Date: Saturday, August 15 from 10 AM until 2 PM

Location: Kellogg Park• 33 Kellog st, Ventura, CA 93001 US

The Mutual Aid Working Group of DSA Ventura County is engaged in base-building and community organizing by exchanging goods and services with those who want to see a world beyond capitalist profiteering.

A free meal is served to attendees. Come get a free meal, or even bring your favorite potluck item or beverages, or non-perishable food to donate.

If you would like to help our mutual aid efforts but are not able to attend, DONATE HERE:

Monthly Working Session Meeting

Tuesday, August 25 at 6 PM PDT

The Political Education Working Group is the place to bring your ideas for workshops, educational material, agitprop, and more. Our goal is to bring socialist ideas, DSA messaging and campaigns, and class consciousness to the people of Ventura County. All levels of organizing experience welcome.

Join DSA Ventura County’s Labor Working Group on zoom to discuss recent labor struggles in our communities, from Starbucks Workers United’s indefinite strike, to the new contract our County employees won by threatening to strike, to the movement for an arms embargo by Labor for Palestine, and the calls for a general strike by May Day 2028. Please, bring other ideas, campaigns, and your own workplace experiences. An agenda will be posted on slack soon. You will receive the zoom link shortly after completing RSVP.

Now with three VC Locations!

Newbury Park

Date: Saturday, August 22 from 9:30 AM until 11 AM

Location: Ragamuffin Coffee Roasters • 111 N Reino Rd, Newbury Park

Simi Valley

Date: Tuesday, August 25 from 6:30PM until 8PM

Location: 85C Bakery Cafe• 3013 Cochran st, Suite A, Simi Valley, CA

Oxnard

Date: Sunday, September 13 from 9:30 AM until 11 AM

Location: Ragamuffin Coffee Roasters • 550 Collection Blvd Suite 130, Oxnard, CA 93036, USA

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Come join like-minded comrades for a cup of your favorite morning beverage. These gatherings offer a relaxed space to meet members and find out how to get involved, decompress, talk about the issues we face, and stay connected as we close out the year.

No RSVPs needed!

Many hands make light work.

Please reference our Slack’s events channel, or general, for the Agenda.

Zoom Meeting link will appear upon RSVP.

By Alissa B., Anthony D., Elijah N., James M., and Jill R.

One year into an experimental electoral project to organize alongside our Socialists in Office, DSA is setting down real roots in western Wayne County.

Below is an approximate transcript of comments made by members at the June 2026 General Meeting detailing progress on Metro Detroit DSA’s organizing in western Wayne County.

Anthony D., engineer, Royal Oak, 2025–2026 SOWW chair:

At our 2025 Convention, members passed an amendment to the Socialists in Office (SIO) Committee consensus resolution, authored by Anthony D. and Frances R., that created a unique and experimental ‘Geographic Working Group’. It was designed as a space for rank-and-file DSA members living in State Representative Dylan Wegela’s and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s overlapping districts, to regularly meet with and organize alongside them. Our SIOs are surrounded daily by politicians ranging from corporate Democrats to fascist Republicans who serve the same ruling class, so we imagined this group as the socialist antidote and support system. The idea was to experiment with a new concept of how DSA and our SIOs should use elected office and carve a path towards our political independence. The amendment included the clause below.

The Geographic Working Group will issue a report at both the six-month (December 2025) and twelve-month (June 2026) mark to:

• provide an update on progress towards our goals and explain any roadblocks to accomplishing them
• offer an analysis and critique to consider whether it should be replicated by future similar bodies or other SIO Committees around the country
• normalize open reporting on the progress of this and other unique experiments in the chapter — all of which can be expected to have misses and fails, which are acceptable so long as the lessons learned are defined and shared with membership similar to past electoral campaigns

We conducted the first report-back at our December 2025 GM six months ago and wrote an article for the Detroit Socialist. We are doing so again today at the one-year mark. As of June 1, I am now the former chair of the group after having led it for a year, and have since handed off duties to our newly elected co-chairs, Jill and Kathy.

