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Este fin de semana, la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza, fuerza policiaca personal de Trump, empezará a ocupar nuestra ciudad y secuestrar a nuestros vecinos para terrorizar a la comunidad inmigrante e intimidarnos a quienes nos oponemos. Charlotte Metro DSA condena esta invasión. Nos mantenemos en solidaridad con la clase trabajadora de todas las naciones . Lucharemos contra esta invasión con toda la gente de consciencia.

Estos ataques son parte de una historia larga del estado fomentando la división entre personas de la clase trabajadora para debilitar y amenazar a nuestras comunidades con agentes armados cuando parecemos demasiado fuertes.

Previamente en este año, iniciamos nuestra campaña para boicotear a Avelo. La aerolínea Avelo es una aerolínea de bajo costo que está bajo contrato con ICE para llevar a cabo vuelos de deportaciones. Estamos pidiendo a la gente que participe en el boicot para generar presión a la empresa y la Ciudad de Concord, ciudad de donde despegan los vuelos, para que cesen el contrato. Con este fin llevaremos a cabo una protesta el día 29 alrededor del aeropuerto Concord-Padgett, les invitamos a que se nos unan.

Otros grupos de la comunidad están trabajando activamente para luchar contra este fenómeno.

Por favor revisen y utilicen la red de migrantes de las Carolinas y su línea directa para reportar secuestros (704) 740-7737

Y también visiten Siembra NC para obtener detalles sobre el entrenamiento en vigilancia de ICE el 17 de noviembre.

Nuestro objetivo es organizar y unir a la ciudad para resistir estos secuestros. Por favor acérquese a nosotros para colaborar o involucrarse.

En Solidaridad,

El Comité Directivo de Charlotte Metro DSA

English

Today, Customs & Border Patrol, Trump’s personal police force, will begin occupying our city and abducting our neighbors to terrorize the immigrant community and cow domestic opposition. Charlotte Metro DSA condemns this invasion. We stand in solidarity with the working class of all nations. We will fight this invasion with all people of conscience.

These attacks are a part of the long history of capital & its state fomenting divisions among the working class to keep us weak and siccing armed agents on us and our communities when we appear too strong.

Earlier this year we began our Boycott Avelo campaign. Avelo airlines is a budget airline that has a contract with ICE for deportation flights. We are asking people to boycott the company and help us put pressure on the company and the City of Concord where they fly out of to get them to drop the contract. To that end, we’ll be having a protest on the 29th by the Concord-Padgett airport. We invite you to join us.

Other groups in the community have also been actively fighting back. Please check out the Carolina Migrant Network and use their hotline to report abductions: (704) 740-7737. 

See Siembra NC for details about their upcoming ICE Watch trainings.

We aim to organize and unite the city to resist these abductions. Please reach out to collaborate or get involved. 

In Solidarity,

The Charlotte Metro DSA Steering Committee

By rejecting Thrive!, voters are saying that they want their money to go to the things they care about: the library, infrastructure, social support systems.

Enjoy your November National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 27-person body (including both YDSA Co-Chairs) which functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, hear about recent wins, support striking Starbucks workers, sign up for trainings, and more!

And to make sure you get our newsletters in your inbox, sign up here! Each one features action alerts, upcoming events, political education, and more. 

• From the National Political Committee — Take on the Moment
• Help Socialists in Competitive Runoff Elections!
• Be a Part of Our Fall Drive! Next Call Saturday 11/15 with Labor Guest
• Sign Up for Trump Admin Response Committee (TARC)
• Join DSA’s Queer Socialist Working Group
• National Political Education Committee Trainings Thursday 11/20, Thursday 12/04

From the National Political Committee — Take on the Moment

Dear Comrades,

It’s hard to believe that it has only been 9 days since proud DSA member Zohran Mamdani became New York City Mayor-Elect — we’ve been celebrating, and we hope you have been too! This is the biggest socialist electoral victory in the US in a century. Despite the millions spent to stop us, working people across New York chose a movement to bring down the cost of living, expand public services, and hold war criminals to account. 

And socialism isn’t just winning in NYC — Zohran won office alongside a slate of democratic socialists who won municipal races in Atlanta (Kelsea Bond), Detroit (Denzel McCampbell), Minneapolis (Robin Wonsley and Soren Stevenson), Boston (Ayah Al-Zubi), and across the country, and DSA chapters all over the place fought hard in races that built a stronger local base for future fights.

Join us to analyze these wins and find new ways to grow DSA by taking on the political moment at our Our Time to Win call tonight at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT!  On this call, you’ll hear organizers from some of the teams that brought you these wins (and at least one of the winners themselves!) as well as folks from the labor movement, organizers for immigrant rights and Palestine solidarity, and more. 

Tonight’s call is a perfect opportunity for new and potential DSA members to learn how we work in DSA to tie together different areas of working class organizing, both inside and outside the electoral arena. Our connections with labor and tenant unions, social justice movements, anti-war organizations, and mutual aid networks are crucial for building the working class power that can and will defeat capitalism, and we need all hands on deck! 

