffing now that isn’t even respected. The hospital doesn’t follow through on any of their staffing policies. Resource nurses — the ones that are meant as all-around support on their floors, especially in emergencies — have upwards of half a dozen patients at a time, which is more than a regular floor nurse should have. The whole unit becomes strapped. Care doesn’t get done; things get missed; we have negative outcomes.

We file unsafe staffing reports, and UMass just sits on stacks of them until their staffing committee just writes them all off at once. So, you could be in an emergency, but staffing problems haven’t been resolved when you really need them to be. There’s all kinds of red tape around it.

Beyond the hospital’s lack of follow-through and overload on staff, rank-and-file nurses report that Worcester County hospitals can’t retain nursing staff in the long haul. A lack of “new blood” to take on their roles leaves an older, aging staff pool to take on increased burdens at work, and low wages at UMass force younger nurses to seek opportunities elsewhere. At the time of writing, the bargaining unit at University has been offered annual wage increases as low as 1% by management. 

Since 2022, when many MNA nurses ratified their last contract with UMass hospitals, electric bills in Massachusetts have increased by about 30%.

Heather J, a registered nurse of twenty-seven years in the maternity postpartum unit at UMass Memorial, said:

We need new, young talent in the hospital because we’re all getting older. Some of us are going to be retiring soon, so we need new nurses to come along and pick up where we leave off.

Heather L works in Marlborough’s cancer center. She told Working Mass:

I became a nurse twenty-five years ago so I can sit there to hold their hands in the worst of times, and to celebrate with them in the best of times. That’s what I want to continue to do, but in order to do that, we have to retain our staff — we lose seasoned and specialized workers to other areas where the prospects and the wages are better and the hospitals are safer.

The Political as Personal

For Heather L, there was also a personal element to the contract fight. Unions are most successful when people see the individual texture of their dreams in the organization’s.

My daughter is a nursing student. I want this to be a great profession for her to join. She’s my baby, I want it to be safe for her and I want her to be able to pay her loans off.

Phil B also focused on the impact of student debt. 

It makes more sense for new nurses to eat the cost of a commute than to stay here, especially when you need to get a Bachelor’s degree to work at UMass. You’re telling us we need to take on huge amounts of student debt, then pull ourselves up by our bootstraps — all while we’re trying to pay outrageous rents in the city!

Roughly 1 in 6 households in Massachusetts spend more than half their income on housing.

I have coworkers who have families and kids, and they’re having trouble making ends meet in a dual-income household! People can’t afford their basic necessities.

Working Mass asked Phil how UMass justified new building projects, recent hospital acquisitions, and large administrative pay packages in contract negotiations while offering nurses no meaningful improvements to wages or working conditions.

Phil laughed: “they don’t touch it with a 10-foot pole. It doesn’t look very good for them. There’s never a conversation about executive pay or where they’re going to get the staff for all these new developments. Did you know our CEO has a stable of horses at home?”

Dr. Eric Dickerson, President and CEO of UMass Memorial Health, owns 9 horses and a 35-acre ranch in Princeton, Massachusetts. 

In 2023 — not long after many UMass nurses had ratified their most recent agreement — Dickerson was paid a total of over 3 million dollars, placing him as the highest-paid nonprofit chief executive in Central Mass for his third year in a row. His pay has more than doubled since he was hired. Including Dickson, UMass Memorial Health executives accounted for 6 of the 18 highest-paid nonprofit executives in Central Mass that year.

As Phil indicated:

We’ll have a real healthcare desert in our community if we can’t fill these roles with new nurses. Hundreds and hundreds of us are getting close to retirement. There’ll be a lapse in nursing care, and patients will suffer.

Solidarity from Within and Without

Members of other unions representing thousands of non-nursing staff workers across UMass — the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) whose members had a contract fight of their own with the University hospital just last summer, the State Healthcare and Research Employees Union (an affiliate of AFSCME), and the United Auto Workers — joined the picket. So too did MNA nurses working at Saint Vincent’s.

