Hours of testimony provided to the DC Commission on Human Rights revealed an unceasing tapestry of human rights violations committed by ICE, MPD and other federal agents.

Happy Halloween, socialists! Have fun out there tonight, and if you're dressed up as a zombie, remember only to eat the rich.

Soon enough, it'll be back to business: for the next couple weeks, we'll be getting ready for our annual chapter convention on Sunday, Nov. 16, at the Old Labor Hall (46 Granite St.) in Barre. There, we'll elect new officers and set priorities for 2026.

No event plays a bigger role in shaping the direction of our chapter's work. We need your attendance!

And if you're a member, you still have time to declare your candidacy for an officer position or to submit a resolution or bylaws amendment. We'd like to receive proposals by Nov. 3 in order to give ourselves time to put together a convention bulletin.

RSVP here. We'll start with a potluck at 11 a.m. Carpools will be available. See our flyer and a couple photos from last year below.

Meanwhile, those of you who live in Burlington may have heard that GMDSA member Marek Broderick has announced his bid for reelection as Ward 8's city councilor. If you missed the launch party last week at Folino's Pizza, you can learn more about Marek's campaign on his website.

Below, you'll find a smaller-than-usual calendar of GMDSA committee meetings. That's because all of our committees must be reauthorized annually at the chapter convention: after Nov. 16, we technically don't know which committees will or won't exist.

If you want to create a new one, you can do so by submitting a resolution. You can email us here if you need any help writing one or have any other questions about the convention. See you on Nov. 16!

GMDSA MEETINGS & EVENTS
🚲 Our Urbanism Committee will meet on Monday, Nov. 3, at 6 p.m. on Zoom.

🧑‍🏭 The next meeting of our Labor Committee will take place on Monday, Nov. 10, at 6 p.m. on Zoom.

🔨 Talk about your job and learn about shop-floor organizing from peers at Workers' Circle (co-hosted by the Green Mountain IWW) on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month, including Nov. 12, at 6 p.m. at Migrant Justice (179 S. Winooski Ave., Burlington).

‼️ Again, our annual chapter convention will take place on Sunday, Nov. 16, at Barre's Old Labor Hall (46 Granite St.) at 11 a.m.

STATE AND LOCAL NEWS
📰 Burlington band Marxist Jargon has released a new album, to each according to their needs.

📰 The Vermont State Employees' Association staged a demonstration in Waterbury against Gov. Scott, who has ordered the state's remote workers to return to the office by Dec. 1.

COMMUNITY FLYERS

Democratic Socialist Kelsea Bond was just elected to the Atlanta City Council. Kelsea is a long-time DSA member and organizer. For many years, they have worked closely with local labor unions to expand workers’ rights on picket lines, at sip-ins and community meetings, in marches, and inside and outside of the State Capitol. They have canvassed for reproductive justice and advocated for the City to fund life-saving abortion care. They have fought to Stop Cop City and instead fund public services, build affordable housing, and expand mass transit. Our Chapter is immensely proud of their victory, as well as the work of the hundreds of volunteers and Atlanta DSA members who made this historic win possible.

For months, our members knocked doors and talked to District 2 residents about the issues that matter to working people — affordable housing, green public transit, and an economy for the 99%. The success that came from this massive effort proves that these bread-and-butter issues are broadly and deeply popular — even here in the deep south, even in a city whose government too often bends to corporate interests and the capitalist class.

This people-powered campaign was about standing up to billionaire commercial property owners who aren’t paying their fair share in taxes, and colluding landlords who are jacking up our rent year after year. It was about closing Atlanta’s wealth gap, which is one of the highest in the nation, by fighting for workers’ rights and a guaranteed living wage. It was about protecting the trans and immigrant members of our community, who are under attack by the fascist Trump administration and the Republican-controlled State government.

It was about building greener, more resilient city infrastructure that can withstand climate disaster and make Atlanta a more convenient and affordable place to call home. It was about ensuring that no Atlanta resident is without housing, healthcare, and a truly democratic say in how our city is run. We plan to continue our fight for working-class Atlantans alongside proud DSA member and Atlanta City Councilmember Kelsea Bond this spring, and we’re bringing the movement into City Hall with us.

