Zohran Mamdani has, in recent months, led an incredible campaign for mayor of New York City, generating unprecedented levels of energy and excitement around his candidacy. But the campaign may soon be, according to some, suffering from success. While Mamdani’s mayoral campaign was meant to be chiefly an agitational run, his recent successes have generated some serious questions and debate over the problems posed to DSA as an organization if he were to win come election time. A DSA mayor of NYC would, in the words of Sid C., writing for the Socialist Tribune, “thrust DSA into a governing coalition without a mandate to govern.” This, obviously, presents us with some major problems we must reckon with sooner rather than later. 

Executive Governance

A mayor, in the vast majority of cases, represents the executive branch of the city government. The most vital of an executive’s powers are not enumerated but are inherent to the position itself. The concept of the “bully pulpit” wielded by US Presidents, who transcend their humanity and become semi-deities in the American civil religion, is no less applicable to mayors. By occupying such a central, powerful position, one becomes the complete and total representation of the political entity itself—the mayor of New York City is not merely the chief administrator of the municipal government, they also act as the human representative of the city itself, with all the burdens and complications that entails. The plus side, however, is that this naturally means the opinions of the officeholder are amplified and broadcasted to the world. It is a powerful position; some may say too powerful. There is a strong argument, well made by Bruno Leopold in Marx’s Social Republic (an excellent analysis on Marx’s conception of socialist society), that executive powers are by their nature undemocratic and that legislative supremacy (based upon the collective decisionmaking of elected and recallable representatives) of the people is a far more stable system of government. While such an office exists, however, in our deeply undemocratic society, it must be utilized to its full extent to bring power to the people as much as possible. This is all well and good—“power to the people” is an excellent slogan; it has been utilized for decades for a reason. But what does it look like? How is it achieved? 

The Socialist Strategy

In his article, Control the Bureaucrats, Marxist scholar and historian Mike Macnair demarcates a key breaking point in strategy between socialists and social democrats, as the two groups as we know them today began to diverge in the early 20th century. The battleground of this divergence was the state; subtly but vitally different understandings of the bourgeois state, its class character, and its limitations led to vastly differing strategies and conceptions of the immediate tasks and goals of the working-class movement. Social democrats have, historically, taken the modern state as a class-neutral institution—while it, under our current economic framework, is under the rule of the capitalist class, this is not inherent to the state itself. Through reform and, particularly, through winning an absolute majority in the legislature—the working class may take hold of the ready-made state machinery and utilize it to its own ends. That being said, while social democratic parties throughout much of Europe have, at various times, held absolute majorities in their countries’ respective parliaments and enacted sweeping reforms, the essential class nature of the state has remained unchanged. Even in the much celebrated social democratic Nordic states, the essential rule of the capitalist class over the economy and state has been preserved. Meanwhile, in the socialist conception of the transformation of society, a different calculation is made. This approach highlights the capitalist state as bound by its organizational form and structure to the will of the capitalist class. Instead, Macnair (and Marx before him) advocate for the total abolition, or “smashing,” of the modern state and its replacement with a socialist, working-class-led state. Such a society, perhaps best exemplified by the famous Paris Commune of 1871, would democratize all facets of public life. The workplace, industry, and the new socialist government would each be reorganized on the basis of one worker, one person, one vote. From the electoral college to unequal representation to the very structure of our workplaces and economy, the many anti-democratic elements of our current governing systems are not the markers of a broken system—they are the markers of a functioning system, one that is intended to separate the people from decision-making. Thus, any socialist strategy for operating in public office within a capitalist state must be concerned not merely with reforming the capitalist state (though this is not to discount reform, a central piece of any electoral strategy, and something Mamdani’s campaign has better messaging on than perhaps any other DSA elected in the past), but also with establishing and building democracy outside of the existing state structures. As explored in August Nimtz’s The Ballot Box, the Streets, or Both, socialist political strategy cannot rely merely on standard political avenues of decision-making, where the people are purposefully minimized in favor of a ruling elite; it must go beyond them. Executive positions, such as that of mayor, are especially capable of being utilized for these purposes.

How To Build democracy

The power of the bully pulpit, as well as the prime source of the basically undemocratic nature of the executive in government, is centered in the concept of legitimacy—the automatic legitimacy executives possess as actors grants them power far beyond those that are specifically enumerated; legitimacy that is independent of the legislative branch executives contend with. An executive represents their polity, much like a monarch is the human encapsulation of their kingdom, and this fact is enormously important to our understanding of how to function in this role. Presidents of the United States, as chief executives of the national government, have not hesitated to use this legitimacy to strengthen their office at the expense of the legislature. We must go another way; the power of the executive must be used to grant  legitimacy to new, non-governmental institutions. Socialist mayors (and socialist executives more generally) must undercut the legitimacy of the state in favor of new, directly democratic organs. 

To build new branches of government is not under the mayor’s purview—these popular institutions would thus, of course, not be a part of the government per se, but instead a set of conjoined “popular clubs.” A mayor may delegate a large portion of their power to these democratic organizations, thus building them up as a real way for people to affect change through direct participation in governance. For example, in many city governments, mayors may submit proposed laws to the city council; a socialist mayor may delegate this ability to the popular assemblies, pledging to automatically submit any measures demanded by the populace through them. Such an arrangement would serve to get citizens more actively involved in the governance process and more apt to do so through radically democratic institutions. By showing ordinary, working-class people they can actually affect the political process in ways that go beyond simply voting for candidates, we prime them to become more actively engaged on the whole, something that is absolutely necessary should we ever hope to see the working class take power. In taking such actions, mayors will not merely be executives of the city government, they will also be acting as organizers within a larger movement. By virtue of their office and of the reach of the “official statement,” the mayor-organizer has a reach and power to draw crowds far beyond that of any other single individual in the city. But this is not the only, or even the primary, reason for the establishment of the democratic assemblies. 

Crisis Periods

There come times in history during which polities undergo crisis periods, whether brought about by natural disaster, civil unrest, or social catastrophe. During these periods, standard modes of authority often break down, whether by loss of legitimacy or inability to enforce laws. It is within these periods that we observe some of history’s most wonderful experiments in democratic governance. From the Paris Commune to the Petrograd Soviet, the Shanghai Commune, the Rojava, and the Zapatistas, popular institutions occasionally are able to fill the void and pursue the interests of the majority. We have seen several crisis periods resulting from civil unrest in recent US history; from the Occupy Movement to Black Lives Matter to the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, we see movements that had real public support and the potential to wield genuine power. But, in each of these cases, they did not. Why is this? 

Without a ready-made organizational form, these movements decay to the tyranny of structurelessness. Imagine how things could have gone differently were citizens endowed with ready-made procedures and methods of popular organization during these “crisis moments.” In 2020, for example, following the public murder of George Floyd, two-thirds of Americans were in support of the Black Lives Matter movement before the Democrats effectively hijacked the movement. In the years since, support for the movement has, of course, dwindled, with the sudden energy being lost to entropy. The job of socialists must be to prepare ourselves to meet and sustain popular anti-establishment energy like this—chiefly by providing organization.

