By: Rodney Coopwood

The Illusion of Choice

What Americans call political diversity is actually ideological uniformity. Turn on any news channel, scroll through any political debate, and you’ll see the same tired performance: conservatives versus liberals, Republicans versus Democrats, each side convinced they represent fundamentally different worldviews. But here’s what I’ve come to understand as a socialist looking at this spectacle from the outside — they’re all playing variations of the same tune.

Conservatives, liberals, and even libertarians aren’t offering different philosophical frameworks. They’re offering different flavors of the same ice cream: liberalism. The marketing makes them seem distinct, even opposed, but strip away the branding and you find they all believe in the same core values — just different approaches to achieving them.

This confusion runs so deep that when progressives push for reforms like universal healthcare or wealth taxes, they get labeled as “radical leftists” when they’re actually just trying to make the existing liberal-capitalist system function closer to its stated ideals. True leftist positions — like worker ownership of the means of production or democratic economic planning — don’t even register in mainstream political discourse because they fall outside the artificially constrained liberal framework that defines America’s political vocabulary.

Unmasking the Liberal Consensus

At their very core, conservatives, liberals, and libertarians all operate within the classical liberal tradition that emerged from the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. They all accept:

• Individual rights as the foundation of society
• Private property as sacred and natural
• Market relations as the default way of organizing economic life
• Constitutional government with checks and balances
• The basic legitimacy of democratic institutions (though they may disagree on their scope)

The differences people get so heated about are really just different emphases within this shared framework. Conservatives might say they want minimal government interference in the economy while liberals want more regulation, but both accept that the economy should be organized around private ownership and market exchange. Libertarians take classical liberalism to its logical extreme, but they’re still working within the same philosophical boundaries.

When I say this is about marketing, I don’t mean the policy differences are trivial — they have real impacts on people’s lives. What I mean is that the ideological packaging makes these tactical disagreements appear to be fundamental philosophical divisions when they’re really just different management styles for the same basic system.

Libertarianism perfectly illustrates this point. Libertarians present themselves as radically different from both conservatives and liberals, advocating for minimal government and maximum individual freedom. But libertarianism is actually what you get when you push liberal principles of individual rights and limited government as far as they can go while still maintaining private property and market relations. The libertarian’s “radical” position of eliminating most government functions isn’t a departure from liberalism; it’s liberalism without the moderating influences that other liberals accept as necessary to manage capitalism’s contradictions. This is why libertarianism sits even further right than conservatism — conservatives at least accept some government intervention as necessary, while libertarians want to strip it down to almost nothing.

Here’s where American political discourse gets it fundamentally wrong: liberalism isn’t the “left” — it’s the center of the political spectrum. In mainstream American conversation, “liberal” gets treated as synonymous with “left-wing,” but this is a profound misunderstanding that distorts our entire political vocabulary.

The real political spectrum runs like this: To the left of the liberal center, you have progressivism (what Americans often mistakenly call “liberalism”), then socialism, then communism, then anarchism. To the right of the liberal center, you have conservatism, then libertarianism, then far-right extremism.

But American discourse compresses this entire range into a false binary where “liberal” means left and “conservative” means right, completely erasing actual left-wing positions from the conversation. When Americans say someone is “liberal,” they’re usually describing what should properly be called progressive — someone who wants to reform the liberal system to make it work better, not someone who wants to replace it entirely.

This linguistic confusion isn’t accidental. It serves to make the liberal framework appear to encompass the full range of legitimate political thought, when in reality it represents just the center position with some variations to either side.

The Structural Contradiction

Here’s where it gets interesting from a theoretical standpoint. Capitalism developed as a purely economic system focused on market relations and private ownership. But any economic system needs a political and social framework to sustain it, and liberalism provided that framework for capitalism.

The problem is that these two systems have contradictory logics. Liberalism promises political equality — the idea that all individuals have equal rights and equal say in democratic governance. But capitalism requires economic inequality to function. Someone has to own the means of production, someone else has to sell their labor. Capital needs to accumulate, which means wealth concentrates. The system literally cannot work without creating and maintaining class divisions.

This isn’t some unintended side effect –- it’s structural. Political theorist and historian Roy Casagrande describes how liberalism essentially became capitalism’s philosophical framework, providing the ideological justification for a system that contradicts liberalism’s own stated values.

Even early Enlightenment thinkers who developed liberal theory recognized this tension. They understood that capitalism’s tendency toward inequality could undermine political equality, but they believed this could be managed through institutions and reforms rather than by questioning the economic system itself.

The Evidence: When Theory Meets Reality

This contradiction isn’t just theoretical — it plays out in concrete ways that affect real people’s lives.

Black Americans provide the clearest example of how formal political equality coexists with systematic economic exclusion. Despite decades of civil rights legislation, anti-discrimination laws, and diversity initiatives –- all liberal solutions — the racial wealth gap has barely budged. Median Black family wealth remains about one-tenth that of white families. This isn’t because liberal reforms haven’t been implemented, but because they address symptoms while leaving untouched the underlying system that created and maintains these disparities.

