This month we bring you an audio adaptation of a presentation designed by the Political Education Committee of Maine DSA. It is narrated by Bluebird, and is geared especially to people who may be new to left-wing politics. It can be hard to follow the ins and outs of socialist history, so the Political Committee put together a very brief overview on the origins of the socialist movement and some bare essentials people ought to know. We hope you enjoy the program!

The post Maine Mural: Origins of the Socialist Movement appeared first on Pine & Roses.

Pasco hernando DSA is back and now on instagram, with plenty of new members ready to organize! See us on instagram, twitter, and bluesky. Check the bottom of the website for the links!

Are you interested in becoming the best organizer you can be? Do you want to expand socialism here in Milwaukee, but are unsure of where and how to start? Have you been involved but feel like the project did not go anywhere? If you answered yes to any of these questions, the Milwaukee Socialist Organizer Class is for you! 

This nine week program will focus on holistically teaching you to be an unstoppable organizer who builds socialism, changes hearts and minds, and impacts our city.  You will learn direct action organizing, as defined by Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists, in which we organize actions, campaigns, and tactics to “1) win real, immediate, concrete improvement in people’s lives . . . 2) Give people a sense of their own power . . . 3) Alter the relations of power.” 

Interested individuals will apply (Click here, which is due by 11:59 p.m. on June 10, 2025), be interviewed, and enter the program if selected.  DSA membership is not required to participate, but is encouraged. 

This education program will be a combination of in-person events with virtual events if necessary. Each unit will be roughly a week, with a week break in the middle of the program. Each unit will consist of classroom-style instruction in the unit topic (no more than 2 hours, which will be in-person), field work in organizing (which will be at least 3 hours and consist of having conversations, moving people to action, and building infrastructure for a strong socialist movement involving several types of campaigns), and time for personal reflection. Each participant must commit to the entire program and, unless excused, attend every unit instruction, and field work session.  Missing more than two classes and field work sessions may result in removal from the program.  

This is the sixth time this program has been offered, and it is back by popular demand! The two instructors have updated and revised the course to make you even more prepared to lead in socialism.  

Time commitment per week: 

Unit instruction: 2 hours 

Organizing work: 3 hours 

Miscellaneous tasks: 1 hour 

Total time per week: 6 hours

Weekly Schedule 

Class will be conducted on Thursday evenings from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. and held in-person at Zao MKE, located at 2319 E Kenwood Blvd, Milwaukee, 53211.  

Field work will be held at regular intervals over the week, with options to organize at several points during the week: 

(tentative schedule, subject to change . . .) 

Saturdays, 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.

Sundays 12:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. 

Mondays 5:30 until 8:30 p.m. 

Program Timeline: 

June 10 at 11:59 p.m.:

Application deadline – apply here

June 12:

Start of nine week program ( class held, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.), held at Zao MKE, located at 2319 E Kenwood Blvd, Milwaukee, WI 53211

June 19:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

June 26:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

July 3:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

July 10:

Week Break

July 17:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

July 24:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

July 31: 

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

August 7: 

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Units

Each unit helps to answer the question: what is organizing? 

Welcome: what is organizing?

• Get to know participants and instructor
• Define scope of class and intentions 
• Determine goals and desired outcomes 

Organizing is one-on-one Conversations

• Learn the 7 point organizing conversation 
• Practice the conversation and its elements 

Organizing is building the committee and the campaign 

• The importance (or not) of the committee
• Power Mapping the campaign 
• Strategy Chart 

Organizing is holistic productivity 

• Traction versus distraction 
• Time management and its importance
• The Reverse Calendar 
• Overcoming blocks to action

Organizing is a mindset 

• Acknowledging hurdles and setbacks 
• Failure is a great option
• Develop a practice to keep you going

Organizing is raising money and managing it

• Why money is OK 
• How to bring energy and money to your campaign 
• The basics of campaign budgeting and finance 

Organizing is communications

• What does “messaging” mean? 
• The power of media 
• Writing workshop

Organizing is bringing it all together

• You’ve got momentum – now what? 
• Recap of unit themes

Reviews

Here is what previous students have to say about the Milwaukee Socialist Organizer Class: 

“[Before the class] I had no idea about the actual work of organizing.  Now I feel confident that I would be able to become a leader in a campaign setting . . .” 

“I loved the practical application of socialism . . . [and] I loved the far-reaching application of some of the class content.” 

