This is a chapter statement, approved by the Salt Lake DSA Steering Committee by unanimous vote. It was not voted on at a general body meeting.

Salt Lake DSA condemns the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Since DSA does not advocate political assassination, it was unsurprising to learn that Tyler Robinson is not associated with DSA.

The post Statement On the Assassination of Charlie Kirk first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

Note: posts by individual GMDSA members do not necessarily reflect the views of the broader membership or of its leadership and should not be regarded as official statements by the chapter.

GMDSA Co-Chair Joe Moore on the recent B-2 flyover. Photo Credit: Northrop Grumman/U.S. Air Force

On the afternoon of Saturday, September 20, a B-2 “Spirit” stealth bomber flew low over Montpelier on its way to Norwich University. The 2 p.m. flyover was scheduled to coincide with the kickoff of Norwich’s homecoming football game. 

The B-2 is a heavy bomber designed to carry a large payload, including up to sixteen 2,400 pound B83 nuclear weapons - each one with a potential yield 80 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. At about $2 billion per plane, the B-2 is the most expensive military aircraft ever produced. In terms of both cost and destructive capacity, the F-35 pales in comparison. 

I happened to be standing in the parking lot behind Montpelier’s Christ Episcopal Church when I heard the low roar of the B-2 overhead. It was a terrifying sight to behold from directly below. Its unique angular profile makes it immediately recognizable as a nuclear-capable stealth bomber. With only 19 in existence, the B-2 is a rare sight in most places, not to mention the skies over Vermont’s capital.  

A deep sense of unease at finding myself directly below a weapon of mass annihilation quickly turned to anger. At that moment, I was surrounded by the tents and canopies of Montpelier’s unhoused population. Dozens of Vermonters were forced to seek refuge in the Church parking lot following the end of the state's motel housing program on July 1 and Montpelier City Council’s ongoing ban on camping in “high sensitivity areas.” The juxtaposition of the $2 billion B-2 flying low over a cluster of makeshift shelters erected on parking lot asphalt could not have been more stark.

This one plane alone could have paid for the construction of 10-20,000 additional units of housing – not to mention clinics, schools, childcare centers, and other socially useful infrastructure. At $2 billion, one B-2 represents just under one-quarter of Vermont’s entire state budget. Its presence in the skies over our communities is both an affront and a timely reminder that the existence of poverty and homelessness in America – the wealthiest county in the history of the world – is not an inevitability. It is a social choice. 

While gratuitous displays of military power have become commonplace at U.S. sporting events, we should remember that those machines that inspire feelings of awe and pride in many Americans are weapons of mass destruction that inspire terror in most other places around the world. For the thousands of refugee families who have resettled in Vermont after fleeing wars abroad – including U.S.-launched wars – low-flying bombers are not associated with patriotic pageantry. They are associated with death and devastation. 

Norwich University is a private military college, but its leaders should consider its responsibility to the community and region in which it is embedded. Football is enjoyable on its own. The University doesn’t need to subject Washington County residents to the presence of weapons of annihilation for the purpose of “entertainment”. 

by Austin DSA

Austin DSA unequivocally condemns the decision of the Texas State University President, Kelly Damphousse, to terminate Dr. Tom Alter from his position at Texas State University.

On Wednesday, 10 September 2025, Dr. Tom Alter, a well-respected educator, published historian, and tenured faculty member at Texas State University, was unceremoniously terminated from his position at Texas State University. This unjust decision came just days after Dr. Alter spoke at the Revolutionary Socialism Conference in his legal and protected capacity as a private individual and not as a representative of the university. Karlyn Borysenko, an online personality with known fascist positions, recorded his talk, livestreamed it online, and immediately began calling for his termination on 8 September 2025. Dr. Alter was summarily fired from his position by university President Kelly Damphousse without notice nor due process. The decision was announced (and communicated to Dr. Alter) via public letter.

Dr. Alter’s firing is the latest in a string of recent firings under similar circumstances: an individual acting in bad faith records the words of professional educators, publishes them online, and conducts a smear campaign against the targeted professor calling for their immediate termination. This is not just an attack on Dr. Alter himself; **it is an attack on the very institution of public education**. Further, it is an attack on the right of all Texans, of all Americans, and of all people around the world, to speak freely without fear of retaliation. It fits the ongoing pattern of right-wing, often openly-fascist, attacks on public and higher education as a means of eroding the trust, legitimacy, and power of the very concept of human knowledge.