Help us maintain our momentum and continue our work to make Atlanta more affordable, equitable, and safe for the 99%. This election is only the beginning. From here, we’ll continue relentlessly organizing to build a mass movement for working people.

Get involved today with Atlanta DSA to be a part of this fight, and win the socialist future workers deserve: atldsa.org/organize

DSA is beginning to engage in the fight against Trump, while simultaneously building the socialist wing of the movement. By Twin Cities DSA members Ramy K, Sam G, and Emma F October 18th was one of the largest days of political protest in US history!  (See crowd-counting estimate) On April 5th, 2-3 million protestors participated […]

This piece addresses the reactionary threads and narratives of blame, spoken and unspoken, that exploded in the direct wake of the CK assassination. It argues that the marginalized parties that fascists dishonestly blame (for a wide variety of social effects) can find solidarity with one another’s struggles through a critical examination of the rhetorical moves this blame employs. 

In the wake of the events of September 10, much has been said about the identities of the two people directly involved. Here I want to situate the event and its consequences in a broader political discourse, based on threads of narratives and events that seem to be revitalized in the week now since the event. On the one hand, the narrative of blame which is explicitly formulated has had an extremely gendered component. As Judith Butler (a queer Jewish scholar of gender who is themself presently under attack from the administration) points out, gender is an overdetermined site, which many social anxieties both cluster around and find articulation through. The language of gender is used, hegemonically, to voice anxiety, and people pushing on the boundaries of normative gender are used as screens upon which to project this anxiety. We can certainly see how many existential anxieties have attached to trans people, which fascists “justify” by invoking the “deviance” of transness: anxieties about things like social order, demographic futurity, normative sexuality, the multivalenced term “safety”, children & their development, the body and its permeability… indeed we have seen many of these anxieties intersecting and amplifying one another in transantagonistic narratives. 

Even if we abstract away the question of the perpetrator, the assassination itself represents a severe rupture in hierarchy, and in the ordering of who is supposed to be safe and why. Any violence Kirk incited was meant to play out on other bodies, other flesh. (Indeed, the outsized reaction seems to attest to how unthinkable his death was as a young white conservative man beloved by the regime.) Again regardless of the perpetrator, the intensity and spectacle of the event has offered an opportunity for power to consolidate itself around the production of an enemy who bears responsibility. This narrative production has been able to ground itself in both liberal elegies and in a reactionary constellation of ‘trans’ and ‘antifascist’. To this point, as of writing this, the terms have been fully elided into Project 2025’s recently released info sheet on “trantifa”. These have been the two threads of explicitly formulated narrative formation: 1) the posthumous praise and laundering of Kirk’s figure and 2) the triangulation and amplification of a political enemy. Maga accomplishes this latter move by reaping the already-sown seeds of anxieties projected onto and through gender, and by having rhetorically associated trans people with threat through many vectors.

At the same time that there is this narrative above the surface, I want to also suggest that there is a parallel narrative of blame. This parallel narrative is, as yet, running beneath the level of formulation– it is not explicitly spoken– and we instead have seen it play out in direct political actions that have as their basis racialized violence. I am thinking here about the bomb threats that targeted HBCUs immediately following the shooting, despite there being– and remaining– no connection of any suspects to HBCUs. I am thinking of the opinion writer who was fired for merely being a Black woman and quoting Kirk’s own words on Black women. I am thinking about the 18 year old Texas college student who was arrested and expelled, images of her arrest and mugshot rapidly populating the internet. I am also thinking of the early reports of mysterious hangings of black and homeless men in Mississippi, from the week following the shooting. Each of these stories, of course, become spectacles in themselves of racialized violence for the American appetite. Of course we know that the founding gesture of the formation of the United States is a program of racialized violence called genocide; we know, too, that the foundation of all the capital accumulated here is the brutality of slavery. Racialized violence is our national unaddressed symptom, recurring and recurring because we have not made real conditions to heal it.

