Every June, Chicago DSA holds our annual membership convention. Typically, our convention is more-or-less another General Chapter Meeting of the type we hold every quarter. Currently the only unique features of the convention are that any existing chapter Priority Campaigns are sunset unless they submit a resolution to “reauthorize” for a period of time up to a full year, and that there is generally a forum with candidates running for Chapter Officer.

As I wrap up my term as Chapter Co-Chair (and run for a second one), I’ve been thinking a lot about 1) how we give our chapter a clearer political focus, and 2) how we can make our chapter convention a bit more special. While it’s good that we use every convention to evaluate our Priority Campaigns, not every political priority is going to be an issue campaign. I think it’s important we spend time at the chapter convention to debate our broader priorities and direction as an organization, and I hope next year we can do more proactively to start that discussion in the lead up to the convention. 

This year, I am submitting a resolution that outlines four major political priorities for Chicago DSA, both in hopes of giving our chapter a clearer direction, and to help facilitate discussion and debate about what our priorities should be if not these four. Those four priorities are as follows:

1. Fight the boss. We must work to get masses of workers into motion against the capitalist class by encouraging, supporting, and precipitating class struggle, whether waged in the form of labor action, issue campaigns, direct action, or at the ballot box. 
2. Make more socialists. We must work to expand democratic socialist consciousness in the working class. We define democratic socialist consciousness as both engagement in purposive action (i.e., fighting the boss) and awareness of the ultimate goal of socialist transformation.
3. Be socialists everywhere. We need to become embedded in working class communities, especially in our workplaces and in unions, as well as in civic life and organized communities of all kinds.  
4. Build a class party. We need to build DSA as the foundation for a mass party of the working class. The party is an instrument to carry out the aforementioned tasks and for conquering the political power necessary for the transition to socialism.

The resolution is supplemented by a longer “commentary” on these priorities, which is presented in full below. 

Some of these priorities are already oft-repeated mantras by chapter cadre. That’s good, but we should formalize them and incorporate them into our orientation events and refer to them regularly as a way to evaluate ongoing and potential chapter work, not dissimilar to the Campaigns Criteria we adopted for our priority campaigns in 2018. 

The state of the world in 2025 is ever-changing and chaotic. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, to feel powerless, and to get pulled in new directions every week as the second Trump administration carries out its ultra-reactionary program. These priorities are designed to be “evergreen” and be applicable nearly no matter what the current situation is. We will always need to be working to carry out these four tasks. 

Additionally, while these are priorities for our chapter, and the commentary makes specific references to some of the particularities of Chicago DSA, these are also broadly applicable enough that I think any DSA chapter and the national organization could adopt them as well. Let’s trial run them in Chicago first and see how they work for us.

I hope that this proposal will lead to productive debate in our chapter. I would encourage anyone interested to submit amendments, whether partial or full on “substitute” amendments that would propose a completely different text entirely for us to adopt. Midwest Socialist is also a great avenue to share perspectives in longer form. You can also share your thoughts directly with me at Co-Chair-2@chicagodsa.org. 

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Forward

Commentary on “Political Priorities for Chicago DSA”

There is no dignity or democracy under capitalism. It is a system for producing life that depends on exploitation and dictatorship ensuring private accumulation of wealth and power by an elite few. We are democratic socialists because we believe we, the working class, should control our own labor power and run society democratically to benefit everyone. Our ultimate goal is a complete rupture with capitalism and the establishment of a new political order where workers rule.

Socialism will require uniting and empowering workers the world over in common pursuit of a shared vision for a new socialist society. To commit to the socialist project is to commit to lifelong struggle, to commit oneself to a larger whole, and to commit to working towards a total transformation of life as we know it today.  

Our organization, the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, has adopted the following political priorities to move us forward towards a socialist future. 

I. Fight the boss. 

We live today under the dictatorship of the capitalist class: the bosses. The bosses live in luxury off our labor while we spend the majority of our waking hours toiling at their behest to “make a living”. Our two classes are locked into a relationship of domination and subjugation. It is an irreconcilable conflict, and the only resolution will be through a total abolition of the capitalist system. 

The capitalist class have erected a vast superstructure to veil this class conflict and to prevent workers from realizing their common interests and common purpose. Our first task as socialists is to bring this conflict out and into the open through organizing workers as workers against the bosses — to encourage, support, and precipitate class struggle. We must take every possible opportunity available to engage in these struggles and leverage our membership and organization to achieve victory. 

Naturally, a primary site of class struggle is the workplace and through unions. This makes our chapter’s Labor branch an essential project. In addition to supporting labor struggles through strike solidarity activities, our members must work to cultivate a “militant minority” in their workplaces that can lead workers in struggle against the bosses directly from the shop-floor. While we want to see workers organize everywhere, our members should focus on industries, employers, and unions determined to be strategic priorities by the Labor branch, up to and including taking specific jobs to that end.

Our fight against the bosses extends to all their encroachments into our lives outside of the workplace, and in particular political struggle against the bosses’ representatives in government. Half a century into the neoliberal era we continue to find ourselves in retreat, fighting back against the further erosion of civil liberties and social welfare. We must wage a vigorous defense against these attacks while also working to go on the offensive, organizing to win transformative “non-reformist” reforms that shift the balance of power in our favor, such as those in DSA’s Workers Deserve More program. We need to fight for major structural changes to our political system too, from the expansion of voting to all residents including non-citizens and the incarcerated, to winning proportional political representation and an end to restrictive ballot access laws, all the way to a new democratic constitution that puts an end to minoritarian rule. 

These kinds of revolutionary reforms not only chip away at the power of the bosses but through their achievement give workers an understanding of their potential power and the necessity of political struggle. We need to run campaigns around these reforms and around issues that are widely and deeply felt by the working class. These campaigns should develop winnable demands and identify clear targets and timelines for escalation, emphasize tactics and actions that engage the largest number of people possible, and center the development of new activists and leaders. 

Because of our conflicting material interests, there is no way for both workers and bosses to win on any issue. A victory for workers is necessarily a loss for the bosses. This is why we must prioritize mass action that forces concessions over negotiation that yields meager compromises. 

