Trump relies on anti-immigrant rhetoric to score points with its base, leaving workers to defend each other on the job. Here are proven ways to do it.

The post How to debunk anti-immigrant myths at work appeared first on EWOC.

We offer you these political cartoons from contributor Vernon S, please enjoy and share.

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The post Political Cartoons, February 2026 appeared first on Pine & Roses.

Flagstaff DSA’s successful campaign against the surveillance contract shows that organizing can push back against rising repression.

The post “Flock Out of Flag” appeared first on Democratic Left.

By: Travis Wayne

Loubna Mrie was marching up the hill in a sweeping blizzard in Vermont the first time I met her. Mrie’s first words: “I have bagels.” She handed us a large box of bagels she carried as an offering from a famous New York shop to our student organizing committee. 

Mrie, then at New York University, had crossed state lines to be a guest speaker and workshop facilitator in the symposium we organized to connect students and domestic movement activists with Syrian revolutionaries in shared talks and workshops on organizing tactics. It was 2017.

In the pages of Defiance, bearing bagels becomes more symbolic: characteristic of a change in the definition of home that seems to represent a change for Mrie, who cracks jokes about “New Yorkers’ pride in bagels and their ignorance of what is happening on our side of the world” when she first arrives in the city. After surviving one soul-crushing loss after another in service to the Syrian cause, where the big tent popular movement led by civil society leaders and godfathered by long-term socialist thinkers like Yassin al-Haj Saleh was rapidly engulfed, ravaged, and co-opted in a liquid imperialist struggle between five colonial powers, Mrie realizes the extent of her loss with the acceptance of a new future:

“It is time for me to let go of Syria and consider New York my new home. This realization gradually helps me settle. I first notice that my mindset has changed when someone asks for my phone number, and I realize that I have it memorized. When people stop me for directions on the subway platform, I no longer avoid them and keep walking like I used to; now, I can give them an answer without a map.”

Loubna Mrie’s story is testament to one Syrian experience of revolution and exile, but its themes resonate on levels far deeper than the story of any given political struggle. Mrie’s memoir is a fiercely personal testimony of the human experience of surviving struggle itself. Despite far more hellish material conditions, organizers today can see in Mrie’s experiences ghosts of our own: displacements, resolutions, family losses, revolutionary relationships, political factions, half-homes seized from under you, political opponents with far more power, manipulators and opportunists, coping with the aftermaths of campaigns – and death. Over time, lots of death. 

After describing the unique placement of the Alawite minority in the Assads’ governing political base, positioning her own lived experience within the social and political context of Syria on the eve of revolution, Loubna Mrie’s story ramps up in the household of a tyrant who lords over her household almost as much as Hafez al-Assad. “When we did everything right, we always seemed to have done something wrong” as Loubna and her mother chewed quieter and dodged phones flying just to keep the peace in the home. Abuse becomes clearer than the sun. 

The shadow of Loubna’s father stalks the pages of the story far beyond the first ones. “My father’s ability to end lives was what had lifted him and his brothers out of poverty,” from an experience of the colonized working class of midcentury Syria to believing that “poor people are just jealous of us.” Following her family is to follow the story of the consolidation of a particular political rule in Syria. Mrie’s father’s violence becomes the commodified labor needed to transport social fortunes, for which her family is paid handsomely with vast estates of national wealth. Her uncle Wahib is just one beneficiary of Hafez’s rule when he becomes the Syrian “king of steel” overseeing hundreds of workers. Women in her family received next to nothing.

Joining an uprising – and thus rejecting her conservative background for the possibility of a new world – entails deep loss for Loubna just shy of twenty. As an Alawite organizer within the strategically big tent multiethnic movement, Mrie sits in rooms filled with smoke and photos of freedom fighters; argues against conservative intellectuals that the lower classes were not too sectarian for democratic rule; laughs with songwriters cutting their hair while recording songs mocking the military; and inspires, and is inspired by, movement journalists who believe that “documenting the government’s brutality … is the first step towards stopping it.” She organizes distros and pools funds for local civic organizing projects and blocks roads so “people at the intersection are forced to look, read, and witness the courage of the few:” observation and participation, bold action to inspire mass action. She hides her face with a scarf at meetings with ululations that shake the air as organizers blanket the mosques (each Friday, imbued with significance) as organizing spaces, public squares too highly policed. 

As Mrie’s roles transitions within the movement she dedicates herself to, she goes out of her way to document municipal elections held against all odds, the first time in a generation for people to experience direct shaping of any aspect of their lives in what Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau) leader Riad al-Turk called the Kingdom of Silence: 

“The next day, Mezar and I join Monzer to film the election of the city council. Despite the constant air strikes, a few dozen people are gathered in a warehouse. They’ve bundled up against the cold and drawn their scarves tight over their heads. The air inside smells of fresh paint and exhaust from the diesel heaters burning in each corner. The windows are sweating, and the revolutionary flag is nailed to the wall behind the four candidates for office.”

Loubna eyewitnesses the noble spirit undergirding so much revolutionary activity. As she notices Kurdish migrant worker shoe shiners amidst the Syrian working class not visible within segregated urban enclaves, the mass action all around her against brutal repression inspires her to imagine new creativities to contribute to the new world:

“A popular chant around this time is for a city called Amuda, an iconic village in the Kurdish areas, but a town so isolated that most people have to spend some time searching for it on a map when they first hear the chant. Its protesters are famous for their signs that carry quotes and poems from the Spanish Civil War… 

I want to go. I could shoot a short documentary, I think, showing how a small Kurdish town is teaching us, through their signs, about world history and the revolutions and poets of generations past.”

