As a rising leader in the Democratic Socialists of America, you could be forgiven for feeling like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. You weren’t sure what to expect when you first started attending meetings, but you were excited about DSA’s goals and glad to be among like-minded people. You took on some low-stakes projects like flyering or phone banking, and became a regular face in the crowd at your branch or working group meetings. You still felt like the ‘new kid’, but you were starting to get your bearings and develop an understanding of how and why the organization operates.

But something felt a bit unbalanced. The steering committee of your branch or working group was clearly juggling a ton of work—planning meetings, doing outreach, onboarding new members, and trying to figure out how to carry out the work they were tasked with doing for the chapter. The leadership and longtime members all seemed to know each other well, but they didn’t appear to have much time to get to know the revolving cast of newcomers at their meetings, let alone engage with them one-on-one outside of group settings. They rarely made concrete asks of general members beyond attending more meetings or basic agitprop. At times, they even appeared to be on a different page from other parts of the chapter, or to lack clear goals beyond maintaining the structure of their organizing body. 

But you believed in the work, so you kept showing up to do whatever was asked of you. Then, one day, you were approached by a member of leadership: Someone had stepped down from the steering committee for whatever reason, and they wondered if you’d be interested in filling the seat. You said yes, of course—you were eager to take on a higher level of responsibility, but hadn’t been able to find a clear path to doing so. 

Fast-forward a month or two later, and you’re running around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off: Zoom meetings are multiplying across your calendar like spores, you’re getting dragged into leadership debates about internal stuff you barely understand, and your sense of your steering committee’s medium- and long-term goals is somehow not that much clearer to you than before you entered leadership. The most maddening part, however, is that you feel alone in a crowd. Plenty of new members are showing up to your meetings each month, looking for work to do. But you can’t seem to offload major tasks, because doing so would require you to engage, train, and mentor these new members—which you don’t have time to do. Eventually, you step away, burnt out, and one of the more engaged members takes your place, like a fresh-faced actor stepping into the superhero costume.

Many of our current and former chapter leaders, myself included, have reported feeling caught in this cycle of organizational burnout. As our membership has continued to grow, the chapter has elected to take on more and more work. As a result, our base workload never feels sustainable no matter how many new members sign up each month. It’s a vicious cycle. Leaders are spread too thin to develop new members into future leaders, so they struggle to carry the burden all by themselves. Meanwhile, all but the most industrious general members watch from the sidelines, waiting to be directed and developed. The membership continues to grow, but the organization doesn’t. How do you break the cycle?

I found myself asking this question throughout my tenure as a leader of the North Side Red Line (NSRL) branch. At the time I was appointed to fill a vacancy on NSRL’s steering committee, the branch didn’t have nearly as deep a pool of engaged general members to recruit from. This was in part due to high leadership turnover and structural disadvantages that date back to the split of the former North Side Branch’s split into Red and Blue Line groups in 2020. As a result, we lacked close working relationships with other leaders across the chapter, and we weren’t facilitating nearly as much activity as other branches.

Since then, NSRL has taken great strides to break the cycle of “middlelessness.” Our monthly branch meeting attendance has nearly doubled. We’ve developed a reliable organizing committee open to all branch members that focuses on logistics and operations. We’ve grown a kick-ass agitprop team and a crew of neighborhood leaders, and we’ve built effective working relationships across different parts of the chapter. 

The process of getting there as a group was at once painstaking and revelatory. And it has led me to view “middlelessness” as one of our most crucial organizing challenges across the chapter – one we ought to make a central focus of internal conversations as we approach the chapter’s June convention and look toward the next year of organizing. 

I’ve outlined here a road map of sorts based on my experience in NSRL leadership, in the hope that these insights might be helpful for other leaders across the chapter, both new and established.

1: Clarify Your Goals

Because of DSA’s significant membership and leadership turnover, new leaders sometimes end up inheriting a position of responsibility for an organizational body or initiative whose founding leaders are no longer active cadre. If these organizers have been “rocketshipped” into leadership from general membership before they have a chance to be integrated into the organizational culture, they’re likely to lack a sense of institutional history. In some cases, they may be unclear on the medium- and long-term goals of the entities they serve. Multiply that across several cycles of turnover, and you might end up with a steering committee whose members may unknowingly have different ideas about our basic goals.

As a newer leader, I recall feeling nervous asking my fellow branch steering committee members for clarity on our goals and priorities. I worried it might come across as a criticism, or even just a stupid question. But as it turns out, I didn’t need to be worried at all! My comrades were extremely supportive, and we met soon after to discuss what work needed to be done to thrive as a branch, per the priorities set for us by the chapter. How could we best divide work between us to handle the ongoing workload while also leaving ourselves with enough time and energy to develop new members into middle-level leaders?

