By Triangle DSA Socialist Feminist Working Group

The NC Triangle Democratic Socialists of America’s two-year-long effort to shut down anti-abortion center Gateway Women's Care on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh has ended in victory! Gateway's landlord is no longer leasing to this unlicensed, unregulated, and unethical “crisis pregnancy center.”

Local activists with Triangle DSA’s Socialist Feminist (“SocFem”) Working Group began picketing Gateway in the spring of 2023. We aimed to bring attention to the harm that anti-abortion or “crisis pregnancy centers” pose to working-class communities. These centers are known to target low-income folks and women of color, who experience disproportionate risk for poor maternal health outcomes. Like other “crisis pregnancy centers,” Gateway poses as a source of legitimate healthcare, even though it is not a licensed medical facility. Misinformation abounds on their website, from alleging abortion causes breast cancer and depression to offering dubious “abortion pill reversal” services. Crucially, anti-abortion centers like Gateway obstruct reproductive justice by endangering people regardless of whether or not they want to stay pregnant. Free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds peddled by centers may deceive clients into thinking that they are receiving quality prenatal care, a calculated diversion that can delay OBGYN visits. “Crisis pregnancy center” staff have also been known to fail to diagnose pregnancy complications that might require urgent medical attention or abortion care. 

Gateway opened with the stated intent of targeting college students seeking reproductive healthcare. Their location stood within two miles of seven local universities serving over 50,000 students. In the end, the very college students Gateway hoped to “slow down in the rush to the abortion clinic” were instrumental to the center’s demise. The NC State Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) turned out dozens of students for regular pickets on the sidewalk in front of Gateway. At our pickets, we warned community members about the presence of an anti-abortion center in their neighborhood and shared legitimate resources for reproductive healthcare. We also informed passersby that Gateway’s landlord was a registered Democrat who worked in the building just next door and seemed all too comfortable profiting from his lease with the anti-abortion operation.

Ultimately, our campaign was successful because we threatened the reputation of Gateway’s landlord. In May 2024, we received no response when we contacted the landlord to inform him of Gateway's harm to the community. In August of 2024, we contacted him again to no avail to share that over 200 petition signers shared our vision of a Hillsborough St without Gateway. Later that month, we had the first opportunity to speak to him when he arrived at his workplace next to Gateway during a picket. He memorably suggested that we should hold Kamala Harris signs since she could “take care” of anti-abortion centers. Inspired by his comment, at our next picket in November 2024, we decided to hold a sign bearing the name of the only person who could fix the situation. Within an hour of hearing that picketers were outside holding signs demanding he stop leasing to Gateway, the landlord emailed us claiming our tactics would not work. But on March 27th, 2025, we learned through public records that Gateway would no longer be a tenant at 1306 Hillsborough St. 

We want to credit the borrowed and learned techniques that helped shape our successful campaign. We learned how to de-escalate anti-abortion agitators from clinic defenders in our community. Triangle DSA’s No Appetite for Apartheid campaign shared tips for canvassing local businesses. Siembra and Triangle Tenant Union encouraged us to identify Gateway’s points of vulnerability, helping shape our unique strategy of escalating pressure on their landlord. We are also deeply appreciative of chapter partner and member of the Raleigh Planning Commission, Reeves Peeler. His guidance supported us in confirming the lease's termination and identifying areas where Gateway may have failed to comply with municipal building code. 

Most importantly, we want to thank the more than 100 community members who showed up to picket Gateway. The “sexually broken and abortion minded” community that Gateway sought to deceive and control came together to fight back, and we won. In the continued pursuit of bodily autonomy, Triangle DSA SocFem plans to activate other DSA chapters and politically aligned organizations across the nation to take action against anti-abortion centers. There are six remaining “crisis pregnancy centers” in the tri-city area of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill– and we are prepared to dismantle the thinly veiled propaganda operation that they are, one by one. 

The 2024 Convention of Metro DC Democratic Socialists produced a unified plan for 2025, although divisions remain.

