How candid should we be when making labor propaganda?

The post ‘Union:’ Don’t Hide the Mess appeared first on EWOC.

by a comrade

This article is written by a DSA member and does not formally represent the views of MADSA as a whole or its subgroups.

I am excited to present a new format of content on Red Madison – a recurring summary of what kind of work we’re doing in our chapter each month! My goal as a contributing author is to inform people about MADSA’s everyday efforts in a convenient and easily accessible place.

The content in this publication overlaps significantly with our DSA newsletter and monthly General Membership Meetings. To sign up for the newsletter or check out an upcoming General Membership Meeting, visit: https://madison-dsa.org/events/

Celebrating a Local Win

We saw a win this summer after our Abolitionist Working Group, in collaboration with other groups in Madison, spoke up at a county board meeting in late July against an alarming contract with the county jail. The contract would implement a for-profit digital “mail scanning” system, robbing inmates’ rights to receive and hold their own physical mail. The “mail scanning” would entail forwarding all mail to a privately owned facility in Florida, scanning mail items into an online system, and making mail accessible only via digital tablets in the jail which inmates would not have round-the-clock access to. Mail scanning is billed as a inmate safety measure to prevent overdoses, but evidence from other jurisdictions that have implemented such systems show that mail scanning at best does not prevent the majority of drugs from entering prisons and at worst it can make the problem worse. The ability to receive and hold physical mail – like a letter of encouragement from a parent or a drawing from one’s child – is vitally important to inmates on their rehabilitation journeys. Protecting the rights of incarcerated individuals and promoting humane criminal justice policies with the goal of decreasing recidivism is a chief concern for the Abolitionist Working Group, who rallied MADSA and other community members show up in opposition to this unnecessary and dehumanizing contract being proposed. Around a dozen people provided in-person testimony against the contract, others shared comments via Zoom, and still others registered their formal opposition online ahead of the county board subcommittee hearing, adding up to around 50 people in total! After this overwhelming response from the community, two county board subcommittees have recommended the contract be denied. The contract will appear in front of the entire county board at its upcoming September 4th meeting for a final determination. DSA members and non-members alike are encouraged to check the board agenda the Friday before the meeting and attend in person or register your opposition ahead of time to continue this important battle!

Keep an eye out for the board meeting agenda around Friday, August 29th, and check out this article in Tone Madison for more about the contract and the fight against it.

Topic Highlight: Act 10 Series

As the days steadily shorten and summer comes to its end, so too ends a recent education and organizing series within MADSA: the Act 10 Series by our Labor Working Group. Wisconsin Act 10, passed in 2011, severely gutted union power by ending most collective bargaining rights for a majority of government employees. A court case challenging Act 10 has been working its way through the Wisconsin appellate court system and may appear before the Wisconsin Supreme Court within the next year. Learning about Act 10 is a powerful piece in understanding levers of change for workers in Wisconsin. 

The Labor Working Group hosted previous Act 10 events this summer, including a reading group and a movie night, and will be finishing their series with How Workers are Overturning Act 10: a Panel Discussion on August 28th. As usual, this event is open to the public and all workers are encouraged to attend – unionized or not!

Reporting Back from the DSA National Convention 

MADSA had the pleasure of sending nine delegates and one alternate to the DSA National Convention, which establishes priorities, policies, and leadership at the national level for our organization. Our delegates reported back in the August General Membership Meeting and shared some of their experiences. We confirmed that our chapter is doing well in terms of our activity levels relative to our size and recent membership expansion. Some key national topics included the details of the DSA’s stance against the genocide in Palestine, strategies for national unionizing and workplace organizing, and DSA’s political program for the foreseeable future. Between debate blocks, delegates attended programming sessions regarding prescient organizing areas and exploring how to strengthen our members’ leadership and decision-making skills. Delegates also discussed the role of electoral politics in our collective struggle, and debated strategies for building an independent working class party.

Hot Strike Summer: MADSA Stands in Solidarity with Striking Workers

This summer, workers across Wisconsin – and around the world – are taking action and striking for higher wages, better working conditions, and dignity at work. MADSA members have taken to the picket lines, helped fundraise, and raised awareness about these struggles. Here are just a few of our recent strike support efforts:

• Since July 2nd, more than 130 members of UAW Local 95, a local representing wall-to-wall healthcare workers at Janesville’s Mercy Clinic East, have been on strike to demand fair compensation and better workplace safety. Our members have visited the picket lines, donated supplies, and participated in Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement’s strike support fundraiser. 
• MADSA members held an informational picket at the Hilldale Lululemon, as part of a global day of action in solidarity with Filipino garment workers. Read more here.
• Immigrant workers at W&W dairy in Monroe are on strike because the dairy’s new, out-of-state owners implemented an e-verify system that effectively bars undocumented workers from working, even those that have worked at the company for 20 years. Wisconsin is not America’s dairyland without the workers that make our cheese. MADSA members joined them on the picket line on August 19th, and we encourage everyone to donate to their legal defense fund. Follow Voces de la Frontera for more updates and information on how to support these brave workers!
• Workers at Festival Foods and Hilton Monona Terrace have recently won their union elections! MADSA stands in solidarity with these workers and will support them as they begin to bargain their first contracts. 

Do you want to help with strike support or other labor organizing? Join MADSA’s Labor Working Group & sign up for updates from the LWG Text Tree! 

Further Organizing Highlights This Month

Our work continues in so many more ways thanks to our dedicated membership. Here are other key organizing efforts taking place this August in MADSA. This summary is not exhaustive! 

• Doing Politics in Public – This committee has been working on researching the formal systems of power in Madison, and exploring ways to make this information widely available to the general public. The group is looking into the various entities relevant to major decision-making in Madison, including governmental systems and non-profits. At our general membership meeting, members of this group presented preliminary information, including a report on our chapter’s geographical distribution and specific information about local electoral systems.

• Political Education Working Group – Our PoliEd group has been conducting a survey to learn more about topics of interest within our chapter, with the hopes of developing more events inside and outside of our membership. The group has also been running a “Socialism 101” series!