Like any organizer, critiques of her own movement sprout in Mrie’s mind with each successive month, year, campaign, lived moment. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) became so dependent on funders, Mrie notes, that they turned a blind eye on Turkish involvement in the kidnapping of their own founding leader – a complete loss of the soul of the militias, an early sign of their oblivion. She lambasts those that call for imperialist intervention out of desperation. Even though Gulf country funders “just want a Sunni government to replace the Alawite one,” the most cynical movement leaders trade everything for money. The Syrian National Council is an establishmentarian “hotel opposition,” ripped for “friending us on Facebook just so we can mock them,” while the exiled reduced to the status of Syrian refugee in the eyes of Europe are asked how “‘the revolution in Berlin’ is going.” 

The nations expecting Syrian gratitude for basics are not spared Loubna’s wrath: “the Lebanon experienced by rich Syrians is not the same as the one experienced by the poor.”

Loubna also sees the personal horrors, how tragedy can destroy individuals in movement:

“It would take me years to understand that, under pressure, under the fear of death by execution, by torture, by bombing, people can release the monster they’ve spent most of their lives repressing. I didn’t know then that almost every marriage, every friendship that I saw blooming around us in Damascus during this time would die. The two couples that went to jail together and married right after they were released. The girl who was so scared her partner would be taken away by the police that she got pregnant just to preserve something of his smell. Or the girl whose boyfriend’s family rejected her because she was not Sunni, and who agreed to elope with him because the whole country was revolting against injustice, so why couldn’t they? Even Samar and her partner’s relationship would eventually collapse under the strain of exile and the guilt Amer was talking about. So many love stories. All of them decimated, just like our hopes of what Syria would become.”

Loubna copes with the loss of so many: so many lost friends, but also lost lovers – most brutally, Peter Kassig, a U.S. medical worker abducted by ISIS and executed by the fascists. Her partner’s murder isn’t the only one that carves a void into her life. Even movements can’t shelter us from the grief of survival, especially for someone like Mrie, who lost a whole world for a new one – only to end up lost, far from home, making a new home. 

In the end, the killer that stalks the pages of Defiance from its beginning doesn’t just murder her mother who begs her to come home; he murders her dream of what home is, till she makes it anew. But the shadow in her family is not just her own, we learn, as one of many final horrors drop in the life of the organizer. When Mrie reveals rumors of Ba’ath Party founder and early leader Salah al-Din al-Bitar’s assassination, we see just how far the shadow could extend.

Defiance stands out because of its imagery: the kunafeh sizzling on copper plates, the wistful lanes of cities, its diligent documenting of the horrific spiraling of the Syrian Revolution beyond the control of any individual. But Defiance also stands out for its insights and foresights, where comrades who end up shot in the head warn of black flags replacing the green of the revolution and of a different kind of regime to come out of the militant nihilism the movement descends into: a warning that foreshadows the massacres of Druze and of Alawites at the hands of post-Assad government actors and militias given implicit license to kill, as well as the assault on the socialist feminist autonomous zone of Rojava, which has (for now) averted all-out war in its stand-off with the consolidating state.

Read Defiance to dream, to cry, to feel – and to witness, through her own words, the experience of a fellow comrade who lost a whole world to win a world. Most of all: read Defiance, to survive and to fight, in spite of it all. 

Defiance: A Memoir of Awakening, Rebellion, and Survival in Syria is scheduled to be published by Penguin Random House on February 24, 2026. 

Travis Wayne is the managing editor of Working Mass.

The post Losing Your Whole World To Win a World – A Review of Defiance by Loubna Mrie appeared first on Working Mass.

by Emerson Shaw

The government and ICE are using the threat of deportation to strike fear into our hearts. It is because they want to stop people and workers like us from working together — from trying to create genuine positive material change in our lives and workplaces. How and why does the owning class align with and use the state to prevent our unity? They know that when we are divided is when we are most exploitable.

They want to convince us that immigrants and citizens are somehow fundamentally different, despite immigrants living and working in the same community as us. They want us to think that immigrants are aliens or foreigners, when they call the same cities home. The ruling class enforces a border and ever-stricter legal barriers on movement from country to country to keep us divided, when the only real difference between citizens and immigrants is that immigrants are forced into fear of deportation should they speak up or try to organize when their employers or the state exploit them.

While the extraction of labor value is inherent to capitalism, immigrants are much more exploited, being paid less and subjected to significantly worse conditions.

Immigrants are forced into submission and squeezed for every last droplet of profit.

Every moment they step outside, there could be a ‘legally’ armed swarm of masked bandits to abduct them.

This is not acceptable.

This is fascism, and this is our reality.

The owning class has a long history of implementing the divide and conquer strategy towards workers, legally and socially supporting racial segregation, and racializing immigrant groups as somehow different from citizens. It has been done to exploit existing populations, as with Irish immigrants entering into “whiteness” to gain a position of social superiority over Black workers. It has been done to exploit incoming populations, as with Chinese immigrants in California during the 19th century. This strategy has been used repeatedly, around the United States and worldwide. Our history is a history of exploitation fueled by the profit motive.