DSA San Diego, as part of TRUST Coalition, is demanding the end of Automatic License Plate Readers used by the San Diego Police Department. Read statement. [...]

Read More... from DSA San Diego Calls on the San Diego City Council to End the use of Automatic License Plate Readers

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As the current administration bemoans the lack of a baby boom in the U.S., many public commenters have staked out their own “natalism” positions. Pro-natalists believe there need to be more births, while anti-natalists believe there need to be fewer births. Motivations on various sides come from fears of race replacement, overpopulation, underpopulation, environmental catastrophe, a desire for stronger community, religion, misogyny, and more¹.

The modern debate on natalism in the U.S. is irrelevant to the experience of working people in this country. People are going to have children whether or not a stranger takes a pro- or anti-natalist stance. The question we should be asking isn’t whether people should or shouldn’t have children. We should instead ask how our society should provide for the physical, emotional, and psychological needs of children who are learning about the world around them and how to be a person, the parents who need support to survive, and the health of society as a whole. To support the needs of those children, leftists must fight for paid parental leave and universal childcare among other policies such as Medicare for All, abortion protections, and more to advocate for what is best for humans not corporations.

The Status Quo

Currently, the only form of guaranteed leave for new parents in the U.S. is offered under the Family Medical Leave Act. This provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave for employees working for employers with more than 50 employees. Only 56% of employees in the U.S. are eligible for FMLA, and the current program could easily be scaled back or eliminated by the Trump administration. In a country without universal healthcare, many new parents are expected to go without pay after likely incurring an exorbitant hospital bill. The resulting financial strain often leaves working-class families without the means to support their young children. The current system exacerbates systemic problems of child poverty, homelessness, and the extreme cost of childcare serving as a barrier to reenter the workforce, creating a cyclical crisis.

Since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022 because abortion rights were not codified into law, abortion rights have come under attack across the country. States that still have expansive abortion protections, such as Illinois, are seeing an uptick in people traveling to them for abortion care. In 2024, the Chicago Abortion Fund received requests from over 16,000 people in 41 states for assistance receiving abortion care in Chicago. Chicago DSA members are currently fundraising for the organization as part of the National Network of Abortions annual Fund-a-thon. In states with abortion bans, maternal deaths are on the rise, although those states refuse to investigate. 

Looking at just Illinois, in 2025 average rent is $1,592 while average childcare for 1 child was $1,364. The state’s $15 minimum wage puts a single full-time earner at $2,400 monthly pre tax. This already puts a single parent earning minimum wage at -$556 per month (pre-tax) after rent and childcare. A two-adult household on minimum wage would have just $1,844 (pre-tax) after rent and childcare, which quickly disappears considering utilities, transportation, clothing, additional medical costs, groceries, and more. In Illinois, a two-person household can’t qualify for SNAP benefits if family members earn more than $2,811 a month, and those benefits amount to $536 for a two-person household. This is unsustainable for our society. 

Despite no efforts to advance the policy during Biden’s term, the 2024 DNC platform included support for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. The platform also supports investments in child care to make it affordable. It references the American Rescue Plan’s subsidy of childcare centers, but crucially it does not propose universal childcare. Even in Illinois, where Democrats have fully controlled the state government since 2019, the state still has no paid parental leave or universal childcare. It is clear that Democrats either don’t believe in those rights, they don’t see them as a priority, or they don’t want to fight for them. The socialist left must be making these demands. 

There are currently 13 states (plus DC) that have mandatory paid family leave systems. These are either a social insurance policy funded through a payroll tax or a private insurance system. Ten states have a scheme endorsed by the National Council of Insurance Legislators (a lobbying organization for the insurance industry) that has pushed for states to adopt private family leave insurance. The most generous paid parental leave, provided by 12 states, is just 12 weeks².

