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.

Before the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) as we know it existed, New York City’s bus system was an amalgamation of private bus companies that operated on a franchise basis – they had contracts with the city detailing where they could run and what fares they could charge.

One such private company was Fifth Avenue Coach (FACO). It had a monopoly on most of upper Manhattan and all Bronx routes, and was staffed by TWU Labor. In the early 1960s, real-estate mogul and transit poacher Harry Weinberg orchestrated a hostile takeover of FACO’s board. He purchased a majority of its shares and coordinated a proxy faction (who included Roy M. Cohn, lawyer for THAT Senator Joseph McCarthy) that installed him as Chair. Transit labor knew Weinberg had a past of taking over transit systems, keeping their real estate holdings, then offloading the systems to their cities or states but benefiting from the real estate gains, as he did in Dallas, Scranton, and Honolulu. His goal as a capitalist was not to provide quality public transportation to the public, but to use quasi-public transportation services as a tool of private capital accumulation.

New York Times, Feb 2, 1962

In New York, Weinberg announced a reorganization plan that included layoffs of 800-1,500 workers, elimination of most night and weekend service, and a halt to pension payments. He also wanted to increase the fare from 15 to 20 cents (about $1.45 to $1.90 in today’s dollars) and re-instate a 5 cent transfer between lines (note: when they eliminated the free transfer just months before, the company thought it would put their books in the black; instead, ridership plummeted).

The TWU saw right through Weinberg’s capitalist ploy. In February, they authorized a strike should Weinberg make cuts or layoffs. At that meeting, TWU president Micheal J. Quill said he would like to see the city take over the whole company.

He would get his wish.

On the morning of March 1st, 1962, Weinberg laid of 29 TWU fare collectors, doorman, and watchmen, all of whom were unable to drive because of age, injury, or illness. The TWU stopped work on all FACO lines by 5pm that day.

More photos here: http://www.twulocal100.org/story/60-years-ago-fight-survival-and-birth-mabstoa

Mayor Wagner meanwhile wasted no time condemning Weinberg for precipitating a strike and threatening cuts, layoffs, AND a fare increase. Within 2 days he moved with the Board of Estimate and the state Legislature  to condemn FACO’s buses and garages and seize them for municipal use.

On March 8th, the Board of Estimates striped FACO of 80% of its franchises.
On March 15 & 19th, the state assembly and senate passed the bills needed for the city to condemn and seize FACO’s garage/maintenance properties and rolling stock.
By the end of the month, under the newly created Manhattan and Bronx Surface Transit Operating Authority (MABSTOA), the buses were back online (repainted to city colors) and strikers went back to work as public employees.

The state, neither before nor since, has never moved so quickly in public transit. Perhaps this is because public sector workers are no longer legally able to strike under the Taylor Law, which severely curtails the strength Labor has as an organized body to defend not only their rights, but the rights of the public.

History taken from From a Nickel to a Token (2016) by Andrew J. Sparberg.

What We Did

As we close the book on another NPEC term, I’d like to use one of my last acts as chair to recap the past year, debrief how we did, and preview what’s to come.  

The centerpiece of this term was NPEC’s inaugural National Capital Reading Group (CRG).  This ambitious project was our first foray into reading a foundational socialist text at a national level.  The Reading Group divided Capital Vol. 1, into several monthly sections, where we would meet on Zoom to have rotation facilitators review key ideas and discuss.  We also provided our guide so that chapters or regions could have their own Capital reading group.  Our kickoff event had over 500 RSVPs in October. While there was a dropoff, like any reading group, we did have a good number of members make it to the final session at the end of February. We feel that the CRG went so well, we will make it an annual tradition, and would like to adopt the format to other foundational socialist texts.  

Chapter Support

Our Chapter support subcommittee continued on its mission by mentoring 20 chapters and multiple trainings, including how to have a socialist night school, talking to non-socialists, and our how to have a childwatch in your chapter.  

Curriculum 

We published two new modules this term: Race and Capitalism in the United States: An Introduction and Fascism and the American Right. Next term, we are committing to publishing even more modules while revamping our old modules with new readings, materials, and resources for chapter to political educators to use out of the box.  We are also excited to share that our modules will be moving to a DSA Moodle shortly.  

Events 

They had a very active term, producing 4 of their typical mass calls while venturing into new territory and planning the first series of national foundational calls in collaboration with the NPC.  Events also lent a hand with the Capital Reading Group, the annual Educators’ Conference, and other NPEC mass calls.  You can find recordings of these events and series on the DSA YouTube.  