Jill R., stay-at-home mom, Westland, 2026–2027 SOWW co-chair:

As of June 1st, I’m one of the new co-chairs of Socialists Organizing Western Wayne (SOWW). I had first heard of DSA from Dylan when he knocked on my door during a canvass for his election a few years ago. Though it sounded interesting, I told him I didn’t want to drive out to Detroit for events. That didn’t stop him from trying to get me to join every time I saw him after that initial meeting. Then, last summer, I went to an event that Dylan and Mike McDermott had hosted just three minutes from my house. Dylan once again brought up DSA, where I once again told him I didn’t want to drive to Detroit.

That’s when he told me that a new group was forming and would be meeting in Westland. I told him to let me know the details as that was definitely something I would be willing to attend. I finally attended my first SOWW meeting at the end of October 2025 and joined DSA the following week. I’m now willing to drive to Detroit for General Meetings and other DSA events, but if it wasn’t for SOWW existing in the first place, I wouldn’t be here.

One of the projects I’ve worked on was having SOWW co-host the March No Kings event with UAW Local 900 in Wayne. I know a lot of us have mixed feelings about the No Kings events and the mobilization versus organization aspect to them, but attending the October No Kings gave me the little bit of hope I was missing that allowed my ADHD brain to finally contact Dylan for information about SOWW, which led me to DSA. And I wanted to use the March No Kings event as a chance to find some folks who may have been needing a little bit of hope, too.

After seeing the Wayne event pop up on the No Kings map and realizing that hosting one in Westland wasn’t going to be an option, I contacted Tonya, the Wayne host, to see if we could support in any way. Tonya is a UAW retiree who had talked her leadership into letting her have the No Kings event at their local union hall. She was able to convince leadership to let us co-host because so many DSA folks had joined the Local 900 members on the picket line during the 2023 UAW auto workers strike. Tonya and her leadership remembered the strong strike support and solidarity that DSA provided during those weeks.

During the event, we had a table where we talked to folks about DSA and SOWW and we had members, including newbies, crowd-canvassing to get signatures for the Mop Up Michigan petition. We provided medics and wrote up a safety plan, and Mike and Dylan both gave speeches to the 100+ people that attended. It was one of the smaller No Kings events due to it being a first-time location, but overall it went well and we’re looking forward to working with Tonya and Local 900 again. Tonya and I are still in contact and let each other know about any potential chances to organize together, and her husband Paul, who is a State Field Director at Voters Not Politicians, has attended SOWW meetings and shown interest in joining DSA.

Alissa B., retiree union staffer, Romulus, SOWW member:

I joined DSA in late July 2025 as a relatively new resident in Michigan. I got a call from Anthony not long after joining and he told me about this experimental Geographic Working Group that we now call SOWW, and invited me to a meeting. I was excited about the chance to connect with my community and like-minded people in the area. Ever since, I’ve been a regular attendee and have been able to observe the growth of this group.

SOWW meetings are intentionally structured to foster membership growth and leadership development. This is a space for new folks who don’t know much about DSA but are socialist-curious. It’s easy for non-members to show up to something local and feel comfortable getting to know DSA before joining. They get a chance to “dip their toes in,” and we build political reading and discussion on current issues and socialist theory into every agenda.

These productive discussions help expose us to a variety of perspectives. We can gradually ease people into organizing and socialism in a way that isn’t overwhelming, so people can learn about democratic processes and how to be active participants in organizing out in the world. In organizing alongside our SIO’s, you can see the direct benefits of organizing. Another aspect of the membership growth and leadership development model is task rotation. Each meeting, we rotate the standard tasks: facilitators, notetakers, food coordinators, space reservers, political reading and discussion developers, etc., so everyone has an opportunity to try different roles.

Lastly is the growth in numbers. In less than a year, we’ve doubled our membership from 30 members in December 2025 with an average of 12–13 meeting attendees to now having 60 members and 20–25 meeting attendees. Seventy different people have attended at least one SOWW meeting, and nine have joined DSA through their participation in SOWW.

Number of meeting attendees, SOWW members that have joined DSA, and first time attendees since the group’s inception a year ago.