Let us consider why there are so many immigrants here from Latin America today. What economic and personal hardship could they be fleeing, or what greater opportunity does the U.S. provide?

Consider that the U.S. has repeatedly destabilized Latin America for centuries. The U.S. has sent its agents to coup any government that might turn against U.S. hegemony. It has turned Latin America into an economy of extraction, with resources being exported and very little money flowing back in.

U.S. imperialism, another extension of capitalism’s need to expand and find more exploitable methods to drive higher profit margins, has created the migration that the imperialists and fascists now portray as invasion.

We created this displacement crisis, and because climate change disproportionately affects the overexploited global south, there will be significantly more people seeking refuge and a place to start over. 

Yet the U.S. stops immigrants at our arbitrary border and says, “Even if you enter, you will not be free.”

You are marked for life, and unless you want ICE to come knocking on your door, you can never protest, you can never fight back. 

You will never be free.

Never forget that those who endlessly scapegoat immigrants for all of the inevitable horrors of capitalism are the cause of their own problem. Capitalism is a gluttonous system. It cannot help but decay, because infinite growth is not possible, when there is nobody left to exploit here or abroad, and when all limited resources are inevitably extracted.

First, fascists find a target, be it immigrants, queer people, or any marginalized group. Then, the fascists attack those groups because it is an easy narrative to say: “Immigrants are the ones taking your jobs and bringing wages down.” The narrative that immigrants drive down wages because “they will work for less” has to be defeated. Immigrants do not voluntarily choose to work for less than the full value of their labor; exploitative work is the only option offered to them. Additionally, wages are only “brought down” when a manager or a member of the owning class chooses to lower them.

It is easy to blame every societal problem on already marginalized groups, because it gives the masses an easy out, a narrative to follow, rather than forcing themselves to come to terms with the full scale of their oppression. It is easy for the fascists to create their own “problem” and then use the promise of solving it to gain power. Anyone who has studied the Holocaust understands this to be the case. This is the same method the Nazi party gained support in Weimar Germany, and it is the same method the Trump administration used to gain power today.

They want us to accept their narratives rather than face the reality that immigrants are the same as all legal citizens — they are people, they are workers, they deserve endless kindness, love, and respect, they deserve the same access to education, welfare, and basic amenities as we all do.

We must understand that immigrants are often the most exploited workers, and that liberals and conservatives alike use their immigration status as a means to force them into low-paying jobs. The narrative that we only accept immigrants because they “do the jobs citizens don’t want to do” must be eradicated. It is the justification for using immigrants as what amounts to a slave class: people only allowed in society as long as they engage in the most exploitative labor.

All immigrants are welcome. We must eradicate the narrative that any immigrant is more valuable than any other because of how long they have been involved in their current community, or how much they have produced within it. These factors are irrelevant. All immigrants deserve to have their needs met, just as every other human does.

The idea that we must organize society from each according to their ability, to each according to their need, does not stop at an arbitrary national distinction. It does not stop at the racial border perpetuated in our minds. 

We must understand that immigrants would not be illegal if those in power did not make them illegal. They decide to arbitrarily restrict movement and to create national boundaries. They choose the criteria for legal entry and set the threshold as high as they wish.

The abolitionist struggle cannot stop at state policing, incarceration, or ICE.

We must abolish borders as well. 

Likewise, the socialist struggle cannot stop at capitalism or imperialism.

We must abolish borders as well.

Today, we must come to a realization. Immigration was never the problem. Borders themselves are the problem.

They exist for no reason but to divide us — to divide the people so that we may not rise up together against our oppressors.

If the owning class can drive us apart by nationality and race, then they can exploit us. If the owning class can tie these with immigration status, they can and will use ICE to destroy our communities.

We will no longer let that happen.

As organizer and author, Harsha Walia writes in the conclusion to Border and Rule:

We understand that “man-made borders shall never fully thwart human movements compelled by the upheavals of our era.”

We fight for the idea that “the freedom to stay and the freedom to move are revolutionary corollaries refusing imperial bordered sovereignties, with home as our shared horizon.”

Abolish ICE!

Abolish Borders!

None of us are free until all of us are free.

Sources:

Border and Rule by Harsha Walia (Ch. 4; Conclusion)

Walia, Harsha. Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism and the Rise of Racist Nationalism. Haymarket Books, 2021.

How the Irish became White by Noel Ignatiev (Introduction)

Ignatiev, Noel. How The Irish Became White. Routledge, 2009.

Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat by J. Sakai (Ch. 4, s. 3)

J. Sakai. Settlers: the Mythology of the White Proletariat. Morningstar Press, 1989.

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano (Part 1, Ch. 3)

Galeano, Eduardo. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Monthly Review Press. 1973.

Hope you’re staying warm, comrade! 🥶🥶🥶

January was a lot more harrowing than most of us probably anticipated — from the US attacking Venezuela and kidnapping their president to a nationwide uprising in response to the cold-blooded murders carried out by ICE. But, even amid all the anxiety and uncertainty, there is a silver lining.

With each passing day, more and more people hear the call of the socialist movement. As I write, DSA is closing in on 100,000 members. By the time you read this, we may already have surpassed that figure. And, that’s what we need to remember: even when the world feels unhinged, no socialist is ever alone!

