The struggle of working people for an equitable society free from injustice and oppression has sharpened in recent months, taking center stage through headlines on everything from the devastating climate catastrophe to anti-immigration raids. As that fight shows its face in Milwaukee, we must say no to the elements of hatred and division, even when our institutions appear to embrace them.

Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and our allies are calling on CBS 58 and their parent company, Weigel Broadcasting, to restore former meteorologist Sam Kuffel to her position.

We’ve launched a petition Monday rallying their supporters behind Kuffel and against the notion that a stand against fascism should cost someone their employment. Can you sign?

The people of Milwaukee deserve local reporting that is unafraid to challenge the rising tide of far-right hatred instead of running cover for its leading figures. As we reflect this year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is important that we recognize and fight the forces behind historical atrocities as we see them in the present.

Sign the petition online. View the chapter calendar.

In solidarity,
Milwaukee DSA

Sam Z. is a co-coordinator of the DSA-LA Mass Transit for All campaign, and Correna T. is a co-coordinator of the bathrooms side of the campaign. 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

GNDCC: Tell me about your campaign and what you’re currently focusing on.

Sam Z: Transportation is the largest source of emissions in California. Los Angeles is the driving capital of the world, basically. So we find a transportation-motivated, Green New Deal-style campaign to be the most strategic and possibly most impactful.

Our entire chapter votes on our chapter priorities. In April 2023, the chapter voted to make public transit a priority campaign and then re-upped the campaign, so we’re currently in year two. We decided to pursue a two-pronged campaign: the first prong aimed at the county government, the second prong aimed at the city government. There are tons of ways in which public transit could be improved/expanded here as well as life for the working class in LA to be made better—and political and economic power built at the same time. 

The county transit system is governed by the LA Metro Board. LA County is huge—there are 88 cities within LA County. It’s a really powerful governing body. We decided to prioritize public bathrooms as a way to improve and expand transit for riders and for workers—especially transit workers. Our high-level goal is to expand publicly owned brick-and-mortar bathrooms at the LA Metro system level that are serviced by union workers.

At the city level, our second priority is to intervene in a particular moment when, this year, voters in the city of LA voted to pass an unfunded pro-transit mandate that says: we want the city to fully implement the mobility plan. The mobility plan does a lot of good stuff: more rapid bus lanes, more pedestrian infrastructure, more bike infrastructure; all things that are not cars, basically. The mobility plan does not have any power. The ballot question that passed gave it some legal power, but no public budgetary power. So we decided that our campaign would focus on trying to get more budgetary power behind this implementation. Similar to bathrooms, this would make life better for working class Angelinos in terms of riding transit also for potentially lots of union workers who might be building more bus lanes, driving more buses, etc. That has involved trying to intervene in the city council.

Correna T: That second goal, we are pivoting a little bit in our campaign. Sam and a couple of other members have been meeting pretty regularly with our socialists in office. A couple of the staffers from the current city council electeds that we have have been meeting with them in order to try to get that funding for Measure HLA, whether it be some capital campaign, just include it in the city budget for next year, etc. As the city budget is super tight this year, that ask for $100 million or whatever it is to try to get new paved streets with bike lanes, etc. is hitting a wall. 

It’s been really good to develop that relationship. But last month, a new opportunity actually came up for a potential push as a campaign to instead work on a fare-free drive. There’s a city bus route that’s not run by the county metro system. It’s run by the city—by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation—and those buses have been free ever since the pandemic started. Due to all the budgetary cuts in the city, they are trying to reinstate fares as of January. There was a public hearing last month, and we, as a campaign, got together at our last meeting and voted to see if that’s something actionable that we can affect, to transition some of our city council-focused energy to fare-free rather than working on this capital campaign. 

Sam Z: The one other campaign description comment I wanted to add in is, especially in year two of our DSA-LA transit campaign, we are making sure that organized labor is at the center. Both in terms of the policy goals we have and in terms of the strategy. So for bathrooms and the city government-level transit build-outs and now fare-free, we have actively tried to build relationships with the relevant unions. That’s been somewhat successful on the bathroom side; that helped us do at least one motion at the Metro Board level. At the city level, It’s been a little trickier, but we’re still working on it.

