It’s hard to repress a devilish grin from stretching across my face when I see the most evil parasites of the world, from asset managers to European neoliberal politicians, in full-blown panic at the economic free fall triggered by President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. However, I can manage to stifle my joy by reminding myself of the 900 workers laid off by Stellantis allegedly due to the tariffs, or more generally that it will be the American working class that suffers the most from the approaching economic recession.

I am sure the lay off of those 900 workers is also being waved about by champions of unrestricted international trade as evidence that support for tariffs by unions like the United Auto Workers is misguided. And it’s this reaction that concerns me almost as much as the harms that will come from President Trump’s nonsensical tariffs. Because tariffs are not the problem – it is the reliance by President Trump, and practically every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter, on private investment to create domestic manufacturing that makes their tariffs so ineffective at protecting workers in this country. It was not always this way – the U.S. escape from the Great Depression and successful mobilization for World War II were predicated on one of the largest state plannings of the economy in human history, and when Americans saw the benefits, they became politically invested in it, from public housing to the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930 are being used as a convenient historical example by critics of President Trump’s protectionism. The persuasive appeal is obvious – the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were a last-ditch effort to reverse the ever-deepening Great Depression.. And, depending on which historian you asked, these tariffs either failed to stop massive unemployment or made the situation far worse by the trade war it triggered. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, otherwise a notorious boogeyman of “free market” proponents, ran on decreasing tariffs, ending the trade war, and reforming the political process for instituting tariffs.

However, while the increases of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were undone by FDR, the huge decrease in tariffs did not occur until after 1947. A global economy devastated by World War II had largely made the question of imports undermining U.S. jobs a moot question, and to the contrary American capitalists wanted trade liberalization because the U.S. had become the unquestionable center of global manufacturing, not to be dethroned until 2010 by China. The state of Pennsylvania alone produced more steel in 1945 than Germany and Japan combined.

But that was not created by the “free market.” It was created by unprecedented (at least within the United States) centralization of manufacturing by the U.S. federal government. Perhaps the most obvious example was the War Production Board formed in 1942. The WPB directed $185 billion (equivalent to $2.48 trillion today) of production in its three years of existence. The Board converted companies’ production lines (whether they liked it or not), prohibited nonessential production, rationed several commodities, and otherwise behaved in a way that earned the admiration of more controversial state planning proponents. 

Unsurprisingly given its broad mandate, the WPB also worked closely with the United States Tariff Commission. As this report from the Tariff Commission in 1942 reflects, changes in tariffs and other trade restrictions were not done out of some neoliberal ideology that the free-er the trade the better, but rather were calibrated to balance protecting domestic production while maximizing trade needed for the war effort. To just name one example, the report notes that the reliance on importing “canned fishery products” created a massive shortage once the war disrupted global trade. Even so, the report notes that any restrictions to ameliorate the situation had to be “consistent with the prosecution of the war.”

There is no such calibration between President Trump’s tariffs and state planning for production. To the contrary, planning of the economy in the U.S. was long ago turned over by the state to the finance industry (as epitomized by former War Production Board staffer and former Treasury Secretary Henry Fowler becoming the chairman of Goldman Sachs International in 1969). Even worse, President Trump’s strategy for incentivizing private investment is not even the typical flawed strategies of neoliberal orthodoxy (special economic zones, tax incentives, regulatory sandboxes, etc.), but rather to bully the world in the hope that foreign private capitalists will invest in American manufacturing out of fear of becoming a target. Whether this strategy will be effective in attracting foreign private investment is dubious at best – private investment generally is averse to the uncertainty and volatility that President Trump inculcates, and that is all the more the case when the purse strings are held by those with less influence over U.S. politics.