What I want to suggest with this piece is that there is an (at least) double motion of gendered and racialized blame and reaction happening in the wake of September 10. I want to argue that this multiple articulation displays the intimate solidarity between all groups scapegoated and targeted, explicitly or implicitly, as threats to (white supremacist) order. This “threat to order” is both the basis of our targeting, and the potential strength of our solidarity. The specificities of the order that is being enforced are written over and over in this country’s history, and we continue to see its living edicts today in the racialized and gendered violence that unfolds in front of us – in the media, in hateful chats, in bomb threats to HBCUs, on the streets in traffic stops, at the detention center just down at the port. In light of that I want to invite us to think together about the question of how to frame and use this moment, and any coming moments like it, for the necessary project of solidarity. How can we build new relationships in principled rejection of what Kirk stood and advocated for, in principled rejection of the logics of gendered and racialized violence that his assassination has been recruited to justify, in principled rejection of the nationalism coalescing around his figure? This seems to be the task before us, and it is imperative we do not imitate the Democrats’ cowardly collapse into silence or forced honor for this man who wanted so many of us dead, and who is now, instead, himself dead. 

by Caitlin Murphy

This August marks 80 years since the United States detonated two atomic weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. 

This gets a lot of attention in history books and the media, as it marks the end of World War II and the United States’ ascendance to nuclear superpower status.

But a little-known fact, not featured in textbooks and media, is the sheer number of unnamed, unacknowledged people who suffered the consequences of the Atomic Age.

One example: 70,000 Koreans were victims of the bombings. After the Japanese Empire colonized Korea, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to work in mines and factories in places like Hiroshima and Nagasaki during wartime. Estimates state that about 30,000 Koreans in those cities survived the initial blast.

The U.S. government has never offered acknowledgment, apology or recompense. Survivors and their descendants continue to press the U.S. and Japan for justice and recognition.

I recently visited Hapcheon, South Korea, to attend events commemorating these victims. Because of the many bomb survivors and descendants living there, Hapcheon is called the “Hiroshima of Korea.”

While the bombings happened long ago, the residents of Hapcheon continue to live with the fallout. Exposure to acute radiation breaks apart strands of human DNA, literally shredding the building blocks of life. Atomic bomb survivors, and as many believe, their children are many times more likely to develop cancers, specifically thyroid cancer and leukemia, than the general population.

I first learned of the plight of the Korean A-bomb victims after a delegation visited Seattle in 2023. Early this year, another delegation, including first-generation survivor Park Jeong-soon, 92, shared their pain and desire for a formal U.S. apology. Park will be a plaintiff in the 2026 International Peoples Tribunal on the 1945 Atomic Bombings, in New York City.

During my time in South Korea, I heard testimony at the Korean National Assembly from nuclear-impacted communities from around the world, including the Navajo Nation (Diné Bikéyah), the Marshall Islands, French Polynesia, Kazakhstan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Representatives spoke of the intergenerational effects of radiation exposure and “nuclear colonialism.”

The testimony highlighted yet another untold story — that of the Congolese. The Manhattan Project, the huge undertaking to build the world’s first nuclear weapons — which enriched uranium and produced plutonium at facilities in Hanford and in Oak Ridge, Tenn. — was supplied with uranium from the Belgian-colonized Congo in central Africa. The Belgians were notoriously brutal overlords. In a mine called Shinkolobwe, Congolese people were forced to mine some of the purest radioactive uranium ore by hand, with no safety protection. Birth defects and severe illness are still recorded in the communities near the mine.

Under a campaign of secrecy, Shinkolobwe claimed the first victims of the nuclear arms race. Miners and residents died of radiation exposure. The United States attempted to distance itself from the atrocities committed there by claiming that the uranium from the Manhattan Project came from Canada, but the vast majority came from Shinkolobwe. There are more victims of nuclear weapons than we can possibly imagine.

Meanwhile, the NewSTART nuclear arms control treaty, which caps the deployment of U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals, expires in February 2026. The Trump administration has yet to appoint a negotiator or enter formal negotiations, and despite Washington state being home to over 1,000 deployed nuclear weapons, only two lawmakers from our state — U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Adam Smith — have signed on to H.Res 100, expressing alarm at the impending expiration. The U.S. has said it plans to spend over $1.7 trillion on new nuclear weapons in the next three decades. Nuclear weapons, nuclear production and nuclear testing are a war waged in the bodies of its victims through generations, and in the environment at places like Hanford and Chernobyl. Our leaders must do more to prevent another Hiroshima, another Hapcheon and another Shinkolobwe. 