Correna’s been super involved in trying to build our transit labor circle, which has been experimental and successful in some ways, and still growing. In an ideal world, our campaign would be members of DSA-LA who are also transit workers. We have tried to borrow some ideas from that kind of model from the East Bay DSA folks and their transit work. We’re not there. We have some transit workers; they’ve maybe thought about getting involved sort of on the periphery.

Correna T: There’s definitely been a lot of labor discussion and coordination on the bathroom side of our campaign that I can talk about, too. I was not as involved with the first year of the campaign, but the public services—as we call it—side of things, was more general. We were doing a lot of canvassing at stations, talking to folks about fare-free, talking to folks about what kind of services they wanted. Part of the reason, I think, that we focused on bathrooms here in year two is that Metro started a pilot program last year where they unfortunately partnered with a Silicon Valley startup company that provides public restrooms. They are free; you use this little QR code to scan and get into the stall.

And so we were like, They’re clearly acknowledging that there is a need for public restrooms, especially because Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 Olympics. That is a huge thing with Metro, that they’re going to do a car-free Olympics in Los Angeles somehow. And they’re acknowledging that there’s a need for things like public restrooms. We were like, There might be some leverage here with the board to increase this public service here. We started off canvassing folks about these restrooms. We’ve seen them there, they function, but we want brick-and-mortar restrooms. We want these to be built at all these stations, we want them to be Metro-owned and -operated.

Then, over the summer, we found out that not only were they using this third party contractor, but the employees who service them are gig-work employees. So they’re not even just part-time or full-time workers. They get paid 15 to 20 bucks per restroom that they clean, which, especially out here in LA, is ridiculous. It’s almost comical that they can even get people to service them. So that became our push, and that was a moment where we were able to successfully do some lobbying.

We reached out to TCU, the Transportation Communications Union, which is the union that represents all the unionized janitorial staff that actually work for Metro, that do all of the cleanings of the stations in the very few staffed bathrooms that they actually have. They reached out to their union leaders and presented this as an opportunity for them. Essentially, these are jobs that should be going to that union, and instead are being proposed to go to this gig work model. At the time, they were still a pilot program, but there was about to be a vote in the Metro Board to extend the program for the next four years. They’re talking about 64 bathrooms that are going to be potentially operated and cleaned by gig workers. This union that we partnered with was able to get an amendment through the Metro Board using their contacts. It didn’t stop the expansion of the program from happening, but it did make sure that we look into the opportunity of using union work instead.

I think right now they’re at a bit of a standstill because there may or may not be a part of the union contract that requires that any janitorial or custodial work on Metro property be done by the union, but they approved to expand the program for this gig work company. So neither one of them is happening right now, and this is a place where we’re trying to wedge ourselves in there to see if we can influence it to go in one direction and actually do have the restrooms and make sure that they’re union labor. It’s been a really interesting connection/crossover there.

I can also talk about our labor circle up here, which is a little bit separate. This has been a really interesting thing, because we started off talking to riders. We were talking about doing lobby meetings, but it wasn’t until we had this union connection that some of our gears actually started turning and things actually started happening, which has been really cool to experience.

GNDCC: Tell me about the labor circle.

Correna T: It came partially from this union partnership that we had. But also, just in our canvases of riders, of workers, one of the things we were hearing over and over again was that even people who work for the same company, people who both work for Metro who aren’t contracted employees, just have no idea what’s going on. The lack of transparency between the bosses and the actual workers seems to be keeping a lot of people in the dark. They don’t know what people at other stations are doing, they don’t know what people across different departments are doing. So we felt like we, as DSA, had an opportunity to come in and create a space where workers could come together and talk about different issues that they’re facing. 

