Hey Comrade,

The last few weeks, DSA Cincy has turned out at multiple protests alongside working class people in Cincinnati to oppose the Trump administration and its policies. In the past week alone, DSA Cincy members have shown out in solidarity to a protest by the organization 50501 on March 4th, an action by UC workers on March 7th, an event for International Working Women’s Day on March 8th, and a protest to oppose white supremacy on March 9th. DSA has spoken and/or tabled at all these events, built strong relationships with organizers across our city, and have made sure to continue circulating our petition to protect immigrant and trans communities in Cincinnati. Needless to say, it’s been a busy time for the chapter!

We’re going to continue to be part of the fight for a better world. Democratic socialists are ready to fight for a socialist future, and for a movement that can defeat the forces of billionaires and fascists we’ve seen coalesce in this administration. We hope to see you join the fight with us at some of the opportunities we’ve got ahead of us. And, please sign our petition to show Cincinnati is ready to fight back as well!

Comrade, sign on to our petition

• Our regular general meeting is this Sunday, March 23rd 2 PM, at the Downtown Library, the address of which is 800 Vine Street. Join us in the 3 South Huenefeld Tower Suite! Childcare will also be provided. RSVP for the general meeting here!
• Are you a tenant nervous your landlord will find a reason to take away your security deposit? Our Community Support and Direct Action Working Group is holding an information session called Tips and Tricks to Get Your Deposit Back this Friday, March 14th 6:00 PM, at 4216 Montgomery Road in Norwood.
• DSA Cincy is hosting a movie night with Topia Coffee Cooperative! Join us for a showing of Judas and the Black Messiah this Saturday, March 15th at 6:00 PM, at Topia Coffee Cooperative! Space is limited to just 20 people, so make sure to RSVP above so your spot is reserved!
• Worried what to do if ICE raids your workplace? Join DSA Cincy’s Labor Working Group for a training session on what to do in just such a scenario. Trainings will be hosted at multiple times to fit different work schedules, all at the Newport Library at 901 E 6th St. Time slots include:
  • Monday, March 17th at 10:00 AM
  • Thursday, March 20th at 6:30 PM
  • Saturday, March 22nd at 4:00 PM

The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935

We need to free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclopedia knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts, which have to be filed in the brain as in the columns of a dictionary, enabling their owner to respond to the various stimuli from the outside world. This form of culture really is harmful, particularly for the proletariat. It serves only to create maladjusted people, people who believe they are superior to the rest of humanity because they have memorized a certain number of facts and dates and who rattle them off at every opportunity, so turning them almost into a barrier between themselves and others.

-Antonio Gramsci

When we laid out our theory of power in 2022, we were organizing for a Green New Deal in a neoliberal Democratic administration over which the Left had limited power. We knew the following four years would be more of the same if we were lucky; now, we find ourselves at the conjuncture of Trump 2.0, which will be worse. Already, ICE is raiding homes and workplaces and chapters are in the streets trying to protect trans people and workers, while Democrats cower or criticize Trump for low deportation numbers. The Administration has launched a trade war, frozen research grants, escalated attacks on immigrants and transgender people, and started purging federal workers, with Elon Musk in charge of gutting the administrative state. Basic environmental protections like the Clean Air Act are under threat, even as we barrel past international emissions targets. 

Trump has already issued an executive order to halt future Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) spending, an unconstitutional attempt to reappropriate what Congress has already approved that will be challenged in court. As flawed and inadequate as it is, Biden’s IRA, still in its infancy, has just begun to bear fruit as a weak “green” industrial policy. Though unraveling the IRA would undermine job creation and economic growth in key Republican districts, that material fact may not be enough to save the legislation from forces dead-set on stopping our transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, even via mostly private means, and committed to precluding the state from acting on climate mitigation and adaptation. So far the direct pay provision of the IRA, a key component of the Build Public Renewables Act passed by some of New York state’s DSA chapters, remains unscathed.

Although the full fate of the IRA is uncertain, we already know that compromise legislation has not spurred the kind of green economic populism this moment requires. As Thea Riofrancos and Daniel Aldana Cohen pointed out, our vision for a socialist Green New Deal goes far beyond the hybrid “Prius economy” promised by legislation like the IRA. The Prius economy is driven by the private interests of big capital, which push investment—including federal subsidies and loans—towards cars and suburban housing and electric jets. We intend to change that direction, fighting for public investment in public goods like mass transit, green social housing, parks and trails, and healthy schools, all built and operated with good union jobs. 

