by Jeremiah M

It’s been awfully hot so I try to have something cold to drink to offer my mail carrier. He’s never been interested but I feel compelled to offer. It’s not a problem for me to do so since I work at home and he’s one of the people I see everyday. Like a coworker almost. He comes to my door every day but Sunday, every day of the year, except holidays.

It’s kind of amazing, thinking about it, but every day the Federal Government sends one of its agents to every house in the country. Lest you forget, you’re part of this giant beast – a uniformed agent of the state appears unbidden at your house. It would be pretty impressive, actually, if not for what the letter carrier brings me.

The national government, every day, can reach out and deliver an important personal message to every American. And every day I’m told that values are king, that I owe money to strangers, that other strangers want my money and that I may have to be a juror. If we look at the mechanism of delivery, the whole post office, it’s a fantastical service that performs a daily miracle. This miracle’s entire purpose is to extract money from people.

Every day we are buried in coupons and bills and limited offers to participate in usury. Turning the miracle from gold to lead in the anti-alchemy of the profit motive. Where a miraculous act should edify and uplift, this one invalidates the self, turns a citizen into an occupant and a neighbor into a mark. Commerce serves to expand the distance between people and it’s always trying to make that distance that much greater; any division is a beachhead where commerce can wedge itself, a place where it can start extracting value from a subject populace.

I can’t help but imagine a post office that served the citizenry rather than their bosses. A service that dispersed information and coordinated connections rather than serving to isolate subjects seems like something that a government based on serving its citizens would do. When we examine the practical execution of the post office’s miracle we see that it serves the government’s true citizens, its only constituents, which are commercial concerns that prey on citizens. We’re reminded once again that we’re not regarded as citizens but as ‘civilians’ – irrelevant inessential objects that must be managed in service of the ruling class. A daily miracle that could reinforce connections and which could improve all of our lives is bent toward a ruthless purpose. The infrastructure of the nation has been placed into the hands of people who can’t help but misuse it.

The post Who Does the Post Office Serve? appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

On Tuesday, over 300,000 Wisconsinites chose democratic socialism – an economic and political system run by and for the working class – as the future they believe in. Our chapters of the  Democratic Socialists of America are proud of the work that we did to get our member Francesca Hong within 4,000 votes of winning the Democratic nomination for governor.

In the face of organized money and a political establishment hell-bent on keeping working people out of power, DSA and the Hong campaign gave corporate Democrats and their wealthy donors a literal run for their money. 

Fran won nearly 40% of the vote despite being outspent, having limited national support, and facing a barrage of attacks from both the far right and the Democratic Party establishment. Working class Wisconsinites are ready to demand more. 

But the political terrain is uneven. Wealthy elites subvert the democracy of our elections through their control of the corporate media and the lobbying of our politicians. They promote “electability” myths, claim Fran’s platform is too radical, and focus on 6 year old social media posts — anything to avoid discussing Fran’s policies. Despite their efforts, Fran’s unprecedented success makes clear that her platform is extremely popular with working people. There is tremendous support across the state for strong unions, universal healthcare, universal childcare, and AI policy that puts workers and communities first. She united socialists, progressives, independents, and even conservatives around their shared interests as workers. This is what democracy looks like. 

This campaign was always about more than getting a candidate elected. It was about empowering working people to organize in their workplaces and communities, and build the lasting power we need to have real control over our own lives. DSA organizers have built and run dozens of regional committees around the state, and we’ve been humbled to see the ways volunteers have identified our movement as their new political home. Our membership is growing at an unprecedented rate, and new chapters are forming in every corner of the state — proving that socialism is gaining influence not just in Madison and Milwaukee, but all of Wisconsin.

In the fight to defeat Tom Tiffany and Republicans up and down the ballot, the hundreds of thousands of people who voted for Democratic Socialist politics will be critical. Those Wisconsinites want to see that vision reflected in the nominee’s campaign. No matter what, DSA will continue the fight for a Wisconsin that works for the working class to empower workers to demand what they deserve and organize for a democratic socialist future.

If that’s a future you want to live in, go to dsausa.org/join and become a member of your local DSA chapter. There’s work to be done and a world to win, and we’re just getting started. 

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By: B. Greer

The terms “abundance” and “supply” are unavoidable in the housing affordability debate. 

The Healey administration’s plan to address the housing crisis, “Achieve a State of Housing Abundance” confidently states that a “lack of supply is the root cause of our housing cost crisis.” The state is correct that Massachusetts needs more homes, as does most everywhere, but treating the supply shortage as the root cause mistakes an outcome for an explanation. 