If there’s one thing this past year has taught me as an organizer both inside and outside of DSA, it’s that these types of purposeful resets, when initiated with a positive spirit and genuine curiosity about others’ experiences, can be really transformational. They lead not only to clearer goals, but also to stronger working relationships and more deliberative processes.

2: Get Connected!

Chicago DSA is a large chapter in a geographically vast municipality, and the neighborhoods with the densest DSA membership are scattered across the city from one another. This alone makes it very difficult for members who don’t live near one another to get enough face-to-face interaction to form enduring organizing relationships. Add to that the fragmentation of our capacity across different bodies—branches, working groups, committees, etc.—and it’s not hard to see why it takes a conscious effort to avoid disconnection and siloing between different parts of the chapter.

One of my first priorities as a branch leader was to get in touch with at least one leader from each chapter body, ideally someone who was also a member of our branch, to talk about what we could do in branch meetings to better facilitate their work. Forming those connections not only gave us a clear picture of how the entire chapter was operating at any given point in time, but it also made other chapter leaders feel invested in the growth of our branch, and eager to lend a hand to help us figure out organizing and logistics challenges as they popped up.

3: Get to Know Your Members

Generally speaking, spending your downtime doing unpaid organizing work for a socialist party is a pretty unusual thing to do, and one without much precedent for most people. Nearly everyone who comes through our doors—even the most outgoing and enthusiastic folks—will arrive with some uncertainty as to whether there’s a place in this project for them. That’s why it’s so important that we meet people as people, rather than mere numbers or pairs of ears to listen to us talk about our politics and program.

Regular social events have helped us facilitate this work by allowing us to learn about our new members as people: their jobs, their interests, their pets, and so on. It might not feel like important work—there are no pragmatic goals to be set or immediate indicators of success. But by putting in the time to get to know your comrades well enough that you can have a real, non-DSA-related conversation with them, you build trust in each other and in the institution.

4: Set Up Shop

If you want to determine who among your general membership is interested in taking on a higher level of involvement, carving out a dedicated space for those members to opt into is crucial. Create opportunities to get people involved at a slightly deeper level than a canvas or volunteer shift. Name a time, name a place, and invite the members—but don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t take off right away. In NSRL, for example, we knew we wanted to form an organizing committee (OC) to take on some of the administrative and logistical work of running the branch, so we started advertising a weekly Zoom call for general members to join for just that purpose. At first, there were many weeks in which no one outside of the steering committee showed up. But we kept having them every week, until one or two people started consistently showing up—and then more people joined from there.

5: Make Small Asks 

Putting people together in a room doesn’t magically make delegation start happening. You need to build habits that support thoughtful task delegation, no matter what space you’re in. Don’t be afraid to start small—in fact, that’s the ideal place to start. At an in-person general membership meeting, for example, there are myriad opportunities to make small asks: you need someone to keep time, someone else to greet new members when they walk in, a third person to take notes, another to bring snacks, and so on.

It’s possible that leadership has the capacity in the moment to do all of these tasks themselves, but that doesn’t matter. The point of delegating them is much less about their completion than about letting members step up to take responsibility within the space in a way that feels safe and approachable. By doing so, you help these members feel more confident, and establish a space that feels cooperatively operated by members, rather than managed solely by leadership. And when you see a member consistently stepping up for small tasks, you can eventually try making a larger ask of them; they may even step up and offer to help with an unfilled need themselves.

6: It Just Takes Some Time

Some members will be confident and enthusiastic right from the jump, and they will quickly find a niche within the operations of your organizing body. Others will be trickier. Perhaps they’re friendly and consistent about showing up to things, but you can’t quite figure out how to encourage them to step into the middle layer of leadership no matter how much you chat with them after meetings or at socials. This is normal, and typically not a poor reflection on them (or you). Everyone moves at their own pace, for their own reasons. The most important thing is to foster people’s curiosity and recognize their consistency, no matter what stage of development they’re at. 

It’s also important to remember that you cannot be all things to all people. Your background, personality, and interests will enable you to mobilize and develop some kinds of people, but perhaps not others. The beauty of relational organizing, in fact, is that you and your fellow chapter leaders don’t have to carry the weight of middle-layer development alone. 

For example: let’s you’ve seen Wanda at nearly every general meeting and social event for months. She seems to really enjoy being a member, but she hasn’t stepped up to take on any tasks and you can’t seem to figure out how to encourage her. Meanwhile, you’ve formed a strong working relationship with a newer member named Suzanne, who’s on your OC. Lo and behold, Wanda and Suzanne totally click, and before you know it, Suzanne’s convinced Wanda to help schedule calendar events for the OC.