Pinellas DSA is rising to meet the moment. Read on to see what we’ve been up to, and what’s coming next!

January Highlights

We started off the month with members of our International Solidarity Working Group picketing at a Chevron station in St. Petersburg as part of the Stop Fueling Genocide campaign, followed the next day by an emergency demonstration to demand “HANDS OFF VENEZUELA!” in response to the imperialist assault on that nation carried out on January 3.

The International Solidarity Working Group also hosted a forum to share political education on the history of the Bolivarian Revolution and US aggression against Venezuela, a book study on the history of Cuba, organized a march through the streets of St. Petersburg to reject the US regime’s latest war for oil, and rallied in front of the headquarters of SPPD with well over a hundred of our neighbors from across the city to demand Chief Halloway end the city’s 287(g) agreement to collaborate with ICE.

Our Ecosocialist Working Group hosted a press briefing and canvassing as part of our ongoing Dump Duke campaign. Our Health Justice Working Group hosted a training for those interested in learning about how to administer self-managed abortions. Members of our Housing Working Group met with tenants at The Morgan on St. Pete’s South Side about their ongoing efforts to establish a tenants’ union. And, to top it all off, January 24 marked the official launch of PDSA member Richie Floyd’s campaign for re-election to St. Petersburg City Council.

In other words: it’s been a busy month, comrades.🥴

Working Group Spotlight: International Solidarity

As we always say at our general meetings, the real work of DSA is done in our working groups. Each working group is made up of a dedicated cadre committed to advancing the cause of socialist struggle in one specific arena, be it housing, labor, electoral, ecosocialism, health justice, etc.

We wanted to begin spotlighting the important work carried out by each working group, and how it fits into the broader strategy of our chapter. This month, we’ve invited the members of our International Solidarity Working Group to share a little about what they’ve been up to, what’s coming next, and why this work is important to the broader aims of the chapter.

Check out the full report back from ISWG, written by Natalia C.

CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Re-Elect Richie Floyd

We officially kicked off Richie Floyd’s re-election campaign for St. Petersburg City Council on January 24!

More than two dozen volunteers hit the ground running (figuratively, of course), braving the cold to canvas neighborhoods. Our aim is to collect 500 petition signatures and get Richie’s name on the ballot just like we did in 2021: the grassroots way. Rather than paying for ballot access, the campaign is relying on people power. And, we collected more than 100 signatures just on that first day alone!

Folks gathered to warm up and celebrate with a barbecue afterward. Owing to the chilly weather, the party moved indoors at Richie’s house, where good food and good energy filled the room. It was a reminder of what we can build together. But, we’re just getting started!

CAMPAIGN UPDATE: End 287(g)

Pinellas DSA, as a member organization of the Tampa Bay Immigrant Solidarity Network, hosted a volunteer meeting at the Barack Obama Library in St. Petersburg on Sunday January 25. Turnout was so overwhelming, the event had to be moved into a larger space to accommodate all attendees!

We shared information about the campaign and our next steps to ratchet up the pressure Chief Holloway and his boss in City Hall, Mayor Ken Welch, to void the 287(g) agreement signed last year with ICE. But, this wasn’t just an educational session — it was also a training session, aimed at getting everyday people involved in the fight against ICE! After the education session, we led attendees out to knock doors and circulate our petition to raise our demands and tell local government officials: No collaboration! No ICE in our streets!

CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Dump Duke

The Dump Duke campaign is picking up real momentum in St. Petersburg and entering a critical new phase. The city has officially released an RFP (request for proposals) for a feasibility study on a publicly owned power utility, which represents a major step toward breaking Duke Energy’s grip and exploring a cleaner, more accountable alternative for the city. Now, it’s on us to make sure the selected bid gets approved and this process moves forward.

There’s more coming up fast. On Tuesday, February 3, campaign members are scheduled to meet with Mayor Ken Welch to discuss next steps and the path ahead. And, on February 9, Dump Duke will face off against Duke Energy’s surrogate group, the Clearwater Energy Alliance, in a public debate at Bayboro Brewing — a great chance to hear the arguments and show visible support. This is what progress looks like: bringing real pressure to the halls of power!

Upcoming Events

Housing Working Group & St. Pete Tenants Joint Meeting

Tuesday, February 3 from 7:00–8:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg). Discuss and take action on the housing crisis in St. Pete at this joint meeting between the St. Pete Tenants Union and Pinellas DSA.

Socialists in Office Working Group Meeting

Wednesday, February 4 from 6:30–8:00pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg). Will be hosted in the Hybrid Room, as well as virtually. Zoom link.

Run DSA: Glow in the Park 5k

Friday, February 6 from 6:30–8:30pm at Vinoy Park. Get those endorphins up by running alongside your comrades with the Run DSA squad!

Canvas for Richie Floyd

Saturday, February 7 from 10:30am–1:30pm at 2900 3rd Ave N, St. Petersburg, FL 3371, (Seminole Park). RSVP at richiefloyd.com/volunteer-rsvp.

General Meeting & Social

Sunday, February 8 from 2:00–3:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg).

Dump Duke Public Power Debate

Monday, February 9 10 from·7:00–9:00pm at Bayboro Brewing (2390 5th Ave S. in St. Petersburg).

International Solidary Working Group Meeting

Tuesday, February 10·from 6:00–8:00pm. This will be a virtual meeting. Zoom Link.