Most states that are working towards universal childcare plan to offer universal preschool for three- and four-year-olds. This reinforces the need for paid parental leave that can cover families until a child ages into universal childcare. Six states have universal preschool for four year olds. Vermont also has universal preschool for three year olds. Four states are implementing universal preschool, while four other states have recently passed laws to implement universal preschool. In Illinois, JB Pritzker’s 2025 budget proposal included money for the early childhood education block grants and child care assistance program, though the block grants are only for preschool aged children and the child care assistance program is means-tested. 

Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) chapters have fought for reforms across the country, with varying degrees of success. Information on local chapter endorsements without national DSA endorsement of the campaign is only available to the national organization starting in 2024, so some data is incomplete without reading every single chapter’s website or social media, or knowing who to ask in every chapter. Looking at the DSA National Electoral Committee’s available endorsements information, which includes endorsements for candidates and ballot referenda but not endorsement of legislative efforts in city councils or state houses, we see a picture of strong fights for abortion rights, with some movement to universal preschool. Oregon chapters won a statewide campaign to protect abortions there in November 2018. Portland DSA won a preschool for all campaign for Oregon in November 2020. Lawrence Kansas DSA won their campaign to protect statewide abortion rights in August 2022. Kentucky chapters won their campaign for abortion protections statewide in November 2022. Western Montana DSA won a campaign for abortion protections in November 2022. Chapters across Florida endorsed and unfortunately lost a referendum to protect abortion rights in November 2024. 

The Right Ratchet

The right wing, in their pushes to repeal abortion rights and more, clearly wants to have birth for birth’s sake. They want a steady stream of new workers who have no expectations. They are punishing people for having abortions, including imposing the death penalty. Project 2025 is attempting to exert patriarchal control over society, which requires strict gender norms, leading to their attacks on bodily autonomy of LGBTQI+ people and women. They want to force women out of the workplace and trap them in the domestic sphere. By weakening workplace protection enforcement through firing and cutting staff at the NLRB, EEOC, OFCCP, and dismantling DEI programs, the Trump administration is setting the field for a mass push of women out of the workplace. They are enacting voting restrictions to discourage participation in democracy. Trump has effectively tasked Elon Musk’s “DOGE” with gutting all public social safety nets that do currently exist, including removing funding for the Head Start early education program.

The Left Horizon

As socialists, we should always fight for universal programs. There are basic policy objectives the Left needs to fight for, if not at the federal level at this moment, then at state levels. This ensures equal access to benefits and reduces administrative burden and costs³. These include establishing a Medicare-for-All program covering all reproductive healthcare, expanding and protecting abortion rights, federal laws guaranteeing comprehensive paid parental leave,  universal childcare, and prenatal paid time off, to name a few. If we are going to have shorter paid parental leaves, we need to have universal childcare start sooner than three or four years old. 

Paid Parental Leave and Universal Childcare must be won in tandem with abortion rights. We need to create a world that works for people, not an economy that wants to extract maximum profits out of people. If someone chooses to have children, we must give time for parents to recover from birth and the adjustment to a new child, and for that child and their parents to bond and have their needs met. We must also provide a place for children to be safe to grow when parents choose to return to work before the child reaches school age. This includes accessible childcare after school and during school breaks. 

This will require us to tax the rich to provide the world we want and deserve. We must fight for a vibrant public life to ensure we do not isolate new parents. We must invest in places with programming for child development and socialization with their families, including robust public libraries, public parks, public transportation, investment in public arts and cultural events, and public community centers. We need democratic socialist cadre candidates and elected officials who will publicly fight for these policies. We need democratic unions that will fight alongside us for these reforms and who will organize the public workers who will make up this infrastructure and services. We need DSA chapters putting on public political education and talking to people on the doors about who we are and why we support these initiatives, and we need to be clear to the public about who is preventing us from creating a better world when capitalists seek to stop us.