During the next four years, DSA will continue to fight for those policies at the state and local level. Because the federal terrain is more hostile, we think the task before us remains to build local power with legislative, labor, and electoral organizing in order to expand public services to tackle both the cost-of-living and climate crises. 

Building with Labor

DSA’s long-term orientation towards rebuilding the labor movement is at the heart of our strategy. Of course, Green New Deal organizing can help do that, but it’s also clear that labor power is essential to winning climate policy at the scale and speed needed. We encourage GND and labor organizers in chapters to support workers bargaining for fair contracts and walking the picket line, while we help them build enduring coalitions with labor to win local changes that, in turn, create union jobs, enabling further organizing. This is why every B4P campaign places just transition demands and the creation of green union jobs at the center of the strategy. This process of changing state terrain so it is more conducive to working class organizing – while also engaging in direct working class organizing – is key to class formation in this moment, and a role DSA is uniquely capable of filling.

We’ve already seen bargaining for the common good used to win Green New Deal demands in LA, where United Teachers Los Angeles won provisions for solar panels, green spaces, and electric school buses in their last round of contract negotiations. And the organized Left has the first real opportunity to organize a general strike on May Day 2028, with the UAW calling for unions to align their contract expiration dates so the labor movement can take action as a whole. The UAW also happens to be a model for the kind of rank-and-file reform that needs to spread throughout the labor movement. Through their contract negotiations they are setting the terms of the EV transition, and creating space for other climate demands, like a 32-hour work week. Our long term project of rebuilding the labor movement continues, and Green New Deal unionism can help us win the future the working class deserves.

Winning State Power

The GNDCC originally launched Building for Power partly as a way to build on electoral organizing and wins. Coalitions led by DSA, labor unions, and DSA electeds can fight for different elements of GND policy. We recognize this timeline can become vague and/or lengthy, but we also understand that electoral organizing and labor organizing, led and cohered by socialists, can build unique forms of pressure on state actors while also accelerating class formation in the local context. We also think that building and operating such broad-based but complex coalitions can help develop strong, skilled DSA chapters that can lead on not only winning GND policy, but responding politically and materially to the climate crises ahead. And we think it’s clear that mass coalitions with labor power can be a major bulwark against the right wing locally and nationally. 

Responding to crises 

DSA chapters are responding to the immediate threats their communities face under Trump 2.0, and members will continue to be called on to protect people and build networks of solidarity when disaster strikes. But the connections generated in disasters must outlive the moment of crisis. DSA’s task is to organize those relationships into lasting working class solidarity to address the political causes of crises.  

Ecosocialist formations can help their chapters respond to moments of crisis, while also preparing them for the future, by Building for Power. We have witnessed devastating hurricanes and wildfires in just the past four months, requiring rapid response from DSA chapters who will spend months helping their communities rebuild. Strong Building For Power campaigns can pivot to disaster response while also fighting to change the conditions that cause these crises in the first place, with policies like green social housing, public power, mass transit, and more. As we respond to urgent threats in the coming years, we cannot afford to lose sight of the long-term horizon: beyond reacting strategically in moments of disaster, our goal is to actively build the future we deserve.

Building toward the Future 

Restructuring our economy by returning the wealth created by our ecosystems and our labor back to us, where it rightfully belongs, is the work of our lifetimes. The crises we face are urgent, yet the public goods we are working to expand take years to build out, and there is no time to waste. An organized Left must keep pushing on the local level, where there is still ample opportunity for wins that build working class power and green public sector capacity. 

Already, we’re seeing Trump 2.0 take a more rapacious direction, precipitating emergencies at multiple levels. In this setting, it is true that chapters may become stretched responding to immediate demands more pressing than new bus lanes. But our view is that, through B4P campaigns undertaken now, chapters can build the leadership and organizing skills and expand the outreach and recruitment that will be essential to responding to whatever Trump dishes out. And the GNDCC will be there to support chapters that need to pivot their work to meet the moment. 