Socialists elected to city office can play a role in building dissent and parallel institutions, as demonstrated by such figures as former Seattle City Councillor (and current DSA Member) Kshama Sawant, who, during her time in office, was a defender and even leader of CHAZ and an active supporter of anti-government protests. 

Assemblies of Various Types

But what form is this organization to take? History and experience provide us with various ready-made institutional frameworks, each of which comes with its own particular drawbacks and merits. At the risk of wading into the territory of utopianism, I will explore a few potential institutions a mayor-organizer could help assemble.

Workplace Representation: 

One of the most tried and true methods of socialist radical democracy, workplace representation, helps to bridge the false divide between “economic” and “public” spaces. Additionally, it could play a role in helping to massively expand union representation, getting people and their coworkers talking in protected discussions about labor issues (alongside discussions about politics in general). Representation could either be based on region, with workplaces electing delegates to either neighborhood workers’ councils, or on trade, with workplaces electing delegates to syndicates based on industry. Such assemblies, besides submitting legislation, could advise the mayor and council on labor issues and, with support and codification from a city council, even play a role in setting labor standards. 

Although such a body would be specifically rooted in the working class and have some serious disadvantages. First, workers’ councils, of course, have a controversial legacy, due in large part to their integration into the party-state of the USSR, in which they became organs not of democratic representation but mere rubber stampers of party decisions. That being said, the examples of early council governance in what became the USSR and also in various other European nations (Finland, Germany, etc.) demonstrate that councils can indeed act as democratically representative organs when given the room to do so — indeed, they can be far more radically democratic than parliamentary systems, with a right to recall and imperative mandate. The long and storied history of council democracy is explored in detail by Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen and Gaard Kets in their article Workers’ Councils and Radical Democracy: Toward a Conceptual History of Council Democracy. Madsen and Kets explore the massive impact the council system had on thinkers within and without the Marxian tradition and the salience the idea still holds as a model for the future of government, specifically highlighting how the (open, autonomous) council government “makes participation in the creation of society’s fundamental laws open and accessible to all citizens.” 

But the council system, for all its virtues and for all its storied past, still poses some potential political issues, particularly for the purposes of this strategy. For not all workers in a city are residents; in New York City, for example, 20% of employees live outside of the city. This arrangement has positive and negative sides – while it involves people living in the larger region, the “representation gap” may alienate residents. They may identify the city government as more representative of them and their interests than any sort of worker-based assembly and ultimately reject the validity of the councils. 

People’s Assemblies: 

Another, more currently “in vogue” organizational method is the People’s Assembly—a town-hall-style, directly democratic assembly. Popular assemblies are utilized by the EZLN and, closer to home, in the Occupy movement. Delegates, and executive/organizing committees may be elected by these assemblies but act on the delegate mode of representation, in which they are given explicit instructions by the assembly and expected to follow through, subject to recall and democratic oversight. This is a far cry from the sort of “representation” offered in the United States and most capitalist states, based on the trustee method of representation, in which the representative is not accountable to their constituents beyond the narrow window of the election period. Thus, a system of popular assemblies in various neighborhoods, convened on a regular schedule (say, once a month), could, in the minds of many residents, and indeed in reality, be far more representative of the masses than the city government. Several regional assemblies from different sections of the city (or, indeed, depending on population and feasibility, a single city assembly) could give common people a place to voice their complaints and make demands of their government. It would allow working-class people to get direct experience in the process of governance and democratic decision-making, an opportunity that many unfortunately never have. That can, itself, be a radicalizing process. 

Such an institution is not without flaws, however. The time constraints of a monthly meeting would inevitably exclude some people, regardless of its scheduling (though a city-wide right to be excused from work to participate in a neighborhood popular assembly could and should be a suggestion by any mayor interested in convening such meetings). Additionally, the difficulty of sustaining energy around groups such as this has been noted by many. That being said, as long as the assemblies are kept alive and routinely elect a dedicated committee of organizers, the framework can remain, hibernating, in wait for a potential crisis. 

The policing problem

All of this could be for naught, however, if the mayor-organizer cannot adequately address the problem of policing. As it currently stands, the NYPD is the largest police department in the country—then mayor Michael Bloomberg once bragged (erroneously) that it was the “7th largest army in the world.” In New York City, as in other places, the mayor is not capable of singlehandedly abolishing the police but is expected to regulate the department (making recommendations on budgeting and appointing/firing commissioners). How can a socialist, who wants to dismantle the oppressive, racist structure of US policing, stand as the chief administrator of the violence they speak against? It presents deep problems for DSA of both a moral and political character. The moral concerns with having to spearhead and represent such a blatantly racist institution should be obvious, but let us stop for a moment to consider the political angle.

Socialists are meant to serve as beacons of the working class, champions of a new, brighter future—allowing ourselves to become associated with the exercise of repressive state violence is thus not only a tough situation we must face, something we must hold our noses and carry out, it is anathema to our entire political project and a deadly threat to how we are perceived by those who elect us. Socialists, then, should take a directly oppositional stance to such institutions. But how does one do so in a way that adequately addresses the deep contradictions of serving in such a role? State representative and DSA-elected Shaun Scott has demonstrated one highly valuable path forward: presenting alternatives. In the newly opened session, Scott has brought forward a bill that would allow towns of a certain size to create non-police crisis response centers and 911 alternatives. By championing such programs on a municipal level, mayors can help people to truly think outside the narrow box of our police system. With these alternatives in the minds of constituents, a mayor should continuously distance themselves from the violence of the police, calling for defunding, an end to police unions, and an end to qualified immunity (outside of the few cities, like New York, where this has already occurred). 

In addition, some amount of local public defense may be transferred to a citizens militia—an open, volunteer-based community organization with democratic election of leadership—in short, a sort of empowered neighborhood watch. Such a system may be contrasted with traditional police departments, which, being based on long-term employment and structured under an internal bureaucracy, more closely resemble a professional army than a citizen’s guard. In Robert Leicher’s The Modern Militia, the legal and constitutional scholar explores the history of the debate between proponents of a citizens’ militia vs. a professional army. As Leicher highlights, the American Founders were highly skeptical of the concept of a standing, professional army. By establishing a caste of professional officers with their own interests separate from that of the general population, it is easy for these organizations to take on lives of their own, leading those they were meant to protect down the path of despotism. The state is inherently based upon a monopoly on (so-called legitimate) violence. By giving the right to apply that force to an organization separate from the people, the people themselves cannot be said to control the state. Only once people are empowered to defend their own communities, rather than being policed by some quasi-military organization imposed upon them, can accountability and freedom truly be possible. The importance of such forms of community self-defense to the socialist project is covered in depth within French Reformist Socialist Jean Jaurès’s 1911 text The New Army and more broadly touched upon in Engels’s Can Europe Disarm?. As Jaurès covers, the debate between the standing army and the citizens militia was not limited to North America, circa 1776. The founders’ contemporaries, other revolutionary Republicans of the 18th and 19th centuries, not to mention the democrats of ancient Greece, also railed against the professional army as a predictor of tyranny. Small wonder why, when, historically, professional armies have spelled the end of no shortage of Republican states, from the legions of Julius Caesar to the soldiers of Napoleon Bonaparte. Such conspiratorial dangers can also be seen in US police departments, most notably in the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and member of the city Board of Supervisors Harvey Milk, progressives who sought to curb police violence in the city. For their trouble, they were killed by police and fire officer Dan White. Following the murder, police unions rallied around White, successfully preventing his conviction on a murder charge and reversing the fledgling reforms sought by Milk and Moscone.