We’ve had two labor circles so far. Our third one is going to be this coming Sunday. A couple of really interesting things have come out of that. We’ve had workers who are contracted, whether they’re unionized or not, who have been able to talk to each other about different union pushes that they have. There is a group of workers right now that are being contracted through a nonprofit organization that are going to become part of Metro at some point in the next year. And we’ve been working really, really closely with them to see if they can get organized ahead of being pulled in-house so that they have cards ready to sign and an OC ready to make sure that their bargaining agreement is on par with what they’re wanting once they’re pulled in-house. So it’s been a really interesting space for us to be able to get workers together across all different parts of Metro. Even after the campaign ends in April, we’re really hoping that that’s something that we can keep going in conjunction with our labor committee. So that’s been a really cool thing for a lot of folks to be a part of.

GNDCC: Why should DSA members in LA get involved in this campaign, or DSA members in general get involved in public transit campaigns in their local chapters?

Correna T: I think transit is a really interesting issue, and I’m really glad we’ve been able to do a transit-focused campaign. It is a combination and amalgamation of so many different other areas of socialist ideals. It’s a Green New Deal campaign. It focuses on clean energy and on reducing our usage of cars. It’s a mutual aid concept, because a lot of our transit resources go towards homeless outreach and towards crisis intervention. The ambassadors that are on our transit system carry Narcan with them; they’ve saved over 300 lives. It’s also pro-labor. What we want is essentially a robust system that creates thousands of more unionized government jobs. So it’s a really interesting crossover of a bunch of different areas and ideals that DSA members I hope would carry. It’s a cool way to engage with a bunch of different topics. We’ve had a lot of really good energy from people coming from all different sides of that, which is pretty cool.

Sam Z: Yeah, I second all that, I think with the caveat that different campaigns should be run in different places based on their local politics and policy context. In LA at least, and translatable elsewhere, I would say something similar, but maybe I would phrase it like: do you think climate change is an existential crisis? Do you think that local air pollution and environmental injustice in cities is a horrific problem that we should not have? Do you think that public goods need to be expanded universally? Do you think we need way more union jobs? Then, boy, have I got a campaign for you.

Electric vehicles are not the future. They’re here, they’re for rich people. They’re probably going to come down in price, but we don’t want to be living in a future in which we are trying to mitigate the climate crisis and expand public goods where everyone’s still driving in their fucking solo cars. We’re going to need shit-tons of buses and trains, and the way to get to that future in which we have stronger societies, happier lives, things are not as expensive, and people have way better jobs and union workers have a lot more power, than we need to be running local public transit campaigns.

Correna T: I think it’s a really interesting topic of what it means to have a community and to build a community, because we’re so individualistic. Elon Musk wants us to believe that the future of climate justice is every individual person getting their own Tesla. Public transit to me—being on a bus, being on a train—is a physical representation of the fact that we cannot do this alone and that it takes community, it takes people coming together to actually solve this problem. If that means that you have to deal with the fact that people are kind of annoying on the bus sometimes, that’s what that means. And if that’s a sentiment that people in your local chapter are having, then maybe that’s an opportunity for a conversation about what it is that we’re trying to build here as an actual socialist community.

The post CAMPAIGN Q&A: DSA-LA’s Mass Transit for All appeared first on Building for Power.

As DSA’s National Political Education Committee finishes our fourth year of service, we’d like to reflect back on 2024 — a year that saw us expand our capabilities and offerings — as we prepare for a new year of challenges and opportunities for the socialist movement and political education.  

Capital Reading Group

One of the developments  we are most excited about is the debut of our first-ever national reading group, with Marx’s Capital Vol. 1. This reading group has been facilitated through a combination of Zoom calls, a dedicated category on the national discussion board, and chapter/regional groups. Our reading group doesn’t favor one translation over another, but was timed to coincide with the release of the new North and Reiter translation and has found a reinvigorated study of Marxist political economy and its application in membership new and old. We have learned much through this process and feel better prepared to facilitate additional national reading groups.  

