Arielle Clynes was an integral volunteer in the early years of EWOC, building our crucial structures and setting us on a path to success.

The post Remembering Arielle Clynes appeared first on EWOC.

By Dan M.

On May 5, a 3–3 vote in Clawson’s city council to continue the city’s Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) contract with Flock Safety resulted in the cancellation of that contract. Clawson is the third city in Oakland County to cancel its contract with Flock after my hometown, Rochester, and current home, Ferndale. Folks around the country are pushing for their cities to cancel contracts with ALPR companies.

What is Flock? What are ALPRs? What can you do about them? How many puns on Flock and the f-bomb can I make in under 1500 words? Let’s see.

What the Flock are ALPRS?

Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are computer-controlled cameras that read license plates and send that data — including the image, time, and location — to a storage system for use by the police. These cameras may be mounted to poles, police vehicles, or even handheld devices. The ALPR software analyzes information like license plate number and make/model and compares it to a “hot list” of vehicles associated with certain offenses, allowing officers to more quickly track down targets.

ALPRs have been used for far more than just official police work, however. Officers and others with camera access have used Flock ALPRs to stalk their romantic interests. The Institute for Justice has documented 14 cases that occurred since 2024. In May 2025, authorities in Texas used ALPRs across multiple states to track a woman seeking reproductive healthcare where it is legal. Flock sales employees even used their cameras to surveil a children’s gymnastics room, a playground, a school, a Jewish community center, and a pool as part of a sales pitch.

ALPRs enable authorities to watch people who, even by the logic of the law, don’t need to be watched. It pains me to reference Orwell here, but truly, ALPRs are bringing Big Brother to life. Additionally, data collected by ALPRs is often retained by the companies indefinitely and used to train AI.

Flock is using ALPRs, as well as drones and other technology, to create a mass surveillance network all over the country. Flock makes attractive offers to police departments to install cameras for low or even no cost and has done trials with Border Patrol. Drivers often help to pay for the technology through fees on top of the tickets they pay. Flock also offers “free trial” periods for its technology, as it recently did to Oakland County with drones. Flock is happy to accept as compensation whatever data it can get. Flock is not the only purveyor of ALPRs, either. Axon Enterprise, Inc., the company formerly known as TASER International and as the inventor of its former namesake, is also an ALPR vendor.

Go Flock Yourself, Ferndale

Ferndale city council approved a contract with Flock in March 2023, after it was proposed the previous December. The Ferndale Inclusion Network (FIN), a local activist group that MD-DSA’s Ferndale Area Organizing Committee (FAOC) organizes alongside, has been advocating against ALPRs since the introduction of the initial contract. Members of FIN and FAOC, as well as other citizens of Ferndale and neighboring cities, went to city council meetings for years to speak against Flock. Our work got attention from more and more citizens, who joined in our organizing work. A few of them even joined DSA.

Also during this time, the city held multiple “community engagement” sessions that mostly consisted of Flock representatives and/or police officers giving a presentation in favor of ALPRs, followed by public comment. Despite frequent requests and even promises from the city, these meetings never included a presenter against ALPRs, such as a representative from the ACLU.

At later sessions, these presentations used the March 2025 murder of a DoorDash driver as a case study in favor of ALPRs, saying that Flock cameras were essential for tracking down the suspect. However, their case study mostly used footage from private CCTV cameras, not Flock cameras. Additionally, city officials supporting Flock frequently assured us that data from our ALPRs would never be shared with ICE, other federal agencies, or other police departments, as this would violate our policy with Flock.

During a city council meeting on September 29, 2025, an audit of Ferndale’s Flock data by councilperson Laura Mikulski, who had consistently voted against ALPRs, revealed that federal agencies and police departments from around the country had been allowed to access the city’s data using a National Lookup Search option. Who could possibly have seen this coming? Ferndale then cancelled the contract with Flock. City officials such as the mayor and police chief framed the issue as specific to Flock, saying that Flock was “a bad actor,” but wanted another ALPR vendor.

The city then announced it was seeking a new ALPR contract with Axon. After the community continued to put pressure on city council not to sign, council eventually decided to compromise by making the contract contingent on passing a surveillance ordinance. This ordinance was based on the Detroit Citizen Input Over Government Surveillance (CIOGS) model and was to be voted on by city council. Members of FOAC and FIN and other citizens raised concerns about the proposed 30-day retention period, as well as repeated use of “exigent circumstances” as a justification for the suspension of rules without a clear definition of when these circumstances would apply.

By the time the ordinance came to a vote in February 2026, DSA member Eddie Sabatini had been inaugurated to the city council, meaning a majority now opposed ALPRs. The ordinance failed in a 3–2 vote, resulting in no contract with Axon and making Ferndale an ALPR-free city!

In April 2026, Laura Mikulski posted data from the September 2025 audit on her Facebook page. This audit included who performed these searches, search terms, how many times a search time was used, and more. Less than 1% of searches of Ferndale’s Flock data were made by Ferndale police officers. There were hundreds of searches using terms related to immigration, graffiti, anti-Trump protests, and littering. There was also one search using the term “Hamburger [sic].” This audit is a fantastic case study in how individual city ALPR systems are part of a larger mass surveillance network.

We’re Tired of These Motherflockin’ Cameras in Our Motherflockin’ Cities

What can you do about ALPRs in your city? The FAOC’s anti-ALPR working group is developing a toolkit for organizers. The main reason Flock has so easily been able to slip into cities around the country is that people simply aren’t paying attention. Votes for these contracts are usually public, but if the public isn’t paying attention, they are signed unnoticed.

