The Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America [DSA] condemn the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran and demand that U.S. leaders move towards disengagement instead of continuing the destruction of the region. 

After decades of crying “nuclear,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American President Donald Trump have sparked a hot war that will directly impact 90 million Iranians, 10 million Israelis and 4 million Palestinians living in the region. It will also indirectly affect people around the world, including those in Milwaukee, as the economic impact takes hold. 

“This is yet another example of unnecessary American intervention in the Middle East,” Milwaukee DSA leader Pamela Westphal said. “While thousands of Americans every day struggle to have adequate access to food, shelter, water, education and transportation, the U.S. government uses the same taxpayer dollars that could alleviate these problems to bomb innocent civilians in Iran.”

Though Trump has characterized this initial attack as necessary to bring peace, we recognize the self-fulfilling nature of a nuclear nation baiting and bombing another nation over unproven claims of that nation’s combative intentions.

Already, Israel, the U.S. and their allies have spent decades destabilizing the region. In the past three years, Israel’s escalated ethnic cleansing of Palestine alone has led to international charges of war crimes and condemnation from countries around the world.

“To our Iranian brothers and sisters in Milwaukee and beyond, I pray for your safety and healing as this war is reignited,” Westphal said. “And to our Muslim neighbors here in Milwaukee, we stand in solidarity with you against Islamophobia and U.S. intervention in the Middle East.”

Just a generation after the horrific occupation of Iraq, Americans should know better than to beat the drums of regime change or to join a war that has already cost hundreds of civilian lives. Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan remain battered by American and allied meddling, their communities facing some of the world’s worst living conditions. We hope U.S. leaders will do the right thing and move towards immediate peace instead of continuing down a long road of death and destruction.

Milwaukee DSA is Milwaukee’s largest socialist organization fighting for a democratic economy, a just society, and a sustainable environment. Join today at dsausa.org/join.

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.

Below is a speech made by Green Mountain DSA labor chair, Andy Blanchet, on June 10th, 2025 at the Burlington, VT ICE OUT protest. The protest brought together people across the Vermont community - from union & migrant workers to retirees and community organizers - to stand in solidarity with the community of Los Angeles, CA in their resistance to government repression. 

GMDSA’s Labor Committee recently worked with rank and file union members in putting on a Union Power organizing training in April 2024, and was a key organization in coordinating and organizing the May Day 2025 March in Williston, VT where 2,500 people came out to celebrate international workers’ day and stand in solidarity with Vermont migrant farm workers in their Milk with Dignity picket line at Hannaford Supermarket. 

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Repeat after me:  An Injury to One, is an Injury to all! (x3)

Hello! My name is Andy Blanchet and I am a full-time worker at Howard Center, and speak today as president of our labor union, AFSCME Local 1674, and as chair of the Green Mountain Democratic Socialists of America Chapter’s Labor Committee. I come with an urgent message for fellow working class people and our role in combating Trump’s Authoritarian cruelty as witnessed in LA and beyond. I first want to state clearly: AFSCME Local 1674 stands in solidarity with all who have been kidnapped by ICE and DHS and we demand the immediate release of those currently detained. We stand in solidarity with every Union member on the streets exercising our right to freedom of speech in calling for an end to the cruel ICE raids. These unacceptable state sponsored acts of kidnapping are both horrific and unsurprising from this administration. Unsurprising, considering capitalism’s fundamentally authoritarian nature. 

We currently live in a world where bosses who run corporations have full authority over workers. This is an ugly dictatorship of capital - where those who make profits from the blood, sweat, and tears of workers can decide exactly what kind of lives we are allowed to live by exploiting our time and energy for the sake of profit. Not only that, but the capitalist landlords, who pay for their new pools and 2nd homes with our meager wages we break our backs for, decide exactly how much to extort from us in exchange for shelter. Workers have historically worked to combat this dictatorship of the bosses by forming our own labor and tenant unions.

And with that collective organizing, working class people have tried to exercise our natural rights to free speech, organizing, freedom of association, and collective bargaining to win both better wages and working conditions, as well as political change. However, every step of the way, the rich have fought us tooth and nail for even the most meager of wins. They hire union busting lawyers from an industry that reaps profits by convincing employers to keep them on retainer in order to fight their own workers simply pursuing dignity and respect in the workplace. They call the police on striking workers, like they did to Starbucks Workers’ United members during their sit-down strike earlier this year. The rich have even gone so far as to OUTLAW the ability to strike, to withhold our labor, in different industries. That didn’t stop unions like the Newton Teachers’ Association of Newton Massachusetts from organizing a successful, and illegal, strike to win their demands. 

But now, it seems, the rich bosses want more. They criminalize working people from speaking out in support of Palestine through the critique of our own country’s complicity in the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people. ICE beat & detained the President of SEIU California, David Huerta, while he exercised his freedom of speech. The rich are willing to target unions, union workers & leaders, and immigrant workers to maintain their full control over our economic, political, and social lives. And it is essential that every union, be they local or international, answer the question: Which side are you on?