“This is a great way to move into the world of socialism. . . thank you so much for offering this course” 

“This [class] is a great first step for anyone looking to start organizing . . .” 

“I radically grew in my comfort around being upfront and simply being able to approach a complete stranger with a potentially controversial topic.” 

“New organizers and experienced organizers can benefit from this class.” 

“Generally speaking my confidence level just interacting with people about socialism has gone through the roof.  I have been given a phenomenal overview of how to organize and I feel confident that I can find out what works best for me in the future.”  

“It was great to grow as an organizer within the confines of a welcoming community/instructor.” 

“I feel more confident organizing outside of an electoral context.”  

Meet your instructors: 

Alex Brower

Alex Brower is a labor leader, socialist organizer, and Milwaukee’s 3rd district alderperson as a DSA endorsed elected. Professionally, Alex has been the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans, which organizes union retirees. In his organizing work, Alex has saved jobs from privatization, helped workers win a union voice on the job, defeated a temp agency, organized against a proposed iron-ore mine, helped bring comprehensive sex education to Beloit Public Schools, and won workplace healthcare for many uninsured MPS Substitute Teachers. As an MPS substitute teacher and former Milwaukee Rec. Department instructor, Alex brings a host of experience teaching others. Alex has also been a candidate for Milwaukee City Comptroller and School Board, running both times as a socialist. 

Autumn Pickett

Autumn Pickett is a union organizer and Communications Director for American Federation of Teachers – Wisconsin. She helped win back voting rights for 20,000 students while attending college in Indiana, protect 100’s of custodial and grounds crew jobs from privatization across Wisconsin, sink Billionaire Howard Schultz’s 2016 presidential run, use organizing tactics that garnered national headlines, and mentor dozens of YDSA chapters across the country that continue to make real wins for working people. She has served on the National Coordinating Committee for YDSA, as Milwaukee DSA’s Education Officer, and currently represents Milwaukee DSA on the statewide Socialists in Office committee. Autumn is excited to bring her years of experience mentoring new socialist organizers over to the Milwaukee Organizer Class for the first time and help build a people powered movement in Cream City alongside each of you.

Any questions? 

Contact Alex Brower at 414-949-8756 or milwaukeedsa@gmail.com 

Apply now!

Apply here, or copy and paste this URL into your web browser: https://forms.gle/JLgc33sE3fpK8TSH7

From the Portland DSA Steering Committee:

At the Beaverton School Board meeting this Thursday, after an hour-long closed-door session, a motion was made to engage a “third-party investigator” to look into the actions and comments of Dr. Tammy Carpenter, an elected school board member and a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). What was her alleged offense? Being an unabashed supporter of Palestinian liberation in the face of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. While discussions in executive session are legally withheld from public records laws, our understanding is that this retaliation was instigated by the Jewish Federation of Portland, an organization lobbying for Zionist interests and the State of Israel that has a history of waging smear campaigns against pro-Palestinian elected officials and community members.

We commend Dr. Carpenter for fighting for the rights of all children – in Beaverton, in Palestine, and around the world. We believe that children have the right to go to school in peace, unburdened by war and famine, and that those defending them are on the right side of history. As the United States’ funding of Israel grows increasingly unpopular, it is clear this “investigation” into Dr. Carpenter is a desperate maneuver to force local governments to crack down on free speech, and to go down with the sinking ship of the Zionist project. In the last 600 days of genocide in Gaza, every public school and university in the territory has been destroyed by the Israeli military. We cannot allow this to continue.

Dr. Carpenter is a beacon of community integrity and is the only elected official on the Beaverton school board to regularly hold town halls, respond to constituent inquiries, and share information with families. She is also a champion of unions and workers’ rights in our schools. It is no wonder that the political establishment is colluding with the Jewish Federation of Portland to slander her.

This is just the latest example of how the US’ war industry attempts to silence dissent around Palestine. Schools – and by extension, school boards – should be a place where people can speak freely and learn the truth about our military’s complicity in genocide. The people of Beaverton elected Dr. Carpenter, and she is our voice for justice.

We call on all supporters of free speech and a free Palestine to rally at the Beaverton School Board meeting to show our opposition to this undemocratic retaliation! Join DSA and allies this Monday, June 2nd, 6:30pm at the Beaverton School District offices at 1260 NW Waterhouse Ave to defend Dr. Carpenter, along with all those facing political retaliation for their support of Palestinian children and families. No to Genocide! Solidarity Forever!