Even if President Trump’s strategy were to succeed though, it will not create the kind of manufacturing jobs that World War II era state investment paired with tariffs did. There will be no governmental support for unions and their ability to collectively bargain with employers, let alone the WPB’s threat of nationalization to those factories that did not promote industrial peace with the unions. And there is a certain irony to President Trump’s racist hatred of foreigners not extending to foreign capitalists, who are particularly well-positioned to exploit American workers. A CEO in Barcelona does not have to worry about his workers in Danville, Illinois showing up at his house or neighborhood charity fundraiser. And the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) empowers these foreign corporations to attack what few protections exist for American workers. This is not conjecture – the Canadian mining company Glamis Gold took the U.S. to ICSID in 2003 over environmental and labor protections related to open pit mining in California.

In the words of Marxist economist Anwar Shaikh, “In real international competition, there are always winners and losers.” The neoliberal ideology behind global free trade ignores this reality by claiming that unrestricted global trade lifts all boats, when that is clearly not true. The Trumpian protectionist ideology meanwhile acknowledges this reality but attempts to make America the “winner” by bullying other countries with the hope that this leads to foreign private investment in U.S. manufacturing. That strategy will likely fail, or even worse create abominable manufacturing jobs with little protections for workers. In this time, socialists must thread the needle by arguing that tariffs are an important tool but must be paired with state investment and planning to replicate the process by which the U.S. became the manufacturing powerhouse with good union jobs in the post-World War II era. We must clearly say that tariffs cannot bring back good union jobs, and even state investment is not guaranteed to, but instead we should follow historic examples like the Tennessee Valley Authority where public investment was paired with democratic engagement and labor unions (which continues to this day).

The post Tariffs Are Not the Problem – Private Investment Is appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

Nevada’s 83rd legislative session started on February 3rd, 2025. Las Vegas DSA’s Electoral Working Group has been tracking bills on economic justice, worker power, immigrant justice, environmental justice, criminal justice reform and more.

By Jean Allen

At the end of the vigil for Sam Norquist, a queer man who I was sitting by said “see you at the next one” as I left. I came back, insisting that no, let there never be a next one. The man shrugged, took a hit of his vape, and we nodded and left. I was really struck by that, the bleakness that prompted in me. 

A week later, at another vigil for those lives destroyed by ICE, a comrade of mine—an unbelievably kind Chinese socialist on a student visa in Rochester—asked me if they were going to allow all of us to speak. I don’t think it’s that kind of rally, I said, and he left to argue his case. As I saw him be gently talked down, I heard the speaker talk about how many voices were being silenced by ICE and by our capitalist system.

Comrades, I don’t have any problem with any of the speakers at either of these vigils. Even where I disagree with these speakers we are all together trying to stop this terrible administration. And I think that the Sam Norquist vigil’s use of an open speakers list was helpful. But even with that, what is desperately needed is some degree of open conversation among the participants of our rallies.

My ideal would be small group conversations, but even a response period, as RCEA’s vigil had, is preferable. In November of last year, ROC DSA held a forum where people were allowed to speak in small groups about their feelings on the election, and where we could move forward. While I understand that the weather has been brutal the last two months, why have other groups not repeated this format? 

There’s a term I’d love us to start thinking about—protagonism. Developed by Marta Harnecker talking about Latin American movements, the term refers to the ability of the working class to “be the subjects, not objects, of their own individual (private) and collective (historical) stories—to be protagonists.” This seems obvious—who wouldn’t want to empower the masses?—and yet we so consistently disempower the people who come to our events in order to avoid annoyance or frustration.

And I get that. The two vigils I went to in the last few weeks were events that popped out of the blue, and they were managed as well as they could have been. No disruption occurred, no unpleasant moment transpired. I had my political start with the anti-war movement of the 00s and I remember how for a decade any open mic would eventually attract a 9/11 truther or someone with some similarly embarrassing conspiracy theory. It’s easy to dismiss open replies as encouraging cranks and conspiracy theorists. But cranks and theorists emerge because people aren’t used to thinking about society, because people don’t know how politics works because they’ve never played a part in it. Awkward moments are the growing pains that come from people processing thoughts themselves, which we can never force. Our events are drama free, yes. But people are coming to our people disappointed by our political system, which just seems to offer passive observance, and they passively observe a lecture series, and then they go home unchanged. That is a failure.

