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!

Welcome to another Town Meeting Day.

Last year, Champlain Valley DSA’s Burlington-focused voter guide lamented the brevity of the Queen City’s ballot following Democratic city councilors’ unusual refusal to allow voters to consider a citizens’ initiative condemning Israeli apartheid, even though more than 1,700 residents had signed the organizers’ petition. And now, the same thing has happened again.

One question, six towns (or more)

This time around, however, activists didn’t limit their efforts to Burlington. The Apartheid-Free Community pledge – drafted originally by the American Friends Service Committee – will appear on ballots in Winooski, Vergennes, Montpelier, Brattleboro, Newfane, and Thetford. Hearteningly, as it turns out, the Burlington Democrats’ contempt for democracy may be unique within Vermont; across the state, other city councils and select boards have determined to let the people have their say.

Coincidentally, Champlain Valley DSA no longer exists: Green Mountain DSA – a new chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America seeking to represent all of Vermont (or, at least, all but the sliver belonging to our Windsor County comrades in Upper Valley DSA) – has replaced it. On our first Town Meeting Day, we endorse the Apartheid-Free Community pledge in every municipality whose ballot contains it.

The text is the same in all six places. Vote yes on Article 5 in Winooski, Article 7 in Vergennes, Article 13 in Montpelier, Article 2 in Brattleboro, Article 38 in Newfane, and Article 23 in Thetford. Please tell your friends, or you can send them this video or this op-ed written by GMDSA’s co-chair for the Times-Argus.

On behalf of the Shelburne Progressive Town Committee, a member of Green Mountain DSA also plans to propose the Apartheid-Free Community pledge from the floor at Shelburne’s Town Meeting Day, along with a resolution advocating for healthcare reform. GMDSA endorses this effort as well. If you’re planning to attend an in-person town meeting where you live, consider doing the same thing!

Winooski

Due to a procedural error last time around, Winooski must vote again on its Just Cause Eviction charter change, which passed by a huge margin in 2023. You can learn more about Just Cause Eviction, a policy that protects renters, here.

Municipal charter changes must travel through the statehouse. Burlington, Essex, and Montpelier passed Just Cause Eviction in 2021, 2023, and 2024, respectively, but none of them has won permission to implement it. And with the Vermont General Assembly trending rightward, its immediate prospects don’t look good.

But tenants will keep fighting, and someday the tenants will win. GMDSA endorses Just Cause Eviction. Vote yes on Article 4 in Winooski.

Randolph

The Orange County town of Randolph has 4,774 residents. At that size, one might expect it not to have a police force. Jericho, Georgia, and Waterbury are all larger than Randolph, and none of them employ police officers.

Yet Randolph does have its own police department, and that police department has requested a budget of $820,937 for fiscal year 2026. Including generous supplements from the town’s American Rescue Plan Act allocation, spending has grown rapidly since fiscal year 2022, when the town paid just $343,960 for law enforcement services.

The Randolph Police Department serves the Randolph Police District, not the entire municipality. The residents of the Police District, specifically, must therefore approve or reject the police budget as an independent article rather than as a component of the townwide vote on Randolph’s annual general fund expenditure. As a result, they have a chance to say no to this particular form of municipal spending without saying no to the rest.

Like many other parts of Vermont, Randolph appears recently to have begun moving toward austerity. The Orange Southwest School District has proposed cutting $1.1 million from its new budget in order to avoid property tax increases in Randolph, Brookfield, and Braintree. Yet the Randolph Police Department has bet that the growing cheapskate attitude that has emerged out of Vermont’s cost-of-living problem will make an exception for expensive policing.

We hope they’re wrong. GMDSA endorses a “no” vote on Article 5 in Randolph. It won’t abolish the police, but it’ll send Randolph’s bloated cop budget back to the drawing board.

Candidates

The membership of Green Mountain DSA did not vote to endorse any candidates for public office on Town Meeting Day this year. But our Electoral Working Group recommends the 17-candidate slate endorsed by the Vermont Progressive Party.

We’re especially pleased to see Progressives in Windham, Lamoille, and Addison counties running for select board and school board positions. In Burlington, East District and South District candidates Kathy Olwell and Jennifer Monroe Zakaras both face competition for open seats.

Victories in those races would give Progressives a majority on the Burlington City Council. Burlington’s ballot also includes a critical vote on a $152 million bond for improved wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, upon which plans for new housing depend – we recommend a yes on Question 3.

