With record member turnout, and 96 percent of voters in favor, Buffalo DSA has voted to endorse Adam Bojak for New York State Assembly in District 149. The Buffalo DSA Steering Committee looks forward to working with Adam and his campaign toward a socialist future for Western New York.

Adam has been a dedicated, dues-paying member of Buffalo DSA since 2017. A leader in the chapter’s early years, and previously endorsed for Assembly in 2020, he has organized primarily with our Infrastructure (formerly Housing) and Electoral Committees. Adam’s commitment to DSA and its principles is also evident across a decade of fighting for the working class. In addition to serving as assigned counsel in Family Court, he takes on tenant legal cases pro bono. Over the past decade, he has never charged a housing justice client for services.

Through a robust endorsement process, the chapter determined that Adam’s campaign shares our goals for housing justice, universal healthcare, labor rights, and social equity. Additionally, despite New York’s undemocratic closed primaries and ballot access hurdles hindering Buffalo DSA’s political independence, the campaign nonetheless shows potential to build toward a true workers’ party. For too long, Republicans and Democrats alike have exploited our class and ignored our needs; Adam’s proud, socialist campaign offers us new ways to fight the capitalist status quo and agitate the masses.

Last, but not least, the incredible turnout we saw in this vote shows the strength of the American socialist movement, and of our organization. We urge all members and inspired supporters to help Buffalo DSA sustain our organizing–not just for Adam, but for our entire political project. This is our chance to build on our momentum for Good Cause Eviction and the New York Health Act, and continue to support workplace organizing and the labor movement. 

We need you. Join DSA today and get involved in our committee work, to learn the same skills and principles that brought Adam’s campaign to life.

On Wednesday, River Valley DSA members successfully passed a pro-labor city council resolution in Easthampton in collaboration with UFCW Local 1459 and the Western MA Area Labor Federation. The resolution was also supported by the Easthampton Education Association, which spoke in solidarity at the rally before the city council meeting. The resolution and rally were […]

By: Juan Reardon & Nils McCune

November 2025

“Formation must be linked to a strategic political project for the transformation of society. This very project is constantly under development and formation must be part of the process. For this reason, formation cannot be dogmatic nor spontaneous but instead should be prepared, planned and combined with the development of the strategic objectives of the organization.” 

– La Via Campesina

Introductory Note

Across a vast Latin American landscape, the imperialist project of past and present runs up against a plurality of organized resistance. Be they extractive mining conglomerates and the dams they need built, corporate agribusiness and its endless expansion of the agricultural frontier, or the financial capital behind it all, the incursions of capital into Latin America – with the collaboration of corrupt local elites – are almost always met by an extraordinary diversity of worker-, student-, peasant-, Indigenous-, Black-, LGBTQIAPN+- and women-led movements defending their lived, lands, waters, territories, peoples, histories, and horizons. When one looks specifically to the countryside, Latin American social movements stand firm in the recuperation of ancestral knowledge, the defense of multiple ways of life, and the popular construction of food sovereignty – the right of all peoples to define, develop and defend their own food systems through the exercise of rights to land and territory, agroecological production systems, and an end to free market neoliberal impositions. In contrast to the amnesia characteristic of imperial ‘America’ [See: Monroe to Trump], the place known as Nuestra América (Our America) is the carrier of a historical memory rich in organizational experiences and approaches towards collectively building social justice, sovereignty, rights and self-determination. In the face of military dictatorships, fascism and armed extractive industries, the struggle for democratic transitions towards just societies has developed a creative maturation of strategies and tactics among popular movements, with political education at the heart of many.

 

The Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo, or Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC), is a “movement of movements” that includes all Latin American member organizations of the global peasant movement La Via Campesina (LVC). CLOC’s remarkable experience in combating colonialism, racism, patriarchy, agribusiness and capital’s extractivist agenda has given rise to a continental system of political education beyond the scope of traditional cadrefication. CLOC’s is a process of experience- and reflection-based education the movements call formación. 

CLOC-Via Campesina: Who, What, Where and Why?

The Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC-Vía Campesina) is a continental articulation of peasant, farmworker, fisherfolk, and other land- and territory-based movements with decades of direct experience in the struggle for human, economic, social, cultural, and political rights. The accumulated experience of cadre within CLOC is deep, as many come from the collective experience of building revolutionary transformation in local, national, continental and international contexts. Born in 1994 from an alliance of people’s organizations mobilized in what was known as “500 years of Indigenous, Black, and Popular Resistance”, a protest against official celebrations of Columbus’ arrival to the Americas, CLOC’s steadfast embrace of class struggle offers a profound and pluralistic understanding of socialism, as it stands at the forefront of the struggles against patriarchy, racism, colonialism, capitalism, neoliberalism, and imperialism in the effort to build a new society free of oppressors or oppressed in right relation to Mother Earth. 

Currently, the CLOC includes 84 member organizations in Latin American and Caribbean countries. Some of its more well-known members are Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) [See: Brazil’s MST by DSA], Chile’s National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women (ANAMURI), Cuba’s National Association of Family Farmers (ANAP), Haiti’s Papaya Peasant Movement (MPP), Puerto Rico’s Organización Boricuá for Ecological Agriculture (Boricuá) and Guatemala’s Peasant Unity Committee (CUC). Among its many efforts, CLOC is dedicated to consolidating food sovereignty at the levels of nation and territory by multiplying experiences and knowledge in agroecology. To confront the living legacies of colonialism, patriarchy and racism, CLOC connects peasant organizing efforts with those of workers, students, and others disproportionately demeaned and disenfranchised by corporate interests. 

At the global level, CLOC brings together the struggles for peasants’ rights in Nuestra America with permanent solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for life, rights, and sovereignty. The CLOC campaign “Sovereign Peoples, People in Solidarity”, for example, helps people across the continent hear from and connect with the efforts of the people of Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, and Nicaragua to build and sustain transformative political projects while resisting U.S. imperialist aggression and unilateral coercive sanctions. Unapologetic in nature, CLOC expresses a firm and public commitment to “furthering debates that contribute to building the theoretical and programmatic foundations for a socialist project in the Americas.” 

Many of these debates take place through CLOC’s formación infrastructure, processes, and programs. The CLOC’s ‘Banners of Struggle’, available online in Spanish, give a sense of its vision for structural, democratic change to defend life, biodiversity, and rights in the Americas:

• Popular, Comprehensive, and Redistributive Agrarian Reform
• Peasant Agroecology based on the Recovery of Ancestral Knowledge
• Food Sovereignty based on Public Policy supporting the Peasant and Small Farm Sectors
• Implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP)
• The Construction of Popular Peasant Feminism
• Alliance-Building with Organizations of Other Sectors
• Youth-led Processes for Intergenerational Renewal
• Internationalist Solidarity
• Political, Ideological and Technical Training or formación…

What is Formación?

People’s movements develop a collective identity based on a shared analysis and, above all, a shared experience of struggle for a fundamentally different society. As noted in DSA’s 2023 article on Paulo Freire and Political Education, “there can be no theory that doesn’t inform practice, and vice versa. While distinguishable, the two must be inseparable, two sides of the same coin”. While in some contexts [See: Global North] for one person to wear “many hats” – to the point that often there can be meetings with more organizations “present” than people in the meeting – this can be problematic and is often an obstacle in the construction of a collective political project. Within the CLOC’s political culture, it is understood to be much more advantageous to have a shared analysis and greater levels of organicity – which is a kind of organizational culture that helps individuals understand where their unique contributions can be most impactful and appreciated within the larger needs of the collective. There is a popular saying that reflects this concept: “It’s more helpful to have one idea in a hundred people than one person with a hundred ideas.” Movements create specific moments for people to share their unique thoughts, reflections and opinions – with consensus and unity being the overall objectives – adjoined by moments in which members are expected to carry out responsibilities effectively without imposing their own desires or opinions on the collective’s agreed-upon commitments.