We are not going to get free, we are not going to stop the US’ slide to fascism, with the handful of organizations and notable figures we already have. To build towards a real democracy, we must first empower people and transform people’s consciousness. The best way is to allow people to talk through these ideas among their equals. That’s a lot more complicated than a lecture series. It’s a lot harder to pull off, and will feature frustrating moments. But, frankly, we don’t get infinite vigils on the road to fascism. We need to get this right, and empower the thousands of workers in this city, and we have a limited time frame to do so.

The post Let People Speak first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Join us in Portland on May 1st to speakout, march, and sing. Bring union banners, homemade signs, friends, family, neighbors, coworkers, and fellow students. All unions, community groups, and political organizations are welcome to form contingents and bring their own bullhorns and chants. We start at USM at 3:30. March to the Post Office, Portland High, and then Public Library in Monument Square starting around 5pm. Then up Congress Street for a final rally in front of the Portland Public Museum. Details here.

The slogan “Strength in Solidarity” won the vote to lead Portland’s International Workers Day protest on May 1st. About seventy people took part in the April 12 organizing meeting, including teachers, electrical workers, nurses, graduate student workers, LGTBQ+ activists, Gaza solidarity organizers, and political organizations like Maine DSA, Indivisible, and many more. The Maine May Day coalition meeting aims to build immediate mobilizations while contributing to a long-term united front to defend working peoples’ rights against the Trump blitzkrieg. 

The Portland effort is part of a larger picture. On April 17, over 1300 people participated in a national conference call spearheaded by the Chicago Teachers Union to organize May Day Strong protests in hundreds of cities across the country. [Note: Maine May Day sites will be listed starting later today.] Meanwhile, the Maine Education Association and Maine AFL-CIO affiliated unions are calling for rallies in multiple towns and cities across the state. 

[Read next: We need an anti-Trump united front in Maine]

Unfortunately, our social movements and unions are not yet strong enough to stop Trump in his tracks. This means we’re going to suffer losses and casualties, even as we increase our ability to fight back. Scores of immigrant workers are being detained and threatened with deportation in towns across our state. Bowdoin College faces threats from Trump for solidarity actions carried out by Students for Justice in Palestine. Free school lunch is at risk for more than 100,000 public school students. Transgender people face an orchestrated backlash, striking at the core of their basic human rights. Federal unionized workers have been illegally terminated and Trump wants to outlaw their collective bargaining rights. Cuts to Medicaid will lead to more hospital closures. Not to mention the impact of massive tax breaks for the rich, the slashing of environmental protections, and the very existence of our—already weak—democracy and civil liberties. The message is clear: if you stand up for basic civil liberties, you risk financial catastrophe and police repression.

Meanwhile, the Maine Republican Party, with Laurel “Doxxing kids” Libby at its head, is raking in millions from far-right groups across the country to ram through a referendum in November to limit voting rights for women, the elderly, the disabled, and—it must be said out loud—anyone that doesn’t look white enough for Libby and her entourage. Their strategy is to break our resolve and gerrymander power for themselves for decades to come in the name of profits for the rich and pain for the working class. They have the wind in their sales and we have to prepare for a drawn out struggle.

In that vein, one inspiration for the May 1st action comes from United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain’s call to begin coordinating contract expiration dates and ongoing actions now in advance of an effort to launch a general strike on May 1st, 2028 to flex workers power. One graduate student union organizer put it this way, “If we want to win, we all need to get strike ready. We need to practice. Not just in our unions, but in our communities, too.” 

Collectively, we took an important step in the right direction when 15,000 people in towns across Maine turned out on April 5 to protest Trump’s wrecking ball. These mobilizations began to change the mood from isolation and disbelief to determination to put up a fight and they are set to continue on April 19. 