School budgets

Taking a hint from the stronger-than-usual showing for Vermont Republicans in November’s legislative elections, school districts have aimed to head off an anticipated taxpayer revolt on Town Meeting Day by slashing their budgets preemptively. Hundreds of school employees will lose their jobs, but that may not be enough to satisfy voters in some towns.

In 2024, Vermonters shot down about a third of the school budgets across the state, forcing cuts that hurt students, teachers, and families alike. This year, we recommend voting yes on every school budget.

Town Meeting Day is Tuesday, March 4, 2025. Please email us at hello@greenmountaindsa.org if you’d like to join a canvass between now and then (here’s one option), or if you’d like to see an item on your town’s ballot included in this guide. 

You can check your voter registration here. 

Enjoy your National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 18-person body (including two YDSA members who share a vote) that functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, join a call hosted by the International Migrant Rights Working Group, hear from Amazon organizers who went on strike, get involved with the Mutual Aid Working Group, 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 Our Co-Chairs — Organizing Amidst the Chaos
• Immigration 101: No Human is Illegal hosted by the International Migrant Rights Working Group 
• DSA Amazon Priority Campaign
• Pitch an article to Socialist Forum
• Check out Democratic Left’s new website!
• Nationwide Abolish Rent Reading Group
• Announcing our new SC and calling for members to join MAWG!
• Organizing Fair for At-Large Members on 3/2
• Convention Planning Committee

From Our Co-Chairs — Organizing Amidst the Chaos

“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.” – W.E.B. Du Bois

Dear Comrade,

There’s never been an easy time to be a socialist in the USA, but organizing amidst the chaos of this second Trump administration – where Elon Musk, the richest man alive, attempts to dismantle our public services one by one; where Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-science nepo baby, is attempting to roll back crucial public health initiatives (and life-saving SSRIs); where the Democratic Party, the only opposition that holds formal power, is throwing their hands in the air and saying that nothing can be done – is uniquely exhausting. But that’s the point, right? Overwhelm is intended to lead us to inaction and despair. But because we have a strong socialist analysis and a theory of change that is continuing to prove correct, we do have hope; we do have stamina; we do know that a better world is possible, and we do know that an organized working class is what will get us all there.

Just this week, we’re seeing DSA chapters throw down with the Federal Unionists Network to turn out hundreds and thousands of people for events to Save Our Services and fight for federal workers, as they become one of the hottest new targets for Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)” cronies.

We keep showing how we are so much more than the sum of our parts, and even as the fire hydrant of bad news continues to spew uncontrollably, this analysis and the actions we take to combat it are leading to significant DSA membership growth (over 10%, with no signs of slowing, especially as chapters across the country take on intentional recruitment campaigns to meet this moment). But our work is not just about the numbers — it’s about building power for the working class, and we are seeing signs of that power everywhere.

We’re drawing hope and inspiration from the dozens upon dozens of chapters who are finding ways to show up and build connections with the broader working class in their areas, from strike support on hundreds of picket lines to know-your-rights trainings for targeted migrant workers from border to border; from abortion aftercare kit building events to protests led by DSA chapters from New York City to Chicago to Los Angeles to defend trans youth’s access to healthcare and demand that hospitals and university systems refuse to comply in advance with Trump’s anti-trans orders. 

And DSA chapters continue to rack up major wins — just a few among them recently:

• East Bay DSA were leaders in the successful movement to push Alameda County to divest over $30 million from Caterpillar, one of the primary targets of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions Movement (BDS)
• Seattle DSA helped achieve a major working class victory with the passage of Prop 1A, which will tax wealthy businesses to pay for a massive investment in social housing, estimated at around $50 million per year
• Philly DSA threw down and saw victory as a major partner in the Save Chinatown coalition, working alongside and building crucial connections with a variety of community organizations to halt the building of a new stadium that would have razed a historic working-class majority-AAPI downtown neighborhood for the sake of billionaires
• Pittsburgh DSA organized with the Not On Our Dime campaign to get over 21,000 signatures to get on the ballot this May, well above the necessary threshold, for a referendum that would prevent the city of Pittsburgh from investing or doing business with any government actively committing genocide, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing, in solidarity with Palestine.

If you are part of any of this work already, please know that your comrades across the country and throughout the world are drawing inspiration from you and your local comrades. If you’re not already jumping in on a local project or campaign, there’s no time like the present. Find your chapter, join a meeting, and get to work – we need you! If you don’t have a chapter in your area, join us for an At-Large Organizing Fair on March 2 to find out ways to either start a local chapter or plug into national DSA work!

