By: Rob Switzer

The following is a post I made on Facebook that was not intended to be published. It was mainly written to vent and just to show friends the kind of things I deal with as union steward at my workplace, which is a Food and Commercial Workers meat market where I have been working for five years as a butcher.

Someone suggested this piece would work as a demonstration of how power functions in the workplace. Note that the stories included are not official union activities and could theoretically be accomplished in any workplace. However, it is worth noting that the union-provided protections we have and my status as a quasi-authority figure very likely embolden my coworkers and me to assert ourselves in ways that we otherwise might not.

A couple of weeks ago, I was informed that a coworker of mine was sent home, suspended, and written up. He had allegedly gone shopping, prepared a lunch, then had his lunch, all on the clock. He was being accused of deliberate and extended time theft, which of course is a fireable offense.

Coworker said this was not true, and I asked him to send me a screenshot of his punches on the time-keeping app we use. He did so. Upon cursory inspection, it was obvious that he had in fact neglected to clock back in from his early break, and was therefore actually off the clock during these events.

We had a meeting with the store manager, and Coworker brought the write-up itself, which included the clearly false accusations, and even had his receipt stapled to it, showing what he bought and when he bought it (while he was off the clock, remember). The store manager saw my point and understood, but told the worker that he had to be more careful about punches; this time it wouldn’t be held against him.

But I wasn’t satisfied — the shift manager who had originally made these accusations was still operating under the belief that my coworker was a time thief. So I informed him the next morning that the worker wasn’t on the clock. “Yes he was!,” he told me. “No he wasn’t!,” I retorted. “Yes he was!” he shouted back. He agreed to let me show him the screenshot. We walked to my locker to see my phone. The shift manager looked at it and I could see his mind spinning. He exclaimed something like, “Well, he probably would have done it anyway!”

About ten minutes later he approached me and apologized, admitting he was wrong and that he should have investigated better. He seemed to hide for the rest of the day; other workers noticed and told me. I made sure everyone was aware that someone had just been written up and suspended for something he demonstrably did not do. Someone chanted, “Steward! Steward! Steward!” which was pretty amusing.

Fast forward to today. We had about six first-shift meat cutters/handlers working. It was getting close to 2:30, our usual out time. But overtime was posted, meaning management can hold us later if they want to.

We had ten cases of bacon that had to be bagged and vacuum-sealed. No one likes doing this; it’s tedious. But it’s part of the job. So when I was done with my other work for the day, I took it upon myself to start.

Right around this time one manager came into the cutting room and said, “We’re getting ready to prep up!” That basically means we’re being cut loose as soon as we clean up. Two of the cutters promptly left, leaving four of us behind. We finished the bacon; we were all getting ready to leave.

Then a different manager came in and said he wanted us to make sure the bacon got vacuum-sealed before we left. Usually what we do is bag it all and let one of the afternoon-shift cutters handle the sealing. There were four of them there today. Why couldn’t one of them do it? We all were ready to leave, and had already been told we could leave.

I told the manager I thought this was bullshit. That’s literally a one-person job. Are you actually asking three of us to stand around and watch someone vacuum-seal 10 cases of bacon? In so many words, he said that yes, yes, he was asking that.

I talked to the other three workers individually. Everyone agreed they were ready to leave. So let’s leave, I told them. I went and talked to the manager, and we had a little argument. “I have other stuff for them to do; I want you to seal the bacon, blah blah blah.” He stormed off and said something like, “Just get it done and you can leave.” I don’t think he understood; I was telling him we had already decided we were leaving.

We rolled the sealer machine into the cutting room, and one of the second-shift cutters started sealing. He was clearly free to do this. I checked in with everyone to make sure we were all walking out in solidarity. And then we did. It will be interesting to see if there are any consequences tomorrow.

Epilogue: There were no consequences, other than a manager mentioning it to me in disapproval. I hope our action stands as a lesson to my coworkers that we have power when we take actions in solidarity.

Adventures of a Union Steward was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Better health, stronger families and fairer spending – all for about 63$ per paycheck

The post Five Interim Policies to Bridge the Healthcare Gap appeared first on Democratic Left.

Brazilian political party PSOL reports on the 2025 DSA National Convention and reflects on their participation as invited guests.

The post DSA National Convention Strengthens the Building of the Socialist Left in the United States appeared first on Democratic Left.