Chapter Support

In 2024, our Chapter Support Subcommittee conducted six trainings, including a new collaborative training with San Francisco DSA focused on helping chapters establish their political education programs. We also hosted a Spring Educators’ Conference that examined political education’s role in building working-class power and how to develop our local and national programming further. Chapter Support also continued its mission of mentoring chapters as they establish and build their political education programs. Chapter educators and members can find training materials on our website here: https://education.dsausa.org/resources/trainings-catalogue/ 

Comms 

Our podcast team has kept busy pushing out 18 episodes over the last year. We have transitioned to producing our podcast Class under our Comms Subcommittee, which has experienced its highest monthly listeners and total downloads, receiving over twelve thousand in 2024 which surpassed our cumulative total downloads in history. We’ve had several prominent guests on Class, like Aziz Rana and Dr. Manisha Sinha, while producing more multi-part episodes for significant issues, like our most recent on EWOC.  Check out Class on your favorite podcast platform or our website: https://education.dsausa.org/class-the-npec-podcast/

Comms continues to post regular updates on our Facebook, Twitter(X), and Bluesky accounts, along with some of our newest platform editions, the NPEC, and Capital Reading Groups categories on the national discussion board. Our monthly newsletter, Red Letter, remains a popular repository for all things NPEC, reaching an ever increasing amount of people with each edition. We are also exploring other social media and content options for 2025, like Instagram.  

Curriculum 

This year, we are debuting two new modules: Race and Capitalism in the United States, and An Introduction and Fascism and the American Right.  We have also revamped our foundational modules for use with our Socialist Night School trainings. We also plan on re-running our Foundational Political Education Series covering our three 101 modules on capitalism, socialism, and the working class — more on that soon! Check out our newest modules on our curriculum website: https://dsa-education.pubpub.org/

Events

Over the last year, NPEC hosted eight panel events on a variety of topics, ranging from the National Capital Reading Group kickoff, to Palestine solidarity organizing, along with other essential topics to DSA right now, like Marxism and Queer liberation and examining democracy in the lead-up to the presidential election.  

You can check out recordings of all of NPEC’s events on our website here: https://education.dsausa.org/resources/events-catalogue/ 

Convention Season

Haymarket Books’ Socialism 2024 Conference in Chicago featured a large DSA presence with eleven panels and hundreds of members attending. NPEC and the NPC kicked things off with our first ever Organizers Conference before DSA members spent the weekend speaking at sessions on labor organizing, bodily autonomy, a new Red Scare, ecosocialism, and more. You can see a full list of our panels here (https://www.dsausa.org/socialism-conference-2024/), and audio recordings from the conference here (https://soundcloud.com/socialismconf). This year, DSA expects to return to Haymarket Books’ Socialism 2025 Conference in July (https://socialismconference.org/), with NPEC doing its part to contribute to DSA’s biannual convention later in the summer.

2025 Onwards

It is not lost on NPEC that this year may prove a is a crucial juncture year for DSA and the socialist movement in the United States.  We look forward to finishing the Capital Reading Group and hosting events to prepare members for the next DSA Convention while also stepping up to help chapters and new members prepare for a second Trump term with national foundational calls for new socialists and more political education trainings. We have a lot of work to do, but NPEC and DSA are better prepared and ready to onboard new members and turn them into socialist organizers for years to come. 

If you’re a DSA member that ever thought of contributing to our organization’s national political education efforts, applications will be opening in the next few months. If you haven’t yet joined DSA, there’s never been a better time to: https://dsausa.org/join

Follow us here and join our listserv so you can keep up with the latest! 

The post From Our Co-Chair: A Vision for Memphis Midsouth DSA 2025 first appeared on Memphis-Midsouth DSA.

This speech was given on January 20, 2025 by BRDSA member Jacob Newsom outside the Governor's mansion.

Thorn West: Issue No. 223

Last week, several explosive and destructive wildfires erupted across LA County. Over 25 casualties have been reported, and many thousands of homes have been destroyed in and around the communities of Altadena and Palisades Park. DSA-LA has put together this evolving emergency resource guide, containing news and organizing opportunities.

