Portland DSA Celebrates Zohran Mamdani’s Historic Victory in NYC, Signals Parallel Path for Portland on Affordability Issues

PORTLAND, OR — The Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) today celebrated the historic election of Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York City, hailing it as a watershed moment for the socialist movement and evidence that a politics centered on working-class issues resonates with voters in major American cities, including Portland.

“The victory of Zohran Mamdani shows what is possible with grassroots energy and people power,” said Tiffany Koyama Lane, Portland City Council Vice President, District 3. “In Portland and across Oregon, we stand on the same side of the fight for: no-cost childcare, housing by and for the people, people over big banks and billionaires, dignity for everyone and protecting democracy. Zohran’s win proves that when we organize, regular working people can change the rules, and win a better world.”

“Mamdani’s victory is a clear sign that people want representatives who relentlessly and unapologetically fight for working class people, stand against genocide, and share a vision for a world where everyone lives a life of joy and dignity,” said Angelita Morillo, Portland City Councilor for District 3. 

Mamdani’s victory, powered by an army of volunteers and a platform of affordable housing, free transit, free childcare, and taxing the rich, demonstrates that voters demand concrete solutions to the affordability crisis. Here in Portland, DSA-endorsed city councilors are already advancing a similar agenda.

A Shared Vision for Governing

The policy priorities championed by Mamdani in New York mirror the work Portland’s socialist councilors are already advancing. In New York, Mamdani ran on a platform tailored to the needs of working people. Similarly, in Portland, DSA and our electeds are championing and defending universal Preschool for All, advocating for major expansions and improvements in public transit, recommitting the city to eliminating traffic deaths, advancing police accountability, funding our parks, exploring new models for social housing, taking on the fossil fuel industry, protecting sensitive habitat in Forest Park, affirming Portland’s Sanctuary City status, protecting Portlanders from ICE and Trump’s promised military invasion, and demolishing the false narratives of the Trump Administration on national television (1, 2).

Portland DSA has a long history of advocating for a progressive tax revenue program, famously encapsulated in its “Tax the Rich Portland” initiatives, which resulted in a successful universal preschool ballot measure This aligns directly with Mamdani’s pledge to fund social programs and public services by ensuring the wealthy pay their fair share.

“The same energy that elected Zohran Mamdani in New York is alive and well in Portland,” said Olivia Katbi, co-chair of Portland DSA. “For too long, our city has been told that corporate-friendly policies are the only way. Mamdani’s victory, and our own successes on the Portland City Council, prove that when you offer a clear, bold vision for a more affordable and just city, people will rally to it.”

Earlier this year, Portland DSA launched a new initiative called “The Family Agenda for Portland,” which aims to win policies that help families and children. Members have been canvassing for the Parks levy as the first official project under this campaign. The Family Agenda was inspired by one of Zohran’s campaign proposals earlier in the year, which promised “baby boxes” to all new parents in the city as part of a comprehensive Family Agenda for NYC.

Portland DSA’s Record of Action

With four members on the Portland City Council, Portland DSA has become a decisive force in city politics, setting the agenda and passing substantive policy changes. Key budget achievements include rerouting $1.8 million from the Golf Fund to parks maintenance and fully funding the city’s Small Donor Elections program. The socialist bloc also championed a move to divert $2 million earmarked for the Police Bureau to fund parks, reflecting a commitment to reallocating resources to community needs. 

Even where DSA priorities didn’t achieve council majorities during budget season, DSA electeds stood clearly for our values. Councilor Mitch Green led a charge to reallocate Prosper Portland’s “Strategic Investment Fund” to critical public services under threat, criticizing the development agency’s history of “directing public funds for unaccountable private profit-making.” Councilor Angelita Morillo proposed an amendment redirecting funding for 1 of Portland’s 20 encampment sweep teams to emergency rental assistance.

After budget season, Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane championed a unanimous council reaffirmation to Vision Zero, moving the head Vision Zero Staffer under the Deputy City Administrator and ensuring traffic deaths are responded to as seriously as any other public safety concern. Councilor Sameer Kanal led a resolution codifying our “Sanctuary City” reputation, prohibiting city employees from cooperating with ICE and directing city employees on how to engage with immigration enforcement. Council Morillo’s Detention Facility Impact Fee — which would disincentivize new detention facilities like the ICE facility on Macadam — will be considered by the city council this week. 

Portland DSA maintains its power through consistent street-level mobilization and a strong relationship between its members and its elected officials, ensuring accountability to the movement, not corporate donors. DSA‘s member base is expanding rapidly, because the organization produces results. 