There’s no telling in advance how large the protests will be in the coming weeks and months. The ebb and flow of mass social movements cannot be scheduled in advance. However, the history of labor during the Great Depression and the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s both demonstrate that the better organized we are in advance, the better we are able to cultivate and sustain opposition. The more we leave our internal organization up to a date posted on Facebook and Instagram—or to small professional staffs managing large databases of passive followers and donors—the weaker we will be. This doesn’t mean we can’t use social media or raise money, but there is no substitute for face-to-face planning between organizations who can democratically represent activists in every workplace, neighborhood, community and school. We’re not there yet. That’s where we have to get in the years to come if we want to beat Trumpism and replace it with something better than what came before. 

Fortunately, we’re not starting from scratch. Maine has hundreds of community and labor and advocacy organizations who have been doing the hard work of organizing for a long time. That work has expanded the rights and social programs we all rely on. Now, much of that is under threat. It’s no surprise that the first groups to stand up were those with the strongest organizations, for instance, unions representing postal workers, federal workers, nurses, and teachers. We have to build on those efforts. To defend ourselves, we all need to expand our circles and build bridges between communities.

[Read next: Sitting down with the Portland Tenants Union]

Final details will be hashed out this weekend, but the outline of Portland’s May Day action is coming into view. We’ll begin at 3:30 on the Portland campus of the University of Southern Maine to speak out against Trump’s threat to our public universities. And, we’ll march on the boss to demand the UMaine system bargain in good faith and sign a union contract with graduate student workers represented by the United Auto Workers. The two go hand in hand. 

Next, we’ll march to the Post Office on Forest Ave to oppose Trump’s threats to privatize it and hear from workers threatened with mass layoffs. Then up past Portland High School and the Portland Public Library in solidarity with educators and students opposed to Trump’s destruction of the Department of Education and his attacks on LGTBQ+ and immigrant students. Finally we’ll march up Congress Street during rush hour to the Portland Museum of Art to support funding for the arts and hold a final community rally starting around 5:00 pm. We’ll have a program of speaking out against Trump’s attack and offering ideas about how to deepen solidarity between all the different parts of our movement for democracy and justice. 

We need your help. Please attend the march if you are able. It’s a big state, so if you can’t get to Portland, please support or organize another action in your town or region hosted by the Maine Education Association and the Maine AFL-CIO or any other community group that steps up to stand up. Strength in solidarity. 

[Listen to the Maine Mural Podcast latest episode: Camp Hope in Bangor, Maine]

The post Strength in Solidarity: May Day protests against Trump take shape in Maine appeared first on Pine & Roses.

By Richard S

Cambridge, MA – Massachusetts labor activists were some of the first movers to confront South African apartheid and push for US divestment and sanctions. These efforts bore fruit in 1982 legislation divesting Massachusetts pension funds, Boston municipal divestment in 1984, and federal sanctions in 1986. Throughout the late 20th century, labor activists in Boston kept the issue of apartheid firmly on the agenda until the African National Congress (ANC) leadership supplanted apartheid and established a progressive constitutional democracy.

Today, American workers confront another criminal regime. In July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found Israel to be practicing “racial segregation and apartheid” in occupied Palestine. In Gaza, Israeli forces have resumed what Human Rights Watch and international institutions around the world call genocide, “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” According to a recent YouGov poll, only 15% of Americans support increasing military aid to Israel. Public favorability toward Israel has cratered across all partisan and age demographics over the past three years. Given this bedrock of anti-apartheid sentiment, we can look to the New England struggle against South African apartheid as inspiration to end its Israeli form.

Workplace Roots of Anti-Apartheid Struggle

In 1970, at the Polaroid Corporation in Cambridge, MA, two Black employees – chemist Caroline Hunter and photographer Ken Williams – discovered the South African government was using Polaroid’s cameras to produce passbook photos – the internal passports enforcing racial segregation​. Outraged that their labor aided oppression abroad, Hunter and Williams formed the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement (PRWM) and launched the first anti-apartheid boycott of a U.S. corporation​. They demanded Polaroid withdraw from South Africa through a pressure campaign that included rallies at Polaroid’s Cambridge headquarters. Pressure worked. By 1977, Polaroid ended all business in South Africa after a failed attempt at “responsible engagement” collapsed under public scrutiny​.