From the intense repression of the protests during the Student Intifada last spring, to the direct targeting of immigrant students and educators as with Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, and others, to the push for school vouchers from Governor Greg Abbott, the education system is being targeted and dismantled. This sustained campaign against education is being conducted via an inside-outside strategy of institutional repression from university presidents combined with online harassment and smear campaigns by fascist “influencers” on social media platforms. In taking their marching orders from internet micro-celebrities, university administrations show a level of hypocrisy that is unbecoming of those who claim to be educators, circumventing due process and labor rights to enact openly political decisions that go against the right to freedom of speech.

Austin DSA has hosted Dr. Alter for political education events in the past. Many of our members have learned from him and hold him in high esteem. Further, our comrades in Texas State YDSA are directly affected by the decision to fire him without due process and the lack of any guarantee to protection from repression and retaliation for their own free expression. We stand in solidarity with Dr. Tom Alter and call upon Texas State University to:

Reinstate Dr. Alter immediately.
Publicly affirm the constitutional right of all employees to speak as private citizens without retaliation.
Establish clear policies guaranteeing due process before any termination related to off-duty expression.

We ask our comrades to sign this letter from Dr. Alter’s union, the Texas State Employees Union (TSEU-CWA Local 6186), voicing their own support for the above demands.

The post Reinstate Dr. Tom Alter first appeared on Red Fault.

Read more at Memphis-Midsouth

Hello Comrades,

Are you ready for fall? At MADSA, we’re kicking off cozy season with a great Wisconsin activity – apple picking! We had a summer full of outdoor fun, and we just had to squeeze in one more event before it gets too chilly. To our comrades who are looking forward to the cold, we see you and love you, and to those mourning the end of the summer sun and heat – and perhaps gazing woefully out on the lake as the sail boats are brought in for the year – we feel that too. Regardless of your feelings on the weather, we all know winter in Wisconsin can be a grey and lonely time – but not when you have a strong community and the fire of revolution in your heart! Now is a great time to start building that community ahead of the gloomy months, so make sure to stop by at least one of our three cozy, comradely socials coming up: Crafting with Comrades, Coffee with Comrades, and of course apple picking!

But wait, there’s more! The energy of summer may now be waning, but at MADSA, we aren’t slowing down for a second. Besides lovely fall and winter, there’s another season on the horizon: campaign season! The Power Mapping Committee has been hard at work on electoral plans, and we need everyone involved. At tonight’s General Meeting, we will have the opportunity to pass the charter for an Electoral Working Group to really get our electoral operation up-and-running and to continue that work in the coming months and years. We will also hear from chapter member and state rep Fran Hong and member and staffer David O on the state of Wisconsin politics and what we can be doing as a chapter to be movers and shakers in our city and state’s political scene. Come out to our Canvassing Kickoff event on September 13 to get fired up about potential upcoming city council campaigns and to talk to your neighbors in District 6 about their thoughts and feelings on local life and politics. We will start with a canvassing training, so no experience is required. Even if canvassing isn’t something you ever thought you’d do, it’s always a good time to learn a new skill, and there will be experienced comrades to help every step of the way. Also, please be sure to fill out the Membership Mapping Survey linked at the bottom of this email if you haven’t yet. A thorough survey of our members is important to assessing our internal power so we can plan our labor, electoral, and other activities most strategically.

Finally, check out our new and improved Socialism 101 – now titled Beyond the Two Party System! If you attended a Socialism 101 in the past, bring a socialism-curious or two-party-fatigued friend or coworker out and help us spread the message: workers deserve more, and socialism is the way to win it.

Solidarity forever, 

Your MADSA Executive Committee

In this newsletter:

• Tue. September 9, 6:30-8:30pm: September General Membership Meeting
• Sat. September 13, 1-5:00pm: Canvassing Kickoff
• Sat. September 13, 5:30pm: Crafting with Comrades!
• Sat. September 20, 10:00am: MADSA Apple Picking Social
• Thu. September 25, 6-8:00pm: Beyond the Two Party System: A Socialist Way Forward
• Sat. September 27, 10:00am-12:00pm: Coffee with Comrades!
• Sat. October 4, 2-3:30pm: October New Member Orientation

Note: posts by individual GMDSA members do not necessarily reflect the views of the broader membership or of its leadership and should not be regarded as official statements by the chapter.