Denouncing the Corporate Backlash: Portland Business Alliance Aims to Block “Socialist Majority”

This rising socialist influence has drawn the ire of Portland’s corporate establishment. The Portland Business Alliance has explicitly stated that its #1 goal is to “prevent a socialist majority” in the city council, a goal that is completely out of touch with the material needs of Portlanders who are struggling to keep up with housing and healthcare costs and protect their neighbors from ICE raids.

“This is not a surprise,” said Jesse Dreyer, a co-chair of Portland DSA’s electoral working group. “The Alliance represents the same corporate interests that Mamdani defeated in New York. They are threatened because we are proving that a city can be governed for the benefit of its working people, not for private profit. Their goal to block a socialist majority is an admission that our movement is growing and that their agenda is unpopular.”

Political staffer Doug Moore recently admitted that the PBA’s goal was to “stop DSA from taking over the council”, calling our commitment to bread-and-butter issues as an attempt “to take over the City Council and turn it into an ideological showcase for the rest of the country.” Similarly, District 2 Councilman Dan Ryan has repeatedly publicly questioned what the North star of the DSA aligned city councilors is. 

“The Portland Business Alliance and our local oligarchs are stuck in a self-serving echo chamber, advancing debunked arguments about tax flight and arguing that tax cuts for the rich will somehow help ordinary Portlanders who are suffering,” said Brian Denning, co-Chair of Portland DSA. “Both Zohran Mandani and Portland DSA are offering a new direction for city politics and the local economy, based on fair redistribution of wealth, functional public services, a healthy environment, and affordability for all.”

A Unified Movement for the Future

Mamdani’s victory in New York signals a national shift and provides a model for how socialists can win and govern major cities. The Portland DSA chapter, now recognized as a major power broker in the city, is committed to this same path.

“The future of Portland will be decided in the coming years,” said Mitch Green, Councilor for District 4.” We can choose a city managed for the wealthy and corporations, or we can follow the lead of New Yorkers and build a Portland for the many, not the few.”

The post An Historic Night for Socialism appeared first on Portland DSA.

Christopher Columbus is widely considered one of the greatest villains ever to set foot in the Americas. His crimes have been extensively documented by modern historians, and even his contemporaries were so disgusted by his behavior that he was returned to Spain to stand trial for his crimes as a governor in the so-called “New World.”

The myth of Columbus as a heroic explorer has been shattered, in Chicago as everywhere else. In July 2020, massive protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd led to the removal of the city’s public monuments to Columbus in Grant Park and Arrigo Park. The city announced earlier this year that these monuments will not be returned to public display.

The defense of Columbus represents a reactionary effort by a small minority of Chicagoans to launder the reputation of a murderer. This group seeks to use public land and funds to push a regressive, sanitized version of a history of unrelenting violence and oppression. The people of Chicago expressed their will that statues honoring Columbus be removed from the city’s parks, and the city’s elected officials have ratified that decision through peaceful, deliberative, and democratic action.

Unfortunately, another monument that advances that exact same mission of intimidation and historical whitewashing is still on display in Chicago to this day. It was gifted to the city by Benito Mussolini himself, and it lionizes a key architect of the original fascist movement in Italy: Italo Balbo.

—

Italo Balbo started his political career after World War I as an organizer of the fascist Blackshirts in Ferrara, where he and his men spent years terrorizing and murdering agricultural workers for attempting to unionize. He trained fascist thugs as strikebreakers, and they used extreme violence to reassert control of the countryside on behalf of wealthy landowners. Balbo himself was accused of ordering the brutal murder of anti-fascist priest Giovanni Minzoni, though he was acquitted of the crime in an Italian court after Mussolini took power.

In 1922, Balbo helped orchestrate Mussolini’s March on Rome, in which the future Duce threatened to launch a civil war unless the king of Italy appointed him as Prime Minister. The king relented, and Mussolini proceeded to use the power of the police and military to terrorize his enemies and establish an authoritarian state. Balbo was rewarded for his loyalty with a position as a member of Mussolini’s inner circle (a quadrumvir on the so-called “Grand Council of Fascism”) and as the head of Italy’s Royal Air Force, where he developed the country’s military air power in preparation for the Second World War. In a leadership shakeup in 1933, Mussolini appointed Balbo as Governor-General of Libya. He served there until his death in 1940, when poorly trained Italian forces shot down his plane in the mistaken belief that it was a British bomber. Allegations that Mussolini orchestrated Balbo’s death are unsubstantiated and likely untrue.

—

In 1933, Balbo personally flew across the Atlantic Ocean from Italy to Chicago, arriving with a fleet of twenty-four amphibious aircraft to visit the Chicago World’s Fair. The spectacle was well-received by the public, especially the Italian-American community of the city, and Mussolini saw it as an opportunity to propagandize in favor of fascism.