Further, a mayor could, particularly in extreme cases like that of New York City, even fire current police commissioners, refusing to reappoint replacements until the policing system of the city is restructured. By consciously refusing to carry out certain repressive duties, a mayor may not be able to fully deconstruct the repressive state apparatus on their own, but they can effectively “jam the gears” of the machine. Once again, such a strategy would constitute mayors not merely contenting themselves to administer the state with a so-called “progressive” agenda, but instead actively building people power and, where possible and useful, using their position to effectively do battle with the state. Such a move would no doubt be dramatically controversial, however, in the long run, it would reintroduce concepts of police abolition and restart a much-needed conversation on a national scale. That being said, due to the extreme risk of controversy, mayor-organizers should avoid such sweeping moves without, as previously mentioned, strong,  viable alternative proposals to replace those public functions that the police are currently expected to carry out. Without a viable alternative, we run the risk of making our politics seem utopian to the average worker; broad, sweeping, unworkable, and without grounding in actual concrete proposals. If we make such proposals, however, make them loudly and often; we will help to show that the violent, much maligned status quo can be changed. No doubt such a road is perilous; one only needs to look to examples like that of the small town South Carolina mayor George Gardner, who was murdered by police following a dispute between the city government and the department that apparently included threats of defunding. Yet, DSA electeds, as “tribunes of the people,” must be ready to call out the cops, along with all forces that oppress and exploit. To confront such violent systems is, inherently, dangerous. “The first lesson a revolutionary must learn,” as said by Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panthers, “is that he is a doomed man.”

While there is little chance that a citizens militia would be able to fully supplant the police in a modern US city overnight, empowering civilians to police their own communities and giving this citywide “neighborhood watch” real responsibilities and structure, we can truly begin the long process of abolishing the police and moving towards an equitable, community-centered model. As long as demands to abolish the police are isolated, without the presence of organizations and programs the community can fall back on, we can expect to make very little progress.

Towards transformation

It may be doubted that organizations sanctioned by the city government can play a truly transformative role in the class struggle. Such concerns, I believe, are adequately answered with a close study of historical revolution. Many revolutionary bodies, from the National Guard during the age of the first French Revolution to analogous bodies during the Revolutions of 1848, popular bodies sponsored by a certain state and a certain class are quite capable of taking on lives of their own during periods of instability, given that they have autonomy from the state and sufficiently open membership. 

The other response of many to these proposals will likely be that they, while agreeable in essence, are unworkable in practice. While popular representation may be a preferable model to current forms of government, and a community militia may be preferable to militarized police forces, these proposals cannot be meaningfully implemented under capitalism and will doubtlessly provoke all manner of foot-dragging and resistance from the ruling class and their foot soldiers through legal and extralegal means. This, I think, is true. Alternative forms of administration cannot be implemented in their totality under capitalism, and any attempt to do so will doubtlessly be mired in conflict. But the job of the socialist elected official is not to broker neat and tidy class collaborationist programs and technocratic solutions. It is to sharpen the edge of class conflict, to stand unflinchingly in solidarity with the working class, and to demand rancorously, repeatedly, and unceasingly the fulfillment of the promise of democratic rule of the people, for the people, by the people. By placing such transformative demands front and center, we can expand the imagination of constituents and bring us one step closer to those demands’ realization.

Image Description: Zohran Mamdani at the Resist Fascism Rally in Bryant Park on Oct 27th 2024. Image taken by Bingjiefu He.

On May 26th, Marcos Henrique and Lucas Segobia, both skilled workers here in Maine, were abducted by ICE on their way to work at 6am. They are being held at Twin Bridges Facility in Wiscasset on no charges, and they fear removal from the state and deportation. As of this report, a representative stated that the men were informed they would be moved shortly. If and when they are, it will be hard for their legal representatives to locate them. This is how the government disappears people.

In response, there was a press conference today, May 30th, at 10 AM in front of Portland City Hall. Roughly 100 people showed up on short notice to show support, along with local news outlets. Those who spoke included friends, family, and coworkers of the two who were abducted.

When neither of Lucas or Marcos showed up for work on Monday morning, loved ones tried to locate the pair for over 36 hours. In that process of calling Border Patrol, ICE detention Centers, Local prison facilities, and using the ICE locator page, family members were misled and lied to multiple times before they were located. Worse, Marcos and Lucas were lied to about where they were, believing they were in Portland when they were in Wiscasset. Every person in this country has a right to due process and habeas corpus. To waive the rights of people based on their immigration status is not just an attack on the immigrant community, it is an attack on everyone. We must bring Lucas and Marcos home to their friends and family. 

People’s Inclusive Welding, Southern Maine Worker’s Center, Maine DSA, and more are desperately urging the Maine community to contact their representatives, both locally, statewide, and nationally, to express outrage at this miscarriage of justice. 

The post Two Men Abducted by ICE in Maine appeared first on Pine & Roses.

By Ecosocialist WG member Jordan Lewis

Transit isn’t just a nice-to-have; someone in your community relies on it, and they deserve better service.

In anticipation of Oregon’s once-a-decade Transportation Package, which decides transportation spending priorities for the years ahead, Portland DSA boarded TriMet’s busiest bus and train routes to survey actual daily riders. Our goal was to learn the needs of those who depend on transit so we could best advocate for them in state deliberations over the transportation package. We felt riders were not advocated for in these negotiations, as proceedings tended to center lane expansion projects and a “back to basics” framing over any kind of transit service improvements. This was confirmed when the Oregon Transit Association warned of coming service cuts if the existing STIF Payroll tax were not raised from 0.1% to 0.5% (early drafts of the package proposed a mere 0.18% STIF rate).

“My commute time to work used to be 15 min to the Portland VA when the 64 still existed. Now my commute time is 1 hour with transfers even though I live 15 min driving distance from work. This has been an abysmal change that has made my workdays so much harder […] It doesn’t help that I am also disabled with constant chronic pain, to add to how difficult my life has become since this bus schedule was unnecessarily changed.”

The Ecosocialist Working Group, itself composed of many regular transit riders, recognized Elite Projection in how media, local and state governments told stories about public transit. While they describe our buses and trains as “Portland’s largest homeless shelter”, with otherwise fine service interrupted by homelessness on the streets and on trains, our membership did not think that was the whole story. Our suspicions were supported by Trimet’s own Attitude & Awareness Survey (A&A) which did report safety concerns twice as common as cleanliness or service concerns, but whose demographic data showed a non-representative sample. 66% (!) of A&A respondents had Bachelors Degrees or higher; 24% had the option to work fully-remote.