The fact that you couldn’t figure out how to empower Wanda isn’t a failure on your part. You just weren’t the right person to develop Wanda. Suzanne was the right person to develop Wanda, and you were the right person to develop Suzanne. Trust between members builds organically, but not randomly. It takes intention, self-awareness, and a willingness to be approachable and listen to your members with care and curiosity.

Trust the Process

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a fellow branch member that I was planning to attend an OC meeting for the first time since I took a break from leadership two months prior. He suggested I swing by a meeting the week after next—next week’s meeting, he told me, would be a “heads down” work session where they’d be hammering out final logistics for an upcoming town hall event hosted by the branch.

When he told me this, I nearly wept from joy. There was no way we could have gotten nine or ten people in a room together to plan an event like that a year ago. Organizational growth and replication isn’t easy—in all honesty, I took a break from leadership earlier this year in part because the stress of this process had caught up to me. I needed time to recharge. But watching new members find their niche in the organization and grow into leadership in a more sustainable and supported way than I and others could is an indescribable honor and blessing. 

This is why middle layer organizing is of such profound importance to me, and why I want to see our chapter embrace it as a core internal priority. In the next year, our chapter will attempt to build on the momentum of Byron Sigcho Lopez’s congressional campaign to grow our membership and fight for big external wins. As we do this, however, we need to focus as much as possible on our capacity to grow as an institution made up of people. We must work to slow member attrition, encourage a healthy and sustainable pace of work, and build meaningful working relationships that can stand the test of time and the inevitable stresses of building a working-class party together.

The post Middle-Level Organizing: The Key to a Successful CDSA appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

In September of 2024, I brought a resolution to a Chicago Democratic Socialists of America general chapter meeting to continue our “Crash the DNC” campaign, which had reached its natural conclusion after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago a month earlier. I’d proposed that we continue the campaign for a few more months to focus on engaging the wider public in DSA’s Workers Deserve More program ahead of the general election in November. The proposal passed unanimously, without anyone motivating against it. But at our committee meeting the next week, only one other person showed up. It was humiliating. Members had voted “yes” with their hands at the meeting, but voted “no” with their feet once it was time to take action. 

One of the challenges of democracy in a membership organization is that without member discipline, democratic decisions can become meaningless. Some organizations attempt to address this problem by imposing discipline from above; if you fail to carry out a decision, or worse yet, work to oppose it, you are stripped of your membership rights. This rigid centralism solves the initial problem, but creates many more in the process, and often degenerates into exclusively top-down decision-making. What’s more, following this path means excluding the vast majority of people who aren’t ready to accept this level of direction, at least not on day one. The demands of this type of centralism are tenable for a sect, but not for a mass organization. 

So, what to do? Organizations like ours need to cultivate a kind of voluntary discipline among our members: the will to carry out democratic decisions not because you fear some form of punishment, but because you voluntarily hold yourself accountable to enacting them, regardless of what side of the debate you were on.

But as much as we need to cultivate discipline of action among our members, we also need them to exercise discipline as voters at meetings, such as General Chapter Meetings and Conventions. That is, you have to vote with your hands in a way that reflects how you are likely to vote with your feet afterwards. To exercise this discipline, we must each ask ourselves: 

1. Am I willing and able to contribute to making this thing happen? 

2. Are enough other people likely to contribute to making this thing happen, even if I don’t? 

If the answer to both those questions is “no”, you should have some serious concerns about voting “yes” — even if the proposal is a great idea in theory. 

This kind of voting discipline is difficult to maintain, and for good reason. It can be very uncomfortable to shoot down your comrades’ ideas, especially when the ideas may be good — even if the likelihood of successful execution is low. A voluntary organization like DSA can’t operate in the same way as a state with powers of taxation and coercion at its disposal, or as a non-profit organization with many paid staffers and a top-down, unelected leadership. We need members to voluntarily choose to carry out our work. Without this kind of discipline we get situations like the zombie post-DNC campaign, where everyone in the room was willing to say “yes”, but no one had the capacity to actually do the work to execute the proposal. Just because we should doesn’t mean we can.

When you vote “yes” on a proposal that seems doomed to stall out due to a lack of member involvement or organizational capacity, you avoid disappointing your comrades in the room during the meeting, especially the ones who brought it forward in the first place. But those comrades still experience disappointment afterward. Not for the span of a single vote, but gradually over time, in rooms and Zooms with fewer and fewer people each week after the project is out of sight and out of mind. 