The following year, Mussolini shipped a Roman column to Chicago to commemorate the flight. On the base of the column, he wrote the following words in English and Italian (emphasis added): 

THIS COLUMN 
TWENTY CENTURIES OLD
ERECTED ON THE BEACH OF OSTIA 
PORT OF IMPERIAL ROME 
TO SAFEGUARD THE FORTUNES AND VICTORIES 
OF THE ROMAN TRIREMES
FASCIST ITALY BY COMMAND OF BENITO MUSSOLINI
PRESENTS TO CHICAGO 
EXALTATION SYMBOL MEMORIAL 
OF THE ATLANTIC SQUADRON LED BY BALBO
THAT WITH ROMAN DARING FLEW ACROSS THE OCEAN 
IN THE 11TH YEAR 
OF THE FASCIST ERA.

The text has since worn away from the base, but the monument has remained in Burnham Park for over ninety years. During Balbo’s visit to Chicago, the city chose to further honor Balbo by renaming Seventh Street as “Balbo Drive,” a fact that made Mussolini extremely jealous. Balbo’s flight drew explicit comparisons to Christopher Columbus at the time, and the statue of Columbus that formerly stood in Grant Park was dedicated in Balbo’s presence during the World’s Fair in 1933.

Balbo died before the United States entered the war in December 1941, so he never featured in anti-Axis propaganda as one of Mussolini’s vile toadies. This is likely what allowed the monument to slip through the cracks in the country’s united opposition to and hatred of European fascism.

—

Some of the positive characteristics extolled by Balbo’s defenders are not complete fabrications. By all historical accounts, Balbo was personable, courageous, adventurous, and sincere. He criticized Mussolini’s turn toward anti-Semitism, and he believed Italy’s alliance with Nazi Germany was a strategic mistake. He had a complicated relationship with Mussolini, and his political disagreements with the Duce became more pronounced in the final years of his life.

Fortunately for Balbo, his position in the regime afforded him the luxury of criticizing Mussolini in public. His victims in Ferrara and throughout Italy were not granted the same liberty. The crimes of the legions of jackboots he commanded are extensively documented, and Balbo is likely guilty of many acts of violence that don’t appear in the historical record. He also played a key role in amassing the fighters and bombers that later killed thousands of Allied servicemen as they liberated North Africa, Sicily, Naples, and Rome from fascist tyranny.

Balbo spent his term as a supposedly ‘moderate’ governor of Libya preoccupied with a project to ship tens of thousands of Italian settlers to the colony and eventually displace the colonized. He dreamt of an Italian empire stretching across the Mediterranean and East Africa, unconcerned with the ultimate fate of the non-citizen Arab, Berber, Black, and Jewish ‘subjects’ who were terrorized by the brutal colonial regime he helped oversee. Balbo was eager to criticize Mussolini’s alliance with Hitler only when he wasn’t rubbing elbows with the Führer himself on an official state visit to Nazi Germany.

Most importantly, Balbo orchestrated the destruction of democracy in Italy and was a senior minister in Mussolini’s fascist government. He never recanted his profoundly held belief in fascist ideology or his support for Mussolini. Nothing Balbo said or did during his lifetime can absolve him of the horrible crimes he committed.

—

There have been numerous attempts to remove the monument and rename Balbo Drive over the years, most recently in 2017 and 2020. A tiny minority of right-wing Chicagoans consistently turns out to defend the monument when it is threatened, and all City Council measures to remove the monument or rename the street have failed.

In 2018, a measure was introduced to the Chicago City Council to rename Balbo Drive as Ida B. Wells Drive. At the last minute, the Council caved to pressure from right-wing groups and chose to rename Congress Parkway instead.

In 2022, the Chicago Monument Project published a report that recommended the removal of seventeen monuments and works of public art in the city, including the Balbo Column. In their rationale for the removal of the column, the Monument Project stated:

This monument was a gift of the fascist government of Italy. According to historian John Mark Hansen, aviator Italo Balbo “was a leader of the movement’s paramilitary Blackshirts, one of the men who planned the insurrectional March on Rome to install Mussolini as Italy’s dictator and, as colonial governor of Libya, [and] a supporter of Italy’s forced annexation of Ethiopia.

The Brandon Johnson Administration pledged to follow the recommendations of the report upon his election in 2023, but there has been no movement on the Balbo question since.

Today, a tiny minority of Chicagoans defend the monument out of a strong but profoundly ahistorical sense of pride in Balbo’s accomplishment divorced from its context as an expression of fascist state power. Balbo’s apologists have aligned themselves with a nasty flavor of right-wing Italian-American civic pride that attempts to excuse his numerous crimes and his lifelong disdain of democracy and basic human rights.