1. For a fuller accounting on the natalism debate from the Left in date publication order, see Dustin Guastella in Damage Magazine, Elizabeth Bruenig in The Atlantic, Nathan J. Robinson in Current Affairs, and Robin Peterson in Spectre Journal.  ︎
2. For a comprehensive list of what states have what levels of coverage, consult this Bipartisan Policy Explainer. ︎
3. For more about the benefits of universal programs, see Abdallah Fayyad’s “What if everyone qualified for welfare benefits?” ︎

The post A Socialist Future for Families: Paid Leave, Childcare & Reproductive Freedom appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

Seattle Children’s Hospital has once again blindsided staff and community members by halting the provision of gender-affirming surgeries for patients under 19 years of age. This news comes only a couple of months after the turmoil that erupted in February when news first broke that Seattle Children’s had decided to cancel gender-affirming surgeries, folding almost immediately under the Trump administration‘s threat to withhold federal funding from hospitals providing the surgeries and other gender-affirming care. An estimated 1,000 hospital staff and community members rallied to protest this decision.

This massive overreach by the Trump administration was one of many to be challenged in Washington state courts. On February 14, Western Washington District Court Judge Lauren King blocked Trump’s executive order. The court ruling was a momentous win for staff and community members. As reported in The Stranger, Seattle Children’s responded to this win by stating that it had the “clarity it needed at this time to deliver on our mission while ensuring we operate within all applicable laws.” With these pretty words and reassurances that Seattle Children’s would indeed continue its mission, staff returned to work breathing a sigh of relief.

However, on April 16th news broke that Seattle Children’s had decided once again to stop providing gender-affirming surgeries to patients under 19. Sources inside the hospital say that rather than cancel existing surgeries, the hospital has quietly decided not to schedule them. This refusal to schedule surgeries is a clever roundabout way to avoid negative press and public outrage by misleading communities and by outwardly suggesting that care would be continued. This is a strategy of silence and complicity: rather than risk their funding, Seattle Children’s decided to quietly bend to governmental overreach despite a State judge’s block of the executive order.

These decisions to comply without due process are directly contributing to the demise of our democracy. When the checks and balances that we once relied on are being eroded, larger organizations like hospitals, universities, and retail chains have the power to resist the federal government’s attempt to strip liberties from entire communities. Unfortunately, organizations like Seattle Children’s Hospital are choosing self-preservation and complicity.

In the days since the start of this administration, Congress has only weakly challenged this administration over its actions that are destroying the economy and removing the rights and freedom of many. The administration has begun targeting a number of communities and programs, spreading our focus and attention among numerous societal concerns: immigration, tariffs, trans rights, national forests, the Department of Education, research, Medicaid, and many more. This strategy causes institutions to become self-interested, focusing only on their own budgets and longevity and turning their backs on the communities that are most vulnerable.

However, this strategy can also be the administration’s undoing. If only one or two organizations decide to stand on the side of justice and human rights, the federal government will be able to focus all of its energy on stamping out one or two fires. But if many larger organizations choose to resist, the federal government will need to allocate much of its own resources to fighting the many fires it has ignited.

The choice comes down to this: will the people comply in advance, or will they resist? Seattle Children’s has made the choice to comply, and we cannot accept that choice. We cannot stand by and watch as organizations comply in advance; we must put pressure on organizations like Seattle Children’s to protect marginalized communities. Allowing institutions to quietly bend to this administration will be our downfall.

This is where we as individuals have the power to enact change. It is up to us to change the minds of workers and community members that refuse to resist. They act out of fear and self-preservation; we must act out of bravery and hope for our communities. When we write history, we will write it in the streets, with our voices and with our actions. This is where we, the people, have power. We can and we must demand that institutions like Seattle Children’s choose to prioritize the health and well-being of the communities they serve. Healthcare organizations should provide care based on evidence, not on the commands of a political party.   

This is a call to action — it is time to organize, it is time to rise up! Go to protests, sign petitions, call your representatives, and put pressure on your place of work if they are not representing you. When you are at protests and rallies get connected with groups that you identify with. Make your actions impactful, not performative. Use your anger as fuel and then hone that anger into carefully crafted weapons for change. If you are feeling burned out, rest and recoup, but then return to action. Challenge yourself to be defiant and persistent. Remind yourself of what keeps you in this fight and of who you fight for. Remind yourself of your own strengths and of the community that you are working to build.