After reading that Burlington’s legendary music spot Nectar’s had permanently closed, GMDSA Secretary David Wilcox wrote to Seven Days to propose municipalizing the venue. His letter, printed on 8/20/2025, is republished below.

In response to the shutdown of Nectar’s, I’d like to suggest a solution: Why not have the city government take over and run Nectar’s? There’s nothing radical or unprecedented about the City of Burlington running a popular music venue, given that it owned and operated 242 Main for 30 years. And I would argue that a venue like Nectar’s, one that’s synonymous with the general idea of what Burlington is, contributes far more to the city’s bottom line than its own financial numbers would indicate.

Without venues like Nectar’s, Burlington loses its aura as a cool, desirable place to live. And if Nectar’s has seemed like a shadow of its former self in recent years, why not try to revitalize it under new (public) ownership? Especially since the final shutdown of Nectar’s was due to a dispute with a landlord. The city has already forced the sale of one Handy property (184 Church Street) for the greater good of the community. Surely, there’s a way to make all this happen with enough political will.

I, for one, am sick and tired of passively accepting the loss of important places and services due to “the market,” which is every bit as much a human-created institution as laws and governments. The Burlington renaissance began with then-mayor Bernie Sanders (whose administration founded 242 Main) refusing to accept the market dictating that we couldn’t have nice things. If we want Burlington’s glory days to return, we need to rediscover that energy.

David Wilcox
Winooski

by Reese A

This piece was written 08/15/25

Last week, I had the honor of representing the Liberal Arts and Science Academy chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), at YDSA’s 2025 annual national convention. It was a true honor to be their co-chair, and to serve them once more as their delegate.

Ultimately, however, I came away from the convention concerned for our political future as a movement: We were decisively against organizing students. We failed to pass crucial resolutions that would strengthen the student movement, including R23: Building Campus Consciousness, Democracy, and Militancy through Student Unions and R10: Building an International Student Movement. R23 would have provided crucial support to mass student organizing in the form of student unions, a formation that can mobilize large numbers of students in solidarity in a way that YDSA cannot. The success of the student union formation is outlined below with Students United by LASA YDSA, and I think that failing to bet on mass student organizing via student unions will remain one of the biggest lost opportunities of the convention. Additionally, R10 centered our internationalism around building relationships with student organizations as YDSA, something that must be centered in order to build an international coalition to win student demands and ultimately socialism.

Instead, we focused on gatekeeping durable socialist organizing to only people with “real” ties to the class struggle (current laborers) and building value-pure socialist groups to recruit students into. We passed resolutions like R12: For a Campaigning Internationalism and R18: Recommitting to Running Strategic Campaigns as Unapologetic Socialists, which aren’t obviously bad, but show a clear focus away from larger mass movement organizing of students towards socialist groups. This tendency fundamentally doesn’t believe that students have a claim to power, but rather we must take a backseat to the “real” working class and focus on political education, supporting their cause, and running smaller campaigns as socialists to pressure the campus. It doesn’t believe in the mass student movement or their own claim to power and representation.

This is a mistake. If we want to win material change, at our schools and in the world, we have to be comfortable organizing the people around us, having conversations, and building power. As students, we represent some of the most diverse, progressive and willing bodies of people in America, and our organizations should strive to organize and mobilize as many students as possible to win. Some might argue that students don’t have the correct “class character,” and I must disagree. We are forgetting what the root of working class is – people who are not owners, people who do not control capital. Just as unemployed people are part of the working class, so are students. Additionally, others argue that students inherently aren’t worth organizing because they’re a transient group. The student movement has built some of the strongest organizations and movements in American history, from Vietnam and Students for a Democratic Society, to divestment from South Africa and winning the collapse of apartheid, to fighting for a free Palestine today. Turnover is not a valid reason to avoid organizing – if that were true, we wouldn’t be organizing Starbucks and Amazon. Yet regardless of the excuses people give for abandoning students, none of them give a valid reason to leave them unorganized and retreat to our comfort zone of like-minded socialists. They’re progressive, willing to fight, and have organized throughout history. It would be a shame for YDSA to give up on student mass organizing, let alone for the wider socialist movement to do so, yet increasingly that seems to be the trend.