The problem is not simply that the market has failed to produce enough housing, but that housing is produced, financed, owned, and governed through institutions that benefit from the very scarcity that the Healey administration cited as the sole culprit.

The housing crisis grew out of an inherent contradiction in how housing operates. For tenants and workers, it is shelter: the place people live, raise families, and recover from work. For developers, contractors, and labor, it is a commodity: something built, bought, and sold through the market. For owners, lenders, investors, and towns, it is an asset: a source of rent, wealth, credit, and tax revenue.

Clearly, these roles do not fit together neatly. Shelter requires affordability and stability. Commodity production requires profit. Asset ownership depends on rising rents, rising land values, and protected resale prices. 

The same system that asks housing to become affordable also demands that it stay expensive. High prices generate rent, support land values, secure loans, and protect local tax bases. The crisis we see today is the logical outcome of a system expected to provide affordable shelter, produce profit, preserve wealth, secure debt, reward investment, and sustain municipal finance.

Supply-Side Limitations

Private development responds first to profit, not need. 

My work as a designer focused on multifamily housing has taught me that projects only move forward when expected rents or sale prices can cover land, construction costs, financing, and profit. Private development can add homes and ease pressure, but when rents fall, prices weaken, or returns shrink, capital pulls back. 

The market does not keep building just because working people need homes.

The abundance movement wants to recreate the rate of residential construction we saw in the postwar era. However, the postwar boom cannot be separated from the massive federal subsidies that supported its construction. We do not have the modern suburb without the GI Bill, Federal Housing Administration-backed insurance, and the creation of the interstate highway system. Since the postwar boom, and subsequent pullback of government support, housing construction has sporadically materialized as a declining series of booms and busts shaped by recessions, credit conditions, land prices, and construction costs.

The role of states and cities rise and fall within that larger cycle, while their relative position depends on material conditions like land, labor costs, infrastructure, and regional growth pressure. 

Massachusetts can reform zoning and strengthen public policy, but it cannot replicate the building rate of a state like Florida without the available land and market conditions that make that scale of private construction possible. Massachusetts has set a goal of 220,000 new homes by 2035, but so far it has not built the public institutions needed to build, preserve, and keep that housing affordable. Unsurprisingly, we aren’t on track. 

What Needs to Be Done?

All three sides of the housing contradiction must urgently be confronted. 

Massachusetts, and the Healey administration, must protect housing as shelter, build and repair housing beyond the limits of private profit, and weaken the power of landlords, banks, investors, and wealthy towns to benefit from scarcity. More homes are necessary, but new housing becomes an affordability strategy only when public power determines where it is built, who controls it, and whether it stays affordable.

The blueprint forward is simple. Housing must be defended as shelter. In both gentrifying Boston-area neighborhoods and Gateway Cities across the state, the goal must be reinvestment without displacement. That means rent control, eviction protections, and prioritizing affordable housing.

Second, housing production must become a public responsibility. When expected returns fall, the market slows, even if people still need housing. Massachusetts needs public financing, infrastructure investment, and a state social housing authority capable of building and preserving homes directly.

Legislation should be passed mandating that municipalities allow  apartments, remove parking minimums, and allow smaller residential lots that can accommodate smaller homes. Exclusive suburbs like Milton and Wellesley should also have to use public land for social housing and meet enforceable regional housing obligations. Communities that hoard access to jobs, transit, schools, and high-value land should not be enabled to push all housing construction  into working-class neighborhoods.

These are not separate crises. Displacement in high-rent neighborhoods, abandonment in older industrial cities, and exclusion in wealthy suburbs are different expressions of the same housing contradiction.

The housing crisis cannot truly be solved without federal action, but Massachusetts cannot wait for Washington to move first. If scarcity is protected through law, finance, and land ownership, then those are the forces we have to confront here.

This will not be easy, but there is no other option. Massachusetts must protect tenants, build social housing, and challenge the system that organizes housing around scarcity. Despite the recent loss in the Massachusetts Supreme Court, the need to push for rent control has not ended.

Boston DSA Housing Working Group Co-chair Tim Scalona addressed the problem clearly:

As rents explode and few affordable housing opportunities exist without a years-long waitlist, tenants risk an eviction notice after each health emergency or job loss.

The task now is to fight for an equitable future, building by building, city by city, and law by law.