Markus Sokol represented Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) at the 2025 DSA National Convention and discussed the challenges facing left-wing organizations against the rise of fascism and the far right around the world.

The post Partido dos Trabalhadores Participates in the DSA Convention in the USA appeared first on Democratic Left.

By: Taina Santiago

When summer ended and the school year began again, parents were racing to check off their supply lists. For working class families, this task can be time-consuming and expensive. In response, Metro Detroit DSA’s Black and Brown Alliance (BBA) organized a back-to-school backpack drive.

The event took place Saturday, August 30, at the Eastside Community Network (ECN) building in Detroit, where other community services like free vaccines for children and free pizza for families were set up as well. ECN also runs a free store packed with clothes, shoes, and toiletries.

This space fostered the socialist principle of meeting the needs of the working class in real ways. With a “Solidarity Metro Detroit DSA” banner proudly displayed, a dozen DSA volunteers throughout the day distributed 140 backpacks filled with folders, markers, pencils, and other school supplies.

Why Mutual Aid?

Mutual aid is a form of community service that expects nothing in return from those you are lending a helping hand. It functions under the philosophy that we always show up for each other in our communities. BBA has been talking about doing a mutual aid project for a few months now, with members eager to get started on something actionable. BBA Secretary Rodney Coopwood had a personal connection to the idea: “Growing up in Detroit, there were times when I myself didn’t have what I needed for school. I had to wait for supplies well after classes started.”

BBA was also inspired by the Black Panthers and their ability to radicalize people through community services. BBA Co-chair Jon Mukes said, “[Mutual aid is] how a lot of Black people from various other socialist traditions organized. Free breakfast programs, free health clinics, etc., were incredibly revolutionary. Historically one of the reasons why socialism grew is because socialists and communists fed the people when the capitalist system failed.”

Because of the Black Panthers’ example, it was clear to the BBA that there had to be educational and community-building elements in the project to avoid doing one-and-done, detached charity work. So along with handing out supplies, we also gave literature about DSA to parents and had deliberate conversations with members of the community about socialism.

Recruitment Potential of Mutual Aid

One of the BBA’s goals is to diversify Metro Detroit DSA. Black and Brown socialists have always been the backbone of the larger movement and there should be many more people of color in our organization. Mukes said, “One of the many reasons that our chapter is incredibly white is that we aren’t visible/doing work in Black and Brown communities.” While a delegate to DSA’s national convention this year, Mukes says he “made a point to hang around and talk to other POC comrades and I asked about how they recruited Black and Brown members. A backpack drive for Black people in their communities came up a lot.”

BBA’s mission of diversity in the chapter also informed where we chose to hold the backpack drive: in Detroit. Volunteers spent the day informing Black parents about DSA’s September general meeting, giving interested people an actionable next step to get involved, and collecting contact information for further communications. An event that makes DSA visible and allows us to have one-on-one conversations with people of color has great recruitment potential for working class Black and Brown comrades.

Another goal of the BBA — and DSA as a whole — is to change the narrative around socialism. Decades of Red Scare propaganda have painted socialists as the enemy of the people when the opposite is true. Socialists want to bring working class people together and events like the backpack drive do just that.

“If we approach them with more actions and fewer words, they see us as people of purpose. We give their kids backpacks. We provide water when they’re thirsty, heat when they’re cold,” Coopwood said. “When we were there, I expected to be brushed off, but people were very open to talking about socialism. They may not sign up for DSA, but they’ll know that DSA and socialists are there to help. So when an open socialist is on the ballot, holding a rally, or pushing an agenda to publicize a private corporation or implement ranked-choice voting, they’ll be open to us.”

Lessons on Organizing

As important as the event itself was all the planning, budgeting, location scouting, and prepping that had to be done in a short window of time. When BBA voted to put the backpack drive into motion, there were only a couple of weeks before the school year began. Within a couple of days, Coopwood had drawn up a fully mapped out proposal to take to the steering committee. In another week, Mukes was ordering supplies and a week after that, those supplies were in the hands of working class families.

This speed of turning talk into action was a testament to BBA members’ organizing skills and served as a confidence booster to fuel more projects. Coopwood said, “I realized I’m much more capable as an organizer than I originally thought. This was my first time doing something like this. I applied what I do at work as a researcher, made an action plan, and it worked — I was very proud of that.” Mukes sang the praises of fellow organizers, saying, “My biggest takeaway was how quickly a handful of dedicated people can set something like this up.”