In one guest essay written for the Monument Report, a defender of Columbus and Balbo writes “These monuments are not, nor were they intended to be, political statements. It is senseless to try and make them into a political agenda.” Indeed, most of the attempts to sanitize Balbo’s legacy seek to bring him out of the political sphere and turn him into a benign cultural figure, an Italian hero who was, at worst, ‘a product of his time.’

This is an extreme distortion of Balbo’s legacy. Mussolini saw Balbo’s flight as an explicit exercise in fascist propaganda. He followed the progress of Balbo’s ‘expedition’ with great interest, and Balbo’s men took careful note of the presence of a small number of anti-fascist protesters in Chicago and New York. The flight was an explicit attempt to legitimize Mussolini’s totalitarianism in the eyes of the American public, and the continued presence of the monument is evidence of how thoroughly this effort succeeded.

—

Balbo’s values and life’s work should be reprehensible to any person who believes in free expression, democracy, an independent civil society, and freedom from political coercion. Democratic rights are under dire threat in America, and our city’s official valorization of a proud fascist has never been more embarrassing.

Between the ongoing authoritarian takeover of the United States by the Trump Administration, the continuing death and destruction in Palestine, and a number of other emergencies at home and around the world, leftists in Chicago have had a lot of other things to focus on in recent years. But symbols matter a great deal, and our city’s continued veneration of an avowed enemy of everything we as socialists hold dear is an insult we must not abide.

Fortunately, there is a simple solution to the present state of affairs. The city should give Balbo the same treatment it gave to Columbus in 2020: rename Balbo Drive and loan or donate the column to a private historical society.

Chicagoans have the right to honor whomever they like on their own property, no matter how vile their hero’s actions were in life. Earlier this year, the Columbus statue formerly standing in Arrigo Park was loaned by the city to the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans.

I, for one, think the Balbo column would look wonderful right next to it.

—

Markus van Drenthe is a democratic socialist and anti-fascist living in Chicago. Much of the information on Balbo in this essay was sourced from the biography Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life by Claudio G. Segrè (University of California Press, 1987).

The post In Chicago, The Legacy of Christopher Columbus Lives On in Italo Balbo appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

In 1847, the Choctaw Nation donated $170 (almost $7,000 in today’s money) to a small coastal town in Ireland called Midleton. Ireland had been facing a famine and a British economic blockade for two years. Despite facing their own recent genocide that killed over 2,000 Choctaw, the nation donated what money they could to the people of Ireland.

Over a century later, the people of Midleton realized the aid had come from the Choctaw and recognized their shared histories of forced famine and ethnic cleansing. In 1995, former Irish president Mary Robinson visited the Choctaw Nation (now in Oklahoma), reestablishing ties between the two nations. Two decades later, an Irish artist named Alex Pentek created the stainless steel structure “Kindred Spirits”, which is located in Midleton’s Bailick Park in commemoration of the Choctaw’s aid. Just last year, the Choctaw commissioned their own sculpture, titled “Eternal Heart,” by Sam Stitt, an enrolled Choctaw artist.

These two indigenous peoples and their shared history reminded me of the recent Global Sumud (meaning “resilience” in Arabic) flotilla and the nearly 500 participants from 44 countries who sailed across the Mediterranean to break the illegal Israeli blockade on Gaza. Twenty-two participants from the United States sailed with the flotilla. The flotilla was established in July of this year to denounce the genocide in Gaza and call on the international community to help Palestinians in desperate need of food, medicine, and other basic supplies.

The flotilla, however, did not reach Gaza. It was illegally intercepted by the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF). While one of the boats, the Mikeno, did make it past the Gaza blockade, it too was boarded nine miles off the coast of Gaza. The participants were arrested, taken to the port of Ashdod, paraded around by far-right settler and Jewish Power party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir for Israeli social media, and shipped off to the Ktzi’ot Prison, located in the occupied Negev desert. For almost a week, the families of the American participants did not know where they were, how long they would be held, or their condition. The U.S. consulate did little to provide aid, and participants were prevented from speaking to legal counsel. 

On October 7th, 2025, Nelson Mandela’s grandson and Sumud participant Mandla Mandela posted a video about his release from Ktzi’ot. American activist David R.K. Adler could be seen in the background of the video. A few days before, X, the mother of one of the participants, received word from the Japanese consulate in Jordan that the Americans were deported from Israel to Jordan and allowed to return home. 