The time for fence-sitting apolitical unionism must come to an end. There are numerous examples of unions trying to play-nice with overtly hostile political administrations, thinking this would save them, and it never has. All this does is allow those in power to exercise their will over organized labor and know they can get away with it. Worse than that, the do-nothing Democratic party has used the plight of working class people as their political platform for decades. Workers are not pawns to be used in rhetoric and then discarded when it’s time to make good on policy promises - working people are who have built and sustained society and we deserve money for healthcare, prenatal & child care, education, housing, and food, not money for bombs and deportation! It is well past time for unions, big and small, to recognize these trends and organize to win the future we all deserve.

We can win these demands, and more, if we recognize and internalize that when we are divided, and alone, we are at risk. But when we practice safety through solidarity, we are unstoppable! Look at what organized labor did to energize the working class of South Korea in 2024. By organizing workers in huge companies into strike-ready unions and collaborating with farm workers, Korean workers were able to mobilize and fight back against President Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law in a fight for democracy. We, the workers and organized labor, must find the political will to commit to this version of organizing for the common good in order to have a lasting impact. We deserve lives of dignity, honor, love, and justice!

The workers, united, will never be defeated! (x3)

Thank you! Solidarity Forever!

Columbus DSA condemns, in the strongest possible terms, the actions of President Trump and his administration, the United States armed forces, ICE, and the LAPD in their relentless brutality against peaceful protestors fighting to protect their communities from the thugs abducting their friends, family, and neighbors. We condemn the violence of ICE and their campaign of mass deportations that has come to our city of Columbus. On June 3rd ICE arrested Leonardo Fausto at a court hearing for a dismissed misdemeanor traffic violation. Fausto has lived in Columbus legally for 4 years while waiting to be granted asylum. Ohio senators have also passed a bill that will require public officials to allow the arrest of suspected undocumented immigrants with or without warrants, while other Ohio lawmakers have proposed the “America First Act”, making it a felony to be in Ohio undocumented. We stand in unshakable solidarity with our undocumented neighbors: no one’s existence is illegal.

The recent protests in Los Angeles and other cities demonstrate that the American people are aware of the cruelty that this administration inflicts upon our families, our neighbors, and people in our communities, and we demand that these abuses stop.

Left unchecked, this administration, alongside ICE and local law enforcement, will continue to hide what the ‘land of the free’ has become from the world. They obscure their names and faces so that no one knows who to hold accountable for their crimes, all while they vanish our neighbors, family, and friends. ICE has only existed since 2003 but is being used like the Gestapo of Nazi Germany to create terror among us. We have lived without their presence for most of our existence, and we don’t need them now. To that end, we demand the following from our own community of Columbus:

We demand ICE be abolished. We demand that undocumented citizens be given amnesty and a swift path to citizenship. And we call for the immediate release of every person that ICE has arrested in LA and across the nation.

We demand that Columbus City Council end their contracts with ICE, make Columbus a sanctuary city, and protect its residents from these illegal abductions.

Columbus DSA will continue to fight for the power of the working class and the freedoms of people all over the world, immigrants or not. We will not stand by as the people of our community are abused by state violence. An injury to one is an injury to all. Free the prisoners, abolish ICE, and end the authoritarian regime currently in power.

On Thursday, June 19, we celebrate what began as Jubilee Day, and what we now recognize as Juneteenth. This year, it marks 160 years since Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to finally enforce the Emancipation Proclamation and deliver the word of freedom to some of the last enslaved Black Americans.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – June 19 2025

Info@portlanddsa.org

Update: sign our petition to tell Gov. Kotek hands off!

In an article published on June 18 by Willamette Week, Governor Tina Kotek is quoted as suggesting to Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pedersen a restructure of the Preschool for All tax, a levy on Oregon’s top 5% which funds universal preschool for everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. This is an unacceptable capitulation to the demands of Oregon’s rich and super-rich, whose feelings have been hurt by being required to contribute to the society that made it possible for them to get so very rich.

Portland DSA led the fight for universal preschool in Multnomah County, and we count its adoption as one of our largest victories. The law levies a very small tax on Portland’s very highest incomes, and the programs funded by that small tax have broad and powerful impact. In the Willamette Week article, Kotek is described as making the argument that the tax is causing Portland’s wealthy “job-creators” to flee the city. This assessment couldn’t be further from the truth.

Kotek’s argument is based on spurious data: in a chart created by economist Mary King and posted on Bluesky by DSA City Councilor Mitch Green, the data clearly show that the percentage of high-income earners in Multnomah County is dramatically increasing. 

Kotek’s fear-mongering about the loss of the city’s tax base because of a tax which funds a universal program for every resident of the county is a great disappointment, but not unexpected. It shows how subservient our political class is to the moneyed elite, who pay high prices to get access to them and their political power.