In the wake of the 1976 Soweto Uprising, Boston activists formed the Boston Coalition for the Liberation of Southern Africa (BCLSA) alliance fighting white minority rule. Labor organizers coordinated boycotts and educational events. Black American trade unionists in particular took the lead: in 1975, the national Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) broke with the conservative AFL-CIO and passed a resolution supporting the exiled South African trade union federation aligned with Nelson Mandela’s ANC. CBTU became the first U.S. labor body to call to boycott apartheid.

New England Labor at the Leading Edge

As South Africa’s repression intensified, New England labor activists championed divestment – pulling financial investments out of companies tied to South Africa. In 1979, State Representative Mel King of Boston and State Senator Jack Backman introduced legislation to divest the state’s public-employee pension fund from banks and corporations doing business in South Africa​. At first, their bill lacked enough support​. Understanding that broader grassroots backing was needed to overcome political inertia and corporate lobbying, they helped convene a meeting of unions, church groups, and anti-apartheid activists across Massachusetts​. 

Unionists testified that worker pension dollars should not fund apartheid. They linked factory shutdowns in Massachusetts to companies seeking cheap, non-union labor in South Africa. 

These forces merged to form the Massachusetts Coalition for Divestment from South Africa, or Mass Divest​. Crucially, labor unions were at the coalition’s heart, including locals of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and Massachusetts Teachers Association​. By uniting labor with religious and student groups, Mass Divest built a broad constituency in favor of cutting Massachusetts’ economic ties to apartheid. As Mass Divest rallied public support through petitions, pamphlets, and public hearings, the campaign gained momentum. Unionists testified that worker pension dollars should not fund apartheid. They linked factory shutdowns in Massachusetts to companies seeking cheap, non-union labor in South Africa. 

In 1982, their efforts paid off, as the Massachusetts legislature passed a sweeping pension divestment bill requiring the state to sell off all investments (around $100 million) in companies doing business in South Africa​. Conservative governor Edward King vetoed the bill. In a dramatic show of unity, lawmakers overrode his veto – the only override of King’s tenure​. The new law, enacted in 1982, made Massachusetts the first U.S. state (alongside Connecticut that same month) to divest its public pension funds from South Africa​. Massachusetts’ divestment law – described at the time as the toughest in the nation – passed through a concentrated campaign led by a bedrock of labor unions and activists in Massachusetts. Union activists provided much of the grassroots muscle behind Mass Divest, lobbying legislators and educating rank-and-file workers on why apartheid investments were immoral. The state AFL-CIO and major unions formally endorsed the campaigns in resolutions and lobbying officials. 

Inspired by the state’s stance, Boston City Councilor Charles Yancey successfully introduced a Boston city ordinance in 1984 requiring Boston to withdraw its funds from companies tied to apartheid​ – a measure similar to a proposal by Somerville for Palestine to Somerville City Council in March 2025. “Today’s divestment legislation is one more hammer blow against the chains of apartheid,” declared Yancey in 1984​. This made Boston the first major American city to divest municipally, selling $12 million in stocks and leading to policy transfer across the country as cities and states took Boston’s law and codified it into their own books. By 1986, the U.S. Congress, prodded by a broad coalition prominently featuring labor, overrode President Reagan’s veto to enact the federal Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, imposing economic sanctions on Pretoria​.

Labor Building Base, Boycotts, and Networks of Solidarity

New England labor did not just lobby for legislation; their memberships took more direct action to isolate the apartheid regime. Trade unions passed strong anti-apartheid resolutions throughout the 1980s, committing union resources and moral authority to the cause. For example, Massachusetts AFL-CIO under President Arthur Osborn vocally supported sanctions. So did local labor councils; the Greater Boston Labor Council regularly urged its affiliates to boycott firms complicit in apartheid. National unions such as the United Auto Workers (UAW) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) denounced apartheid’s exploitation of workers. West Coast longshoremen in 1984 boycotted South African cargo ships, inspiring unionized dockworkers and truckers in the Northeast.

Unionized city workers even removed Shell products from municipal garages.