On October 8, five of the American participants made it back to the U.S. and flew back to the O’Hare International Airport. Al Hub, a Palestinian-led youth forum based in Bridgeview, or “Little Palestine” in Chicago, formed a welcome committee for those returning. The action was originally organized for Illinoisan and former Marine Jessica Clotfelter. I was one of the people who turned out in support of the returning Sumud participants. Taking the CTA Red and Blue lines, I made my way to the international terminal (Terminal 5) to join the welcome committee for Jessica Clotfelter, Tommy Marcus (a.k.a. Quentin Quarantino on Instagram), Stephen Wahab, Logan Hollarsmith, and Paul Reid. Jessica’s family, her parents, brother, and cousin, and Stephen’s brother anxiously waited for their return.

The Sumud quintet came from across America. Stephen and Paul are from Oregon, Tommy from California, Logan from Arizona, and Jessica from Illinois. Not all of them were on the same ship during the flotilla. Stephen, a Palestinian-American, was aboard the Alma with activists Greta Thunberg, Thiago de Avila, and Mandla Mandela. Paul was sailing on the Inna with a mostly Spanish and French crew. The Ohwayla hosted Logan (who served as one of its captains), Jessica, and Tommy, as well as fellow American activists David R.K. Adler and Greg Stoker. 

It was around half an half-hour before we saw the five heroes emerge from Exit A in Terminal 5. The Sumud quintet was not expecting this small but mighty welcome home. Paul clutched his heart as he walked towards our group, clearly not expecting such hospitality after nearly a week in an Israeli internment camp.

Jessica and Stephen’s reunions with their families were some of the most heartfelt moments; you could feel the emotion between the families as they were finally reunited with their daughter, sister, brother, or cousin. Al Hub bought bouquets for Jessica’s mother to hand to her and individual flowers for the rest of the quintet. It was touching to witness families reuniting after the wrenching uncertainty of the past week. Tommy, Paul, and Logan did not expect a grand reception just for them.

Once greetings were done and calm settled over the group, some of the gathered community members, including myself and independent journalist Jackie B., asked the five activists questions about their journey to Gaza, their treatment under Israeli captivity, and their eventual release into Jordan.

Tommy Marcus took the lead in answering the first set of questions, as the rest of the group were jet-lagged and still processing the experience. “Yes, we are back in the United States, even after our own government and consulate failed us,” he said. Marcus described how the group was illegally captured by the Israeli Navy in international waters and taken to the Port of Ashdod. There, they and the rest of the Sumud participants were placed in front of Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right Israeli politician, leader of the Otzma Yehudit or “Jewish Power” party, and a known settler in the occupied West Bank. There, Israeli military media showed Ben-Gvir calling them “terrorists” and “Hamas.” This is ironic because Ben-Gvir is a Kahanist, who had a portrait of Baruch Goldstein, the perpetrator of the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs massacre, where 27 Palestinian Muslims were murdered, in his house.

After the Israeli propaganda tour, or hasbara, they were then shipped off to the Negev to Ktzi’ot, the largest Israeli prison, or an internment camp, as David Adler called it in this “Democracy Now!” interview. According to Tommy Marcus, the camp holds thousands of Palestinians, including hundreds of children. Jessica and Logan chimed in, saying that men and women were separated into different isolation blocks and away from the Palestinian hostages. All five confirmed that some of the Sumud participants were held in 1 by 2 meter cells (3.3 feet by 6.6 feet) for up to 72 hours, a practice widely condemned by human rights groups. 

Marcus continued by describing how IOF guards would hold guns to their heads, try to break them by taking away medicine such as insulin or, in Tommy’s case, Lexapro, and zip-tying their hands behind their backs. Logan Hollarsmith, a captain of the Ohwayla, reported that they could hear the screams of Palestinians despite the isolation, and that there is a sub-level beneath the cellblock they were held in via other Sumud participants, who were familiar with the prison.

During this time, Jessica Clotfelter’s attorney, Farah Chalisa, attempted multiple times to locate Jessica by contacting the U.S. consulate, Jessica’s state representative, Mary E. Miller, and other Israeli and American officials. Representative Miller is a far-right Republican elected to serve Illinois’ Congressional District 15. She said in 2021 that “…Hitler was right on one thing: he said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.’” Ironically, when asked about Jessica’s captivity in occupied Bedu-Palestinian lands, Miller’s office responded to a request for comments by stating  that she “support[s] the right for Israel to exist.”

So how did the quintet make it out of Ktzi’ot and end up in Jordan? As mentioned before, participants’ families heard about it from the Japanese Consulate, one of them being Stephen’s brother, who found out through another Sumud participant’s mother that the Americans were being released into Jordan. 