B. Greer is the Housing Justice Campaign Lead for Boston DSA and a senior designer focused on multifamily housing. He is currently working on the social housing proposal in Cambridge alongside CHJC.

The post OPINION: Healey’s Abundance Relies on Institutions Keeping Us in Scarcity appeared first on Working Mass.

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Seattle DSA stands in solidarity with the more than 140 immigrants currently organizing a hunger strike at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA. It’s being reported that these brave community members have not eaten in more than 24 hours in protest of the continued inhumane conditions that they and their fellow detainees are being subjected to. 

The GEO Group owned facility has had more than 10 hunger strikes organized by detainees just since the beginning of 2026, a clear sign that the conditions in the already horrific facility are deteriorating as Trump’s regime continues to pursue a blatantly racist immigration policy which has led to death and disorder all over our country. 

Like so many current events, this specific crisis sits at the crossroads of our society’s systemic xenophobia and crony capitalism. Our tax dollars are being paid to the GEO Group, a corporation which donated millions of dollars to Trump and his endorsed candidates, so that their private corporation would be given multi-million dollar contracts to confine, abuse, force work, and starve tens of thousands of our neighbors and family members that have been arrested by ICE.

Seattle DSA demands an end to all forms of immigration detention. We specifically demand the closure of the Northwest Detention Center and the immediate release of everyone who is being held and tortured for profit inside. We encourage you to call your representatives and demand they take action to get these facilities closed and our neighbors returned to our communities. 

This isn’t just a film review

On a Wednesday afternoon, I walked into the Music Box Theater, ready to watch Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey in 70mm. Nolan’s film is carried by an ensemble cast, beautiful cinematography, and of course, the use of IMAX cameras, a first for a blockbuster film. Yet after leaving the showing, Nolan’s interpretation of Homer’s iconic work wasn’t the first thing that came to my mind. Instead, I concluded that the film was a response to the United States’ war and invasion of Iraq.

Warning: the following contains spoilers ahead for Nolan’s The Odyssey

Baghdad is Troy, Troy is Baghdad

Nolan’s film opens on Odysseus’s flashback, like Homer’s epic, to the Trojan War. This opening scene depicts Greek soldiers hiding in the Trojan Horse, a ‘gift’ to the Trojans and their gods. Sinon, played by Elliot Page, sacrifices himself before the Trojans to ensure that the horse makes it through Troy’s walls. At night, after being dragged in, the Greek soldiers descend from the wooden horse and unleash chaos throughout the city of Troy.

This is the first direct comparison to the invasion of Iraq, specifically to the fall of Baghdad. The looting and arson besieging Troy is a direct link to how the United States and its allies (most notably the United Kingdom) besieged Baghdad in April of 2003. The Greek soldiers created chaos while panicked Trojan civilians tried to escape, with statues of the gods themselves beheaded or broken during the siege. One might recall how U.S. soldiers helped Iraqi civilians destroy statues of Saddam Hussein. It is clear Nolan is connecting the Greeks’ savagery to the United States and its actions in Iraq.

As with the fall of Troy, with the capture of Baghdad, all of Iraq fell under U.S. occupation. The Bush administration’s Trojan horse was the promise that they would bring about democracy for the Iraqi people after Saddam Hussein’s rule. However, after two decades (which is how long it takes for Odysseus to get home), the U.S. occupation decimated the Iraqi population and left puppet leaders throughout the region, not to mention human rights violations committed by the U.S. and its allies (see Abu Ghraib).

The final part of the film, similar to the original epic, reflects on the hero’s journey – specifically Odysseus’s regret for his actions against Troy and the fate of the men under his command. It mirrors that of veterans of the Iraq War who regret their actions in Iraq, how they were just ‘following orders’ (Agemmon and Odysseus play the roles of the Bush administration and the U.S. military). They bear the scars of war both for themselves and the people they have killed or hurt along the way. In the end, just like the fall of Baghdad, the fall of Troy reflects on how decades of bloodshed and the mad decline of human civilization have unfolded amid promises of so-called democracy.

“…To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entirely, including his home…”

— Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, talking to Penelope (The Odyssey, 2026)

Trump’s “Golden Age” of America

While this film is more or less a direct analog to the Iraq War, Nolan takes a slight jab at the current Trump regime near the end. Odysseus mentions the ending of the Bronze Age to his wife Penelope. Trump, in his second term, has boasted that he is bringing a “Golden Age” to America. But as we know, it has been the opposite, with blowback from Iraq and Afghanistan, the continuation of the genocide in Palestine, his Gestapo (ICE) running around and rounding up our immigrant neighbors, and a failing economy. Just like the Bronze Age, Trump’s “Golden Age” and the American Empire will fall.