Attend city council meetings to see if contracts with Flock, Axon, or similar companies are being considered. Speak at these meetings during public comment sections. Bring neighbors and even friends from neighboring cities, as ALPRs affect everyone who ever finds themselves within a particular city’s borders, not just the residents. Here are some arguments against ALPRs and counterarguments against support:

• There exist no formal studies showing that ALPRs are effective at preventing crime. Nada. None. Zip. Zilch. Zero! Any evidence for the effectiveness of ALPRs is anecdotal or from data provided by the companies themselves. Of course companies are going to say their product is effective — that’s their job. It’s our job to point out that their “evidence” is simply marketing.
• If your city council presents a case study in favor of ALPRs, as Ferndale did, pay close attention to the data they use. How much data they present actually comes from ALPRs? As stated earlier, the Ferndale case study mostly used footage from private security cameras, not Flock cameras. Clawson’s case study included the same. Poke holes in their case.
• Companies like Flock and Axon have a long history of shady behavior. For example, Evanston, Illinois, cancelled its contract with Flock after officials found out Flock had violated state law. The story didn’t end there, though. After the cameras were removed, Flock reinstalled the cameras without the city’s permission. Flock doesn’t even play by the rules to which they’ve agreed. In June 2022, nine of 12 members of Axon’s ethics advisory board resigned in response to the company’s plan to develop Taser-equipped drones, stating that they had “lost faith in Axon’s ability to be a responsible partner.” Share examples of these companies’ malfeasance with your city council.

I used to believe the type of pressure we were using on our community leaders didn’t mean much. Having seen the power of it firsthand, I can no longer deny it. The only way we can damage the mass surveillance network being built in our country is to organize a mass of people to oppose it. Find your community and start fighting!

Clusterflock: Automatic License Plate Readers, Mass Surveillance, and What You Can Do was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey hey, comrade! It’s another edition of the Pinellas DSA Chapter Notes!

We scored some very exciting victories this month (more on those in a minute). And, the socialist movement in Florida continues to grow at a rapid pace. But, as Antonio Gramsci said writing from a jail cell in 1930s Europe, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”

The fascists sitting in Washington — and in Tallahassee — are feeling their grip on power slip. They’re desperate to hold on, and they’re more than willing to do what liberals, until very recently, assumed simply couldn’t happen here. The only way we can beat them and build a world in which all of humanity can thrive together is with mass, working class organization!

Every move we make is made with the aim of getting us closer to that goal, so read on and see what we’ve accomplished so far…and what comes next!

May Highlights

We started the month by joining in with other local progressive groups and labor unions to rally in downtown St. Pete in recognition of International Workers’ Day on May 1st.

We also hosted a fundraiser for Oliver Larkin, a member of Broward DSA who is running to represent Florida’s 25th Congressional District in Washington. Oliver’s opponent is a devoted zionist and self-described “DeSantis Democrat,” so we were happy to lend Oliver our support and endorse his campaign!

We rallied in front of the Florida Second District Court of Appeal building in downtown St. Pete in response to DeSantis’ illegal attempt to gerrymander the state and further suppress the voices of working Floridians. Members of our International Solidarity Working Group hosted a screening of The Voice of Hind Rajab, a powerful new film centered on the murder of five-year old Hind Rajab, as well as her family and the medics that attempted to rescue her, at the hands of the IDF in 2024. And, our Ecosocialist Working Group hosted a community town hall as part of our chapter’s ongoing Dump Duke campaign.

Anything we’re missing? Oh right…can’t forget the biggest news of the month! Pinellas DSA member Richie Floyd has been re-elected to St. Pete City Council! Months of knocking doors and collecting petition signatures by our campaign cadre paid off, ensuring that the socialist movement will continue to have a voice in local government for the next four years.

CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Re-Elect Richie Floyd

The campaign to re-elect PDSA comrade Richie Floyd to the District 8 seat of St. Pete City Council is complete!

As we did for Richie’s first election back in 2021, Pinellas DSA members pounded the pavement, collecting the 500 signed petitions needed for Richie to qualify for a place on the ballot. Noon on May 29th marked the deadline to register as a candidate for the August election, and with Richie as the only registered candidate, he is now officially running unopposed!

Everyone who was with us on election night in 2021 will remember what a nailbiter that evening was. But, this is the power of sustained grassroots organizing in action. When the capitalist class knows that the working class is engaged, activated, and ready to go to bat for the politicians that represent their interests…the capitalist class doesn’t even bother to show up.

HUGE congrats to Richie, the campaign team, and everyone in our chapter who knocked doors, sent texts, and raised funds to help make our victory happen!

CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Dump Duke

Our Dump Duke campaign is continuing to gain traction. In May, we hosted a town hall with St. Pete City Councilmember Richie Floyd titled Electric Bills 101. The aim of this presentation was to help St. Pete residents get informed, understand their bill, and learn how local decisions could impact costs in the future.

We also achieved a major milestone: getting St. Pete City Council to set a date and time for a vote on whether to commission a feasibility study for a public power utility. This study would be the first major step toward our ultimate goal of dumping Duke Energy and returning St. Pete’s power grid back to the democratic control of the people!

UPDATE: WE WON!!

We called for “all hands on deck” at City Hall on Thursday, June 4, and the people answered! Thanks to overwhelming pressure from the public, who took time out of their day to show up to tell their councilmember: Commission the study! Give us the facts on public power! the city council voted to commission the study, bringing us one step closers to our goal of Dumping Duke Energy!

To see what’s next for the campaign, go to dumpdukefl.com.

Upcoming Events

We have more than a dozen political events, working group meetings, and social outings scheduled in May. You can always view our full calendar of upcoming events, along with the most up-to-date times and locations, on our website: https://www.pinellasdsa.org/home.

Queer Movie Night with Queer Expression

Saturday, June 6 from 1:00–3:30pm at The Nest (544 1st Ave N. in St. Pete.). The Pinellas DSA Health Justice Working Group and Queer Expression are hosting Queer Movie Night where we will be screening Patient No More (2019). Pizza and refreshments will be provided!

“War on Cuba” Screening & Fundraiser

Sunday, June 7 from 6:00–8:30pm at Bar Chica (1180 Central Ave in St. Pete). $10 suggested donation to help buy medical supplies for the Cuban people.