Formation is simply one part of a larger whole. As social movements or popular organizations attempt to change society, they must take action of some kind – whether that be through street protests, sit-ins, occupations, encampments, boycotts, lawsuits and beyond. Action is a moment in a long-term struggle, and should be planned and carried out collectively. Organization is another moment; this is when people debate and decide what their long-term vision is, and what kind of a structure can help them get where they hope to go. Assemblies, internal elections, designation of roles, and the creation of political positions are all part of organization. Formation, in turn, is a moment of struggle in which people temporarily remove themselves from action in order to critically reflect upon that action. Formation gives form to the action of an organization. By studying their own experiences and mistakes, as well as those of others across borders or throughout history, organizations can more effectively adjust their strategies and tactics, to be able to return to their practice with a more accurate understanding of their context and situation. The cycle of action-reflection-action, like the practice-theory-practice cycle described by Paulo Freire, is part of a collective movement through history known as praxis, as people resist and learn from that resistance. Formation is part of a critical process of collective self-preparation for world-changing activity.

According to La Via Campesina’s International Formation Collective, of which CLOC is an integral part, “formation is an infinite and permanent process of producing, socializing and sharing new knowledge derived from confronting ideas and comparing them with reality. It is a process of producing and reproducing the knowledge of our own reality, including the commitment to seek and distinguish our unique reality from the rest. All of this, of course, not only to understand the world but with the intent to transform it.”

Over 30 years into its development, the many movements that make up CLOC now maintain multiple formation processes with diverse tracks and methodologies. Designed to prepare new and experienced grassroots cadre for a lifelong – often difficult and dangerous – journey of political engagement for social transformation, these processes also serve to strengthen internationalist unity within diversity that is unique to the CLOC and La Via Campesina. 

A few of the CLOC’s most prominent formation processes are:

• Latin American Institutes of Agroecology (IALA)

Beginning with the IALA Paulo Freire in Barinas, Venezuela, the IALA model of peasant universities created by and for member organizations of the CLOC has now spread to include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. These autonomous social movement universities provide advanced training in agroecological production methods, as well as organizing skills, dialogue, and reflection to learn from concrete struggles and improve the practice of social movements in territories. 

The IALAs are a space of Latin American integration that recover the historical memory of 500 years of colonialism and over 200 years of formal independence while US neocolonialism has continued.

• Political and Ideological Formation Schools

Organized at two distinct levels – regional grassroots leadership and continental organizational leadership – the CLOC’s Political and Ideological Schools aim to consolidate an experienced collective of cadre at the national, regional, and continental levels capable of accompanying popular struggles with political clarity and determination. 

At the regional levels, both the “Andean School” (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia) and “School of the Southern Cone” (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay) host grassroots organizers in a diversity of national venues – schools, churches, cultural centers, and more – where selected participants share organizational updates, contextual analyses, contributing to a dialogue of knowledge as well as mística, meals and other daily commitments (cooking, cleaning, studying, and more).

At the continental level, the rotative 15-day Egidio Brunetto School (held in different contexts and countries each time it’s organized) and multiple short-courses held at Managua’s Francisco Morazán International Peasant School host leadership development processes for those who have completed courses and processes at the regional levels.    

• Continental Women’s Schools

The CLOC’s Continental Women’s Schools are about empowering rural women organizers in what La Via Campesina defines as “popular peasant feminism,” a uniquely movement-based contribution to grassroots feminism that centers class analysis and the collective construction of food sovereignty. The most recent CLOC Women’s School took place in the Dominican Republic (May 2024) –- the sixth such school in recent years. In it, Nicaraguan feminist leader Yolanda Areas Blass noted that, “each region in La Via Campesina used to organize their own political education processes. Now we have been able to strengthen the school system of the Women’s Articulation from the first International Women’s School carried out in Africa, where we advanced globally in the discussion about popular peasant feminism and about women’s political participation.” From grassroots to global, the CLOC and Via Campesina’s popular peasant feminism are contributing to other important formation processes such as the Berta Cáceres International Feminist Organizing School (IFOS).

• Continental Communication Schools

Involving many of the same grassroots leaders engaged in the above mentioned processes, the CLOC’s Continental Communication Schools are an equally important cycle of action, reflection, and matured action designed specifically to deepen political and technical expertise in “popular anti-capitalist communication.” According to their own reporting, the 5th Continental Communication School (online due to Covid-19) included critical reflections on “the concept of internationalism and its implications for popular struggles” as well as “the ongoing challenges facing communication in CLOC organizations.” 