Join our upcoming campaign huddles if you are interested in creating a Building for Power campaign in your chapter: 

Building the Green New Deal: Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going
Wednesday, March 26, 2025 8:00 PM • Virtual

Building for Ecosocialist Power under Trump/DOGE
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 8:00 PM • Virtual

Thorn West: Issue No. 227

City Politics

• The Charter Reform Commission, which is expected to consider municipal reforms including a potential increase to the size of city council, has not been able to begin meeting, because Mayor Bass has not yet appointed anyone to the four seats designated to the mayor to fill. This week, after the delay received media coverage, applications for the positions were posted to the public.

• Recent reports on the city budget from both the City Controller and Chief Administrative Officer have projected a larger than expected budget gap.

• Two weeks ago, Mayor Karen Bass fired LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley. Crowley appealed the decision to the City Council, but the termination was upheld by a vote of 13–2. An after-action report on the city’s preparedness for and reaction to the wildfires is still being drafted.

• As the mayor faces sustained criticism over her handling of the wildfires, a group of right wing opponents, including RFK Jr’s running-mate, Nicole Shanahan, has initiated a recall effort.

Labor

• It’s been one year since California law raised the minimum wage for fast food workers and created the Fast Food Council to oversee labor conditions in large chains. CalMatters summarizes year one of the council. Capital & Main has more, including a recent study indicating that so far, the wage increase has had a minimal effect on either the number of jobs, or the price of fast food.

• A package of protections for fast food workers, authored by Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martinez and Katy Yaroslavksy, passed unanimously out of the city’s Economic Development committee.

• The Original Pantry Cafe has survived as an institution for over a century, but new owners, the heirs of former mayor Richard Riordan, are closing the restaurant for good after its workforce refused to negotiate its union contract.

• Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order requiring that most state employees work from the office at least four days a week – echoing a similar effort from the Trump administration. SEIU Local 1000, which represents 100,000 state workers, has filed an Unfair Practice Charge with the Public Employment Relations Board.

Housing Rights

• An audit has concluded that the city and county’s homelessness response programs are disorganized and lack adequate financial oversight. At both the city and county level, plans to restructure homelessness around newly created organizations have already been proposed..

• In Pacific Palisades, plans to use the opportunity of the rebuilding effort to increase affordable housing stock have met with pushback from local homeowners.

Local Media

• This week, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the Los Angeles Times’ billionaire owner, announced “Insight,” a new AI program that will chart the paper’s opinion columns on a left-right spectrum, while automatically generating the “opposing view.” Within a day of its launch, the program drew controversy by offering a defense of the KKK.

• Governor Newsom has launched a podcast. His first guest was hard right podcaster and political operative Charlie Kirk, to whom Newsom capitulated on a variety of issues. Newsom drew the most criticism for agreeing with Kirk that Democrats were too supportive of trans rights. Statement from Equality California here.

Environmental Justice

• The cities of Pasadena and Sierra Madre, along with LA County, are suing Southern California Edison, alleging that the utility company’s equipment is responsible for starting the Eaton fire.

The post Scathing Audit of Homelessness Spending Released + LA Times Owner Introduces AI to Editorial Page appeared first on The Thorn West.

In moments of historical consequence, everyday people can rise as a chorus that shakes the foundations of power–or be intimidated into silence. Today, we stand at such a crossroads. The pillars of democracy tremble not from natural disaster but from calculated erosion. This is not politics as usual but the dimming of lights that have guided our journey toward justice.

When power concentrates in fewer hands, when dissent becomes dangerous, when truth bends to serve the powerful—these warning signs demand our attention. Democracy dies in silence, withering through a thousand small concessions, each seemingly reasonable alone, catastrophic together.

The Democratic Socialists of America represent a vision where power rests with the many, not the few. In this critical moment, this vision becomes necessary. We offer a framework for resistance that is both principled and practical, understanding that true freedom requires both political rights and material security.

Participating in resistance means recognizing democracy is not a spectator sport. Voting is just the beginning of our civic responsibility. True democratic participation happens in community meetings, mutual aid networks, labor organizing, public demonstrations, and countless daily acts of solidarity. Democracy is a thing that becomes real when we engage in it.

When we join DSA chapters, we declare our commitment to a democracy that works for all. We assert that healthcare, housing, education, and dignified work are not commodities to be rationed by the wealthy but human rights to be guaranteed by society. These rights are not privileges to be granted or withheld at the whims of parasitic wealth extractors and bloodless billionaires.