These kinds of mutual aid projects would give the chapter more opportunities to build up experienced organizers, giving members projects to try out, learn from, and succeed at. The DSA volunteers who have conversations with strangers about socialism will improve their skills there too. The members who put events like the backpack drive together will take valuable lessons into subsequent projects, bringing ideas from the abstract into reality with effectiveness and efficiency.

As Coopwood pointed out, these events “give action-oriented members an outlet to effectively aid communities, and those communities know exactly who assisted them, building unity and loyalty. This unity will be reflected when we need to run electoral candidates or launch campaigns like Michigan for the Many,” which is a campaign we actually gathered signatures for at the backpack drive. He continued, “This is how we get the public — who intrinsically value actions over promises — to know what Metro Detroit DSA is and bring them to our side.”

Just the Beginning

As socialists, getting the material needs of the working class met is an important element in our ideal political and economic system, so we should put our socialist money/action where our mouth is. The backpack drive is not a one-off event, it is a kick-off to a greater focus of the BBA on mutual aid in general. Our direct involvement in communities of color — getting to know people and cultivating camaraderie — will be invaluable to building our movement.

And it isn’t just about the big picture goals. It’s also about the small moments that keep us connected to the human-driven purpose of everything we are doing, which Coopwood highlighted: “I got to see kids pick out their favorite color backpacks, and in the grand scheme of trying to stop capitalism and imperialism from destroying the world, it’s nice to see a kid pick their favorite color backpack.”

BBA Rings in the School Year with Backpack Drive was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Note: posts by individual GMDSA members do not necessarily reflect the views of the broader membership or of its leadership and should not be regarded as official statements by the chapter.

After reading that Burlington’s legendary music spot Nectar’s had permanently closed, GMDSA Secretary David Wilcox wrote to Seven Days to propose municipalizing the venue. His letter, printed on 8/20/2025, is republished below.

In response to the shutdown of Nectar’s, I’d like to suggest a solution: Why not have the city government take over and run Nectar’s? There’s nothing radical or unprecedented about the City of Burlington running a popular music venue, given that it owned and operated 242 Main for 30 years. And I would argue that a venue like Nectar’s, one that’s synonymous with the general idea of what Burlington is, contributes far more to the city’s bottom line than its own financial numbers would indicate.

Without venues like Nectar’s, Burlington loses its aura as a cool, desirable place to live. And if Nectar’s has seemed like a shadow of its former self in recent years, why not try to revitalize it under new (public) ownership? Especially since the final shutdown of Nectar’s was due to a dispute with a landlord. The city has already forced the sale of one Handy property (184 Church Street) for the greater good of the community. Surely, there’s a way to make all this happen with enough political will.

I, for one, am sick and tired of passively accepting the loss of important places and services due to “the market,” which is every bit as much a human-created institution as laws and governments. The Burlington renaissance began with then-mayor Bernie Sanders (whose administration founded 242 Main) refusing to accept the market dictating that we couldn’t have nice things. If we want Burlington’s glory days to return, we need to rediscover that energy.

David Wilcox
Winooski

The 2025 DSA Convention featured a panel on “Building DSA’s Cultural Organizations,” featuring panelists who started DSA sports leagues, choirs, and more. They made the case that these cultural organizations can become institutions of collective action. 

The post Culture is Collective Action appeared first on Democratic Left.

DSA is proud to endorse the following candidates running with Twin Cities DSA support:

Robin Wonsley is running for her third term on Minneapolis City Council, representing Ward 2. She’s running as an independent socialist, and has been a tireless advocate for rent control, public housing, and police accountability.

Robin has a thorough list of campaign priorities which also references the work she has already done on council, encompassing an impressive legislative record. These priorities cover a wide range of issues impacting workers and students including a traffic calming program, housing programs, and working to secure tuition-free college at the state level.

Learn more about Robin in her interview with the Minneapolis Interview Project!

Soren Stevenson is running for Minneapolis City Council, Ward 8. He’s championing working class issues, including housing for all, public safety reform, and environmental justice.

Soren is a proud union member, survivor of Minneapolis police violence, and has extensive experience in housing justice. He recently worked within his union to prevent the permanent closure of a much needed homeless shelter, which required council support.