Unions also joined campaigns targeting specific corporations. A notable one was Shell Oil, part of an international boycott to pressure Royal Dutch/Shell to withdraw from South Africa. Boston became a key front in this campaign. In December 1988, Boston’s mayor Raymond Flynn (former labor organizer) issued an order flanked by labor leaders declaring the city government “Shell Free” – no city agency would buy Shell gasoline until the company cut ties with apartheid​. Boston’s unions enthusiastically backed Flynn’s order; unionized city workers even removed Shell products from municipal garages.

Finally, Massachusetts activists built relational networks of solidarity with South African liberation movement organizers. Union locals hosted South African trade unionists and anti-apartheid leaders on speaking tours. Labor-affiliated groups raised funds for Black union organizers in South Africa who were jailed or fired by apartheid authorities. For instance, Boston-area unionists sponsored the defense of imprisoned labor leaders such as Oscar Mpetha and funneled material aid to newly independent Black unions in South Africa like the National Union of Mineworkers​. In June 1983, Northeast activists formed a Labor Committee Against Apartheid to coordinate letter-writing drives.

When Nelson Mandela was liberated from prison in 1990, he made a point to visit Boston​. Speaking to a jubilant crowd of 300,000 on the Charles River Esplanade, Mandela praised “the pioneering and leading role of Massachusetts.” The long-incarcerated leader of the South African freedom struggle cited the early Polaroid protests of 1969–70 as proof that Bostonians “rallied around our cause when we soldiered on by ourselves…You became the conscience of American society.”​

Mandela’s praise was not just empty rhetoric. As recounted by scholars like Kathleen Schwartzman, Kristie A. Taylor, and Stephen Zunes, international sanctions and other restrictions on South African capital played a decisive role in apartheid’s collapse.

Today: Labor and the Struggle for Palestine

Labor’s fight against apartheid in South Africa shows us divestment and sanctions can be effective tools to isolate racist regimes. It continues today in the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel. Just as our unions once opposed apartheid South Africa, unions today, such as the UAW, UE, tenant and teachers’ unions are taking up the baton of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Crucial to the earlier generation’s success was building a broad, popular coalition across religious, labor, and student groups in coordination with allied lawmakers.

For our predecessors, “an injury to one is an injury to all” was not just a moralizing cliché. It was an analytic necessity that grounded the struggle for universal justice in shared class interest, the same class interest that leads workers to oppose Trump’s mass firings, the plunder of the commons, attacks on free speech, science, public health, and social insurance. As the war on Gaza deepens in its cruelty, and as the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza nears its fifty-eighth year, the fight for an arms embargo and broader sanctions will be fought by labor.

Richard S is a member of UE Local 256 and Boston DSA. He is also a doctoral student in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Recent attacks on the NLRB are forcing unions to consider their tactics. U.S. labor history may hold some new ideas.

The post How do we organize when union rights are under attack? appeared first on EWOC.

Welcome to your quick glimpse into some of the work of the chapter over the past couple of months, prepared for the Little Red Letter #135. The I-94 Fight Continues Organizers kept the pressure on after our joint event with Our Streets to shine light into MNDOT’s opaque and undemocratic process at the January Political […]

Author’s Note: This article was written and initially posted to slack prior to the vote for endorsement in the Mayoral election, however due to the author’s laziness it was not finished in time for the prior newsletter. Because the thrust of the article is caution against the socialist electoral project taking executive offices, rather than […]

This month our Maine Mural podcast brings you interviews with houseless folks from Bangor who are being forced out of their encampment with little guidance as to where they should go.

The post Camp Hope, Bangor Maine appeared first on Pine & Roses.

By Skye K.

If you are reading this, you are very likely aware that ROC DSA has endorsed Stanley Martin, Chiara “Kee Kee” Smith, Tonya Noell Stevens, and Kevin Stewart—The People’s Slate—and Kel Cheatle for City Council, and Mary Lupien for Mayor in the city of Rochester. What you might not know is that in 2024, ROC DSA adopted a political platform to help guide our electoral decision-making and to communicate clearly our official, collective position on a variety of matters. One thing which in retrospect has been glaring to me is that we never published this platform publicly.