It also hinges on the tired myth that Portland is a city in decline, burnt out after so much conflict. The reality is that Portland is a vibrant, thriving city that the rich want to live in, along with the rest of us. In part because of its social programs, not in spite of them. Working-class voters won this social program and will defend it — and Portland DSA is proud to be a part of that fight.

In Solidarity,

Portland DSA

The post Defend Preschool For All! appeared first on Portland DSA .

We are experiencing the most sustained and broad attacks on US democracy since the McCarthy period. MAGA has put together a fascist coalition of white supremacist, reactionary nationalists, Christian fundamentalists, libertarians, and techno-authoritarians, and they are on an offensive against the 20^th century. All the gains of labor, civil rights, women, and the LGBTQ community are under assault. The fascists intend to fundamentally restructure institutional democracy and to impose a straitjacket on civil society. This closely parallels the McCarthy period, and there are important similarities and differences between now and then, and lessons we can draw.

My uncle (Fred Fine) was on the leading committee of the Communist Party (CP) and closely involved in discussions about organizing an underground apparatus of safe houses for Party leaders. Fine himself was assigned to the underground, and was there for four years. During that time, he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List, and never once spoke with his wife or young son. My father, who had fought in the Spanish Civil War, was threatened with deportation, and the FBI threatened to declare my mother “unfit” and told her they would have her children (ages 6 and 11) put into foster homes without visitation rights. Thousands suffered similar threats and intimidation, key leaders were jailed, some cadre turned informant, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were executed.

When the Party leadership discussed how to respond to McCarthy, there were two key assumptions: fascism was imminent and war with the Soviet Union inevitable. The similarities to today are striking. Many people feel fascism is imminent and war with China inevitable. The CP drew a number of conclusions from these assumptions that had drastic consequences for its members and mass organizing.

First, they purged members they considered untrustworthy or politically weak. And perhaps more damagingly, the Party concluded repression would be worst in the South, and so shut down all its southern districts and withdrew its organizers after 25 years of outstanding work organizing the South. When my parents divorced, my mother left Chicago and went to Florida with my brother and me to join a close friend—a woman who had been a nurse in the Spanish Civil War, working with the world famous doctor Norman Bethune. My mother was kicked out of the Party for moving to the South, and was only let back in when we moved to California. That didn’t stop the FBI from following her to Florida and getting her fired from several jobs.

My mother kept a journal of her time in Florida. Here is one short excerpt of her experience:

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY…35 years. Nobody knows except the FBI. My gift from them
was once again being fired. This time from a job short lasted.
But I truly enjoyed working as proofreader on the St. Petersburg Times.
Well, at least I was let go early in the day. So now I’m home with enough time to
change into my waitress uniform. And time enough left to wait for Paulie to come home
from school. Young Jerry is only 4 and Paulie 9. The best birthday.
We’ll be playing a few games of baseball before I take off for my night shift.
There sits the limousine of the FBI. Another obstacle of fears,
confusion of what the future holds. This is the time for courage and bold adventures.
For it is now, I have come to understand, and someday so will my sons.
Of that I’m confident. For my mother’s heart tells me so.

The author’s mother, Rose Fine, (center) at a protest in Chicago (c. 1955)

The Party went to great lengths to set up an underground apparatus. This had at least two levels: the most secure, in which eight national leaders were sent into hiding, and a less secure state and city underground into which hundreds of local leaders were assigned. This eliminated many of the best organizers from doing mass work. Moreover, local underground networks were largely penetrated by the FBI. Even at my uncle’s level, four of the eight leaders were captured by the FBI. Although he had a number of close calls at different safe houses, he held out until the Party decided to come out of hiding and he eventually stood trial with several other leaders in New York.

When the Party’s first line of leadership (William Foster, Eugene Dennis, and others) went on trial, they tried to defend themselves by educating the jury about the true meaning of Marxism-Leninism. The result was prison time for all. On my uncle’s wanted poster (up in post offices throughout the country) was the following charge: “unlawfully conspiring with other persons to knowingly teach and advocate the duty and necessity of overthrowing and destroying the government of the United States by force and violence.” Of course, the Party never told members to arm themselves, they never organized armed cells, nor did they have plans for an armed insurrection. They did teach about the armed revolution in Russia, the history of capitalist violence, and the ultimate need to defend any socialist electoral victory from a reactionary counterrevolution.

FBI “Most Wanted” Poster for the author’s uncle, Fred Morris Fine

By the time my uncle stood trial, the Party had switched its defense strategy to asserting the freedoms of speech, association, and assembly. There is a difference between speech and advocacy and actively organizing acts of violence. This focus on civil liberties proved more successful with the courts. In 1957 the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protected radical speech, overturning the conviction of 14 Communist Party officials and effectively ending the use of the Smith Act to target leftists for their political beliefs. A series of subsequent rulings forbade the use of blacklists and other methods of political persecution, which helped bring about the end of the Second Red Scare. However, the proceeding period of internal debates and bitter feelings resulted in about half the remaining members leaving the Party by 1957.

