Finn Green works for the U.S. Post Office as a rural carrier associate in Ojai, California. On a typical Monday, Green and other rural postal carriers deliver Amazon packages for hours without overtime pay. When mail volume is higher, such as days following legal holiday weekends and holiday seasons, carriers are ordered to prioritize Amazon parcels over Express and Registered mail, USPS’s most expensive products. Only after completing the Amazon deliveries may carriers return to their regular route to deliver USPS mail.

Amazon’s recent statement about its relationship with the U.S. Postal Service is a carefully constructed narrative. Since 2013, USPS has delivered Amazon packages through a program colloquially known as “Amazon Sundays.” The contract was up for renegotiation this year, and the stakes were high. Amazon brings in $6 billion in annual revenue to the Federal agency on the brink of bankruptcy. The 2026 negotiated contract resulted in the USPS delivering 80% of amazon packages it had previously handled, an outcome USPS had no real power to refuse. Amazon, for its part, calls this a “longstanding partnership.” The relationship is not as mutual as Amazon suggests.

Amazon’s relationship with USPS is that of an independent, dominant tech corporation leveraging a financially strained public institution whose survival depends on the multi-billion dollar contract. Green explicitly pushes back on the idea that Amazon is “saving the day,” and  instead suggests that Amazon is also dependent on USPS for rural and last-mile delivery, where private logistics are too costly to replicate. Although Amazon presents as a high‑tech delivery giant, its ability to promise cheap, fast, and near‑universal shipping is absolutely reliant on USPS’s public infrastructure and labor. 

USPS provides the tools necessary for Amazon’s success through long-established delivery routes, legally mandated universal service obligations, and a national workforce capable of reaching rural regions. Amazon’s role is not that of a benefactor, but of a dominant customer whose logistical operations are actively reorganizing a public institution through the slow process of death by a thousand cuts. In Green’s words, “Amazon has us by the balls, basically… the system is rigged, where it’s like Amazon sets the metrics of what we have to hit, and if we don’t hit it, they can withhold that money.” These pressures flow downward through USPS operations and dictate how carriers prioritize their workload.

Workers are further exploited through the rural route evaluation system. Under this system, rural carriers are assigned a fixed number of paid hours for a given route, based on standardized assessments of expected workload. Actual working time often far exceeds the hours assigned to an evaluated route, particularly during periods of high mail or Amazon package volume. Rural carriers work many additional hours beyond their evaluated time and do not receive corresponding pay or lunch breaks. Carriers are not allowed to return to the post office with any undelivered mail, meaning they must complete their full route no matter how long it takes. Delaying the mail is a federal violation. A carrier who does not complete an assigned route risks a fireable offence.

USPS maintains records of both evaluated hours and actual hours reported by carriers. While carriers are required to complete full delivery routes under penalty of discipline,  compensation is only addressed under specific thresholds instead of actual working hours. This means that although labor law requires hourly workers to be paid for every hour worked, the reality of combining the rural route evaluation system with delivery enforcement normalizes unpaid labor. 

Union leadership allegedly delays addressing any structural problems. When Green raised concerns with the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association (NRLCA), representatives acknowledged that the rural route evaluation system can result in carriers working unpaid hours without breaks. While NRLCA representatives admit the system is unfair, it is nevertheless authorized by the union contract and tied to the rural carrier’s pay structure. 

Carriers are disillusioned with the union’s perceived complicity in these exploitative practices, and the working conditions for a rural carrier makes participating in union activities or holding management accountable practically impossible. The immediate labor crisis is a bureaucratic nightmare, and feeds into a growing sense among workers that privatization is inevitable. “Here is a workforce that is unionized, but the unions aren’t strong enough,” explains Green. And Amazon knows it.

In 1970, postal service workers won protections after initiating a strike without leadership approval, but striking against the Federal government remains illegal for USPS workers to this day. Alongside the 1970 workers strike, the postal system was restructured to operate more like a self-funded business, largely cutting off taxpayer support and relying instead on revenue from postage and services. USPS kept its public mandate to deliver mail to every address in the country, including rural and remote areas, six days a week. This created a contradictory system: USPS must remain financially independent while still delivering to addresses that private carriers won’t touch because they aren’t profitable.

Rather than being dismantled outright, USPS is repeatedly pressured through funding cuts, declining mail volumes, and a unique congressional requirement to pre-fund retiree health benefits. The breakdown of USPS isn’t by accident. Recent reports of USPS suspending pension contributions and projecting bankruptcy are presented as evidence of institutional failure, even though these crises are engineered by policy choices. Today, Trump claims there is no money to properly fund USPS while allocating billions of tax-payer dollars into the war in Iran and overall military spending.