Ecosocialist Working Group Meeting

Monday, June 8 from 6:30–8:00pm. Zoom only.

City Council Mobilization: Make The Morgan City-Owned Public Housing

Tuesday, June 9 from 5:00–6:00pm at St. Pete City Hall (175 5th St N. in St. Pete). Speak at St. Pete City Council during Open Forum to urge the city to buy The Morgan Apartments and make it into a model for city-owned public housing.

Portland Canvass

Tuesday, June 9 from 6:00–7:00pm at The Portland Apartments (300 8th St N. in St. Pete). Canvass to inform and encourage tenants to attend a tenants meeting, where they can tackle the issues facing their property together!

International Solidarity Working Group Meeting

Wednesday, June 10 from 6:30–7:30pm. Zoom only meeting; link will be available in Discord.

People’s Pride Coalition Teach-In

Thursday, June 11 from 7:00–8:30pm at The Nest (544 1st Ave N. in St. Pete.).

Morgan Canvass

Saturday, June 13 from 1:00–2:30pm. Meet at Family Pak and Ship (2822 54th Ave S. in St. Pete) to canvass The Morgan Apartments to encourage tenants to collectively withhold rent until slum-like conditions improve!

General Meeting & Socialist Social Hour

Sunday, June 14 from 2:00–4:00pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete).

Steering Committee Meeting

Sunday, June 14 from 7:00–8:30pm. Zoom link.

Electoral Committee Meeting

Monday, June 15 from 6:30–7:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete). Meeting in the Hybrid Room.

Housing Working Group Meeting

Thursday, June 18 from 7:00–8:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete). Meeting of the Pinellas DSA Housing Working Group and St. Pete Tenants Union to decide action on tackling the exploitative capitalist housing system.

International Solidarity Working Group Meeting

Monday, June 22 from 6:30–7:30pm. Zoom only meeting; link will be available in Discord.

Educational-Social Working Group Meeting

Tuesday, June 23 from 6:30–7:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete). Meeting in the Hybrid Room.

Socialist in Office Working Group Meeting

Wednesday, June 24 from 6:30–8:00pm. Zoom only meeting; link will be available in Discord.

Labor Committee Meeting

Thursday, June 25 from 6:30–7:30pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete). Meeting in the Wesley Room.

Peoples Pride Coalition

Friday, June 26 from 5:00–11:00pm at Allendale United Methodist Church (3803 Haines Rd N. in St. Pete).

Pride Tabling

Sunday, June 28 from 7:30am — 5:00pm. We’ll be tabling on Central — check the Discord to get the cross streets!

Steering Committee Meeting

Sunday, June 28 from 7:00–8:30pm. Zoom link.

–

NOTE: All dates and times are subject to change, so check the website regularly for updates!

Purpose

As a volunteer, democratically run, socialist organization we are dedicated to building a majority movement that will make democratic socialism a reality in America for the working class. We are committed to creating a safe, respectful and inclusive space for our members and comrades in both our online and in person interactions. We expect everyone who joins our chat server to abide by the following community standards.  

“Better things are in store for us. The world ever moves onward. Get into the fray. Do your part, and you will soon see the results of your efforts. Don’t expect all Socialists to be either perfect human beings or to think exactly as you do. Learn to overlook the shortcomings of your comrades. Remember we are fighting for a better system, not to make all men uniform or perfect. Filled with a conviction of right, resolved with a determination to win, nothing can stop the onward march of this movement for a higher civilization until final victory is achieved.”

Daniel Hoan, “The Failure Of Regulation”

1. Community Agreement

By joining our chat server, you agree to follow these community standards and to respect the decisions of the moderators, Harassment and Grievance Officers (HGOs), and admins. Anyone who violates these standards may be warned, muted, kicked or banned from the chat server at the discretion of the moderators, HGOs, and admins. The moderators, HGOs, and admins reserve the right to update or modify these standards at any time with prior notice.

Thank you for being part of our community and for making it a better place for everyone.

2. Community Guidelines

The following guidelines are strongly recommended best practices for community discussion. Many of these guidelines are modified from DSA Guidelines for Respectful Discussion. Repeated failure to abide by the guidelines may result in moderation actions. (see Policy: Internal Communication and Moderation section IV.)  

1. Assume good faith in your fellow comrades

Assume good faith in each other. Please try to speak from experience, speak for yourself, and actively listen to each other. When someone makes a point, repeat what you heard, summarize, and ask clarifying questions like “did you mean X” or “what makes you say that” to get more information. Encourage yourself and others to maintain a positive attitude, honor the work of others, avoid defensiveness, be open to legitimate critique and challenge oppressive behaviors in ways that help people grow. We want to “call each other in” rather than calling each other out — in other words, if you are challenging someone’s ideas or behavior, do it respectfully, and if you are being challenged, receive it respectfully. Remember, mistakes will be made, nobody is perfect.

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While the internet is infinite, we all have limited capacity/time for discussion and engagement. When in discussion, please ask yourself “What am I adding to the conversation?” Consider whether or not what you want to say has already been said, whether what you want to say is on topic or if there’s a better time and place to say it, and other methods for showing how you feel about the conversation (eg. ‘liking’ or reacting to other’s posts)

3. Please recognize and respect others feelings, background, and cultural differences

Many people have different levels of experience, knowledge, and feelings in social justice and radical activism and all participants should respect and embrace this diversity. Many people from different backgrounds have different definitions of what it means to be an “activist” or “radical.” While we all don’t have to agree on everything, we should respect our diversity of opinions. Recognize that everyone has a piece of the truth, everybody can learn, and everybody has the ability to teach and share something. Please, refrain from using acronyms or complicated language that could exclude others, and be ready to explain your meaning in good faith if your comrades are confused.

4. Be respectful of diversity and difference. 

Celebrate the diversity of our members and comrades and the richness of their cultures, backgrounds and experiences. Do not make any assumptions or judgments based on stereotypes or prejudices.