A common tactic of the bosses to try to dull class conflict is by dividing workers based on race, nationality, gender, religion, immigration status, and other lines of difference. Working class unity cannot be achieved by simply trying to ignore these divisions and specific forms of oppression. We must fight them head on and identify them as attacks on the international working class as a whole. This means committing to organize around issues and through campaigns that focus on fighting these specific oppressions directly, such as struggles to weaken the power of the police, to combat imperialist wars and US militarism, or to fight back against attacks on bodily autonomy and transgender rights.

II. Make more socialists.

To achieve victory in the class struggle, the US working class needs a massive expansion in democratic socialist consciousness. While many in the US have come to hold a more positive view of socialism in the past decade than they have since the Red Scare, socialism is still quite marginal, and the common understanding of socialism by most is very rudimentary. 

We define democratic socialist consciousness as both engagement in purposive action (i.e., fighting the boss) and awareness of the ultimate goal of socialist transformation. Many workers are engaged in some level of the former, and many who identify as socialists or leftists have an understanding of the latter, but a much smaller number possess both qualities. 

No one is born a socialist. One becomes a socialist through a combination of action and education. This brings us to our second major task: guiding workers towards the path of becoming socialists, towards achieving both purposiveness and awareness. 

Our aim is not shallow indoctrination or to bring salvation to workers from above. Our aim is the transformation of workers’ capacity for analysis and self-activity, and to grow the ranks of workers who identify with a socialist tradition that spans the globe, several centuries, and many distinct tendencies. It is through strengthening workers’ insights and organization, through making more socialists, that socialists can hasten the day that the working class emancipates itself.

Making more socialists means an extensive focus on political education. While the elucidation of Marxist politics is paramount, socialist political education must involve the direct application of this theory to understand the present moment, to contextualize history, and to shape concrete organizing. Training workers in the practical skills required for organizing must likewise be an essential objective of a socialist political education program.

Political education is for everyone. We have to accommodate a series of concentric circles of different audiences ranging from organizational leaders and activists all the way out to the non-monolithic masses. This is a challenge given our limited resources. 

Focusing solely on the specific interests of members who are already deeply committed socialists is not very effective for developing new cadre (members who have made a serious long-time commitment to building the organization and advancing socialism). Developing popular education is of crucial importance for socialists, but popular education cannot scale without a corresponding increase in organizational capacity resulting from the recruitment and training of new cadre. For now we must prioritize political education programming that can bring together the socialist curious, non-cadre members, and core activists and leaders into shared spaces of vibrant debate and discussion, as is exemplified by our chapter’s most successful Socialist Night Schools.  

Intellectual awareness in total isolation is not consciousness though. Consciousness requires motion. This makes direct participation in class struggle perhaps the most valuable form of political education. These engagements transform abstract concepts into observed phenomena and resituate individual experiences into a dialectical framework. This makes both getting workers into motion against the bosses, and creating dedicated space to collectively debrief and evaluate those struggles, fundamental for the process of making more socialists. 

III. Be socialists everywhere.

Socialism in the United States today is largely subcultural. Like with many subcultures, the demographic make up of self-identified socialists is generally very skewed and unrepresentative of the working class as a whole. DSA’s current membership is disproportionately white, non-union, college educated, white collar, and millennial. In Chicago, our chapter’s membership is especially dominated by “transplants” who may have only recently moved to the city in their adult life and are less likely to have deep social and community ties as a result.  

If we want to expand our reach and grow beyond our existing narrow social base we need to work to become embedded in working class communities, in our workplaces, and in civic life. And we need to do so as socialists. We call this being socialists everywhere. 

The clearest example of this in practice is the model of the socialist shop steward. The socialist shop steward builds tight organization and unity against division amongst their coworkers. They know their contract backwards and forwards, keep watch for when the boss inevitably violates it, and take responsibility for being their coworkers’ advocates in grievances and disciplinary matters. To be effective, and generally to get elected in the first place, the socialist steward must win and sustain the trust of their coworkers. This is not accomplished overnight through sloganeering and polemics, but through the slow work of developing personal relationships and demonstrating a capacity for purposive action and leadership. 

The socialist steward does not discriminate. They stick up for even the most reactionary or even anti-union workers. Through this they come to gain the respect, however begrudgingly, of those same coworkers. The socialist steward does not substitute themselves for the union either. They act as a conduit for collective action, bringing others with them into motion against the boss. The degree to which the socialist shop steward identifies themself as a socialist will depend on the conditions of each particular shop. Ultimately though, even if it takes years, workers should come to understand that the reason that the socialist shop steward acts as they do is because they are a socialist, that a socialist is someone who looks and acts like their shop steward. 

This process taken at scale is how we begin to transform the popular understanding of socialism in the working class, how we grow from subculture to mass culture. These same principles can be applied outside of the workplace too, though there will be some major qualitative differences. 

US society today is deeply individualistic and atomized. This is not human nature. It is the product of a half century of neoliberal rule. Everywhere workers are taught to fear each other, that anyone who struggles to survive has only themselves to blame, and that the only way to advance in the world is to advance individually and at a necessary cost to others. 

Socialists need to build a culture of solidarity and cooperation for the common good. We do this by uniting others, by leading by example, by being socialists. We do this at work with our coworkers, on our block with our neighbors, around elections with voters in our precinct, in civic life, and as members of organized communities that few think of as being political, such as leisure and athletic groups. 

A significant challenge we face is the way that screens, digital media, and the internet have become the primary way that social life is mediated. Whatever expansion in potential reach for socialists that has resulted from social media has also come at the cost of our most basic social muscles atrophying. It’s not hard to imagine how a sudden black out of telecommunications could be entirely paralyzing for many. Only organizations built on strong social ties and personal relationships will  be resilient through such crises.

IV. Build a class party.

Fighting the boss, making more socialists, and being socialists everywhere will require socialists to build and participate in many different kinds of organizations. However, socialists and their various organizations need a connective tissue, a political organization that acts as a ballast to give focus and direction to the larger workers movement. We need a party.