The post Iraq: America’s Trojan War appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

On July 21, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair General Dan Caine appeared before the Senate Appropriations Committee to ask for $87.6 billion in emergency supplemental funding for the war in Iran. This amount would add to the current funding of $839 billion found in the most recent budget and the $150 billion added last year in the Republicans’ “Big Beautiful Bill,” for a total budget of over $1 trillion.

Senators had reasonable questions and received clownish answers. Shouldn’t all of this be approved by Congress? (No.) What happened to the money we already gave you? (Those are for different, unrelated bombs.) How can Iran be killing soldiers when you said previously that we destroyed their missiles? (Iran has more, hidden missiles because “That’s what terror regimes would do.”) Why are we bombing Iran to stop their nuclear program if we already destroyed it? (“Iranians foolishly continued to attempt to pursue nuclear capabilities.”)

“We hear a different rationale for this war every few days,” said Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), vice chair of the committee. Pointing to the shifting objectives during this now five-month war, she said: 

“It was about preempting imminent threats which we now know did not exist. It was about regime change, then liberating the Iranian people. It was about destroying Iran’s nuclear program and its navy, and at one point it was about taking out its ballistic missiles […] Trump has even suggested the war is about taking Iran’s oil to ‘Make a fortune.’ And now the United States’ primary strategic objective seems to be to actually just reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which, of course, was fully open, toll-free, before this war began.”

Murray is also the only senator to note that the request includes unrelated items such as “Almost $1 billion for SOUTHCOM, nearly $1 billion to keep deploying the National Guard here in DC, and more than $1 billion for the southern border.”

These items being included make perfect sense under the current model of governance. Under a regime where funds appropriated by Congress can be withheld at-will by the executive, it doesn’t really matter what the mechanisms of funding are as long as it keeps flowing in the right directions. And subjugating brown people costs a lot of your money. Summed up a different way by Hegseth, “Every dollar appropriated to the Department of War will be focused on building the lethality of our joint forces and reinforcing peace through strength.”

Only one senator displayed the level of emotion I’d expect for a conversation about murder. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) spent her time haranguing the assembled warmongers and asking why we couldn’t be here mongering something else. “[New Yorkers] are seeing their healthcare bills rise because [of] massive cuts to medicaid. They’ve seen their grocery and gas bills rise, and this unpopular and unauthorized war abroad is a higher priority to this administration than their ability to feed their families and provide healthcare to their loved ones who are sick.”

Any amount of pushback given by this committee to the administration is tempered by the effusive praise multiple senators offered for the war and for alleged rapist Pete Hegseth.

“Secretary Hegseth,” Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) said, “Thank you for being here and the amazing job that you’re doing. I have the utmost respect for you, your team, and what you’re accomplishing.”

Democratic socialists have little praise to offer anyone in this hearing. National DSA has passed resolutions calling for an end to all foreign wars, the closing of overseas bases, and ending sanctions on Iran. It is long past time for Americans to reject two parties equally supportive of overseas murder, even if one party (the Democrats) technically approves and funds that murder using proper procedure.

Will the Senate go on to support this package? One senator has no idea: Senator John Kennedy (R-LA). Because the emergency funding request also includes provisions for farm aid, sitting next to Hegseth throughout the hearing was Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins.

Kennedy mumbled his way through a series of stern but meaningless questions for Caine and Hegseth (occasionally pausing to stare intensely into open air), before turning to Rollins and engaging in a line of questioning involving “Other countries who grow oysters and shrimp in a ditch and shoot them full of antibiotics,” with the exact same seriousness as his questions about war.

Kennedy has no relation to the more famous Massachusetts Kennedys, but Senator Kennedy is the inheritor of a vast fortune built on slavery and sharecropping in Catahoula and Concordia parishes in his home state of Louisiana.  With this being the caliber of person in our legislature’s upper house, there is little reason for faith in a just outcome. Maybe we should just abolish the whole senate.

The post Craven Warmongers Beg the Senate for More of Your Money appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

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By: Jason M, Jake S

WORCESTER – Teachers and staff organized under the Massachusetts Community College Council (MCCC) have been engaged in contract negotiations with the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education for the last few months. Despite Massachusetts offering free community college through the MassEducate program, faculty at community colleges across the state face conditions that harm their wellbeing. Low pay, food insecurity, and ever-increasing class sizes hurt faculty and prevent them from being able to teach their students. While community college presidents across the state regularly make more than $200,000 annually, community college faculty make the lowest average salary nationwide, according to a study conducted by the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA). 