Comms and Podcast

We democratized our podcast production to expand the scope of topics while maintaining quality, producing 13 episodes. The Class podcast has grown its listenership by over 10,000 downloads in the past year, moving past 26,000 this past month. Our newsletter Redletter, is also gaining popularity through its quality and pertinent information about political education in DSA. It is read by an average of 3,600 members monthly this term.  

Meeting Goals 

At the beginning of this term, we set some goals about the content, events, and materials we’d like to produce this year. I wanted to reflect on those goals to highlight the ones we met and put a pin in what we can strive for this coming term.  

• We had the ambition to create several new trainings and how-tos geared at new and at-large members, along with developing chapters. A new facilitation and how-to start a political education training will debut soon, after the member surge in the wake of the 2024 election. We did implement our national foundations call in conjunction with the NPC and help wrangle DSA 101 and new member resources. So, we didn’t check all our boxes, but we did get some important ones marked, especially those that met the moment. 
• Resources depot This is halfway met. Over the past term, we have gathered many new and diverse chapter-created materials, but we haven’t yet sorted, categorized, and posted those on the resource page. 
• Democratic Socialists of America: A Graphic History, which we helped the DSA Fund produce, is finished and available digitally. As of this writing, a Kickstarter campaign will soon launch to produce physical copies. NPEC’s next step is to possibly make an accompanying lesson plan for chapters to utilize along with the Graphic History.
• The Spanish translations of our foundational modules are complete and can be found here. It went down to the wire, but NPEC was able to complete our initial goal of offering our materials in more languages. With a language justice and accessibility resolution up for debate at this year’s convention, we look forward to having a wider and more diverse set of translated materials.  
• We wanted to continue to have contact with every chapter, no matter the size, to see if they are doing political education and how we can help them better facilitate their programs.  The goal of reaching every chapter and getting their status still eludes us, but our yearly survey, which we sent out many times and worked with the NPC to circulate it, had the most interactions of any term. With that, we could work with large and established chapters like Philly down to Organizing Committees like Alachua County in Florida. NPEC and our Chapter Support subcommittee will continue our outreach through every avenue at our disposal to reach out and communicate with chapters.
• Through an NPC resolution after the 2024 election results, we were asked to put on another round of socialist foundations mass calls. This was an excellent opportunity to meet one of our goals and revamp the program with the participation of our national co-chairs. These calls were well attended and are now on DSA’s YouTube.  
• The Capital Vol. 1 Reading Group was the feather in our cap this past term. It created the most buzz of any event that NPEC has put on, with over 200 members attending our kick-off event. Along with reading a seminal socialist text, the reading group made many members aware of our committee and offerings.  There was a drop off like any reading group, but especially one of this density. Still, we finished with a solid core and built the foundations to make this an annual event while providing the blueprints to do it with other essential readings.  
• We also hosted a second national reading group for Eric Blanc’s recently released book, We Are the Union, in collaboration with the DSA’s National Labor Commission, YDSA, and EWOC.  This strong collaboration led to one of our best-attended calls, with over a thousand people turning in for the launch call that featured Eric Blanc, labor writer Kim Kelly (author, Fight Like Hell), and Moe Mills of Starbucks Workers United. The Recap Call featured Jane Slaughter of Labor Notes and Jaz Brisack, an original organizer of Starbucks Workers United, to discuss their impressions of the book with the author, Eric Blanc.  

Next Term

NPEC members came together and democratically decided our goals for the future in our 2025 Consensus Resolution. After meeting our charter goals from Resolution 33 at the 2019 Convention, we outlined how we will continue improving our current fair and what we strive to do next to keep developing political education in DSA, thereby shaping the future of DSA as we grow and develop as an organization. 

• Expanding our volunteer and contributor pool of members
• Structurally, shore up our place as a dynamic national committee with an increase in budget and staff time
• Add depth and width to our media offerings and member outreach
  • Expanding the scope of topics and increasing the frequency of our podcast Class
  • Creating more video content for DSA’s YouTube channel
  • Ensuring that our Educators’ Conference is held regularly throughout the term. 
• Continue to expand and improve our curriculum offerings
  • 4 new Socialist Night School Modules
    • Democracy, Civil Society, and Socialist Politics
    • What is Internationalism for Socialists?
    • Socialist Analyses of Nativism and Racism
    • Socialist Feminisms & Gender Liberation
  • Refine and improve past modules for use in Socialist Night Schools
  • Found a Party School to be used in conjunction with the Growth and Development Committee’s hard skills trainings
  • A Socialist Sprouts curriculum for children, parents, and caregivers
  • The Capital Reading Group will continue annually, with the prospect of offering more reading groups for other critical socialist readings.  

