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.

By Triangle DSA Socialist Feminist Working Group

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

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

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

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

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

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