Hannah Shvets, running to represent Ithaca’s Ward 5, is a student organizer who’s championed worker and tenant rights. If elected, Hannah will fight for an affordable and just Ithaca, including Just Cause Employment, rent stabilization, public transit, and more.

Hannah is part of a slate of candidates in the Socialist Cash Takes Out Capitalist Trash fundraising project!

Jorge DeFendini is also running for Ithaca Common Council!

Jorge DeFendini, running to represent Ithaca’s Ward 1, is a former Alderperson who went after union-busting, passed protections for gender affirming care, and secured funding for stabilizing rents. In office, Jorge will fight for worker protections, housing for all, stable rents, and more.

Jorge is part of a slate of candidates in the Socialist Cash Takes Out Capitalist Trash fundraising project!

Hannah Shvets is also running for Ithaca Common Council!

NNJDSA Statement on the Arrest of Ras Baraka May 11th, 2025  North New Jersey Democratic Socialists of America condemn in the harshest terms the abduction of Mayor Baraka by DHS and the brutalization of activists on the scene by ICE thugs.  Friday afternoon, Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark was arrested by DHS Agents and held […]

Increasing the existing CEO surcharge Novick championed in 2016 equitable move to fund parks

The Portland Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America supports Councilor Novick’s move to increase the surcharge on companies with highly skewed ratios of CEO to worker pay. Portland DSA recently launched a new campaign for a Family Agenda for Portland, to fight for concrete public investments in Portland families, children, and communities. We appreciate Councilor Novick’s bold proposal that will protect programs families rely on. We also support DSA member Councilor Green’s PCEF loan proposal as a vital part of this package. Novick’s complement to Green’s plan is an example of the creative policy-making this city desperately needs.

An increase in taxation aimed at the city’s vast wealth inequality is an appropriate way to pay for infrastructure vital to working Portlanders’ lives. Parks are some of the few remaining publicly shared free spaces; third spaces where we can exist in community. They function as oases when heat waves hit the city, and provide connections to nature that we depend on. They are places of solace in a too-hectic time.

Parks programs and community centers are the cornerstone of Portland communities, and anyone who attended the public listening sessions on the city budget that were held in every district in Portland this spring heard personal testimonies of how much parks programs had transformed the lives of Portlanders and their families. Parks programs also provide jobs and support livelihoods. They must be defended.

Portland DSA Co-Chair Olivia Katbi testified at the District 2 listening session accompanied by her family, urging the council to raise revenue by taxing the rich, and to keep open the community center where she brings her daughter. “At a time when Trump and Musk are gutting critical services at the federal level, the response from our city government cannot be to turn around and do the same thing. Do we want to have a nice city that families with children want to live in, or do we want to just have a shell of a police state with shitty services and abandoned parks? What is going to be left for us? The billionaire class is growing while the rest of us are fighting for scraps. We need to present an alternate vision forward.”

Socialists understand that austerity always functions to the detriment of working people, and we believe strong progressive tax measures targeting the wealthy are good for the economy, and a sign of independent, uncaptured political leaders. We also understand that the underlying issue is the limitations of capitalism’s ability to provide for full lives. We cannot afford a market-driven neoliberal urbanism, which privatizes and undermines public goods in the name of profit, at a terrible human cost.

Councilor Novick proposed, championed, and helped pass the first CEO surcharge in any city in the US in 2016; another reason Portland is a leader in public policies.

Portland DSA urges City Council to pass Councilor Novick’s CEO surcharge increase. We urge the people of Portland to contact your district Councilors and speak in favor; to protect our communities, our parks, and our future!

Find all city councilors here. Not sure which district you’re in? Enter your address into the interactive map here.

The post Portland Democratic Socialists support Councilor Novick’s Park Plan appeared first on Portland DSA.