But what’s the harm in letting people try anyway? The chief risks are that everyone becomes demoralized, and that resentments bubble up as organizers fail at a project that has become siloed. They feel isolated from their comrades and can think the membership has done little to help them succeed, which can lead to burnout and disillusionment with the greater work.

Comrades sometimes look to technical and procedural solutions at this juncture. Perhaps you simply restrict the amount of projects any one member can vote for, imposing a hard limit on members’ tendency to overcommit the organization with their votes. But these solutions don’t address the larger cultural problem at play. Members’ tendency to sign the organization up for more work than it can collectively accomplish can only be changed through action from below — from the conscious effort of moving with discipline both in carrying out decisions and in making them. This kind of transformation is not just necessary for the success of a socialist party like DSA, but is also reflective of the larger transformation needed for the entire working class to transition to workers’ democracy and socialist production. 

So when you’re at your next DSA meeting, think about how you’re going to vote with your feet before you vote with your hands. If you’re going to vote “no” with your feet, I think the most honest thing you can do is vote “no” with your hands, too. We can’t do everything. We can only succeed in the things we set out to do if we do them together, moving in the same direction as a collective.

The post “Vote With Your Feet” and With Your Hands appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

Remarks delivered by DSA Co-chair Megan Romer at the Party of the European Left conference in Brussels.

The post Militarism: the Biggest Obstacle to Socialism and Most Dire Threat to Humanity appeared first on Democratic Left.

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A crowd gathers to hear speeches from MNA Nurses at Baystate Franklin hospital. (Working Mass)

By: Mary Ann Sheppard

GREENFIELD – On April 7, unionized nurses at Baystate Franklin Medical Center staged an informational picket to advocate for better wages and staffing. The picket, organized by the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), was attended by nurses, community members, and supporters of the labor movement outside of Franklin County’s only hospital. 

Nurses at Baystate Franklin have been struggling with poor nurse-to-patient ratios, a central complaint which nurses argue stretch workers thin and lead to inadequate treatment. The fight is a familiar one; the union had already won staffing grid protections in 2017 – a contract stipulation that requires the hospital to implement minimum staffing and nurse-to-patient ratios. 

Union nurses consider safe staffing ratios non-negotiable, as they have been proven to save lives. However, hospital management has attempted to undermine these protections in recent negotiations, threatening to staff Baystate Franklin with non-union “float” nurses from other hospitals. In essence, the union is being threatened with scab labor unless they accept staffing levels that nurses say make their patients less safe.

The MNA has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board  (NLRB), which may take more than a year to adjudicate. In the meantime, the hospital’s contract violation has forced nurses to the bargaining table.

Bargaining committee co-chair Marissa Potter has led advocacy for nurses’ demands to management. In addition to safe staffing ratios, the Potter and the nurses have demanded wage parity with other regional hospitals, which pay their nurses an average of 10% – 25% more. 

Potter spoke to the strength of the union at Baystate Franklin: “We always have been a union facility.” 

The large crowd which gathered in support of the MNA picket attests to deep roots that organized labor has in the community. Union workers came out to support the nurses, bearing signs and shirts with the names of other unions such as Mass. Teachers Association, AFSCME, UNITE HERE, and the Teamsters. Some in the crowd were nurses from other hospitals, or knew medical workers personally. Others were motivated by political principles or a hope for organized labor to bring about better health care. However the message was clear: We have your back.

Speakers from within and outside the union expressed support for the nurses in securing a fair contract. Ethel Everett, the incoming president of the Western Mass Area Labor Federation, spoke in terms of class conflict. “Nurses are the ones who keep us alive,” she said, “This is part of an ongoing war on the working class.” She led the crowd with a call and response chant – “When we fight, we win!”

Greenfield Mayor Ginny Desorgher and Ward 6 Councilor Patricia Williams also attended the picket. Both had ties to the union, Desorgher a former union nurse, and Williams  is a former MNA staff representative. Baystate Franklin hospital is located in Councilor William’s district: “You are my constituents,” she said, announcing her plans to propose a resolution in Greenfield City Council in support of the union. 

MNA nurses were cautiously optimistic about negotiations. As with any strike action, workers would have to forgo wages in order to force the company’s hand. Baystate Franklin’s nurses can only win their contract through solidarity with one another. “We don’t want to strike,” said Marissa Potter. “But if we have to, we will.” 

Mary Ann Sheppard is a member of Worcester DSA and contributing writer to Working Mass.

The post Greenfield Nurses Prepared to Strike At Franklin County’s Only Hospital appeared first on Working Mass.

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Democratic Left interviews New York State Assembly candidate David Orkin as part of a series of interviews with members of New York City DSA’s insurgent slate.

