by Richard P

Why do we protest? In a recent blog post, comrade Kevin N spoke of how his “romanticized 1960s images of crowds of protestors” transformed eventually into a commitment to “organizing, not just mobilizing,” and on both points, I agree with him. However, his argument that protests are “cathartic, empowering, and publicly visible” but ultimately “will accomplish … little” misses a few key points.

Kevin suggests that protests are simply tools to mobilize people to show up, and that organizing, which has “a deep commitment to developing one another into leaders both inside and outside the organization,” is fundamentally different and unrelated to this mobilization effort. I would instead argue that if we want to “organize people into DSA and build it into a formidable political force that can leverage its power from below,” we must engage with them where they are, and that includes through endorsing and attending protests. Thousands of people showed up for the No Kings rally last October, and the numbers increased in March. These protests are thus an excellent opportunity to meet potential comrades, and show left-leaning Clevelanders that Cleveland DSA cares about the issues that they care about enough to march in the streets about it.

As a chapter that says we are informed by labor organizing strategies (shout-out to No Shortcuts), we recognize that the foundation of that organizing is solidarity. The working class acting together in solidarity has ended authoritarian governments, improved the lives of millions of union workers, and spurred some of America’s most necessary changes such as civil rights legislation, expanded healthcare coverage, and child labor laws. Protesting, too, just like those romanticized 1960s marches in the civil rights and anti-war movements, is an act of solidarity.

But what does solidarity look like in 2026? The socialist theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, in his upcoming book Solidarity: The Work of Recognition, makes the argument that we need a “solidarity of the shaken,” that is, “a radical human togetherness formed out of an acceptance of our shared vulnerability and reliance on each other in a fallen world.” To protest, then, is not just to have a shared moment of catharsis, but to stand in solidarity with those who are feeling vulnerable. Our current moment, brought on by the failed capitalist state that is the United States of America, has left too many people vulnerable and marginalized. It is an outward and visible sign of our inward emotions, worries, and hopes, being present in physical space and taking on risk to support the marginalized (especially when they may not be able or willing to take on that risk themselves), not just posturing “allyship.”

This solidarity requires urgency and discernment in where that urgency is applied. Not everything is a five-alarm fire, but these emergencies do exist. When the next Tamir Rice or Tanisha Anderson is brutally killed by the police, the next bomb is dropped on a country we do not want to be at war with, the next ICE action crosses yet another line, or some fresh hell that we cannot begin to imagine occurs, our solidarity is important. We can’t just ignore what other organizations and people think about us – they, as our fellow humans and potential comrades in collective struggle, deserve our solidarity and for us to be in solidarity together. When we remember the civil rights movement, we remember the titanic work of Black-led organizations like the NAACP, the SCLC, and the SNCC, but there were white people and groups who showed up in solidarity too, from Dwight Eisenhower’s personal physician Paul Dudley White to the lawyer Jack Greenberg, who argued over 40 civil rights cases in front of the Supreme Court. When we recognize that we are all vulnerable and hurt by the system of capital, we then realize that it is incumbent on each other to be in solidarity and support – including at protests.

In the last verse of that great union anthem, “Solidarity Forever,” we sing that “In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold, / Greater than the might of armies, multiplied a thousand-fold. / We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old / For the union makes us strong. / Solidarity forever! / Solidarity forever! / Solidarity forever! / For the union makes us strong.” 

Our union comrades show us what this means every day – even when their union isn’t on strike, members show up to other protests, teach others about the power of the picket line, and support union organizers that are helping other people get the same protections they have. There is no reason we shouldn’t want to do the same for everyone suffering under the boot of capital and fascism, especially when we are discussing building towards a General Strike in 2028. That takes organizing, from conversations, to strike votes, to picket lines. But it also includes collective action, i.e. a protest on May Day this year.

If you consider the prototypical protester, the “liberal wine mom,” if you will, there are avenues available to us to welcome them into our movement. An avowed democratic socialist with the NYC-DSA endorsement won a plurality of all white women in the 2025 New York Mayoral election. Even amongst older white women, he still got over a third of their support last November. They’re not turned off by democratic socialism and might even be interested in our work – but what have we done to recruit them and get them to join our movement? We need to show up in the places where they gather, including protests. Protesters are already agitated and will know something about our organization or democratic socialism because of figures like Zohran, Bernie, or Rashida – that’s a lot of our organizing conversation already done! Cori Bush, a phenomenal fighter for the working class in Congress, came out of the movement in Ferguson. Our comrade, Cleveland City Councilman Tanmay Shah, as well as many other electeds, have come out of the labor movement.