It is our belief that the A&A survey, which was distributed via advertisement, mail and e-mail to those already on TriMet’s internal contact lists, oversampled professional office workers who may not ride as much post-pandemic. Our survey was designed to be distributed in-person, either digitally or with pen and paper, to those riding the bus, MAX or streetcar during rush hour or on weekends. We thought this approach would better represent the average TriMet users who rely on it as a public service. We surveyed every “Frequent Service” transit route in the city of Portland in order to maximize response rate, and we selected sessions geographically in order to distribute surveys evenly across the city. We did not collect any identifying data other than ZIP Code, regularity of riding and Transit route (due to data privacy concerns), but the geographic distribution seemed very even across the city. In total, we canvassed 340 riders from 65 zip codes, across 33 transit routes. While 11% of our respondents rode less than once per week, 40% of “Attitude & Awareness” respondents rode less than once per month.

The survey findings did not totally contradict the A&A survey; most riders still listed passenger behavior as their most common negative experience, but poor stop shelter conditions trailed it by a few percentage points. When increased service frequencies were offered alongside increased outreach workers, the same riders who reported feeling unsafe preferred increased frequencies.

“Specific to the 77, more frequency. Overall unpleasant conditions at stops makes the experience waiting at the bus uncomfortable. I ride with my toddler and there is often human feces and drug paraphernalia. Lack of marked well lit crosswalks at stops also means I get off further than I would like to so that I can feel safer crossing at night.”

Our theory as Ecosocialists is that ridership follows service quality just as much as it follows homelessness rates. A strategy to improve transit service, both for current riders and for potential new ones, must prioritize increased service frequency, cleaning/maintenance of shelter facilities, and an increased presence of unarmed rider ambassadors to de-escalate difficult situations onboard.

“Most buses downtown have incredibly difficult disabled access. trimet security and police intimidate and harass people and delay trips and make riders feel unsafe. NARCAN. security should be public safety such as narcan, not policing fare.”

All of these improvements require an increase in funding to agencies like TriMet through raising the STIF Payroll Tax to at least 0.5% by 2030, and ideally to a full 1% by 2035.

The next steps are to lobby for these changes, both through discussion with state representatives and senators, and during the public testimony opportunities which are as-of-yet unannounced. The Package (now known as TRIP) is still under discussion, and so the specifics of the Bill have not yet been revealed, though a draft was released in early April and a controversial May memo has not inspired much confidence. Move Oregon Forward has an email form through which you can contact state officials with influence over the bill. Ecosocialist WG member Jordan Lewis has reserved a public communications slot at Portland City Hall at 9:30 AM on June 11, which he will use to present the findings of this report to city council.

You can view or download the full report here (PDF, 854KB):

“We need more seating and shelters at more stops, it sucks to have to stand at a stop while waiting for a ride.”

The post Ecosocialist Working Group Releases Transit Rider Survey Report appeared first on Portland DSA .

Before the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) as we know it existed, New York City’s bus system was an amalgamation of private bus companies that operated on a franchise basis – they had contracts with the city detailing where they could run and what fares they could charge.

One such private company was Fifth Avenue Coach (FACO). It had a monopoly on most of upper Manhattan and all Bronx routes, and was staffed by TWU Labor. In the early 1960s, real-estate mogul and transit poacher Harry Weinberg orchestrated a hostile takeover of FACO’s board. He purchased a majority of its shares and coordinated a proxy faction (who included Roy M. Cohn, lawyer for THAT Senator Joseph McCarthy) that installed him as Chair. Transit labor knew Weinberg had a past of taking over transit systems, keeping their real estate holdings, then offloading the systems to their cities or states but benefiting from the real estate gains, as he did in Dallas, Scranton, and Honolulu. His goal as a capitalist was not to provide quality public transportation to the public, but to use quasi-public transportation services as a tool of private capital accumulation.

New York Times, Feb 2, 1962

In New York, Weinberg announced a reorganization plan that included layoffs of 800-1,500 workers, elimination of most night and weekend service, and a halt to pension payments. He also wanted to increase the fare from 15 to 20 cents (about $1.45 to $1.90 in today’s dollars) and re-instate a 5 cent transfer between lines (note: when they eliminated the free transfer just months before, the company thought it would put their books in the black; instead, ridership plummeted).

The TWU saw right through Weinberg’s capitalist ploy. In February, they authorized a strike should Weinberg make cuts or layoffs. At that meeting, TWU president Micheal J. Quill said he would like to see the city take over the whole company.

He would get his wish.

On the morning of March 1st, 1962, Weinberg laid of 29 TWU fare collectors, doorman, and watchmen, all of whom were unable to drive because of age, injury, or illness. The TWU stopped work on all FACO lines by 5pm that day.

More photos here: http://www.twulocal100.org/story/60-years-ago-fight-survival-and-birth-mabstoa

Mayor Wagner meanwhile wasted no time condemning Weinberg for precipitating a strike and threatening cuts, layoffs, AND a fare increase. Within 2 days he moved with the Board of Estimate and the state Legislature  to condemn FACO’s buses and garages and seize them for municipal use.

On March 8th, the Board of Estimates striped FACO of 80% of its franchises.
On March 15 & 19th, the state assembly and senate passed the bills needed for the city to condemn and seize FACO’s garage/maintenance properties and rolling stock.
By the end of the month, under the newly created Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority (MABSTOA), the buses were back online (repainted to city colors) and strikers went back to work as public employees.

The state, neither before nor since, has never moved so quickly in public transit. Perhaps this is because public sector workers are no longer legally able to strike under the Taylor Law, which severely curtails the strength Labor has as an organized body to defend not only their rights, but the rights of the public.

History taken from From a Nickel to a Token (2016) by Andrew J. Sparberg.

What We Did

As we close the book on another NPEC term, I’d like to use one of my last acts as chair to recap the past year, debrief how we did, and preview what’s to come.  

The centerpiece of this term was NPEC’s inaugural National Capital Reading Group (CRG).  This ambitious project was our first foray into reading a foundational socialist text at a national level.  The Reading Group divided Capital Vol. 1, into several monthly sections, where we would meet on Zoom to have rotation facilitators review key ideas and discuss.  We also provided our guide so that chapters or regions could have their own Capital reading group.  Our kickoff event had over 500 RSVPs in October. While there was a dropoff, like any reading group, we did have a good number of members make it to the final session at the end of February. We feel that the CRG went so well, we will make it an annual tradition, and would like to adopt the format to other foundational socialist texts.  

Chapter Support

Our Chapter support subcommittee continued on its mission by mentoring 20 chapters and multiple trainings, including how to have a socialist night school, talking to non-socialists, and our how to have a childwatch in your chapter.  

Curriculum 

We published two new modules this term: Race and Capitalism in the United States: An Introduction and Fascism and the American Right. Next term, we are committing to publishing even more modules while revamping our old modules with new readings, materials, and resources for chapter to political educators to use out of the box.  We are also excited to share that our modules will be moving to a DSA Moodle shortly.  

Events 

They had a very active term, producing 4 of their typical mass calls while venturing into new territory and planning the first series of national foundational calls in collaboration with the NPC.  Events also lent a hand with the Capital Reading Group, the annual Educators’ Conference, and other NPEC mass calls.  You can find recordings of these events and series on the DSA YouTube.  

Comms and Podcast

We democratized our podcast production to expand the scope of topics while maintaining quality, producing 13 episodes. The Class podcast has grown its listenership by over 10,000 downloads in the past year, moving past 26,000 this past month. Our newsletter Redletter, is also gaining popularity through its quality and pertinent information about political education in DSA. It is read by an average of 3,600 members monthly this term.  