James M., engineer, Westland, Dylan Wegela re-election campaign co-chair:

I joined DSA nearly a year ago after I was spotted at a No Kings Rally by my coworker and DSA member, Dan W. After attending a couple of General Meetings, I was struggling to find a group to get involved with because of the long distances to attend DSA meetings and I did not find Zoom meetings appealing. That’s when I got a call from Anthony about this Geographic Working Group to organize alongside our local SIOs. Fast-forward to today, and I am now one of the co-chairs for Dylan’s re-election campaign.

Dylan’s campaign isn’t your typical campaign, as he represents a fairly blue district and is running unopposed in the primary on the Democratic Party ballot line. Dylan having no opponent is surprising given how he has fought the mainstream Democratic Party and corporate interests by voting ‘No’ on every corporate handout brought to a vote and is continuing the fight against corporate handouts and AI data centers in Michigan.

Because Dylan is running unopposed, we have a unique opportunity to get creative with our campaign. Not just using it to get people to vote for Dylan, but to get Dylan’s constituents to work alongside him on tackling many of the issues plaguing our district, such as AI data centers, ICE occupation and detention facilities, tenants’ rights, and Flock.

So far, we have held some traditional events like a campaign launch party with a turnout of over 200 people. We’ve also held campaign fundraisers and canvasses which we have used to engage with the community about the myriad of issues in our district.

At the moment, we are planning to host some social events to bring the community out so that Dylan and SOWW can engage with them, with the goal to recruit more people into SOWW and DSA. We are also working on holding joint canvasses with Rashida’s team and other DSA-endorsed candidates.

Elijah, engineer, Livonia, SOWW Flock campaign chair

I joined DSA three months ago through my brother and through SOWW. SOWW has started a subcommittee to address Flock and AI-surveillance more broadly. I have been given the privilege of leading this group and bottom-lining our tasks. Our goal is to replicate the success of our sibling group in Ferndale. They were successfully able to push their city to cancel their Flock contract, proving that it is possible in southeast Michigan.

In Westland, we are taking two parallel approaches. The first is to build broad public support. Our group has canvassed homes and created literature to spread. The second is to build connections with the city council and ensure we can make a persuasive case against the technology. To achieve both aims, we informed, motivated, and organized many new members who had been attending SOWW meetings.

We set up weekly meetings to support each other. With the assistance of Ferndale and other knowledgeable members, we educated otherwise uninformed members about Flock and how best to go about the above goals. We have been successful in leveraging everyone’s unique skills and experience. Members who have never attended a city council meeting before are now showing up and speaking their minds. Other members are helping with creating literature, media, and petitions. Ensuring that we maintain pressure and consistent communication with Westland City Council has been possible thanks to the dedication of all members.

With all the above efforts, we are confident in our chances. We look forward to reporting back in July when the contract is canceled [Westland City Council announced on July 9 that they would not be renewing the contract]. Further, we are eager to expand our efforts so that ALL people in southeast Michigan have their privacy rights protected.

I would like to take a moment to talk about SOWW itself. SOWW presents a unique opportunity for this kind of work. First, local residents have the greatest impact on electeds in local communities, and second, SOWW is what gave me the opportunity to be a contributing, active socialist. I am grateful to this chapter for backing this initiative and bringing DSA closer to my home. Further, the opportunity to learn how to be a leader and how to organize from experienced members, such as Anthony, is also a privilege I am grateful for.

The Next Six Months

We plan to continue our recruitment of western Wayne County residents into SOWW and develop them into socialist organizers, through a cycle in which each new cohort is taught by the last. We will report back to membership again in six months at the December 2026 General Meeting. Through both our verbal and written debriefs we hope to continue normalizing open reporting on the successes and failures of our organizing work so we can all learn from it together.

Socialists are Organizing in Western Wayne County was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Jeremiah M

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[[{“value”:”

By: B. Greer

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

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

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

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

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

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

Supply-Side Limitations

Private development responds first to profit, not need. 

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

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

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

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

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

What Needs to Be Done?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“}]] 

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

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

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

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