The more than twenty DSA members who were at the Cleveland No Kings protest at the end of March saw a moment that encapsulated the issues we’re dealing with. State Senator Nickie Antonio, who gets to be considered “progressive” in part because of her sexuality, despite her fundraising with senior Republicans, stopped the speech of a Latina activist speaking in Spanish about the fight for immigration rights. A video of something similar happening to a pro-Palestinian speaker in Pennsylvania has gone decently viral. Antonio, like current Flock employee and former Cleveland City Councilman Kerry McCormack, benefits from a system where, as Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò argues in Elite Capture, identity politics has been twisted to serve the elites and their interests, not those of working class people.

If you are unconvinced by the establishment’s choices, you can either sigh and return to being apathetic, or you can work with an organization that is actually trying to challenge the Democratic status quo that self-aggrandizes itself as “brave” while simultaneously snatching the mic from a Latina discussing immigrant rights. A protest isn’t the end of our anger and frustration – it’s the beginning. Being present and using that presence to invite someone to consider joining DSA and enter our membership pipeline gets them into a structured mass party-like movement that takes them away from the unstructured progressive movement that, in the immortal words of Jo Freeman, isn’t “very good for getting things done,” a take echoed by Vincent Bevins in If We Burn.

Our transformation into a mass party does not need to be slow and incremental – as comrades in New York showed us last year and as our comrades in Wisconsin are showing us right now with Francesca Hong. The voters supporting her and putting her at first place in the polling aren’t just members of Wisconsin DSA chapters. When we present our message, as Oliver Larkin is doing in his primary against Jared Moskowitz in Florida, we see voters joining with us. Mass action, be it electoral work, protests, public comments, community response networks, or encampments, helps people get to know us better by meeting them where they are and on the issues they care about – and that’s the core of solidarity.

The word “solidarity” comes to us from the French solidarité which is rooted in the Latin solidus – Firm. Whole. Undivided. Entire. What transformations might we see in our work and our world if we lived into those four words as a goal for who we are fighting for and the type of movement we have to build? Every time we turn up and show out, a new organizer grows in their skills and learns even more what solidarity means, not just with each other as comrades, but with the marginalized who we continue to fight for. Let us be firm on our beliefs and what we are called to do, but with the understanding that we are seeking an improved life for the working class of the entire country, and indeed the world. Together, the people must be undivided – no matter where or how we meet them.

The post “Solidarity Forever”: The Need for Protest Activism appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

DSA proudly endorses Val Thomason in the race for Nevada’s State Assembly, District 10! Val is a long time DSA member and a pillar in Las Vegas DSA’s fight for rent control, health care, worker’s rights, and more!

We look forward to continuing to fight alongside Val and Las Vegas DSA and bring Democratic Socialism to the Nevada state government and beyond!

We stand with Val, Las Vegas DSA, and our comrades across the nation as we elect more socialists to public office. Let’s carry the torch for our comrades! A little bit of your socialist cash will help us take out capitalist trash!

Val is part of a slate of candidates in the Socialist Cash Takes Out Capitalist Trash fundraising project!

DSA is thrilled to endorse Richie Floyd and wholeheartedly supports his re-election to St. Petersburg’s city council! Richie is one of the most historic DSA candidates of our time, and we will fight alongside him once again!

A few years ago, Richie Floyd became the first openly self-identified socialist to win an election in Florida since the early 1900s, and he became St. Peterburg’s youngest council member!

While many of Florida’s elected officials remain openly hostile to socialists and insist on pushing red-bait culture war hysteria, Richie held his ground fighting for tenant’s rights, reproductive rights, and the entire working class of his city and state.

Richie is part of a slate of candidates in the Socialist Cash Takes Out Capitalist Trash fundraising project!

Over the Christmas and New Year holidays, I re-watched the films of George Lucas’s Star Wars science fiction franchise. Although Star Wars is very well-known, it also has been almost 50 years since it first came out, so a quick synopsis is that it starts with a galaxy under the rule of a democratic but ineffectual government called the Galactic Republic. Internal strife and an outbreak of civil war lead to a politician, Palpatine, being able to seize absolute power and install himself as Galactic Emperor. The formation of the Galactic Empire inspires the rise of the Rebel Alliance. Over the decades, the franchise has produced nine films, which have a timeless quality, showing little awareness of current political and cultural trends but being archetypical enough that many of its themes can be applied to contemporary challenges.