Lessons for Today

During the McCarthy period the ruling class was united in its efforts to destroy the left. From conservatives to liberals, Republicans to Democrats, a united front was made impossible. Even the ACLU purged Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from its board for being in the CP. Furthermore, social democratic union leaders like Walter Reuther were more than happy to rid labor of Communists. Loyalty oaths were demanded at universities, public schools, unions, Hollywood, and various industries. Public show trials were held by the House Un-American Activities Committee in cities across the country. Many former friends of the Party were running scared.

But while the persecution the Party faced was real, “the almost fatal blow,” as Party leader Peggy Dennis later wrote in her Autobiography of an American Communist, “was self-inflicted.” The decision to shutter its Southern districts and take the Party leadership underground anticipated a level of repression far greater than that which materialized. Designed to protect the Party from the advent of fascism and world war, it instead deprived mass struggles of thousands of their most militant organizers and activists, weakened the labor movement, cut off key linkages with the Black freedom struggle, and contributed to a decline of CPUSA membership from 80,000 in 1945 to less than 15,000 by 1957.

Today, conditions are in some important ways more favorable for us than during the McCarthy era. The ruling class is split. Already we see mass rallies and protests. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders, Hands Off, and May Day marches have already gathered millions in opposition to fascism. Courts as of yet have often ruled against Trump. A united front is not only possible, but is in early formation.

In this moment, many leftists are concerned about safety and security – understandably. The harms caused by Trump’s repressive regime are real. But a key lesson from the McCarthy Era is that we must not let our fear of persecution isolate us from the masses and from mass movements. We can and must continue to organize, even as we take measures to help keep ourselves and each-other safe. The following are some suggestions for this period:

• Stay rooted to mass work, defend our friends and allies, and ask them to defend us.
• Defend the Bill of Rights, civil society, civil liberties, and civil rights for all.
• Stay calm but be aware of security.
• Make sure your financial records—particularly organizational finances—are in order.
• Organizations should have a house counsel, and individuals should always keep the number of a lawyer with you.
• Never write on social media or in email what you don’t want read back to you in court.
• Vocally reject all proposed violent acts at public meetings
• NEVER TALK TO THE FBI. Legally you don’t have to, but if you lie, you’re committing a federal crime. So, NEVER TALK TO THE FBI.

This is the time for courage and bold adventures. Collectively, our actions now will help determine what the future holds.

The post Lessons from the McCarthy Red Scare appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

As part of our 2025 Migrant Rights Campaign, DSA San Diego is pressuring Grossmont Union High School District to defend students against ICE raids. Read more. [...]

Read More... from Migrant Rights Priority Campaign: Summer 2025 Update

The post Migrant Rights Priority Campaign: Summer 2025 Update appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America | San Diego Chapter.

This article is reprinted from the Socialist Forum, a publication of DSA. It was authored by Todd Chretien, who serves both on DSA’s Editorial Board as well as Pine & Roses’ Editorial Collective. It was originally published on May 30, 2025.

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What happened? 

Hundreds of thousands of workers marched and rallied on May Day, making it the largest International Workers Day since 2006 when two million immigrant workers left work and marched to demand their rights. Protests were organized in 1300 locations, large and small; no doubt the first May Day protest in many places. Broadly speaking, there were three different levels of mobilization. First, as in 2006, Chicago stood out with some 30,000 marching, organized by a mass coalition of labor and immigrant rights organizations. Second, cities like Philly, New York, Baltimore, San Francisco, Oakland, Burlington, and Portland, Maine mobilized between two and fifteen thousand. Third, hundreds of cities and towns turned out crowds from a couple dozen to hundreds, including smaller cities like Davis, California. This ranking is not intended as a judgement on the organizers. In fact, some of the smaller rallies included higher percentages of the population than the largest. For instance, in the town of Wayne, Maine—population 1,000—seventy-five people turned out for both morning and evening rallies. 

It’s worth noting that the crowds were not as large as the April 5 day of protest initiated by Indivisible; however, participants were noticeably more multiracial, younger, and radical with widespread support for transgender rights and opposition to the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Though an important step in the process of building working-class unity against the billionaires and capitalist class, these efforts have a long way to go. For instance, although multiracial, at the national level, the marches did not entirely reflect working-class diversity. And if immigrant rights organizations were critical in many cities, Trump’s reign of terror against immigrant workers suppressed turnout from this community in many places. 

Who organized it and how? 

Memory and sacrifice play a role in sustaining oppositional working-class culture. No Haymarket Martyrs, no May Day. More recently, the 2006 May Day protests provided a living link to the past as well as the importance of International Workers Day globally. UAW president Shawn Fain’s call for unions to align contracts and lead a 2028 general strike, have introduced May Day to a whole new generation of labor organizers.