The caste system that affects Black Americans operates alongside the class system. When economic downturns happen, Black Americans face distinct and often disproportionate impacts not just because of class position but because of how race and class interact under racial capitalism. Liberal frameworks struggle to address this because they’re designed to treat race and class as separate issues rather than understanding how they’re systematically intertwined.

Native Americans face even starker contradictions. They’re simultaneously sovereign nations and colonial subjects, with formal treaty rights that exist alongside ongoing land theft and resource extraction. The reservation system creates a form of internal colonialism that liberal political theory can’t even properly name, let alone address. How do you reconcile individual property rights –- a cornerstone of liberalism — with collective indigenous sovereignty and traditional land use practices? You can’t, which is why liberal solutions consistently fail to address the root issues.

Latino Americans demonstrate how immigration status creates tiered citizenship that serves capital’s need for exploitable labor. Some have formal rights while others are deliberately kept in precarious legal positions that make them more vulnerable to exploitation. This isn’t a policy oversight — it’s exactly what the economic system requires to maintain cheap labor pools.

Even European social democratic models, often held up as examples of successful liberal reform, reveal these same fundamental contradictions. Sweden’s domestic equality coexists with arms exports to authoritarian regimes. Germany’s strong worker protections rely on exploiting Southern European labor through EU economic structures. The welfare state ameliorates capitalism’s worst effects domestically while often intensifying exploitation elsewhere.

The Progressive Trap

Here’s what’s particularly revealing: every time progressives push for reforms to address inequality, they’re essentially admitting that capitalism doesn’t naturally produce the outcomes liberalism promises.

Universal healthcare? That’s because market-based healthcare creates inequality. Strong labor protections? Because unregulated capitalism exploits workers. Wealth taxes? Because capitalism concentrates wealth. Affirmative action? Because “merit-based” systems reproduce existing inequalities.

Each progressive reform is an acknowledgment that the economic system undermines the political ideals. The more adjustments liberals have to make to capitalism to achieve their stated goals of equality and freedom, the more they’re proving that socialism’s analysis was correct — that you can’t have genuine political equality while maintaining private ownership of the means of production.

This is why liberal reforms, no matter how well-intentioned, keep failing to address root causes. They’re trying to solve systemic problems with tools provided by the same system that created those problems. It’s like trying to fix a broken foundation by rearranging the furniture.

Beyond the Liberal Horizon

Understanding this helps explain why American political discourse feels so constrained and circular. When both major parties operate within the same fundamental framework, when the boundaries of “realistic” policy are drawn by that framework’s limitations, genuine alternatives become literally unthinkable within mainstream political conversation.

Socialism offers something different because it addresses both the economic system and its supporting political structures. Instead of trying to manage capitalism’s contradictions, it proposes replacing the system that creates those contradictions in the first place. Worker ownership of the means of production. Democratic planning of economic priorities. An economic system designed to serve human needs rather than accumulate capital.

This isn’t utopian thinking — it’s practical recognition that the problems liberalism struggles to solve are inherent to the economic system liberalism was designed to support.

Breaking the Frame

The first step toward real political alternatives is recognizing how narrow the current frame actually is. What gets presented as the full spectrum of political possibility is really just different management strategies for the same basic arrangement of economic and political power.

Once you see this, a lot of things start making sense. Why Democrats and Republicans seem to agree on so much when it comes to fundamental economic structures. Why reforms that sound transformative end up changing so little. Why the same problems keep recurring regardless of which party is in power.

We live in a liberal Enlightenment society with capitalism as its economic model. Until we’re willing to question that framework itself, we’ll keep having the same debates, implementing the same types of solutions, and wondering why the same problems persist.

The real political spectrum is much broader than American discourse suggests. It’s time we started acting like it.

This article represents the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of The Detroit Socialist or Metro Detroit DSA as a whole.

Beyond the Liberal Mirage: Why American Politics Is a Closed Loop was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Events & Actions

Tuesday, September 30 (8:00 AM – 4:30 PM): ICE Out of SF Courts! (In person at 100 Montgomery)

Tuesday, September 30 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Immigrant Justice Healing Circle (In person at 1916 McAllister St)

Wednesday, October 1 (6:30 PM – 9:00 PM): New Member Happy Hour (In person at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia)

Thursday, October 2 (7:30 PM – 9:30 PM): TOWG Reading Group: “Housing the City by the Bay: Tenant Activism, Civil Rights, and Class Politics in San Francisco” (In person at 1916 McAllister St)

Friday, October 3 (8:00 AM – 4:30 PM): ICE Out of SF Courts! (In person at 100 Montgomery)

Friday, October 3 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM): Municipal Social Housing: Learning from Seattle’s Win (518 Valencia)

Saturday, October 4 (10:30 AM – 12:00 PM): DSA SF x EBDSA: No Space for ICE Canvassing (In person at Portsmouth Square Park, 745 Kearny St)