The drivers of the story are individuals who are sensitive to a semi-sentient spiritual force (i.e., the Force). The concept of the Force is influenced by animism and eastern mysticism (George Lucas identifies as a “Buddhist Methodist”). The Force is variously described as being generated either mystically by all living things or by special cells in the body called midi-chlorians. Those born sensitive to the Force can sense the feelings (empathy) and thoughts (telepathy) of others as well as control matter through telekinesis. It seems also that mastery of the Force can be attained either through controlling one’s passions or embracing them fully. The latter leads to the “Dark Side of the Force.”  

At the start of the franchise, this Force has become the focus of two diametrically opposed religious orders of light-saber wielding warrior monks. The Jedi seek to control their desires to focus their use of the Force toward duty and selfless service to others in order to bring peace and justice to the galaxy. The Sith, on the other hand, embrace the Dark Side of the Force and use it to accumulate power for themselves. Palpatine turns out to be a Sith who almost destroys the Jedi through the help of the Jedi-turned Sith Anakin Skywalker, who is renamed Darth Vader when he becomes a Sith. Darth Vader betrays the Jedi but at the end of Episode VI turns back to good and gives his life to save his Jedi son, Luke Skywalker, and defeat Emperor Palpatine. Vader could be seen as a sort of dark messiah who overcomes evil through self-sacrifice after turning good. 

In re-watching the films, I was interested in the ways that both the Jedi and the Sith play a significant role in transforming the galactic civilization. The Jedi act as guardians of the Republic, safeguarding peace and justice. When the greedy Trade Federation attempts to invade the peaceful planet Naboo to exploit its natural resources in Episode I, the Jedi are called in to negotiate with the Trade Federation, though negotiations turn out to be short. When a league of separatists (instigated by the Sith) begins to threaten the Republic, the Jedi intervene at the First Battle of Geonosis in Episode II, albeit with the help of a clone army. It is also ultimately a Jedi who defeats Galactic Emperor Palpatine in Episode VI and restores peace and freedom to the galaxy.

The role of the Jedi is not limited to politics and society. It is also implied that they play a role in the accumulation of knowledge and the advancement of science. The Jedi Library on the urban planet Coruscant contains all knowledge known by the galactic civilization. In the Expanded Universe, which contains novels and games created by fans to expand on the canonical films, there are Jedi researchers who specialize in specific scientific fields, including archaeology, linguistics, geology, astronomy, and biology.

Other than the obvious role of the Sith in creating the Galactic Empire, it is also implied that the Sith actively encourage capitalistic exploitation and extractivism. In the recent Disney Star Wars spinoff shows such as Andor, Imperial officers talk of “profit.” A major plot element of Andor is the Galactic Empire inciting unrest on the planet Ghorman to create pretense for genocide so that the Empire can remove the current  population and strip-mine the planet for a valuable mineral, kalkite.

Intriguingly, the Sith never appear to indulge in the luxuries that come from ruling an empire. Their lifestyle remains austere and monastic. In this way, they resemble Karl Marx’s description of early capitalists in volume I of Capital. The capitalists see themselves only as profit-making machines and shun indulging in the profits for the sake of luxury because that would make them less competitive. In this way, the Sith resemble the ideal capitalist. They have made exploitation and oppression for their own sake a calling as much as the Jedi have made peace and justice a calling.

The actions of the Jedi and the Sith are reflected in real-world religious orders. Because it is my background, I will focus on examples from the Christian tradition.  One specific example is the Jesuits, who have a mixed history both in opposing and reinforcing imperialist oppression and exploitation at different times. An example of the latter is the role of the Jesuits in the Spanish conquest of Guam in the 17th and 18th centuries, where Jesuits acted as agents of Spanish colonialism, encouraging militarization, forced Catholicization, and replacement of the Indigenous culture with European culture. In contrast, the Jesuits have also been advocates and protectors of Indigenous people in Latin America, trying to shield them from the worst excesses of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism during reduccion (forced relocation). 