Trump has repeatedly signaled support for privatizing the USPS. If this happens, Trump could use Federal pressure on private postal operators to influence mail-in ballots. According to a recent report, nearly 1 in 3 Americans voted by mail in 2024. If mail-in ballot responsibilities became dispersed within the corporation, Amazon could use the opportunity to control and influence elections. This is not outside the realm of possibility. In an Amazon facility in Alabama in 2021, security guards were seen unlocking a USPS mailbox where employees were casting union election ballots. The Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union accused Amazon of controlling the “mechanics of the election,” including pressuring workers to use the company-requested USPS mailbox to submit their ballots. 

If the USPS were to shut down, millions of people across the country would lose a universal public communication system that delivers mail, ballots, stimulus payments, and essential goods to every address at a flat rate. Without the USPS, private carriers will lose money delivering to remote rural areas, and won’t have any incentive to do so. This will disproportionately affect rural communities and people living below the poverty line, particularly Indigenous peoples and Tribal Nations already dispossessed by U.S. colonial structures. 

Amazon’s integration into USPS operations is not a good faith partnership. The agency is expected to function as both a universal public service and to prioritize efficiency and optimization set by Amazon, at the expense of its workers. “People can see it coming,” warns Green. “They can see that if Amazon takes priority, it turns a federal workforce into a private workforce for a for‑profit, multibillion‑dollar company.”

Image: The USPS headquarters at 475 L’Enfant Plaza, Washington, D.C. Photo by Tony Webster and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

This article was originally published by jacobin on may 19, 2026. Read the original article here.

Many of us have misconceptions about Black history in amerika… Among the most common lies are that Lincoln freed the slaves, that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves, and that the history of Black people in amerika has consisted of slow but steady progress, that things have gotten better, bit by bit. Belief in these myths can cause us to make serious mistakes in analyzing our current situation and in planning future action.

– Assata Olugbala Shakur

On June 19, 1865, two full years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas and announced the freedom of 250,000 Black people still held in bondage. The freed people named this day Juneteenth, and it has served as a celebration of the emancipation and liberty of African Americans. 

Unfortunately, the end of slavery did not bring equality to the formerly enslaved. Instead, Reconstruction was steered away from its liberatory potential. Four hundred years of slavery was followed by another century of lynchings and Jim Crow segregation. Legal forms of discrimination were outlawed by the Civil Rights Act, but the legacy of slavery continues, limiting Black communities’ access to equitable employment, housing, healthcare, legal and political representation to this day.

The white capitalist class has maintained the exploitation and control of Black workers through economic control and an expanded prison system. Today, the United States has the largest prison population in the world, with a highly disproportionate level of Black prisoners. California was a central part of the massive expansion of the US prison system, at one point embarking on what Ruth Wilson Gilmore described as “the largest prison building program in the history of the world.” Just a few years ago, Californians voted to allow forced labor to continue in prisons.

Here in San Francisco, slavery’s legacy of racial capitalism remains stark as well. The destruction of the Fillmore through so-called “urban renewal” which continues to displace thousands of Black residents and businesses. The brutality of homelessness that falls hardest on Black residents, especially Black women, many of whom have been displaced. The ongoing radiation crises at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and on Treasure Island in historically Black neighborhoods. The Black men and women who are killed by SFPD with impunity. Across the city, Black San Franciscans continue to bear the cost of policies that prioritize profits over people.

From the Haitian Revolution’s victory in 1804, to Juneteenth in 1865, through to today, the fight for Black liberation continues. Juneteenth is a reminder to recommit to the struggle for self-determination for Black communities in this country and around the world. This commitment is all the more urgent today, under the emboldened aggression from white supremacist movements. A better world is possible and it is our duty to win. 

Join DSA.

Resources/recommended reading:

• DSA National Abolition Working Group https://www.dsausa.org/working-groups/abolition-working-group/ and National Abolish ICE WG and local Immigrant Justice Working Group
• “Juneteenth: The Slave’s Cause, the Socialists’ Cause” by John Lewis (DSA NPC member) https://www.dsausa.org/blog/juneteenth-the-slaves-cause-the-socialists-cause/ 
• “Golden Gulag” by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
• “Assata: An Autobiography” by Assata Shakur
• “Black Reconstruction” by W. E. B. DuBois

By Victor A. Jiménez

January 23, 2005

I woke up on my aunt’s couch to 12.2 inches of snow and Saturday morning cartoons. Two hours later my grandmother went to another couch in the living room where my mother was sleeping to wake her up, and found her not breathing.

The ambulance came and pronounced her deceased around 12:00–1:00 a.m. At 11 years old, they told me that she had passed away “from a heart attack caused by depression.” In hindsight, that was their way of explaining to a child that she had died due to a drug overdose. Later in life as I saw others around me abuse prescription medication, I came to understand the truth of what had happened. She was depressed and abusing medication prior to the incident that led to her death. That night we were sleeping at my aunt’s house because the lights in our own home were shut off. My mom had struggled financially since my grandmother left for Mexico to retire. My grandmother was back in town specifically to help us find our footing.

