Peace Not War, Migrant Justice Not Deportation: The Obligation to Resist
Leftist Fiction Is Good, Actually
Statement on State Department report “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism”
Statement on State Department report “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism”
Date: July 24, 2026
Media Contact: For all press inquiries, please contact media@mdcdsa.org.
Washington, DC: The US State Department has released a report titled Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism. This report should be understood as part of the Trump Administration’s attempt to smear its domestic political opposition as malign foreign agents. It must be rejected as such.
From the first page to the last, this report makes unfounded allegations that critics of the administration’s foreign policy – particularly the Democratic Socialists of America, but including the National Lawyers’ Guild, CodePink, and Black Alliance for Peace, and other organizations – are “mirrors” or “inheritors” of the Cuban government’s supposed ideological victory in the U.S. Left. It breathlessly concludes that Cuban agents “maintain a foothold in hundreds of” groups such as ours, and moreover that everything from the 2020 racial justice protests to college students protesting against the genocide in Palestine is puppeted by this secret influence network. Of course, even this far-right fever dream of a report must admit: “DSA was not shaped by the direct and tangible influence of the Cuban government.”
As the DSA chapter in our nation’s capital, let us be clear: DSA’s positions and activities are determined democratically by our members. We oppose the US-imposed economic blockade on Cuba that makes ordinary life unbearable, support the right for all peoples to have self-determination, and oppose US interventionism abroad because of our own socialist principles, not because of the influence of any foreign government.
If the US government officials are concerned about growing international solidarity movements, they should examine how they are creating the crises that inspire those same solidarity movements. If the US government were not enforcing a stranglehold on the Cuban people, if it were not financing and arming a genocide in Palestine, if it were not illegally kidnapping foreign leaders, if it was not waging an illegal war on Iran, then there would be nothing to oppose. But these are the actions of our government, and we have a right and obligation to oppose them.
It is all Americans’ right to criticize and organize in solidarity against the unjust actions of our nation abroad. Solidarity is not foreign influence; it’s doing the right thing. When the actions of the United States bring suffering to ordinary people, whether they be in Cuba or elsewhere, DSA is proud to be part of the mass movement that opposes those actions. We have a world to win!
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Unclogging Capitalism’s Debris
Statement on Our Bus Stop Bench Project
Over the past few days, several news outlets in the Wilmington area have reached out to us regarding the current situation with our bus stop benches. In an effort to avoid conflicting statements or selectively edited quotes, and to be as clear as possible, Wilmington Democratic Socialists of America (ILM-DSA) has decided to release this statement. Our intent is to correct misconceptions, make our position clear, and explain where things stand.
We have built and placed over 30 bus stop benches since April 2025. The bench builds were undertaken as a mutual aid project to improve city transit and the lives of working class Wilmington residents by making their commute easier. This demonstrates one of our core beliefs as Democratic Socialists: that the city must work for the citizens within it. We paint these benches with friends and families both inside and outside of DSA. The building and painting rotates between locations based on availability and turnout. These benches are made from reclaimed wood and leftover paint and we actively strive to minimize both expense and material waste in this project. The benches we created cost around $200 in total.
There is a misconception that we were given approval by WAVE to set up these benches; this is not the case. We received an email from the Executive Director of WAVE on July 6th informing ILM-DSA that there had been complaints about the benches, and that they had been instructed by the city to get in touch with us. These complaints, to our knowledge, stem from people who found the messaging on the benches “too political” after the benches were the topic of discussion in a Facebook thread. Many benches feature art and messages designed to provide a bit of levity and joy for people who see them. A few feature messaging about real issues like rising rents from predatory landlords. We do not find these facts controversial, we believe affordable housing and public transit are rights owed to all.
Due to the complaint, we were informed it was possible that the benches would need to be removed. As we began to explore our options, we launched a letter writing campaign to show public support for the benches. Hundreds of citizens responded, and we thank them all for their belief in our project and for their desire to support our attempts to help improve the city when the city government and its various arms can’t or won’t.
We want to be clear: do not harass or bother WAVE over this. In our recent discussions with them they have been understanding and helpful. We also discourage arguing with the city government on social media. This will not be solved in the comments of a post. If you have positive stories about the benches, please post about that and tag us, we would love to read them. Hopefully that will allow council members to direct their attention away from social media and focus on assisting with finding solutions to Wilmington’s transit accessibility.
It has been brought to our attention that at least one bench has been the target of graffiti, with racial slurs on it. This is, obviously, against everything we believe in. More importantly, we are reminded to thank everyone who has kept the benches in such good condition over the past year. While we perform maintenance on benches that have issues, one of the most positive things about this entire experience has been seeing how riders and passersby have helped to keep the benches clean. That is a validation of this project: this community can, and wants to, care for itself. It believes that these benches, while certainly not perfect, are a valuable asset that improve the material condition of everyday life.