• Free School Lunch Campaign – This project is part of a coalition in Madison working towards a shared goal – that children and their families never have to worry about their next meal at school. As their next step this Fall, project members are planning to gather information from the Madison school system about the real costs of a free school lunch program.

• Hands Off Medicaid – Members continue to take organizing steps, including protest actions and ongoing communications with the governor’s office, to defend Medicaid in Wisconsin (also known as BadgerCare). Medicaid is currently under severe threat due to spending cuts and other restrictions being enacted at the federal level. 

Social Opportunities

Lastly, MADSA has had some budding social opportunities (get it?) as our membership grows! Events in the past month have included our regular Coffee with Comrades gathering and weekly jogging group. The chapter has also restarted a program called “Rose Buddies,” where members can submit a request for a 1:1 meeting with a member around an interest or question. You can sign up for that here! 

We’ve also had thriving reading group opportunities, including V.I. Lenin’s What is to Be Done, meeting Sundays at 11am, and Alec Karakatsanis’ Copaganda with the Abolitionist Working Group, every other Monday at 7pm.

Comrade’s Protest Song of the Month

To bolster morale in these times, I figured I’d include a protest song to close things out!

My pick for this month is a nod to labor, in Peggy Seeger’s Song of Myself (lyrics here). 

And that concludes our monthly round-up!

The 2025 national convention of the Democratic Socialists of America wrapped up this weekend, right here in Chicago – home of some of the most vibrant and dynamic working-class communities in the history of this country. As often happens, our speakers, delegates, caucus members, and organizers correctly spoke of the importance of building a mass movement of the multi-racial working class in order to fight capitalism and win socialism.

But there is a curious tendency, even in the most enlightened and class-conscious spaces on the left, to discuss the working class in a strange, detached way, as if they are an object and not a subject, a signifier and not the signified. It can have a disorienting effect, especially on newly organized members and people who are not used to the rarefied language often employed in activist circles, to hear workers, the poor, and the marginalized referred to as if they are specimens to be coaxed, cajoled, and studied before being released into the wild.

This is understandable! Just as DSA struggles with its racial composition, it struggles with its class character, with many of its members drawn from the white middle and upper-middle class. It’s not a cause to feel guilt; people have no say in how, where, and when they are born, and anyone can be part of the struggle. It is a fact that, especially in America – the most capitalist country in the history of the world, one whose citizens are inundated in anti-communist propaganda from the cradle to the grave – many people only develop class consciousness, leftists political tendencies, and an understanding of material analysis by attending elite colleges and spending time around socially aware academics. 

But if we are going to reach the working class, let alone organize the working class into the only weapon that can end the dominance of capitalist imperialist hegemony, we must understand how to talk about the working class. While it was being in solidarity with educated children of the bourgeoisie that gave me the language to understand Marxism and develop a theory of change, it was being around other working-class people that gave me the life lessons to translate those theoretical frameworks into action that can bring more and more workers into the fold. Here are four commandments for talking, thinking about, and organizing the working class.

I. UNDERSTAND WHAT THE WORKING CLASS IS.

Defining the working class can be deceptively difficult, especially in the U.S., where the bosses have developed all kinds of tricks and rhetorical feints to discourage class consciousness and solidarity and discourage the working class from identifying them as the true enemy. But here, as in most things, we look to the source: Karl Marx. We must conquer our shyness around words like “comrade” and “proletariat” and turn our attention to the most basic definition of the working class that Marx gave us: those great masses of people who have nothing to sell but their labor, and who must do so in order to live. That is why the working class is larger than we allow ourselves to imagine, as it comprises every person on Earth who does not directly control capital. It does not matter how much you are paid for your labor; it does not matter what that labor consists of you selling. If you must sell it, whether it is muscle or brains, to live, you are the working class.

II. UNDERSTAND WHAT THE WORKING CLASS ISN’T.

One particular trap people fall into is to mistake cultural signifiers of class for the true class marker of what you must do to earn a living. Again, this is an easy pitfall, because the bosses are forever muddying the waters through propaganda, and in America – a country that claims to have no classes – we often talk ourselves into the delusion that class consists of certain cultural markers. Even people on the left do this out of the same confused impulses that makes reactionaries do it: teachers aren’t working class, but plumbers are. Truck drivers are working class, but baristas aren’t. Blue collar workers are working class, but white collar workers aren’t. Real working-class people drive like this, fake working-class people drive like this. Don’t fall for it, comrades! This is the same old ruling-class trick to keep us fighting among ourselves instead of the people keeping us all down. Your fellow workers are your allies, no matter how they talk, what they do for work, or what their taste in music is.

III. THE WORKING CLASS ARE EVERYWHERE.

To hear some people talk, the working class is like a rare species of bird or a mythical creature like gnomes cavorting among the toadstools. The truth is, you do not have to go anywhere to find working-class people. They are everywhere you look! They are your friends and they are your neighbors. They are the people who drive your cabs and serve you food. They are the security guards at the office building where you work. Unless you are part of the bourgeoisie (and it’s fine if you are; class traitors are part of a great leftist tradition going all the way back to original communist gangster Friedrich Engels), they are your co-workers! Talking to them is as simple as having a conversation with them about how their day is going, when their shift ends, or how long it is before they get to go home. Most working-class people are more than happy to talk to anyone (besides the boss) about how alienated they are under capitalism. From there, a conversation about workplace organizing is an easy next step.

IV. THE WORKING CLASS SHOULD LEAD.

Perhaps the most dangerous mistake many leftists make is to assume the working class are helpless, hopeless, and politically idle, and are waiting in a kind of ideological limbo from those of us who come from on high to liberate them. But disorganization is not helplessness! The truth is that the working class has been organizing for its own interests long before we ever came along. When we say we believe in workers controlling the means of production, that means the workers are the ones we trust to organize for themselves. All workers know their workplaces, their social conditions, and the nature of their exploitation. They may not have the language to describe it or the know-how to resist it, but we don’t need to explain their own lives to them. As one of the speakers at our convention this year, a grocery worker encountering DSA for the first time, put it: “We do not need saviors. We just need people with knowledge and organization to stand with us.”