April 3rd, 2026

This was my second year going vegan for Lent. I’m not a devout Catholic (I think like many Catholics I’m not great at it). My way of making up for it is going really hard for Lent. Luckily, the 21st century is the best time ever to be sober or vegan. There are a ton of options for me at the UFO Bar, where the Groundworks Caucus of Metro Detroit DSA held a social event. It was really well attended, big Metro Detroit DSA brass, with members from all caucuses present.

This was a month or so into my membership, and my new job. I left a start-up paid field firm to run the field program for a DSA candidate, and it was the best decision I made in a long time. I was so eager to be working on a team again and even more excited to be working on a real campaign.

I’d sat down with a comrade, and we had one of our first conversations. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon– I had my non-alcoholic beverage in hand and my onion rings were crunchy just like I like. I opened wide to chomp down on my vegan smash burger.

My fellow comrade chose that moment to ask me, “So Victor, what does being a socialist mean to you?” I totally froze. Partly because I was caught off guard, partly because the vegan smash burger was falling apart in my hands, but mostly because I hadn’t asked myself that question yet, or put much thought into my answer. Why was I a socialist? And why the hell was I so sure?

I’ve never studied economics, foreign affairs, sociology, or even politics to be honest; I was a communications major. I took a bite to give myself time to think on the fly, I think they could tell I panicked. I’m not known for my poker face. I was surprised because the little thought I’d put into the question before that point did not have any bearing on the conviction of my answer.

There is no reason why any basic human need should not be completely bought and paid for: water, power, internet, housing, healthcare, food, and education. All of these should be public goods, not just for those who need it most, but for everyone. That’s what it means to be a socialist to me.

Any other outcome is a choice by the rich and powerful oligarchy running this country. Who never has trouble finding money for war, or data centers, or warehouses to lock up our immigrant neighbors. After I washed down that first bite I gave a less eloquent version of that answer and we moved onto other subjects, but that question hasn’t left me since.

If this series was called “Why Am I Socialist?” I could just end it right there, but that’s not the question. Why this organization? Well, I’ve worked in campaigns for a while now and I’ve learned to discern a winning strategy from a losing strategy very quickly. I like playing for winning teams, especially when that team also has members who believe in the same principles and values as I do sitting in seats at the highest levels of government.

Progressive politics have always been important to me. I’ve been as selective as I can with my employers and I prefer to work for issues over politicians as often as I can. The quality of candidates that this organization has produced in recent years is undeniable and how they govern and show up for their communities has matched how they campaign through and through. Besides the candidates, the party itself is growing exponentially. The influx of new members is bringing new life and creating the opportunity for new initiatives, ideologies, and theories of change to take hold of the party in unexpected ways. This is an environment rife with energy, hope, and purpose; the perfect time to join an organization.

The best thing about DSA isn’t our politics. It’s the outcomes our politics produce. I’m 100% done with case studies and surveys. We know the air is bad and we know it’s because of heavy industry, we know that none of us can afford anything, there is no other way to interpret the rising cost of living and stagnant, undignified wages. There has never been a single survey nor case study needed to decide whether or not to build weapons for the military industrial complex which our tax dollars are propping up at rates which we will never know because the Pentagon has never passed an audit. From what I’ve seen our brand of politics is producing real outcomes, quickly, and unapologetically governing with the radical idea that basic human needs should be met for everyone in our society.

My answer to the question posed by this running series is simple: if DSA electeds made up a significant portion of officials in this country, at every level of government, we might actually live in a world where water, power, internet, housing, healthcare, food, and education were all public goods.

We might live in a world where our power wasn’t shut off in 2005 during the 12th heaviest snow storm in Detroit’s history and in that world my mother and millions of others who are no longer here due to the pain and trauma that capitalism burdens us with might still be here. All of this nonsense is a choice — we need people in office willing to choose differently.

Why I Joined DSA: For the Vegan Smash Burgers was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

by Serge S

(Note: This is a corrected version of a previous post.)

Cleveland joined several communities nationwide who are changing their stance on Flock surveillance technology. 

During the Cleveland City Council Public Safety Committee’s June 17 meeting, members voted 3 to 1 against renewing their Flock “Safety” surveillance contract which expires on June 29. 

Voting against were Stephanie Howse-Jones, Niki Hudson, and Kevin Conwell, leaving Committee Chair Mike Polensek as the sole member to vote for the agreement. 

According to News 5 Cleveland, council members, police administrators, Public Safety Director Wayne Drummond, fifteen community members and more than two dozen people from Flock No were involved in the discussion, which lasted nearly two hours. 

Flock cameras were first installed in Cleveland during the summer of 2023 and have spread to nearby communities including Euclid, Richmond Heights, Willoughby Hills. 

The $250,000 contract would have extended the system for another year. 

The fight isn’t over. Although the safety committee declined to renew the contract this time, another council committee may take up the legislation, although no date has been set. 