Nearly half of MCCC members struggle with food insecurity and most need a second job to pay their bills. Increases in the size of online classes by as much as 56% undermines existing protections in the Local QCC Distance Education agreement and severely hampers the ability of faculty and staff to offer students a quality education. 

The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education has not entertained a proposal from MCCC. Only three bargaining sessions have been held over a four-month period, during which the Board has tried to implement restrictions over rank-and-file MCCC members’ ability to attend, and changes to how union representatives are compensated for their time spent negotiating. The union has filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) over the latter.

Working Mass sat down with Caitlin B, an academic advisor and enrollment counselor, as well as secretary for the union’s QCC chapter (the Quinsigamond Community College Professional Association, or QCCPA), to talk about union members’ concerns.

Quotations used in this article have been edited for clarity and brevity.

Distraction, Delay, and Hostility

Salary, workload, and schedule flexibility are top concerns amongst QCCPA members. The Mass Board of Higher Ed, instead of entertaining proposals from the union, has forced negotiations to fixate around rules of engagement. Caitlin explained:

We haven’t proposed anything regarding these issues yet. So far, we’ve been working with management on establishing ground rules for bargaining. This has already been difficult to negotiate.

The Mass Board of Higher Education has also earned an Unfair Labor Practice charge from QCCPA early on by undermining compensation of the union’s bargaining team.

They don’t want us to be compensated, so we’ve been doing all of our bargaining outside of working hours. I’ve never done this before, but other people are like: ‘This is absurd.’

The school argues that rank-and-file union members should not be physically visible to the boss when they attend virtual bargaining sessions.

I’ve heard horror stories about bargaining, and so far I haven’t experienced anything that bad, but this year, there were some issues with silent representatives. Dues-paying members can silently attend bargaining sessions, and there’s this complaint about, should they be visible during the Zoom session, should they not be visible, it clogs things up, blah blah blah.

The Board of Higher Education hasn’t offered much detail to explain why seeing union members’ faces make them so uncomfortable during negotiations. Caitlin can only assume their intent.

The silent representatives are really important for us, because when we caucus in between bargaining sessions, they actually have information they can give to us that we wouldn’t necessarily know off the cuff. Management doesn’t want them there, they don’t want to look at people when they’re telling them: ‘No, you can’t get this, you can’t get that’, so that’s been the biggest issue for them right now.” 

A Real Sense of Ownership

When asked about what being in a union meant to her, Caitlin paused thoughtfully.

Without the union, we’d be at the mercy of whatever our employee decides what is best for us. When you work in a system with so many different components and types of employees, having proper representation is essential. 

Caitlin continued:

My coworkers have an unwavering dedication to their students. We work together on a mission to help our students get what they need, and at the community college level, our students may not be “traditional.” We are their advocates and support systems, and that is something worth preserving.

Caitlin reflected positively on rank-and-file engagement at QCC.

We’ve increased our membership a bit. We’ve got the MTA [Massachusetts Teachers Association, of which MCCC is an affiliate] noticing that and coming to our meetings every week, they’re really paying attention to how we’re doing things, which is really nice. So I think watching the change, watching people being more engaged in it, makes you want to be more engaged in it.

Caitlin in large part credited James L, president of the QCC chapter of MCCC and an active member of Worcester DSA who previously served on its Steering Committee, with this growth. “He quickly formed an organizing committee on campus, which exists at the statewide level, but usually locals don’t have one,” she explained.

I think once people started realizing, oh, we can actually do something with this, it’s not just a contract, it’s also action, you know? I think that’s really important.

Workers united can, in fact, demand a say in the place where their labor is bought and sold is why a strong, conscious labor movement is a central component to building working class power. Ownership unites the collective. When workers organize amongst themselves to confront a class enemy, they become the protagonists of the struggle they live through every day. They learn to think and act collectively, laying down the paving stones along the road to a better future. One where the working class is in full control of society, not the bosses and the capitalists.

Jason M and Jake S are members of Central Mass and Worcester DSA. They are contributing authors for Working Mass..

The post Community College Faculty and Staff, Suffering Low Pay and Board Hostility, Fight for a Contract appeared first on Working Mass.

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