Fundraising Committee Meeting

Thursday, February 12 from 6:30–8:00pm. Our chapter’s monthly fundraising check-in and brainstorming session at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg). Will be hosted in the Hybrid Room, as well as virtually. Zoom link.

Canvas for Richie Floyd

Saturday, February 14 from 10:30am–1:30pm at 2300 13th Ave N, St. Petersburg, FL 33713 (Booker Creek). RSVP at richiefloyd.com/volunteer-rsvp.

Labor Committee Meeting

Wednesday, February 18 from 6:30–8:00pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg). Will be hosted in the Wesley Room.

Capitalism Vs. Socialism 101 & Social

Friday, February 20 from 6:30–8:00pm. The next in our series of quarterly education sessions, explaining key elements of socialist theory and practice. To be hosted at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg).

Canvas for Richie Floyd

Saturday, February 21 from 10:30am–1:30pm. Location TBD, but RSVP at richiefloyd.com/volunteer-rsvp.

Gulfport Eng 287(g) Meeting

Saturday, February 21 from 3:00–5:00pm. Location TBD.

Boycott Chevron Canvassing

Sunday, February 22 from 12:00–1:30pm. Location TBD.

Clearwater Boycott Chevron Protest

Sunday, February 22 from 2:00–4:00pm. At the Chevron station located at 23977 US Hwy 19 N.

International Solidary Working Group Meeting

Monday, February 23·from 6:30–8:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg). Will be hosted in the Hybrid Room, as well as virtually (check back for the Zoom link).

Health Justice Now! Reading Group

Tuesday, February 24 from·6:45–8:00pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg). Join us to read and discuss Timothy Faust’s Health Justice Now: Single Payer and What Comes Next. We will meet in-person in the Hybrid Room and virtually. Zoom link.

Canvas for Richie Floyd

Saturday, February 28 from 10:30am–1:30pm. Location TBD, but RSVP at richiefloyd.com/volunteer-rsvp.

Cuba: An American History Reading Group

Saturday, February 28 from·4:00–5:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Petersburg). We’ll be meeting in the Hybrid Room for a final discussion of Cuba: An American History.

Each month Seattle DSA (SDSA) holds a General Membership Meeting. These meetings serve as a democratic vehicle for members, educational vehicles for those looking to get more involved, and informational vehicles to learn about upcoming events and votes.

Each GMM follows the same basic schedule: We begin with a call to order, during which we acknowledge the fact we’re operating on stolen land. After the call to order, we vote to approve or amend the proposed agenda, and then we move through the agenda once approved.

Robert’s Rules of Order is our chapter’s parliamentary authority, which sets rules on decorum, debate, resolutions, and voting for making democratic decisions.

Universal Childcare Ballot Initiative: Amended Proposal

SDSA members gathered on a very windy, very dreary Seattle night to organize, discuss, and vote on chapter business. 

The first vote of the evening was on whether we wanted to continue with our 2026 Universal Childcare Ballot Initiative. Last year, the chapter voted to support a 2026 ballot initiative for free universal childcare in Seattle. However, as the Electoral Working Group proceeded with the initiative drafting, they hit some unexpected roadblocks. 

At the previous monthly meeting, the drafting team presented these roadblocks to the chapter and proposed abandoning the ballot initiative. They no longer believed this was an effective path to universal childcare, and wanted to explore a different approach. 

The chapter spent the intervening weeks discussing the initiative over Discord, and finally, we would put it to a vote.

For fifty minutes, members presented their positions to the chapter, advocating either for or against the ballot initiative. Those in favor spoke passionately about the need for universal childcare, with arguments including: 

• Wildly Popular Policy: Childcare costs in Seattle are untenable, and the strain is felt across the working class. These extreme costs keep people in economic uncertainty, restrict workers’ bargaining power, and keep women economically oppressed. As one member put it, “The lack of childcare is a weapon of the ruling class against the working class.” 

And whether or not they’d phrase it the same way, working class voters clearly agree; wide voter support has been demonstrated in cities like Portland and New York. Seattle could be next. 

• We Have Momentum: Speaking of New York, after the wins of socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani in NYC and Katie Wilson here at home, it is clear that progressive and socialist policies have momentum. Class consciousness is rising. We should capitalize on this momentum, especially while we have an amenable mayor. 

• Fair Wages for Employees: One member yielded their time to a group of non-members – five women of color who spoke to their experiences as childcare workers in Seattle. They highlighted the current state of exploitation in their industry and urged the chapter to vote in favor of the initiative, which requires fair wages for employees. 

On the other hand, while those opposed to the initiative supported universal childcare as a goal, they expressed concerns about the way this particular initiative was structured. Their arguments included:

• Lack of Union Support: While some childcare workers, like the five women who spoke, were indeed supportive of the ballot initiative, official union leadership came out strongly against it. SEIU 925, Washington’s branch of the Service Employees International Union, came out in opposition to the initiative, and urged all other local unions to oppose it as well. 

No socialist wants to oppose unions, and this opposition could erode the coalitions assembled around Raise the Wage Renton and Prop 1A. Members also expressed concern that a campaign against both the expected big business backlash and Washington’s unions would be nearly impossible to win. 

• Lack of Funding: The costs of this program would immediately make it the most expensive program in the city, and because Washington doesn’t have an income tax, the only way to fund it would be to increase the tax on big business. This progressive big business tax, Jumpstart, is already funding important projects like Prop 1A’s Social Housing Developer. The ballot initiative would greatly increase this tax. 