And have you signed up for your unique referral link for our Fall Recruitment Drive yet? Zohran’s election is inspiring people around the world, and this is a crucial political period for us to grow DSA and keep building momentum together. We just passed 85,000 members nationwide, and are aiming for 100,000 by the end of 2025! It’s a great time to ask friends, coworkers, or family members to join DSA — and as you recruit people (perhaps by inviting them to tonight’s call or to participate in one of the actions below), have them use your unique join link. If you recruit three new people to DSA using your referral link, you’ll win a prize, as well as the satisfaction of helping to grow and sustain our mass movement for socialism!

Speaking of mass movements, over 1000 Starbucks baristas in 40+ cities across the country just walked off the job and launched an open-ended Unfair Labor Practice strike. This is likely to be one of the highest-profile labor actions in recent memory, given the combined popularity of the pumpkin spice latte and the tireless coast-to-coast organizational efforts of our comrades at Starbucks Workers United. 

Starbucks organizers have some simple organizing asks for us, and because Starbucks really is everywhere, it’s likely that the vast majority of folks reading this newsletter can show up for at least one of these. So let’s make it happen! 

1. Find a picket line near you! They’re in cities across the country. Connect with your DSA chapter if you can, or just show up and make new friends once you get there!
2. Don’t buy Starbucks, and tell your friends: “No contract? No coffee!” This is a great way to practice having some organizing conversations in your network. (If they go really well, use that unique join link and ask them to join DSA!)
3. Join SBWU for a mass call on Monday 11/17 at 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT/6:30 MT/5:30pm PT! Hear from baristas on strike and find new ways to get plugged in.

These are just a few of the organizing asks we’ve got for you this week. Just because this round of elections is mostly over (we’ve still got some runoffs — see below for how you can help!) doesn’t mean the work is done. In many areas, it’s just beginning! Scroll down for more opportunities to plug into DSA work nationally. And if you’re not yet connected with your DSA chapter locally, find it here and reach out. We’ve got a world to win and it’ll take all of us. We’ll see you out there!

Solidarity,

Ashik Siddique and Megan Romer
DSA National Co-Chairs

Help Socialists in Competitive Runoff Elections!

BREAKING: Our comrades Jake Ephros and Joel Brooks of North NJ DSA are heading to a runoff for Jersey City Council!

Corporate money will be flooding into this high stakes run off in North New Jersey, and Jake and Joel are going to need YOUR help to get over the finish line. It’s time to take out the capitalist trash in Jersey City and send 2 more socialists to office. 

We’ve already raised $100,000 for DSA candidates around the country, who won over 11 races this year! Help us cap off a historic election cycle for socialists in the US with a donation to Jake and Joel TODAY.

Be a Part of Our Fall Drive! Next Call Saturday 11/15 with Labor Guest

The Growth and Development Commission has been hard at work with the Fall Drive. We now have over 5,000 new members, and the goal is to keep that growing while helping chapters engage members new and old in recruitment and development work.

We have a team of coaches working with chapters across the country for the Fall Drive. If you would like to participate in the Fall Drive with your own coach from our national team, please email the GDC at gdc@dsacommittees.org.

If you want to help us build DSA, join us for an upcoming phonebank with special guests:

• Sat 11/15 at 5pm ET with the NLC and a special guest from the labor movement
• Wed 11/19 at 7pm ET with special guest author Adam Hochschild
• Sat 11/22 at 2pm ET with special guest, author and Danish MP Pelle Dragsted
• Tue 12/02 at 7pm ET Giving Tuesday phonebank

Sign Up for Trump Admin Response Committee (TARC)

As the second Trump administration continues to wreak havoc, we know this onslaught is meant to overwhelm working class people and make us feel powerless. The Trump administration has within the first year committed mass terror campaigns against the people who live in this country, from threats against trans lives to the brutal horror of ICE raids across the country. But at the same time, we’ve seen the power of solidarity in this moment, as working class people in LA, Chicago, and cities across the country have taken a stand to defend their friends, families, and neighbors from this administration’s brutality. Multiple times this year, millions have taken to the streets to show their opposition to the Trump administration. What we are seeing across our society is something we as socialists already know: we are not powerless when we’re organized, and we’re still fighting for someone we don’t know.

It is crucial for socialists to be part of this fight to defeat fascism and win a socialist world. To that end, DSA’s Trump Admin Response Committee (TARC) is organizing with DSA members across the country to fight to defend and expand the rights of trans and migrant communities, stand up against Musk’s billionaire coup and stand with workers, elect socialist champions to office all over the country, and show how DSA is fighting against fascism and authoritarianism and for a world where we all have dignity and liberation. 

DSA can be a leader in the fight against fascism, but we need you to make it happen. Join our fight against fascism, and sign up here to get involved in TARC today!

Join DSA’s Queer Socialist Working Group

Join the DSA Queer Socialists Working Group (QSWG)! With recent anti-trans judiciary decisions, joining QSWG is more important than ever. The Supreme Court just decided that Trump can invalidate trans people’s passports, and a Federal court in Ohio just allowed people to bully trans students.