The post David Orkin Wants to Bring His Advocacy for Immigrant Workers into Office appeared first on Democratic Left.

by Justin W

I Love Boosters is a story about a trio of “boosters,” women who steal from department stores and resell the items to the community, and their fight against a local billionaire. The billionaire’s name is Christie Smith, whom one of them admires so much she has her platitudes memorized, which makes for a complicated relationship that evolves as the movie goes along. The CEO is very clearly a genius, having graduated college at 17 and spent years working in physics departments, but her platitudes still sound just as vapid and amorphous as any other CEO or motivational speaker. During their heists the trio find a Chinese worker who steals the designer wear so quickly they legitimately believes she has a magic bag, and given that this is a Boots Riley film, you believe it too until it’s revealed to be a teleporter. 

The Chinese factory worker, Jianhu, is stealing the clothes as a way to attack Christie Smith for the horrible conditions in the factory she and her family work in. This brings the trio and Jianhu together as they start stealing more from Christie Smith. As they’re in the process of stealing clothes a discovery is made: The teleporter does more than teleport, it deconstructs and accelerates the contradictions as well. It becomes clear this is a machine based on Dialectical Materialism as the machine brings two things together (teleports), it deconstructs (as shown when they deconstruct clothes into their base components AND when they aim it at a person and turn that person into their parents having sex), and it accelerates the contradictions of a given entity (a cop car is turned into a parody of overmilitarization and reconstructs a person from their parents from before). 

This leads to the personal conflicts in the movie and what I believe to be the thesis. We have the main character Corvette and her best friend Sade, one who is trying to overcome the ills brought about by capitalism (Sade) and the other who is so lonely a loneliness demon tries to pick her up on multiple occasions (Corvette). Sade sees MLM marketing as the way through the ills of capitalism and Corvette sees vengeance as her way out of her loneliness. This is resolved when they link their struggle against Christie Smith to the workers both in China who are making the clothes as well as the workers building a union to stand up against the billionaire. The resolution is built through the combining of the efforts of all workers against Christie Smith and the fashion industry, starting in China and the United States but then the rest of the world, and the community organizing that needs to happen to build those strikes and protests. 

We see this through Corvette rejecting the loneliness demon and her confronting the rolling ball of bills, tickets, and failures of Corvette’s past (seen the entire movie following her just out of sight of everyone else), which shrinks once she has a community to help her deal with those problems. The problems are still there, just reduced to a more manageable size. 

Given this is a Boots Riley film, there are some incredible design and artistic choices that combine to create wonderful metaphors. The CEOs office is tilted, showing her skewed view of the world. The loneliness demon who has been around for millenia can only remember two years back when they were lost in a Target, or, one might say, lost in a capitalist hellscape (please listen to the song “Lost in the Supermarket” by The Clash). At one point some characters who have been seen interviewed on TV take off their skins, revealing that they play characters on TV (like workers arguing for less pay and benefits as well as Candace Owens, among others) or lead MLMs to generate in people the need for more brutal cop tactics, anti-worker propaganda, and false solutions (like MLMs) as part of a campaign created by the billionaire to reduce in workers the desire for real solutions like collective action. 

The skin suits also demonstrate how those with anti-worker sentiments but still working class themselves literally sell their identities to be used and interchanged by anyone who needs them for whatever purpose. They give away their ability to identify themselves for the purpose of fulfilling the whims and desires of a billionaire. In true Boots Riley fashion, he tries to make the metaphors as overt as possible, with a little bit of surrealism thrown in the mix. The comedic elements of the movie shine through these metaphors and are so littered throughout I am very surprised the movie isn’t considered a comedy. Boots Riley’s love of storytelling and visual metaphor make him one of my favorite directors and this was terrific and just the right amount of silliness to push through the slightly radical position he’s leading towards through the film.

But this wouldn’t be a Marxist take on a very overtly Marxist movie (the main catalyst for the movie is a Dialectic Materialism machine) without some discussion on the theory presented. The Dialectical Materialism machine is initially seen only as a teleporter, but later in the movie a union organizer explains the full functionality, urging the trio to use it to help them accelerate people into the union they’re building. Initially, the Velvet Gang (the name of the boosters’ group) turns her down in favor of their plan to simply steal from the billionaire thinking that would be enough. As the movie progresses and we reach the climax of the film, the machine is used to link the struggles of the union in the United States to the factory workers in China, creating the solidarity needed to fight against their collective boss. 