While we certainly believe that businesses like Amazon and Microsoft should be taxed higher, they have too much leverage within our current system. If this additional tax pushed Amazon or Microsoft to finally move operations to Bellevue, as they’ve been threatening, the entire funding source for all these projects would collapse. 

• Better Potential Pathways: Part of SEIU’s objection was that they believe universal childcare in Seattle will cannibalize the fight for universal childcare in Washington state. A statewide initiative has a higher chance of receiving statewide support. Additionally, some members argued that rather than proposing ballot initiatives, we should focus our strategizing on getting cadre candidates into office–like New York City DSA did–where they will be better positioned to push for socialist policies.

Ultimately, the final vote was 56 yeses and 82 nos. SDSA will not present a universal childcare ballot initiative in 2026 or 2027. 

Despite the vote, it is clear that universal childcare is a major need, and it is something our members care deeply about. To address this, the Electoral Working Group will propose alternate ways to fight for universal childcare at a future meeting.

Chapter Business

After the ballot initiative vote, the meeting proceeded with some announcements and general chapter business. Here were some highlights! 

• The new Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy Working Group was approved with unanimous consent–and was met with a round of enthusiastic applause. 

• The Seattle DSA Code of Conduct was also approved. This Code of Conduct was written by a committee of members through a long and thoughtful feedback process. 

• The chapter celebrated its artists with a presentation of potential new logo designs. Members submitted designs along with an explanation of their thought process. After a vote, we selected our beautiful new orca logo! 

Bill Analysis With Bud! 

After a short break, one of our Socialist in Office Committee members gave a presentation on bill analysis. In a twenty minute segment he called “Bill Analysis with Bud!”, AJ taught the chapter how to research bills in the state legislature and form our own opinions. 

Bill analysis is one of the main projects of the Socialist in Office Committee because elected officials don’t have time to thoroughly read and research bills before they vote. Socialists in office (in our case, Shaun Scott) rely on DSA to provide analysis. 

Attend a Socialist in Office Committee event to learn more. 

Twin Cities Fundraiser

While local politics and chapter business are incredibly important, we know that the fight against capitalism extends far beyond Seattle. And in the wake of multiple state sponsored killings and the fascist ICE invasion in the Twin Cities, SDSA stands in solidarity with Minnesotans. 

After a member read the names of all those murdered by ICE, we observed a moment of silence – followed by a spirited and expletive laden anti-ICE chant.

The final order of business? A fundraiser for the Twin Cities DSA.

SDSA members donated what they could, the Arts and Merch team sold shirts and stickers, and one of our local council members adopted the role of auctioneer. The chapter auctioned off vintage socialist ephemera like newspapers, pamphlets, and even a book of old socialist songs. 

In one night, our chapter raised a little over $3,000 to help Minnesotans fight ICE and protect their neighbors. 

Conclusion

We closed our meeting by singing “Bread & Roses”. This socialist song was based on a speech by suffragette and activist Helen Todd, where she called for “bread for all, and roses, too.” The phrase became a rallying cry during a 1912 textile strike, in which workers maintained their right not only to fair wages, but also to dignity and respect. 

We do everything we can to help one another survive the world we’re currently living in – but we fight for a kinder, juster future, too. These are dark times, but a better world is possible. 

Give us bread but give us roses. 

In solidarity with Renee Good, Alex Pretti, Keith Porter, Herber Sanchaz Domínguiz, Victor Manuel Diaz, Parady La, Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, Luis Gustavo Nuñez Caceres, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Isaias Sanchez Barboza, Jose Castro-Rivera, Silverio Villegas González, Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, Jaime Alanis, and all those fighting for a better future, 

Seattle’s Democratic Socialists of America

Events & Actions

(NOTE: TIME CHANGE) Tuesday, February 3 (5:30 PM – 7:00 PM): Social Housing Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Tuesday, February 3 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Public Transit Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Thursday, February 5 (6:00 PM – 7:00 PM): Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (zoom)

Thursday, February 5 (6:30 PM – 7:30 PM): Public Bank Project Meeting (zoom)

Thursday, February 5 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Immigrant Justice Working Group Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Friday, February 6 (7:00 PM – 11:00 PM): District 1 Coffee with Comrades (Breck’s, 2 Clement St)

Friday, February 6 (3:00 PM – 5:00 PM): KCC Office Clean with TLHC (Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Friday, February 6 (7:00 PM – 11:00 PM): Comrade Karaoke at the Roar Shack (Roar Shack, 34 7th St)

Saturday, February 7 (11:00 AM – 2:00 PM):  ETOC Session 1 – Social Investigation and the Tenant Movement (in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Saturday, February 7 (11:00 AM – 12:30 PM):  Public Bank Lit Drop – Mission (Mission Playground Park, 36 Cunningham Pl)

Saturday, February 7 (4:00 PM – 6:30 PM): “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” Film Screening (in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Sunday, February 8 (11:00 AM – 1:00 PM):  Physical Education + Self Defense Training (Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Monday, February 9 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Tenderloin Healing Circle (Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Monday, February 9 (6:30 PM – 7:30 PM): DSA Run Club (in person at McClaren Lodge)

