Our annual Madison Area DSA Chapter Convention is Saturday, March 15 from 10 AM to 4 PM at the Madison Labor Temple. Please RSVP as soon as possible! (Masks will be required and provided; lunch will be available to those who RSVP by March 4th.)

At Convention, we’ll take a look back at the past year, and members in good standing will make important decisions about the direction of the upcoming year.

The 2025 About the MADSA Convention Guide has everything you need to know about our Convention.

We’re asking members to submit resolutions, bylaw amendments, working group reports and charters, and executive committee and community accountability committee nominations by March 4th.

If you have questions or want to team up with other folks on resolutions, join #2025-convention in the Slack.

Solidarity from the Convention Committee! 

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, February 19 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): What is DSA? (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, February 19 (6:45 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (In person at 438 Haight)

Thursday, February 20 (5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group (Zoom)

Thursday, February 20 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Immigration Justice Priority Working Group Meeting (Zoom)

Saturday, February 22 (10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.): No Appetite for Apartheid Know Your Rights Training and Outreach (In person at the AROC office, 522 Valencia)

Saturday, February 22 (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Food Service (In person in the Castro)

Monday, February 24 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Ecosocialist Monthly Meeting (Zoom)

Monday, February 24 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Electoral Board Meeting (Zoom)

Monday, February 24 (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Tenderloin Healing Circle (In person at Kerry Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Monday, February 24 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board Meeting (Zoom)

Tuesday, February 25 (7:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.): Abolish Rent Reading Group, Session 1 (In person at 438 Haight)

Wednesday, February 26 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Maker Wednesday (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, February 27 (5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.): Education Board Open Meeting (Zoom)

Friday, February 28 (7:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.): Comrade Karaoke (In person at The Roar Shack, 34 7th St.)

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

Events & Actions

Organizing 102

Come out and flex your organizing skills with the Labor Committee in this follow up to Organizing 101. Attendance at Organizing 101 is not a pre-requisite. At this next session on Tuesday, February 25, we’ll jump into what it takes to start planning collective actions with a special focus on workplace organizing. We’ll meet 7:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister. See you there!

Maker Wednesday on February 26th

We’ll be having a Maker Wednesday on February 26th from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the DSA SF office at 1916 McAllister! Support chapter work through art or bring your own project and come hang out. We’ll be making Know Your Rights cards to support Immigrant Justice, buttons, and more. Masks are required and will be provided! See you there!

Reportback: Know Your Rights Canvass

More than 30 DSA members, together with Supervisor Jackie Fielder came out on February 9th to canvass businesses with the Immigrant Justice Working group to inform our immigrant community about their rights and to protect them from fear, disinformation and ICE. Together we can help beat back fear, build solidarity amongst the community and protect our immigrant neighbors!

Behind the Scenes

The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and newsletter, etc. Members can view current CCC rotations.

To help with the day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running, fill out the CCC help form.

As Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their lackeys escalate their assault on the working class, federal unions are organizing and fighting back. From the courts to the streets, rank-and-file workers in the Federal Unionists Network are launching a “Save Our Services” day of resistance on February 19, zeroing in on Tesla dealerships to expose Musk’s slash-and-burn profiteering.

In San Francisco, Mark Smith, DSA SF member and president of NFFE Local 1, is helping lead the charge. Read more about the campaign here: Federal Workers Organize Against Billionaire Power Grab (LaborNotes, February 14, 2025).

I’ve never seen a billionaire carry the mail. I’ve never seen a billionaire put out a forest fire. I’ve never seen a billionaire make sure people get their Social Security checks on time. I’ve never seen a billionaire answer a phone call from a suicidal veteran on a crisis line.

So I don’t trust a billionaire to decide what happens to our public services—and that’s why we’re fighting to get this billionaire’s hands out of them.

— Mark Smith, DSA SF member and Federal Unionist Network organizer

ROC DSA endorses the following candidates because we believe their platform, both in writing and in action, aligns with our vision for the future of Rochester. A Rochester city government with both a socialist majority on Council and in the Mayor’s office will be one that finally represents the interests of the working class, not those of the wealthy and land owning. 