Saturday, October 4 (1:00 PM – 3:00 PM): International Day of Action: Oakland Arms Embargo Now! (In person at Oscar Grant Plaza, Oakland)

Saturday, October 4 (4:00 PM – 6:00 PM): Divestment Strategy Session (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, October 5 (5:30 PM – 7:15 PM): HWG Reads “Capitalism & Disability – Selected Writings by Marta Russell” (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Monday, October 6 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Labor Board x SF EWOC Local Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Tuesday, October 7 (6:00 PM – 7:30 PM): Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (Zoom)

Wednesday, October 8 (6:45 PM – 9:00 PM): October General Meeting (Zoom and in person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Thursday, October 9 (5:30 PM – 6:30 PM): Education Board Open Meeting (Zoom)

Thursday, October 9 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Immigrant Justice Court Action Orientation (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, October 11 (12:45 PM – 4:00 PM): Homelessness Working Group Outreach and Outreach Training (Meet in person at 1916 McAllister)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates. Events with a are especially new-member-friendly!

ICE Out of SF Courts!

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

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

Municipal Social Housing: Learning from Seattle’s Win

Two DSA SF-backed ballot props in 2020 were meant to enable and fund social housing, but mayoral opposition has blocked the funds being spent for that purpose. Seattle’s victory offers a lesson in how we might beat that blockage. In February, Seattle’s House Our Neighbors passed a ballot proposition with dedicated funds for a social housing developer. The campaign won by 26 points over opposition from Seattle’s mayor and most of their city council.

Join us at 518 Valencia on Friday, October 3 from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM for a conversation with Seattle organizer Eric Lee (House Our Neighbors, Seattle DSA) and our own Shanti Singh (Tenants Together, DSA SF).

RSVP here!

Stop the World for Gaza! Arms Embargo Now!

At least 280 shipments have left the Oakland Airport in the first 6 months of this year, carrying deadly military cargo to maintain Israel’s F-35 fleet. On Saturday, October 4th at 1:00 PM, we’ll link arms at Oscar Grant Plaza in Oakland and re-energize ourselves for the fight ahead and demand killer cargo out of OAK! If you’d like to join the DSA contingent, check out the #palestine-solidarity Slack channel.

DSA SF x EBDSA: No Space for ICE Canvassing in SF Chinatown

The DSA SF Immigrant Justice Working Group and East Bay DSA Migrant Defense Working Group are leaving No Space for ICE! Join us on Saturday, October 4, at 1:00 PM to distribute red cards and other Know Your Rights materials to businesses and community members in SF Chinatown. We will meet at Portsmouth Square Park to share materials and train before we canvass. You can RSVP for the event here! Wear DSA merch if you can, or put a DSA pin on a visible part of your clothing.

New to canvassing? No worries! There will be a brief how-to training before we go out in pairs or small groups.

Steal This Story, Please! at the Roxie

DSA SF is proud to be a community partner with the Bay Area Premiere of Steal This Story, Please!, a documentary about award-winning journalist and host of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman. The film will be playing on Saturday, October 4th from 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM at the Roxie Theater. Expected guests include Amy Goodman and the directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin.

Steal This Story, Please! is a gripping portrait of the trailblazer whose unwavering commitment to truth-telling spans three decades of turbulent history. From the front lines of global conflicts to the organized chaos of her daily news show Democracy Now!, Goodman broadcasts stories and voices routinely silenced by commercial media. Get your tickets here!

DSA SF Homelessness Working Group Reads: Capitalism & Disability: Selected Writings by Marta Russell

Join DSA SF’s Homelessness Working Group as we read through Capitalism & Disability: Selected Writings by Marta Russell. We’ll be meeting every other Sunday evening starting in September for 4 or 5 sessions at 1916 McAllister. The next session is Sunday, October 5. For more info, register here: bit.ly/martacd and check the events calendar for latest details.

Save the Date: Palestine Study – Understanding Zionism and Imperialism for Palestine Liberation

What does socialism have to do with Palestine? What did the founding of Israel really look like? How do we fight the genocide in Gaza here in the Bay Area? Join DSA SF on Sunday, October 19th from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM for the upcoming Palestine Study exploring the foundations of Zionism and how we fight imperialism for Palestinian liberation.

Immigrant Justice Court Action Orientation

Come one, come all to 1916 McAllister St for our court watch orientation! You’ll learn how we are resisting ICE , how you can help, and participate in a biweekly art build. Bring questions and anti-ICE slogans! This event will take place every other week on Thursdays starting at 7:00 PM and the next one is October 9th!

DSA SF Tenant Organizing Reading Group – “Housing the City by the Bay: Tenant Activism, Civil Rights, and Class Politics in San Francisco”

San Francisco has always had an affordable housing shortage, but solutions outside of the private sector have long been neglected or overlooked. Join us as we learn about the history of one proposed solution: public housing.