Collective action transforms fear into courage. Alone, we feel overwhelmed by state and corporate power. Together, we know that no system of control can withstand the sustained resistance of ordinary people determined to live in dignity.

The path forward requires courage to stand firm when intimidated, to speak truth when lies become policy, to protect the vulnerable when targeted. It requires care to build relationships across differences and create spaces where democracy is practiced.

In joining DSA, you become part of a living tradition stretching from abolitionists to suffragists, from labor movements to civil rights struggles, from environmental justice to queer liberation.

The question isn’t whether history will judge our actions—it already is. The question is whether we’ll tell our children that when democracy was in peril, we did more than watch. That we stood with our neighbors. That we chose solidarity over cynicism. That we helped bend history toward justice.

The time for that choice is now. Join us.

Every year the chapter conducts a census of the members and creates a report on how the dynamics of the chapter function along with vital information about demographics. Read the report here.

The post 2024 CNJ DSA Chapter Census appeared first on Central NJ DSA.

The National Political Committee is looking for nominees to serve on the National Political Education Committee from May 2025 through April 2026! As the DSA committee charged with providing a socialist political education to its members and the public, NPEC welcomes members with substantial roots in diverse areas of DSA, across a range of organizing and education experience. We also ask that chapters and official national committees, working groups, and caucuses to submit nominations.

Applicants should be prepared to devote 8 hours a month to committee business, though those with less availability will still be considered. Applicants should also be prepared to contribute to substantive discussion on the content of political education material as well as partake in its implementation. This implementation can occur across (but is not limited to) any of NPEC’s four standing subcommittees:

• Chapter Support, which holds regular workshops to support local political education programs, develop DSA members’ skill base, and connect chapters with experienced mentors
• Events and Speakers, which hosts national political education events year-round on basic socialist ideas and critical issues
• Curriculum, which develops an expanding library of ready-to-use political education materials
• Communications, which broadcasts and furthers our committee’s work through social media, our podcast, and our newsletter, Red Letter

Chapters, national committees and working groups, and caucus steering committees (or equivalent) must email their nominee’s contact information (name, email address, and phone number) to politicaleducation@dsacommittees.org by 3/24. All DSA members interested in joining NPEC, whether nominated by a DSA body or applying as an individual, must apply via this form by Monday, April 6th. Appointments by the NPC will be announced by 4/30 to begin their terms on 5/1.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to the Political Education Committee at politicaleducation@dsacommittees.org, reach us on the DSA forums, or RSVP here to join us for an online information session on Sunday, March 16th 2-3pm PT/5-6pm ET

By Henry McKeand

In the everchanging movie landscape of the past decade, one of the great casualties has been the wide-release R-rated comedy. In the 2000s, raunchy joke-a-minute projects were being made with big stars for less than $50 million and reliably turning a profit at the box office, but there was a shift in the industry around a decade ago. Suddenly, studios were afraid to take a risk on releases that didn’t have superhero spectacle or franchise potential, and mid-budget films began to face an uphill battle at the cineplex. Comedy moved to television and the internet, while lighthearted fare in movies was relegated mostly to direct-to-streaming leftovers and throwaway gags in larger blockbusters.

This is part of what makes One of Them Days, Lawrence Lamont’s new comedy starring Keke Palmer and SZA as friends on a Los Angeles odyssey to recover their rent money, such a breath of fresh air. It’s a capital-C comedy with a back-to-basics buddy dynamic and modest budget (around $14 million), relying on a funny trailer and the strength of its stars to drive audiences to the theater. There’s an old-school appeal here that has already made it successful with critics and audiences, but the real highlight is the working class core of the narrative. When was the last time you watched a crowd-pleaser where the main dramatic question was whether or not the main characters would be evicted?

Palmer plays Dreux, an ambitious young woman working as a waitress at a small diner who has an important corporate interview coming up in the afternoon. SZA plays Alyssa, a talented artist with a laid back demeanor and “candles and crystals” sensibility. While Dreux has a plan for everything, Alyssa goes with the flow and believes that the spirits of their ancestors will guide them through anything life has in store. But when Alyssa’s do-nothing boyfriend Keshawn runs off with their rent money, they’re forced to work as a team and race against the clock to get their money back before their landlord kicks them out, contending with various local oddballs, criminals, and love interests along the way. 