The post Statement on the Political Retaliation Against Dr. Tammy Carpenter appeared first on Portland DSA .

By Bennett T The United States intends to target socialists for political persecution. It will investigate them inappropriately, it will charge them spuriously, it will revoke their legal protections, and it will remove them from the United States. The administration has already sent surveys to researchers and organizations overseas who receive federal funding, and this […]

By B. Maloney Politics permeate every aspect of our lives. While discussions may arise about distinguishing human issues from political ones, it is evident that human issues are becoming increasingly politicized. How can we protect ourselves from the overwhelming and divisive attacks on human issues? On Tyranny offers insights into the resistance needed to navigate […]

By Rachel M Toiling to survive and a long day of labor deadens the best parts of We. Are there instructions? A guide map? How do we document the end of an empire nourished by blood, built on brazen exploitation… the thought of writing with sincerity only elicits fatigue Fatigue that reverberates, penetrating far into […]

By Austin DSA

For over a year and a half, Austin DSA has argued that the state of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people is inseparable from struggles for justice in Texas and the United States. We see this everywhere: from the militarized police forces that stalk Black and Brown neighborhoods after being trained by the Israeli military, to the women in Gaza forced to navigate reproductive healthcare structures that have been obliterated by imperial US foreign policy as reactionary domestic policy destroys those same systems at home. The local is inseparable from the international, as the violence that the US oversees abroad returns to our own communities in the form of fascist violence. 

We stand in solidarity with Nueces Mosque, Austin Diyanet Center, and the Islamic Ahlul Bayt Association (IABA), which on May 22 were spray painted with “symbols, including Stars of David, defacing the mosque’s main entrance and surrounding property.” 

Conventional media in the United States often frames violence in Palestine as a religious conflict that has lasted for centuries. The spray painting of a Star of David on a mosque perpetuates this myth, when in fact, this conflict is defined by the aggression of a Zionist, racist, setter-colonial state against an indigenous people which refuses to let itself be destroyed. Framing this as a religious conflict hides a national liberation struggle and inflames both Islamophobia and antisemitism around the world. While Zionism claims that no Jewish person can be safe from antisemitism without a militarized ethnostate, Jewish people suffer when their religion is co-opted and equated to the violent, political ideology of Zionism.

The use of a Jewish religious symbol as a hate crime object against Austin’s Muslim community at large and the UT community at Nueces Mosque in particular is only one more example of how these dynamics have tangible consequences in our city. Recall the stabbing of Zacharia Doar following a Palestine solidarity protest in Austin in 2024, the attempted drowning of a child in Euless, TX later that year, and the emboldening of local neo-nazi groups to carry out actual antisemitic hate crimes in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election. None of us are safe unless all of us are safe.

Austin DSA and Austin Against Apartheid organize for a free Palestine by diverting US resources away from Israeli genocide and apartheid. In doing so, we are standing against all occupational forces that stand between working class people and freedom. We all deserve to live in a world free from money spent on state violence and war instead of life affirming services like housing, healthcare, and social safety nets. Israel’s aggression and religious framings of the conflict breed acts of hatred around the world. The struggle for Palestinian liberation affords us a vocabulary for envisioning a safer, freer world. A free Palestine means a safer society at home and abroad.

The post Solidarity with Austin’s Muslim Community first appeared on Red Fault.

In his failed presidential bid, Human Health and Services Secretary RFK Jr. remarked that he would help people struggling with addiction become healthy again by having them work on unpaid “wellness farms.” If they refused, they would face incarceration. Throughout his career, RFK Jr. has railed against vaccination and modern medicine, taking particular aim at measles and HPV, antidepressants, antipsychotics, and even weight loss drugs. He now serves on Trump’s team of wreckers, an administration that’s dismantled public health infrastructure like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) during our sixth year of COVID-19 and as the threat of a bird flu pandemic grows. 

It should be no surprise that fascism often comes first for the disabled and people deemed as a “societal expense.” In Nazi Germany, Krankenmorde, or the “euthanasia” of the disabled, marked the beginning phase of mass death, and in fascist Italy, mental asylums swelled and transferred their patients to Nazi death camps. Both of these initiatives were preceded by American psychologist Henry Goddard’s writings against the “feebleminded” and the United States’s forced sterilization of the disabled. Fascism’s contemporary resurgence, especially in the U.S., is not a surprise to disabled activists who have warned since the onset of Covid that the rapid normalization of eugenics in regards to the pandemic would be its modern precursor. Yet, both the socialist left and the labor movement remains unprepared for this moment and continues to ignore a public health crisis that fundamentally threatens the vision and hope for an organized, militant working class. 