V. DON’T GET HIGH ON YOUR OWN SUPPLY.

Okay, technically, that’s one of the Ten Crack Commandments, but related to the above, it’s desirable to introduce Marxist language to the working class, because it’s for them to use in pursuit of their own liberation. But it’s easy to overwhelm people with jargon, or use particular academic argot that can be confusing to newcomers to theory. By the same token, it’s important to remember that it is class that binds us, and while moving in unfamiliar circles allows for lots of opportunities to introduce related forms of liberatory solidarity, we shouldn’t disqualify people from membership in the working class because they aren’t as politically developed as we are or as socially integrated as we are. Once we unite them in struggle, we will have plenty of time to help them move beyond whatever prejudices they retain from growing up in a reactionary environment encouraged by the bosses. You were a worker first, and so are they. Having comrades who trust you is better than being assured of your own righteousness.

If we could distill all of this into a single Golden Rule, it would be “Don’t other the working class.” The working class is you, it’s us, it’s practically everyone. As our chapter strives to teach in our political education platform, we do not value the working class as the means to revolution because it is uniquely moral, especially politically developed, or the most oppressed; we value the working class because it is us, in our vast numbers, a huge army of labor equipped and suited to fight the bosses and overthrow the rule of capital for the benefit of all. For workers to be a class of themselves and for themselves, they must be seen as ourselves, our allies, and our comrades – not an exotic animal at the zoo. Reject the egoistic notion that you are different, better, or even inferior to other workers and embrace the totality of solidarity, and you will begin to see that the path to building a mass movement of the multi-racial working class is not as rocky a road as it may seem. 

The post THE FIVE WORKING-CLASS COMMANDMENTS appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

Today, California DSA (to which I am now an LA delegate) voted to endorse Proposition 50, the Election Rigging Response Act. Prop 50 will be on the ballot in a special November 4 election this year and will redraw California federal congressional districts to (frankly) shut out current Republican seats. 

As a former longtime Austinite, I’ve seen firsthand what Republican gerrymandering does. Austin—one of the most left-leaning cities in the South—was deliberately carved into multiple congressional districts, each stretching out hundreds of miles into deep-red territory–some all the way to the border with Mexico. The effect was simple: no matter how the people of Austin voted, they would never elect a representative who actually reflected the city’s majority in full.

That taught me what’s at stake. Gerrymandering isn’t just an abstract fight about maps—it’s about whether working-class communities can have any real say in shaping their future.

That wasn’t an accident. It was a calculated assault on democracy. It's a naked move openly embraced by Texas state senator Phil King (R-Weatherford): “I did not take race into consideration when drawing this map, I drew it based on what would better perform for Republican candidates.”

In states like Texas and Florida, they’ve built maps that guarantee minoritarian rule: the Far Right dominates Congress even without majority support. 

California has already been in the crosshairs. Trump unleashed mass ICE raids on our neighborhoods in Los Angeles, terrorized farmworkers in the Central Valley, mobilized active duty marines to occupy us, and made open threats against our cities. If Republicans lock down Congress through putting a big fat thumb on the scale in 2026, those attacks will only escalate—with California’s communities bearing the brunt.

Should We Care?

Some may ask (and rightfully because the Democratic Party is a shitshow): why should we care at all about this? Why do we need a dog in this fight? 

Because the fight over maps is a political fight over not letting rightwing authoritarianism expand. Gerrymandering is the Right’s most powerful weapon for locking working people out of politics. It’s the natural progression of a broken two-party system and first-past-the-post voting method. 

Backing redistricting shouldn’t mean tailing Democratic strategists. Gavin Newsom is a centrist turd who has moved vicious campaigns against the homeless and stripped environmental protections as part of the hyper-YIMBY Abundance agenda. We should have no illusions about the party establishment and what it wants out of this (which–let's be blunt and real–is the same kind of thumb-placing). 

But this moment gives us a chance to both take a realpolitik move to reduce the GOP advantage from Texas gerrymandering and to agitate and push beyond the rigged two-party system. We should also back Prop 50 but we also can and need to demand more fundamental reforms in CA: proportional representation, multimember districts, ranked-choice voting, and political pluralism. (California DSA’s endorsement commits us to this).

Unions are already mobilizing for redistricting. I don’t want to overstate it, but this is an opening. By standing with unions in this fight, we can again strengthen ties that are essential for building a Left-Labor pole in California politics—exactly the kind of force we need for the battles to come in 2028 and beyond. New district lines could also open space for us to run strong DSA “cadre” candidates for Congress, giving working people real choices at the ballot box.

The Right wants to lock us into permanent minority rule. Corporate Democrats want to tinker around the edges and only have us move around their banner. We can do something different: fight in the immediate struggle while making the deeper case for democracy, pluralism, and working-class power.

Fascism.

It’s a charged word—one that can appear to many as histrionic, and to others, the perfect description of the social and political environment we find ourselves in. It is a movement that begs for definition to properly counter it, yet is broad enough to render such a definition endlessly debatable. Whatever the case, whatever we call it, however we define it, we are living with the material reality, accelerating headlong into the collapse of even a nominal democracy.

DSA-LA saw the writing on the wall, and acted accordingly by passing a priority resolution to create a Working Group focused on developing our organization in a way that can respond rapidly and effectively while establishing a long-term vision and executing against a political program—to react while playing the long game, including direct action tactics and strategies, mass politics, and effective coalition building.

This body has been put to the test and has had to adapt and grow every day since June 6th, when the invasion of Los Angeles by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) saw our friends, families, and neighbors chased through the streets and dragged out of their places of business.

Our early response was naturally largely reactive as comrades were moved to act: taking to the streets in the face of violent repression, coordinating jail support for protestors, and signing on with rapid response networks in their neighborhoods. Weeks of triage felt like months as the administration escalated tensions by deploying the National Guard and Marines, engaging in disturbing shows of force, and increasing the brutality and frequency of the raids themselves. Members adapted as quickly as possible as they connected with local organizations with decades of experience in immigrant justice, plugging in and activating branch-by-branch.