But right now, you can take action on anti-trans legislation! The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), described by sponsor Marsha Blackburn as intended to “protect children from the transgender in our society,” is back in Congress. This is especially concerning given the passage of explicitly transphobic anti-“obscenity” and digital surveillance bills in state legislatures all over the country. Our coalition partner Fight For the Future has a dialing tool and information about KOSA here.

The QSWG also has major internal changes going on. The Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy campaign commission is merging into the Queer Socialists Working Group (QSWG). We’ll also change our name, make structural reforms to comply with the Democracy Commission’s proposal, and have elections for new leadership in January. To vote or run in that election, you must join the QSWG.

National Political Education Committee Trainings Thursday 11/20, Thursday 12/04

With our big wins and fightback against the right, DSA has momentum and we are growing! The National Political Education Committee (NPEC) offers trainings to help chapters prepare for new members and build the strength of their local. Join us to learn how to start and run your own poli ed committee on Thursday 11/20 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT. Or learn how to set up a childwatch program on Thursday 12/4 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT.

And that’s not all! We want to broaden DSA’s horizons and encourage the spread of this kind of knowledge. If you have reflections and experiences with socialist political education in or out of DSA, we want to help you share them. Pitch your writing to our monthly newsletter, Red Letter.

The post Take on the Moment — Your National Political Committee Newsletter appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

On November 4th, a 1% sales tax was passed (52% to 48%) in Mecklenburg County to fund the P.A.V.E. Act.

We remain opposed to the sales tax increase. The working class had no say in the P.A.V.E. act, yet we are those with the most to lose. With the current $20 billion transit plan, we will also gain the least. We will not be able sit on the new governing Transit Authority Board of Trustees, but we're free to be harassed and kicked off transit by the new transit police force. There are no guarantees that these transit expansions will be completed, and that this tax money will actually go towards transit or bike infrastructure.

We support transit when it serves the working class. This Bill does not. It serves to support corporations.

Bills like the P.A.V.E. act get passed because these politicians don’t care about workers, only their corporate donors.

We're building an organization by and for the working class that can stand up to the capitalist class and fight for reforms like fast, free, reliable, and comprehensive public transit. We hope you will join us!

In Solidarity,

Charlotte Metro DSA

The High Peaks Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (HPDSA) mourns the lives of the more than 334 transgender and gender non-conforming people (TGNC) lost in 2025, including the more than 57 people who lived in the U.S. Many of those lost were trans people of color, a pattern that continues year after year, and a tragic reminder that we are failing the most vulnerable people in our communities. We are heartbroken by the loss of our comrades. 

We believe that trans people deserve to live free and full lives of peace, joy, and happiness without fear of being discriminated against, harmed, or even killed for how they choose to express their gender. We know that any lives lost–whether to direct or stochastic violence–represent a failure by all of us to address pressing issues within society. We ask everyone to stand up and defend our TGNC community at every opportunity, and push back against harmful anti-trans ideologies wherever they may appear.

We have seen an alarming increase in hateful rhetoric directed at TGNC people in 2025, along with tens of millions of dollars spent by political campaigns in recent elections to sour public opinion against them, with little political defense from the mainstream Democratic Party and its allies. Combined with influencers masquerading as experts and discredited or misrepresented studies being used as proof of harm, all backed by conservative think tanks and politicians funded with dark money, TGNC people have never been at greater risk. This damaging propaganda has led to trans people losing their jobs, new and vindictive restrictions on their ability to travel abroad safely, bans from participating in sports, and hundreds of thousands of TGNC youth losing access to life-saving medical care. Further potential injustices are a constant threat on the horizon.

“As a trans person myself, I feel the incredible pressure we’re under every day,” says Cayenne Wren, member of HPDSA. “We wake up, turn on the news, and we’re instantly confronted with unhinged social posts about us. Our very right to exist is endlessly debated about, even though we’re never included in those discussions. All too often we’re underemployed and unemployed, and when we do get a job, we are frequently harassed. Our greatest risk of harm is often from intimate partner violence and even our own family members. My heart breaks continuously for not only those we’ve lost, but also for my trans siblings who must continue to live with injustice every day of our lives. I love each and every one of you, and please know that you are never alone.”

For gay and bisexual individuals who fail to see the fight for trans liberation as central to the broader queer struggle, and for feminists who reject trans women as part of their coalition. Like Jewish liberal Zionists over the last two years of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, they will continue to find themselves ostracized further from the broader social justice movement, and forced into the untenable position of having to align politically with reactionary right-wing forces that subjugate them as well to uphold the white supremacist heteropatriarchal order.

HPDSA asks you to join us today in pledging to end all forms of violence against TGNC people. You can make a difference by directly donating to TGNC people in need, uplifting trans voices, showing up to public meetings to advocate for trans rights and inclusivity, being vocal against anti-trans propaganda, participating in local and state elections, and advocating for our elected officials to do more to protect TGNC in our state and provide a sanctuary for those individuals who face greater threats elsewhere. 

Together, we can make a difference in the lives of our most vulnerable community members and work towards a future where trans people can live openly and authentically without fear. 