Meeting Goals 

At the beginning of this term, we set some goals about the content, events, and materials we’d like to produce this year. I wanted to reflect on those goals to highlight the ones we met and put a pin in what we can strive for this coming term.  

• We had the ambition to create several new trainings and how-tos geared at new and at-large members, along with developing chapters. A new facilitation and how-to start a political education training will debut soon, after the member surge in the wake of the 2024 election. We did implement our national foundations call in conjunction with the NPC and help wrangle DSA 101 and new member resources. So, we didn’t check all our boxes, but we did get some important ones marked, especially those that met the moment. 
• Resources depot This is halfway met. Over the past term, we have gathered many new and diverse chapter-created materials, but we haven’t yet sorted, categorized, and posted those on the resource page. 
• Democratic Socialists of America: A Graphic History, which we helped the DSA Fund produce, is finished and available digitally. As of this writing, a Kickstarter campaign will soon launch to produce physical copies. NPEC’s next step is to possibly make an accompanying lesson plan for chapters to utilize along with the Graphic History.
• The Spanish translations of our foundational modules are complete and can be found here. It went down to the wire, but NPEC was able to complete our initial goal of offering our materials in more languages. With a language justice and accessibility resolution up for debate at this year’s convention, we look forward to having a wider and more diverse set of translated materials.  
• We wanted to continue to have contact with every chapter, no matter the size, to see if they are doing political education and how we can help them better facilitate their programs.  The goal of reaching every chapter and getting their status still eludes us, but our yearly survey, which we sent out many times and worked with the NPC to circulate it, had the most interactions of any term. With that, we could work with large and established chapters like Philly down to Organizing Committees like Alachua County in Florida. NPEC and our Chapter Support subcommittee will continue our outreach through every avenue at our disposal to reach out and communicate with chapters.
• Through an NPC resolution after the 2024 election results, we were asked to put on another round of socialist foundations mass calls. This was an excellent opportunity to meet one of our goals and revamp the program with the participation of our national co-chairs. These calls were well attended and are now on DSA’s YouTube.  
• The Capital Vol. 1 Reading Group was the feather in our cap this past term. It created the most buzz of any event that NPEC has put on, with over 200 members attending our kick-off event. Along with reading a seminal socialist text, the reading group made many members aware of our committee and offerings.  There was a drop off like any reading group, but especially one of this density. Still, we finished with a solid core and built the foundations to make this an annual event while providing the blueprints to do it with other essential readings.  
• We also hosted a second national reading group for Eric Blanc’s recently released book, We Are the Union, in collaboration with the DSA’s National Labor Commission, YDSA, and EWOC.  This strong collaboration led to one of our best-attended calls, with over a thousand people turning in for the launch call that featured Eric Blanc, labor writer Kim Kelly (author, Fight Like Hell), and Moe Mills of Starbucks Workers United. The Recap Call featured Jane Slaughter of Labor Notes and Jaz Brisack, an original organizer of Starbucks Workers United, to discuss their impressions of the book with the author, Eric Blanc.  

Next Term

NPEC members came together and democratically decided our goals for the future in our 2025 Consensus Resolution. After meeting our charter goals from Resolution 33 at the 2019 Convention, we outlined how we will continue improving our current fair and what we strive to do next to keep developing political education in DSA, thereby shaping the future of DSA as we grow and develop as an organization. 

• Expanding our volunteer and contributor pool of members
• Structurally, shore up our place as a dynamic national committee with an increase in budget and staff time
• Add depth and width to our media offerings and member outreach
  • Expanding the scope of topics and increasing the frequency of our podcast Class
  • Creating more video content for DSA’s YouTube channel
  • Ensuring that our Educators’ Conference is held regularly throughout the term. 
• Continue to expand and improve our curriculum offerings
  • 4 new Socialist Night School Modules
    • Democracy, Civil Society, and Socialist Politics
    • What is Internationalism for Socialists?
    • Socialist Analyses of Nativism and Racism
    • Socialist Feminisms & Gender Liberation
  • Refine and improve past modules for use in Socialist Night Schools
  • Found a Party School to be used in conjunction with the Growth and Development Committee’s hard skills trainings
  • A Socialist Sprouts curriculum for children, parents, and caregivers
  • The Capital Reading Group will continue annually, with the prospect of offering more reading groups for other critical socialist readings.  

Seattle DSA Condemns Anti-Trans Police Violence in Cal Anderson Park

APPROVED FOR RELEASE 25 MAY 2025

Seattle DSA strongly condemns the violent police riot that occurred yesterday, during which officers assaulted, peppered sprayed and arrested protestors and bystanders including DSA members as they peacefully exercised their 1st Amendment rights to demonstrate against a bigoted anti-trans hate rally in Cal Anderson Park hosted by an out-of-state astroturf group.

It is egregious that the city and state would use public resources to protect a hate rally. Sending in law enforcement to attempt to provoke, arrest and injure Seattleites advocating for a city free from discrimination and hatred is disgusting.

We condemn Mayor Bruce Harrell for using the police to target queer protestors in one of Seattle’s gayest neighborhoods, and call on every local elected official to condemn these actions by police and investigate how this hateful, bigoted event was ever allowed to take place.

Today is a shameful reminder that the state has chosen to side with hatred and discrimination, and the police will always come down on the side of those who seek to attack and erase us. Seattle DSA will always stand with the trans and queer community – an attack on one is an attack on all.

Seattle DSA Statement on Those Arrested at Cal Anderson Park

APPROVED FOR RELEASE 26 MAY 2025

This past Saturday, 24 May 2025, twenty-three Seattle community members were arrested after the Seattle Police Department and Washington State Troopers violently attacked protestors exercising their constitutionally protected free speech to tell the anti-queer, transphobic, anti-choice astroturf group MayDayUSA their hate is not welcome here. Seattle DSA condemns this recent exercise of state violence and Mayor Bruce Harrell’s equivocating statement on the events of last week as he attempts to absolve himself of responsibility.

While several of the arrested were soon released, many remained in jail over the weekend under false, trumped-up charges including felony assault. Among these political prisoners are close comrades of Seattle DSA, individuals with deep ties to our community who have been active in the wider movement for a just, collectively liberated world.

This uncalled-for attack at the hands of the police and courts will not go unchallenged by Seattleites as we face many mounting crises, an increasingly hostile Mayor and City Council, and a growing recognition that politics-as-usual is a dead-end. Seattle DSA stands with our queer and trans neighbors as they fight for their liberation from both the violence of cisheteropatriarchy and the many violences of capitalism, and we stand with political prisoners who fight for justice and freedom.

As we mark the five-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd and the summer of uprisings it sparked, we have seen demands for police accountability and disarmament as well as prison abolition be met with further police impunity, more police funding, and an ever-growing prison-industrial complex. Time and time again marginalized communities have borne the brunt of state violence in defense of an untenable status quo, communities including our BIPOC, queer, unhoused, migrant, and low-wage neighbors. And time and time again these communities have risen up to declare this situation unbearable and fought back.