The party we need to build is nothing like the existing political parties in the US today. We do not need a “third party”. We need to build the first party in the United States that is truly democratic, has a mass character, is explicitly socialist, and is solely of and for the working class. Much more than a ballot line, more than a caucus of elected officials in legislatures, the party is an instrument the working class uses to become “a class for itself”. It is an instrument for fighting the boss, making more socialists, being socialists everywhere, and ultimately, an instrument for conquering the political power necessary to catalyze the transition to socialism. 

We know we cannot simply declare the formation of such a party today. We see DSA as the foundation that can make such a class party possible. As such, building a class party means building DSA, both the national organization and our local chapter. We see DSA as well positioned to be the foundation for a working class party because it is explicitly socialist, because of its multi-tendency “big tent” nature, its commitment to being member-driven and democratic, and its nation-wide scope. In contrast to the large number of progressive NGOs that are staff-driven and dependent on foundation money, DSA is an organization that any ordinary working class person can not only join but actively shape and have ownership over through their participation in it.

There is, of course, much work to be done to build DSA. We need to shape DSA into an organization that can regularly fight and deliver for workers, that unlocks members’ potential for activism and leadership, that is more representative of the working class as a whole, and that is recognized as a powerful political force, a force independent from the Democratic Party, from entrenched political elites, and from the ruling class. We need to transform DSA from an activist organization to a mass organization that can be the political home of millions of ordinary working class people who do not yet see themselves as political actors.

***

Our road to power is long and the path will not always be clear, but our hope is not dimmed. At every possible juncture along the way we will need to engage in constant analysis of the present moment, evaluate our trajectory, and rigorously debate our next steps. As we undertake this journey we see these four priorities as guiding principles to keep us focused, to keep us united, and to keep us moving forward towards democratic socialism. 

The post Political Priorities To Move Chicago DSA Forward  appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

Pasco hernando DSA is back and now on instagram, with plenty of new members ready to organize! See us on instagram, twitter, and bluesky. Check the bottom of the website for the links!

Are you interested in becoming the best organizer you can be? Do you want to expand socialism here in Milwaukee, but are unsure of where and how to start? Have you been involved but feel like the project did not go anywhere? If you answered yes to any of these questions, the Milwaukee Socialist Organizer Class is for you! 

This nine week program will focus on holistically teaching you to be an unstoppable organizer who builds socialism, changes hearts and minds, and impacts our city.  You will learn direct action organizing, as defined by Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists, in which we organize actions, campaigns, and tactics to “1) win real, immediate, concrete improvement in people’s lives . . . 2) Give people a sense of their own power . . . 3) Alter the relations of power.” 

Interested individuals will apply (Click here, which is due by 11:59 p.m. on June 10, 2025), be interviewed, and enter the program if selected.  DSA membership is not required to participate, but is encouraged. 

This education program will be a combination of in-person events with virtual events if necessary. Each unit will be roughly a week, with a week break in the middle of the program. Each unit will consist of classroom-style instruction in the unit topic (no more than 2 hours, which will be in-person), field work in organizing (which will be at least 3 hours and consist of having conversations, moving people to action, and building infrastructure for a strong socialist movement involving several types of campaigns), and time for personal reflection. Each participant must commit to the entire program and, unless excused, attend every unit instruction, and field work session.  Missing more than two classes and field work sessions may result in removal from the program.  

This is the sixth time this program has been offered, and it is back by popular demand! The two instructors have updated and revised the course to make you even more prepared to lead in socialism.  

Time commitment per week: 

Unit instruction: 2 hours 

Organizing work: 3 hours 

Miscellaneous tasks: 1 hour 

Total time per week: 6 hours

Weekly Schedule 

Class will be conducted on Thursday evenings from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. and held in-person at Zao MKE, located at 2319 E Kenwood Blvd, Milwaukee, 53211.  

Field work will be held at regular intervals over the week, with options to organize at several points during the week: 

(tentative schedule, subject to change . . .) 

Saturdays, 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.

Sundays 12:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. 

Mondays 5:30 until 8:30 p.m. 

Program Timeline: 

June 10 at 11:59 p.m.:

Application deadline – apply here

June 12:

Start of nine week program ( class held, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.), held at Zao MKE, located at 2319 E Kenwood Blvd, Milwaukee, WI 53211

June 19:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

June 26:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

July 3:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

July 10:

Week Break

July 17:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

July 24:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

July 31: 

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

August 7: 

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

Units

Each unit helps to answer the question: what is organizing? 

Welcome: what is organizing?

• Get to know participants and instructor
• Define scope of class and intentions 
• Determine goals and desired outcomes 

Organizing is one-on-one Conversations

• Learn the 7 point organizing conversation 
• Practice the conversation and its elements 

Organizing is building the committee and the campaign 

• The importance (or not) of the committee
• Power Mapping the campaign 
• Strategy Chart 

Organizing is holistic productivity 

• Traction versus distraction 
• Time management and its importance
• The Reverse Calendar 
• Overcoming blocks to action

Organizing is a mindset 

• Acknowledging hurdles and setbacks 
• Failure is a great option
• Develop a practice to keep you going

Organizing is raising money and managing it

• Why money is OK 
• How to bring energy and money to your campaign 
• The basics of campaign budgeting and finance 

Organizing is communications

• What does “messaging” mean? 
• The power of media 
• Writing workshop

Organizing is bringing it all together

• You’ve got momentum – now what? 
• Recap of unit themes

Reviews

Here is what previous students have to say about the Milwaukee Socialist Organizer Class: 

“[Before the class] I had no idea about the actual work of organizing.  Now I feel confident that I would be able to become a leader in a campaign setting . . .” 

“I loved the practical application of socialism . . . [and] I loved the far-reaching application of some of the class content.” 

“This is a great way to move into the world of socialism. . . thank you so much for offering this course” 

“This [class] is a great first step for anyone looking to start organizing . . .” 

“I radically grew in my comfort around being upfront and simply being able to approach a complete stranger with a potentially controversial topic.” 

“New organizers and experienced organizers can benefit from this class.” 

“Generally speaking my confidence level just interacting with people about socialism has gone through the roof.  I have been given a phenomenal overview of how to organize and I feel confident that I can find out what works best for me in the future.”  

“It was great to grow as an organizer within the confines of a welcoming community/instructor.” 

“I feel more confident organizing outside of an electoral context.”  