Resources

• New York Name Change Guide

The post High Peaks DSA Honors Transgender Day of Remembrance appeared first on High Peaks DSA.

Central Indiana DSA’s Fully Funded, Fully Public committee condemns Indiana Attorney General’s lawsuit against Indianapolis Public Schools for “hindering” ICE agents in the strongest possible terms.  Rokita’s lawsuit against IPS […]

Para leer en español haz click acá.

Imagine that in the poorest neighborhoods of Detroit, Atlanta, and Chicago, you could find a public park with glistening swimming pools, world-class sports and recreation facilities, and spectacular landscape architecture rather than vacant lots. If you are a single mother, rather than being forced  to lug your clothes blocks away to pay to wash your clothes, you can come to a public, well-maintained, space to do your laundry for free while you eat delicious food grown at the agroecological garden nearby. Meanwhile, your children can learn how to swim, attend workshops on how to grow food in the city, hit up the planetarium to learn how Mayan Cosmology relates to the Big Bang, hang out at the skate park, or take a guitar lesson.

As you eat your lunch and do your laundry, there is a staffer whose job it is to talk to you and be on the lookout for any whiff of domestic violence in your life. If you are dealing with domestic violence, right next door is a counselor who can help you. Imagine in this scenario, somewhere in the most gutted sections of U.S. cities, you can have access to an expert lawyer should you need one. Regardless of what you’re dealing with at home, you are welcome to see the massage therapist and acupuncturist in this same public building, a space for women known as Casa Siemprevivas. She doesn’t just provide you with bodywork, but will teach these practices to fifteen of your neighbors and friends so that you can use this space for peer-support bodywork circles. These are spaces where emotional release through laughter and crying are encouraged. All of this is free and funded by the government.

In the U.S., this kind of investment in such expansive public services remains imaginary, for now, but it is very much real and operating efficiently in Mexico City under the leadership of the MORENA party of President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, the left-wing populist leader of the country. 

Such public institutions in Mexico are called “Units for Transformation and Organization for Inclusion and Social Harmony” or UTOPIAs for short. There are now sixteen of these, at present exclusively in Mexico City’s most populous and poorest borough of Iztapalapa. Virtually all UTOPIAs provide services for women dealing with domestic violence, harm-reduction forward centers for drug users, spaces to support queer and trans folks, community centers for the elderly, and workshops to support men in deconstructing toxic masculinity – which in practice involves teaching men whose relationships are in terminal decline or men who have become single fathers due to unforeseen tragedy, how to do things like wash dishes, fry eggs, or braid hair. No small thing.

Each UTOPIA  has a range of other specialized services. For example, UTOPIA La Libertad, sited directly behind a prison wall, has a petting zoo and a planetarium. UTOPIA Meyehualco, occupying what used to be an extensive park full of soccer fields for use by exclusive leagues only, now has a large animatronic dinosaur park (yes, you read that right) and a hockey rink. UTOPIA Olini hosts extensive manicured ponds, a tidepool, and gym that’s the home field for an outstanding breakdancing squad. UTOPIA Estrella Huizachtépetl sits atop a reclaimed drainage area from a water treatment facility that has been converted into an extensive wetland ecosystem. And UTOPIA Quetzacoatl, sited unusually across multiple discontinuous buildings and spaces in a dense urban area, has a strong focus on children’s mental health services, with an art therapist on staff. Some of the UTOPIAs have regular workshops supporting residents, especially women, in forming small businesses and cooperatives under the banner of the ‘solidarity economy.’

In the following section, I will share more stories of how people use and benefit from the services provided at the UTOPIAS based on several months of research on the ground in Mexico. My aim is to expand our collective imagination in the United States and elsewhere in the imperial core about what a robust urban commons of care can look like. In addition, I hope to share the deeper history of working class organizing and struggle that made these programs a reality. Despite the many differences between our organizing contexts, I suggest that US organizers have much to learn from organizers who have built mass power in Mexico.  

Stories from below: how the UTOPIAs improve the lives of working people

With all of these free social services on offer with a strongly anti-carceral, feminist, and ecological inflection to boot, it is no wonder that the UTOPIAs have garnered attention among international left-wing circles as a concrete example of what municipal ecosocialist politics can look like.  As part of my research in urban political ecology, I’m now spending a sabbatical semester here and I’m basing this article on visits to eight of the sixteen UTOPIAs and interviews with a range of staffers, users, and functionaries.

Across these visits and interviews, an unambiguously positive picture emerged. Mental health counselors told me about how they were able to spend far more time with clients working at the UTOPIAs than they had been working at understaffed clinics. 

An OB-GYN who rotated among the UTOPIAs believed that she was finally able to do what she went to school to do: “bring reproductive justice directly to the people.”

A farmer on staff at UTOPIA La Libertad shared that his agroecological vision for the future was that “cities can and must grow their own food.”

An elderly woman told me that the workshops on death and dying provided her with community and solace after her husband passed. 