Through the explanation of the functions of the machine we get a decent description of dialectical materialism, in a way that is simple enough that we can progress with the movie, while still being faithful to the concept itself. I think Boots’ decision to purposefully inject actual theory into the movie gives a stepping stone for those who like the movie something to grasp onto when deciding to work on their own politics, but does mean the resolution of the movie cannot be as explicit in the direction I think we should go. The CEO is not removed nor a communist revolution waged by the end of this film, instead a worldwide strike against the fashion industry is started, and characters from the movie are seen leading the union in their fight for a better wage, though the main characters are not participants. The most recent film to have such overt Marxist themes, also made by a black director, is Sinners. 

Sinners, for those who haven’t seen it (Why haven’t you? Go watch it!) has a black community fighting against a vampire who uses racism to escape from justice and controls the actions of those whom he has bitten. It is a story about a blood sucking parasite who had oppression forced on him years ago and wants to forcibly create the community he lost due to colonialism and imperialism by stealing the music and soul of a community that hasn’t yet lost themselves to that same oppressive force. The black community fights and kills the vampire, in a bloody struggle that lasts all night, ending with one character killing the racists who came to kill him. In interviews following the release of the film, director Ryan Coogler was asked multiple times about the Marxist implications of the movie and what was being said through the metaphors, every time keeping silent about what he wrote. He could not, at any point, be explicit in the aims and messaging of his movie, lest he lose what position he has to make films like Sinners again. He was able to show the action of the theory, but wasn’t allowed to be explicit in the ideology that created it. 

I see Boots Riley’s choice to name the theory but not show the action as the flip side of the coin. Even on a good day Hollywood would not allow both sides of the coin to be shown on screen at the same time, as Capital knows what it can allow anti-capitalist art to show, as well as what it can’t. Were I Love Boosters to show the fall of capitalism and say the words “Dialectical Materialism,” a producer would have simply shut down the movie and not let it see the light of day. There must be a balance struck between what can be said and what can be shown while still being funded by those who would otherwise be the target of said action or the villain of theory. The theory of the film is presented in a relatively clear way, but the film needed to reel in the actions shown to compensate. When we say “The Revolution will not be televised” this is an example. You can see that revolutions happen or you can hear theory be spoken, but never the twain shall meet, at least not on the big screen. So we need to read between the lines, and see the direction Boots Riley or Ryan Coogler are pointing us in. (On a related note, come join us at Book Club sometime.) 

Overall, this movie is terrific and I recommend everyone go see it. The bright colors, wonderful fashion, comedic style, and the only just so slightly over the top surrealism blend together into a wonderful movie that I would definitely watch again, and recommend others watch too. Combined with the theory hilariously intertwined into the movie, it is one of the best movies I have ever seen and I want to hear your thoughts on it too.

The post I Love “I Love Boosters” appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

Labor organizers must prioritize developing new leaders in order to grow union density and winning new workplace fights.

The post Our goal is to develop leaders appeared first on EWOC.

The Revolutionary Potential of Metro Detroit and How the Membership Engagement Committee Can Ignite It

By Reese McCaskill Jr.

In 1966, during Ronald Reagan’s first term as Governor of California, he made it his mission to rein in public education. He did so because many college students were taking a stand against the war in Vietnam and he couldn’t have that on any UC college campus. In order to curb the anti-war protests, he thought of the idea of initiating tuition (for the first time, while UC schools never had a tuition system). Despite this new system, students courageously stood their ground.

As anti-war protests continued, he even resorted to a more aggressive move; sending national guard troops to suppress the protests at UC Berkeley. Reagan continued to show aggression towards the higher education of California colleges and was stalwart in his defense of his policies. Even his own advisor, Roger A. Freeman was an ardent defender of Reagan’s assault on higher learning. His advisor went on to say, “we are in danger of producing an educated proletariat” which he stated at a press conference, weeks before the California gubernatorial election of 1970. Reagan would go on to win his re-election for Governor and continue his assault on higher learning and the rest is history.

Now, how does Ronald Reagan and his advisor’s statement coincide with the work of the Membership Engagement Committee (MEC)? Because the revolutionary potential of the people is strong. Even in the 1960s, the capitalist class feared that an educated proletariat would recognize their potential and work to radically uplift their material conditions.

Currently, I see the revolutionary potential within Metro Detroit, which is why I am running for our chapter’s Membership Engagement Coordinator position. From the energy of the No Kings Protests to the passion at the May Day rally, Metro Detroit is itching to put the power in the hands of the people. If I am elected as coordinator, there are three strategies I believe would ignite this potential:

1. The creation of an active membership engagement strategy

2. Building stronger bonds between MEC, Committees, and Working Groups

3. Equipping new and current members with tools and knowledge to be effective socialist organizers

In the first 30 days after steering committee elections conclude, MEC would embark on the creation of a membership engagement strategy to accomplish our goal within the MEC resolution to hit 2,000 socialist organizers by the 2027 convention and get 15% of our membership actively engaged in the chapter. As your candidate, I believe our strategy should work not only to recruit new members, but also to orient new members into active organizers in our chapter.