 Recently, precursor actions in the wake of Trump’s election laid the basis for pulling together a mass, class-based response. As the saying goes, the best organizing tool is a bad boss and Trump is one of the worst bosses possible. Repression and widespread layoffs do not always provoke resistance, but this time targeted workers put up a critical mass of opposition that gummed up the works and provided the time to organize a strategic response. 

Thousands of teachers from across the country responded to a call by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers for walk-ins in March to protest Trump’s destruction of the Department of Education. Bay Area activists organized a “Day of Resistance” against ICE even before Trump was inaugurated. The Maine State Nurses Association led a rally to protest Medicaid cuts in March and organized a mass town hall to prevent the closure of the obstetrics department in the small town of Houlton. Kathryn Lybarger, president of AFSCME 3299 representing 22,000 workers at the University of California, summarizes her union’s approach, “My union went on its fourth strike in six months on May Day, and the energy felt great. For union members fighting a powerful employer for our families’ futures, it was amazing to be joined on the picket line by all kinds of community members who are fighting billionaires for their futures too. The day felt like an event and an important step in building the movement we need to stop Trump and win a better world.”   In the single biggest display of working-class power on May Day, 55,000 LA County employees in SEIU 721 walked off the job and marched through downtown LA. 

As federal workers reeled from Trump’s layoffs, the Federal Unionist Network was one of the most important elements blunting the blitzkrieg. FUN organizer Chris Dols explains, “Amidst all the necessary defense we’re playing against the billionaires’ offensive, May Day is the labor movement’s opportunity to articulate a positive vision for the world we deserve. Federal workers are uniquely positioned and proud to help advance such a vision because, above all else, we are public servants, and it is the entire public that is under assault. As is captured by the FUN’s ‘Save Our Services’ demand, our approach to May Day was to foreground the crucial services and protections federal workers provide in an effort to not only cohere fighting federal labor movement but also to develop and deepen alliances with all who stand to lose the most if Trump gets away with smashing up our agencies.”

Pair these factors with decades of bipartisan misery inflicted on the working class, and it’s not surprising workers are angry. Politicians have failed to deliver on demands like healthcare for all, affordable housing, and a stronger public education system. Add inflation, union-busting, white supremacy, misogyny, transphobia and homophobia, genocide in Gaza, and anti-immigrant bigotry, and the potential for uniting large parts of the working class across its many divisions comes into focus.

Chicago takes the lead

Yet objective conditions alone cannot make a plan. Organized forces with the credibility and capacity to think through a strategy and to put it into practice are needed. 

According to Jesse Sharkey, past president of the Chicago Teachers Union and lead organizer with the newly-formed May Day Strong coalition, “Chicago became a center of May Day organizing this year for two reasons—first, there was a local coalition that got a lot of people involved. Activists from the immigrants rights community were extremely important in initiating it, and they held open meetings. They invited anyone who wanted to help organize. That drew in trade unionists, and many others. On a second front, Chicago was in the middle of initiating a national call for May Day protests… The call for that effort came from the Chicago Teachers Union and a handful of allied organizations such as Midwest Academy, Bargaining for the Common Good, and the Action Center on Race and the Economy. The NEA also played an extremely helpful role. In late March, we had about 220 people from over 100 organizations join us in Chicago to start planning for May 1 actions. The reason we were able to initiate such a widespread effort was because we have a past practice of closely linking trade union fights to wider working-class demands. In places where local unions have worked with community and activist groups, we had networks of communication and trust. Then, once that effort had reached a certain critical mass, some of the big national networks like Indivisible and 50501 got on board, and that really grew the reach of the day.”

It’s not that the CTU and immigrant community organizers in Chicago were the only ones thinking about May Day, but their action drew together and amplified similar efforts across the country, nationalizing the protest by providing a framework and resources for labor and community organizers in hundreds of towns and cities. Chicago didn’t create May Day 2025—thousands of activists across the country had to take up the call—but it did open a door. 

Socialists and the united front

Assessing the impact of May Day for the working class as a whole should not be conflated with DSA’s role in the organizing. But as this is an article that will mostly reach DSA members, it’s worth reviewing what we contributed. First, thousands of DSA members across the country turned out for May Day. This fact alone shows our organization’s strength, and it points to opportunities and responsibilities. If all your chapter was able to do was to turn out members or help publicize the local protest among coworkers and the broader community, that’s an important contribution. Second, at the National Level, DSA’s National Political Committee and National Labor Commission joined May Day Strong and organized membership Zoom meetings to encourage branches to take action starting in March. Third, and this should come as no surprise, DSA played a bigger role in some places than others. I think it’s worth considering the impact of the strategic and tactical choices local chapters made on the influence they wielded and the organic ties they deepened. After speaking with comrades from across the country, I will offer a few positive examples. I hope comrades will add to this picture and offer alternative ideas or criticisms. 