So in this column, I have become determined to share ROC DSA’s official platform. I’ll also explain some of our internal structure, and how we came to develop and adopt the platform!

How does ROC DSA make decisions?

We make decisions procedurally

“How do you make decisions?” is quite a reasonable and relatively-common question. More broadly, people often wonder about the internal structure of ROC DSA. Each year at our annual convention, the membership sets the number of Steering Committee (SC) members and elects that number from a pool of nominees who have self-selected or agreed after being prompted by the Nominating Committee. The Steering Committee then exists throughout the year to make relatively-fast-paced and -high-level (meaning more-abstract) decisions on the chapter’s business. Otherwise, our decision-making happens in Organizing Group (OG) meetings, at our regular general meetings (GMs), and at our annual convention. We believe strongly in true democracy and rigorous democratic process. Given a central body elected by membership, ROC DSA is in fact structured much like non-profit organizations are in New York state.

The annual convention is commonly (and correctly) cited as “the highest decision-making body in the chapter,” meaning that at the end of the day, the convention calls the shots! The reasons for this are partly-cultural—we generally amend the bylaws at convention—and partly-mechanical—we always elect our leadership at convention. For similar reasons, in my perspective, any meeting of a quorum of membership, announced ahead of time, is essentially “the second-highest decision-making body.”

When it comes to procedure during meetings, we often operate on a consensus decision-making model, but upon request any of our meetings must begin to run on Robert’s Rules with a handful of additional standing rules. This is primarily helpful for very large meetings or contentious decisions–the rules of order aren’t meant to stifle discussion, but to facilitate it in a timely way. There are of course advantages and drawbacks to this approach. Not everyone knows Robert’s Rules. Some consensus models feel more equitable. But there’s a hidden irony in consensus decision-making—recommended reading: The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman. 

For the purposes of debate, our convention and general meetings are always run on Robert’s Rules. The Steering Committee sets the agenda for GMs. Members can propose resolutions to the SC, and they are either taken up by the SC or added to the agenda for an upcoming general meeting.

We do stuff, too

It’s worth noting before going on that much of our work takes place at a less abstract level than the business of running and steering the whole chapter, within Committees, Solidarity Groups, and Working Groups. These are broadly referred to as Organizing Groups, and they are listed here:

Committees are tasked with certain internal functions. Examples:

• Accessibility works to improve and maintain accessibility for our meetings
• Communications runs social media and public outreach
• Member Engagement develops and communicates with membership
• Political Education produces poli-ed programs and materials

Solidarity Groups are self-selected and -directed bodies formed by 5 or more members of the chapter, possibly on the basis of shared identity or unified goal, often (but not necessarily) with the intention of building a campaign proposal, or advocating for specific politics within the chapter. Examples:

• The Socialist Feminist Collective
• The Queer Solidarity Group
• The Palestine Solidarity Group

Working Groups are similar to and often begin as Solidarity Groups, but they have proposed a campaign which has been adopted as a priority by the chapter at convention, and therefore have greater access to the chapter’s resources. Our three priority campaigns are:

• Rochester City Council and Mayoral races, run by the Electoral Working Group
• Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, run by the Labor Working Group
• Rochester Grants Pass Resistance coalition effort, internally run by the City Vitality Working Group

Committees’ chairs are appointed by the SC on formation, and must elect a Secretary; Working Groups are also required to elect a chair and a secretary, and Solidarity Groups are encouraged to do so. These “OG Leaders” meet on a quarterly basis with members of the Steering Committee. All together, the Steering Committee and the OG Leaders are considered “chapter leadership.”

What’s in the platform?

2024 Platform Process

Now that you know roughly how we are structured and how we make collective decisions, briefly here’s how we put the platform together: for a period of about six months, beginning in March, the Steering Committee and the Electoral Working Group held discussions and solicited resolutions adding planks to a provisional platform. Over the course of September, at our General Meeting and at a special meeting two weeks later, we debated and voted on each of these plank resolutions, amending several of them.