Tangible efforts would focus on stronger social media outreach, recruiting at our campaign events, getting more involved with the community for a long-term approach to engagement, and cooperating with our Administration Secretary to look into our digital tools to consolidate our information so new members understand our chapter. The committee would also look into ways to activate 15% of our membership within this engagement strategy. With an effective engagement strategy, we would ensure every member has the opportunity to develop their political and organizing capabilities.

MEC also needs stronger ties with our committees and working groups. As one of the vital arms of Metro Detroit DSA, this committee is dedicated to engaging with all members. To strengthen our ties with the committees and working groups, MEC would establish MEC Liaisons. These liaisons would be MEC members who consistently attend committee or working group meetings and report back to MEC about the support needed from the committee. With stronger ties to our committees and working groups, this would allow for more rapid engagement of our newer members to their areas of interest and a better understanding of how to engage our entire membership.

Another important task for MEC is complementing the efforts of working groups and committees by preparing, informing, and developing members into stronger socialist organizers. But, how can we engage the membership when they don’t have the necessary tools to develop their political organizing skills? If elected, I would continue MEC’s work of ensuring every new and current member has every opportunity to develop as effective socialist organizers. We would do so by conducting socials, hosting organizer skills events, uplifting our current political education events, yearly convention planning to ensure our membership feels prepared and informed and developing ways the committee can make stronger connections with new members. Every member this committee engages with creates an opportunity to equip and teach. This movement that we are a part of is a great struggle and the only way for our members to understand such struggle is to give them every chance to learn and be ready for the task at hand.

This committee is and must be a reflection of our entire chapter. Independent comrades, Bread & Roses, Groundwork, Marxist Unity Group, Socialist Majority, etc., are crucial for the development and growth of this committee. With the rising tide of fascism, worsening material conditions, and people looking for a way out of this mess, our chapter and MEC must tell the people the good news; socialism is our path forward and Metro Detroit DSA will lead the way.

If I am able to serve as our Membership Engagement Coordinator, MEC wouldn’t be my committee, it would be an all-hands-on-deck-effort to ensure all members feel welcomed and have the chance to be effective socialist organizers. As Coordinator, I would steer the ship of this committee, but the real captains are every member in MEC. Democratic deliberation, discussion, and action would be what leads this committee and I’m proud to ask membership to rank me #1 for the Membership Engagement Coordinator position.

The Revolutionary Potential of Metro Detroit and How the Membership Engagement Committee Can Ignite… was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Mona Fastvold’s 2025 film The Testament of Ann Lee, with Amanda Seyfried in the title role, shows a working-class woman passionately and relentlessly seeking the realization of her unique spiritual vision. It will bring Ann Lee’s story to scores of women who are relegated to the margins of their religious traditions despite their rich spiritual gifts. It will speak to people of any gender whose sincere faith inspires a deep hunger for spiritual and social liberation now, not just in “the sweet by and by.” And it will speak to all of us who feel out of step with a culture that passively accepts the world as it is and instead feel called to build a better one. 

The Testament of Ann Lee is an unconventional movie musical, using contemporary arrangements of Shaker hymns and stylized choreography to communicate the passion and immediacy of a  mystical eighteenth-century Christian movement that grew from the Quakers. An illiterate child factory worker in England at the dawn of the industrial revolution, Ann Lee grew to become the revolutionary spiritual mother of a religious community in the “New World” that followed a gospel of union with God, gender equality, and proto-communism. Although the film uses character amalgamations and time compressions to translate the historical events into slightly more than two hours, it is mainly true to the historical record. 

The deeper I dug, the more treasures I uncovered. By centering Shakerism’s spiritually ecstatic music and dance, The Testament of Ann Lee presents the audience with a religious experience, a sensual encounter with the Divine that is purer and truer than any of our inadequate attempts to translate it into language. And while this spirit-filled emotionalism won’t be for everyone, for those that it touches, it touches deeply.

The basic facts of Ann Lee’s story are simple, and at first glance not too different from the more oft-told tale of the Puritans: a religious leader is inspired to bring their followers to the New World, seeking freedom from persecution and new converts for their nascent protestant movement. Theologically, though,  the Shakers were the mirror opposite of the Puritans. Puritans feared and avoided pleasure but allowed sex under certain restrictive conditions (spawning psychological hang-ups that still keep thousands of therapists in business to this day). The Shakers lived in celibacy but whole-heartedly embraced and pursued pleasure as a divine gift of God. 