When Soren ran for council in 2023, he received the most first-choice votes by lost by a mere 38 votes! With just a little bit more help this time around we can secure his seat on Minneapolis City Council!

Robin and Soren are no strangers to national DSA endorsement and we’re looking forward to welcoming both of them to the new Socialist Cash Takes Out Capitalist Trash slate this year!

Adam Schneider is running on a third party ballot line for the Minneapolis Park Board. He has led environmental justice fights, including the Roof Depot campaign. His campaign is championing parks equity, youth programming, and labor protections.

​​I am running because I believe the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board can be a vehicle to advance climate and environmental justice. By working with the community, our park system can be an integral part of an equitable, resilient, and vibrant Minneapolis.

– Adam Schneider

Adam’s focus areas for the Parks Board include community-driven governance to prioritize resident needs and health over developer interests, expanding community gardens and the urban tree canopy, and environmental stewardship.

Michael Wilson is also running for Minneapolis Park Board! Michael is a stalwart labor advocate, backed by unions running to unseat anti-union incumbents. He’s a former Park Board worker, labor organizer, and environmental justice leader in the successful Roof Depot campaign.

Michael is running on a platform of fair wages for park workers, expanding public transit to reach all parks, utilizing Park and Recreation programs to support working families, and directly addressing environmental concerns impacting the working class such as the Emerald Ash Borer infestation.

Michael’s going up against major anti-labor opponents who’ll pour in as much corporate cash as they need to keep him out of office – pitch in with a donation to our slate today!

The Twin Cities DSA Slate is part of the Socialist Cash Takes Out Capitalist Trash fundraising campaign!

The National Guard is coming to Chicago. Never mind the fact that Governor J.B. Pritzker doesn’t want them here and hasn’t ordered them. Never mind the fact that a federal judge recently struck down Trump’s siccing of the Guard on Los Angeles, where they were tasked primarily with intimidating protesters and milling about aimlessly.  Never mind the fact that the presence of troops and federal agents in Washington, D.C was so enraging that a salmon-shirt-and-khaki-shorts-wearing Generic White Guy threw a sandwich at a federal agent – and dodged felony charges after a grand jury refused to indict him. 

Trump has chosen to illegally deploy  National Guard troops and more ICE agents to our city because Chicago is purportedly a violence ridden “killing field” requiring immediate federal intervention. The actual, obvious reason is that Trump is still mad that a group of protesters chased him out of the city in 2016, and that workers here have successfully organized against ICE terrorism. He also resents that Chicago is a thriving, multiracial, multi-ethnic city with local and state leadership uninterested in complying with his whims or bowing to threats of force.

At the same time, the allegations of violence and crime haven’t stopped well meaning people sharing photos of the best of Chicago – its street festivals, beaches, and museums – while mocking how “scary” this world-class city is. I understand the urge to troll and to tell people who have never visited our city to kick rocks. But we cannot neglect the real people behind every statistic, every talking point, and every headline about the number of shootings and assaults in Chicago. Those people deserve more than Trump’s false promises of “law and order,” a “gotcha” headline about crime, or erasure of what happened to them. 

Over the Labor Day weekend in Chicago, 58 people were shot. Eight of those people died. Eight people’s parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, and sisters are grieving the loss of loved ones while having to navigate the grim logistics of death: visits to the morgue and the funeral home, obtaining a tall stack of death certificates, contacting Social Security, phone and email providers, banks and credit card companies, health insurance companies, utility providers, and landlords in order to close accounts and attempt to eliminate any debts.

The 50 people who were “only” injured, not killed, are recovering in the hospital. They are fighting with insurance companies who want them discharged before they have gotten used to using a colostomy bag, or before their excruciating pain has dulled to become a manageable (but likely permanent) part of life. Their parents, partners or children are trying to figure out how they are supposed to accommodate a wheelchair or walker in their rickety walkup or two flat, or how they’re supposed to pick up their prescriptions when the only pharmacy in the neighborhood closed three months ago, or who they can talk to about their loved ones’ psychological trauma as the city grapples with a critical shortage of trained mental health professionals.