New York 

In October, the NYC-DSA chapter adopted a resolution to support the UAW’s call for a 2028 May Day strike. The chapter subsequently held an internal May Day 2028 strategy retreat and identified May Day 2025 as a key link in the chain of developing power and political momentum to fight against Trump and the broader machine. As one DSA organizer puts it, “It’s not enough to circle May Day 2028 on a calendar, we need to build a coalition to organize it and politicize it.” Rooted in this perspective, NYC-DSA turned out to support a mass post-election labor-left anti-Trump rally, the FUN day of action in February, the subsequent Stop the Cuts rally on March 15, and Hands Off on April 5. 

Olivia Gonzalez Killingsworth, co-chair of NYC-DSA Labor Working Group and National Labor Commission SC member (as well as a twenty-year member of Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA) picks up the story, reflecting, “After Stop the Cuts, I went to Chicago on March 19 and 20 as an NLC representative to join the May Day Strong meeting. Stacy Davis Gates, Jackson Potter, and Jesse Sharkey welcomed us all into the house that CTU built. Shawn Fain was there along with Randi Weingarten, who was enraged because Trump signed his executive order gutting the Department of Education that same day. We broke out into regions and were charged with going back home to build May Day as big as possible. In New York City, broadly speaking, there were three important currents: the core of the union movement represented by the Central Labor Council, the left-liberals like Tesla Takedown, and the labor/left, of which DSA is a part. Through a lot of coalition work, we made a circle out of this Venn diagram. Trump helped along the way. Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s deportation really angered the Building Trades, further galvanizing them into participation. DSA played an important role in mobilizing: we had a huge contingent, and even more members marching with their unions. But more than that, we helped politicize May Day to point to the billionaires who are benefiting from the Trump administration’s attacks on us.” 

Part of this work included successfully advocating—alongside many others—for both AOC and Mahmoud Khalil’s lawyer to speak at the rally, which garnered significant national media attention, helping broadcast our message far beyond May Day participants. It’s important to point out that DSA did not initiate the coalition, but worked alongside long-time labor activists to support May Day, earning our stripes as a trusted and capable partner. 

On the day, NYC-DSA turned out some 500 members, many of whom marched with their unions. They did so while keeping up with other work—DSA member Zohran Mamdani is running for mayor—with NYC-DSA labor organizers having advanced a month-long Build to May Day campaign. Organizers called on committees and working groups across the chapter to make May Day a priority, turning out members and volunteer marshalls. The chapter is now in a stronger position to discuss next steps with the broader coalition and consolidate a layer of new members and allies. There’s more pain ahead, but May Day helped gather working-class forces together for action and to take the temperature of the most active and militant layer of trade unionists and community activists. As NYC-DSA Labor Working Group member David Duhalde suggests, “The New York City May Day rally and march from Foley Square to the iconic Wall Street Bull statue was a microcosm of the shift in energy in labor during Trump’s second term.” How far that shift goes can only be tested in practice.

Philadelphia

As in New York, Philadelphia DSA did not initiate the call for the May Day rallies. The AFL-CIO led the charge in alliance with immigrants rights organizations such as Milpa, New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, and Juntos, mobilizing some 5,000 workers. But Philadelphia DSA did add its organizing muscle, assigning Luke M to act as liaison. The chapter followed many of the same tactics as their New York comrades. When the AFL-CIO opened up the coalition, DSA members proved themselves energetic organizers; for instance, running the marshal training and providing a large portion of marshals. DSA members constituted a large part of the seventy-two people arrested at the end of the march in a civil disobedience action, including Rick Krajewski, a DSA member elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Seven union presidents joined in this calculated escalation of tactics, demonstrating a broad understanding that workers will have to take matters into their own hands to back down the billionaires and capitalist elites. 

And in a lesson passed down through generations, from the IWW to Sit-Down Strikes to the Civil Rights Movement to Occupy to Black Lives Matter to Gaza, no protest is finished until jail support is organized, a responsibility that was taken up by DSA members and coalition partners alike. That unity in action demonstrated the most important aspect of united front work, but the chapter also raised the socialist banner. Taking placards and membership interest card ideas from DSA members in California, Philadelphia DSA formed a visible presence on the march with some 200 members, and signed up sixty-two new recruits. It didn’t hurt that the unions invited Bernie to speak. After all the hard work, Luke praised his Philly comrades, “I have to say I’m genuinely proud of what we accomplished, and I’m looking forward to the debrief meeting to see what comes next.”