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Share your ideas, feedback and resources in a positive and helpful manner. Respect the purpose and goals of each channel and topic.

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For sensitive discussions, please take them offline or to an encrypted platform

7. Be mindful of how you present yourself online. 

It is important to organize to communicate online with members and beyond, know that it is different to interacting through voice or person to person, and some nuances may get lost in the digital space.

8. Be open and willing to learn. 

Recognize that we are all here to build a better world for everyone. Do not assume that you know everything or that you are always right. Listen to different perspectives and experiences and be open to feedback and criticism.

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Who said movement building can’t be fun?  This is a great opportunity for people to get to know one another, building lasting friendships and relationships, to laugh, love, and build a movement.

12. Report any violations or concerns to the moderators, HGOs, or admins.
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The following standards are required for anyone participating in online discussion in Milwaukee DSA forums. Any failure to abide by these standards will result in moderation actions (see Policy: Internal Communication and Moderation section IV.)  

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7. Report any violations or concerns to the moderators, HGOs, or admins.
8. Do not argue about moderation decisions outside of direct messages. Moderation actions can be appealed to the HGOs. See Procedure: Moderation Appeal. 

By TZ

Citizens are outraged at Congress for wielding its power in the abusive manner we have witnessed for decades. The Patriot Act routinely violates the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments and leads us to the breaking point we are subjected to today. Frustrations increased exponentially with ICE invading communities, and citizens distrust the government more than ever.

It is important to remember that your federal representative does not hold all levers of power. Activists are protesting and arguing with city officials around the country, attempting to block ICE from infiltrating their communities. During these battles, it is often forgotten that traditional government positions (such as state and federal representatives, senators, mayors) are not the only officials with power to fight ICE. Positions such as superintendents, park directors, library boards can all exercise some level of their power against ICE. An institution that has taken a step in the right direction is Royal Oak School District. On January 29, the District announced new safety protocols that create a much sterner, strict approach for ICE and Border Patrol (CBP).

Key points within these new safety protocols will protect staff, students, and families in the community. First, any ICE and CBP agent that appears at a school building will be properly identified and redirected to the Board Office, and met by the superintendent, legal counsel, and local law enforcement.

Second, if the agents refuse this and attempt to enter the school anyway, the building will enter lockdown mode, which is the safety protocol enacted when an active threat has entered the building or is on school grounds.

Lastly, if ICE or CBP appear during arrival or departure times, the building will enter lockdown mode and an emergency alert will be sent to all families notifying them of the presence of federal agents. The same team — the superintendent, legal counsel, and local law enforcement — would meet the agents on school grounds.

This protocol was in addition to some guidance in the fall on how to speak with federal agents if needed. This included contacting administrators, protecting identities of all students, and requiring a legal warrant signed by a judge.

This protocol creates reasonable guidelines that should be expected of any school district, but not all districts do so. It is imperative for citizens to ask for their school district’s safety plans for ICE/CBP, and to demand more from the school board and superintendent if they are lacking. Schools are able to provide strict protection of students and have the capabilities to alert families as well.

It is important to note that this policy has not been tested yet — there have not been any federal agents on school grounds in Royal Oak. It is unknown who the Royal Oak police will truly side with if the situation occurs. Police departments across the country have not exactly given citizens reason to trust police to protect them from lawless federal agents.

A superintendent and/or school board using some of their limited power to create safeguards in their community against fascism is a perfect example of power that citizens can direct their attention to. Royal Oak is a community known for leaning liberal — — parents and students were outraged last fall when a Turning Point USA Chapter was created at Royal Oak High School, resulting in student walkouts and protests. Students consistently protesting fascist issues and citizens demanding transparency from the Royal Oak City Commission helps pressure school district officials into creating policies, or shows they will have support for such protections when they create them. Activism is not only about forcing those who are resistant to make positive change, but also about providing support for those who are hesitant to make bold moves.

Local institutions like schools, libraries, and parks can be some very specific zones that citizens can pressure to create protective policies for their community. After all, change often happens from the bottom up. Readers interested in stricter ICE protocol in their local school district should gather a coalition of like-minded parents and citizens to voice their concerns at school board meetings. The same approach can be applied for city commissions, library boards, etc. The more businesses, institutions, and citizens that take stances against ICE, the more likely a city or state is to create a safer protocol.

School Districts Can Oppose ICE was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

[[{“value”:”

By: Ashraf Hazeyen

Every semester, the adjunct professor walks into the classroom carrying the full symbolic weight of the university while possessing almost none of its protections. He enters with a syllabus, readings, assignments, office hours, and the responsibility of making a discipline feel alive to students who may never know the terms of his employment. In that room, he is the university’s voice, its care, and its promise that thought still matters. Then the class ends, the students leave, the emails continue, and the institution that needed him for its mission offers him only a temporary place in its life.

Adjunct professors are contingent, non-tenure-track faculty members usually hired on temporary contracts to teach specific courses. They often perform the central work of the university itself: preparing classes, teaching, grading, mentoring, and sustaining intellectual life in the classroom, while frequently lacking the security and institutional protections attached to permanent academic positions.

Their labor is usually described through numbers: wages per course, lack of benefits, unstable contracts, and the uncertainty of whether another class will appear next semester. These numbers matter because they shape rent, health care, debt, family planning, and the ordinary dignity of imagining a future. The numbers tell the truth, but not the whole truth. The adjunct is present where the university performs its mission and unsettled where the university distributes continuity, status, and institutional memory.