Participant communicators, “learned about and evaluated CLOC’s current continental communication work as a counter-hegemonic strategy in the class struggle.” They then, “delved into the nature of CLOC’s communication, current strategies and challenges, internal and external communication tools,” before engaging in practical, “workshops strengthening skills in areas such as photography, video, audio, graphic design, social media, newsletters, and internal communications”. 

“The rich process of political education in popular communication,” left participants of the 2020 course with, “many lessons learned, challenges identified and, above all else, a growing collective (of communicators) with transformative dreams and hopes, strengthened by a revolutionary and internationalist spirit.”

• Continental Youth Encampments

Last but by no means least, the CLOC’s multiple youth-led processes feed into their own larger political education process known as ‘Encampments’. Each held in a unique national/historical context, hosted by the youth of a CLOC-LVC member organization, dozens of organized youth gather to, “promote formation and reaffirm the principles of CLOC Via Campesina as well as to exchange productive experiences, celebrate Latin American and Caribbean culture, cultivate the mystique and strengthen the peasant struggles of the regions of our territories.” In Spanish only, the following documentary shares some of the voices, smiles, and experiences of the XVII Youth Encampment of 2022.

Closing Remarks

Latin America’s Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC) is a living, breathing, and learning articulation of people’s movements prioritizing the political development of cadre within a larger process of action, reflection, and matured action aimed at consolidating a socially just and ecologically sound society for all. It listens to and learns from its own organizers – encouraging honest debate amongst the many – while encouraging friends and allies to contribute their own experiences through a dialogue of knowledges. From a place of organizational strength and sincerity, the CLOC learns while teaching and teaches while learning. For those of us engaged in our own processes of political education for societal transformation, the CLOC inspires. 

Readers interested in contacting the CLOC directly can do so in both English and or Spanish emailing: secretaria.cloc.vc@gmail.com. 

See Also: 

https://cloc-viacampesina.net

https://www.instagram.com/cloclvc/?hl=en

https://web.facebook.com/cloc.viacampesina

https://web.facebook.com/friendsatc/?locale=es_LA&_rdc=1&_rdr#

Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement

Paulo Freire and Political Education

Political Education in Social Movements and Theory

Contributing to NPEC Collective Research Project

The UK left is regrouping in the wake of the Labor Party's neoliberal lurch. Can socialists reawaken the left into a dedicated political force?

DC's restaurant wars wage on! Locals have joined the workers' fight for union recognition, aligned against the skeevy Stephen Starr.

Faith and community advocates across Louisiana are calling for compassion, transparency, and accountability as immigration enforcement actions continue to separate families and destabilize communities.

We would like to clarify that this was not a DSA event and that Central IN DSA has absolutely no relationship with Mr. Hornedo.

Español

Este fin de semana, la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza, fuerza policiaca personal de Trump, empezará a ocupar nuestra ciudad y secuestrar a nuestros vecinos para terrorizar a la comunidad inmigrante e intimidarnos a quienes nos oponemos. Charlotte Metro DSA condena esta invasión. Nos mantenemos en solidaridad con la clase trabajadora de todas las naciones . Lucharemos contra esta invasión con toda la gente de consciencia.

Estos ataques son parte de una historia larga del estado fomentando la división entre personas de la clase trabajadora para debilitar y amenazar a nuestras comunidades con agentes armados cuando parecemos demasiado fuertes.

Previamente en este año, iniciamos nuestra campaña para boicotear a Avelo. La aerolínea Avelo es una aerolínea de bajo costo que está bajo contrato con ICE para llevar a cabo vuelos de deportaciones. Estamos pidiendo a la gente que participe en el boicot para generar presión a la empresa y la Ciudad de Concord, ciudad de donde despegan los vuelos, para que cesen el contrato. Con este fin llevaremos a cabo una protesta el día 29 alrededor del aeropuerto Concord-Padgett, les invitamos a que se nos unan.

Otros grupos de la comunidad están trabajando activamente para luchar contra este fenómeno.

Por favor revisen y utilicen la red de migrantes de las Carolinas y su línea directa para reportar secuestros (704) 740-7737

Y también visiten Siembra NC para obtener detalles sobre el entrenamiento en vigilancia de ICE el 17 de noviembre.