The Cost of Modern Eugenics

Disability has what is referred to by theorist Sara Ahmed as “stickiness,” or the idea that bodies are impressed upon by their relationships to other bodies, signs, and cultural associations. Race and disability have long been wedded through eugenics. As a recent example, racism and disability were enmeshed at the onset of COVID-19 when Asian people, specifically Chinese Americans and the broader diaspora, were condemned as being the cause of the pandemic, echoing the racist history of Asian people having been situated as “carriers of contagion.” A similar pattern unfolded during the AIDS epidemic, with AIDS having been deemed by major politicians as a disease contracted by “degenerate” queer and Black people. 

Necropolitics and who is mournable have framed much of American history, but especially the last six years. At the start of the pandemic, hospital overcrowding led to infamous triage protocols worldwide where some lives were valued more than others. Nursing homes across the US piled up with deaths without so much as dignified preservation in a morgue. In that time, we began manufacturing consent for the death of the working class from a preventable airborne illness. The CDC claimed early on that Covid would only severely impact the disabled or people with comorbidities, not because they intended to inspire care for the disabled, but to justify their deaths so everyone else could carry on with life as normal. Since 2020, over 1 million Americans have died from Covid-19. 

Infectious disease and a crumbling healthcare infrastructure incapable of providing accessible preventative care continue to leave lasting effects on our communities. Our government takes solace in the active spread of infectious disease and in the culling of the disabled because fascist states believe we must weed out the unfit. The “Make America Healthy Again” Executive Order, RFK Jr.’s announcement of a “disease registry” taking aim at autistic people, and the dismantling of the FDA’s regulatory power over our food supply are just the latest steps taken by this administration that will hurt all segments of the working class. For workers in America, the precarity of health is universal.

And yet, many of us remain largely in denial about our own proximity to disability. Apart from the fact that about 45% of Americans have a comorbidity, Covid has been proven to remain in the body post-infection and cause lingering damage to cardiovascular and organ systems, and having been infected with Covid even just once makes it more likely you’ll develop long-Covid. Studies on the prevalence of long-Covid show that nearly 7% of the population, or 1 in 13 Americans, currently has it and of those, 1 in 5 report having symptoms that disrupt their daily life. Some doctors estimate that within four years, most Americans will have long-Covid. As of the summer of 2024, 13.9% of those experiencing long-Covid had failed to return to work; we know what happens to people who can’t work under capitalism. 

The material repercussions of Covid infection and reinfection have already begun to show themselves. The most apparent impact is the disruption to our immune systems. We saw reports of a “quademic” this past holiday season (Covid, RSV, flu, and norovirus), and this season our flu infections and death rates are higher than they were at the peak of swine flu. As disability rates climb, services and social safety nets for the disabled become harder to access. Our life expectancy is in decline. Our cancer rates are on the rise. Since the onset of modern medicine, Americans have seemingly never been sicker.

But the left’s reluctance, including DSA, to fight for disabled people is not just a mistake that costs us our health, it is also making us deeply vulnerable to attacks on workers. In a police state reliant on facial recognition technology to squash threats to power, mask bans are an obvious next step, and multiple counties and states are banning them entirely. 

Most recently, Columbia University announced plans to implement a mask ban on campus because of protests in solidarity with Palestine. Kathy Hochul is following in lock-step to ban masks in public in the name of safety, and Maryland is contending with a Democrat introduced statewide ban in service of the Anti-Defamation League, another decision also directly connected to the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Simultaneously, we’re seeing an end to Covid era worker benefits like telework, which was originally intended as a disability accommodation, and even threats to OSHA. A wider, bolder movement invested in disability solidarity that sees disabled struggle as class struggle would be better equipped to protect workers and their organizing rights. 

The longer we continue to ignore our public health crisis, the more vulnerable the working class will become to sickness, disability, and state repression.

What is to Be Done? 