Portland, Maine

Maine DSA’s Labor Rising working group decided to focus on May Day in December, laying the basis to help initiate an organizing meeting open to all community groups and unions. Maine AFL-CIO leaders and UAW graduate students participated in a preliminary meeting to brainstorm ideas, and more than 70 people attended an April 12 meeting in the South Portland Teamsters’ Hall, where the group democratically planned Portland’s May Day. Working groups took up all aspects of the action, and we took all important decisions back to the coalition for votes. Running a long a related track, Maine Education Association and Maine AFL-CIO leaders called for actions across the state, amplifying the Chicago May Day Strong call and dramatically broadening what the Portland coalition could organize. 

Nearly 2,000 people turned out in Portland, starting with a rally at the University of Southern Maine to back UAW graduate students’ demands for a first contract and then marching to the Post Office to hear from postal workers. Members of the Portland Education Association and a trans student poet headlined the stop at Portland High School and a librarian union rep spoke in Monument Square before the final rally that heard from the president of the Metal Trades Council at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, a rep from the Maine State Nurses Association, members of the Maine Coalition for Palestine, an organizer from LGTBQ+ community group Portland Outright, a local immigrant rights group called Presente! Maine, and others. It was a great demonstration and showed the thirst for a broader coalition. Twenty-five other towns held actions, bringing the total number of Maine participants to over 5,000, the largest Maine May Day anyone can remember. 

It would be shortsighted to overstate the power and stability of this fledgling coalition. Large doses of patience and understanding will be necessary to foster bonds of trust. Sectarian pressures to draw “red lines” that exclude workers new to political activity and organizations who have various programs and interests represent one danger. A narrow focus on the midterm elections represents another. Fortunately, there’s a lot of room for creativity between those two extremes. 

Long road ahead

May Day was the first test of strength for the left and working class against Trump, MAGA, and forty-plus years of neoliberal rot. We face a long, complex problem where political pressures to return to passivity will be strong, but May Day 2025 constitutes a small step towards healing deep wounds in the American working class, the divide between organized and unorganized, immigrant and US born, etc. If brother Fain’s call for 2028 is to grow strong, then 2026 and 2027 must be practice runs.  If 2026 and 2027 are to be real demonstrations of strength, they must grow out of tighter bonds between labor, community, and the left, more active membership participation in all of those forces, and a combination of defensive struggles we are forced to fight and battles we pick on our own terms. As Sarah Hurd, co-chair of DSA’s National Labor Commission, spells out, “This year’s May Day actions showed the power of what we can accomplish just by setting a date and inviting people to take action together. It has also highlighted what work we need to do to scale up our level of organization in the next three years.” 

What did May Day teach us? Fittingly, the last word goes to Kirsten Roberts, a rank-and-file Chicago teacher, “The most important element of May Day 2025 is the explicit entry of organized and unorganized labor into resistance to Trump. Trump’s attacks are aimed directly at dividing the working class and turning ordinary people against one another while the billionaires rob and plunder us all. An agenda for working class unity can be built when we stand up for those most victimized and vilified by the right-wing bigots AND when we stand together to fight for the things that the billionaire class has denied us—the fight for healthcare, education, housing, and good-paying jobs for starters. For decades, we’ve been told by both parties that funding war, incarceration, and border militarization are their priorities. May Day showed that working people have another agenda. Now let’s organize to win it.”

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On April 15, Border Patrol agents tackled a 27-year-old Salvadoran man to the pavement on Massachusetts Avenue in Portland. They zip-tied his limbs and threw him into the back of an unmarked vehicle. “It looked like someone getting kidnapped,” a witness told reporters. That’s because it was: a state-sponsored abduction, a spectacle of fear, and a message.

Eyidi Ambila, a man from the Democratic Republic of Congo, served a short sentence in Cumberland County Jail and has since been caged for over eight months by ICE with no new charges, no passport, and nowhere to be deported. This is not immigration enforcement—it’s indefinite detention and state-sanctioned cruelty. A federal judge ruled that Ambila can stay in the U.S. while appealing his deportation, acknowledging that returning him could mean arbitrary arrest, prolonged imprisonment, or torture. Let that sink in: the government admits deportation could lead to torture and still wants to deport him. He’s not a threat. He’s not a flight risk. He’s a living example of a system that dehumanizes, disappears, and discards. 

Marcos Henrique and Lucas Segobia, two skilled immigrant workers en route to a job in Maine, were abducted by ICE without charges. They were disappeared for over 36 hours and moved from one facility to another, while ICE lied to their families about their location. Jail staff refused responsibility. It was only after public pressure that officials finally tell their families where they were detained but the respite was brief, ICE, against their families wishes, moved them out of state.

These are not outliers. These are the cases that made it into the press. In April, documents obtained by the ACLU revealed that Cumberland County Jail was detaining 80 people for ICE, and Two Bridges Jail another 25. That’s over 100 people disappeared into the deportation pipeline with the full cooperation of local law enforcement. This is not policy failure—it’s policy success. It is not an accident—it is the infrastructure of repression being put to work to manage the turbulence of dying world.