Monday, February 9 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Labor Board General Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Tuesday, February 10 (6:30 PM – 7:30 PM): Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Wednesday, February 11 (6:45 PM – 9:00 PM):  DSA SF General Meeting (zoom and in person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Thursday, February 12 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM):  New Member Happy Hour – Richmond District Edition! (in person at Lost Marbles Brewery, 823 Clement St)

Thursday, February 12 (6:00 PM – 7:00 PM):  Education Board Open Meeting (zoom)

Thursday, February 12 (7:00 PM – 9:00 PM):  Tech Worker Reading Group (in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Saturday, February 14 (11:00 AM – 2:00 PM):  ETOC Session 2 – Building Campaigns I (in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Monday, February 16 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM): Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (in person at 1916 McAllister St and zoom)

Monday, February 16 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Labor Board Meeting – Existing Union Support (in person at 1916 McAllister St and zoom)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates.

Comrade Karaoke at the Roar Shack

This Friday, February 6, 7:00 – 11:00 PM, come hang out at the Roar Shack (34 7th Street) and do some FREE karaoke with your fellow DSA SF comrades or cool people you want to impress with your incredible singing voice! No songs refused, no entry denied! The entrance is on Odd Fellows Way around the corner from 7th Street.

SF Public Bank Lit Drop

Please join the Ecosocialist Working Group and the SF Public Bank Coalition for a lit drop event this upcoming Saturday, February 7th at 11:00 AM. We’ll be meeting at Mission Playground (Valencia between 19th and 20th). No experience needed and snacks will be provided. RSVP here.

Emergency Tenant Organizing Committee (ETOC) Fundamentals of Tenant Organizing Watch Party

Looking to deepen your understanding of housing work on the ground? Interested in building durable tenant power in SF? Come learn how to organize tenant associations, fight landlords collectively, and build toward radical tenant unionism in San Francisco. These ETOC watch parties happen every Saturday in February at 11:00 AM at our office (1916 McAllister) and focus on turning socialist analysis into mass tenant struggle: investigation, campaigns, and building real tenant organizations that can win. If you’re serious about anti-landlord work, this is where to plug in.

Immigrant Justice Know Your Rights Canvassing + Social

Join the Immigrant Justice working group Saturday, February 7 at 1:00 PM for a KYR canvass in the Marina district, followed by a happy hour where we’ll be grabbing food and drinks and doing a debrief on canvassing! Meet up at the Marina Branch Public Library!

Film Screening of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”

On April 11, 2002, a failed US-backed coup attempt was orchestrated against the then Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Join us this Saturday, February 7 at 4:00 PM at 1916 McAllister St for a screening of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, a documentary that focuses on events leading up to and during the failed 2002 coup, and filmed by Irish filmmakers Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain, who happened to be in Caracas when it happened. We hope you can join us as we stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people and their fight for self-determination and against U.S. sanctions.

Reportback: EWOC Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing

We have another graduated cohort from the four week long Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee organizing training! The last two weeks covered “The Arc of the Campaign” and “Inoculation and the Boss Campaign”, allowing for even more detailed discussion about the organizing efforts happening within the group. 

The “Arc of the Campaign” focused on Lisa, a nurse who met with her co-workers to organize them in an escalating campaign towards a strike. They used different ways to organize people towards this goal, such as media coverage, candlelight vigils, educating about the meaning of the strike, and collectively representing their issues. There are a variety of ways that union leaders can educate the public about their cause, and making them fun and creative can move the campaign forward!

We heard from Diego, a Trader Joe’s worker whose union election ended in a tie, during “Inoculation and the Boss Campaign”. The boss targeted workers that were less informed about their rights or shakier in their commitment to organizing in order to catch people off guard. It was important that organizers had people prepared to combat the anti-union narrative in larger captive meetings and after 1:1s with management. We went through the union busting bingo card to ideate what we could say in response to anti-organizing rhetoric, whether it was from management or fellow coworkers.

The Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing course is run every other month! If you’re interested in an in-person format or generally want to get involved with the SF local chapter of EWOC, reach out to the lead coordinator Caitlin S or email labor@dsasf.org. EWOC is a standing topic at the new organizing meetings of the Labor Board, which are held on the second Monday of every month at 7:00 PM, both in-person at 1916 McAllister and over Zoom. Anyone is welcome to attend, and we’re always looking for people interested In workplace lead canvassing, organizer trainings, and volunteer outreach. If you’re interested in organizing your workplace and would like to be connected with an EWOC organizer, fill out the request form here.

Behind the Scenes

The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and publishing the weekly newsletter. Members can view current CCC rotations.

Interested in helping with the newsletter or other day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running? Fill out the CCC help form.

Chapter and Verse: Chapter News for December 2025 and January 2026

The post Mobilization Against Brutality in Minneapolis and More appeared first on Democratic Left.

Educator & Seattle Democratic Socialists of America member Ty Saxon discusses the chapter’s Socialist Night School program.

Patrick O’Neill: Ty, the last time we talked you discussed your theory of education, and you talked about bringing democracy into your classes. Can you tell me what that looks like in practice in one of the Socialist Night School classes?

Ty Saxon: One of the ideas that we’ve adopted as a core principle of Socialist Night School (SNS) is the concept of “protagonism,” specifically protagonism of everyday working class people. Protagonism focuses on the idea of working people becoming active subjects in our own lives. WE are the agents of change in history, and WE have the power and responsibility to remake the world for the common good of the people. This is a concept we talk about at SNS, but more importantly protagonism is a concept that we really try to design the format of our classes around.