Our earliest and longest running action has been with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), with every branch adopting a Home Depot—a consistent target of ICE here in Los Angeles—to patrol daily. Volunteers act as early warning systems, inform jornaleros of their rights, advocate for them with store staff, and bear witness through documentation and reporting should raids occur—which they have, with all the violence that entails. Our comrades have witnessed the impunity with which these “agents” act and the terrorism inflicted upon those the federal government deemed scapegoats to feed to a rabid base.

The “agents” have adjusted their tactics as we have adjusted ours, notably shifting their raid schedules, and employing a “hit-and-grab” strategy that sees them in and out in minutes. These tactics were on full display in early August, as ICE defied the Temporary Restraining Order in a stunning series of what can rightfully be described as abductions. Where a location might have been hit once in a day, we watched—many of us in shock, while away at DSA’s national convention in Chicago—as they returned multiple times in a series of blitz attacks. As if this were not enough they cosplayed as special forces in tactical gear, smuggled in via a Penske truck to conduct a raid they dubbed “Trojan Horse”, abducting 16 jornaleros outside of a Home Depot in Westlake.

Such an escalation and disregard for any semblance of the law makes permanent patrols and empowered communities all the more important—especially given how many of those abducted are denied access to a lawyer, or lost in the system should bystanders not get their information to track them.

To be properly reactive, we must be proactive.

To achieve this end, our comrades have organized consistent ‘Know Your Rights’ and ‘Rapid Response’ training for both members and the public. Branches and neighborhood groups conduct block walks to prepare local businesses, and where possible we have begun cultivating a more meaningful presence in our most vulnerable communities with our Socialists in Office (DSA members who are elected officials) and the tenants unions-—an especially critical component as impacted families often face a loss of income, fear going to school, avoid critical appointments and face retaliation from landlords who use their status as a threat.

Through these actions, we continue to coordinate and build relationships with the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU), Community Self-Defense Coalition, Unión del Barrio, Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Los Angeles (CHIRLA), as well as local street vendors’ unions. The importance of coalition-building has never been clearer—to properly defend our neighbors we must create an expansive and connected network. This Working Group will continue to develop partnerships with the mindset of understanding where to plug in and learn versus when to lead. In doing so, we will recruit membership into our chapter and expand the base of those who identify with the movement, a pool that grows as left-leaning liberals become increasingly radicalized by the ineptitude of the gerontocratic establishment Democrats.

These direct actions were at first largely self-organized, an initiative taken to fight back before the Working Group could formally be established. They spread to every branch, with each building a system based on its unique environment, providing training to both prospective and existing members, and creating a sustainable network to keep boots on the ground every day for as long as they are needed. While we have since taken the steps to consolidate related channels and provide the structure for cross-team (and for that matter, cross-chapter) collaboration through a broader Community Defense campaign, we have remained agile and flexible.

Going forward, the Working Group will help guide and support comrades in the Immigrant Justice, Queer Socialist, and Palestine Solidarity Working Groups, while connecting committees and Working Groups across the chapter to collaborate on strategic initiatives. Through consistent and focused research, education, and training, we will grow our ability to proactively respond to the ways fascism manifests in Los Angeles, California, and the world. With clear eyes, we will set our sights on ending the genocide in Gaza and ensuring the safety of our comrades at home as we fight to end imperialism from Palestine to Mexico, understanding that fascism enacted abroad will always come back to us.

We will not lose sight of the need to organize around the issues that matter most to the working class. Indeed, these issues will be the foundation for strong, popularized messaging, the expansion of our electoral presence, and the means by which we build collective power to not only fight fascism, but to bring about a society governed by the working class that keeps it running.

There is much to learn, bridges that need to be repaired and reinforced, a base that requires expansion and activation, leaders to develop, and a local and national body that must begin to cohere around a program that speaks to the masses.  Where we find ourselves is not in an isolated response, not simply a “moment,” not a project. It is quite likely a protracted battle, one that will test our commitment and our grit. We will not win with piecemeal action.

Ours is not an ad hoc resistance—it’s a Democratic Socialist model in action: member-led, coalition-backed, and scalable.

As we fight on we must remember: Just as fascism did not arrive overnight, it will not be defeated in a day. Our hearts will be broken daily. We will be shaken by the violence of the state. We will be energized. We will feel like collapsing under the weight of it all. Yet we will fight—as a community, for our community: family, friends, those we will never know.

While we might not know when this will end, there IS an expiration date. Our mandate is to ensure that when we win, it lasts. This can only happen if we fight fascism with socialism.

Everyone’s asking: how do we reverse the tide of fascism? One of the most important ways is to get into the streets with as many other people as we can turn out. With a little luck and your help, that’s about to happen on Monday, September 1, Labor Day.

An anti-fascist movement has been getting its act together, albeit in a somewhat lumbering fashion. DSA members in coalition with other community groups in California and elsewhere are showing up to protect immigrants from kidnapping by Trump’s secret police. Discussions are taking place among local elected officials and community coalitions to convince local law enforcement to refuse cooperation with the cruel, inhumane and often violent actions of ICE. Many people are leading or attending trainings on non-violent direct action, safe participation in demonstrations, and preparing for the 2026 elections.

Delegates to California DSA state council at its meeting on Saturday August 23 voted to endorse the off-year special election put in place by California governor Gavin Newsom and the state legislature, with Proposition 50, a statewide ballot initiative coming up this November 4. Devised in response to the actions of the Texas legislature to gerrymander its districts and elect five more Republican representatives to Congress, California’s state elected representatives have decided to fight fire with fire. [See article elsewhere in this issue.]

Actions like these, along with many others, are necessary types of work in building the anti-fascist movement. But for the coming week one item should be at the very top of our to do list: planning to come out on the streets on Labor Day, and make it the biggest nationwide demonstration yet. The May Day Strong coalition effort has scheduled hundreds of events across the country behind the banner of “Workers Over Billionaires.”