Meet your instructors: 

Alex Brower

Alex Brower is a labor leader, socialist organizer, and Milwaukee’s 3rd district alderperson as a DSA endorsed elected. Professionally, Alex has been the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans, which organizes union retirees. In his organizing work, Alex has saved jobs from privatization, helped workers win a union voice on the job, defeated a temp agency, organized against a proposed iron-ore mine, helped bring comprehensive sex education to Beloit Public Schools, and won workplace healthcare for many uninsured MPS Substitute Teachers. As an MPS substitute teacher and former Milwaukee Rec. Department instructor, Alex brings a host of experience teaching others. Alex has also been a candidate for Milwaukee City Comptroller and School Board, running both times as a socialist. 

Autumn Pickett

Autumn Pickett is a union organizer and Communications Director for American Federation of Teachers – Wisconsin. She helped win back voting rights for 20,000 students while attending college in Indiana, protect 100’s of custodial and grounds crew jobs from privatization across Wisconsin, sink Billionaire Howard Schultz’s 2016 presidential run, use organizing tactics that garnered national headlines, and mentor dozens of YDSA chapters across the country that continue to make real wins for working people. She has served on the National Coordinating Committee for YDSA, as Milwaukee DSA’s Education Officer, and currently represents Milwaukee DSA on the statewide Socialists in Office committee. Autumn is excited to bring her years of experience mentoring new socialist organizers over to the Milwaukee Organizer Class for the first time and help build a people powered movement in Cream City alongside each of you.

Any questions? 

Contact Alex Brower at 414-949-8756 or milwaukeedsa@gmail.com 

Apply now!

Apply here, or copy and paste this URL into your web browser: https://forms.gle/JLgc33sE3fpK8TSH7

By Bennett T The United States intends to target socialists for political persecution. It will investigate them inappropriately, it will charge them spuriously, it will revoke their legal protections, and it will remove them from the United States. The administration has already sent surveys to researchers and organizations overseas who receive federal funding, and this […]

By B. Maloney Politics permeate every aspect of our lives. While discussions may arise about distinguishing human issues from political ones, it is evident that human issues are becoming increasingly politicized. How can we protect ourselves from the overwhelming and divisive attacks on human issues? On Tyranny offers insights into the resistance needed to navigate […]

By Rachel M Toiling to survive and a long day of labor deadens the best parts of We. Are there instructions? A guide map? How do we document the end of an empire nourished by blood, built on brazen exploitation… the thought of writing with sincerity only elicits fatigue Fatigue that reverberates, penetrating far into […]

By Austin DSA

For over a year and a half, Austin DSA has argued that the state of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people is inseparable from struggles for justice in Texas and the United States. We see this everywhere: from the militarized police forces that stalk Black and Brown neighborhoods after being trained by the Israeli military, to the women in Gaza forced to navigate reproductive healthcare structures that have been obliterated by imperial US foreign policy as reactionary domestic policy destroys those same systems at home. The local is inseparable from the international, as the violence that the US oversees abroad returns to our own communities in the form of fascist violence. 

We stand in solidarity with Nueces Mosque, Austin Diyanet Center, and the Islamic Ahlul Bayt Association (IABA), which on May 22 were spray painted with “symbols, including Stars of David, defacing the mosque’s main entrance and surrounding property.” 

Conventional media in the United States often frames violence in Palestine as a religious conflict that has lasted for centuries. The spray painting of a Star of David on a mosque perpetuates this myth, when in fact, this conflict is defined by the aggression of a Zionist, racist, setter-colonial state against an indigenous people which refuses to let itself be destroyed. Framing this as a religious conflict hides a national liberation struggle and inflames both Islamophobia and antisemitism around the world. While Zionism claims that no Jewish person can be safe from antisemitism without a militarized ethnostate, Jewish people suffer when their religion is co-opted and equated to the violent, political ideology of Zionism.

The use of a Jewish religious symbol as a hate crime object against Austin’s Muslim community at large and the UT community at Nueces Mosque in particular is only one more example of how these dynamics have tangible consequences in our city. Recall the stabbing of Zacharia Doar following a Palestine solidarity protest in Austin in 2024, the attempted drowning of a child in Euless, TX later that year, and the emboldening of local neo-nazi groups to carry out actual antisemitic hate crimes in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election. None of us are safe unless all of us are safe.

Austin DSA and Austin Against Apartheid organize for a free Palestine by diverting US resources away from Israeli genocide and apartheid. In doing so, we are standing against all occupational forces that stand between working class people and freedom. We all deserve to live in a world free from money spent on state violence and war instead of life affirming services like housing, healthcare, and social safety nets. Israel’s aggression and religious framings of the conflict breed acts of hatred around the world. The struggle for Palestinian liberation affords us a vocabulary for envisioning a safer, freer world. A free Palestine means a safer society at home and abroad.

The post Solidarity with Austin’s Muslim Community first appeared on Red Fault.

In his failed presidential bid, Human Health and Services Secretary RFK Jr. remarked that he would help people struggling with addiction become healthy again by having them work on unpaid “wellness farms.” If they refused, they would face incarceration. Throughout his career, RFK Jr. has railed against vaccination and modern medicine, taking particular aim at measles and HPV, antidepressants, antipsychotics, and even weight loss drugs. He now serves on Trump’s team of wreckers, an administration that’s dismantled public health infrastructure like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) during our sixth year of COVID-19 and as the threat of a bird flu pandemic grows. 

It should be no surprise that fascism often comes first for the disabled and people deemed as a “societal expense.” In Nazi Germany, Krankenmorde, or the “euthanasia” of the disabled, marked the beginning phase of mass death, and in fascist Italy, mental asylums swelled and transferred their patients to Nazi death camps. Both of these initiatives were preceded by American psychologist Henry Goddard’s writings against the “feebleminded” and the United States’s forced sterilization of the disabled. Fascism’s contemporary resurgence, especially in the U.S., is not a surprise to disabled activists who have warned since the onset of Covid that the rapid normalization of eugenics in regards to the pandemic would be its modern precursor. Yet, both the socialist left and the labor movement remains unprepared for this moment and continues to ignore a public health crisis that fundamentally threatens the vision and hope for an organized, militant working class. 