Our four-part reading group will meet every other Thursday at 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM hybrid in person at 1916 McAllister and Zoom with RSVP to discuss John Baranski’s book “Housing the City by the Bay”. The next meeting will be Thursday, October 2nd.

If you wish to join please RSVP here!

Behind the Scenes

The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and publishing the weekly newsletter. Members can view current CCC rotations.

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

SIGN ON: Fight Authoritarianism with the “Full Force” of the Working Class

Organizations and unions: Sign on to this letter and add organizational info here.

As Trump continues to sow terror on the working class, we, the undersigned organizations, are committed to protecting our rights to organize freely without fear of state repression. Engaging in peaceful protest and criticism of the government and the current social order is essential to democracy and freedom.

This weekend, Trump published a draconian directive to federal agencies to surveil and disrupt individuals and organizations who exhibit supposed “indicators of violence” including “anti-Americanism”, “anti-capitalism”, “extremism on migration, race, and gender”, and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality”. These are obvious signals to repress anyone who criticizes corporations, ICE, Israel, transphobia, patriarchy, Christian nationalism, and anti-abortion policies.

Trump then announced on social media that he would deploy military troops to Portland and use “full force, if necessary.” Oregon is not being targeted for federal intervention because of any actual threat to safety here, but because we have a proud history of demonstrating working-class power such as in street mobilizations, labor militancy, and our recently elected left-leaning Portland City Council. The business lobby alongside both liberal and conservative politicians tried to create the perception of Portland being a crime-ridden warzone in recent years – and now even they are opposed to troop deployment here. 

If Trump sends federal agents or the National Guard to Portland, it will do nothing to solve the daily crises – created by capitalism and made worse by Trump himself – that working Oregonians already face: housing insecurity, low wages, unstable employment, underfunded schools, cuts to public programs, escalating climate disasters, and corporate control of nearly every aspect of our lives.

We condemn the attempts to intimidate working class people, especially immigrants, and contrive an “emergency” to further repress our right to organize and protest.

We declare ourselves part of the century-old movement against fascism.

We pledge to protect members of our organizations, our families, our immigrant neighbors and our communities against Trump’s intimidation and violence. We pledge non-cooperation and resistance against illegal, unconstitutional violations of our human rights. We encourage all dissidents to organize at work, at school, in their neighborhoods, and in their faith communities.

We pledge to mobilize the power of our members in collective actions, as we know how:

• Withhold our labor or creatively deploy our labor
• Coordinate direct actions such as pickets, marches, rallies, vigils, and caravans
• Engage in civil disobedience such as sit-downs and sit-ins
• Display our union banners and wear our union gear at work and in public
• Display yard signs and window signs expressing our unity against fascism
• Encourage individual federal agents and National Guard troops to disobey unlawful orders
• Encourage our members and all resisters to participate in surveillance and rapid response to ICE, federal agent, and troop activity

People power is the only way to stop authoritarianism and create a better world that we all deserve.

The post Against the Militarization of Portland appeared first on Portland DSA .

“Nobody cares, work harder.” 

I watch my parents work themselves to the bone, while they are constantly exploited by the people for whom they work, and the capitalists who are oh so nice enough to afford them a place to live, while taking every opportunity to take more without reason and say, “That’s just how it works.”

My people sacrifice their bodies to erect buildings for companies that will exploit and discriminate against them. They leave their homeland, ravaged by corporations, corruption, colonialism, and imperialism, to build homes they may never be able to afford themselves.

I came across a forum post in which users were venting about their frustration, no, their hopelessness, in not being able to find a job in a system that requires you to have one to afford the most basic human necessities. 

I sat back and read as many admitted they just don’t see an end in sight, and were looking at heartbreaking alternatives to ease the suffering.

But we’re told we just need to “work harder.”

“Work.” Rich, coming from those who don’t seem to understand its meaning.

“But you don’t understand, if you work hard enough, you too will one day own capital. You, too, will one day be a big shot!”

Okay, even if that were true, then what?

What happens when we’re all filthy rich CEOs? At the expense of exploiting other countries, mind you, but that’s a whole other story.

Who will perform the labor?

“You just hire others to do it for you! Better yet, you can replace them all with AI or overseas laborers and pay THEM pennies on the dollar.”

But I thought the capitalist dream was that we all become big shots?

Do you see how that’s an inherently flawed “plan?”

Our participation in this capitalist system leaves us with two options: sell our labor at a tremendous loss, monetary and quality-of-life-wise, or exploit our fellow humans.

What kind of a choice is that?

We work ourselves to death, and for what? Low wages, maybe some benefits, and to be tossed aside at any given moment while CEOs rake in the fruits of our labor.

We’re then, if lucky enough, forced into gig work, meaning even longer hours, less pay, no benefits, and still, the company giving you the wonderful privilege of “being your own boss” takes their unfair cut of your labor.

And if you manage to start your own business free of these parasitic owners, congratulations, you are now in competition with them. 