A 24-year old butcher who used to be addicted to heroin got clean thanks to the harm reduction and counseling services at UTOPIA Teotongo, and he now goes to the site at least once a week to assist the on-site shaman in conducting temazcal sweat lodge ceremonies. He explained, “the UTOPIAs provided me with a life that I could have never imagined before.”

A group of teenage girls who started a punk rock band confirmed that there was no way they could have done so without the free instruments and practice spaces provided by the UTOPIA.

The UTOPIAs also demonstrate that expanding the urban commons of care-giving does not need to be expensive. The government of Iztapalapa has stated that each UTOPIA cost $100 million pesos (about $5 million USD) to build, with an operating budget of about $1 million USD. Even if these figures are underestimates, and even if they were ten times higher in the United States due to higher prices for materials and labor, the numbers would still not be very burdensome when you consider the billions that our big cities spend on cops and tax breaks for the rich.

As I spoke to workers and users of the UTOPIAs and asked about how these spaces were built, one name came up consistently: Clara Brugada, the former mayor of Iztapalapa and now Head of Government of all of Mexico City. I was told by mental health workers, retirees, hydroponic technicians, and site administrators that the UTOPIAs were the brainchild of Brugada, and that it was through her vision and through the sheer force of her political will, backed as it was by the people, that the UTOPIAs were built. 

The consensus that I heard was so widespread that it felt silly to simply deny it , even if it seemed implausible that a single individual could compile such a radical set of diverse services related to issues as varied as mental health, science education, and urban agriculture. But still, something seemed incomplete – so I dug deeper. Through my research into the recent history of Mexico City’s politics,  it became clear that there was in fact a mass movement that shaped the city’s urban political matrix, developed and piloted many of the initiatives commonly found at the UTOPIAs today, and in a significant way directly produced Clara Brugada. It’s called the Urban Popular Movement. 

The Urban Popular Movement and MORENA: political organization in the wake of neoliberalism

Decades before the MORENA party took shape, a far more scattered constellation of urban organizations were fighting for working people’s immediate demands for titles to their land, water services, and electricity. But in some instances, these organizations went beyond fighting for immediate political demands, and also experimented with and ultimately built direct services to improve people’s lives. They created centers for women dealing with domestic violence, grew food, regenerated urban forest ecosystems, and provided harm reduction services for drug users. In essence, they built many of the elements that we now find, at scale, across the UTOPIAS.

That urban organizers in Mexico City managed to create a forceful social movement with real political muscle under these conditions should give us further confidence that we can too.

The Urban Popular Movement itself built political power among the city’s disenfranchised squatters, the informally employed urban poor, and other working class people clinging to some semblance of normality and dignity.  This movement grew in the fertile soils of urban disaffection with the decades of pro-capital rule by the Institutional Party of the Revolution(the PRI) and subsequent conservative opposition. 

The ruling PRI party had historically maintained its power from the late 1940s all through the 1990s and even part of the 2000s through a corporatist structure built on three organizational pillars under its strict control: theConfederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos (CTM), representing labor, the Confederación Nacional de Campesinos (CNC) representing peasants, and the Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Populares (CNOP) representing urban middle classes, “civil society” organizations, and, in theory, the urban poor. 

By the 1980s, though, large numbers of Mexico City residents were neither in industrial unions nor were they meaningfully represented by the CNOP. For those of us living in the United States in the 21st century, this likely sounds very familiar: union density has plummeted in our own country since the 1980s, and ‘civil society’ organizations have gradually receded from popular life.  

Just like in the United States, by the 1980s the labor movement in Mexico was a shadow of its militant past.  The CTM formed in the crucible of the 1930s. The progressive president Lázaro Cárdenas established the organization with the aim of bringing together the more militant and communist-inflected industrial proletariat with more independent workers in the transit sector and those working for smaller businesses. But after the rightist Miguel Alemán Valdés came to power in 1946, he rechristened the official party as the Institutional Party of the Revolution(the PRI) and set out to purge militants from organized labor. He appointed Alfonso Ochoa Partida, nicknamed “el charro” for his love of the Mexican rodeo sport of charrería, as the head of the CTM to carry out these purges. To this day, flat-footed pro-capital unions are known as “sindicatos charros” in Mexico. These capital-friendly unions remained powerful political forces throughout the economic halcyon years of relatively prosperous Import Substitution Industrialization during the 1950s and 1960s. 

This era of relative class harmony held together by the PRI’s corporatist structure started to unravel in the late 1960s. The 1968 Tlaltelolco and subsequent Halconazo massacres of student activists, followed by the dirty war of the 1970s carried out by José López Portillo, created a crisis of political legitimacy for the PRI. Despite the relatively moderate demands of the student movement for political reform, the PRI was unwilling to tolerate any challenge to their corporatist hegemony. The PRI’s crisis of political legitimacy was supercharged by the global economic crisis of the late 1970s, which sounded the death-knell for Import Substitution Industrialization that had maintained rising standards of living in the postwar decades. These combined crises spelled the beginning of the end for the PRI, and created political openings for left-wing opposition to organize and build.