We demand charges be dropped for the Cal Anderson Defendents and for Bruce Harrell to immediately resign. Seattle DSA further continues to demand for the end of prisons and police militarization as tools of domination and capitalist exploitation along with the wider structural violence of racism, settler colonialism, and imperialism that underlie them.

Without justice, there can be no meaningful peace. And attack on one is an attack on all.

While the conclusion of the 2024 election season offered most DSA chapters an opportunity to pause, reflect on their campaigns, and regroup ahead of the following electoral cycle, special elections called in Oakland immediately launched East Bay DSA back into action. The recall of Oakland’s mayor and the election of the District 2 Councilmember to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors created two vacancies to be filled in an April special election.

Both elections were pivotal for political control of local government in Oakland, as progressive wins in both races were necessary to secure a progressive majority. The left quickly coalesced behind a single candidate in each race: former Representative Barbara Lee for Mayor and housing policy director Kara Murray-Badal for District 2. Lee, both a progressive icon and a longtime mainstay of East Bay politics, was easily able to assemble a broad coalition of support ranging from the left to the establishment and from labor unions to the business community, and faced only former Councilmember Loren Taylor, an arch-centrist figure in Oakland politics who narrowly lost the 2022 mayoral election and subsequently emerged as a leader in the recall movement.

But despite her progressive credentials, most notably being the only member of Congress to vote against the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Lee is not a socialist and East Bay DSA did not intervene in the mayoral race. Murray-Badal, on the other hand, is not only a socialist but a once-active member of East Bay DSA, having founded the chapter’s Racial Solidarity Committee and organized for Medicare for All as a canvass lead. Members of the chapter were enthusiastic about her run, and the chapter voted overwhelmingly to endorse her.

It was, however, clear that Murray-Badal faced a much greater challenge. Her main opponent, environmental policy advisor Charlene Wang, started with a financial and name recognition advantage, having run only a few months prior for the at-large position on City Council. Wang also benefited from being able to position herself between the progressive and moderate wings of local politics, aided by the presence of candidates to her right such as Harold Lowe and Kanitha Matoury. Murray-Badal would need to rely on a strong field operation through her core coalition of labor unions and progressive organizations to win.

Immediately following our chapter’s endorsement in February, we began to co-host and support canvasses on a weekly basis. In total, we held or supported eight weekend canvasses, three weeknight canvasses, and one phonebank, in addition to conducting turnout phonebanks and textbanks during the week, knocking nearly three thousand doors in the process. We developed a strong relationship with the Murray-Badal campaign, and multiple DSA members served as campaign staff.

Ultimately, though, our efforts were unsuccessful. Wang won the election, leading with 47% of the vote to Murray-Badal’s 34% in the first round and winning 59% to 41% after ranked-choice voting.

Electoral analysis

District 2 is in many ways a microcosm of Oakland as a whole, exemplified not least by its demographic makeup. A racial and socioeconomic gradient spans the district; the hills in the north are mostly white and wealthy, while the communities in the flatlands, closer to the shore, are overwhelmingly non-white and working-class. Wang won both extremes, while Murray-Badal won the diverse and mixed-income center of the district, in particular Cleveland Heights and most of the Eastlake neighborhood. In Crocker Highlands, the wealthiest part of the neighborhood, Wang won easily and Murray-Badal finished third behind centrist candidate Harold Lowe. Wang was strongest in Chinatown, the westernmost part of the district, and also performed well in San Antonio in the southeast, a neighborhood which notably awarded Trump his best performance in Oakland last November with over 20% of the vote.

A precinct-level estimate of the results after ranked-choice calculations produces a similar map, though with Wang flipping one precinct and improving significantly on her result in Crocker Highlands thanks to the distribution of Lowe’s second-choice votes.

Examining turnout at the precinct level most clearly demonstrates the gradient described earlier. While some San Antonio precincts saw turnout below 20%, a whopping 64% of Crocker Highlands voters cast ballots, a particularly high figure for an off-cycle special election. Turnout disparities between wealthier and poorer areas are obviously commonplace, but they are exacerbated in lower-turnout scenarios such as special elections.

Takeaways

The trichotomy between conservative wealthy areas, progressive middle-income areas, and conservative poor areas is not unique to this election; rather, it reflects voting patterns commonly encountered by progressive and socialist candidates across the country and indicates an issue we must tackle if we are to be more electorally successful. We must expand beyond our base of college-educated, downwardly-mobile young people and make inroads among working-class communities that have been ignored by campaigns and political organizations and often move toward reactionary politics as a result. Toward this end, East Bay DSA’s Electoral Committee plans to undertake deep canvassing campaigns in areas such as West Oakland and East Oakland, inspired by and hopefully in collaboration with left-wing community organizations such as the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment which are successfully building bases in these areas.

Internally, too, there is work to be done. While there was a core group of consistent volunteers throughout the campaign, most chapter members did not engage with the campaign, and some even expressed opposition to participating in the campaign or electoral politics in general. Getting more members on board with engagement in elections will be crucial to building our capacity and strength as an organization. Additionally, our decision to hold canvasses every weekend may have dampened attendance at each canvass, especially considering our limited capacity to turn out members on a weekly basis; for future campaigns, we are considering instead hosting a smaller number of canvasses but concentrating turnout efforts on those few canvasses to maximize impact.

But while we lost the election, our efforts were still fruitful for East Bay DSA and our electoral organizing, both internally and externally. Our canvasses and phonebanks provided valuable campaign experience and leadership development to members, growing the Electoral Committee’s core and preparing us for future campaigns. 

Antonio G, co-chair of East Bay DSA's Electoral Committee, put it this way: “The campaign was an outlet for local political agency. Kara’s campaign and values were for some new members the perfect starting point to connect with strangers and organize in community."

Our consistent involvement made us one of the strongest components of the Murray-Badal campaign’s coalition, strengthening our relationship with allied organizations and the broader left in the East Bay. While we have much room to grow, learn, and improve, this experience has helped us as we look toward 2026 and beyond.

Before reading more, an urgent ask for all members: we want the feedback of all our membership! Please fill out our chapter survey so we can know more about your thoughts on our various areas of work and how we can improve! This will take about 10-15 minutes, so set aside some time to sit down and share your thoughts!

• Our State and Revolution reading group is coming up this Saturday. Make sure to RSVP in order to get the link!

• Our Sanctuary Cincy petition is going strong, but we need you to help us reach as many people as possible to sign! Sign up for our canvass this Saturday, May 24th in Westwood to get as many residents of Cincinnati as possible to sign the petition!

• New to DSA (or know someone interested) and want to meet others and learn more about the country’s largest socialist organization? Join us for our next DSA 101!

• Our next Stitching Social is happening this May 31st at noon! Join us at the Covington Library to start or continue a craft project and socialize with fellow socialists!

• We’re hosting a 101 session on Medicare for All and why we fight for it as socialists! Join us on May 31st at the Newport Library at 3 PM for a political education event on one of the core issues for democratic socialists over the past ten years!

Climate Disaster? The Point is to Change It!