Do you see how hard we’ve been working and continue to work? Do you see how easy these corporations, these capitalists have had it at YOUR expense?

You know what, maybe we do need to work harder.

We need to work harder to take back our labor.

Our time

Our dignity

Our lives.

The post The Capitalists Are Right: We Need to Work Harder first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

The following opinion piece does not represent the editorial position of Pine and Roses or of Maine DSA as a whole.

Graham Platner has broken the race for US Senate wide open while Troy Jackson promises to be the most pro-union governor in the state’s history. Less than two months ago, all bets were on Gov. Janet Mills sweeping the primary and facing off against Trump enabler Sen. Susan Collins. And, despite Maine labor’s enthusiastic support, Jackson was going to struggle to expand his base sufficiently to outpace left-leaning candidates like Hannah Pingree and Shenna Bellows. The most likely outcome appeared to be a governor one step to the left of Mills—barring an unexpected Republican gubernatorial victory— and a senate race between DNC centrism and the last vestiges of Republican “moderation.” A contest that Collins has repeatedly demonstrated she can win. 

Platner’s announcement in August created a buzz, but the 7,000 who attended the joint Bernie-Platner-Jackson rally on Labor Day turned up the volume, raising the potential for a radical turn. Both Platner and Jackson’s campaigns picked up Bernie’s crusade against the billionaire oligarchy. They intend to tax the rich to fund public education, healthcare, and elder care, champion unions to grow working-class power, end the genocide in Gaza and demand freedom for Palestine, and, as Jackson put it, “finally do right by the Wabanaki people.” Platner and Jackson are clearly in it to win and are amassing an army of volunteers, endorsements, and small contributions–Platner has taken in $2.5 million in little more than a month. Mills, especially, will be a formidable primary opponent, but working-class Mainers have a pair of horses in this race and they should take the opportunity to break free from politics as usual. 

[Read next: Trump’s Social Murder Bill Passes – Now What?]

As state co-chair of Maine DSA, I am speaking only for myself below. Maine DSA will follow its own procedures to decide when, and if, the organization endorses any candidate. We will have multiple, thorough discussions, we will listen to one another’s concerns—and there are always valid concerns when it comes to politics—and then we will vote democratically on our position. All Maine DSA members in good standing have the right to participate in this debate and vote on any potential endorsement. Of course, rank-and-file Maine DSA members are free to volunteer for any campaign at any time and do not have to wait for chapter authorization. 

However, in my opinion, Maine DSA ought to consider endorsing both Platner and Jackson for several reasons. 

1. Endorsing is good for the candidates and good for Maine DSA. We can help grow the movement as we grow ourselves. We are a small force, but we have a dedicated layer of experienced organizers and thousands of members and supporters who look to the chapter for direction. If there’s going to be a real fight against the oligarchy in Maine, we’ve demonstrated we will be a dedicated and useful part of that fight, from electing socialists to office to organizing tenants unions to raising the minimum wage. And even as Maine DSA sustains a wide array of working groups and committees, we ought to look for ways to prioritize state-wide efforts where we can become more than the sum of our parts. Where we can all move in the same direction, recruit new members, turn inactive members into active ones, and strengthen our bonds with unions and community organizations.

2. United front defense in a purple state. Maine is one of a handful of so-called purple states in which organized labor, community organizations, and the broad left have not been decimated by neoliberal attacks. That is, we have retained an important capacity for self-defense. This puts a target on our back from the Trump administration, but it also gives us the chance to serve as an example of how to resist the destruction of our hospitals, nursing homes, VA hospitals, and schools. To do so, we’ll have to organize against ICE across the state, continue to speak out against the genocide in Gaza, and defend our LGTBQ+ siblings. Additionally, we’ll have to build a united front movement capable of demanding and winning real taxation of the rich in Maine. Trump wants to defund Maine. We will have to pry open Maine’s own oligarchs’ wallets and stock portfolios if we want to promote job-creating renewable energy projects, fully fund our public schools, and use the legislature’s muscle to embark on an affordable and workforce housing construction boom. Platner replacing Collins provides us one more measure of defense nationally and Jackson has pledged to fight for the kind of budget and reforms that working-class Mainers so desperately need. We have to shift the balance of forces in our favor in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces, in our schools, and in Augusta. It’s not enough to defend democracy and civil liberties against attacks, we need a positive economic program to improve working-class lives.

[Read next: As Cumberland County goes, so go immigrant rights in Maine]

3. Don’t rely on the corporate Democrats. Trump and Stephen Miller declared war on the working class in Arizona this weekend. If Trump demonstrated his desire to tamper with elections in 2020, today he is organizing the (semi)legal and extralegal means to retain Republican control in 2026 and beyond. Unfortunately, the national Democratic Party appears incapable of confronting this reality. If they spent as much time fighting Trump as they have sabotaging Zohran Mamdani and Omar Fateh, we might be in a different position. Unfortunately, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have neither the interest nor the knowhow to oppose Trump. MAGA is becoming a mass fascist movement, the DNC is a fundraising operation for lawyers-turned-politicians. The DNC does not have the tools for this job, instead, unions, community organizations, and the left will have to forge them ourselves. 