There is only one open land route between the  West Bank and Jordan: the Allenby Bridge, named after Gen. Edmund Allenby, who led British colonial forces tasked with supporting the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans in World War I. When the Sumud members were thrown into a blacked-out IOF van bound for Jordan, Tommy Marcus said he thought “…he and David Adler were going to be black bagged or disappeared and that nobody knew where they were headed”. It was Palestinian-American activist Stephen Wahab who caught a glimpse of a sign pointing to the Allenby Bridge in Arabic through a small sliver of exposed window.

In Jordan, the Sumud members were provided a 5-star hotel and traditional Jordanian/Palestinian food. The American participants stated their consulate did not provide for their comforts in Jordan and that these amenities came from the Jordanian government. After six days in prison, the quintet finally had a warm bed and food; they didn’t have to share the toilet bowl in the cellblock for water and sleep on a hard floor anymore. Before going to an official interview with Jackie B. and Fox News 32, Tommy Marcus said they, the Sumud Five, appreciated the global community for amplifying their captivity, but highlighted the importance of continuing to focus on the genocide in Gaza and the Palestinian hostages from Gaza and the West Bank, especially with the ongoing ceasefire Phase 1 talks going on at the time.

As I made my way back home with Jackie B. and Tommy, who was catching a connecting flight to L.A., I thought about the parallels between my Irish ancestors and the Palestinians. With similar experiences, they face or have faced ongoing famines and genocides. As Jackie and I sat on the Blue Line train, I wondered where future generations might place a sculpture commemorating the flotilla’s actions for the Palestinian people in Gaza. Will there be greater cultural exchanges between the Palestinians and the international community? When and how will the genocide and blockade end? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that the resilience of the Palestinian people will live on as they struggle to finally be free.

Though the five Americans we greeted at O’Hare are now safely home, the danger for other activists continues. As of press time, there is one participant from Spain, Reyes Rigo Cervilla, still being held in Israeli captivity. He is imprisoned alongside participants in the recent flotilla “Thousands Madleens to Gaza” that sailed after the Sumud. We stand in solidarity with him and all who sacrifice in the name of a just peace for the Palestinian people.

I cannot begin to describe the bravery of the Sumud quintet had for joining a global flotilla sailing to Gaza to bring aid to the Palestinians. I see very clearly the parallels between the Global Sumud and its heroes and the Great Hunger, which my own family experienced in nineteenth-century Ireland. Even after hundreds of years, colonial tactics remain the same. While there is an ocean between our five heroes and Gaza or the Choctaw and Ireland, there is hope, solidarity, and resilience between all of us. Despite the current situation in Gaza and the horrible violence elsewhere around the world (in Sudan, the Congo, Kashmir, Myanmar, Ukraine, etc.), everyone can do their part, no matter how small. May we all live to see a free Palestine and where all international struggles and the oppressed are free from their shackles of Western imperialism.

The post Famines and Flotillas: From Ireland to Palestine  appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

Hours of testimony provided to the DC Commission on Human Rights revealed an unceasing tapestry of human rights violations committed by ICE, MPD and other federal agents.

Statement from the North NJ DSA Executive Committee Working-class people in Jersey City were inspired by the platforms of two democratic socialists, Jake Ephros and Joel Brooks, and sent both […]

River Valley DSA is proud to announce that our candidates for local office in Agawam and Amherst, Tom Hendrickson and Jill Brevik, have won their elections. Tom is a tireless fighter for the working-class of Agawam who has spent his time in office fighting for green energy, public school funding and government transparency. Jill is […]

Happy Halloween, socialists! Have fun out there tonight, and if you're dressed up as a zombie, remember only to eat the rich.

Soon enough, it'll be back to business: for the next couple weeks, we'll be getting ready for our annual chapter convention on Sunday, Nov. 16, at the Old Labor Hall (46 Granite St.) in Barre. There, we'll elect new officers and set priorities for 2026.

No event plays a bigger role in shaping the direction of our chapter's work. We need your attendance!

And if you're a member, you still have time to declare your candidacy for an officer position or to submit a resolution or bylaws amendment. We'd like to receive proposals by Nov. 3 in order to give ourselves time to put together a convention bulletin.

RSVP here. We'll start with a potluck at 11 a.m. Carpools will be available. See our flyer and a couple photos from last year below.

Meanwhile, those of you who live in Burlington may have heard that GMDSA member Marek Broderick has announced his bid for reelection as Ward 8's city councilor. If you missed the launch party last week at Folino's Pizza, you can learn more about Marek's campaign on his website.

Below, you'll find a smaller-than-usual calendar of GMDSA committee meetings. That's because all of our committees must be reauthorized annually at the chapter convention: after Nov. 16, we technically don't know which committees will or won't exist.