State Politics

• In response to the devastation of the ongoing wildfires in LA County, Governor Newsom has proposed a 2.5 billion aid package. Newsom also called for the suspension of some environmental laws that he argued would impede rebuilding.
• Newsom also published an open letter inviting incoming president Trump to tour the areas devastated by wildfires. Trump has incoherently blamed environmental conservation policy for causing the fires, and threatened to withhold disaster relief.
• On Friday, the Governor released an early draft of the proposed budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year. Though drafted before the wildfires, the budget forecasts a small and unexpected surplus after two years of heavy shortfalls.

City Politics

• LA Public Press breaks down the controversy surrounding recent budget cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department. Many departments experienced cuts after hundreds of millions of dollars were committed to raises for LAPD officers. More granular breakdown here.
• Former mayoral candidate and real estate billionaire Rick Caruso, who has been outspoken in his criticism of Mayor Karen Bass’ handling of the fires, hired private firefighters to protect his Palisades mall while local public hydrants ran out of water.
• In response to the wildfires, Los Angeles has extended the filing period to register as a candidate for Neighborhood Council elections, and also made it for Neighborhood Councils to issue monetary grants to local nonprofits.

Housing Rights

• The wildfires have been followed by rampant price gouging on rent, as landlords attempt to profit from the devastation. While citizens have responded by collaborating on a rent-gouging spreadsheet (here), the State Attorney General has vowed to investigate and prosecute landlords in violation of the price gouging laws; violations can also be reported here.
• A motion from Councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez would reintroduce COVID policies mandating a blanket temporary rent freeze, as well a moratorium on evicting tenants affected by the fires, but the city council postponed voting on it.
• LA Public Press documents the work of unhoused communities and advocates in developing networks of mutual aid during the wildfires.
• Grist puts the recent fires in the context of the rapidly rising cost of homeowner insurance in California, and the recent state attempts to regulate and reform the market. Meanwhile, The New Republic debunks the myth that insurance companies are being “forced” to raise rates, rather than using disasters as an opportunity to maintain and increase profits.

Immigration

• In neighboring Kern County, Border Patrol agents conducted a massive raid, targeting agricultural workers for detainment and deportation – a return to the practice of frequent workplace raids carried out during the first Trump administration.
• Capital & Main explores how immigrant communities mobilized local relief efforts to help navigate the wildfires.

Local Media

• As false information about the wildfires is proliferating, The Institute for Nonprofit News is offering grants for local independent news sources covering the wildfires.

Environmental Justice

• Climate protesters with Sunrise Movement LA rallied outside a facility operated by oil company Phillips 66, and 16 demonstrators stormed the facility’s office building. The protestors demanded that the oil industry accept financial responsibility for the damages caused by current wildfires.
• Why does climate change lead to more dangerous wildfire seasons? Not only because of the longer dry seasons, but also because of the wild swings between drought and heavy rain.
• KCRW conducted a panel discussion (available in English and Spanish) on the impact of the wildfires on air quality in Los Angeles.

The post Wildfires Devastate Los Angeles County Communities appeared first on The Thorn West.

Nosferatu demands we critically examine our social order and how it has deluded social relationships. What demons have we summoned and what would their pact demand of us?

MnDOT is “confident in their analysis”. They shouldn’t be. Report authored by Mateo Frumholtz in collaboration with TCDSA, Our Streets, and the Minnesota Communities over Highways Coalition.  The attached report outlines the inconsistencies and biases in MnDOT’s decision making process using information gathered from a FOIA request.

A brisk recap of the 2024 Metro DC Democratic Socialists' local convention.

The end of World War II marked the beginning of an unspoken era in our history: the baby scoop era. Conservatives, obsessed with an idyllic 1950s America that never really existed, are trying to force us back into a baby scoop era. Overturning Roe v. Wade was just the beginning.