Next offramp

DSA members have been helping to organize for the national days of anti-Trump action, adding their bodies to millions of others across the country at events such as “No Kings Day”, expressing the firm desire to take the next offramp from Trump’s Road to Fascist Hell.

Although Labor Day is better known for barbecues and consumer discounts than militant demonstrations of worker solidarity, that’s not the way the holiday started out. Signed into law by President Grover Cleveland in 1894, it was meant to intervene within a moment of peak industrial class struggle. By giving workers a paid day off, the capitalist class hoped to lead them to believe that U.S. society might have something to offer besides the points of National Guard bayonets during strikes, all too fresh in mind the year of the American Railway Union’s Pullman Strike.

Labor Day was offered as a less radical substitute for International Workers Day, held on May 1, the campaign for which had sparked the only national general strike in US history, but was bloodily repressed in Chicago and elsewhere in 1886. The past few years have seen a revival of interest within organized labor to mark May Day as a time for remembrance of class struggles of the past and preparing for those to come. May Day 2025 served as one of the big days of national demonstration against Trumpian fascism, and labor leaders are calling for Labor Day to function the same way.

Making the event especially significant this year is a growing understanding that it’s up to all of up to stop the steady erosion of democracy, and that we can use events like Labor Day as steppingstones to build toward a strong mass anti-fascist movement, and to aim high at May Day 2028, when we answer United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain’s call to leave work together and begin to take back some of the historic power that the working class lost during the long years of neoliberalism.

Click here or here to find Labor Day events near you. See you on the streets.

Marty Bennett interviews co-chair Jay Belmonarch of the brand new Sonoma chapter.

MB:  Tell me about the origins of the new DSA chapter in Sonoma. 

Jay Belmonarch:   So right after Covid, I had inquired about joining the chapter that had previously existed here. But it had it already dissolved by that point. Then, last October, immediately before the  last election, I got together with a couple of people to discuss forming a new chapter, and once we looked into it we were delighted to find that other groups of people had independently gone to submit the paperwork to start a new chapter. So needless to say, there was a lot of energy and enthusiasm behind it, since then. 

I've been doing organizing and activism since I was a teenager. But I had no history with DSA before that. And actually, most of our core members are new to DSA. Many of them are new to Socialism. Many of them are new to organizing entirely. So starting from scratch presents difficulties. But I think it's an opportunity to build a movement that's truly integrated into the community, inherently, by its very origins. And personally, I believe that is the next step, on the way to mass movement of the working class. 

MB:    So most of those you're working with kind of came to DSA independently based upon their observations of DSA activities elsewhere in the country or the region.? 

JB:   Definitely. I mean Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, figures like Ilhan Omar, have brought more awareness to this type of politics, and it just has been shut out of our culture so completely for so long that a lot of people are discovering it for the very first time now. 

MB:   How are you going to address that internally?  Are you planning, or are you engaged in political education? 

JB: Yes, we have political education programs. We have reading groups. We're doing our first DSA 101 coming up in a couple of weeks. 

MB:   How many members would you say there are now, or members and supporters?

JB:   Right now we are at 160 members, up from zero, like 6 months ago. We have made recruits at pretty much every event we have done so far. And we have put together a very diverse group, not only like in terms of identity and age, but also in a political perspective, and in the types of engagement they want with their community. And we encourage dual membership, especially in groups with a local focus, and that has been instrumental in making alliances that we expect to pay off. As the American fascist movement rolls on, increasingly we have to rely on solidarity. 

MB:   Dual memberships in terms of other progressive organizations? 

Anything pro-democracy.

MB:  Talk a little bit about the immediate and longer-term goals of this chapter. I presume for the last several months here you've just been getting organized as a chapter, and formally laying out the ground rules in the structure? 

Jay: Yeah, we're trying to develop a sustainable organization that's going to be robust enough to be able to do a lot of things simultaneously. So the idea there is that members of our community can plug into our organizer network to make the changes that they want to in their neighborhoods and in their workplaces. We're focused on local impact as a strategy for building power and building reputation. The goal of that is to create alternative systems for our community to care for each other cooperatively. So that we don't have to rely on the state and on capitalist infrastructure that is so rapidly being degraded and stolen away from us. and even locally, you know, like municipal government or petit bourgeoisie, or whatever, they might agree with the concept of preventing illegal seizures or of liberation of marginalized peoples. But they won't risk their power to do it for us. We have to do it ourselves. So we're making an organization that is prepared for the long-term consequences of capitalist decay. 

MB:   And are you going to be engaging in workplace organizing?

JB:   Yes, we are. Just starting to kind of enter that with some local union leadership having joined recently. So we'll be looking into that. And hopefully, we can work with other organizations locally, like Working Families Party. 

MB:  Where are people situated, and what type of workplaces? 

JB:  We have a lot of members in SEIU. Well, I mean, the County is the biggest employer in the area. We have a lot of members in unions in the healthcare industry and teachers. 

MB:  And in terms of the shorter-term goals of the chapter, are there specific campaigns that you've landed on?

JB:   Yeah, we're focused on that sustainable growth of the organization and on maintaining the momentum of the resistance to this regime that we're seeing by providing a space for folks to be able to express their frustration through demonstrations, lobbying or just commiserating with like-minded people. We have set up committees for communication for elections. For mutual aid. We put on a variety of different activities. We mentioned political education:  activities that can appeal to different people with different abilities and with different backgrounds. Do you want some examples of mutual aid?

MB:   Yeah. 

JB:   Some of the things we're working on is food swaps, item swaps, cleaning up public spaces, skill share workshops for all different types of skills, repair and mending events and we're doing a lot of outreach at events that are implicitly nonpolitical community events, farmers markets, things like that. 

MB:  And is the intent that DSA in Sonoma County will become involved in local, if not state and national politics, as other DSA chapters have certainly in the East Bay? 