Before reading more, an urgent ask for all members: we want the feedback of all our membership! Please fill out our chapter survey so we can know more about your thoughts on our various areas of work and how we can improve! This will take about 10-15 minutes, so set aside some time to sit down and share your thoughts!

• Our State and Revolution reading group is coming up this Saturday. Make sure to RSVP in order to get the link!

• Our Sanctuary Cincy petition is going strong, but we need you to help us reach as many people as possible to sign! Sign up for our canvass this Saturday, May 24th in Westwood to get as many residents of Cincinnati as possible to sign the petition!

• New to DSA (or know someone interested) and want to meet others and learn more about the country’s largest socialist organization? Join us for our next DSA 101!

• Our next Stitching Social is happening this May 31st at noon! Join us at the Covington Library to start or continue a craft project and socialize with fellow socialists!

• We’re hosting a 101 session on Medicare for All and why we fight for it as socialists! Join us on May 31st at the Newport Library at 3 PM for a political education event on one of the core issues for democratic socialists over the past ten years!

Climate Disaster? The Point is to Change It!

What got me out of being a climate doomer is meeting and collaborating with enough people across this organization who have been through that period of engaging with how bad things are and reckoning with that doomer aspect, and then are like, No, we just have to build something better and that’s the only alternative, because otherwise we are fucked. But we have to figure out what that alternative is and how to make it happen at whatever cost because that’s our collective and individual survival. Those actually are the stakes and we can build it together—there are all these reasons to think we can build it together—but we have to keep articulating that in a way that people can actually believe, that we can actually believe and also convince other people of.

• Ashik Siddique, DSA Co-Chair. READ MORE

By Triangle DSA Socialist Feminist Working Group

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

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

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

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

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

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

DSA San Diego, as part of TRUST Coalition, is demanding the end of Automatic License Plate Readers used by the San Diego Police Department. Read statement. [...]

Read More... from DSA San Diego Calls on the San Diego City Council to End the use of Automatic License Plate Readers

The post DSA San Diego Calls on the San Diego City Council to End the use of Automatic License Plate Readers appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America | San Diego Chapter.

Enjoy your May National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 18-person body (including two YDSA members who share a vote) which functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, join Palestinian solidarity actions, sign up for tenant organizing trainings, get in the Convention spirit, and more!

And to make sure you get our newsletters in your inbox, sign up here! Each one features action alerts, upcoming events, political education, and more.

• From the National Political Committee — Growing Our Movement
• Palestine Will Live Forever — Nakba Week of Action Through Wednesday 5/21
• May and June Afrosocialists & Socialists of Color Caucus Committee Meetings
• Document Our Socialist History! Join Our DSA Archives Workshop Thursday 5/29
• Summer Tenant Organizing Training Series Starts Saturday 6/7!
• Monthly Convention Update: Programming Proposals, Running for National Political Committee, and More!
• DSA Graphic Novel — Help New Members Learn Our History!
• Apply for DSA’s National Communications Committee

From the National Political Committee — Growing Our Movement

Two weeks ago on May Day, chapters across the country poured into the street to protest the oligarchy and celebrate our power, bringing the spirit of International Workers’ Day to over 800 cities and towns all over the United States — the most simultaneous May Day events in US history. Standing shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with each other and with workers everywhere is a powerful reminder of the world we’re building toward — a better world where the working class has democratic control of every aspect of our lives, instead of the war-hungry earth-killing capitalist class currently running it all like some kind of demented planetary chessboard. 

As we organize and show up at mass events to keep demonstrating and growing our power, we know we are up against the rise of fascism everywhere as capitalism buckles under its own need for endless, mindless growth of profits for the very few at the top. The death drive of these war profiteers is especially clear today, the 77th anniversary of the Nakba of Palestine, as corporations and governments complicit in genocide and apartheid feel the heat from the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. Our international solidarity is the force that will not only push back against this tide, but turn it altogether — but only if we organize ourselves into something stronger than the billionaires’ bottomless bank accounts. 

We know that this means growing our numbers and carefully organizing the resources we have, to deepen our power in ways that disrupt the ability of the capitalist class to control us. We need powerful labor unions in our workplaces to take on the bosses, organized tenants to take on the landlords, socialists in office to use state power and the bully pulpit to curb capitalist control of the economy, and a mass movement that’s ready to hit the ground in defense of immigrants, trans folks, reproductive rights, and against ecological devastation for a planet where all can survive and thrive together. 