The Electoral Working Group compiled those resolutions which were passed by the members into a final Platform Resolution, which was submitted to our 2024 annual convention, briefly debated with none speaking against, and finally adopted with 31 in favor and 2 opposed out of 59 present. This Platform Resolution resolved that:

• ROC DSA will adopt the platform
• ROC DSA will post the platform on its website
• Candidates seeking endorsement shall agree to the platform
• Actions or statements in substantial disagreement with the platform are considered cause for 10 members of ROC DSA to move to rescind endorsement of a candidate.

The resolution also created a Socialists In Office Committee (SIO), to be made up of elected officials endorsed by ROC DSA and members of ROC DSA appointed by the SC, to include the leadership of the Electoral Working Group.

ROC DSA Platform, adopted on November 9th, 2024

These are six of the seven resolutions (the seventh created the SIO) making up the Platform Resolution, summarized.

• No Increases to RPD Officers by Brent L, as amended
  • ROC DSA opposes any city budget that increases the number of sworn officers or increases funding to the police while neglecting other vital public services.
• Food and Agriculture by Elizabeth H
  • ROC DSA calls for the city of Rochester to endorse and implement the Good Food Program (a program created by The Good Food Bill in the 2024 NYS legislative session).
  • ROC DSA calls for 30% of all food purchased for Rochester institutions to be from local and regional farms and producers within two years, 50% within seven years, and 75% within nine years.
  • ROC DSA calls for the city to support the Rochester Food Policy Council efforts to end hunger and malnutrition, and hold regular work sessions with the council, twice a year at minimum, to coordinate goals, policies, activities, and funding opportunities.
  • ROC DSA calls for free school meals for all children, including breakfast, lunches, and weekend snacks, year-round.
  • ROC DSA calls for every public school to have a school garden coordinated with a nutrition training program for all grades.
  • ROC DSA calls on the city to take measures to limit the expansion of Dollar Stores, and to require that Dollar Stores already in operation in food apartheid neighborhoods carry fresh and healthy food.
  • ROC DSA calls for the city to develop a clear implementation plan within six months of approval of the Rochester Food System Plan, with a timeline and target achievements.
  • ROC DSA calls for zoning to encourage gardening and farming in the city with a definition of community gardens that recognizes multiple benefits – producing food, green space, education, conviviality, and a role in creating local food sovereignty. We call for the Real Estate Department to continue to control garden permits only for those properties that are suitable for development, and for all other spaces usable for gardens or urban farms to be under the purview of the City Recreation and Human Services Department.
  • ROC DSA calls on the city and the county to ban the use of glyphosate and other toxic pesticides and herbicides on parks, playing fields, and other lands managed by the county and the city.
  • ROC DSA calls for a $21.60 minimum wage in the city, the “living wage” for a single person.
  • ROC DSA calls on the city to expand the ROC City Compost Program to the entire city.
• Against Masking Bans by Mickey W
  • ROC DSA supports universal masking in healthcare settings and opposes mask bans.
• Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions by Brent L, as amended
  • ROC DSA expects endorsed elected officials to uphold the principles of BDS.
  • ROC DSA opposes any laws penalizing participation in the BDS movement.
• City Vitality by Skye K and Vincent L, as amended
  • ROC DSA supports public restrooms in the city of Rochester.
  • ROC DSA supports complete municipalization of “public” transit in Rochester, and a regular 24/7 schedule on all routes.
  • ROC DSA supports a ban on cashless operation for businesses in the city of Rochester.
  • ROC DSA supports a ban on hostile architecture, and removal of the same.
  • ROC DSA supports the labeling and banning of “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” (CPCs).
  • ROC DSA supports car-free zoning as an option residents may pursue for their own neighborhoods.
  • ROC DSA supports complete municipalization of Rochester Gas and electric.
• Harm Reduction by Matthew G
  • ROC DSA calls for the establishment of Overdose Prevention Health Centers in Rochester and the surrounding suburbs.
  • ROC DSA supports all methods and attempts at harm reduction, regardless of legality.

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