JB:   Absolutely. We are currently scouting for State Assembly, City Council, School boards. The thing is we refuse to do simple paper endorsements.  So any candidate endorsed by the chapter is required to have a close public association with us. 

MB:  And then you will fully participate in their campaign?

JB:  Anything less doesn't help us build our power. And we're even requiring that they become members.  For Federal offices, we might be able to afford to be flexible on that. But we'll see how that those talks go. And you know, when it comes to representation in State legislatures and Congress, we're in kind of a unique position in Sonoma County. It’s a largely rural agricultural area that votes overwhelmingly for Democrats. There's a lot of money here. And as a result, there's entrenched institutional power. But so much of  the population is working poor, and there's a long history of radical left politics in the area. 

So I think when it comes to representation in the government we have unique needs. And also a unique advantage in the ability to demand responsiveness to those needs. On the kind of radical history point, our logo and mascot is a chicken, which is a reference to one of the earliest settler communities in this area was a chicken raising commune formed by Eastern European Jewish Communists. You know, we also have a lot of old school hippies around here, and these sorts of liberatory movements have been dormant for like generations. And it's past time that an updated, more useful version was revived. Something capable of delivering material gains for the working class. 

MB:  Of course there's a famous book called Comrades and Chicken Ranchers, by Kenneth Kann, which you probably looked at that chronicles that history which, indeed, goes way back to the twenties in this county. 

JB: And it's so important, too. You know that we're in a position where we're advocating for the proletariat, but also the precariat, and, the importance of agriculture and the housing crisis together, makes that very important. 

MB:  Yeah, and, about two in five workers in this county are working poor. And we've had a long history of living wage and minimum  wage campaigns in an attempt to raise the wage floor. And we've had multiple organizing drives, particularly in hospitality and waste management amongst low wage workers. So there's quite a history of particularly struggles for economic and social justice to be built upon in this county. But you're going to be doing your own endorsement process.

JB:   That's right. 

MB:  But you do plan to be involved, certainly in local, if not state elections. 

JB:   Yes, we're taking an all or nothing approach. The idea is that if we can throw our weight behind somebody, they need to be there for us. So that we're a real constituency at that point. We want to build those relationships on that mutual basis.

MB:  Tell me what role you perceive that DSA is going to play in building an anti-fascist united front in the county. 

 JB:   Yeah, this county is full of people who are already doing good work. So we want our club to serve as like a platform for all types of pro-democracy efforts. We want to be the definitive hub of organizing in the county where we can draw upon resources and knowledge  grounded in Socialist principles of DSA, and to be able to make a material impact on the area and to deepen left unity. We've been central to the new coalitions that  have formed around anti-fascist action in the area, groups for the demonstrations May Day and Labor day groupings designed to bring the local Democratic Party closer to leftist organizing. And actually, right now, we're acting as a sort of a diplomatic corps, mediating strategy-disagreement between the more, I don't know, anarchistic and more conservative groups doing left organizing in the area. And we're well set up to function as a bridge between the different types of progressive organizations. 

JB:   And I I've been involved in this work since, like Occupy Wall Street, basically. And this is the first time that I've seen like a mass shift towards a more radical outlook. Or maybe radical, is not even the right word. But like we're seeing more and more people, recognizing  that the struggles for liberation are all one and the same. We're seeing people who for decades understood the political as being a, you know once every four years, news-binging exercise, for the first time recognizing that their workplace is political, their housing is political, their childcare, their health care, their education is political. That violence abroad and kleptocracy at home are simply different aspects of the class war. And importantly, they see that they have no one left to lobby, like it's only the impotence of the Democratic Party that has revealed it as a tool of capital to its ostensible constituency, who have been loyal to it, maybe since the Party had a real relationship to organized labor. So as folks realize that they do not have the influence that they thought they did on their representatives they’re searching for alternatives, and I think the only viable alternative is democratic Socialism. 

MB:  And how do people get in touch with you?     

JB:   We have a website, socoDSA.org, and we have a bi-monthly newsletter. We have a discord group, which is not restricted to members, and anyone who lives in Sonoma County will see us at pretty much any public events we can get to. 

MB:  And you have a social event once a month. Is that correct? 

JB:   We have a business meeting once a month, and we have a more social, casual sort of get to know you meeting as well. So for this next one that'll be rolled into our  first DSA 101.

Earlier this month, delegates elected at-large or from chapters in California joined nearly 1,500 delegates from across the country in Chicago for the 2025 National Convention, the highest decision-making body of our organization. The convention takes place every two years, and it is where DSA debates priorities, amends its structure, and elects our national leadership. 

Delegates spend full days moving through Robert’s Rules of Order, debating resolutions, and taking votes that will shape DSA’s work for the next two years. That process can be tense, procedural, and exhausting, particularly when the issues being debated are heavily internal. But it is also deeply inspiring: gatherings of over a thousand committed socialists in a single location are a rare occurrence in American history and an experience to be treasured. Perhaps the high point of the weekend came when Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, herself an active member of Detroit DSA, delivered a keynote address that ended with the entire hall chanting “Free, Free Palestine!”

Over the course of three days, delegates considered 59 resolutions and major amendments, with another 45 qualifying but not reached in time. The convention expanded the National Political Committee (NPC) from 18 to 27 members, four of whom are from California. The NPC guides the organization between conventions, and the expansion was passed as a part of a package of reforms offered by the national “Democracy Commission”, which was renewed for the next two years. Those will now be taken up by the new NPC. 

External Facing Priorities

The vast majority of external priorities coming out of convention were established in a single vote on the consent agenda, and thus didn’t receive separate debate. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it saved time and demonstrated there is broad, near-unanimous support across the organization for these political priorities. On the other hand, it meant that these priorities were not top of mind coming out of convention, and contributed to the convention agenda overall feeling very internally-focused, with limited discussion of external political conditions and strategy. It will now be the responsibility of the newly elected NPC and DSA’s existing national committees and commissions to launch and drive enthusiasm and engagement in these big national campaigns, since they will not be top of mind for delegates or observers coming out of the convention, who are largely instead thinking about the internal contested debates as the convention’s primary takeaways.