Marlena P has been a nurse at Saint Vincent’s for thirty-nine years. When asked why she and her coworkers showed up at the UMass pickets, she said:

You know the old saying: an injury to one is an injury to all. Our sisters and brothers are hurting out here, they’ve been fighting for a fair contract — better wages, safety, staffing — for many, many months. When their needs aren’t being met, it means all of our patients aren’t being cared for. That affects our whole city. UMass Memorial is one of the premier hospitals in the city, and we’re their sister hospital, and it’s important that we all show solidarity and our power in numbers. It’s not just a cliche, it works, and these big corporations who make billions of dollars off of our hard work need to know that. So it’s very important to stick together. It’s that simple: stick together.

The Steering Committee of Worcester DSA issued the following statement supporting the rank-and-file nurses:

Central Mass and Worcester DSA stands in complete and unwavering solidarity with nurses at UMass. 5 years ago, our chapter was built around the historic MNA strike at St. Vincent’s Hospital. Many of us work in these hospitals as nurses ourselves. By our own lived experience, we know that the purpose of the healthcare industry in this country is not to provide quality care, but to line the pockets of executives and investors. We will commit ourselves wholeheartedly to the working-class struggle until that’s no longer the case. On the hospital floors — not in the C-suites or boardrooms — are where we find some of the strongest and most dignified human beings in our communities.

When asked what their union meant to them, UMass nurses responded.

“My union? My union, it’s our family, it’s our support, it’s our strength, it’s the soul of everything that we have.”

“We can be stuck with things as they are, or we can push for something bigger, together.”

“Oh, it means solidarity, it means pride, it means honor. The honor to stand up for our patients, for our profession — it really means everything.”

“It means sisterhood and brotherhood, standing for and with each other and making sure that the big corporations and the hospitals aren’t taking advantage of us or our patients. You know, not looking at our patients or our coworkers like they’re just a profit margin. It means everything.”

Jake S is a member of Worcester DSA and a Working Mass correspondent. Interviews were conducted by Worcester DSA members and Working Mass correspondents Jason M, Lewis L, Lily L, and Jake S.

The post UMass Nurses Sound Alarm of Depraved Working Conditions Amidst Contract Fight appeared first on Working Mass.

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By Jane Slaughter

In 2011 Frank Bardacke published an 800-page history of the Farm Workers union: Trampling Out the Vintage: Cesar Chavez and the Two Souls of the United Farm Workers. It opened many eyes to the reasons the UFW became a shadow of its former self.

Bardacke starts the book with an epigraph, a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “O what a fall was there, my countrymen! Then I, and you, and all of us fell down…”

Bardacke was a farmworker in the fields of the Salinas Valley for six seasons in the 1970s. When he decided to write his book years later, he went back to his carpool co-workers, finding them still at work in the fields. In 1994, the union had been thoroughly defeated for nearly 10 years — but his old friends were afraid even to mention its name where the foreman might hear.

I interviewed Frank Bardacke after a New York Times investigation revealed evidence that Chavez had sexually abused young girls who were volunteering with the union, and the allegation that he had also assaulted union co-founder Dolores Huerta. –Jane Slaughter

Labor Notes: The revelations about Cesar Chavez as a sexual predator: many people have said they were “surprised but not shocked” or “shocked but not surprised.” How did you react?

Frank Bardacke: The abuse of Ana Murguia was rumored at the time among UFW staff, primarily at the La Paz headquarters. Many of the rumors originated with Ana’s stepmother, Kathy Murguia. But people just didn’t want to hear it. They didn’t want to look into it very deeply because Cesar was one of these powerful men who could do anything he damn well pleased; he was immune from investigation.

It puts him in the category that seems to be so prevalent these days, or at least more known about: powerful men who can do whatever they want to do, including groom children and abuse women, and they don’t have to answer for it.

WHERE DID IMMUNITY COME FROM?

The next question is where did that power come from. The men we know about, it comes from money or political connections or celebrity. Where did Cesar’s power come from?

The first answer is that he had just turned a losing 1965 grape strike into the most successful boycott in American history, at the conclusion of which in 1970 farmworkers won the most substantial contracts they’d ever had: a hiring hall, grievance procedures, seniority lists. They’d never had those before.

That’s the first reason he had power. Through that he became a celebrity. He was the organizer, the architect, and the main energy behind that boycott, a hero and a celebrity with the kind of immunity that modern celebrities have.

But the second reason was an internal reason within the UFW. Everybody within the organization owed their job to Cesar. He appointed everybody, he could discharge anybody at his will, which he often did. That wasn’t just theoretical power; periodic purges pulsed through the organization. So you didn’t disagree with Cesar except at the peril of losing your job.