We acknowledge that one concern raised is compliance with Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility requirements. While we do believe that the entire city should be ADA compliant – which means more sidewalks, ramps, etc. – most of these benches are placed at bus stops that are inherently not ADA friendly, as they are patches of dirt and grass, often on uneven ground. What is more harmful for our neighbors of various abilities and conditions is being forced to stand in the increasing heat and humidity or sit in the dirt while waiting for buses that are increasingly late.
A recent article about the benches stated that 25% of WAVE’s 400 bus stops have benches or shelters; however, WAVE’s own website and interactive map shows that there are 28 benches and 36 shelters. That equates to roughly 16% of stops with seating. The thirty benches we created have doubled the original number of solo benches in the city in just one year, for around $200.
ILM-DSA is currently engaged in discussions with WAVE and City Council to find a solution that allows riders access to seating while waiting for public transit. We realize there is a bit of debate going around between who is ultimately responsible for the allocation of funds, construction, and maintenance of bus stop benches and shelters in the city. But the truth is unchanged: this is a service that Wilmington needs, and there is enough money to do it. What is yet to be seen is the willpower and creativity to solve a problem that would benefit everyone in Wilmington. We hope that through the outpouring of support we have received, as well as the proof of process by which we were able to creatively address this problem ourselves, a solution can be found. In the interim, we will not be providing further comment as we seek to find that solution.
If you haven’t already, please join our campaign to let City Council know that the community supports this initiative. Second, we encourage anyone who has been inspired by this project to join us at a bench build or paint day. We hold them on the second and fourth Sunday of each month, respectively. If that is not your cup of tea, we do group readings, social events, and more nuts and bolts community organizing all the time. More information can be found on our calendar at https://www.wilmingtondsa.org/events/.
A better world is possible – here in Wilmington and beyond – if we build it together. If you agree, join DSA at dsausa.org/join.
In Solidarity,
Wilmington DSA
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Base, Superstructure, and Perennialism: How I Reconcile Religious Tradition and Historical Materialism
We’ve asked our readers of all faiths to send us brief meditations on what brought them to democratic socialism and/or religion. Some examples can be found here, here and here. In what follows, Jon Hochschartner describes his understanding of Marx and religion.—Eds.
When I first started to form an independent political identity, as a high-school senior in the mid-2000s, New Atheism was ascendant. Politicized 
spirituality was almost wholly associated with the right wing. Dogmatic atheism seemed to be the price of admission to the socialist Left, and so, with some struggle, I paid it.
However, in recent years, as I’ve faced various personal challenges and the increasingly chaotic world we’ve all experienced, I’ve sought to reconcile a spiritual perspective with my political commitments. Religious tradition and historical materialism are two schools of thought that seem contradictory on a surface level. Historical-materialist analysis divides society into categories of base and superstructure, arguing that the former, which represents the economic foundation, primarily determines the latter, which represents the ideological system. Thus, the classic Marxist view of religion is that, as part of the superstructure, it will wither away as the base changes and no longer serves an ideological purpose.Friedrich Engels expressed this consensus perspective in his 1877 text Anti-Dühring. “All religion, however, is nothing but the fantastic reflection in men’s minds of those external forces which control their daily life,” he wrote. “When society, by taking possession of all means of production and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself and all its members from the bondage… only then will the last alien force which is still reflected in religion vanish; and with it will also vanish the religious reflection itself, for the simple reason that then there will be nothing left to reflect.”
Following the totalitarian experience of the Soviet Union and the way in which state atheism was so often used in Red Scare propaganda, modern-day democratic socialists are still burdened by outmoded beliefs about socialism and religion. U.S. socialist pioneer Eugene Debs has long been an inspiration to me, and I think his example in this respect is a better model for our time. Although he was suspicious of organized religion, he peppered his political commentary with biblical references and had a portrait of Jesus of Nazareth hanging in his cell during his imprisonment for opposing the First World War.
Emma Goldman’s most famous apocryphal quote goes, “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.” In a similar vein, I would argue, “If I can’t pray, it’s not my revolution.” This is not only because I feel a genuine pull to spirituality, which I think anyone should be free to pursue, but also because I think government crackdowns on religion of the kind seen in the Soviet Union are indicative of a wider authoritarianism that will ultimately move beyond spiritual communities and affect the whole of society.
I’m not an academic, but reconciling religious tradition and historical materialism doesn’t seem too difficult theoretically. If we concede that specific forms of religious expression are influenced by a society’s base, then the historical materialist view must acknowledge that at least some people have an innate drive toward spiritual life. It may not be possible for “hardliners” in each school of thought to admit these suppositions, but others should find them easy to adopt.