What got me out of being a climate doomer is meeting and collaborating with enough people across this organization who have been through that period of engaging with how bad things are and reckoning with that doomer aspect, and then are like, No, we just have to build something better and that’s the only alternative, because otherwise we are fucked. But we have to figure out what that alternative is and how to make it happen at whatever cost because that’s our collective and individual survival. Those actually are the stakes and we can build it together—there are all these reasons to think we can build it together—but we have to keep articulating that in a way that people can actually believe, that we can actually believe and also convince other people of.

• Ashik Siddique, DSA Co-Chair. READ MORE

Starting With Gramsci

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 progress of the 20^th century. All the gains of labor, civil rights, women’s rights, and the LBGQTI+ community are under assault in a blitzkrieg of attacks. The fascists intend to fundamentally restructure institutional democracy, and impose a strait jacket on civil society. Nevertheless, among the people there is an anti-fascist majority and deep splits within the ruling class. How can socialists organize to block, resist, and build an effective opposition? 

In the struggle for power, the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci defined two different periods which have relevancy for our current political moment. He terms these the war of position and the war of maneuver. The fascists are now on a war of maneuver, a rapid offensive to gain ground and consolidate power. For the left, the massive labor movement in the 1930s was our war of maneuver. Other key periods were Reconstruction after the Civil War, and the second reconstruction of the civil rights movement that defeated Jim Crow apartheid and brought radical changes to civil society. 

When not on the offensive, the left needs to be building positions of institutional and organizational strength in civil society, Gramsci’s war of position. In these moments, socialists should root themselves in the working class by building the power of unions, Independent Political Organizations (IPOs), social and community organizations, mutual aid groups, immigration defense, progressive churches, on school boards and so on. In other words, “socialists everywhere.” This builds our organizing capacity and mass influence; increases our ability to mobilize, whether for protests, contract fights or elections; and offers opportunities to train and recruit activists, build relationships, and project power.

How can socialists work to build power in civil society? Mass organizations don’t need to have socialist politics, but socialists can win leadership through fighting for organizational goals, gaining respect, and uniting rather than dividing. Through such work we can attract and recruit the best organizers, educate people about socialism, and connect the immediate struggle to strategic goals. Avoiding working with people because they don’t say or do things as we would, or simply preaching socialism without defending people in their daily struggle, ends in political isolation. We don’t need to impose our ideas, but learn from folks; find out what their worries and demands are. Only once we fully understand their reality, can we hope to clarify the exploitative nature of capitalism and bring them to socialism. Chinese revolutionaries called this “from the masses to the masses,” and the great Brazilian educator Paolo Freire articulated it as “pedagogy of the oppressed” and developing “critical consciousness.” Through such organizing we can help create a broad united front that can resist and block the fascists and build the opposition. By the elections of 2026 we may be in the position to start a counteroffensive, and more so in 2028. 

Coalitions are also a crucial element to building organizational power. We must answer the question: How should we deal with centrists in a united front? There is widespread anger and growing disillusionment over centrist leadership.  It’s evident in the mass crowds rallying to Sanders and AOC, and the huge protests organized by Indivisible, Working Families Party, Move On and 505051. Some members of DSA are uncomfortable working with such organizations. They are too close to the Democrats, they’re not socialists, they fail to say this or that. Yet standing on the sidelines just won’t do and converts are not won through disdain and neglect.

This is the time to unite with all friends and allies to push the centrists to the sidelines. Something we can’t do by ourselves. During the civil rights movement and Vietnam war, under mass pressure, some centrists moved to the left. Others did not. The same will happen today. Senator Van Hollen’s trip to El Salvador should be applauded, much more effective than Senator Booker’s 25-hour soliloquy of performance politics. When centrists vacillate, compromise, and collaborate they weaken the united front from within and must be criticized and called to step aside. But our anger needs to be directed at the fascists. In that battle, when centrists show they can’t lead, it opens the door for more militant leadership.  Schumer and Jeffries act like deer caught in the headlights of an onrushing car. They yearn for a return to “normalcy.” But we must push beyond the old normal that proved too weak to prevent the fascist onslaught. We can build towards an expanded democracy, what we might call a third reconstruction, and win the united front to such a vision. 

This must be done through fighting the war of position. But how do we do it? What practices can we adopt to build the capacity of DSA and the left to generate real political change? What actual examples are there of on-the-ground tactics and techniques to use in today’s war of position? We’d like to explore three projects: one old, one new, and one not yet implemented. These illustrate possible approaches to engaging with organizations and individuals outside the left to build our positional power.

The New Lynn Coalition 

The New Lynn Coalition—a group of faith, community, labor, and political organizations—is a prime example for how coalitions can serve both immediate needs and move forward in the war of position. In Give Light and the People Will Fight, Jeff Crosby, the former Executive Director of the organization, describes the coalition’s successful reactions to Trump’s victory and attack on immigrants, quickly gaining support with an array of community institutions and elected officials. The power to catalyze such a broad range of participants is not due solely to the cruelty of the Oval Office, but a decade’s long campaign to build coalitional power and sharpen organizing abilities.

Their actions should be seen as a set of habits built over decades of organizing and coalition work. These habits within the war of position are what have enabled the New Lynn Coalition to be so formidable in 2025.

Coalitions are not easy. As Crosby outlines, they take patience and, sometimes, a pragmatic perspective. Because of their extensive experience, the New Lynn Coalition was able to effectively employ several techniques to leverage the dissatisfaction with the Trump administration to maintain and build their coalition. In return, Crosby claims that residents have begun successfully building institutions to resist and increase the power of the left.

What can New Lynn teach us? According to Crosby, the coalition sought out organizational allies with different political orientations, encouraged democratic participation outside of the coalition’s leadership, and compromised to maintain positive relationships between organizations and honor the results of the democratic process.

Building Alliances

The New Lynn coalition actively courts organizations that have overlapping interests during a given campaign. Crosby describes two examples. In the first, the coalition worked with a Guatemalan Evangelical Church to support undocumented immigrants and then, after Trump’s 2024 victory, a rally protesting ICE. This very same church discouraged parishioners from attending a Ceasefire for Palestine march. Similarly, seeing how Trump’s attack on immigrants was harming small businesses, the coalition recruited them to join the anti-ICE march, despite their past opposition to labor rights. By building these tactical alliances, the fight to defend immigrants was strengthened. 

By necessity, coalitions must be built between organizations that do not share all the same values. The New Lynn Coalition’s view on temporary alliances increased their public power during marches against the Trump administration and created relationships embedded within the community that can be mobilized for future actions. The core of the Lynn Coalition has strategic and deep organizational relationships, but other relationships are tactical, uniting all those who can work together on a specific issue. 

Democratic Participation

The New Lynn Coalition depended on open meetings to organize one of their actions. This meant that unaffiliated individuals could come off the street and join in. This structure has some risks, but Crosby explains the tactic brought new insights into the current moment and their course of action. Democratic processes that allow people to feel ownership over a movement, have potentially profound effects on organizational depth.

Certainly, this tactic should not always be employed. But there is reason to believe that, if done carefully and selectively, open meetings can help organizations build power within a community, not only increasing a membership roster but ensuring that new members (or affiliated individuals and organizations) are fully engaged and empowered.