THE Baby Scoop ERA

By Saige S

The nuclear family — the idea of a working dad, a stay-at-home mom, and their children — is one of many family structures that has existed in American and world history. Compared to other family structures, particularly multigenerational households, a nuclear family is relatively easy to uproot and move around according to the changing needs of capitalist production, making it the favored family structure of capitalist countries and the bourgeoisie that rule them. In the post-war era, an ideology of hyper-atomized, pure-strain nuclear families came to predominate in the United States. This concept of family, which is still with us today, roots itself in white supremacist patriarchy by centering white, heterosexual nuclear families and othering alternative family structures.

The social attitudes brought on by this rising ideology especially stigmatized  “unwed” motherhood, “illegitimate” children, fertility issues, choosing not to have children, and divorce. Single white women were pressured to give up their infants, often by sending them away to maternity homes. These women were looked down on for failing to meet the expectations of white supremacy and patriarchy, and social workers viewed them as “abnormal” and “breeders”. The phrase “Baby Scoop era” was coined to describe the resulting increase in non-relative infant adoptions from the end of World War II until the 1970s.

Maternity homes, many of which were religious, were known for strict rules, exploitation, and an isolating environment of shame and grief, and oppressing vulnerable single mothers. Women sought out maternity homes for support or were pressured into entering against their will, but more than 80% of them had surrendered their babies for adoption by the mid-1960s. While many of these homes shut down during the 1970s, Jerry Falwell opened his own “Homes for Unwed Mothers” during the Moral Majority movement.

Rickie Sollinger, author of Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade, describes,

“For white girls and women illegitimately pregnant in the pre-Roe era, the main chance for attaining home and marriage… rested on the aspect of their rehabilitation that required relinquishment… More than 80 percent of white unwed mothers in maternity homes came to this decision… acting in effect as breeders for white, adoptive parents, for whom they supplied up to nearly 90 percent of all nonrelative infants by the mid-1960s… Unwed mothers were defined by psychological theory as not-mothers… As long as these females had no control over their reproductive lives, they were subject to the will and the ideology of those who watched over them. And the will, veiled though it often was, called for unwed mothers to acknowledge their shame and guilt, repent, and rededicate themselves.” Sollinger differentiates this era from those before, where “Black single mothers were expected to keep their babies as most unwed mothers, Black and white, had done throughout American history. Unmarried white mothers, for the first time in American history, were expected to put their babies up for adoption.”

Records from the era show that demand for white infants, an appetite for trimming welfare, and a desire to punish unwed mothers inspired adoption agencies to develop an array of devious or coercive methods for separating mothers from their children. One social worker, Georgia Tann, became infamous for kidnapping newborns by telling mothers that the child died shortly after birth and would be (“buried” free of charge). By paying off lawyers, judges, social workers, and nurses she was able to remain undetected for two decades, profiting the whole time from the sale of infants to rich couples. Despite her horrible legacy of child trafficking, she created the closed-adoption model largely still used today. 

The Baby Scoop era’s maternity homes inspired the creation of “crisis pregnancy centers” when an anti-abortion activist in Hawaii fought unsuccessfully against the passage of the country’s first law legalizing abortion. The following year, he and his wife opened their home as a maternity home and counseling center for people with “crisis” pregnancies. He later created a string of over 200 anti-abortion centers in more than 60 cities.

The decline of the adoption industry is often attributed to a falling fertility rate. This is linked to various factors, including the introduction of the birth control pill in 1960, the legalization of artificial birth control and abortion, and increased federal funding to family planning services for young and low-income folks. These factors worked together with other social and political reforms of the era like no-fault divorce, the legalization of interracial marriage, and women winning the right to open their own bank accounts. Along with Roe v. Wade, these reforms brought the Baby Scoop era to an end, but the social and political forces that created it were never really dealt with. Although single mothers and “illegitimate” children face less overt stigma, conservatives have been very successful at connecting social problems like poverty and crime to more abortions and more divorces, to fewer adoptions and fewer (white) babies, and, ultimately, to women’s health and women’s independence. If the rollback of a half century of reforms continues on this track, we may well see a second Baby Scoop era.