More recently, Jesuits have worked to oppose European and U.S. imperialism in Latin America as shown by figures such as Ignacio Ellacuria in El Salvador and Ernesto Cardenal in Nicaragua. Jesuits have also distinguished themselves through their work as scientists, such as the planetary astronomer Guy Consolmagno and his work on meteorites, and activists for global peace, such as anti-Viet Nam war activists Daniel and Philip Berrigan (a Josephite).

It is less common for religious orders to make specific social causes their primary mission in the way that the Jedi, but there are modern examples, such as the multi-faith Order of the Sacred Earth which was founded specifically to advocate for protection of the environment and lacks connection to a specific religious tradition.

In this way, the order of the Sacred Earth draws on both science and faith to work toward justice and peace. Lutheran theologian Thomas Hoffman has proposed the concept of exomissiology, the investigation of possible dialogue with extraterrestrials about religion in a way that resists imperialism and colonialism, preserving cultural diversity and autonomy. 

Today, most religious orders are in decline, but members of religious orders continue to inspire real social change. Historically, religious orders have been at the cutting edge of mysticism and spiritual development. Religious orders are likely to continue to have an influence on the direction of spirituality and religion even if they are no longer as influential as they were in the past.  

Throughout history, religious orders have played both the role of the Jedi in being guardians of peace and justice and agents of social and scientific progress and of the Sith as agents of oppression and exploitation, shaping the course of their respective religions. Modern religions must decide whether they will choose the path of the Jedi or the Sith. Our future may depend on it.

The post The Jedi, Religious Orders, Social Progress, and the Advancement of Knowledge appeared first on DSA Religious Socialism.

Popular education is a method of teaching that centers the voices of students starting from their unique perspectives and situations.

The post How to use popular education to build worker power appeared first on EWOC.

“The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not distinct from that activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity.” – Karl Marx, “Estranged Labour,” Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

Writing is one of the most important inventions in human history. It allowed us to build civilizations, to coordinate social structures across vast distances, and to fuel humanity’s social, political, and scientific development into the modern age. Thanks to the written word, we can read the exact thoughts of scholars who lived many thousands of years ago, communicate complex ideas to millions of people, and build the democratic political movements capable of remaking society for the benefit of working people.

It has never been more important to preserve and expand our ability to write and communicate clearly. Original writing is now being severely devalued by a current of anti-intellectualism, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, and an unprecedented public disinvestment in education. This is why Midwest Socialist wants to encourage Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members in the greater Midwest to develop their own skills at writing and communication.

Learn, Learn, and Learn Again

During the heyday of the democratic socialist movement in the first two decades of the twentieth century, deep engagement with Marxist theory was considered a prerequisite to leading workers in their struggle against oppression. Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Eugene Debs, Antonio Gramsci, and countless others spent years developing tomes of political theory while they organized tirelessly to overthrow capitalism. They did not see organizing and theorizing as two separate activities, but as two integral parts of the same effort.

In the twentieth century, socialist governments considered mass political education an essential step in building a post-capitalist society. In 1961, Cuba sent 250,000 educated people into the countryside to teach millions of poor workers and campesinos to read, virtually eliminating illiteracy on the island within a few short years. The methods developed during this campaign served as an example for the entire Global South, and the model was successfully implemented in other countries around the world.

Socialist states with highly literate populations took this idea a step further. In East Germany, government-sponsored programs established spaces to encourage workers to express themselves creatively, including through prose and poetry. These programs would have been considered wasteful and useless in a capitalist society, but the socialist government of that country saw value in the political development of the working class through creative pursuits.

Closer to home, universal public education is one of the greatest surviving accomplishments of the working class movement in the United States. The collective knowledge of humanity is our birthright as working people, and it is our responsibility to engage with these ideas and educate ourselves.

A Hollow Education

The relevance of political broadsheets and hand-printed pamphlets has declined precipitously in the last hundred years, but the necessity to write clearly and convincingly has not. We live in a time when a significant percentage of young Americans are falling behind in school, when college students at our nation’s most prestigious universities are incapable of reading a whole book, and when AI is taking away the livelihoods of creative and intellectual laborers on an unprecedented scale. In this context, reading, writing, and learning have taken on new significance.

Public schools are under attack in the U.S. Compounding the damage of decades of chronic disinvestment, Republicans and Democrats alike have established charter school systems across the country that take state money to fund academies – often with reactionary pedagogical mandates –  and predatory, unstable for-profit schools through “school voucher” programs. These efforts take away resources from public schools and leave students behind. This is in addition to the current administration’s broad anti-intellectual right-wing attacks on science, history, tolerance in the classroom, and the basic principle that education should serve students rather than the state’s extremist political agenda.