Those were the two reasons that no one wanted to follow up on the rumors of abuse. He was an authentic hero who had led and directed that boycott, and everybody in his organization owed their job to him.

Tell us more about the structure of the UFW.

That’s a crucial part of this. From the beginning, say in the early 1960s, the structure was basically volunteer organizers appointed by Chavez who earned $5 a week, plus expenses if on some kind of assignment.

That structure lasted even when the UFW Organizing Committee (UFWOC) became an actual union. They continued this organizational structure of volunteers. They did not set up union locals. The union constitution did not have provision for union locals. There was no way that an ordinary farmworker could elect anybody; everybody served at Chavez’s pleasure. That included the field offices in local places where there were farmworker contracts.

REVOLT OF THE FIELD REPS

Then in 1969 there was a victorious farmworker strike in the Salinas Valley. There was a provision in the agreement that allowed for farmworkers to elect their own reps, called field reps, who would help enforce the contract in the local areas.

Field reps were in place in addition to the field offices, where everyone owed their jobs to Chavez. But the paid reps owed their jobs to their crews. They got the pay equivalent to what their former crews were making. They were highly skilled, high-paid crews, earning as much as $500 a week back in the day.

This was an entirely new situation in the UFW and Chavez had tremendous trouble from the outset with the field reps — who could disagree with him. People hadn’t successfully disagreed with Chavez for nearly 15 years. There was no tradition of arguing and debating and voting as in other unions.

The paid reps became quite independent and collectively they decided that the big problem in Salinas was that they only had half of the valley organized, and for the union to survive, they had to organize the nonunion companies.

So they started organizing the nonunion companies and had some success. But Chavez was never comfortable with the Salinas contracts. There were lots of contract disputes and Chavez had never dealt with contract disputes. He was sick of the complaints, he thought contracts were a pain in the ass. He was busy with the boycott, which he thought was the most important tool the union had.

But what was the boycott for if not to win more contracts?

The reality of contracts was different from the idea of getting more contracts. Contracts brought problems, especially in 1970 in Salinas after a victorious strike. The workers were testing the extent of their victory. They were filing grievances and fighting for seniority rights.

It was the year I went into the fields and I was astounded by the militancy. I was on a crew that was told to thin the lettuce, and people wouldn’t leave the bus because they said the fields had been fumigated too recently — this was a right which was in the contract. The foreman was furious. He ordered us to go into the fields and somebody went to the union office and somebody came out and argued with the boss and we never went to work that day.

Chavez was primarily a boycott leader by this time. He was not really interested in rank-and-file problems on the ground. Moreover, he could see the reps were expanding their constituency and he thought they would become even more powerful. He ordered them to stop organizing, and when they didn’t, he fired them. Even though he didn’t have a legal right to do so.

There was a big battle and it all came out at the UFW convention — and the growers knew about it. They knew the union was divided, and in 1980 they went on the offensive and basically defeated the union. This story in all its gory details can be found in my book.

TAKE-HOMES

Is there a lesson here for unionists about how their unions should be run?

Yes. Democratic unionism is essential to union strength. Open discussion and debate is essential to building the kind of unity that you need. The lack of democratic organization is what caused the downfall of the UFW. The lack of democratic organization not only gave Chavez immunity in his abuse of girls but is also what caused the downfall of the UFW.

Is there a lesson about making it all about one leader?

I’m not against leaders. Good leaders are essential to a movement. The main lesson I see is that the good leader has got to emerge out of a democratic tradition and democratic discussion and shouldn’t serve for life.

What about the rumors that the union was opposed to undocumented workers?

That is another long, sad story. At various periods the union was actively opposed to the undocumented. They even set up their own border patrol line in the Imperial Valley, called the “wet line.” The UFW had an anti-illegals campaign in the early ’70s in which they actually fingered to the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] undocumented people. UFW loyalists would provide a list to the local INS office of the undocumented people working in the fields.

These were their co-workers.

Yes. Close to half the workers in the fields were undocumented by this time. Why would an organization that was trying to organize field workers set one half of field workers against the other half?

Chavez’s answer was, “We have to explain to the boycotters why we are losing contracts. Illegals is the answer. The undocumented are taking the contracts away from us.” Which points to the fact that the best way to understand Chavez in the mid-1970s was as a boycott leader, not a farmworker leader. He sacrificed the organizing of farmworkers to strengthen his boycott organizing.