To fight back, it isn’t enough to highlight the cruelty of Republican policy — we must investigate the social attitudes and power structures around race, gender, and capital that brought us to this point. When conservatives shake their fists over a declining birth rate while the population grows, we must ask whose fertility rate is declining? Which industry is benefiting and which is losing money? Which narratives are being upheld and which are being challenged? Who is benefiting from this system and who is being exploited?

Ushering in the Second Wave Baby Scoop

Conservatives began chipping away at Roe as soon as they got the chance. Slowly but surely, policy by policy, they decimated abortion access by throwing up compounding barriers over a 50 year span. They went after everything from Medicaid to Title X funding, and they implemented mandatory counseling, waiting periods, parental/spousal consent, and TRAP laws designed to force clinics to close. The anti-abortion movement is rooted in the white supremacist “great replacement” theory, which has driven rising anti-immigrant sentiment and a record number of attacks on abortion in the last decade. The escalating rhetoric surrounding the nuclear family and “traditional” gender roles, as well as the rollback of bodily autonomy, is the patriarchy working overtime to undo decades of progress. 

This assault culminated in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Supreme Court decision that completed Roe’s death by a thousand cuts. Though nominally their decision was a critique of Roe’s legal basis, the conservative court betrayed their real motives when they argued that safe haven laws are an adequate alternative to abortion and that there was no need to worry about children given up for adoption, because “the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth or within the first month of life and available to be adopted had become virtually nonexistent” (emphasis mine).

Besides the bone-chilling implication that infants are commodities to be bought and sold, the “domestic supply” language suggests that the religious right’s plan to “fix” this problem is a return to the Baby Scoop era, with natural mothers serving as “breeders” for a revitalized adoption industry. This rhetoric also goes back to chattel slavery (using women’s bodies as vessels and their children as commodities to both materially benefit and and idealistically benefit the capitalist class) which is precisely why the 14th amendment was constructed the way it was, as an effort to put an end to that practice. The machinery needed to exploit this infant windfall is already in place in the form of Christian adoption agencies, crisis pregnancy centers, and maternity homes. Jessica Valenti, who has been closely following the anti-abortion movement post-Dobbs, details the “move in anti-choice states to ‘streamline’ the adoption process and terminate parental rights—and the link that has to the anti-abortion movement and their relationship to evangelical Christian adoption agencies. (In short, it’s a racist clusterfuck.) … Republicans there have advanced legislation to implement baby boxes in the state, which most people don’t know allow the state to terminate parental rights. That means people in their most desperate moment, would be unaware that by using the boxes they may never be able to get their babies back—there have been cases of women spending months to years in court battles trying to reclaim their parental rights.”

Crisis Pregnancy Centers

The anti-abortion movement is well aware that abortion today is much safer than it was before Roe v. Wade1, and have renewed their disinformation crusade post-Dobbs. Anti-abortion centers (also known as “crisis pregnancy centers” or “pregnancy resource centers”) spread misinformation about abortion, pregnancy, and target people who might be seeking an abortion. These centers target pregnant people who might be considering abortion by strategically choosing locations near abortion clinics and utilizing SEO in their online advertising by strategically choosing locations near abortion clinics and specifically targeting searches as simple as ‘pregnancy symptoms’ on Google. While search engine optimization (SEO) is a foundational part of online marketing, this allows AAC websites to be towards the top of search results for queries that call for licensed medical advice.

These centers are often affiliated with a religious organization (primarily Heartbeat International, Care Net, and Birthright). People are lured into the center with promises of free or affordable healthcare, but once inside  they are subjected to an anti-abortion sermon, fed misinformation about pregnancy, abortion, and birth control, and directed to religious services like “earn while you learn” programs, private adoption agencies, and maternity homes. Despite being a billion dollar industry, these centers receive generous funding from state and federal programs by posing as healthcare providers.