Furthermore, all modern forms of mass media are deliberately constructed to turn working people into passive consumers of carefully curated political messages that shut out the possibility of radical change. They shamelessly promote unjust and insane wars, give billionaires and their servants unlimited airtime and space to advance their own agendas while marginalizing progressive voices, attempt to smear left-wing candidates for public office, and turn people away from transformative social and political structures.

AI is just the most recent extension of the centuries-long effort to control what working people know, think, and feel. A recent meta-study by the Brookings Institute highlights the dangers of using this untested technology in classrooms. Evidence is mounting that students and adults alike suffer a “cognitive debt” when they over-rely on chatbots to perform intellectual tasks, rendering them incapable of the basic skills needed to function in society and sharply limiting their ability to develop any kind of meaningful political consciousness.

This is why Midwest Socialist does not accept AI-generated writing and strongly discourages the use of AI writing programs. For too many, an ‘AI-assisted’ piece of writing is the end of a conversation rather than the beginning of one. It is an excuse not to engage with ideas, a way to treat essays and creative writing projects as problems to be solved, published, and put away as quickly as possible rather than an exercise in critical thinking and creativity. In this context, the adage “if you couldn’t be bothered to write it, I can’t be bothered to read it” takes on new meaning.

At a time when it appears possible to offload every intellectual exertion to an unthinking machine, engaging with ideas seriously and honestly is quickly becoming a revolutionary act in itself. Despite all the hype from tech companies, working people are still quite skeptical that AI will benefit society in the long run. We can consciously reject the implementation of technologies that don’t serve the needs of the working class.

Why We Write

“Our task is to make thinkers out of fighters and fighters out of thinkers.” – General Gordon Baker, revolutionary educator

All progressive transformation finds its energy from the creative labor of working people. To give an example from American history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the face of the New Deal and arguably its most important champion, but he did not implement it. It required legions of skilled, educated, and competent artisans, craftspeople, engineers, laborers, administrators, artists, writers, and countless others working toward the unified goal of transforming society. We are going to need millions of engaged, curious people eager to work to better society. We will build the future we deserve through a combination of organizing, community building, and unshakable solidarity.

Right now, none of those efforts are where they need to be. In the context of economic stagnation and repression at home and abroad, the fight for a better world can at times feel hopeless. Individual action is not enough to reverse the long-term trends of illiteracy and intellectual shortcutting that have plagued our society for decades. We need robustly funded schools, mass political education, a media not beholden to private interests, and an economy that fosters creative pursuits as more than products to be packaged for consumption. But that effort starts by building our own capabilities, collaborating with others, and working tirelessly to create and sustain the kinds of unapologetically socialist institutions that will build a better society.

There’s a reason every child is taught to write essays in school. Writing teaches us to organize our thoughts, to engage with primary sources, and to express ourselves clearly and succinctly to a wide audience. These skills are essential to any political movement. We cannot rely on capitalist-controlled media and obsequious AI to do our thinking for us.

If it is indeed true that every cook can govern, as the old saying goes, then any DSA member can write. Not every single person must become a journalist, theorist, or polemicist. There are a million ways to contribute to our struggle. But if you wrote stories on lined notebook paper in the fifth grade, composed multi-paragraph social media posts in response to articles you see online, or simply have had ideas and perspectives on our work and movement, we want to hear from you. 

If you would like to write for Midwest Socialist, contact us through our Google form. Be sure to read our Editorial Policy before submitting. We publish op-eds, articles about leftist history, interviews, left-wing reviews of recently released media and leftist classics, and other forms of writing, and we are particularly interested in original journalism about events happening in the Midwest.

If you have an idea that you need help turning into an outline, an outline you need help turning into a draft, or an article you’re wrestling with, our Editorial Board offers Zoom appointments to discuss your ideas and help you build them into a publishable article. The editorial board doesn’t guarantee that every individual article will be published, but we will work with you to build your project into a piece we can all be proud of. Once you’ve submitted a draft, we will make edits and send a final draft ready to be published.

Writing is a skill that takes time and practice, just like learning a language, mastering a trade, or playing an instrument. The only way to improve is to jump right in, and Midwest Socialist is a great place to get started. We look forward to reading your work.

The post Why You Should Write for Midwest Socialist appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

We are excited to announce our first federal endorsement for 2026!