Compromise

Crosby details how several decisions were borne out of democratic negotiations. One which Crosby himself did not agree with: the day of the protest was set for a weekday, better for media but inconvenient for workers and seniors. But negotiating in good faith is absolutely necessary to the maintenance of coalitional relationships. It’s crucial that in our partnerships we accept even ideas we disagree with (sometimes) to hold coalitions together, and ensure that partners will continue to collaborate in the future. 

Of course, compromises must be made purposefully: we need to be clear about the principals on which we won’t compromise and, even if socialism is not a prerequisite for coalition unity, maintain our independence to speak about socialism and recruit for DSA. 

Crosby’s account follows the structural decisions of the coalition rather than individual behavior, so we’d like to point to one more potential to build organizational capacity within coalitions: recruitment. Coalitions bring membership into contact with people from different backgrounds and orientations. This is an opportunity. Any interactions with non-socialists are a chance to recruit, however nominally. These recruits do not need to become red-dyed left militants (although that would be great!). Shifting their political orientation leftwards opens opportunities for future mobilization. This boils down to basic organizing tactics: seek out interaction; listen and try to understand their primary political concerns; and ‘recruit’ using their rhetoric and values, not yours. This perspective becomes even more relevant when looking at our next example, Socialists Everywhere.

Socialists Everywhere

Socialists Everywhere, a new project started in the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America (CDSA) Blue Line Branch, asks members to attend meetings for civic and quasi-civic institutions, such as the city councils, school boards, and neighborhood associations and…well…mainly, listen. After the event finishes up, members file reports that break down important information from the meeting. That’s it! No protests or leaflets required. Many descriptions of the program’s goals and structure come from an interview with Ramsin Canon from CDSA Blue Line Branch.

This simple program is an exciting innovation in building positional power. Internally, the ease of access and freedom from the campaign boom and bust cycle give members and potential leaders a simple, unintimidating project to build skills and confidence.

For the project to reach its full potential, we think members should meet people, offer ideas during civic forums, and even take on leadership positions within these civic and quasi-civic institutions. As the project and its participants mature, we expect that these more ambitious goals will materialize, allowing CDSA to build organic ties to the community. Building organic ties to the community sounds more like an over-scripted commercial sound-bite than a central political goal, but these communal ties are crucial political tools, allowing our organization to extend its reach outside of our membership and mobilize a much broader group.

Socialists Everywhere can build these communal ties by increasing visibility, building individual relationships, and constructing the foundations for bottom-up coalitions.

Visibility and Individual Relationships

Socialists Everywhere promotes CDSA as an interested and active organization. If members wearing CDSA swag sit in on group meetings, listening to the concerns of the community and volunteering to help, they’ve effectively proven our organization to be reliable, open, and invested in the problems of concerned workers. Appearance at these events also repositions CDSA as a coalition partner. If our members are attending the same events and listening to the same communal concerns, we no longer need to treat other groups as exclusive representatives. Instead, we’ve been there too. We’ve heard and shared the same problems. This increases our attractiveness as a coalition partner, home for new members, or simply a more powerful endorser of candidates or political goals. This is no small positional change, but promises to make CDSA an equal rather than junior partner in future alliances. 

Individual relationships are also crucial for increasing organizational capacity. With Socialists Everywhere, members can interface with people from different backgrounds and political orientations. More than that, these events are often at least nominally political and have to do with decisions about shared responsibilities and priorities. This is a great opportunity for our members to build networks outside of CDSA that can amplify political goals well past a typical member’s bubble of friends, family, and comrades.

Bottom-Up Coalitions

Socialists Everywhere may also improve the quality of the foundation of our coalitions. Now, it has only been around for a few months, so the effectiveness of coalition building through Socialists Everywhere remains to be seen, but the glimpses are promising. One example: a member attended a ward meeting where a tenant union announced their project and a related event. After the meeting, the member talked to some of the union folks and exchanged contact information. The member discussed their interaction with branch leadership and the union presented at a branch meeting and even took the opportunity to ask for volunteers and donations. This isn’t a full-scale coalition by any means, but the door is now open to future coordination.

This is what Canon would call the beginning of a bottom-up coalition, where a rank-and-file member first connects with members from another group. Leadership consent is still required (otherwise there would be no democratic accountability), but on-the-ground relationships constitute the first step. This is quite different from a leadership-based coalition, which depends on relationships between an organization’s leaders. Leadership-based coalitions are more fragile. Such a coalition is vulnerable to personality differences and leadership changes, dangers that are far less concerning when relationships also exist within the broader respective memberships. Last, when leader-based coalitions do take place, if there are organic ties to other organizations through rank-and-file members, membership is already, at least indirectly, involved and more likely to respond positively

Building a Base through Electoral Campaigns

Both the New Lynn Coalition and Socialists Everywhere seek to continually build networks within their cities and communities by working with people outside of their organization and respectfully listening to the needs and wants of partners and residents. This project format could be applied to other organizational action, particularly electoral campaigns. Typically, we regard them as win or lose, but these actions can be harnessed to build relationships and establish institutional strength in civil society. In addition to winning seats on councils and school boards, we should focus on expanding the ward IPO. 

Let’s say a DSA candidate gets 2,200 votes in a losing effort for city council. In doing our mass outreach and door-to-door work perhaps we have identified 500 home addresses that had positive responses to our issues and candidate. If we used a petition during the campaign, asking people to support one of our issues, we may also have a few hundred emails or phone numbers. So post-election, we have an immediate popular base of 2,200 with more than 500 already identified with contact information.

The election should not be the end, but the beginning. From programs such as Socialists Everywhere and canvasses, we will have learned the major concerns of our supporters. Now we can create a campaign to take to the ward, showing we are serious about issues and not just getting votes. First, we can contact the 200 or so people whose phone or email we have, asking them to come to a planning meeting at our IPO office. Perhaps we get 10 to 20 new people to show up who want to be activists. Now we’re in a position to go back to the 500 addresses of supporters with an enlarged activist core. And we build from there: turning supporters into activists, turning activists into DSA members. The result is an institutional structure led by socialists based in the ward’s working class. 

Positionally, such an approach would have an incredible impact. But, it must be pursued with the ideas of the New Lynn Coalition and Socialists Everywhere in mind. We must listen and learn from the people. What are their issues, not just the issues we think are important. Moreover, to pursue true long-term organizational strength, we need to create working relations with other progressive ward organizations and institutions, built on respect and common concerns.  

By rooting ourselves deeply in working class communities and integrating into local institutions, socialists can build positions of power in civil society. It’s not about one campaign or one election, but a strategy that can defend workers when the enemy is on the offensive, and turn our defense into mobilizations to expand democracy and contest for power. We can build socialist influence and leadership by working with all our friends and allies, using tactical alliances as well as building long-term relationships and recruiting members and building DSA as an organic expression of the multi-racial working class. That necessitates a long-term commitment for socialist to be everywhere, in our community, in our workplace, and in elections. There are no shortcuts. Preaching socialism in a “field of dreams” scenario in which “they will come” to our side won’t do. But being shoulder to shoulder in the daily battles for dignity, building those battles into institutional structures, and making those institutions a base for working class power is our road-map forward. 

The post Building Working Class Power in Civil Society appeared first on Midwest Socialist.