And that’s exactly what we’re doing. DSA has seen more than 10% growth in membership since Election Day, plus a rapid increase in new organizing committees in cities and regions where we didn’t have a chapter. Capitalists organize everywhere, so we must do the same — and we are!

We want to give a special welcome to the members of these new Organizing Committees (pre-chapter formations) that have formed so far in 2025:

• Bluegrass (KY)
• Brazos (TX)
• Central Mississippi
• Chippewa Valley (WI)
• Flagstaff, AZ
• Land of Lincoln (IL)
• Med City (Rochester, MN)
• Middle Georgia
• Northwest Michigan
• Paso Del Norte (TX, NM)
• River Region (AL)
• Southeast Kansas
• St. Cloud (MN)
• Walla Walla (WA)

And we want to welcome our newest chapters, who have all already passed a set of bylaws, elected officers, and gotten down to the nitty-gritty of organizing in their areas!

• Mesa County DSA (CO)
• Mobile Bay DSA (AL)
• Omaha DSA (NE, IA)
• Saginaw Bay DSA (MI)
• Sonoma County DSA (CA)
• Southern Idaho DSA
• Southern Maryland DSA

This is incredible growth and we’re so excited to see organizing happening in these areas. Workers are taking on mega-corporations Amazon and Starbucks, organizing brand new tenants unions, running people for municipal office, fighting back against hospital systems that are complying in advance with Trump’s anti-trans directives, and so much more. If you are an at-large member interested in organizing a new formation in your city or region, you can learn more about that process here. There’s no time like the present to get that work off the ground. Folks are ready to get mobilizing and organizing!

If you’re interested in connecting with DSA members across the country to talk about your organizing work, learn from each other’s successes and challenges, and find the collective motivation and courage to take on these big fights, there are two big opportunities this summer to do exactly that.

Socialism Conference will be held over 4th of July weekend in Chicago and will feature programming from organizers, activists, and thinkers across the country and around the world, with folks addressing everything from the nuts and bolts of organizing tasks to the huge political questions in front of us about how we build left power, against the far right ascending around the globe amid war and wildfires. DSA will be hosting several panels and DSA members will be present on many more, plus there will be DSA meet-and-greets and lots of chances to connect with other members. Watch this space for more information, and register now!

The 2025 DSA National Convention will be taking place in Chicago on August 8-10. It will be an incredible opportunity for us to network with each other, debate our strategy and political orientation for the next two years, and continue building ourselves into the mass party we need to be in order to fight capitalism. If your chapter hasn’t already started the process of choosing delegates, thinking about resolutions, or making a fundraising plan to help get delegates to the convention, what are you waiting for? Reach out to your chapter for more information!

We look forward to seeing you at either or both of these events, or maybe at a march or rally or canvass, very soon!

Solidarity forever!

Megan Romer and Ashik Siddique
DSA National Co-Chairs

P.S. Join us to make some phone calls to raise socialist cash to take out capitalist trash and support our current nationally-endorsed slate of socialist candidates for office. We’ll be hitting the phones on Sunday, 5/18 at 3pm ET/2pm CT/1pm MT/12pm PT, and we hope to see you there!

Palestine Will Live Forever — Nakba Week of Action Through Wednesday 5/21

Now until Wednesday 5/21, DSA is holding a nationwide week of action for Nakba Week. As Israel and the U.S. continue to ethnically cleanse Gaza and provoke an entire regional war and Trump’s administration escalates repression against solidarity work at home, it is more important than ever that we build sustainable, mass campaigns against strategic targets. This is the most effective form of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Chapters across the county are organizing long term BDS Campaigns targeting municipalities, Chevron, and Maersk. Find an event near you here.

May and June Afrosocialists & Socialists of Color Caucus Committee Meetings

National AFROSOC Committees are LIVE. Check it out!

• Communications Committee Biweekly Meeting Sunday 5/18 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT
• Organizing and Mutual Aid Committee Monthly Meeting Tuesday 5/20 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT
• Growth and Development Committee Monthly Meeting Thursday 6/5 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT
• Political Education Committee Monthly Meeting Friday 6/6 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT

And we’ve added May Local AFROSOC Events! Wanna plug into your local chapters actions? Download our AFROSOC Events Calendar here.