Oliver Larkin is taking on one of the most war-mongering democrats in Congress, and DSA is proud to endorse him. Four Florida DSA chapters have already endorsed on the ground, canvassing and carrying petitions for Oliver. We will no longer allow billionaire-backed democrats to claim that we have to spend billions on war while healthcare is further decimated — we’re challenging them in the primaries with organized people who can’t be bought.

Oliver is part of a slate of candidates in the Socialist Cash Takes Out Capitalist Trash fundraising project!

You’ve probably received enough communications regarding this Saturday’s “No Kings” demonstrations, which will be held all across the country. At last count more than three thousand demonstrations are being organized, and there will no doubt be at least one near you.

In case you have been procrastinating, here is a link to find the demonstrations closest to you.

The first of these demos last June had a million or two people attend. The next one, in October, had at least five million. We’re aiming to double that this time, which would put us in striking distance of the 3.5% of the US population that research says is necessary to topple authoritarian regimes in the making. 

Against the backdrop of brutal anti-immigrant violence and preparation for election suppression at home, and clueless trade policy matched with deadly wars abroad, a growing number of Americans are coming out to the streets. These include people who have never been politically involved outside of voting every few years, and progressives who sat out the 2024 presidential elections because they didn’t think there was any difference between the two parties and the two candidates. Within DSA and the rest of the left this often took the form of denouncing the “twin parties of capital”. Which they are. But that picture, drawn without nuance, underestimated what fascism is and does.

Now we know. 

A reasonable question at this point is, ‘What sort of message should socialists be sending to the other demonstrators, and the world, a year into America’s fascist descent?’ You have the opportunity to weigh in on that as you make your protest sign. “No Kings” is a start, not a program. “Workers Over Billionaires” moves us closer to the ideas we need.

This mass demonstration of opposition is absolutely necessary, but not sufficient to stop MAGA from dragging us along on its road to hell. For that we need to be broadening the struggle with other tactics and strategies (mutual aid, mass strikes, non-violent direct action, and electoral politics) that build a powerful anti-fascist movement and lay the basis for moving past the failed politics of the past. What happened in Minneapolis/St. Paul on January 23—‘No Work, No School, No Shopping’—is the best example so far. DSA has joined with labor and community partners in the May Day Strong coalition, which understands “No Kings” as a step toward a sharper critique of capitalism on May 1. On that day we will see how prepared we are to advance beyond a nationwide demonstration to a national movement.

We’ll see you out in the streets this weekend. And then we’ll continue to train and educate and prepare ourselves for the struggle ahead.

In the February issue of California Red we ran a background article on the California DSA campaign we call “The Fair and Responsible Tax Plan for California’s Wealthy”, which embraces both measures currently gathering signatures to qualify for the November state ballot. That was the first in a series we are running between now and the election. Here is the next installment.—Editor

The unfathomably vast yet still growing level of California’s economic inequality

Our East Bay DSA crew of five had planted ourselves in the parking lot of a supermarket in North Berkeley on a warm mid-March afternoon. We were collecting signatures for the Billionaires Tax and the Protecting Education and Health Care Act. During our three-hour shift we did not do badly, gathering several dozen for each measure. Even better were the conversations, which ranged from informing voters about the nuts and bolts of the proposals to broader questions about economic inequality: how much money do billionaires have, anyway? What share of the total income of California, the fifth largest economy in the world, goes to the one percent? What would be the right amount of taxes for them to pay? And how do we get them to pay their fair share? 

We explore a few of these ideas and numbers below.

A cool million

It used to be hard for the typical working class stiff to imagine what a million dollars looks like. A million dollars? That’s what millionaires have, and I’m not even close to being one of those, we would say. But that was before a million dollars or thereabouts became the average price of a house in Los Angeles. It’s slightly below that statewide, and slightly above that in San Francisco. But you get the idea. Generally speaking, if you can afford a home, you know what a million dollars looks like—it looks like your house. (If you’re a renter, it looks like that house.)

A billion dollars was even more unfathomable. We didn’t have many in the United States until relatively recently; as late as 1990 there were just 66 of them. Now there are close to a thousand, and we’ve got 213 right here in the Golden State. Since we know that a million dollars looks like a house these days, we can imagine that since a billion is a thousand millions, it would look like a thousand houses. 