Meanwhile, nurses have to deliver bad news to parents, aid injured patients, fight with insurance companies, while somehow finding time for a bathroom break. Social workers and case managers have to call through a database of agencies that hasn’t been updated in five years to figure out which patchwork of nonprofit service providers are still open and can offer assistance. Many will try to find time to collectively grieve the clients they lost. Community Violence Intervention (CVI) workers will go to funerals and answer phone calls and text messages at all hours from angry friends and family, trying to persuade them that revenge isn’t worth it, all while making minimum wage and facing layoffs if the CVI grant isn’t renewed. To that last point: Chicago’s CVI landscape is even more fragmented and precariously funded in the aftermath of the collapse of Heartland Alliance, which ran the READI Chicago program.

If a survivor decides to take their chances with the criminal legal system, they’ll deal with an indifferent, unresponsive, or downright hostile police detective. If, rarer still, that detective actually clears a case (meaning a suspect is identified and arrested), the survivor then gets to deal with indifferent, unresponsive, or downright hostile assistant states attorneys, along with the stress of having to relive their trauma while testifying in court, being rigorously cross-examined, and having to see the alleged perpetrator and their family in court. 

If a survivor rationally decides that they want to focus on recovery and don’t want to subject themselves and their loved ones to violent retaliation, the police will openly blame them for the next shooting.

The cycle repeats, leaving more families and workers hurt, desperate for some kind of closure, and struggling with no support. The people screaming about crime in Chicago will continue to ignore the suffering of working-class Chicagoans and remain completely disinterested in offering any real solution to the complex problem of urban crime. The National Guard will either pack up or shift duties to mulching trees.

This is the current state of violence in Chicago. Our city is  this way because the ruling class wants it to be this way. The basic reason why violence is such an intractable issue, no matter how many millions we shovel into the police budget, is because the officers and leadership of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) believe that working-class Chicagoans deserve violence as punishment for having non-MAGA politics and for daring to exist in Chicago while not being white.

I am a police and prison abolitionist because I see “criminal justice reform” as being structurally impossible – not because there aren’t effective reforms, but because police have made it abundantly clear that they will not carry out any reforms that would make the police department better at its stated purpose of preventing crime, swiftly intervening when crime happens, supporting victims and witnesses, and detaining suspects without murdering them or violating their constitutional rights.

In recent years, police have successfully lobbied to make reforms ineffective. The “landmark” Empowering Communities for Public Safety Ordinance (ECPS) is a sprawling meetings-industrial complex that has not delivered on its promises of a police force accountable to civilian oversight. The Anjanette Young Ordinance removed the ban on no-knock raids so it could pass with the votes of alderpeople who think what happened to Anjanette Young and Breonna Taylor was good and should happen more often. They and the Chicago Police Department believe police officers should not be punished for terrorizing and murdering innocent people. 

This extends beyond shootings. This year, women in Logan Square were targeted by a serial rapist. Police detectives refused to act until the women got the attention of local news and publicly organized demands for justice to force the department’s hand. A group of detectives paid six figure salaries had to be bullied into doing their jobs and catching the perpetrator. At least one victim attempted to report what happened and received no response.

The ineptitude and indifference of CPD directly caused an increase in sexual assaults. The reason is pretty obvious if you spend any time trawling anonymous CPD Twitter accounts: the average cop considers women in Logan Square (or Avondale, or Edgewater, or Bridgeport, or Pilsen, or Lakeview, or Hyde Park, and so on) to be insufferably woke and feminist, and thus deserving of rape and sexual assault.

It is our role as socialists to name this specific state failure while uplifting the victims and the many workers left to pick up the pieces of these failures. We should not talk about “killing fields” or point to the richest parts of Chicago to claim that everything is fine. We should also avoid waving off violence as only an issue on the South and West Sides, because violence is both heavily concentrated and scattered across the city. I live on a charming block on the Far North Side that feels like it could have come straight from Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy Town. There is a block not too far from me where shootings are commonplace.

Right now, Chicago DSA and many other community groups are bracing for an invasion from National Guard troops and federal agents. It is unclear how long this will last. But once the troops leave, or they are relegated to trash pickup, we need to make a serious effort to uplift the human toll of police letting thousands of people die for no reason, and be a regular presence at community vigils and peace marches. The 58 people shot this past weekend deserved more than a false choice between violence and fascism. We all do.

The post Neither Paradise Nor Killing Field: A Socialist Perspective on “Crime in Chicago” appeared first on Midwest Socialist.