If you want to create a new one, you can do so by submitting a resolution. You can email us here if you need any help writing one or have any other questions about the convention. See you on Nov. 16!

GMDSA MEETINGS & EVENTS
🚲 Our Urbanism Committee will meet on Monday, Nov. 3, at 6 p.m. on Zoom.

🧑‍🏭 The next meeting of our Labor Committee will take place on Monday, Nov. 10, at 6 p.m. on Zoom.

🔨 Talk about your job and learn about shop-floor organizing from peers at Workers' Circle (co-hosted by the Green Mountain IWW) on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month, including Nov. 12, at 6 p.m. at Migrant Justice (179 S. Winooski Ave., Burlington).

‼️ Again, our annual chapter convention will take place on Sunday, Nov. 16, at Barre's Old Labor Hall (46 Granite St.) at 11 a.m.

STATE AND LOCAL NEWS
📰 Burlington band Marxist Jargon has released a new album, to each according to their needs.

📰 The Vermont State Employees' Association staged a demonstration in Waterbury against Gov. Scott, who has ordered the state's remote workers to return to the office by Dec. 1.

COMMUNITY FLYERS

By: Jane Slaughter

This article represents the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of The Detroit Socialist or Metro Detroit DSA as a whole.

A hot take on Zohran Mamdani’s win: Zohran won while leaning into socialism, not downplaying it.

Partly this wasn’t his choice: the media picked up on his DSA membership and hammered him with it. But over the course of the campaign, Zohran actually became more outspoken about being a democratic socialist as he went along, far more than just having the DSA logo on his literature.

Does this mean that the million New Yorkers who voted for Zohran are all pro-socialist? No, but it does mean that they weren’t scared off by Zohran’s allegiance to socialism — and that they appreciated his honesty and forthrightness, his refusal to back off and start using weasel words.

“I am young. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this,” he said in his victory speech.

That’s similar to Bernie in 2016 and 2020. Bernie’s version of socialism often seemed to be synonymous with the New Deal (so, not actually getting rid of capitalism) — but people appreciated his consistency over the years and, again, his refusal to let the red-baiters back him off.

Around the country, DSA often backs candidates who are kind of progressive but don’t openly identify as socialists. We call their campaigns “socialist” because we’re supporting them, but their platforms aren’t distinguishable from any good-government pol–certainly not rising to the level of the life-changing planks of Zohran’s platform. (Imagine what it would mean for an average family to suddenly be able to get free childcare! To have their rent frozen! To get to work reliably on time! It’s still capitalism, but it does inspire ordinary people to think they matter.)

For me, Zohran’s win means we can be bolder in our electoral runs. We don’t have to hide our socialist light under a bushel. We can lift our constituents’ aspirations higher.

Zohran didn’t talk about the “middle class.” He talked to the working class.

BUILD IT FOREVER

Another crucial point about the campaign (and there are many) is that Zohran explicitly asked his army of volunteers not to just go home and rest after Election Day. “This is part of a lifelong struggle,” he told his volunteers. “Not an electoral one. You have joined a movement for the rest of your life. Now, however you want to be a part of that movement is your decision, just as long as you continue to be a part of it.”

That will be the hard part–convincing tens of thousands of people that they have a part to play in winning the Zohran agenda, and finding meaningful ways for all those people to participate now that the canvassing is done. Not him, us!

Several New York DSAers have floated ideas for how that could happen:

“Rather than disbanding his massive volunteer machine after November 4 — as is the norm in electoral operations — Zohran’s team could transition it into a broader organizing apparatus to help secure his agenda under the banner of a broad new campaign, something like a Movement for an Affordable New York (MANY).” — Eric Blanc, Wen Zhuang and Emily Lemmerman

“We propose the formation of a proto-party like what Mayor Bernie Sanders built in Burlington — a place where tens of thousands of volunteers can go to keep organizing beyond the November election.” — Jeremy Gong and Oren Schweitzer

“A group of unions and community organizations came together to form a citywide alliance called the People’s Majority Alliance — to be ready to go into the streets, to lobby the city council and state legislature, and to keep up the organizing we need to bring a bold agenda into being.” — Stephanie Luce

“This is a great moment to get serious about organizing thousands of workers who want a union and don’t have one.” — Brandon Mancilla

Some of their ideas are more exciting than others. We sure don’t want to replicate the tired formula of an NGO-driven “table” where the heads of nonprofits meet to speak on behalf of their supposed (unorganized) constituents. I hope and assume NYC DSA is aggressively recruiting those who volunteered on the campaign–and will invent creative campaigns both for them and for tens of thousands of other New Yorkers. I stand in awe of their audacity in beginning this campaign and their skill in growing it huge.