Sean Arent: is the Nuclear Weapons Abolition Program manager for Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and coordinates the regional Northwest Against Nuclear Weapons coalition. He lives in Tacoma.

by Sean Arent

Charlotte Metro DSA will not endorse the one-cent sales tax increase as we do not believe the framework created under the PAVE Act will adequately reflect the concerns of working families dependent upon public transit. As written, lower-income communities will face the highest cost burden given the regressive nature of sales taxes while Mecklenburg's capitalist class and political outsiders will be overly represented under the newly created 27-member Metropoitan Public Transit Authority (MPTA). Given this, we believe that any future projects will prioritize public transit not as a vehicle for connecting people but rather to enrich developers. In addition, the 60-40 allocation, 40% for roads, 40% for rail, and 20% for buses, intentionally divides communities by limiting where investment will go. Eastern Charlotte in particular loses out the most while North Charlotte will receive much of the immediate benefit under the planned Red Line. Charlotte Metro DSA believes that public transit investment should serve the working class without strings attached. The PAVE Act represents the deeply cynical nature of North Carolina state politics, in which politically-aligned business interests pollute legislation with obvious poison pills aimed at burdening workers and dividing communities.

Charlotte Metro DSA believes that public transit investment should serve the working class without strings attached. We are building a mass organization of the working class to fight and win key reforms like a fast and reliable mass public transit.

Sound good to you? Then join DSA Today!

In Solidarity,

Charlotte Metro DSA

You can view our Resolution from the 10/2025 General Meeting Here which authorized this post.

Like many concerned workers, community advocates, and neighbors, Buffalo DSA Steering Committee is disgusted by the impending delay of SNAP benefits on Nov. 1. 42 million Americans, including an estimated 200,000 Western New Yorkers, will face unprecedented food insecurity.

This is a public health and safety crisis, and an attack on the working class. Wages have stagnated, and workers face unmitigated exploitation and wage theft, yet the cost of living continues to rise unchecked. Capitalists continue to hoard resources, leaving only scraps for poor and working people. The ruling class then spews baseless propaganda that we should blame each other–immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, or other marginalized workers, in particular–thus engulfing our class in an unending culture war.

We are strongest when we stand together against the true enemy–the capitalist class. We must organize and act, together, as a united working class.

What does this mean? We must implement both short- and long-term approaches to this impending, immoral hunger crisis. In the immediate term, the Buffalo DSA Steering Committee commits to both monetary and material contributions to organizations doing critical work on the ground in Western New York. We will also share resource guides with both chapter members in need and the greater community. Finally, we encourage members who are physically and financially able to contribute to mutual aid initiatives that uplift their local neighborhoods. Beyond this, we must harness the energy we have to aid our neighbors in the short term, by committing to long-term struggle against all who continue to oppress us. Community care and nonprofit support are not enough to defeat the depths of this crisis–only a democratic socialist state with a destigmatized social safety net can tackle issues of this magnitude. When we organize toward this aim in our apartment buildings, at work, and beyond, we outnumber the ruling class and their sinister lobbies. We must use mass, collective power to demand our taxes go toward essential services and food for all, instead of war crimes and authoritarian states abroad. Ultimately, the power we harness through organizing for our demands will help us build a truly democratic political apparatus independent of both capitalist parties, leading us to the effective government we deserve.

This multi-front fight does not happen in solitude, nor does it happen overnight. If SNAP benefits are restored at this moment, we still know the Trump administration will find new games to play with our lives again. We must create organizing networks and durable infrastructures of support as the working class. As a democratic socialist member organization, DSA provides this political home for any and all who wish to learn the essential skills we need in the uncertain times ahead.

–

If you need help in the coming days and weeks, see the following pages for a non-exhaustive list of resources.

Buffalo Community Fridges
A local network of community fridges available to take what you need, and leave what you can. Most food items are accepted here, with the exceptions of raw meat, alcohol, and catering trays. All home cooking should be labeled with ingredients and dietary notes, and packaged separately. Note that the 257 East Ferry fridge has recently closed, but all other fridges remain open.