The ticking clock, escalating insanity, and “best friends” bickering call to mind countless comedies from yesteryear, from House Party to Superbad, but the best reference point may be the original Friday. Syreeta Singleton’s script shares not only a working class LA milieu with the F. Gary Gray and Ice Cube classic, but also a similar blend of social realism and class clown silliness. The best Black comedies of the 90s and 2000s, such as Friday and The Wood, served as more socially conscious alternatives to their “white yuppie in crisis” peers, and One of Them Days is no different. Whereas the few big-budget comedies of the past ten years have either been absurdist romps disconnected from reality (Bottoms, Barb and Star go to Vista Del Mar) or Hangover-esque tales of well-off middle class characters cutting loose (Booksmart, Ricky Stanicky), Lamont and Singleton focus on the daily problems that Black and working class people face. 

More so than the gangsters and bullies who stand in Dreux and Alyssa’s way (here, Friday’s Deebo is swapped out for a take-no-shit neighborhood woman nicknamed “Big Booty Berniece”), the true villain is the capitalist, white supremacist world that they live in. Their ceiling is falling apart, but their landlord hasn’t fixed it. When they get their first white neighbor (Euphoria’s Maude Apatow) as a result of ongoing gentrification, they’re shocked that her unit has a working AC. In order to whip up some quick money, their only obvious options are trying to donate at a blood bank and applying for predatory loans. And when they end up en route to the hospital after one of them is electrocuted, they decide to escape from the ambulance because they can’t afford the medical bill.

Things aren’t all bleak, though. This is a film that understands the power of friendship and solidarity in the face of oppressive systems. The various neighbors argue and isolate themselves just like everyday people, but they also come together and stand up for one another as tenants and members of a shared community. And while Dreux and Alyssa have their differences, the script never forces conflict between them. For all of her flakiness, Alyssa is refreshingly supportive in her support for Dreux, and SZA, in her first major acting role, captures the character’s eccentricities and contradictions remarkably well. Palmer, too, is predictably great; her movie star charisma has been evident for years, and she is routinely hilarious as Dreux. Together, they create a lived-in quality to their characters’ friendship that’s authentic and warm.

It doesn’t hurt that this is the funniest feature-length script in years, never afraid to balance sweet human touches with comedic big swings. One scene, involving the blood bank and Abbott Elementary’s Janelle James as an irresponsible nurse, is one of the most laugh-out-loud things to grace the big screen in a long time. There’s also no shortage of perfect cameos, including Lil Rel Howery as a sneaker obsessive and Katt Williams as a sidewalk truth teller named Lucky. But the biggest standouts are the lesser-known names, such as Patrick Cage as Dreux’s mysterious crush and Joshua Neal as Keshawn. Neal, especially, embodies an all-too-real kind of unambitious, manipulative boyfriend with hilarious conviction.

Movies like One of Them Days are often classified by Hollywood as “minor” or “low stakes.” There’s no high-concept twist or massive energy beam threatening to destroy the world. These kinds of “low stakes” movies, however, are the ones that capture the actual joys and stresses of modern life. Take, for example, the scene where Dreux has her interview and has to prove herself to a white hiring manager who doesn’t know how to pronounce her name. The sequence is overflowing with emotion and humor and suspense, and it’s all rooted in something “mundane.” 

At one point, as Dreux is talking to a neighbor who has been evicted and is worried about where he’ll go next, she says four simple words: “Your life is lifing.” It’s an acknowledgement that day-to-day existence is far too urgent and scary for the majority of us. One of Them Days isn’t a radical film, or at least it shouldn’t be. It’s not a vitriolic call to action or an openly socialist film. But by honing in on these kinds of mundane, material realities, it stands out from the endless stream of studio releases that are completely disconnected from working class concerns. 

Films are powerful in their ability to reflect and influence public opinion, and the success of One of Them Days points to a growing dissatisfaction with capitalism. The contradictions and stresses in our everyday lives have gotten to a point where audiences are ready for stories that take stands landlords and the healthcare system. Slowly but surely, the needle is moving.

If your life is lifing right now, and you want to fight for a world in which people don’t have to struggle in order to have simple necessities, then the time is now to get involved with groups like Triangle DSA and Triangle Tenant Union!