We are living in the chaos of a collapsing order. Since the 1970s, the twin engines of neoliberal globalization and carceral expansion have reshaped United States: dismantling public institutions, deregulating capital, and replacing mass employment with mass policing, imprisonment, and deportation. What we are witnessing now is not an aberration but the terminal stage of this conjuncture—a world where crisis is met not with care or redistribution, but with cages and scapegoats. Immigration enforcement emerged to discipline labor, to create a hyper exploited strata of the labor market. Now it is being used by the Trump Administration to impose a blatantly fascist order.

To confront this reality, we start with a simple demand: End Cooperation Between Cumberland County Jail and ICE. And we understand that this demand is also a call to end suffering now, dismantle the deportation machine, and it opens the door to new solidarities and new ways of life.

The Event: Spectacle, Terror, and the Demand for Community Defense

The spectacle of forced removal is meant to terrify. It’s meant to be seen. It teaches entire communities to live in fear and sends a warning: no one is safe. The raids, the unmarked vans, the zip-ties—this is fascism in rehearsal. These moments are not isolated incidents; they are performances of state power. The goal is not merely removal. It is submission.

But for every spectacle of fear, we must respond with a celebration of solidarity. These bewildering, terrifying event demand community defense. They demand mutual aid. They demand we show up: outside jails, inside courtrooms, on the streets. The Trump Administration wants to fear going viral. Resistance must spread faster.

The Conjuncture: Neoliberalism, The Carceral State, and Crimmigration

Beneath the immediate spectacle is a broader structure of political economy. Over the last four decades, both parties have built the crimmigration regime—a fusion of carceral control and immigration enforcement designed to regulate the labor market and manage surplus populations. Reagan began immigrant detention. Clinton passed the laws that made mass deportation possible. Bush created ICE, consolidating immigration enforcement into a nationwide, federal police force. Obama used these tools to deport more people than any president in history. And Trump, despite all his gratuitous authoritarianism, has, in both terms, been unable to match the monthly deportation numbers of his democratic predecessors.

The system was not built to ensure justice. It was built to create a precarious workforce and a permanent underclass. It fabricates social order by dividing workers, criminalizing mobility, and treating migration as a security threat. The Trump administration is now using this bipartisan machinery to impose a more openly fascist order.

This is why ending ICE cooperation in Cumberland County matters. It’s not just a local demand. It’s a strike at on the pillars of the crimmigration system. It removes key logistical support. It complicates ICE’s ability to function. It interrupts the flow of bodies from street to cell to deportation. It is a lever of disruption—and it must be pulled.

The Longue Durée: Capitalism, Racial Division, and the Possibility of a New World

Zoom out further, and the contours of a deeper struggle emerge. The United States is a settler-colonial state founded on land theft, racial hierarchy, and labor exploitation. From slavery to Jim Crow to mass incarceration, from the reservation to the ghetto to the border, the same logics persist. Capitalism appropriates and exploits labor and then organizes abandonment. It produces surplus people: unemployed, unhoused, undocumented, untreated. It punishes these victims and twists and contorts their situations to make them appear as enemies to be contained, excluded, and expelled.

But from within that hell, new worlds are being born.

Presente! Maine is showing us how. Their land and food sovereignty programs, mutual aid work, and wellness initiatives are rooted in the labor and leadership of Maine’s Latine immigrant communities—most of whom work in the very sectors propping up this state’s tourism and agricultural economies. This is not charity. It is not service. It is revolutionary infrastructure. It builds autonomy. It deepens solidarity. It models a different way to live—with the land, with each other, and beyond the violence of borders and bosses.

This campaign is part of that same struggle. It’s not just about removing ICE from our jails. It’s about removing ICE from our future so we can build something better, something more humane, something that can unite New and Old Mainers.

We Are Not Asking—We Are Organizing

Of course, movements that threaten power face opposition—not just from reactionaries, but from liberals who want to manage dissent. We see it already. Some prominent liberal immigration advocacy organizations oppose ending ICE cooperation with the Cumberland County Sherriff, arguing that keeping people detained in Maine in the state aids legal defense. But proximity is not justice. Marcos and Lucas were hidden for 36 hours. Their families were lied to. Eyidi has been held for months with no end in sight. The system is built on opacity and cruelty. Local detention doesn’t protect—it enables.

The point is not to make the system more efficient. The point is to make it impossible.

Real change doesn’t come from appealing to authority. It comes from disrupting business as usual. From making the status quo ungovernable. From forcing elites to choose between justice and disorder. This is how power concedes. This is how history shifts.

We are not asking for better policies. We are not asking for a seat at the table. We are organizing to break the table in half.

For Marcos and Lucas.
For Eyidi.
For every neighbor taken in silence.
For every worker forced into the shadows.
For every life destroyed, for family shattered by the perpetual police war in the name of security and order.

End ICE cooperation in Cumberland County.
Free them all.
Stop the deportation machine.

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