We also know that not everyone has time, energy, or emotional capacity to dig into organizing work, but may have other resources to share. If that sounds like you, please consider becoming a Solidarity Dues payer, or even simply upping your current dues amount by a couple bucks per month. We know that we will never beat the capitalist class with money alone –it’s our organizing and people power that will get that job done. That said, we won’t beat them without money, either, and your monthly dues help fund the work of your own chapter and pay for nationally-shared resources, from tech tools to staff support, that make these big wins possible.

As always, we remain fiercely proud to be in this fight alongside each and every one of you.

In Solidarity, 

Megan Romer and Ashik Siddique
DSA National Co-Chairs

Immigration 101: No Human is Illegal hosted by the International Migrant Rights Working Group on 2/25

As we prepare against the ongoing attacks on migrants, it is important that we have a shared understanding of what reforms currently exist, what they actually do, and how we got to where we are today. Whether you’re new to DSA or new to the fight for immigrant rights, join DSA’s International Migrant Rights Working Group on Tuesday, February 25th at 7 pm CT/8 pm ET as we dig into the ever-changing issues involving immigration and go over the basics of what you need to know, where to start, and what you can do for the long-fight ahead.

This will be the first of many events in our newly-launched chapter organizing support program. This call is open to everyone, so please share widely to anybody interested in DSA! RSVP here.

DSA Amazon Priority Campaign

Last fall, the NLC membership passed the Amazon Priority Resolution, designating DSA Labor resources and capacity towards organizing Amazon’s 1.5 million workers. Organizing Amazon is Do or Die for the American Labor movement and the Left. We are launching the Amazon Priority Campaign on Sunday, February 23 at 8pm EST/5pm PST! Come hear from Amazon organizers who went on strike and are fighting for a first union contract, learn about how you can support local campaigns, and find out how you can get a job to organize. Amazon workers are leading the labor battle of our generation, will DSA step up to the challenge and fight with us?

Pitch an article to Socialist Forum

The next issue of Socialist Forum will be asking members how the U.S. Left should respond to a world on fire, metaphorically and quite literally. The recent years have been brutal, but there is great potential for the left to expand and grow its power if we are willing to analyze the political situation as is and learn from one another. We also welcome pitches on any other topic of potential interest and use to DSA members. First drafts will be due on Monday, March 24th. if your pitch is accepted. Please send pitches (~250 words) that include the following to socialistforum@dsausa.org by Friday, February 28th to be considered: 1) a general description of the topic, 2) your argument, unique perspective, or intervention, and 3) why you think our audience would be interested or should engage with this issue. See full call for pitch description here.

Check out Democratic Left’s new website!

Our national publication Democratic Left has launched a new and beautiful website! Please check it out and read some great articles by fellow members. 

Nationwide Abolish Rent Reading Group

Join DSA members and tenant organizers around the country for a nationwide reading of the new book Abolish Rent, written by two co-founders of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis.

With unsparing analysis and striking stories of resistance, this deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement centers poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process. Rent drives millions into debt and despair and onto the streets, but tenants can harness our power and make the world our home. Together, we’ll learn from the book, share our experiences as tenants and organizers, and discuss how to create a future where rent doesn’t exist.

We will meet biweekly for 4 sessions (3/12, 3/26, 4/9 and 4/23) at 5pm PST/8pm EST. Please sign up here to receive the zoom link to join.

Announcing Our New Steering Committee and Calling for Members to Join MAWG!

The Mutual Aid Working Group (MAWG) just elected a brand new Steering Committee for 2025! We are working to support chapters and members in doing more mutual aid work, getting involved in their communities, and fighting fascism and capitalism with cooperation! Now more than ever we need to support each other as natural disasters and higher cost of living are destroying people’s lives. So, we hope new members get involved in our work and join MAWG! And we look forward to seeing you at our first all members meeting that will be announced soon! 

Organizing Fair for At-Large Members on 3/2

At-large members (members who do not have a local DSA chapter) are invited to join the NPC, a variety of national committees, and our organizing staff for a virtual At-Large Organizing Fair on Sunday, 3/2 at 2pm Eastern/11am Pacific. You’ll hear about ways that you can get plugged into all kinds of national work, learn about the process for starting a chapter locally, get filled in on the process for running as an at-large DSA National Convention delegate, and connect with other members across the country. Join us! 

Convention Planning Committee

Planning is in full swing for the 2025 DSA National Convention, to be held August 8-10 in Chicago. Keep an eye on our Convention Website and your email for ongoing updates on everything you need to know, including information about when and how to submit proposals, apply for scholarships, run your chapter delegate elections, and more!

The post Organizing Amidst the Chaos  — Your National Political Committee newsletter appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).