Adopted priorities included:

• Build Socialism, Defeat Trump, committed to fighting Trumpism as an existential threat to working-class power.

• Support for Amazon Workers, committing DSA to supporting workers organizing against Amazon.

• Towards a May Day 2028, laying the groundwork for a unified, class-conscious campaign that could help make a 2028 general strike a reality, following calls by UAW president Shawn Fain.

• Support Immigrants and Fighting ICE, prioritizing DSA’s commitment to defending immigrants against deportation and state repression.

• Palestine Solidarity, affirming that DSA “understands our primary responsibility as a US based organization in the heart of empire is to force our government and institutions to end their complicity through boycotts, divestments, and sanctions.” This commitment was further strengthened further in the final session, when delegates passed a resolution for “Labor for an Arms Embargo,” committing DSA to work with unions toward cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel.

Two major priorities from the last convention — a national campaign for Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy and a campaign for a Green New Deal—were scheduled too late on the agenda to be debated. A motion to move them up for consideration narrowly failed, leaving them to be taken up by the NPC.

Internal Structure Debates

The vast majority of resolutions and contested votes were fairly internally focused, looking especially at the way DSA is internally structured and the way we budget. I want to highlight two key internal votes:

• One Member, One Vote (1M1V): Multiple proposals were offered, to allow all members to directly vote on electing the NPC and on national endorsements for federal candidates. 1M1V for NPC elections fell short, with 40% in favor (60% required). A second proposal for members to vote on federal endorsements was ruled out of order by the chair and never voted on, leaving all endorsement decisions in the hands of the NPC.

• Anti-Zionist Resolution: versions of this resolution have been a long-running debate within DSA. Proponents have argued that DSA’s pre-2016 history in which the organization held support for Labor Zionism, in addition to votes from DSA-supported congresspeople like Jamaal Bowman and AOC in favor of funding Israel’s Iron Dome, required DSA to raise its standards for members wavering on support for Palestine. Opponents argued that the resolution undermined a unified, external facing strategy as defined in coalition with the BDS National Congress, and that the resolution’s focus on identifying Zionist sympathies in members as expulsion-worthy offences was sectarian and overly internally focused. The resolution passed with 56% in favor.

Electoral Strategy

Finally, the convention passed several refinements and continuing commitments to DSA’s national electoral strategy. In particular::

• Discouraging Paper Endorsements: Chapters are discouraged from issuing endorsements without committing resources to meaningful campaigns.

• Encouraging DSA to prioritize “cadre candidates”, defined as members with significant experience as activists and organizers within DSA, the labor movement, and aligned organizations, as well as “labor candidates”, defined as candidates who are both rank and file labor leaders and self-identified democratic socialists, with DSA-LA’s Hugo Soto-Martinez and NYC-DSA’s Claire Valdez listed as examples of this type of candidate.

• Beyond the Democratic Party: A new subcommittee will explore experiments with running socialists outside the Democratic Party, either on an independent ballot line or in non-partisan races.

• Running a candidate for the 2028 Presidential Election: DSA will join coalitions to identify a candidate who can represent the labor-left in the next Democratic presidential primary. An amendment that would have oriented this search towards running as a third-party candidate failed, and the original resolution calls for identifying a “Bernie-style” candidate who can run as a labor leftist in the Democratic primary.

Nickan F
William P
Jules Y
Michael L
Paul Z
Bonnie L
Mark G

Our seven-member California DSA State Committee, elected last month by State Council delegates, is responsible for organizing and steering the statewide organization between Council meetings. We’re a diverse set of organizers from up and down California, and we’re excited to be shepherding California DSA for the next year! Amid Trump’s fascist attacks on immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and the working class writ large, we're committed to steering an organization that is an active part in the struggle against his administration and to building an alternative vision for California.

Introducing our State Committee members:

Michael L (he/him)

Michael has been participating in EBDSA since 2017 in Medicare for All, labor solidarity and electoral organizing. He is active in the chapter’s priority campaign, ‘Fighting Oligarchy: Support Federal Workers’. He worked for the California Nurses Association//NNU for 25 years and has been a member of DSA since 1982.

William P (he/him)

William has been in DSA since 2021 and has canvassed in every election cycle since 2018. While at college, he co-founded a YDSA chapter that participated in a push to get the college to divest from Israel. He is currently a member of DSA-LA.

Jules Y (they/them)

Jules has been a member of DSA-LA for three years. They have been a labor and community organizer since organizing with dining hall workers to win a union at their university in 2018. This is Jules’s second term as Secretary on the State Committee. 

Nickan F (she/her)

Nickan has been a DSA member for seven years and has served on the State Committee since 2023. She is most active in electoral organizing, having led the electoral committees of both East Bay DSA and CA DSA, and has worked on and volunteered for numerous campaigns.

Mark G (they/he)

Mark has been a member of DSA-LA for eight years, and serves as its Recording Secretary and co-chair of its campaign for stronger rent control.

Bonnie L (she/her)

Bonnie has been an East Bay DSA member since 2017. She was a co-founder of the chapter Climate & Environmental Justice Caucus and currently serves as Climate Action Committee and Boycott Chevron Campaign co-chair. She is a member of the American Federation of Musicians Local 1000.

Paul Z (he/him)

Paul is currently serving as the organization's Communications Director and is a member of DSA Los Angeles, where he serves as one of the Eastside Branch Coordinators. Since joining DSA in 2020, Paul has been active in many electoral campaigns and specializes in design and visual communications at the local, state, and national levels.