The Cost of Modern Eugenics

Disability has what is referred to by theorist Sara Ahmed as “stickiness,” or the idea that bodies are impressed upon by their relationships to other bodies, signs, and cultural associations. Race and disability have long been wedded through eugenics. As a recent example, racism and disability were enmeshed at the onset of COVID-19 when Asian people, specifically Chinese Americans and the broader diaspora, were condemned as being the cause of the pandemic, echoing the racist history of Asian people having been situated as “carriers of contagion.” A similar pattern unfolded during the AIDS epidemic, with AIDS having been deemed by major politicians as a disease contracted by “degenerate” queer and Black people. 

Necropolitics and who is mournable have framed much of American history, but especially the last six years. At the start of the pandemic, hospital overcrowding led to infamous triage protocols worldwide where some lives were valued more than others. Nursing homes across the US piled up with deaths without so much as dignified preservation in a morgue. In that time, we began manufacturing consent for the death of the working class from a preventable airborne illness. The CDC claimed early on that Covid would only severely impact the disabled or people with comorbidities, not because they intended to inspire care for the disabled, but to justify their deaths so everyone else could carry on with life as normal. Since 2020, over 1 million Americans have died from Covid-19. 

Infectious disease and a crumbling healthcare infrastructure incapable of providing accessible preventative care continue to leave lasting effects on our communities. Our government takes solace in the active spread of infectious disease and in the culling of the disabled because fascist states believe we must weed out the unfit. The “Make America Healthy Again” Executive Order, RFK Jr.’s announcement of a “disease registry” taking aim at autistic people, and the dismantling of the FDA’s regulatory power over our food supply are just the latest steps taken by this administration that will hurt all segments of the working class. For workers in America, the precarity of health is universal.

And yet, many of us remain largely in denial about our own proximity to disability. Apart from the fact that about 45% of Americans have a comorbidity, Covid has been proven to remain in the body post-infection and cause lingering damage to cardiovascular and organ systems, and having been infected with Covid even just once makes it more likely you’ll develop long-Covid. Studies on the prevalence of long-Covid show that nearly 7% of the population, or 1 in 13 Americans, currently has it and of those, 1 in 5 report having symptoms that disrupt their daily life. Some doctors estimate that within four years, most Americans will have long-Covid. As of the summer of 2024, 13.9% of those experiencing long-Covid had failed to return to work; we know what happens to people who can’t work under capitalism. 

The material repercussions of Covid infection and reinfection have already begun to show themselves. The most apparent impact is the disruption to our immune systems. We saw reports of a “quademic” this past holiday season (Covid, RSV, flu, and norovirus), and this season our flu infections and death rates are higher than they were at the peak of swine flu. As disability rates climb, services and social safety nets for the disabled become harder to access. Our life expectancy is in decline. Our cancer rates are on the rise. Since the onset of modern medicine, Americans have seemingly never been sicker.

But the left’s reluctance, including DSA, to fight for disabled people is not just a mistake that costs us our health, it is also making us deeply vulnerable to attacks on workers. In a police state reliant on facial recognition technology to squash threats to power, mask bans are an obvious next step, and multiple counties and states are banning them entirely. 

Most recently, Columbia University announced plans to implement a mask ban on campus because of protests in solidarity with Palestine. Kathy Hochul is following in lock-step to ban masks in public in the name of safety, and Maryland is contending with a Democrat introduced statewide ban in service of the Anti-Defamation League, another decision also directly connected to the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Simultaneously, we’re seeing an end to Covid era worker benefits like telework, which was originally intended as a disability accommodation, and even threats to OSHA. A wider, bolder movement invested in disability solidarity that sees disabled struggle as class struggle would be better equipped to protect workers and their organizing rights. 

The longer we continue to ignore our public health crisis, the more vulnerable the working class will become to sickness, disability, and state repression.

What is to Be Done? 

The seemingly innocuous limit of socialist solidarity with the disabled is masking. Despite the claims we made in early pandemic days that a refusal to mask was a refusal to engage in community care, we have adopted the ultimately neoliberal principle that each person can and should make an individual choice about masking. It should be evident that public health matters significantly to the physical and mental wellbeing of the working class. Organizing for socialism will become increasingly difficult as our peers continue to get sick, become disabled, or are caught in a cycle of working to afford caring for sick loved ones who have no social safety nets. 

We know that masks work at preventing the spread and contraction of airborne viruses. N95s and KN95s are the most effective at doing both. For the right-wing, that isn’t a fact. The Trump administration’s latest report about Covid being a lab leak says as much: “There was no conclusive evidence that masks effectively protected Americans from COVID-19.” 

Socialists must counter these fascist, unscientific narratives not just in voice, but through collective action. There was once a time when we did. At the start of the pandemic, socialists prided themselves on understanding the science behind why masks work and why we should wear them. Unionists fought for worker access to PPE and air filtration systems. Some workers even went on strike over it. Now, it is exceedingly rare to find socialist organizations or unions routinely calling for and enabling spaces that require masking, and both have mostly stopped contending with the ongoing ramifications of a lack of public health infrastructure or the working class’s vulnerability to sickness.

The inaccessibility of healthcare in America is why most of us want universal healthcare, a collective solution to the problem, and although every broken piece of the for-profit healthcare system was exposed by the pandemic, the US left failed to win it. Unfortunately, there are segments of the left that still choose to shirk any responsibility to public health. Medicare-for-All is no longer the public rallying cry it once was for national DSA, or its surrogates. Similarly, the Party for Socialist Liberation’s presidential candidate Claudia De La Cruz, in a livestream for her campaign, directly addressed the question of mask mandates in PSL spaces saying, “People are asking about masking, well there’s no federal mandate on masking, right? But we do have masks at our different events. People choose whether to use them or not. We can’t implement something that the federal government, having the power to do it at a national scale, does not do.” 

Why not? Is the role of socialist organizations claiming to counter capitalism and empire to mimic the United States government? We set rules about our spaces all the time. We have bylaws, codes of conduct, harassment and grievance policies– all things that aid in the mission to keep our spaces safe, and yet when disabled activists ask for masking requirements, no one hears us. We’re told that masking makes us “out of touch with the working class,” that we’re “freaks,” or that we’re simply asking too much. Many of these claims run counter to the science behind masking and public health that would benefit most working people, especially those of us already struggling with various forms of disability. 