4. Don’t throw out Platner and Jackson with the DNC bathwater. DNC paralysis should not blind us to recognizing certain places where a real fight against the billionaires is developing within the old form of the Democratic Party. 2026 in Maine is, I believe, one such place. This does not mean we should look to Platner and Jackson to “fix” things for us. As Eugene V. Debs put it while running for president, “I would not be a Moses to lead you into the promised land, for someone would lead you out again.” That is, Platner and Jackson are not, by themselves, the movement we need. All indications are that they want to play a part in a much larger working-class movement for radical change. They will have to prove that in practice, but the movement has to prove itself capable of sinking deep roots, bringing in workers from all over the state, and developing mechanisms and institutions for democratic input and decision making. If we don’t do that, then even if they win, Platner and Jackson will be left high and dry. 

5. Focus on building power in the medium term, but start with 2026. We know that 2026 is not the end of the fight. Our long term vision is to free humanity and the planet from capitalism’s destructive drive. We are not naive. Trump is strong. We expect that MAGA will be in power—or very close to it—for the next decade and they will only leave if a stronger force arises. The oligarchy has no intention of giving an inch. In order to change the balance of forces, we need a strategic, medium term vision. 

What does medium-term success look like? It means 25 percent of Maine workers winning union contracts (we’re at 13 percent now). It means a real fight inside and outside the Democratic Party to elect twenty-five or thirty socialists (we have 1 now), labor leaders, and genuine defenders of tribal sovereignty, LGTBQ+ equality, and freedom for New Mainers to seats in the Maine legislature. It means electing dozens of town, city (we now have 2), county, and school board officials who ground their legislative work in union and community democracy. It means a continuous process of united front action between working-class and progressive forces to expand our areas of influence. It means Maine DSA learning how to act like a socialist party. 

For any of those medium-term dynamics to stand a chance, we should look for short term opportunities that provide our side with maximum opportunities for partial victories and stronger unity. Helping elect Platner and Jackson is one such chance. Not only to win their seats, but to ensure that unions, grassroots communities, and left-wing organizations emerge stronger from the campaigns. Not simply as names on a donor list for the candidates, but in real terms for working-class organization. 

The stakes are high in 2026. Maine DSA needs a plan to help our class defend itself, and we need a plan to grow stronger. We have work to do beyond the Platner and Jackson campaigns, but they can serve as a unifying element we need to get to the next level of organizing and influence. It would be a serious mistake to stand aside or to support the campaigns in a purely individual and disorganized manner. Now is not the time for a bylaws fight, now is the time for serious debate, honest disagreement, democratic decision making, and united action. 

The post What’s at stake in Maine in 2026 appeared first on Pine & Roses.

by Ida Bly

David Rovics and Kamala Emanuel sang a concert in Madison on September 4^th.They call their duo “The Ministry of Culture.” Madison DSA and WORT-FM helped sponsor this performance. This evening of folk-style music offered abundant moments of truth-telling and authenticity.

There were about 35 people in attendance, in a range of ages, at Muso on Winnebago Street. Muso hosts acoustic music events without amplification. In this case, the pleasing harmonies contributed by Kamala Emanuel greatly enhanced the songs David sang while playing guitar. Attendees responded warmly to Rovics’ songs, including his most well-known song, “St. Patrick’s Battalion,” with driving rhythm and a refrain containing the lyrics: “we witnessed freedom denied…we fought on the Mexican side.” It’s the story of Irish immigrants who switched sides during the Mexican-American war of the 1840s. Having recently faced the choice of “death, starvation or exile” in Ireland, they found the Mexicans’ cause more compelling, staving off an invading army, in a parallel to their struggle against the British.

Rovics and Emanuel also sang the tongue-in-cheek “I’m a Better Anarchist than You,” encouraging us to poke fun at ourselves, and to work across sectarian lines. Another popular song with a singable chorus was “If Only it were True,” which recounts the absurd right wing charges against Obama as being a tree-hugging, socialist, immigrant-loving, peace-loving Muslim. DSA members can identify with the song’s sentiment, given the bizarre, fact-free accusations of socialism slung as an insult toward various and sundry figures who are anything but.

There were also new songs about Gaza, including “From Auschwitz to Gaza.” Another brand new song was “Zahid” about a US Veteran who is a beloved long-time local resident of Olympia, Washington, and uses a wheelchair, lingering now in ICE detention in solitary confinement in Tacoma. The concert also included the song, “In Wisconsin in 1854 (Song for Joshua Glover)” (see sidebar article).

Prior to the main act, local singer Tom Wernigg opened the night with his country-tinged, humanistic, singable, and informative songs that have a deep vein of humor. He sang, “I don’t like genocide…under any guise”. The sarcastic “My Minivan…it’s my best friend” included the line, “I like my burgers with freedom fries.” We hope Tom in his signature hat will perform more often in Madison.