This arrangement did not appear by accident. According to data from the American Association of University Professors, nearly 75 percent of instructional staff in American higher education now work outside the tenure system. Contingency no longer exists at the edges of academic life; it increasingly defines the structure through which the university teaches, adapts, and reproduces itself. Universities rely on adjunct and contingent appointments to sustain undergraduate teaching at lower long-term cost even as administrative structures and managerial layers continue to expand.  The system grew inside a university increasingly shaped by enrollment management, administrative expansion, budget flexibility, weakened tenure lines, and the treatment of teaching as adjustable capacity. As institutions planned around fluctuating numbers, shifting programs, and market pressure, contingent labor became the convenient answer to problems described as managerial necessities. The language of efficiency made the transformation sound practical. The cost appeared inside the lives of teachers whose work remained central to the classroom and peripheral to the institution’s durable commitments. Adjunctification taught the university how to preserve its public promise of intellectual depth while relocating the risks of that promise onto the people asked to carry it.

Adaptability has become one of the preferred moral words of modern institutions. For administrators, it means efficiency, responsiveness, and quick adjustment when budgets, enrollment, or priorities shift. For workers, it enters life as fragmentation: a late-changing schedule, a future waiting on approval, a household organized around uncertain income, and a self repeatedly bent around institutional need. The institution calls it adjustment. The worker lives it as interruption. Some lives never gather long enough to become continuous.

Precarity reaches the whole person. Wages matter because they shape rent, food, health, transportation, debt, and the daily conditions of dignity. Unstable labor also enters planning, confidence, family life, intellectual growth, and the person’s sense of continuity. A worker who lives from contract to contract learns to measure life in short intervals. Decisions about housing, children, research, care, rest, and hope pass through the narrow gate of the next assignment. Work organizes the kind of person a future can still produce. When work keeps the future provisional, the worker’s life gathers itself under pressure, always carrying the next uncertainty before it arrives.

Adjunct labor names more than an employment category. It reorganizes the conditions under which teaching, study, and sustained inquiry become possible. The modern university still presents itself as a space devoted to reflection, dialogue, criticism, and public purpose while building much of its educational structure around conditional presence and temporary labor. The contradiction enters the classroom every day. Institutions celebrate thought in mission statements, public speeches, and recruitment materials while placing many of the people responsible for sustaining that work inside unstable conditions.

This instability reaches beyond contracts and salaries. The adjunct belongs intensely to the classroom: to the students, the discussion, the readings, the long hours of preparation, and the fragile moment when an idea begins to matter for someone. His labor turns institutional promises into lived experience while his own place inside the institution remains uncertain. He assembles academic life from borrowed offices, temporary schedules, short appointments, and partial recognition. The instability spreads across space, time, memory, and the long movement through which serious thought gathers shape and continuity.

Spatial instability begins where academic life is expected to continue after class. The adjunct teaches in the building, walks its hallways, answers students’ questions, writes recommendations, and carries much of the university’s daily teaching responsibility while remaining temporary inside the institution he helps sustain. His labor fills the space with meaning, yet the campus gives that labor only a passing address. A student stays after class to discuss a paper, a family crisis, or a sentence in a difficult text that opened a new way of seeing. The conversation happens beside the classroom door, over a library table, in a shared room between appointments, or later inside an email thread. This is the geography of adjunct labor: a living presence carried through borrowed rooms, hallway conversations, and whatever corner the campus leaves available.

Temporal homelessness organizes life through a future that arrives in fragments. The adjunct plans by semester, by enrollment, by contract, by the late appearance of a course on a schedule. January can carry one life, August another. A class opens, fills, shrinks, disappears, or becomes possible only after the budget permits it. One week, the teacher revises a syllabus with care; the next, he checks enrollment numbers, waits for a contract, coordinates travel between campuses, or wonders whether a course that shaped his plans will survive long enough to shape his semester. The university asks him to cultivate duration in others: patience, discipline, growth, intellectual confidence, the ability to think beyond the immediate moment. It places his own duration under semesterly review. That is the temporal wound: the adjunct helps students build futures inside an institution that grants his future one term at a time. Continuity exists for others first.

Intellectual homelessness appears where institutional dependence and institutional recognition move along different paths. Adjuncts shape students’ confidence, curiosity, discipline, and intellectual development while occupying temporary positions inside the institutions they help sustain. Their labor becomes part of the university’s public image of teaching excellence, student care, and transformative education, while permanence gathers around titles, committees, offices, governance structures, and institutional memory. The same instability enters the life of the mind. The adjunct begins again through new courses, new schedules, and new administrative thresholds. Serious thought develops through duration, return, and sustained relation. Teaching gains force through repeated encounters with students, texts, disagreement, failure, and revision. Precarity interrupts that movement before it accumulates weight. The university has built a system in which the labor of inquiry educates others while searching for a dwelling of its own.

Universities still speak beautifully about rigor, and those words still matter. They promise knowledge, transformation, critical thinking, mentorship, citizenship, and lifelong learning. At their best, these words name real human possibilities. A classroom can change the way a student reads the world, and a university can become one of the few places where a society pauses long enough to ask what kind of life is worth building. The fracture begins when this public language of rigor meets a private organization of disposability. The institution celebrates growth, inquiry, and mentorship while arranging much of its teaching labor through temporary contracts, shifting schedules, and adjustable teaching bodies.

The transformation reaches beyond employment structure. The persistence of adjunctification at financially stable institutions makes the pattern difficult to explain through scarcity alone. Large endowments, expanding administrative structures, and visible institutional growth often coexist beside increasing reliance on contingent faculty labor. The university preserves permanence unevenly, concentrating stability in some areas while normalizing uncertainty in others. Universities continue to describe themselves as spaces devoted to knowledge, reflection, and long-term inquiry while increasing dependence on contingent labor organized around flexibility, cost efficiency, and short-term institutional adaptation. Teaching remains publicly celebrated as central to the university’s mission even as the conditions surrounding teaching grow increasingly unstable. The contradiction gradually reshapes the meaning of academic life itself.

Many students experience the university through courses taught by adjuncts, lecturers, visiting instructors, and contingent faculty who carry much of the university’s everyday intellectual labor. They design assignments, guide discussions, grade carefully, meet students in moments of uncertainty, and translate the institution’s mission into actual encounters. Their labor gives coherence to the student experience. The arrangement carries its own pressure: the institution offers students stability through teachers whose own place inside the institution remains conditional.