Flock isn’t the only surveillance system in Cleveland. The city also operates 3,400 video surveillance cameras, most of which have AI tracking capabilities. 

This isn’t the first time that Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration has tried to sneak funding for surveillance technology through backroom channels. In the past he has bypassed the Safety Committee by extending contracts through the city’s Board of Control which effectively sidesteps council’s ability to review, approve, or deny them. 

In one such instance Bibb extended the city’s $850,000 contract with SoundThinking, the vendor of their gunshot-detection technology ShotSpotter in April of 2026. 

Several organizations have risen in response to Flock and other tracking systems which have flooded Cleveland in recent years as city’s including Dayton have cancelled or declined to renew contracts with Flock. 

One of them, “Flock No CLE” formed last year when the city tried to push an emergency proposal to expand Flock systems and replace their ShotSpotter system in 2025. The legislation would have authorized a $2 million three-year contract with Flock’s version of the “shot spotting” technology by using microphones in their already existing automated license plate readers, according to Signal Cleveland. 

According to Axios Cleveland the Cleveland Clergy Coalition spoke in favor of the contract on safety grounds while police argued the technology improves response times and claimed that there has been no misuse of data by Cleveland officers – although there is no way to verify these claims as officers can use a login system that does not always have two-factor authentication – meaning that logins could be shared to avoid tracking. 

Sources in order of use:

https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/cleveland-metro/cleveland-flock-license-plate-reader-contract-expiring-end-of-the-month

https://www.axios.com/local/cleveland/2026/06/18/cleveland-council-flock-contract-renewal-vote

https://www.axios.com/local/cleveland/2026/05/19/flock-cleveland-bibb-council

The post Cleveland Safety Committee Denies Renewal of Flock “Safety” Contract appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

The intellectual landscape of our era is defined by a fascinating paradox. On one hand, society remains deeply committed to a scientific, materialist critique of the world, yet on the other, it seems to many observers that we are witnessing a profound return of the religious. At the heart of this possible modern cultural shift lies a renewed dialogue between three historic figures whose legacies were once thought to be mutually exclusive: Jesus Christ, Karl Marx, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

By weaving together Hegel’s logic, Marx’s economic theories, and the concept of kenosis—the self-emptying of the divine—that has developed in many Christian traditions, some modern thinkers are discovering a shared consistency that addresses the deep identity crises of twenty-first-century life and the global pressures of capitalism. This evolving perspective provides one possible framework for a secular faith, with the person and teachings of Jesus the Christ offering an ethical foundation upon which the grand political projects of Hegel and Marx can be built.

To understand how the modern intersection of Christ and Marx works, one must first look through the lens of Hegel’s philosophy of religion, particularly as rather creatively reinterpreted by the contemporary philosopher Slavoj Žižek. On this reading of Hegel, the arrival of the man who would become the Christ represents a profound cosmic moment where the divine spirit steps out of the abstract clouds and enters into the messy, limited reality of human existence. Žižek takes this a step further by arguing that the “Death of God” on the cross is not simply the disappearance of the divine, but the precise moment God experiences what it feels like to be an atheist. When Jesus cries out in agony asking why he has been forsaken, the divine experiences the radical, terrifying gap of its own non-existence. This painful transition shifts spiritual authority away from a distant ruler in the sky and births the immanent Holy Spirit, which these philosophers redefine as the active community of believers working together.

At this point, Žižek is free-styling: the cry of dereliction (only in Mark) is never attributed to God, and only in the late twentieth century do theologians start to make that rather remarkable connection. “God experiences what it feels like to be an atheist” is provocative, which is how we know we’re reading Žižek.

In this framework, Christ represents the ultimate alienation of God into humanity. By dying on the cross, the distant master vanishes, leaving behind human collective agency to shape history. Many point out that Marx’s later critique of religion was actually a radical expansion of this Hegelian logic. Where Hegel believed humanity would find its ultimate peace and reconciliation within the structure of the political state, Marx looked closely at the world and saw ongoing economic alienation.

This relationship is often oversimplified by reducing  Marx’s legacy to his famous catchphrase that religion is the “opium of the people.” In truth, his work was a deep critique of the material world rather than a simple attack on faith. For Marx, the inverted, fantasy world of religious mythology was a mirror image of the inverted reality of capitalism, where dead labor—which we call capital, machinery, and corporate wealth—rules over living, breathing workers. These dynamics form what Žižek calls the “theology of the commodity,” a phenomenon where inanimate objects seem to possess magical social powers while the real humans who made them are ignored.

Consider how this plays out on a regular basis when a consumer buys a brand-new smartphone. People will camp outside stores overnight, treating a sleek piece of glass and metal like a sacred relic capable of bringing them status and joy. Meanwhile, the actual human beings extracting raw materials or working grueling hours in overseas factories remain invisible to the consumer. The object is given an almost divine personality, while the living worker is reduced to an invisible cog in a machine.