Rovics and Emanuel concluded their performance to applause. Returning to the stage for an encore, they sang “Behind the Barricades“ [2001] acapella with the passage: “As the movement grows there will be hills and bends—But at the center of the struggle are your lovers and your friends—The more we hold each other up the less we can be swayed—Here’s to love and solidarity and a kiss behind the barricades.” It was a tremendous and satisfying finish to a great night.

Muso performance space

Muso created a magical and whimsical backdrop for the event. The proprietors have roots in the Act 10 uprising and long-running Solidarity Sing Along at the Wisconsin Capitol since 2011. Muso puts a strong emphasis on pure musical experiences, especially participatory events. The venue has continued to improve over the last year. We enjoyed comfortable seating augmented by luxurious sofas piled with comfortable pillows, a bookshelf-lined wall, fanciful stenciled woodwork and colorful paper mobiles. There was even a break between sets to enjoy refreshments and visit with others at the event. Muso has great potential for more political and socialist-themed gatherings.

Music in Social Movements

David Rovics is a singer with anarchist politics, connecting many movements over the decades. He describes his “songs of social significance” as being “about life on earth” or, variously, as “songs to fan the flames of discontent.” His works touch on dozens of contemporary struggles including immigration, war, labor, gentrification, capitalism, environmental struggles, high rents, and so on. He is particularly notable as a prolific song writer. Never shying away from difficult subjects, he also writes about bicycles, bonobos, and visions of a better world we can create.

One of my favorite songs is “We Just Want the World” [1998]. It speaks to our fondest wishes: ”closing down munitions plants…shutting down the oil rigs/ And turning towards the sun…we don’t want your dead-end highway/ We just want the world.”

His pieces have been called “song stories,” and in many cases use a specific event to symbolize a much larger issue. Rovics’ historical references have also been compared to what folk singer Utah Phillips called The Long Memory, a connected view of history that can help us see where we want to go. In this moment especially, we need singers and cultural workers to help illuminate our history because it is intentionally obscured by the ruling elites. David Rovics has a large catalog of music on Palestine, dating back at least twenty years but particularly voluminous in the last few years, with new songs coming out regularly on the topic.

For his troubles, Rovics has suffered the demonetization of his YouTube channel in the last year, a major threat to a performer’s financial stability. Just this week, YouTube removed his song “I Support Palestine Action.” His events have been cancelled for political reasons, and he has endured government surveillance during his stops, even in New Zealand and Scandinavia. This reminds us of something we know very well from TV’s top comedians lately: cultural workers put themselves at risk. If our enemies know how powerful cultural workers can be, why don’t we?

I first saw David Rovics perform in Madison at the First Congregational Church on the corner of University Avenue and Breese Terrace in the early 2000s, as part of the Earth Day to May Day events. He also performed at Wil-Mar Community Center around 2009 — on that visit his friend and legendary labor troubadour Anne Feeney was in the audience (his tribute to her: “I Dreamed I Saw Anne Feeney”). On August 25, 2024, Rovics and Kamala Emanuel played on the Madison Labor Temple lawn, with sponsorship of the Family Farm Defenders, with the Raging Grannies as an opener (See the Grannies’ video clip and lyrics listing from that event here).

David Rovics was interviewed by Brian Standing on the WORT-FM show, The 8 O’Clock Buzz in 2024, touching on the role of music in protest gatherings, and that interview can be heard here:

More recently, host Martin Alvarado interviewed David Rovics on Global Revolutions on WORT-FM radio on Mon. Sept. 1, 2025, in the 3rd hour, minute 2:04-2:27. The archive of this brief interview is still available for a while. In this interview, David reported witnessing a Labor Day Parade in Rockford, Illinois, on their way up to Madison to perform this year. Although it was a massive nationwide day of protest with the theme “Workers over Billionaires,” these cultural workers did not get invited to participate, enjoying it instead as spectators.

It was a notable omission, especially because Rovics has made remarkable contributions to the labor movement’s songbook, writing original songs on topics such as Mother Jones (“Pray for the Dead and Fight Like Hell for the Living”), May Day (“The First of May,” and “When the Workers of the World Unite”), “The Battle of Blair Mountain,” the IWW “Ballad of a Wobbly, the Depression (“Union Makes Us Strong” [2010]), the Wisconsin Uprising “We Will Win (Song for Wisconsin)” [2011], and “Tax the Rich” [2011]. Rovics’ bluegrass classic, “Minimum Wage Strike,” is at least as relevant today as when he wrote it in 1998. His song “Joe Hill,” (written on the 100^th anniversary of Joe Hill’s death in 1915) is about a labor organizer who was condemned to death by the state of Utah, and was executed by a state firing squad. How strange it is that the state of Utah may again execute someone by firing squad, if recent events at Utah State University play out as expected. The Death Penalty Information Center wrote a post about this. The current case is nothing like Joe Hill’s, and yet it is amazing how history echoes!