Time allows ideas to accumulate weight. Thought develops through return, revision, disagreement, silence, and sustained attention. Teaching changes through repeated contact with students, texts, failures, and difficult questions that refuse quick resolution. Universities understand this rhythm well. Their public language praises rigor, inquiry, mentorship, reflection, and careful study. Their labor structures increasingly organize classrooms through speed, replacement, short-term contracts, and administrative flexibility. Knowledge loses durability when institutions build the conditions of teaching around interruption. Adjunctification exposes the contradiction clearly: universities celebrate inquiry in public while placing much of the labor that sustains inquiry inside unstable conditions. 

The crisis begins with adjuncts and opens onto a broader question about modern work. Adjunctification is no longer only a university labor problem; it is becoming one of the models through which modern life organizes human beings: necessary, available, temporary, and always adjustable. A society reveals its priorities through the conditions it gives to the people who sustain its most serious tasks. When teachers live provisionally, thought itself begins to inherit the structure of provisional life. Courses continue, students learn, institutions function, and the surface remains intact. The damage survives below visibility. Beneath that surface, something essential thins out: memory, depth, mentorship, intellectual courage, and the durable relation between a society and the people entrusted with its formation.

The adjunct remains one of the clearest figures of modern work: necessary, available, present, and permanently adjustable.

Dr. Ashraf Hazeyen is a Palestinian-Jordanian philosopher, political commentator for Roya News, and adjunct professor at the University of Rhode Island.

The post Intellectual Homelessness: The Adjunct and the Disappearing University appeared first on Working Mass.

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by Anna V.

Meat is expensive. It always has been. Prices are higher, sure, but it’s never really been cheap. Many people don’t think of it as the most expensive item but ounce for ounce it is. It’s why when you go to a hotel breakfast buffet the meat will generally be placed at the very end so you fill your plate with the less expensive fruit and bagels and can’t get as much of the pricier sausage and bacon. 

The reason meat costs so much is due to the amount of resources needed to produce it. Before you can slaughter a cow you need to give it feed made from corn and soybeans for one to two years.  Grass fed beef is even more expensive as it takes longer to get a cow up to slaughter weight on grass alone. This is why multiple studies have found that vegetarian diets can be less expensive, because instead of feeding soy beans to a cow for a year or more you can just make them into tofu.

That’s why it is concerning that the new USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans increase the protein recommendations and are emphasizing eating beef – as well as the similarly expensive dairy – to meet those new recommendations. 

It would be one thing if these changes were backed by science, but most nutrition experts heavily disagree with these guidelines. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics released a statement expressing concerns over the new recommendations (source).  Furthermore, the guidelines actually contradict themselves. For example, they keep the recommendation from the previous guidelines to keep saturated fats consumption under 10% of total calorie consumption. However, in the list of recommended cooking fats are “beef tallow, butter, and olive oil,” two of which are saturated fats. Not only would canola and soybean oil be healthier, but they are less expensive, so it seems the new guidelines are going out of their way to make Americans spend more money on worse health.

Now it would be easy to write this off and say, “Well, everyone knows RFK Jr is crazy, no one is going to listen to him.” However these guidelines aren’t just suggestions for the average American. They instruct how federal food programs like WIC and School Lunches are set up. So if the guidelines aren’t making Americans healthier and aren’t reducing costs, who do they benefit? Well luckily they tell us on page 2: “We are realigning our food system to support American farmers, ranchers, and companies who grow and produce real food . . .”

A lot of people think of farmers as working class but don’t let the big trucks and boots fool you. A lot of farms are owned by large companies or families with generational wealth who make their profit exploiting the low paid farm workers who are the ones actually getting their hands dirty. These profits translate into power via groups like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Global Dairy Platform who go on to influence politics. 

This problem isn’t even unique to the current administration. Probably for as long as you can remember you’ve seen the recommendation that adults need three servings of dairy a day. This has been heavily contested over the years. It’s not that you can’t have a balanced diet with that much dairy in a day, it’s just that it isn’t always necessary. Many people, especially those of non-European backgrounds, get all their nutrients in with little to no dairy. However, it’s in the guidelines and therefore has an effect on government programs. I once spoke to someone who had been on WIC and complained that they gave her way more milk and cheese than she knew what to do with.  

So it seems these new Dietary Guidelines are continuing the theme of taking existing problems in our government and cranking them up to 11. The exact effects on programs like WIC haven’t been seen yet but they’re not likely to help struggling families. However, these guidelines aren’t meant to help them. They are meant to help the wealthy cattle ranchers who will destroy our environment, government, and health if it means increasing their own wealth.

The post My Beef with RFK Jr.: The Problem with the New USDA Dietary Guidelines and Who Really Benefits appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

Labor organizer Daniel Gross's new book, Unions of Our Own, helps workers build progressive, militant, and sustainable unions driven by the rank-and-file.

The post Daniel Gross and Unions of Our Own appeared first on EWOC.

Events & Actions

Tuesday June 2 (6:30 PM – 7:30 PM) Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Wednesday June 3 (5:30 PM – 7:30 PM) Guarantee Act Petition Dropoff/Pickup (Mission Playground)

Thursday June 4 (6:00 PM – 7:00 PM) Social Committee (zoom)

Thursday June 4 (6:00 PM – 7:00 PM) Education Board Open Meeting (zoom)

Thursday June 4 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Immigrant Justice Working Group (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Friday June 5 (9:30 AM – 10:30 AM) District 1 Coffee with Comrades (Breck’s, 2 Clement St)

Friday June 5 (4:00 PM – 6:00 PM) Guarantee Act Petition Dropoff/Pickup @ Horsies (Horsies Market & Saloon, 3368 19th St)

Saturday June 6 (11:00 AM – 1:00 PM) No Appetite for Apartheid Consumer Pledge Canvass (Miguel Hidalgo Statue)