In our current era, this tension has fueled a massive revival of Hegelian Marxism, led by scholars like Nathan Brown, who seek to reunite Marx’s economic sharpness with Hegel’s focus on personal and social freedom. This aligns naturally with Liberation Theologians, such as José Porfirio Miranda , who have long argued that the biblical concept of a “preferential option for the poor” is the spiritual equivalent of Marx identifying the working class as the driver of human liberation. Within this synthesis, the radical teachings of Jesus regarding the poor are not treated as polite suggestions for occasional charity but are recognized as the primary engine for historical transformation.

The conceptual bridge linking these three pillars is kenosis, the voluntary self-emptying of power. In Hegel’s philosophy, God empties Godself of heavenly authority to share in human suffering. As Žižek emphasizes, this self-emptying represents the true birth of democracy, forcing the realization that no external superhero is coming to save us, thereby redistributing responsibility to the community.. The Holy Spirit becomes the emotional and social bond of a revolutionary group that steps up after the master is gone.  Marx localizes this self-emptying in the working class—the people who, by owning nothing under the law, end up representing the universal interests of humanity.

Thinkers such as Enrique Dussel  argue that modern global capitalism operates like a religion of death, requiring constant human sacrifice in the form of extreme overwork and poverty just to keep corporate markets satisfied. When these ideas intersect, the results are revolutionary: Jesus provides the deep ethical mandate of self-sacrifice, Marx delivers the structural blueprint of systemic greed, and Hegel offers the logical framework to push through the negative struggles of history.

In our current digital landscape, this philosophical struggle has moved directly onto our screens. Every time a user scrolls through a social media feed, highly advanced algorithms exploit dopamine triggers to maximize corporate ad revenue. The user is no longer just a consumer; their behavior, time, and attention are mined like raw coal. Yet this digital self-emptying also contains the seeds of its own subversion.

This resistance forms what Martin Hägglund calls a secular faith. Because our time on this earth is strictly finite, reclaiming our hours from the digital grind becomes a sacred act of liberation. True freedom in this universe is not the shallow ability to choose between brands, but a deep break from treating ourselves like products to be bought and sold.

Thinkers like Alain Badiou look to the Apostle Paul as the ultimate prototype of this revolutionary attitude, defined by total loyalty to a radical break from the status quo. Freedom is transformed from simple consumer choice into a shared human capacity to physically reshape the material world, echoing the early Christian church’s view (such as the principle of omnia sunt communia, that all goods are to be held in common, as presented in Acts chapters 2 and 4) that the free development of each person is the absolute condition for the free development of all. (Paul may or may not have followed through on his vision, but his rhetoric of equality is significant.)

While Hegel provides the grand logic and Marx provides the mechanical critique of social institutions, it is the figure of Jesus, in my opinion, who injects the vital pulse and the ultimate purpose into this modern synthesis. Without this element, Hegel’s philosophy risks treating human beings as abstract chess pieces in history, and Marx’s theories can devolve into a cold, utilitarian machine of state power. It is only through the explicit focus on the infinite value of the individual—the theological defense of the least of these—that the struggle remains human and redemptive.

The teachings of Jesus thus can be seen as serving as a direct corrective to the potential extremes of both idealistic philosophy and raw economic materialism. Where a philosopher might justify the suffering of entire generations for the abstract progress of a nation, Christ demands immediate compassion for the individual sufferer and offers radical love as the cure. Where a political theorist might reduce a human being to an economic production unit, Christ asserts an inherent dignity that transcends a person’s utility to a market.

In our contemporary world, this intellectual intersection is a practical call to imitate that radical empathy. The most inspiring element of the Marxist dream—the desire for a world free from exploitation—is, at its core, a secular adaptation of the Kingdom of God. The conclusion of this great historical struggle is not found in the growth of the state or the expansion of the market, but in a community defined by agape, or self-giving love.

Works Consulted

Badiou, A. (2003). Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism. Stanford University Press.

Brown, Nathan. (2019). The Revival of Hegelian Marxism. Radical Philosophy.

Dussel, E. (2003). Beyond Philosophy: Ethics, History, Marxism, and Liberation Theology. Rowman & Littlefield.

Hägglund, M. (2019). This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom. Pantheon.

Haidt, J. (2024). The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin Press.

Hegel, G. W. F. (1977). Phenomenology of Spirit (A. V. Miller, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1807).

Marx, K. (1970). Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (J. O’Malley, Ed. & Trans.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1844).

Miranda, J. P. (1980). Marx and the Bible: A Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression. Orbis Books.

Žižek, S. (2000). The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For? Verso.

Žižek, S. (2003). The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity. MIT Press.

Žižek, S. (2009). The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic? MIT Press.

The post Why Jesus, Marx, and Hegel Matter in the Digital Age appeared first on DSA Religious Socialism.

The post Socialism Wins In DC appeared first on Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America.