What now?

I’m for taking down the statues and renaming the schools and the streets. I’m not for replacing them with the name of Dolores Huerta, who was a loyal lieutenant and very often the point person in the various purges of people who had elicited Chavez’s displeasure.

If you want to give them a name of a farmworker, give them the name of one of the reps who are still known in the fields. Cleofas Guzman. Mario Bustamante.

[This article originally appeared in Labor Notes and Jacobin.]

A Lack of Democracy in the United Farm Workers Gave Chavez Immunity was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Comrade Drake

It is an unfortunate reality in our capitalist society that divisiveness is endemic in our daily lives. Despite our best efforts such divisiveness can enter our organizing spaces, manifesting in sectarianism and compromising unity and impacting our ability to effectively organize our workplaces and our communities. 

The rich history of our movement grants us the privilege of looking to the past to determine our path forward, and in this vein I’m reminded of a phrase from the Chinese socialist period: “Cure the sickness to save the patient”. In context:

Finally, in opposing subjectivism, sectarianism and stereotyped Party writing we must have in mind two purposes: first, “learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones”, and second, “cure the sickness to save the patient”. The mistakes of the past must be exposed without sparing anyone’s sensibilities; it is necessary to analyse and criticize what was bad in the past with a scientific attitude so that work in the future will be done more carefully and done better. This is what is meant by “learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones”. But our aim in exposing errors and criticizing shortcomings, like that of a doctor curing a sickness, is solely to save the patient and not to doctor him to death. A person with appendicitis is saved when the surgeon removes his appendix. 

So long as a person who has made mistakes does not hide his sickness for fear of treatment or persist in his mistakes until he is beyond cure, so long as he honestly and sincerely wishes to be cured and to mend his ways, we should welcome him and cure his sickness so that he can become a good comrade. We can never succeed if we just let ourselves go, and lash out at him. In treating an ideological or a political malady, one must never be rough and rash but must adopt the approach of “curing the sickness to save the patient”, which is the only correct and effective method.

There was a comrade in my old organization who would show up consistently late to meetings and events and forget to complete tasks they had volunteered for. Perhaps understandably, this was incredibly frustrating for not only me but for the other members in the organization as well, and this frustration ultimately came to a head when they were an hour late to an event we were tabling at they had committed to bringing supplies for. In our debrief meeting we brought this up, and they apologized for it, saying that they had a variety of personal issues that made it difficult for them to keep on top of a schedule, and also correctly criticized me for being undisciplined about planning events ahead of time. 

My own frustration blinded me to not only the underlying issue behind their truancy but also to my own unprincipled behavior. Had I approached the issue as “curing the sickness to save the patient” then perhaps I would’ve also seen the sickness within myself that needed curing. With this in mind, we reengaged from a place of mutual best interest. They committed to showing up on time, and I committed to being more disciplined about event planning.

The analogy isn’t exact in the sense that all of us hold some mix of correct and incorrect ideas and in practice they are often rarely as clear cut as something like appendicitis is. However in today’s “rough and rash” political environment where debate amongst the broader left tends to be fought in the heavily polemicized social media thunderdome we should actively work within ourselves to approach disagreement with the understanding of mutual interest. Like an immune system fighting off an infection we are all constantly waging a struggle between bourgeois and proletarian ideas within ourselves and it would be a disservice to ourselves, our movement, and our comrades to be unnecessarily harsh during periods of ideological conflict.

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Reflections on ICE's presence abroad and the public backlash it has caused.

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Pro wrestlers face dangerous conditions without basic protections or representation. See how close some wrestlers have come to winning more than the belt.

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The Palestine Papers aim to spotlight Massachusetts organizations to increase local engagement, accessibility, and solidarity in the fight for Palestinian liberation. This newsletter is produced yearly by organizers in Boston and has been published by editorial consent of Working Mass.

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Boston DSA is proud to endorse Evan MacKay for State Representative in the 25th Middlesex district! Evan is the former president of the Harvard Graduate Students Union, a local organizer on issues of social, racial, economic, and environmental justice, and an active member of Boston DSA. They are seeking office to be a strong advocate for a transparent government and for working class issues such as rent control, and to take a stand against the failures of the Massachusetts Democratic Party and state house leadership.