Sunday June 7 (11:00 AM – 1:00 PM) Guarantee Act Mobilization at Clement Street Farmers Market (152 Clement St)

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

Monday June 8 (6:00 PM – 7:30 PM) Labor Board Meeting – Office Hours (zoom)

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

Monday June 8 (6:30 PM – 7:30 PM) DSA Run Club (McLaren Lodge, Golden Gate Park)

Tuesday June 9 (5:30 PM – 7:00 PM) Social Housing Working Group (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Tuesday June 9 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Public Transit Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Wednesday June 10 (12:00 PM – 1:00 PM) Lunch Break Book Club (zoom)

Thursday June 11 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM) AV Team Training (1916 McAllister St)

Thursday June 11 (6:30 PM – 7:30 PM) Public Bank Project Meeting (zoom)

Sunday June 14 (11:00 PM – 1:00 PM) Physical Education + Self Defense Training (William McKinley Monument)

Sunday June 14 (3:30 PM – 5:00 PM) Understanding Socialism with DSA SF (1916 McAllister St)

Sunday June 14 (5:00 PM – 6:00 PM) Tenderloin Healing Circle Working Group (zoom)

Monday June 15 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Labor Board Meeting – Existing Union Support (1916 McAllister)

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

Dispatch from Steering Committee

Ballots have begun arriving in the hands of San Francisco voters, and as we muddle through long lists of voter guides, candidates, and propositions, we will ask ourselves many questions.

But will we be asking the right ones?

Read more from Steering here Analysis of the Current Condition of Democracy – Democratic Socialists of America – San Francisco

Ways to Support Affordable Housing Guarantee Act

The Affordable Housing Guarantee Act is officially accepting contributions! This is a grassroots, community-led campaign, and we need whatever you’re able spare to help us protect our affordable housing funds and tax the rich! Head to fairhousingsf.com/donate to donate!

If you’re not in a position to donate at the moment, we can still use your help gathering signatures. Head to fairhousingsf.com/events to find a volunteer event near you!

No Attitude for Apartheid Consumer Canvass

Come join us for our next NA4A consumer canvass on June 6! We will be meeting in Dolores Park at 11 AM at the Miguel Hidalgo Statue. Help build support for the 200 apartheid-free zones our campaign has established in SF!

RSVP HERE.

AV Team Training

Lights, camera, action…and you! Audio and video keep some of our core chapter work going, and we need more hands on deck. Come attend the AV Squad’s comprehensive training session where we’ll walk through the AV setup for chapter meetings. No previous experience is required.

Thursday, June 11 6:30 – 8:00pm (1916 McAllister St)

Understanding Socialism Group Reading and Discussion

Join DSA SF’s Education Board for a group reading of excerpts from “The Long Transition Towards Socialism”. We’ll be examining what makes capitalism as a system function, its inherent contradictions, and how the transition to socialism can be achieved within those conditions.

No advance reading required! We’ll provide everything at the event.

Sunday, June 14 3:30-5pm (1916 McAllister St)

EWOC Fundamentals of Workplace Organizing Course

Sign up here!

EWOC holds a regular training course to help you build your union from the ground up alongside workers in your industry. It doesn’t require an organizing background to understand the material, which covers topics including mapping and charting, building an organizing committee, uniting over common concerns, and how to take action. If you’re interested in becoming any level of organizer for EWOC, this course is mandatory.

This course will in person at the DSA office (1916 McAllister). We’ll watch the EWOC lecture together and then go through the discussion activities. If you can’t make all of the sessions, reach out to Caitlin Stanton (SF EWOC local lead coordinator) for accommodations.

SCHEDULE:
Week 1: Developing Leadership
Tuesday, July 14 (7-8:30PM)

Week 2: The Organizing Conversation
Tuesday, July 21 (7-8:30PM)

Week 3: The Arc of the Campaign
Tuesday, July 28 (7-8:30PM)

Week 4: Inoculation and the Boss Campaign
Tuesday, August 4 (7-8:30PM)

By Rodney Coopwood

On May 1, 2026, Metro Detroit DSA rallied at Roosevelt Park as part of the city’s labor coalition for May Day. From the first planning meetings at the IBEW Hall through the day-of march and the debrief that followed, MDDSA (led by members of the Mobilization and Labor Working Groups) sat at the table with Teamsters Local 337, SEIU Michigan, IBEW Local 58, UAW Local 600, UAW Region 1, Moratorium NOW!, Michigan United, and other unions and organizations of the Detroit left. Being in those rooms was the most instructive part of the work.

We were invited in because of the history our members carry in this city’s labor and left movements, and because our chapter has spent the last year building the capacity to show up. A seat at the planning table is not given for free; it is the product of contingent discipline at previous actions and the steady labor of people who have made themselves useful to the broader left. The Mobilization Working Group, formalized at convention, was the structure that let us convert that capacity into coordinated participation and it did so as a genuinely cross-tendency effort, with members from across the chapter’s committees, caucuses, and coalitions working under the MWG’s coordination.

What the Room Looked Like

The most striking thing about the planning process was watching unions sit across from each other under the AFL-CIO umbrella and actually deliberate. These are organizations with different memberships, different cultures, and different relationships to militancy. The fact of them being in the same room, working through speaker order, route logistics, and messaging — that, on its own, was not nothing, and reminiscent of our own practices in DSA.

Still, sitting through those meetings as someone from the organizing side rather than the unionist side, I was struck by how much of the work became institutional rather than political. Speaker order became a question of which body’s position carried what weight, not which voice the day most needed. Logistics bent toward what city authorities would permit and protect rather than toward who the event was for. Parts of the program felt divorced from the meaning of the day itself. May Day belongs to the rank-and-file and in many respects to workers outside unions entirely, and that fact deserved more weight in the room than it fully received.