During the 1970s and 1980s, radical organizers and students who had fled to the countryside during the repressive days of the Dirty War had been hard at work carrying out rural political education programs, often inspired by the Maoist mass line theory.  Many peasants already had existing radical commitments anchored in the legacy of Emiliano Zapata, the militant champion of peasant land rights from Mexico’s revolutionary days. Such commitments were reinforced by their lived experiences of rural economic struggle over the years. 

As the 1970s economic crises began to make rural livelihoods less viable, tens of thousands of these newly dispossessed peasants began to move to the outskirts of Mexico City. While these new arrivals were poor, lacked formal political power, and were highly vulnerable to the predations of greedy landlords, they were far from passive actors. They brought their radical political analyses with them and quickly began to form politicized community organizations. As the legitimacy of formal avenues for popular urban political participation collapsed, these organizations grew into the Urban Popular Movement. 

The story of thirty-year-old Enrique Cruz, a militant with one of the organizations of the Urban Popular Movement known as the UPREZ (the Emiliano Zapata Popular Revolutionary Union), helps shed light on this history. He explained to me, 

I’m an Indigenous Soque-speaker and I was born in Oaxaca. My parents and grandparents were deeply involved in the struggle against gold and silver mining that was destroying our land and threatening the ecosystems we cared about. When I moved to the city, I found a school run by the UPREZ adorned with murals of Emiliano Zapata, and I knew that these were my people. Through the UPREZ, I gained a strong political education and became an organizer fighting for dignified housing, providing direct education and political education to others, and working on other issues.

Organizations like the UPREZ emerged in the 1980s, and became especially strong in the aftermath of the catastrophic 1985 earthquake that sparked a wave of urban mutual aid activity. One of the strongest of these organizations is known as the Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo (the Union of Settlers of San Miguel Teotongo), located in the far northeast corner of Iztapalapa on the edge of Mexico City.  

When I visited their community center and office to examine their archives in August and explained that I was interested in the history and political consequences of the UTOPIAs, staffer Marco Antonio Flores informed me that “If you’re interested in the UTOPIAs, you’ve come to the right place. Much of what you see in the UTOPIAs – services for women facing domestic violence, support for drug users, agroecology – we piloted those things, experimented, and developed them starting in the 1980s. To see them widespread and supported by the government now is a wonderful thing.” 

On first encountering the UTOPIAs, there were some things that seemed familiar. In my political and academic work, I have seen an impressive range of projects with similar aims, from scrappy anarchist outfits doing land projects, to non-profit sexual health and harm-reduction centers, to community-based agriculture organizations. But to see these things, and so much more, packaged together and brought to scale with the full muscle of the state behind them felt like something quite different. 

What made these organizations successful in not only fighting for basic urban services and also finding a foothold in national and city politics? I asked Marco Antonio why his organization seemed to be so robust and so persistent, with such a strong presence in the community today, while other member organizations of the Urban Popular Movement seemed to have disbanded. He responded, “In the 1980s, many of the organizations focused narrowly on demanding land titles, water hookups, electricity, and even rent control. Once some of those demands were met, they didn’t have much of a reason to continue. Our focus was larger: we fought for basic rights but also built  a vibrant community center with a more expansive goal of providing for the well-being of community members in a comprehensive way.” 

Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada herself is of this movement. While she was a student, she began organizing with Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo. She worked to organize for basic services like electricity, water, and sewage. According to an elder woman organizer who has lived in the community since the 1970s, Brugada played a critical role as a young strategist in the early 1980s. She pushed their group to lobby the government to fulfill these demands, in addition to self-organizing to provide services that the state would not.

In the 1990s, Brugada was a leader in a campaign to repurpose a women’s prison that also held political prisoners during the dirty war into a preparatory school. This campaign, which we might today describe as ‘abolitionist,’ ultimately succeeded and the school was inaugurated in the year 2000. While they fought for land titles, Brugada continued to organize with the Unión de Colonos to establish a community center to support women dealing with domestic violence, to restore urban ecosystems, and to provide support for drug users.

Here, there is a larger lesson for the US left, for DSA, and perhaps even more specifically for an incoming Zohran Mamdani administration in New York City. We have movements in our cities that are building the capacity for mass, militant mobilizations. These include the tenant movement and the labor movement. But they also include innovative projects carried out by community-based groups focused on environmental justice, reproductive justice, agroecology, and more. 

In other words, the community organizations of Iztapalapa that endured the test of time and won durable political power didn’t just fight for things like rent control and basic urban sanitation, as vital as those things were. They also directly built the means of providing urban community care with scarcely any resources, and in doing so ensured that when a political opening came about, their ideas and practices would be right there on the table for sympathetic political forces to run with. 

These groups intentionally built partnerships with people who would eventually build the MORENA party and become part of the state apparatus. As the MORENA party consolidated power, these groups were therefore integrated into municipal governance rather than kept on the periphery. 

Existing community organizations and the battle for the urban commons

Each of the UTOPIAs is situated in a neighborhood with a particular political and economic history. While the Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo was a powerful and visionary force for community organizing and development, other UTOPIAs had significant if less persistent community organizations in place. Many UTOPIAs are sited on formerly abandoned lots and parks. The Tecoloxtitlan and Papalotl UTOPIAs, for example, were both sited in empty urban fields that used to be black markets for stolen auto parts. 