In practice, this means spending less time lecturing AT people and more time discussing WITH them, encouraging everyone to speak up and to speak out, using small breakout groups and giving attendees the opportunity to volunteer to report back their group’s ideas to the larger group. Those of us who organize and facilitate different parts of SNS sessions aren’t there to tell the attendees what or how they should think. Our role is to help the attendees think through the topics and issues and figure out how to come to their own conclusions. The conclusions we come to aren’t just some prefabricated talking points that us organizers have come up with. Instead, we develop them as a group during our session together. In upcoming sessions, we’ll increasingly be emphasizing training in organizing skills and using roleplaying exercises to help attendees actively practice the necessary skills to develop that ability to become protagonists in a working class movement with the power to change the world. As democratic socialists, we believe that everyday people have the power and ability to directly run society collectively and democratically, but we need the right kind of liberating education to realize that potential.

Patrick O’Neill:You also mentioned that school under the capitalist system is largely used as a place to train people to be workers, and to train people to accommodate themselves to authoritarianism. Can you talk a bit about how socialist night school re-imagines this relationship with school?

Ty Saxon: There’s a great book by Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis called Schooling in Capitalist America. In the book, they go over evidence showing that our schools are primarily training people to obey authority. Teachers mainly reward students for obedience and not for intelligence, creativity, curiosity, or critical thinking. While students cover various topics in the curriculum, such as math, science, english, etc., the whole tim, they’re also learning the meta-curriculum, which is basically that you have to show up on time, listen to the authority figure (teacher/boss), and do what they tell you to do. This maps directly onto the primary demands of capitalist workplaces. So they’re not just learning information, they’re learning how they’re supposed to behave in capitalism. Bosses want the workers to be smart enough to be able to produce valuable products that the capitalists can profit from, but not smart enough to question why the workers don’t get a bigger cut of the sales from the products they’re making. More importantly, the ruling class needs workers to never consider getting rid of the bosses completely. Why not just keep all the profits for the workers and let the workers decide what products to produce and how to produce them?

There’s no structural reason why workers can’t just run their workplaces themselves. It would actually be much more efficient to get rid of the managers’ bureaucracy and surveillance of workers and to not have to give profits to the owners who don’t do any work. Of course the capitalists strongly oppose this, but other than that the biggest barrier is that workers aren’t typically educated or trained in how to run their own workplaces. This can definitely be done, though. The largest worker-managed business in the world, Mondragon, realized this issue early on and established their own university for training workers. For the same reasons, DSA should have its own democratic socialist education program, because DSA’s goal is for workers to democratically control society. Though SNS is currently much smaller than Mondragon’s education system, we aim to grow into a similar role for SDSA, though one that is more suited specifically to a socialist organization than to a business like Mondragon.

Ultimately, we want the SNS to be a place where people can come to when they want to learn how to get more involved in and even become a leader in organizing in DSA, in their workplace, and/or in their community. It’s essential that DSA is not just a place where people come to complain about why capitalism sucks, but where we can learn the skills and tools to actually DO something to build a new society. We always make a point at the end of each session of the school to discuss opportunities for how people can take action, and we have attendees try to make a commitment to doing at least one thing, based on our discussions.More broadly, we see the SNS as being a key entry point into SDSA and a means of building up a strong culture of democracy, participation, and protagonism.

Patrick O’Neill: What are the big topics of discussion for the first quarter of 2026 Socialist Night School?

Ty Saxon: We try to cover a broad range of topics (as DSA generally does) from session to session, but we also want to keep things topical and relevant to whatever big thing is currently happening. Of course, that’s pretty hard since Trump got reelected, but in 2026 our first session was looking at reforms to make our electoral system more democratic, and our next session in February will be a role-playing exercise based on the historic west coast longshore strike of 1934. This session will be a great opportunity to experience one of the major workers’ victories in US history and also to learn some of the basic skills for organizing toward a general strike, which a lot of people are thinking about right now.

Other ideas we’ve discussed for future sessions: feminism and bodily autonomy, immigrants’ rights, trans asylum seekers, the role of religion/faith in organizing, the role of art in organizing, the concept of work, anarchism, and direct action

Patrick O’Neill: Are there any books, essays or texts you might recommend for a new comrade getting ready to join one of these classes?

Ty Saxon: We always post readings/videos for each particular session. However, these are optional because we want to encourage as much participation as possible, and we want the SNS to be super accessible for everyone. If you can do the readings before the session that’s great, but no shame if you can’t.

Here are a couple of articles that give a good introduction to our education philosophy and pedagogy:

• Organizing to Learn, Learning to Organize
• Myles Horton and the Pedagogy of Protest

For further reading, the book We Make the Road by Walking, with Paolo Freire and Myles Horton is excellent.

Patrick O’Neill: You partnered with YDSA for the last Socialist Night School class of 2025, are you planning to continue that partnership and will there potentially be more classes in 2026?

Ty Saxon: Absolutely! Our first session with YDSA last year was our best SNS yet, and we’re planning to do at least one SNS with YDSA at UW each quarter. Doing SNS at UW makes perfect sense, so we definitely plan to do more sessions with YDSA there and will work with them to see what kind of topics are most relevant particularly for students.