Nuestro objetivo es organizar y unir a la ciudad para resistir estos secuestros. Por favor acérquese a nosotros para colaborar o involucrarse.

En Solidaridad,

El Comité Directivo de Charlotte Metro DSA

English

Today, Customs & Border Patrol, Trump’s personal police force, will begin occupying our city and abducting our neighbors to terrorize the immigrant community and cow domestic opposition. Charlotte Metro DSA condemns this invasion. We stand in solidarity with the working class of all nations. We will fight this invasion with all people of conscience.

These attacks are a part of the long history of capital & its state fomenting divisions among the working class to keep us weak and siccing armed agents on us and our communities when we appear too strong.

Earlier this year we began our Boycott Avelo campaign. Avelo airlines is a budget airline that has a contract with ICE for deportation flights. We are asking people to boycott the company and help us put pressure on the company and the City of Concord where they fly out of to get them to drop the contract. To that end, we’ll be having a protest on the 29th by the Concord-Padgett airport. We invite you to join us.

Other groups in the community have also been actively fighting back. Please check out the Carolina Migrant Network and use their hotline to report abductions: (704) 740-7737. 

See Siembra NC for details about their upcoming ICE Watch trainings.

We aim to organize and unite the city to resist these abductions. Please reach out to collaborate or get involved. 

In Solidarity,

The Charlotte Metro DSA Steering Committee

DSA-LA Statement on Historic Los Angeles City Council Vote to Update the Rent Stabilization Ordinance

After historic wins around the country for an affordability agenda, Los Angeles just won a massive victory for renters.

Let’s start with what was approved by city council on Wednesday:

4% RENT CAP FOR RSO UNITS
A reduction in maximum yearly rent increases in rent-stabilized (RSO) units from 8% to 4%. Capping rent increases at 90% of general consumer inflation, as long as that means that rent will only go up between 1% and 4%.

END TO LANDLORD UTILITY PRICE GOUGING
The elimination of a 1-2% rent increase loophole for utility costs.

RENT BANKING DEFEATED
– “rent-banking” proposals failed at city council. Rent banking would allow landlords to compensate for a low-inflation year by increasing the rent cap based on high-inflation years.

LA tenants will save billions of dollars over the next decade because of this transformative reform. Money that would’ve gone to large corporations and financial elites will now stay in our families and communities.

DSA-LA, with the Keep LA Housed Coalition, organized for an even bolder rent cap of 3% instead of 4%, capped at 60% of inflation instead of 90%. This was supported by the Democratic Socialist bloc—Councilmembers Soto-Martinez, Hernandez, Raman, and Jurado— and other progressive councilmembers, but not approved by a majority of council. While final compromises to our initial demands made city council passage possible, they also mean that hundreds of millions of dollars could’ve been saved by renters and more families kept out of houselessness if the original version were approved. A bloc of councilmembers in Yaroslavsky, McOsker, Blumenfield, Rodriguez, Lee, and Harris-Dawson, would rather concede to the status quo that favors a billionaire-first agenda. This is why electing more Democratic Socialists to office, and supporting them with more socialists doing work on the ground, is so important.

After the last week, three things are now clear:

Affordability is a national crisis whose effects are deeply felt in Los Angeles.

There is a growing movement for an unapologetic affordability agenda and it is changing the political reality in the country and in our city. When we organize, we win.

We need more of our elected leaders to take up the most ambitious demands of this movement, and to be bolder in their support for obviously popular goals like making housing affordable for everyday Angelenos.

It is time to make it absolutely clear what we are fighting for, so that no politician misses the message: Affordability is the mass movement of our time, and it is about more than just money. It is a movement for human dignity.

The coalition that achieved Wednesday’s unbelievable win for renters has transformed what we thought of as politically possible, forcing this reconsideration of the RSO formula for the first time in 40 years. DSA-LA is proud to be a part of that.

But there is more work to be done! The bigger our movement, the bigger our wins. Join DSA and help build a better Los Angeles.

By rejecting Thrive!, voters are saying that they want their money to go to the things they care about: the library, infrastructure, social support systems.