Rovics’ song “Everything Can Change,” about organizing, has a valuable message. We need our organizations of course, but these are just part of larger movements. Our organizations ebb and flow, and only partly contain our capacious aspirations. We need art, music, feasts, festivals, and culture that can carry us from one organization, movement, and phase of life to the next. We need to build deep community that can sustain us for the long haul.

It’s a mistake when our organizations forgo art and music. We deprive ourselves of the succor of music and poetry when our protest events do not include them. Author Barbara Ehrenreich, who was active in DSA, made the point that movements are more than their organizations, and need vital cultural elements to make them strong. The Poor People’s Campaign has made art and music an important component of their work. Preaching to the choir is not pointless, and even left-brained people need encouragement, connection, and learning –- preferably in handy formats to integrate into daily life, such as songs you can sing in the shower or while cleaning the house, as well as before the city council, at a protest, or on a picket line.

Hearing Difficult Truths

One of the motivations for listening to Rovics’ music is that hearing the truth brings cleansing release, even when it is challenging. Particularly now, one longs for the truth, as science is being sidelined, and the gains of the Enlightenment erode. One’s mind and senses feel polluted, as the disgusting residue of falsehoods accumulates. The obsequious worship of power pervades our airwaves and hardens our souls. There is also a struggle to make meaning of our experiences, living here in the heart of Empire, passing people sleeping on the street, taking in the horrors on TV and the crossing of red lines around the world. It is helpful to gather together to seek shared understandings.

While cringing at the sorrows, we reach for the serenity of wisdom. I often think if I understood better how things got so bad, it might help me know how to move forward. This is why learning about socialism is so important now.

David Rovics’ culture work includes essays published in Counterpunch and other places. David’s archive of music is accessible for free at www.davidrovics.com. He also has a presence on Blue Sky, Tiktok, X, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, Substack, YouTube and Songkick. You may tune into his podcast “This Week with David Rovics” – with music, history and current events here. He also has a new memoir out in the form of an audiobook, called My Life as a Protest Singer. To get full access to this and other special material, there is a subscription-based Community-Supported Art program available through his website.

The morning after his performance in Madison, Rovics and Emanuel left for Woodruff, far in the north of Wisconsin, to continue to bring this music to new places, and new people. Rovics often performs for free in parks, at protest gatherings, and on picket lines. Having wrapped up the Midwest tour for now, the next stop is a tour of New York and New England starting in October.

Sidebar: Song for Joshua Glover

Rovics’ and Emanuel’s concert included a song written last year about Wisconsin history, “In Wisconsin in 1854 (Song for Joshua Glover).” It is about the Fugitive Slave Act period when the federal government forced local police to cooperate with slave catchers. But it is also a triumphant tale of rebellion by the local population against this unjust law. After a mob of Wisconsinites helped Glover escape from jail and leave the country, the state of Wisconsin declared the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 unconstitutional in 1854. The people of Wisconsin made a singular, definitive pushback, and effectively ended this law through this one instance of cross-racial solidarity, and public collective disobedience. It usually takes more than one.

Phil Busse (a Madison native) wrote a guest column that ran in the Wisconsin State Journal on May 5, 2025, “Arrest of Milwaukee judge hearkens back to 1850s” explaining how the Joshua Glover incident has important parallels to the immigration struggle embodied by the Judge Hannah Dugan case, set to go to trial in Milwaukee in December.

In 2021, the city of Toronto commissioned a statue of Joshua Glover for a city park. The design is well worth looking up online, and includes Glover in a top hat and with Afrofuturist elements. After escaping the US, Glover lived out the rest of his long life in Canada but also suffered a short bout of imprisonment there, and was denied a proper burial. There have been recent tributes to Glover, including a commissioned song called “Freedom Heights” with a video version spliced with images of Toronto’s pro-basketball Raptors team members. There is also a new mural to Joshua Glover on the I-43 underpass in Milwaukee. There is a new mini-documentary film (“Liberty at Stake”) too. The Republican Party intentionally highlighted the Joshua Glover incident during their convention in Milwaukee in 2024, aiming to claim the abolitionist roots of their party’s founding in Ripon, Wisconsin. But it is an open question whether the Party would make the same effort today, less than one year later. In any case, it is an important historical incident that is too little known, even here in Wisconsin.

Also relevant is David Rovics’ song “In Between Milwaukee and Chicago” written in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha.

On the topic of statues and murals, it is truly remarkable how many long-overdue historical markers went up only after the protests spurred by George Floyd’s death in May 25, 2020. I saw three examples of this on a recent visit to Jackson, Tennessee. Historical markers were recently put up there to the late-1800s lynchings on the courthouse lawn, the 1960’s Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-ins, and to honor their native son, Gil Scott-Heron, the world famous jazz poet and spoken word artist (“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”). This history languished, ignored in plain sight, until the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd forced local communities to rectify their long silencing of history.