The programming coordinator from UTOPIA Papalotl, Rodrigo Castellano Hernández, shared  that starting in the late 2000s, a group of community members came together to start running youth programming around the community. They offered martial arts classes and started to experiment with urban agriculture. By the time that Clara Brugada became the mayor of Iztapalapa, there were already robust community efforts in place to reclaim the site for positive and care-forward community activities. 

Likewise, in UTOPIA Tecoloxtitlan, a group of neighbors combined community resources to start a center for special education and an Alcoholics Anonymous center in the park, self-organizing community labor to clean up the dilapidated urban field. And in UTOPIA Meyehualco, which was built in a park that was previously available only for private soccer league members. The municipal government, alongside allied community organizations, organized to secure this land for free public use despite objections from the private club members who sought to maintain their complete ownership over the property.

In cities in the United States, the specific process of finding space for projects like this would likely look very different than it did in Iztapalapa. At the same time, US cities do have considerable leeway over municipal budgets, even if the ruling classes have been terribly successful at maintaining funding cops rather than care year in and year out. But radical movements in the US have demonstrated that things need not be this way. From teachers striking for better conditions over the past 15 years, to abolitionist campaigns in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, our own movements have revealed that municipal budgets can be meaningful sites of class struggle.

It is worth emphasizing that the UTOPIAs do not merely function as an organ of the MORENA party and Mayor Clara Brugada. Radical community organizations use the spaces to organize independent political power too. In September, I attended an event at UTOPIA Paplotl put on by one of the most important member organizations of the UPREZ, Enrique’s organizing home. In a packed auditorium of about five hundred people hailing from dozens of smaller community-based organizations and cooperatives focused mainly on housing issues, the leaders of the UPREZ formally inducted these groups and their many working class members into their organization. 

One of the founders and movement elders of the URPEZ, Jaime Rello, described how these mass movements relate to the UTOPIAs and the MORENA party succinctly:

Comrades, the UTOPIAS are the synthesis of all this experience and struggle of more than 57 years since the 1968 movement. Our comrade Clara, who emerged from the popular movements and the Unión de Colonos San Miguel Teotongo, learned well from all this experience of struggle and now puts it into practice. But that’s not enough, comrades, if there isn’t a strong movement to continue to fight for these issues, because the pressures that we face and that Clara faces from the right, the pressures we face from the interests of capital, are very strong. 

Our organizations are not built solely by leaders. Our organizations are built by everyone. We need everyone to contribute and put the collective interest before our individual interests. We have come as far as we have because of  thousands and thousands of social activists who have dedicated their lives to transforming this country and this city.

The UPREZ and the larger Urban Popular Movement are undeniably allied with the MORENA party. Clara Brugada herself came from these working class movements of Iztapalapa. Nonetheless, it is clear that these organizations are not demobilizing simply because one of their own is in power. The relationship between these mass organizations and the MORENA government could serve as a model for how DSA and other left organizations might relate to a Zohran Mamdani mayoralty or similar administrations: using the spaces, resources, and platforms provided by such an administration to fiercely organize for the rights of workers and tenants, to build independent centers of community power, and to develop a robust urban commons of care both within and outside of the state.

The historical roots of the UTOPIAs show us that community-driven initiatives to care for one another can be elevated and brought to scale by the state when conditions are right. It is not necessary to build good ideas for community care, urban agroecology, and physical and mental well-being from scratch. Many organizations have been doing this work. With relatively modest funding from the state, they can blossom into serious programs available to the masses. In the U.S. context, we can find similar types of local and regional organizations that have the vision and experience that could help  our versions of UTOPIAs flourish.

Armed with visions of community care similar to what has been realized in Mexico City along with the growing political muscle of DSA, we are in a position to fight for precisely these things in our cities. We should seize this opportunity, in New York City, and across the country.

Bibliography

In addition to interviews and field observations, this piece draws heavily on the following books on the urban history of Mexico City:

• Davis, Diane. 1994. Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century. Temple University Press.

• Gerlofs, Ben. 2023. Monstrous Politics: Geography, Rights, and the Urban Revolution in Mexico City. Vanderbilt University Press.

• Vitz, Matthew. 2020. A City on a Lake: Urban Political Ecology and the Growth of Mexico City. Duke University Press.

Happy Halloween, socialists! Have fun out there tonight, and if you're dressed up as a zombie, remember only to eat the rich.

Soon enough, it'll be back to business: for the next couple weeks, we'll be getting ready for our annual chapter convention on Sunday, Nov. 16, at the Old Labor Hall (46 Granite St.) in Barre. There, we'll elect new officers and set priorities for 2026.

No event plays a bigger role in shaping the direction of our chapter's work. We need your attendance!

And if you're a member, you still have time to declare your candidacy for an officer position or to submit a resolution or bylaws amendment. We'd like to receive proposals by Nov. 3 in order to give ourselves time to put together a convention bulletin.