Maternity Homes

The anti-abortion movement saw the Dobbs decision as the perfect time to open more maternity homes, with the total number of maternity homes increasing nearly 40% during the last two years. There are now over 450 maternity homes across the country. In some states, these homes operate with little regulation from the state. This makes the women who enter them especially vulnerable to financial and emotional abuse through the weaponization of law enforcement and homelessness Unsurprisingly, many maternity homes have affiliations with crisis pregnancy centers and private adoption agencies. 

Anti-abortion proponents respond that modern maternity homes provide housing and financial support. But just like during the Baby Scoop era, these homes are “treating women like criminals“. Residents of maternity homes can be forced to attend morning prayer, may have their phones confiscated at night, and may require a pastor’s approval to enter a romantic relationship. They may also be asked to hand over food stamps to pay for communal groceries, or required to install a tracking app on their phone, and homes have called the police on residents who disobeyed the rules. And while they supposedly exist to support mothers, some homes still prioritize adoptions — ultimately, these homes exist to supply infants to a growing market, and provide yet another node where capitalists can mine profit from vulnerability.

Private Adoption Agencies

Both “crisis pregnancy centers” and maternity homes have ties to private, Christian adoption agencies. These agencies are oftentimes religious. There is no federal regulation of the industry, despite federal tax credits for subsidizing private adoptions (as much as $14,300 per child for the adopting parents). These regulations are made at the state level and vary greatly, and govern everything from caps on financial support to how birth parents give consent to an adoption. Many are a part of the broader religious right and will only work with Christians. A Jewish couple in Tennessee were denied adoption by a Christian state-funded foster care placement agency because of their religion in 2021. While LGBTQ couples can’t be denied the opportunity to adopt a child jointly from a public adoption service, private adoption agencies have reputations for refusing to adopt to same-sex couples. It’s been common for adoption agencies to price babies based on their race, although some states and agencies may use other formulas to determine adoption prices (like sliding-scale or uniform prices). 

Moving Forward Post-Dobbs

This new Baby Scoop likely won’t look quite the same. Unwed mothers aren’t likely to be sent away for breaking social rules. Instead it will be fueled by the housing crisis, barriers to abortion and birth control, privatized and defunded social services, the weaponization of CPS and termination of parental rights. But much like the first Baby Scoop, it will target those living in poverty, in rural communities, young people, and black, indigenous and communities of color. Anti-abortion centers, adoption agencies, and maternity homes are the forefront of the anti-abortion movement, diverting people toward religious services intent on restricting bodily autonomy. Language is one of the first steps in the escalation of a human rights crisis. The combination of anti-immigrant, pro-nuclear family/anti-LGBTQ, and anti-abortion rhetoric used by the religious right show their need to maintain these systems of oppression to hold onto power. The misinformation campaigns and consequent shifting social attitudes will inevitably be used to justify more restrictive laws, all the way up to full criminalization. Many people will suffer, but a few Christian entrepreneurs will grow rich as white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism are further entrenched.

If we want to see a different future, we have to fight the anti-choice movement on every front. We have to organize and educate our communities, sustain each other through mutual aid, and build collective power at work and where we live, through labor unions, tenant unions, and strategic campaigns like DSA’s own effort to shut down Gateway Women’s Care, an AAC in Raleigh. Above all we have to build solidarity between movements and across the lines of gender, race, and class. It feels vulnerable, hopeless, even naive to call for a solidarity that generations before us failed to build, but the fact remains that the power of regular people can only be realized when they’re together — solidarity is our only weapon, and we need it now as much as we ever have.

1.  There have been a number of medical advancements like safe and effective abortion medication, better ultrasound technology, and more accessible and reliable pregnancy tests. Abortion medication has been shown to be as safe as in-clinic procedures (less than a 2% complication rate) and data shows that 63% of abortions in the United States were performed using abortion pills in 2023. There have been technological advancements in the internet and social media, connecting people to resources and information they may not have otherwise known about. Telehealth makes healthcare more accessible and allows people to get services who may not be able to travel for healthcare due to barriers like cost, navigating insurance, ability to travel long distances, finding childcare, etc. ↩︎