While we may list universal healthcare as a primary socialist demand, electoral campaigns associated with the DSA must actively advocate for it. Locally DSA endorsed candidates, like Zohran Mamdani, who I hope wins, should be elevating healthcare as an issue and loudly supporting initiatives like the New York Health Act to establish statewide single-payer healthcare. Universal healthcare must be a core part of our agitational electoral campaigns, regardless of district or region. 

DSA and other socialist and labor organizations must take material steps to protect the health of the working class. It is possible and necessary for us to require masking and air filtration at DSA events, run electoral campaigns that agitate around universal healthcare, and encourage our union members to push their Locals to take up the issue of public health. We should also be engaging in political education on the history of eugenics and disability activism here and abroad. 

The argument for solidarity with the disabled community doesn’t begin or end with Covid mitigation. It requires a sharper analysis of how capitalism preys on our health for profit and disposes of us when we’re sick, and of how it uses sickness and eugenics as a scapegoat to justify the policing and state-sanctioned execution of people of color, the disabled, and political dissidents. Disability touches all of our lives at any given stage, and it is latent in class, social, and ecological struggle. The opportunities for disability solidarity are all around us and as fascism rises worldwide and continues rendering more of us unmournable in the eyes of the state, it is the responsibility of socialists to intervene.

Unless we commit to practicing true solidarity with the disabled, eugenics will disable and kill the working class base we claim to want to organize, fight for, and protect.

Image Description: Official portrait of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the United States secretary of health and human services. Photo taken Feb. 21, 2025.

On February 21, 2025, Elon Musk walked onto the stage of the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference and waved around a chainsaw before declaring “I am become meme!” The chainsaw was handed to him by President Javier Milei of Argentina, who used the chainsaw as a symbol of his campaign to “cut bureaucracy” and bring prosperity to Argentina–a campaign so successful that 57% of Argentinians now live in poverty. In typical Muskian fashion however, the chainsaw did not actually function, and instead Elon himself made chainsaw noises. 

As Elon jumped around, his ex-girlfriend Grimes took to messaging him publicly on X (Twitter) begging him to please stop ignoring their child’s medical needs. “Plz respond about our child’s medical crisis. I am sorry to do this publicly but it is no longer acceptable to ignore this situation. This requires immediate attention,” She then explained to others on the site, “I’m not giving any details but he won’t respond to texts, calls or emails and has skipped every meeting and our child will suffer lifelong impairment if he doesn’t respond asap.” 

This is the man who Trump has granted near-limitless power to cut budgets and fire employees at will through his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

As of writing, this administration has already ordered the firing of 220,000 federal workers. Tens of thousands have been fired so far. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and its activities protecting people from debt collectors have been effectively ended. Plans are underway to eliminate the Department of Education. DOGE has already ended dozens of education programs, seemingly targeting in particular those meant to help disabled students, as part of DOGE’s campaign against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. Thousands have been fired from the Department of Veteran Affairs, and the administration has ended many of its programs researching cancer and veterans’ healthcare. They have also cut hundreds of millions of dollars in research and education funding, particularly healthcare-related research conducted through the National Institutes of Health. Following in the footsteps of Argentina’s Millei, these government cuts are triggering a reduction in consumer spending, an increase in inflation, and risking negative economic growth in the United States–all potential signs of a nosedive towards economic recession.

Listen: these guys suck.

They just plain suck. It’s not even funny! These people are freaks, and not the good kind.

So let’s just get rid of them!

There is, in fact, a long tradition of working people defying governments and organizing for revolution in their workplace: this tradition is called syndicalism.

Syndicalism is a form of action that focuses on organizing unions as the primary revolutionary vehicles to overturn the power of the capitalist class, take control of the workplace, and run our workplaces and economic system together democratically.

The ideas can perhaps best be summarized by the 1906 Charter of Amiens, which became the program of many syndicalist unions: “In daily protest work the union pursues the coordination of working class efforts, and the growth of the well being of workers, through the carrying out of immediate improvements, such as the diminution in work hours, the increase in salaries, etc. But this task is only one side of the work of syndicalism: it prepares complete emancipation, which can only be fulfilled by expropriation of the capitalists; it advocates as a method of action the general strike; and it considers that the union, today a resistance group will be, in the future, a group for production and redistribution, the basis of social reorganization.”

Prior to World War I, syndicalism was an important form of revolutionary socialist struggle in industrial societies. Animated by the vision of a socialist and egalitarian future, syndicalists organized the first major national unions that many countries ever had, mobilizing millions of workers for revolutionary struggle. With this vision, the Confédération générale du travail (CGT) was organized in France in 1895, and to this day it remains the largest labor union in France. The Freie Vereinigung deutscher Gewerkschaften (FVdG) was organized in Germany in 1897, later reorganizing in 1919 as the even larger Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschlands (FAUD). The Federación Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA) was organized in Argentina in 1902. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was organized in the United States in 1905. The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) was organized in Spain in 1910 out of the merger of several earlier regional syndicalist unions. The Unione Sindacale Italiana (USI) was organized in Italy in 1912. The Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU) was organized in South Africa in 1919, evolving out of the IWW chapter there. The Confederação Geral do Trabalho (CGT) was organized in Portugal also in 1919. Each of these unions would reach over a hundred thousand members, and many of them remained in their time the largest labor union in their country. In some cases they became international unions, such as the IWW with its branches in the tens of thousands in Chile, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere.

There are many lessons we can draw from these movements. However, I would like to focus on one particular example of syndicalist organizing relevant to our current crisis. In 1918, the German Empire was overthrown, with a leading role played by a group of labor militants known as the Revolutionary Shop Stewards.

How did this happen?

In 1914, the empires of Europe went to war with each other over competing territorial claims. This was World War I. In a shock to the international socialist movement, the socialist party of Germany, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), did not oppose the German Empire’s war of conquest. Instead, they embraced it! The SPD leadership whipped its parliamentary politicians into funding the war, and opponents of the war within the party ranks were quickly expelled, with many then imprisoned by the Empire. The SPD and the Empire further entered into an agreement called the Burgfrieden, whereby the SPD-affiliated labor unions agreed to not go on strike for the duration of the war and to discipline workers to increase productivity for the war effort. The syndicalist FVdG was the only German union to release a statement opposing the war and Burgfrieden, and for this its leaders were imprisoned and driven underground.