The seemingly innocuous limit of socialist solidarity with the disabled is masking. Despite the claims we made in early pandemic days that a refusal to mask was a refusal to engage in community care, we have adopted the ultimately neoliberal principle that each person can and should make an individual choice about masking. It should be evident that public health matters significantly to the physical and mental wellbeing of the working class. Organizing for socialism will become increasingly difficult as our peers continue to get sick, become disabled, or are caught in a cycle of working to afford caring for sick loved ones who have no social safety nets. 

We know that masks work at preventing the spread and contraction of airborne viruses. N95s and KN95s are the most effective at doing both. For the right-wing, that isn’t a fact. The Trump administration’s latest report about Covid being a lab leak says as much: “There was no conclusive evidence that masks effectively protected Americans from COVID-19.” 

Socialists must counter these fascist, unscientific narratives not just in voice, but through collective action. There was once a time when we did. At the start of the pandemic, socialists prided themselves on understanding the science behind why masks work and why we should wear them. Unionists fought for worker access to PPE and air filtration systems. Some workers even went on strike over it. Now, it is exceedingly rare to find socialist organizations or unions routinely calling for and enabling spaces that require masking, and both have mostly stopped contending with the ongoing ramifications of a lack of public health infrastructure or the working class’s vulnerability to sickness.

The inaccessibility of healthcare in America is why most of us want universal healthcare, a collective solution to the problem, and although every broken piece of the for-profit healthcare system was exposed by the pandemic, the US left failed to win it. Unfortunately, there are segments of the left that still choose to shirk any responsibility to public health. Medicare-for-All is no longer the public rallying cry it once was for national DSA, or its surrogates. Similarly, the Party for Socialist Liberation’s presidential candidate Claudia De La Cruz, in a livestream for her campaign, directly addressed the question of mask mandates in PSL spaces saying, “People are asking about masking, well there’s no federal mandate on masking, right? But we do have masks at our different events. People choose whether to use them or not. We can’t implement something that the federal government, having the power to do it at a national scale, does not do.” 

Why not? Is the role of socialist organizations claiming to counter capitalism and empire to mimic the United States government? We set rules about our spaces all the time. We have bylaws, codes of conduct, harassment and grievance policies– all things that aid in the mission to keep our spaces safe, and yet when disabled activists ask for masking requirements, no one hears us. We’re told that masking makes us “out of touch with the working class,” that we’re “freaks,” or that we’re simply asking too much. Many of these claims run counter to the science behind masking and public health that would benefit most working people, especially those of us already struggling with various forms of disability. 

While we may list universal healthcare as a primary socialist demand, electoral campaigns associated with the DSA must actively advocate for it. Locally DSA endorsed candidates, like Zohran Mamdani, who I hope wins, should be elevating healthcare as an issue and loudly supporting initiatives like the New York Health Act to establish statewide single-payer healthcare. Universal healthcare must be a core part of our agitational electoral campaigns, regardless of district or region. 

DSA and other socialist and labor organizations must take material steps to protect the health of the working class. It is possible and necessary for us to require masking and air filtration at DSA events, run electoral campaigns that agitate around universal healthcare, and encourage our union members to push their Locals to take up the issue of public health. We should also be engaging in political education on the history of eugenics and disability activism here and abroad. 

The argument for solidarity with the disabled community doesn’t begin or end with Covid mitigation. It requires a sharper analysis of how capitalism preys on our health for profit and disposes of us when we’re sick, and of how it uses sickness and eugenics as a scapegoat to justify the policing and state-sanctioned execution of people of color, the disabled, and political dissidents. Disability touches all of our lives at any given stage, and it is latent in class, social, and ecological struggle. The opportunities for disability solidarity are all around us and as fascism rises worldwide and continues rendering more of us unmournable in the eyes of the state, it is the responsibility of socialists to intervene.

Unless we commit to practicing true solidarity with the disabled, eugenics will disable and kill the working class base we claim to want to organize, fight for, and protect.

Image Description: Official portrait of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the United States secretary of health and human services. Photo taken Feb. 21, 2025.

This article is a first attempt to review what happened leading up to and surrounding this year’s May Day rallies, who organized the rallies, how they accomplished it, and what comes next. It’s based on discussions with union leaders and DSA members in a half dozen cities and our experience here in Maine. The breadth of the protests means this assessment is necessarily anecdotal and incomplete. The author welcomes corrections and hopes DSA members will write up and share their experiences across the country. For background to the UAW’s call for a 2028 May Day general strike, see the fall 2024 issue of Socialist Forum featuring an interview with CTU, UAW, and DSA organizers.

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.”