It’s important that we organize the entirety of the working class by building durable organizations to fight for change, not because that we think only the working class can win socialism, but because we truly believe in each and every one of our neighbors as people. In this time of rising fascism, believing in people is more important now than ever if we want to defeat it. Yet the socialist movement seems to be retreating into hiding, requiring that people come to our doorstep instead of organizing our neighbors en masse for change, because we no longer find hope in them. We vote down student organizing, we vote down protest organizing, we stop committing to the rank-and-file strategy and make connections with the union leaders instead. This is what fascism wants of us: to feel hopeless and that your neighbor is untrustworthy, to build division in order to cement the ruling class. Instead, we must meet neighbors where they are, with organizations that can represent them both to their schools and to the wider world, and build committed comrades out of this bond.

At LASA YDSA, we organized a student union, Students United, to serve as a durable student bargaining representative to fight for fairer learning conditions and mental health support. We currently have over 8% of the student body supporting our bid to unionize by signing Union Authorization Cards. This union attracted a wide range of people because it was rooted in a collective movement, representation, and demands for change – a movement from which we were able to build committed socialist organizers out of. While YDSA could never legitimately claim to be a representative of students and demand bargaining rights, a union could, because a union’s legitimacy comes exclusively from its status as a representative of the students instead of ideology or self-interest. YDSA can lead the movement, YDSA can build organizers from the movement, but YDSA must commit to empowering the working class to seize power for themselves. This is an important distinction because it’s both an optical, political and communal one – it’s the difference between one-party rule and a worker’s state for the people. Democratic socialists should commit to people power and democracy first and foremost, not try to make a utopian socialist society concocted out of thin air and imposed on the people.

We will not win by building a cadre vanguard that people do not feel a connection to. We will not win by treating our neighbors as peasants to be strung along. We will win through class struggle and a mass movement of each and every one of us, that, through solidarity, can be built in any community and especially within students. We must not give up on student and wider working class solidarity. We must not give up on our own communities. We must commit more, organize for power, and organize to win socialism.

The post In Defense of the Student Movement first appeared on Red Fault.

As part of a city-wide crackdown on our homeless neighbors, the City of Madison is unfairly targeting the Social Justice Center, demanding that the SJC removes its food pantry, public health vending machine, benches, and public art, in an attempt to drive away unhoused people who rely on the SJC and the organizations it houses for shelter, safety, healthcare, and support.

Madison Area Democratic Socialists of America recognizes the effort the Social Justice Center puts into addressing the housing crisis that this city ignores, and we stand with the SJC and all who rely on it.

There is no denying it: there is a crisis in Madison. Rents get higher and access to affordable housing gets more limited by the day, forcing more and more people from their homes. Public restrooms are not open early or late enough. Overcoming addiction is nearly impossible when one’s basic needs for survival are not met. Each of these problems is a rung in the ladder of capitalist oppression, which forces the working class into worse and worse conditions until they have nowhere left to go.

The city’s approach to this crisis is unjust and unhelpful. We cannot disappear the unhoused population. We must house them. We must give them safety, security, and support. They are our neighbors, community members, and constituents of the politicians who claim to represent us. Any one of us could be a layoff or medical emergency away from joining them. This crisis is a reminder to the rest of the working class that the ruling class will turn its back on anyone who isn’t making them profits.

The Beacon, Madison’s primary day shelter, is beyond capacity, so people look for shelter in other parts of the city. The city’s proposed new men’s shelter won’t be ready until next year, and will only have 250 beds – not nearly enough to meet the well-documented need.

But instead of fully funding and expanding the sorely needed homeless services and meaningfully addressing the housing crisis that makes them necessary, the city is cracking down on neighbors helping neighbors – by increasing police presence at and making punitive demands of the Social Justice Center, by threatening to close down the Dairy Drive campground with winter just around the corner, and by sweeping the encampment at the Wisconsin Veterans’ Museum.

“Solving” homelessness with incarceration is more expensive per person than harm reduction centers and housing first policies, and only perpetuates the cycle.

As community members, it is our responsibility to provide what the city will not, and the Social Justice Center aims to do exactly that. We also have to fight for a just future in which everyone has what they need. MADSA stands in solidarity with the Social Justice Center, and calls upon the Madison Common Council, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, and the Dane County Board to do right by our neighbors:

1. Stop targeting the SJC for stepping up where the city has failed.

2. Continue to fund the Dairy Drive campsite, a crucial transition program.

3. Support the Dane County Homeless Justice Initiative’s demands to fully fund homeless support services.

4. Cure the root cause of the homelessness crisis by building affordable, desirable, and dignified public housing where our neighbors can thrive, not just survive!