Many rank-and-file workers recoiled at the actions of the SPD and began organizing their own opposition to the war. Labor militants and shop stewards created an independent underground network known as Revolutionäre Obleute, or in English–the Revolutionary Shop Stewards (RSS).

RSS members were organizers recruited from workplaces across unions and firms where the workers were opposed to the war and would be willing to go on strike irrespective of the position of the union leadership. The RSS member from that workplace was chosen by the workplace’s workers as a sort of delegate to the RSS, someone who had the leadership abilities to organize strikes while also being trusted enough to represent coworkers and maintain secrecy. The RSS also targeted the war material industries in particular to recruit members and organize anti-war sentiment as a way to position themselves to halt the entire war effort and the Empire’s military capabilities.

As the war dragged on, the Empire began rationing food and energy, and there were scarcities throughout the economy. Casualties mounted. Family members and loved ones were lost. Dissatisfaction began to grow. RSS militants flexed their muscles in their respective workplaces more and more by initiating illegal strikes for better wages and working conditions, violating the Burgfrieden. By 1916, the RSS felt confident enough to begin organizing their first general strike against the government when SPD parliamentary leader and anti-militarist agitator Karl Liebknecht was arrested, spurring the anti-war movement into public action.

With public anger forming against the war and Liebknecht’s arrest, the RSS decided now was their chance to launch a general strike. The RSS tried to hold an emergency meeting of members at a dancehall, but police had been tipped off and arrived before them. The thrity RSS organizers instead chose a local pub to meet, and there they decided that they had enough support in their respective workplaces to call a strike for the following day, June 28, 1916. They returned to their workplaces, and the following day, they left their workplace for the streets–with thousands alongside them. Initially this meant the large metal-working companies in Berlin went on strike, since this is where the RSS was most densely organized, but thousands of other workers soon went on strike in support. In Berlin and Braunschwig, 55,000 workers in total struck to demand Liebknecht’s freedom, despite mainstream union leadership and the SPD publicly opposing the strike.

This strike did not succeed in its goals–Liebknecht was conscripted to the army, then imprisoned again after he kept trying to organize soldiers against the war. He remained in prison until 1918. For many, this was demoralizing. But the RSS understood this was a long game, and the fact that they were able to muster tens of thousands of workers on an illegal strike for a political goal, rather than a purely workplace-related issue, was a promising sign of what could be achieved. So they organized another strike. After a harsh winter, the Empire reduced everyone’s food rations in March, and a new law was passed conscripting civilians to work in the war industries. The RSS felt there was enough popular anger against the Empire again to launch another strike.

Among syndicalists there is a recurring question of whether to work within the mainstream labor unions and convert them to syndicalism or build new independent radical syndicalist unions outside of them. The majority of the syndicalist movement at this time chose the latter. However, the RSS opted for something a little in between. The RSS agreed with their syndicalist comrades that unions should be the major revolutionary vehicle to overthrow the capitalist system and become the infrastructure of the new democratically-organized economy. And although individual members of the RSS were members of various socialist groups, they were committed to maintaining the independence of the RSS and revolutionary labor movement outside the influence of any political parties. However, the RSS did not attempt to build an independent union. 

Instead, RSS members came together across different unions to organize. To that end, their network was both: 1) a parallel infrastructure meant to allow militants to directly organize with their fellow workers and coordinate with each other across workplaces, bypassing the authority of the mainstream union leadership; and 2) a network within each union to coordinate taking over the leadership and direction of that union. Everything is an organizing opportunity, everywhere is a battlefield for class war. To that end, Richard Muller, one of the key leaders of the RSS, successfully passed a resolution in the metalworkers union to demand an end to the new law conscripting civilians to work in the war industries. They then used the union’s upcoming general assembly to organize with RSS and non-RSS union members alike for a new general strike. Muller was imprisoned by the Empire for his actions, but that only served to inflame the more moderate members of the metalworkers union, who now felt that one of their own was being attacked.

The result was an April 1917 general strike that was even bigger than the 1916 one, with an estimate of over 100,000 strikers paralyzing the cities of Berlin, Braunschweig, Halle, Magdeburg, Leipzig, and others. Demands came to free Muller, increase the food ration, and establish democratic political representation. After a day, the pro-war leader of the metalworkers union called for an end to the strike, but tens of thousands continued striking for another week anyway. None of the demands were met. That didn’t stop anyone though. In fact, it just made them more angry.

Several months later, Muller was released, and the RSS began planning another strike. They attempted to forge coalitions with other anti-war elements, in particular the USPD and the Spartacus League. These groups were formed by people who were expelled or resigned from the SPD because they opposed the war, perhaps the most well known of them being Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Karl Kautsky, and even by this point, the famously moderate Eduard Bernstein. If you’ve lost even Bernstein, you’ve really done it! And done it they did – the German Empire was losing the war, and badly. The SPD’s continued support for the war lacked any credibility. After extensive surveying of their members and fellow workers, the RSS in consultation with the USPD and Spartacus League organized for another general strike on January 28. This time the strike demand was explicit: the people demand the downfall of the regime. RSS members went to general meetings of their unions to call on all workers to strike. Some of the mainstream union leadership denounced the strike but to no avail.

On January 28, 1918, the metalworkers announced the start of the strike by banging hammers on metal oxygen tanks in the factories. Eventually over 500,000 workers went on strike across Germany demanding the overthrow of the government. The police responded with brutality, assaulting assemblies and raiding union offices, targeting and arresting strike leaders. The military was called in to Berlin, and RSS leaders feared they would be willing to fire on the strikers. Out of caution, they called off the strike only a week after it began. This was the third general strike.