Events & Actions

Tuesday June 16 (6:30 PM – 7:30 PM) Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday June 17 (5:30 PM – 7:30 PM) Affordable Housing Guarantee Act Phone Banking (in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Thursday June 18 (6:00 PM – 7:00 PM)  Education Board Open Meeting  (zoom)

Thursday June 18 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Immigrant Justice regular meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Friday June 19 (9:30 AM – 10:30 AM)  District 1 Coffee with Comrades (in person at 2 Clement St)

Friday June 19 (4:00 PM – 6:00 PM) Guarantee Act Petition Dropoff/Pickup (in person at 3368 19th St)

Saturday June 20 (12:00 PM – 5:00 PM) 2026 Chapter Convention (Day 1) (Hybrid) (zoom and in person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Sunday June 21 (11:00 AM – 1:00 PM) Guarantee Act Mobilization at Clement (in person at 152 Clement St)

Sunday June 21 (12:00 PM – 5:00 PM) 2026 Chapter Convention (Day 2) (Hybrid) (zoom and in person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Sunday June 21 (5:00 PM – 6:00 PM)  Tenderloin Healing Circle Working Group (zoom)

Monday June 22 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM)  Tenderloin Healing Circle (in person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Monday June 22 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Labor Board – Flex Meeting (zoom)

Monday June 22 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM)  Tenderloin Healing Circle (in person at 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Monday June 22 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Labor Board – Flex Meeting (zoom)

Tuesday June 23 (5:30 PM – 7:00 PM) Social Housing Working Group (in person at 1916 McAllister St )

Tuesday June 23 (6:00 PM – 7:30 PM)  What Is DSA? (in person at 451 Jersey St)

Tuesday June 23 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM)  Public Transit Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Wednesday June 24 (6:45 PM – 8:30 PM) Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Thursday June 25 (6:30 PM – 7:30 PM) Public Bank Project Meeting (zoom)

Friday June 26 (7:00 PM – 9:00 PM) Maker Friday (in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Saturday June 27 (2:00 PM – 4:00 PM) Socialist Shop Talk (in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Sunday June 28 (1:00 PM – 2:30 PM)  What Is DSA? (in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Monday June 29 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Labor Board – New Union Organizing (zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

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

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!

Socialist Shop Talk

Come chat with comrades about socialism through the lens of current events! In this new series, we will read a short text together, then discuss and analyze it from a socialist point of view.

This is a low-key environment where comrades can develop their skills of applying socialist analysis to current events, while having an outlet to discuss and process everything that’s happening in the world together. This event is open to all, whether you’re socialism-curious, new to DSA, or a longtime member.

In this post-primary election session, we’ll discuss an article written by a DSA SF comrade discussing the role of electoral politics in progressing toward and winning socialism.

When: Saturday, June 27th, 2-4PM

Where: 1916 McAllister St

RSVP here

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)

Expression of Disapproval – Burbank City Council Budget Flock Inclusion

On June 2nd, after receiving a multitude of constituent comments objecting to the renewal of the City of Burbank’s $250,000 contract with Flock Safety, the Burbank City Council voted unanimously to pass the city budget unamended, resulting in the renewal of the contract with Flock. This included DSA endorsed Socialist in Office Burbank City Council Member Konstantine Anthony.

DSA-LA and many other chapters of DSA have opposed Flock contracts in our cities, and the DSA-LA Immigration Justice Committee currently has an ongoing campaign to end Flock contracts in Los Angeles. Flock routinely shares data with DHS and ICE, breaking sanctuary ordinances and California State Law in the process, and has a proven track history of extreme data vulnerabilities and violations of their own privacy policies. Flock cameras have been used to track immigrants, women seeking abortions, and even in one instance to access cameras in a children’s gymnastics room. The bottom line: “Flock Safety” is not safe.

DSA Los Angeles strongly disagrees with the council member’s vote. As an avowed socialist, Council Member Anthony should have cast a vote of principled opposition to the use of public funds to surveil working class residents. At the same meeting, the council member was targeted for censure for organizing opposition to a Moms of Liberty, a hate group’s, anti-trans event in Burbank. We understand that this motion put him in a difficult position to take a position of courage – however, the expectation of our SiOs is to take positions of conviction, especially when the community demands it.

The struggle for socialism, multiracial democracy, and immigration justice continues. We are in communication with Council Member Anthony about actions to make amends going forward, and will work with him in the future to build a Burbank for all.

The post Metro DC DSA Statement on Trump’s Threats to Revoke DC Home Rule appeared first on Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America.

Billionaire donors, votes for corporate handouts, lack of socialist ID, and last-minute effort make a Donavan McKinney endorsement the wrong move

By Anthony D.

Metro Detroit DSA members will be asked at the June 13 General Meeting to vote on the endorsement of current State Representative Donavan McKinney’s campaign for U.S. Congress, just two weeks before absentee ballots go out for the August 4 primary. McKinney has had no significant prior relationship with the chapter. His track record as a State Representative includes voting for billions of dollars in corporate handouts and accepting campaign donations from billionaires and corporate PACs.