Through singing, dancing, and other charismatic gifts, Shakers experienced a higher ecstasy than mere sexual gratification can offer. While this may elicit a “thanks, but no thanks,” from most of us allosexuals living in the twenty-first century, the film tries to help contemporary audiences understand that celibacy was not another form of mortification of the flesh but a method to achieve something utopian: bodily autonomy and social equality for women.

The film viscerally depicts what was a common experience in Ann Lee’s time and place. Wives were compelled to be sexually available to their husbands at all times, with no thought given to their feelings or pleasure. They could expect to be constantly pregnant, at a time when giving birth was dangerous and sometimes fatal for mothers, their newborn babies, or both. 

A heartbreaking musical sequence shows a distraught Lee losing four children in quick succession, from stillbirth to other ailments. Her plight was not uncommon, but it  weighed especially heavily on Ann Lee, who never wanted marriage or sex and was forced into both by the pressures of her family and culture. 

The film also briefly touches on the sexuality of Ann’s brother William, who is shown leaving a male lover in order to commit to a celibate life. The historical record calls William Lee a “former dandy,” something that at the time probably meant “womanizer” rather than queer, though doesn’t preclude both (shout out to my fellow bisexuals). It is easy to imagine that the celibate Shaker life would have appealed to some queer people living in the eighteenth century, when “sodomy” was a hanging offense and their only option for family life might have been heterosexual marriage. Shakerism offered our queer ancestors a liberating path to spiritual fulfillment, social equality, and the love of a chosen family. Because of the large numbers of orphans at the time as well as widows with orphans, there were always children in the Shaker communities

Shakers rejected the racial order of the day as well. The film is historically accurate in depicting Black Shakers as equal members of the community, and while many famous Shaker hymns have no attribution, the song “Pretty Mother’s Home,” performed in the movie by Black actor Lark White, was written by a formerly enslaved woman named Patsy Roberts Williamson. Williamson’s enslavers initially joined the Shakers of the Pleasant Hill commune in Kentucky, but when they decided to leave, Patsy bought her freedom with help from the community and remained a member for the rest of her life. 

The Shakers and their indomitable woman leader were remarkable in successfully escaping the extremely limiting social expectations of their time and place and forging a completely new path for themselves. As the film shows, Shakerism began in England as a more outwardly expressive branch of the Quaker movement, but did not blossom into its full expression until Mother Ann, as she became known, was anointed by the Spirit through charismatic visions that began when she was in prison. 

Her visions inaugurated what Shakers consider to be the Second Coming, the presence of Christ’s spirit not just in Mother Ann, but in all true Believers. They cemented celibacy as a requirement for the true Christian life and America as the place that this new gospel seed should be planted. While the number of Shakers living today can be counted on one hand, the many Shaker communes still preserved as historic sites in the United States are the impressive material evidence of what a small band of spiritual radicals was able to achieve. 

The rule of Shaker community life was “from each according to his ability, to each according to his capacity,” a motto inspired by language from the Christian Bible that predates Marx. Leadership and labor were shared equitably  by men and women, children were raised collectively without the use of corporal punishment, and communities sustained themselves by selling their innovative yet simple goods, such as herbal remedies, straw hats, and their famously well-crafted furniture. They lived the ideals of Marxists and feminists before either of those words existed. In fact, when Marx faced doubts about achieving communism in his lifetime, Engels wrote to encourage him, “Remember the Shakers!” 

The Testament of Ann Lee not only remembers the Shakers, it brings them back to life. Through historically accurate costuming and set design, creative reimaginings of traditional Shaker music and dance, and stellar acting, especially from Seyfried as Ann Lee, the film brings us into the living dance of a people who dared to follow God beyond every limit they encountered. Unfortunately, it also shows us in graphic detail the too common fate of dissenters and resistors both in her time and our own. Ann Lee died before the age of 50 from injuries inflicted by hostile mobs. This is not a film for the faint-hearted.

Ann Lee broke through the boundaries of gender, race, conventional religion, and the economic order of the day to co-create the world of peace and liberation that God revealed to her. Despite any theological differences that the span of more than two centuries of religious and social change have created between people of faith today and the early Shakers, we can still find inspiration in their lives.

Our current times may call for new ways and forms, but today’s religious socialists can still look to this inspiring film and feel called to join with the revolutionary Ann Lee in boldly proclaiming, “We are the people who turn the world upside down.”

Works consulted for this essay include the following: The Shakers: Two Centuries of Spiritual Reflection, edited by Robley E. Whitson, and Mother Ann Lee, Morning Star of the Shakers by Nardi Reed Campion.

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Florida’s gerrymander draws new battle-lines for a candidate already campaigning against an undemocratic constitutional order.

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