Lastly! For those who may not vibe with Discord or Slack, we have access to an AFROSOC Discussion Group on the members-only DSA Discussion Forum. If you haven’t signed up for the Discussion Forum already, use the email you use for your membership to get in!

Document Our Socialist History! Join Our DSA Archives Workshop Thursday 5/29

Join the DSA National Political Education Committee and the DSA Fund for our DSA Archives Workshop Thursday 5/29 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT! We invite all DSA comrades who are…

• chapter secretaries
• interested in starting a local archive of DSA and/or associated histories in their chapters
• political educators who want to bring archival knowledge back to their chapters
• socialists with cool stuff who want to know what they could do with it
• interested in exploring the purpose and meaning of archives for the left

This is a 90-minute instructional workshop with interspersed, interactive discussion of theory and practice, led by Michaela B. (DSA National Political Education Committee, North New Jersey DSA), Anna F (Chicago DSA), Colin M (National Tech Committee, North New Jersey DSA), and Shannon O (NYU Tamiment Archive).

Summer Tenant Organizing Training Series Starts Saturday 6/7!

Learn how to start a tenant union! Are you or people you know having trouble with landlords? Take initiative into your hands and start a tenant union! In this weekly training series, you’ll learn how to set up an organizing committee, investigate your local conditions, and run campaigns. RSVP today! Sessions are Saturdays at 2pm ET/1pm CT/12pm MT/11am PT throughout June. If you’re already in a tenant union, this is a great opportunity to share your expertise with other members!

Monthly Convention Update: Programming Proposals, Running for National Political Committee, and More!

Convention season is in full swing. Submit your ideas for Convention programming sessions today! Proposal submissions are open until Saturday 5/31. The Convention team is looking for diverse, engaged, and energetic programming that connects to our theme, “Rebirth and Beyond: Reflecting on a Decade of DSA’s Growth and Preparing for a Decade of Party-Building.” Sessions can include workshops, panel discussions, seminars, and creative displays or performances.

As part of our 2025 Convention Fundraiser, DSA will be hosting an auction — and we need auction items! The deadline for submissions is Sunday 6/15. Are you an artist with a piece you’d be willing to donate, an author who could donate some signed books, or a collector who’s hanging on to a cool item that a comrade might be willing to bid on? Previous years’ auction items have included all sorts of physical goods, gift cards, and even experiences, like museum or concert tickets or a stay at a vacation property. If you are interested in sharing something or talking more to someone about it, please fill out this form. Everyone else, get ready to raise those paddles!

And it’s last call for chapter fundraising seed grants! The deadline is Saturday 5/17. 

Convention is coming, and we hope your chapter has started thinking about how you’ll help fundraise for your delegation to attend! The DSA National Political Committee, 2025 Convention Planning Committee, and Fundraising Committee have worked together to create and approve a $5000 grant pool for chapters to help finance fundraising activities for Convention. 

For example, maybe you’re throwing a punk show, or a “prommunism” fundraising dance, and need to put a deposit on a rental space. Or you’d like to print and sell limited-edition calendars or t-shirts and need to pay for supplies up front. Whatever creative fundraising idea you’ve got, if you need a bit of seed money to make it happen, please reach out to your chapter leader about applying for this grant.

And National Political Committee (NPC) nominations are open until Sunday 6/15! NPC candidates must have a nominating resolution passed by either the chapter or Organizing Committee of which they are a member, any recognized National Working Group or Committee, or a majority vote by the current NPC.

Please note that NPC elections will be more complex than in past years due to rules changes that will be voted on at Convention. You can find information on these, the election rules, roles and duties of NPC members, the candidate questionnaire, and more on the National Political Committee Elections page here.

DSA Graphic Novel — Help New Members Learn Our History!

Democratic Socialists of America: A Graphic History (narrated by the spirit of Eugene V. Debs, seen here) is ready for chapters to use with new and newish members as well as those interested in DSA. Right now, it exists online. You can help us print it for use at in-person events! This comic, based on research and input from several generations of DSA members, was written by Paul Buhle and Raymond Tyler with illustrations by Noah Van Sciver. In 24 colorful pages, it  gives a quick overview of our origins and campaigns. Your support can bring this fantastic and fun tool to both new and experienced comrades.

Apply for DSA’s National Communications Committee

The National Communications Committee is expanding! We are looking for DSA members with experience in video editing, livestream production, social media strategy, graphic design, media relations, and more to expand our national communications work. The National Communications Committee’s NPC members and at-large co-chair will appoint the new members. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis. Apply here today!

The post May National Political Committee newsletter — Growing Our Movement appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).