McKinney is not running as a democratic socialist and a DSA endorsement this close to Election Day would be a significant backslide into the pre-Bernie era of our organization, when our chapter routinely endorsed progressive Democrats whose campaigns we played no major part in building.

What Are We Building?

As DSA evaluates candidates for endorsement, we should consider how they fit into our broader electoral project and its goals. While consensus is rare in DSA, the various political tendencies within it seem to agree that we want DSA to act like a party. We want DSA’s infrastructure and identity to be clearly independent from the Democratic Party. We believe this is necessary to distance ourselves from politicians who would argue that capitalism is not the problem. We want DSA to be a vehicle towards the transformation of society in which the working class has full democratic control of our government, economy, and workplaces.

The type of party and its character remain up for debate, but DSA members expect the candidates that we run will differentiate themselves from Democrats by being clear that our goal is to win socialism. To that end, the 2025 and 2026 election cycles have seen an unprecedented number of DSA-endorsed candidates around the country running for office and publicly identifying as democratic socialists in their campaigns, after having spent many years organizing inside DSA.

DSA endorsements are unlike those given out by individual politicians or nonprofit organizations that simply act as a rubber stamp of approval based on personal relationships or the policies the candidates are running on. Instead, DSA endorsements are material commitments to run members of our party for office. Rather than relying on progressive candidates to come to us with campaigns that are already fully formed as we did during DSA’s pre-Bernie era, the best DSA candidates’ campaigns are conceived of within DSA and engage members to run them themselves. These campaigns are driven by DSA members who fundraise, write the platform, determine the messaging, run the canvasses, build a social media presence, phonebank, knock doors, and design the flyers we hand out. Through this process, the candidates we run remain rooted in DSA and act as an extension of the movement.

Unfortunately, McKinney and his campaign are none of these things. He has no experience organizing in or with DSA. His campaign did not grow out of the chapter and is not being run by DSA members. His social media and campaign literature include no mention of being a democratic socialist and his website was updated sometime since May 31 to add it.

Track Record

McKinney has served as a State Representative since 2023, so it’s useful to review his past campaign donations and how he’s voted while in office. During his 2022 and 2024 campaigns, he accepted donations from various billionaires, corporations, and corporate PACs including:

• $1,000 in 2022 and $500 in 2023 from billionaire Matthew Moroun, a prolific Republican Party and Trump campaign donor as well as the owner of the Ambassador Bridge who allegedly conspired with the Trump administration to attempt to block the rival Gordie Howe International Bridge from opening
• $1,250 from Ida Byrd-Hill, CEO of Automation Workz, whose company created SenseiiWyze, “an AI-powered behavioral intelligence platform that predicts warfighter and front-liner technology readiness under pressure”, according to her LinkedIn page
• $500 from JC Huizenga, who created National Heritage Academies, a for-profit company that runs 103 charter schools in nine states
• $1,000 from Jim George, whose development company was awarded a $5 million grant in the state budget for a housing project without any competitive bidding
• $2,000 from Realtors PAC of Michigan, whose top contributor is Morgan Stanley
• $1,750 from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan
• $1,050 from billionaires Tom and Theresa Preston-Werner. Tom Preston-Werner, the founder of GitHub, was forced to resign in 2014 over allegations of harassment by a former employee.
• $500 from Detroit Regional Chamber PAC, who shaped polls to promote former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan for Governor, then endorsed him. The Detroit Regional Chamber recently joined a coalition to promote data centers.

In the state legislature, McKinney has voted for billions of dollars in corporate handouts. This included a vote to send $1.4 billion into the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve (SOAR) Fund, a corporate slush fund administered by a public-private partnership agency that requires lawmakers to sign non-disclosure agreements and has produced only 1,846 jobs as of October 2025. A separate vote sent $630 million to the site of Ford’s battery plant in Marshall and another $170 million into the SOAR fund. Ford’s battery plant has created just 100 jobs thus far and the SOAR fund has been killed entirely. McKinney has voted with Helena Scott, opponent of DSA-endorsed candidate Chris Gilmer-Hill, 99% of the time. He has not endorsed Chris Gilmer-Hill despite their overlapping districts.

McKinney, to his credit, said all the right things during his interview with the Electoral Committee to try to move us to action on his behalf. During the Q&A, he committed to coordinating on votes with Rashida Tlaib, if elected, and to identifying as a democratic socialist on his campaign literature, website, and social media.

However, McKinney launched his campaign in April 2025, making it more than a year old, and there has been nothing stopping him from identifying as a democratic socialist before now, without our endorsement. It seems unlikely that just a few weeks before absentee ballots go out, he would revamp his campaign, literature, and website, with very little time to reach voters with brand-new messaging. If he’s had a sudden change of heart, that’s admirable, and would be indicative of DSA’s progress. But his track record in Lansing should concern us about whether or not he’s ready to meaningfully change course on his politics. His actions weigh stronger than his last-minute words.