• Locations:
• Buffalo Love Fridge (45 Jewett Ave)
• Big Herk (167 Herkimer Street)
• Merriweather Library (1324 Jefferson Ave, limited to operating hours)
• Delevan Grider Fridge (877 E. Delevan Ave, limited to operating hours)
• Groundwork Market Garden Fridge (1698 Genesee St.)
• Gloria J. Parks Fridge (3242 Main St.; near UB South)
• Resource Council of WNY (347 E. Ferry)
• ACME Fridge (1848 Clinton St)
• NY4BDMA Fridge (637 Walden Ave)

WSCS Provisions 139 Pantry | 44 Breckenridge, 14213 (entrance faces Niagara St.)
Near West Side/Grant-Lafayette/Black Rock areas. Open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. This pantry is not able to accept fridge or frozen foods from non-commercial sources.

Milligan’s Food Pantry | 4th floor, Campbell Student Union (Buff State) Resource for Buff State students in need of food. Open Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Student ID required.

Town Square Food Pantry | 2710 N. Forest Rd (Amherst/Getzville/Williamsville) Pantry near UB North, in the close vicinity of student housing.

Seneca Babcock Food Pantry | 1168 Seneca St. | 716-822-5094
Near South Buffalo/Babcock/Larkin areas.

Buffalo Urban League Pantry | 86 Pine St. | 716-854-7625
Inside the Clemmon H Hodges Community Center. Near Perry/Old First Ward/Downtown areas.

Buffalo River Food Pantry | 62 Republic St. | 716-856-8613
Inside Old First Ward Community Center. Near Old First Ward/Perry/Downtown areas.

Belle Center Food Pantry | 104 Maryland St. | 716-845-0485
Near Lower West Side/Hispanic Heritage District/Allentown areas.

FeedMoreWNY
A county-wide food nonprofit that offers pantry options, including a mobile food pantry, or meal delivery for those with mobility limitations.

Emergent needs? Contact Erie County DSS at 716-858-7239, or dial 2-1-1. Tell the operators you are looking for a pantry, meal delivery, or groceries today; you will then be referred accordingly.

By Lexi J

(DSA members march for Medicare for All outside the capitol at the Cesar Chavez Day March)

Health care is a human right. Gallup polls show that Americans support comprehensive reform to the US health care system, yet little has changed in recent years to adequately address the significant flaws that create confusion, unnecessary costs, and inadequate care. Bernie Sanders brought the idea of Medicare for All to the national stage during his presidential campaigns: a single-payer health care system that would deliver consistent care to all Americans. As we look at our national politics today, achieving this goal feels like a distant dream.

As we navigate a second Trump presidency, many leftists have encouraged folks to turn towards their local politics, working to enact change in our communities. As the capital of California, Sacramento offers the opportunity to engage with both city and statewide movements. National Nurses United—the country’s largest union of registered nurses—has been working for years to push forward the movement for universal health care. They have worked on a variety of campaigns to champion this cause, including the national Medicare for All campaign. But did you know there has also been action towards establishing CalCare, a push to guarantee universal health care for all Californians?

In February 2024, California Assemblymember Ash Kalra introduced Assembly Bill (AB) 2200, the California Guaranteed Health Care for All Act. National Nurses United states that AB 2200 “would enact a comprehensive framework of governance, benefits, program standards, and health care cost controls for a single-payer health care coverage system in California.”.

Studies show that a single-payer system would reduce overall health care costs, as spending tied to upholding the administrative complexity of our current system would be drastically decreased when you consider that health insurance administrative costs are often tied to finding reasons to reject care to maximize profits. This bill envisions a California where everyone is guaranteed comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and mental health care regardless of income or employment status.

While universal health care in the US may feel distant, the infrastructure that is needed to create these systems has already been thought through. As we continue to feel abandoned by centrist Democrats with empty promises, motivated by donor dollars rather than their constituents, now is the time to envision the society we want to live in. We know that health care reform is an issue that people are passionate about; one that expands beyond political divides. A compassionate government program like universal health care is possible as long as we keep the conversation going. Check out National Nurses United to learn more about both CalCare and Medicare for All legislation, join Sacramento DSA and our Healthcare Committee, call on your elected officials to keep pushing for reform in our health care system, and never stop believing in a society that collectively cares for its people.