It was soon followed up by a fourth and final general strike. Knowing they would have to face off against the military, the RSS and allies began assembling weapons and prepared to initiate the next strike in November. They smuggled thousands of rifles into Berlin and hid them throughout the city. They made plans for armed marches through the city to occupy critical infrastructure and surround the military barracks before the army could be mobilized. Then something unexpected happened: sailors in the German Navy in the northern port of Kiel mutinied, refusing to fight anymore in a losing war, and Kiel itself came out in protest to support them. A revolutionary wind in the air, the RSS moved up their plans and launched the fourth general strike on November 9, 1918. This time, the SPD and pro-war union leadership didn’t dare to oppose it. They saw the writing on the wall.

When the day came, everyone did their duty. Contemporary observers noted with surprise how bloodless and automatic it all seemed. The barracks were surrounded. The soldiers either surrendered or joined the strikers. The railways, bridges, telegraphs, and other critical infrastructure were occupied by armed workers. An armed march on the parliament building, with Richard Muller at its head, led to the pro-war parliamentarians scattering and trying to escape as the armed strikers began seizing each room. New revolutionary committees to manage food, welfare, and trade were already being established in the old offices that once were occupied by war planning. Karl Liebknecht, now freed from prison, declared a new socialist republic from the balcony of the former royal palace to thunderous applause from thousands.

The rest of the story doesn’t have a happy ending. But the post-revolution politics that eventually led to the rise of the Nazis is a story for another time.

What can we learn from this part of the story?

As of writing, Trump is attempting to institute his own Burgfrieden, with an extra emphasis on Burger. He has granted permission to Israel to continue their genocide of the Palestinian people with US weapons, as he organizes murderous US airstrikes against Yemen. He has directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport any immigrant, regardless of visa or residency status, who has expressed opposition to the genocide, including the high-profile arrests of Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and others. Now Trump is expanding his attempts to arrest and deport hundreds, targeting university activists, academic union organizers, and immigrant labor organizers. Trump additionally signed an executive order nullifying collective bargaining agreements with most federal labor unions, ending union protections for over 800,000 workers. Trump’s threats to withhold funding from universities that don’t crack down harder on anti-genocide protests has led Columbia University to expel Grant Miner, the pro-Palestine president of the university’s academic worker union UAW 2710 of which Mahmoud Khalil was also a member. This was only one day before union contract negotiations were to begin–the university has since cancelled the negotiations. Twenty-two students at Columbia have either been expelled, suspended, or had their degree revoked. Opponents to the war, including labor organizers, are being suppressed and arrested–does any of this sound familiar?

Noticeably absent from the opposition to Trump’s new Burger-frieden is the opposition party itself, the Democratic Party. Leading Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand have instead voted to pass the Trump-Elon austerity bill, which cuts billions in public spending and thousands of jobs. Only a handful of Democratic members of Congress have spoken out against the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil and others, while the top party leadership remains silent. The result has been a collapse in public approval of the Democratic Party to literally record lows.

Although the people may not yet demand the downfall of the regime, they at least are demanding a real opposition to it. The layoffs among federal employees have led to nationwide protests by federal labor unions. Federal labor organizers have formed the Federal Unionist Network to coordinate collective action against the administration. They have organized mass rallies in major cities under the banner of Save Our Services. Many of these Save Our Services rallies occurred outside of Tesla vehicle dealerships, helping inspire the Tesla Takedown pickets of Tesla facilities and direct action against Tesla vehicles. In parallel, academic labor unions have mobilized thousands of workers in Stand Up for Science and Kill the Cuts rallies. During the April 5 nationwide day of action, which mobilized at least one million in protest, labor unions joined in marching on the capital to demand freedom for Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and other political prisoners.

We can take a few lessons from the history of syndicalism and the Revolutionary Shop Stewards. For one, the revolutionary syndicalist unions built their strength through organizing the unorganized. DSA is doing this through the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) and Workers Organizing Workers (WOW). These successes could be even further expanded upon through deep organizing in immigrant communities, which perhaps some chapters are already doing. This would include the translation and dissemination of organizing materials in local languages, developing organizers for EWOC and WOW who can field organizational efforts in local languages, as well as holding organizing meetings in immigrant neighborhoods in the languages of the neighborhood.

As the organizing base widens, more organizers are recruited, and the organizing network expands, there arises a need to coordinate collective action. This could be done in the manner of the Revolutionary Shop Stewards by establishing a formally-organized network of labor militants across workplaces where the workers are opposed to the Trump administration and willing to take politically-motivated labor action. Many labor militants already connect through DSA, and these connections can evolve into the kind of tightly-organized structure that labor confrontation demands: uniting upon a common platform, common strategy, common actions, whereby all members take responsibility for the mobilization and success of the action within the workplace they represent. Like the RSS, this socialist labor network could also fulfill the dual role of organizing militancy within unions while also coordinating action between militants across unions in a way that bypasses potential blocks from moderate leadership. A lot of this work can begin at the chapter level for local labor organizing and can expand nationally, facilitated by resources and connections from the DSA National Labor Commission.

Ultimately, like the RSS, this militancy could organize a succession of nationwide general strikes against the administration. It goes without saying it will take long and intense organizing work to reach this kind of critical mass, but it’s a critical mass we can reach. And these would be hard fights, but they’re hard fights that can be won. We can take heart from some recent successes of illegal strike actions: the Durham city sanitation workers strike in 2023, the public school teacher strikes in right-to-work states in 2018, the Indiana Graduate Worker Coalition strikes in 2022 and 2024, the UAW 4811 strike for Palestine in 2024, and more. Additionally, we have a long history of general strikes in the United States to draw inspiration from, such as the St. Louis General Strike in 1877, the Seattle General Strike in 1919, and the San Francisco General Strike in 1934.

Perhaps the prospect of taking such a direct and combative stance against the administration seems scary. But if left unchecked, Trump and Elon will engineer a reality far more frightening. People are being sent to prison camps. Hundreds of thousands are losing their jobs. The economy is crashing. The country is being thrown into a generalized crisis. As things stand, each and every one of us in this society is stamped with an invisible number that marks our place next in line for losing a job, losing housing, or getting imprisoned. Our only defense is to band together and fight. We have it in our power to change the world. And we must change it. If we stand still, we will lose everything. If we act, we will win everything. The choice is clear. The world is yours, if you simply reach out to seize it.

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.

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.

The post The Power of the State + Labor: A fascinating history of NYC buses appeared first on Building for Power.