Events & Actions

Tuesday, August 26 (8:00 AM – 4:30 PM) ICE Out of SF Courts! (In person at 100 Montgomery)

Tuesday, August 26 (6:00 PM – 7:30 PM) Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St) 

Wednesday, August 27 (6:45 PM – 8:30 PM) Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (Zoom and in person at Radical Reading Room, 438 Haight St) 

Thursday, August 28 (5:30 PM – 6:30 PM) Education Board Open Meeting  (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St) 

Thursday, August 28 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Immigrant Justice Office Hour (Zoom) 

Friday, August 29 (8:00 AM – 4:30 PM) ICE Out of SF Courts! (In person at 100 Montgomery)

Friday, August 29 (6:00 PM – 7:00 PM) Ecosoc Plant and Seed Swap (1916 McAllister)

Sunday, August 31 (5:00 PM – 7:00 PM) Capital Reading Group (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Monday, September 1 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St) 

Monday, September 1 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Wednesday, September 3 (6:30 PM – 9:00 PM): New Member Happy Hour at Zeitgeist! (In person at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia)

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

ICE Out of SF Courts!

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

We’ll be meeting every Tuesday and Friday from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM at Immigration Court at 100 Montgomery. We need all hands on deck. The 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM window is when we most need to boost turnout, but if you can’t make that please come whenever works for you. 1 or 2 hours or the entire time!

Labor & Homelessness Working Group Food Serve and Rideshare Driver Political Education Event

Join Labor and the Homelessness Working Group for a food serve and political education event at Bayside Park near Burlingame today (Tuesday, August 26th) from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM. We need volunteers to help Homelessness Working Group with food prep and also helping with political education and serving! Pop into the #labor channel on Slack if you’re interested.

Eco-Soc Plant Swap This Friday!

Join DSA SF’s eco-socialism working group for a plant swap on August 29th from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM at 1916 McAllister. Bring a plant, plant cutting, seeds, or plant containers you are hoping to swap, and get plugged in to DSA SF’s eco-socialism working group to hear about current projects related to social housing, public bank, progressive transit funding, community agriculture, and more.

People’s Conference for Palestine

Our chapter is sending a five-person delegation to join thousands of organizers, artists, students, and community members from across North America to the People’s Conference for Palestine, taking place August 29–31 in Detroit, Michigan.

With the guiding theme “Gaza is the compass,” the conference aims to deepen our collective strategy, convene us at a critical juncture, and strengthen the mass movement for Palestinian liberation in North America. Attendees will engage in plenaries, workshops, cultural events, and organizing sessions that reflect the urgency of this moment. Our organization is proud to endorse the conference and is actively mobilizing our members to attend. We see this as a critical opportunity to connect with others in the movement, share strategies, and reaffirm our commitment to justice for Palestine.

Although we’ve voted on our official delegation, you’re still able to attend if you’d like and join up with other Bay Area organizers!

For more information and to register, visit the official conference website: peoplesconferenceforpalestine.org

Looking for other ways to support? Consider donating to support the cost of the Conference.

• Help spread the word by liking and sharing this post on Twitter 
• Instagram
• Call for Endorsers

Watch Party for People’s Conference for Palestine

Can’t make it to Michigan but still want to be part of the global convening for Palestinian liberation? This Saturday, August 30, from 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM, come to 1916 McAllister to watch the live-streamed plenary sessions of The People’s Conference on Palestine and support our contingent!

Say NO to AB 715!

SAY NO TO AB 715! The California Senate Education Committee will be holding a hearing on AB 715, a very dangerous bill that aims to censor criticism of Israel from K-12 public education across the state. This bill comes straight out of the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther playbook. Scott Wiener has been pushing this bill for several months now, and it is essential for comrades and allies in the pro-Palestine movement to turn out to oppose this draconian measure. The hearing will take place either on Tuesday, September 2, or Wednesday, September 3 in Sacramento. If you are able to make this hearing to voice your opposition, please reply to this RSVP.

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

Join DSA SF’s Homelessness Working Group as we read through Capitalism & Disability: Selected Writings by Marta Russell. We’ll be meeting at 1916 McAllister starting September 7th at 5:30pm and running every other week for 4 or 5 sessions. For more info, register here: bit.ly/martacd

EWOC: Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing

The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) is running a Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing course weekly in September (see below for schedule). Just like we did back in May, we’re getting a group to take the course together and benefit from in-person discussions and activities (at 1916 McAllister). If you’re interested, fill out the form here! The goal is to have more people learn organizing skills, both for your own projects and for organizing with EWOC. Sessions run every week from 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM on:

• Monday, September 8
• Monday, September 15
• Monday, September 22
• Monday, September 29

If you have any questions, reach out to labor@dsasf.org.

Tech Reading Group with Kickstarter Union Founder Clarissa Redwine

Come join DSA SF, TWC, BAL4P, and RDU tech workers on Wednesday, September 24th from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM for our monthly tech reading group. We’ll be reading an article by Clarissa Redwine about the Kickstarter Union Campaign that started in 2016. Clarissa will also be making an appearance on Zoom to answer questions about her experience. This is a hybrid event, with in-person attendance at 1916 McAllister and remote attendance on Zoom.

Reports

DSA SF Phys Ed and Self-Defense in the Park

This Sunday, DSA hosted its 4th physical education and self defense class. We learned the following core movement skills: how to crawl, fall, and roll. We also learned some basic grappling and punching techniques.

Interested in Physical Education? Join us next time Sept 14th or 27th. All are welcome

Immigrant Justice x Labor Board Know Your Rights and Organizing Training

This past Thursday, the Immigrant Justice Working Group and Labor Board partnered with UAW 4811 on a combo Know Your Rights/organizing conversation training! We had 40 engaged attendees learn about and practice how to handle ICE interactions in the workplace and talk with coworkers about engaging in collective action. If you’re interested in getting involved in future Immigrant Justice work, join us this Thursday, August 28th at 7:00 PM on Zoom for our Office Hour and join the #immigrant-justice channel on Slack!

Palestine Healing Circle

This past week, we held a Palestine Healing Circle at the office. We discussed our relationship to anger, grief, and reverence as these feelings related to Palestine. The circle was very powerful; comrades were able to grieve and hold space for each other. The circle ended in song and with a potluck where Palestinian dishes were served. One participant even created a zine about their experience of the event.

If you’re interested in getting involved, check out the Tenderloin Healing Circle or join PSAI at their monthly consumer or business canvasses!

Behind the Scenes

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

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