The People Who Made the Day

What made this May Day special for me was not what happened in the planning room. It was what happened on May 1st itself. We had volunteers from MDDSA across every role the day asked for: tabling, banner bearing, flag bearing, marshaling, medic, day-of flyering, and back-end logistics. New members standing alongside members who have been doing this work for years. People taking on new roles for the first time. People who had never carried a banner or been to a planning meeting walking up on the morning of May 1 ready to be useful.

That is what a chapter looks like when it is functioning. It is also what May Day is supposed to look like. The holiday is not just its program; it is its people. The shape of any given year’s coalition matters less than whether the bodies on the street are organized, prepared, and politically conscious. By that measure, what MDDSA put in the street this year was something we should take seriously, and every member who showed up — for the first time or the fifteenth — should know the chapter saw them.

What Worked

The march itself was phenomenal. Speakers connected the labor question to immigration, to racialized policing, to U.S. imperialism, to the specific intersectional realities of the working class in this city — the working class as it actually exists, not the working class as it appears in a 1950s photograph. That part of the day did the work May Day is supposed to do. It said out loud that the labor movement and the broader struggle against capitalism are not separate fights with separate constituencies.

The fact that the unions came together at all is the bigger story. The goal of this year’s May Day, as I understood it from inside the planning room, was modest and correct: get the relevant Detroit unions into the same physical space, working on the same calendar, talking to each other about something concrete. That goal was met. Relationships do not form in the abstract. They form when people have to figure out together how a rally works.

This rally took place under AFL-CIO sponsorship, something that, by accounts inside the planning room, had not happened in Detroit in a very long time. For most of the twentieth century, mainstream American labor kept its distance from May Day’s radical origins, favoring the September Labor Day that Congress established in 1894 in the wake of the Pullman strike. The AFL-CIO returning to May Day is a real shift, and one that creates room for a fuller program in the years ahead.

What The Numbers Said

Turnout at the rally was an estimated 500 attendees. By my count, roughly half were rank-and-file union members. The rest were politically conscious community members and active organizers, with SEIU showing the most prominent and organized presence. The unions did not turn out their memberships in significant numbers. Michigan’s union membership rate is 13 percent, well above the national rate of 10, and Detroit sits inside one of the more heavily unionized regions in the country. The “No Kings” mobilization earlier this year and last, with broadly anti-authoritarian messaging not specifically tied to labor, pulled thousands into the streets of this same city. May Day, with the city’s organized labor leadership formally behind it, did not. The gap is the question.

Part of the answer is practical. A 4pm Friday start excluded most day shift workers and most service workers whose schedules are not their own, and is worth noting for next year. But timing does not explain the whole gap. If union structures had more time to actively mobilize members for May Day in the weeks leading up to it, a Friday afternoon would have moved more people than it did.

The honest version is the one that came out of the debrief: this was a year of using unused muscles. The apparatus of political mobilization through union locals has been dormant for a generation, and that capacity does not return in a single planning cycle. That is partly an explanation. It is also a question. What would unions themselves have to change for next year’s May Day to actually move their members? Further, where is the current state of class consciousness in the U.S. if unions struggle to connect labor to May Day?

What’s Worth Building On

First, the Detroit left should carry more weight at the table. There is history between labor leadership and the broader left that predates my lifetime, and I will not pretend to fully understand it all yet. But even with that history, the moment demands engagement. Capitalism’s contradictions are visibly tearing at the lives of people in this city, this country, and every country the American empire reaches. A leftist — labor coalition strong enough to meet that crisis needs the organizers, writers, and educators who have spent their lives developing the political analysis the movement needs.

Second, and as has already been agreed to, the planning has to start earlier. Much earlier. The skeleton of next year’s May Day, who is in the coalition, what the political program is, who the speakers are, what the demands are, should be sketched in the fall, not in March. Earlier planning creates space for harder conversations and the programmatic clarity a workers’ rally deserves.

The Debrief

The most important conversation of the entire cycle was the debrief. That sounds counterintuitive, the rally is the visible thing, the debrief is internal, but it is the meeting where the organizers decided what kind of coalition it wanted to become.

The clarity that came out of that conversation was this: the goal of 2026 was first contact, and first contact was achieved. The goal of 2027 is to deepen — to pull in rank-and-file participation at a scale this year’s event did not reach.

Some of that conversation pointed toward the possibility of a general strike in 2028. However, a general strike is not a thing you can just announce; it is a thing that becomes possible after years and years of organizational work most people never see, in sectors of society that have been exploited by capital for decades. Treating 2028 as a horizon can be reasonable, if work of a strategically adaptable and principled nature is achieved prior.

What this May Day did was build one vertebra of a skeleton that does not yet have most of its bones. There is a great deal of work between here and any plausible strike horizon, and the honest version of the optimism coming out of the debrief is that the work is finally beginning to look like work, rather than like a wish.

Beyond the Union Hall

If the labor movement is going to grow into the force this moment demands, DSA, the broader left, and the unions themselves have to take seriously the work that exists beyond the union hall. Detroit no longer looks like the city that defined American industrial labor. Manufacturing accounts for under one in ten jobs across the metro area. Health care, education, retail, food service, logistics, these are where most actually work, and the great majority of those workers carry no union card. The Starbucks Workers United campaign has shown that a young, low-wage, dispersed workforce can build real power against an employer the labor establishment had largely written off as unorganizable. The labor movement that meets this decade is going to be built in workplaces like those, or it is not going to be built at all.

May Day’s politics speak to exactly this work. The holiday does not require a union card. It belongs to anyone who works for a wage, and the power it celebrates is the power of labor itself — the capacity to withhold work, to act in concert, to recognize that the people who do the actual work of running this society can stop running it. May Day started as a revolutionary leftist holiday, built by communists, socialists, and anarchists who understood the workplace was one front of a much larger fight. Keeping that history visible in the present and operative in the future is the work that has to follow. This year, we got into the room. Next year, we have to help change what the room can do — and start building the rooms that do not yet exist.

Forming the Skeleton: May Day 2026 and the Work Ahead was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.