No one needs a thousand houses to live in, so most billionaires scrape by with just ten or twelve. Of course, being billionaires, they need somewhat larger houses than most people, so they might spend five or ten million dollars or even more—fifty million! A hundred million!—on their humble abodes. If they owned ten of those, that could put a pretty big dent in their billion dollar fortune. But guess what? The average wealth of a billionaire is not a billion dollars. It’s currently around 8.6 billion dollars, according to inequality.org. So that would be 8,600 houses. 

Minus the dozen they “live” in, that would leave them with enough money to purchase 8,588 more houses. I don’t know about you, but as the numbers climb my ability to translate the million dollar house into a clear image of the wealth of billionaires is beginning to get somewhat unequal to the task. And that’s before we try to imagine what the total wealth of 213 billionaires looks like. 

Trillions

It is reliably estimated that thanks to the ginormous growth of their fortunes during the past ten years (Trump I’s tax cuts, pandemic economy when there was nothing to invest in except stock buybacks, Trump II’s continuing tax cuts, massive AI bubble, and outright looting of public resources) our couple hundred California billionaires collectively own (hold onto your “tax the rich” baseball cap) two trillion dollars’ worth of assets. In California they’re doing a little better than the average 8.6 billionaire; they’ve each got around 9.4 billion. 

Although I just said I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the houses when they added up to the average 8,600 houses each (adjusted now to 9,400), let’s try it out with trillions. That’s a thousand billions. So collectively our 213 ultra-rich people with their two trillion dollars would have, let’s see, carry the one, a bit over 1.8 million houses, at a million dollars each. 

You might think that that’s enough for anyone, and these individuals must be looking around for philanthropies to unload to. But no, according to a recent New York Times article, billionaire giving has fallen precipitously in the last few years as their ‘uneasy accommodation with fascism’ (fascism scholar Robert Paxton’s formulation describing the initial response of economic elites to the uncouth new political rulers) has grown considerably less uneasy—more like downright comfortable. The 213 billionaires in California have seen their total wealth grow by nearly a third in this period as the rest of us have been essentially running in place—and that’s not enough for some of them. 

If you listen to one of their loudest mouthpieces, tech mogul Ron Conway, the proposed billionaire tax is not only bad for his 212 other peeps; it’s way worse than that. He was recently quoted in a New York Times article with a sentiment that inadvertently revealed how that kind of bank account can warp one’s perspective: According to Mr. Conway, referring to the billionaire tax, “This is the greatest tragedy this state has ever felt.” Hmmm. I wonder whether the families of dozens of people who lost their lives and thousands who lost homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires in 2025 agree? Or if Japanese-Californians, 93,000 of whom were incarcerated during World War II, share that view? Or if Native Californians, whose population fell from a third a million people in 1800 to about 15,000 by 1910 during the genocide that did them in, would agree with Conway’s historical research? 

On the other hand

At the other end of the economic spectrum, California’s borders contain about 7 million people below the official poverty line, or 18% of its roughly 40 million people. But the official federal poverty line ($33,000/year for a family of four) is laughably (that’s probably the wrong word) below an actual ability to live. One measure of how many people are barely getting by in California is the number of MediCal recipients, dependent on the federal Medicaid funding stream for most of their care costs. Although California is a net donor to the federal treasury, it does rely on $20 billion per year from the feds to support MediCal. Some 15 million Californians are enrolled in MediCal.

Let’s move on from the tiny extremely rich and the very large poor slices of the state and look at the condition of the merely rich, the top 1% income earners, which includes the billionaires but extends downward to the merely well-to-do. Although calculations vary, the bottom rung of the ladder for a one percenter is just about a million dollars a year in income; the median merely rich, right in the middle of the one percent, is $3.6 million a year. Here’s chart to help us visualize how their share of total California income has grown over the past half century. 

That’s right, believe your eyes. The top 1%’s share of income in the Golden State has grown over the past half century from about one twelfth of total income to almost one third. Richest state in the richest country in the world? Yes, but a vast chunk of the riches seems to have ended up in the pockets of people who didn’t need the transfer. 

On the third hand, if all of the state’s total income had been divided up equally, every person in California in 2024 would have received around $80,000—which means that for a family of four, combining their incomes, the household would have had $320,000—just a little under ten times the official poverty line.  

“But that would be socialism!” cry the billionaires, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and probably quite a few temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Well, sort of. We’ll get into that some other time. One thing is clear: it would certainly be different from what we’ve got.