Finally, just a quote from Zohran Mamdani, who cited Eugene Debs in his victory speech: “The truth is as simple as it is nonnegotiable: we are all allowed freedom. Each one of us, the working people of this city, the taxi drivers, the line cooks, the nurses, all those seeking lives of grace, not greed — we all get to be free.”

Jane Slaughter is a member of Metro Detroit DSA and a retired Editor for Labor Notes.

---

Zohran Won While Leaning into Socialism, Not Downplaying It was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Democratic Socialist Kelsea Bond was just elected to the Atlanta City Council. Kelsea is a long-time DSA member and organizer. For many years, they have worked closely with local labor unions to expand workers’ rights on picket lines, at sip-ins and community meetings, in marches, and inside and outside of the State Capitol. They have canvassed for reproductive justice and advocated for the City to fund life-saving abortion care. They have fought to Stop Cop City and instead fund public services, build affordable housing, and expand mass transit. Our Chapter is immensely proud of their victory, as well as the work of the hundreds of volunteers and Atlanta DSA members who made this historic win possible.

For months, our members knocked doors and talked to District 2 residents about the issues that matter to working people — affordable housing, green public transit, and an economy for the 99%. The success that came from this massive effort proves that these bread-and-butter issues are broadly and deeply popular — even here in the deep south, even in a city whose government too often bends to corporate interests and the capitalist class.

This people-powered campaign was about standing up to billionaire commercial property owners who aren’t paying their fair share in taxes, and colluding landlords who are jacking up our rent year after year. It was about closing Atlanta’s wealth gap, which is one of the highest in the nation, by fighting for workers’ rights and a guaranteed living wage. It was about protecting the trans and immigrant members of our community, who are under attack by the fascist Trump administration and the Republican-controlled State government.

It was about building greener, more resilient city infrastructure that can withstand climate disaster and make Atlanta a more convenient and affordable place to call home. It was about ensuring that no Atlanta resident is without housing, healthcare, and a truly democratic say in how our city is run. We plan to continue our fight for working-class Atlantans alongside proud DSA member and Atlanta City Councilmember Kelsea Bond this spring, and we’re bringing the movement into City Hall with us.

Help us maintain our momentum and continue our work to make Atlanta more affordable, equitable, and safe for the 99%. This election is only the beginning. From here, we’ll continue relentlessly organizing to build a mass movement for working people.

Get involved today with Atlanta DSA to be a part of this fight, and win the socialist future workers deserve: atldsa.org/organize

The Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are joining local union leaders in calling on the Milwaukee Common Council to include a raise for city workers in the upcoming city budget.

The call comes after members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union working across multiple departments in the city of Milwaukee said they are supporting an omnibus package of amendments that includes a 3% raise for all city workers and a 4% raise for city workers who live in the city, a compromise that will slow the erosion of workers’ quality of life as it fails to meet cost-of-living increases brought on by inflation.

“This campaign is a first step toward obtaining economic justice for some of the hardest-working people in Milwaukee,” Ian Gunther, Chief Steward of AFSCME Local 47, said. “At both of the public hearings on the 2026 budget, city workers gave their personal accounts of how they are struggling to make ends meet while providing critical city services and working on crucial city infrastructure. The members of the common council rely on the labor of DNS employees to take care of their constituents’ issues, yet some DNS employees work a second job just to get by; Milwaukee residents rely on Water Repair Workers to get safe drinking water, and yet only a couple years ago, many of those workers banded together in a sick-out to draw attention to their punishing working conditions and low pay—all this, while the city administration failed to provide any raise in last year’s budget.”

The omnibus amendment to the 2026 budget proposes to give city workers a compromise raise and gives city leaders the chance to pay workers wages near what those same workers made last year, before the most recent round of inflation.

“As a Socialist elected official, my office stands with the workers of the City of Milwaukee,” Alderman Alex Brower, the sole DSA-endorsed member of the Common Council, said. “It’s time for this city to appreciate its workers by giving them a well-deserved raise.”

DSA organizers are asking their members to push their alders to support the raise amendment on Budget Adoption day, November 7.

“While the police demand a 15.75% raise and threaten our city with an invasion by the National Guard, our city workers are asking for the first real cost-of-living adjustment in years,” Autumn Pickett, Co-Chair of Milwaukee DSA, said. “Our workers deserve more: I’m proud of DSA-elected Alderman Alex Brower for his proactive conversations with city workers ahead of the budget process to understand the real needs of our community, and I commend the rest of the budget committee for pushing these raises forward to the whole of the common council. Milwaukeeans are paying attention and will remember any alder who votes against the working people who make our city run.”

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