It’s Too Late

With more time, these shortcomings could be overcome by developing a relationship with McKinney and moving him closer to our politics. But Metro Detroit DSA has never endorsed a candidate this close to Election Day in its post-Bernie era. Absentee ballots will arrive to voters just two weeks after our June General Meeting. With two-thirds of voters voting by absentee in Michigan, there’s no opportunity to do anything other than knock doors for an already set-in-stone campaign, with its literature already printed and ads bought. At best, a few thousand doors knocked may translate to a few hundred votes in a primary election that saw 81,125 votes in 2024, which would equate to less than 0.25% of the total votes cast. DSA’s endorsement will be essentially irrelevant to the outcome. Endorsing now and claiming a DSA victory if McKinney wins would be lying to ourselves and to our base.

Table 1 below shows how the timing of our potential endorsement would compare to that of our past endorsements dating back to 2020. McKinney would be the latest we have ever endorsed a candidate, just seven days before absentee ballots are mailed out and 129 days later than our average endorsement date. Compared to the timing of congressional candidate endorsements by other DSA chapters around the country, McKinney’s endorsement would be 89 days later than the average of the 18 candidates.

Changing our approach to endorse a campaign that is more than a year old would indicate to future candidates that they do not need to get involved in DSA and our organizing work in order to win our endorsement. It limits us in the future to reacting to candidates that come to us with a fully formed campaign — including campaigns that do not share DSA’s politics — rather than bringing the candidates into the organization and developing them into lifelong socialist organizers who we then run for office as an extension of our party. It signals that it is acceptable for DSA-endorsed candidates to act individually, deciding to run for office and building their campaign and its messaging on their own without our organization and its collective process behind them.

Learning From The Past

Admittedly, we would not have endorsed Rashida Tlaib in 2018 according to the criteria that I’m advocating we apply to McKinney in 2026. But DSA has matured, our organizers are far more experienced, and we are eight years removed from the lessons learned in a pre-Bernie era. That era saw our chapter hand out numerous endorsements to various liberal and progressive candidates like Kat Bruner James and Abraham Aiyash that did not pan out.

In 2019, Kat Bruner James, running for Ferndale City Council, said during our endorsement interview process that she would run on a slate with our other two endorsed candidates. She later turned heel and instead ran on an opposing Democratic establishment slate when it opened a better lane to victory. The chapter voted unanimously to pull her endorsement and she was elected ahead of our candidate.

In 2020, Abraham Aiyash, running for State Representative in Hamtramck, said during the endorsement interview process that he “was not going to Lansing to make friends.” In 2022, when Michigan Democrats took full control of the state legislature for the first time since 1984, Aiyash became the Majority House Leader and used the position to pressure other Democrats to vote for billions in corporate handouts.

We’re lucky to have Rashida, but she was a rare exception back then, within a flawed approach to socialist electoral politics in which we took too many unfamiliar candidates at their word.

Looking Forward

When Dylan Wegela ran for State Representative in 2022 and applied for our endorsement, our Electoral Committee voted against moving his endorsement forward because he had no prior relationship with the chapter and was running in a district in which only five DSA members resided. We asked him to prove himself in the state legislature and to keep showing up to DSA events. Immediately after taking office, he was the single hold-out vote (McKinney voted yes) for a tax policy bill that included $1.4 billion in corporate handouts. Dylan publicly held firm against Democratic Party leadership even as they threatened to punish him (by undoing the cancellation of public school debt for one of the cities in his district).

The chapter later endorsed Dylan in part due to this principled stance. He became an active member of the chapter and has been a leader in recruiting and training more socialist organizers in his district, creating a model of what legislators can do when they strongly identify as socialists and see themselves as organizers.

As DSA grows, more candidates and elected officials will want to join our movement. We should welcome them, but endorsing someone with a questionable track record that very few of us have any relationship with is antithetical to our strategy for winning socialism. We should take the same careful approach with McKinney that we did with Dylan, by declining to endorse him and asking that we maintain an organizing relationship. If he wins, we could revisit the endorsement in 2028 when he’s become involved with the chapter and we can meaningfully shape his re-election campaign and the outcome.

Anthony D. has been active in the chapter’s electoral and labor organizing work since 2019 and is a member of the Bread & Roses caucus. He previously served as the chapter’s co-chair during the 2021–2022 term.

He’s currently active in Socialists Organizing Western Wayne (SOWW), a geographic working group that was created to organize locally alongside our Socialists in Office (SIOs) — Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, State Representative Dylan Wegela, and Westland City Council President Mike McDermott — where their districts overlap in Westland, Romulus, Inkster, and Garden City.

Too Little, Too Late: Against a Donavan McKinney Endorsement was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.