All across the US, students at colleges and universities have spent over a year organizing to protest the ongoing ethnic cleansing Israel is currently committing in Gaza. The killing and maiming of over 100,000 men, women, and children. The forced relocation of hundreds of thousands. The targeted attacks on schools and hospitals. The blockade of food, water, and medicine to civilians. To billions around the world, if it walks like a genocide, and talks like a genocide, then chances are, well, you get it. In light of this, students across the country have organized sit-ins, encampments, pressure campaigns, and more to try and get their respective institutions to stop any sort of direct or indirect support of the Israeli war machine.

In response to these student efforts, institutions such as Columbia, Harvard, Swarthmore, and Michigan have cracked down hard against anti-genocide protests. They’ve taken drastic measures like creating new rules to tighten students’ right to protest, banning students from libraries, suspending or expelling students, firing faculty, and calling in cops to make arrests. 

Here in Maine, we feel like we’re kept safely away from much of what happens nationally, but that is a myth we feed ourselves. At Bowdoin College in Brunswick, there has been a lively organizing effort to get the school to divest from arms companies and denounce the scholasticide taking place in Gaza. In May 2024, with a supermajority, students passed a referendum demanding the school take action. The administration refused to act. In February 2025, students organized an encampment on campus to pressure the administration to take the referendum results seriously. After five days, the encampment came to an end, with 40 students put on probation, 8 temporarily suspended, and the college’s SJP chapter banned.

All of this happened under the new Trump 2.0 administration, which has ramped up pressure on colleges and universities to crack down even harder on anti-genocide protestors. The administration has investigated and threatened to withhold funding from a number of schools deemed to be too soft on student organizers. And, in a move that has sent shockwaves across the civic and legal world, has sent in ICE to detain and attempt to deport a number of students here on Visas who have allegedly attended pro-Palestinian actions on campuses. 

On March 27, those efforts hit Maine when a congressional committee sent Bowdoin a letter announcing that they were looking into whether the college had adequately addressed “antisemitisim” on its campus, specifically referencing the recent encampment that called for an end to scholasticide in Gaza. They demanded to know what disciplinary actions had been taken against students who partook. That committee considers “antisemitism” not only as actions that target Jews and Judaism, but also absurdly extends it to anything that targets the nation-state of Israel and “Zionism”.

Although Bowdoin unjustly punished anti-genocide activists, and refuses to take any concrete measures to stop a genocide in which they admit they are financially invested, they have also not followed other institutions that have happily acquiesced to outside demands to viciously repress the college community. Moreover, Bowdoin’s president, Safa Zaki, signed onto a letter from the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) on April 22 openly challenging the Trump administration’s attempts to stifle academic freedom. 

And on May 2, the Bowdoin chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released a letter, signed by over 180 current and former Bowdoin faculty and staff, encouraging the college to continue standing up to threats to the community. Among other things, they pledged support to all efforts to challenge threats to higher education, refuse to comply with demands for names, affirm fundamental civil rights, and “reject cynical invocations of antisemitism that undermine democratic norms, stifle critical dialogue, and strip individuals of their rights.”

What comes next, no one is sure. We know that the Trump administration is not as strong as it seems, and that it is vulnerable to resistance. But we also know that it will not give up without a fight. The government is still committed to destroying higher education, and there’s always the risk that college leaders might succumb to the onslaught and throw their community under the bus – especially now that summer is coming and students and staff won’t be as present to hold the administration accountable.

Which is why Mainers and Bowdoin alumni need to keep making their voices heard. People can contact the Office of the President at Bowdoin to show support for her decision to sign onto the AAC&U’s letter. This is a time of great pressure on schools, and it’s important that we encourage administrators and presidents who have shown courage and pushed back against Trump’s efforts to silence educational institutions. We must call on them to continue the fight and keep our students and teachers safe and free from unjust and potentially illegal interference.

The post Bowdoin, Trump, and the Battle for Academic Freedom appeared first on Pine & Roses.