For instance, these days, I think of myself as a Christian perennialist, by which I mean I feel most at home in the Christian tradition but interpret it through the lens of perennialism, the belief that all religious traditions are describing a single, universal truth; differences between faiths can be ascribed to different cultural filters through which seekers perceive that truth. Mapping historical materialism over this outlook appears fairly easy. I would argue that these cultural filters, which might be called the superstructure, are largely determined by the base.
Jon Hochschartner lives in Connecticut. He is the author of a number of books, including The Animals’ Freedom Fighter: A Biography of Ronnie Lee, Founder of the Animal Liberation Front. He blogs at SlaughterFreeAmerica.Substack.com.
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Weekly Roundup: July 20, 2026
Events and Actions
Tuesday July 21 (4:30 PM – 7:00 PM) 
Jackie Fielder Town Hall & Tenants Rights Lit Drop (16th St. Mission, Qa, 2000 Mission St)
Tuesday July 21 (5:30 PM – 7:00 PM) Social Housing Working Group
(zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)
Tuesday July 21 (7:00 PM – 8:30 PM) EWOC Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing (1916 McAllister St)
Wednesday July 22 (6:00 PM – 7:30 PM) 
Phonebank for the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act – Hybrid (Syzygy SF, 395 S Van Ness Ave,)
Wednesday July 22 (7:00 PM – 9:00 PM) Socialist Shop Talk (1916 McAllister St)
Saturday July 25 (10:00 AM – 2:00 PM) No Appetite for Apartheid – Store Canvass (1916 McAllister St)
Sunday July 26 (1:00 PM – 2:30 PM) What Is DSA? (1916 McAllister St)
Sunday July 26 (5:00 PM – 6:00 PM) Tenderloin Healing Circle Working Group (zoom)
Monday July 27 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Tenderloin Healing Circle (220 Golden Gate Ave)
Tuesday July 28 (5:30 PM – 7:30 PM) Phonebank for the Affordable Housing Guarantee Act (1916 McAllister St)
Tuesday July 28 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (1916 McAllister St)
Wednesday July 29 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM) DSA SF Electoral Board x WFP Happy Hour (Teeth Bar SF, 2323 Mission St)
Wednesday July 29 (6:45 PM – 8:30 PM) Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (1916 McAllister St)
Thursday July 30 (7:00 PM – 9:00 PM) ICE Out Orientation (1916 McAllister St)
Saturday August 1 (1:00 PM – 3:00 PM) Immigrant Justice KYR Canvassing – Pacific Heights (Raymond Kimbell Playground Park, 1901 Geary Blvd)
Monday August 3 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St
Apartheid-Free Bay Area Outreach Training and Canvassing
Come join our store canvass for the No Appetite for Apartheid campaign on Saturday 7/25! We will meet at 1916 McAllister St for the training at 10. Snacks will be provided. Canvassing starts at 11:30, and will run until around 2.
This event is very new member friendly! We hope you can make it!
RSVP here.
Immigrant Justice Know Your Rights Canvassing Event & Social
Join the Immigrant Justice Working Group for Know Your Rights (KYR) canvassing Saturday August 1 at 1:00PM at Raymond Kimbell Playground Park!
We will be distributing red cards and KYR materials to businesses and community members in the Pacific Heights neighborhood.
We will meet at Raymond Kimbell Playground Park on the corner of Geary Blvd. & Steiner St. to receive training and materials before canvassing.
Join us after for a social/debrief session at a local spot and grab food/drinks!
New to canvassing? No worries! There will be a brief how-to training before we go out in pairs or small groups.
Reportback: EWOC Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing Week #1
Last Tuesday we held our first session of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) course Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing, a four week course that goes into the basics of organizing: from organizing committees to inoculation against the boss. A group of 10 met in person at 1916 McAllister to watch the course plenary before diving into a discussion about the material we covered. This week’s topic was “Developing Leadership” and was focused on the organizing committee, the core group of workers who lead a union campaign. We heard from a worker-organizer at Attaboy, a newly-unionized cocktail bar in Manhattan. She recounted how they identified leaders in the workplace, assembled an organizing committee, and eventually charted every member of their workplace. Her account emphasized how the organizing committee model played a decisive role during the unionization campaign. The plenary kicked off our discussion, where we compared our own experiences to the blueprint laid out in the plenary. We also talked about the differences between organizing in a small and large workplace and how we have spotted leaders in our own jobs.
The next session will take place on Tuesday, July 21th at 7PM, hosted at 1916 McAllister and will cover the organizing conversation.
If you’d like to get involved with the SF local chapter of EWOC, reach out to the lead coordinator Caitlin S or email labor@dsasf.org. EWOC is a standing topic at meetings of the Labor Board, which are held every other Monday at 7:00 PM, both in-person at 1916 McAllister and over Zoom. Anyone is welcome to attend, and we’re always looking for people interested In workplace lead canvassing, organizer trainings, and volunteer outreach. If you’re interested in organizing your workplace and would like to be connected with an EWOC organizer, fill out the request form here.