RSVP here. We'll start with a potluck at 11 a.m. Carpools will be available. See our flyer and a couple photos from last year below.

Meanwhile, those of you who live in Burlington may have heard that GMDSA member Marek Broderick has announced his bid for reelection as Ward 8's city councilor. If you missed the launch party last week at Folino's Pizza, you can learn more about Marek's campaign on his website.

Below, you'll find a smaller-than-usual calendar of GMDSA committee meetings. That's because all of our committees must be reauthorized annually at the chapter convention: after Nov. 16, we technically don't know which committees will or won't exist.

If you want to create a new one, you can do so by submitting a resolution. You can email us here if you need any help writing one or have any other questions about the convention. See you on Nov. 16!

GMDSA MEETINGS & EVENTS
🚲 Our Urbanism Committee will meet on Monday, Nov. 3, at 6 p.m. on Zoom.

🧑‍🏭 The next meeting of our Labor Committee will take place on Monday, Nov. 10, at 6 p.m. on Zoom.

🔨 Talk about your job and learn about shop-floor organizing from peers at Workers' Circle (co-hosted by the Green Mountain IWW) on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month, including Nov. 12, at 6 p.m. at Migrant Justice (179 S. Winooski Ave., Burlington).

‼️ Again, our annual chapter convention will take place on Sunday, Nov. 16, at Barre's Old Labor Hall (46 Granite St.) at 11 a.m.

STATE AND LOCAL NEWS
📰 Burlington band Marxist Jargon has released a new album, to each according to their needs.

📰 The Vermont State Employees' Association staged a demonstration in Waterbury against Gov. Scott, who has ordered the state's remote workers to return to the office by Dec. 1.

COMMUNITY FLYERS

Democratic Socialist Kelsea Bond was just elected to the Atlanta City Council. Kelsea is a long-time DSA member and organizer. For many years, they have worked closely with local labor unions to expand workers’ rights on picket lines, at sip-ins and community meetings, in marches, and inside and outside of the State Capitol. They have canvassed for reproductive justice and advocated for the City to fund life-saving abortion care. They have fought to Stop Cop City and instead fund public services, build affordable housing, and expand mass transit. Our Chapter is immensely proud of their victory, as well as the work of the hundreds of volunteers and Atlanta DSA members who made this historic win possible.

For months, our members knocked doors and talked to District 2 residents about the issues that matter to working people — affordable housing, green public transit, and an economy for the 99%. The success that came from this massive effort proves that these bread-and-butter issues are broadly and deeply popular — even here in the deep south, even in a city whose government too often bends to corporate interests and the capitalist class.

This people-powered campaign was about standing up to billionaire commercial property owners who aren’t paying their fair share in taxes, and colluding landlords who are jacking up our rent year after year. It was about closing Atlanta’s wealth gap, which is one of the highest in the nation, by fighting for workers’ rights and a guaranteed living wage. It was about protecting the trans and immigrant members of our community, who are under attack by the fascist Trump administration and the Republican-controlled State government.

It was about building greener, more resilient city infrastructure that can withstand climate disaster and make Atlanta a more convenient and affordable place to call home. It was about ensuring that no Atlanta resident is without housing, healthcare, and a truly democratic say in how our city is run. We plan to continue our fight for working-class Atlantans alongside proud DSA member and Atlanta City Councilmember Kelsea Bond this spring, and we’re bringing the movement into City Hall with us.

Help us maintain our momentum and continue our work to make Atlanta more affordable, equitable, and safe for the 99%. This election is only the beginning. From here, we’ll continue relentlessly organizing to build a mass movement for working people.

Get involved today with Atlanta DSA to be a part of this fight, and win the socialist future workers deserve: atldsa.org/organize

Charlotte Metro DSA will not endorse the one-cent sales tax increase as we do not believe the framework created under the PAVE Act will adequately reflect the concerns of working families dependent upon public transit. As written, lower-income communities will face the highest cost burden given the regressive nature of sales taxes while Mecklenburg's capitalist class and political outsiders will be overly represented under the newly created 27-member Metropoitan Public Transit Authority (MPTA). Given this, we believe that any future projects will prioritize public transit not as a vehicle for connecting people but rather to enrich developers. In addition, the 60-40 allocation, 40% for roads, 40% for rail, and 20% for buses, intentionally divides communities by limiting where investment will go. Eastern Charlotte in particular loses out the most while North Charlotte will receive much of the immediate benefit under the planned Red Line. Charlotte Metro DSA believes that public transit investment should serve the working class without strings attached. The PAVE Act represents the deeply cynical nature of North Carolina state politics, in which politically-aligned business interests pollute legislation with obvious poison pills aimed at burdening workers and dividing communities.

Charlotte Metro DSA believes that public transit investment should serve the working class without strings attached. We are building a mass organization of the working class to fight and win key reforms like a fast and reliable mass public transit.

Sound good to you? Then join DSA Today!

In Solidarity,

Charlotte Metro DSA

You can view our Resolution from the 10/2025 General Meeting Here which authorized this post.