At our 2024 Convention, ROC DSA set a bold goal: to build a socialist majority on Rochester City Council. Now, we’re taking that vision even further—endorsing a mayoral candidate who will fight for a city that truly works for the people.

To that end, we’re endorsing Councilmember Stanley Martin, Kelly Cheatle, Chiara “Kee Kee” Smith, Kevin Stewart, and Tonya Noel Stevens for City Council At-Large, and Mary Lupien for Mayor of Rochester. 

Incumbent Stanley Martin has been one of the loudest voices fighting for the working class on City Council these past three years. Shortly after taking office, Stanley, alongside Councilmembers Lupien and Smith, introduced Good Cause Eviction Protection legislation. This legislation was just signed into law in January and is the strongest version in New York State. Keeping Stanley on council means more wins for working class renters. 

Kelly Cheatle has been involved in the community for decades as an artist and community organizer. Their leadership in coalition-building and public education was instrumental in defeating the proposed Business Improvement District, preventing the privatization of downtown. With Kelly on City Council, we can ensure the BID stays defeated and that growth prioritizes the needs of the people to build a future that benefits everyone.

Chiara “Kee Kee” Smith has successfully fought to reduce gun violence in her community through the work of organizations like 585SNUG. Her neighborhood went over a year without a gun related homicide in 2017, showing that we can reduce gun violence without arresting our way out of the problem. With Kee Kee on City Council we can expand these methods and reduce gun violence city wide. 

Kevin Stewart has worked to expand food access to Rochesterians through community gardens and agricultural education throughout the city through organizations like 490 Farmers where he served on the board. Adding Kevin to city council means we can expand these programs and give them the funding they deserve. 

Tonya Noel Stevens has also done the work to feed the community both through community gardens and mutual aid through organizations like Flower City Noire Collective, which Tonya co-founded in 2016. Getting Tonya on city council means a city council that fights to ensure no Rochesterian goes hungry. 

Mary Lupien has been a steadfast champion for the people during her six years on City Council, where she was previously endorsed for her commitment to working-class Rochesterians. She has consistently stood up against policies that harm working class people and has fought to put their needs first. Now, as she steps up to run for mayor, we have the opportunity to elect a leader who won’t just fight back—but will set the agenda for a future where all our neighbors can thrive.

An endorsement from ROC DSA is more than a stamp of approval. It is a commitment to the cause of getting the candidate elected and a commitment to work with them alongside the Rochester community to make sure our community thrives. 

Here’s how you can get involved: Come to ROC DSA’s campaign kickoff event on February 22nd. 

More details here: bit.ly/dsakickoff

Keep an eye out for petitioning events, fundraisers, and canvassing events in the near future. And most important of all,  join ROC DSA! Dsausa.org/join 

The post Chapter Statement: 2025 Endorsements first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Now, at Stonewall we are watching our own undoing.

At our monument, a hollow has been carved into history—a deliberate emptiness where our stories used to live. Where Marsha’s name once stood proud, teaching generations that we have always existed, that we have always fought, that we have always loved and been loved. Now there is only silence.

They think we don’t notice when they chip away at our memories, stone by stone. That we won’t feel the weight of each erasure, each redaction, each carelessly crafted omission. But we feel every cut. We see our elders’ names fade like ghosts from the walls they built with their own hands. We watch as they try to orphan us from our own history.

Every time they try to erase us, we write ourselves back into existence—in permanent ink, in unshakeable community, in unwavering solidarity.

But they have forgotten something crucial: We are still here. We are still telling our stories. In basements and bookstores, in community centers and living rooms, in whispered conversations and shouted protests. Every time they try to erase us, we write ourselves back into existence—in permanent ink, in unshakeable community, in unwavering solidarity.

There is a bitter irony in attempting to sanitize a monument that exists precisely because people refused to accept such violent marginalization. Stonewall stands as testament to the power of collective rage, to a moment when the marginalized said “enough” and transformed their pain into action, to a moment that showed their oppressors they knew how weak the chains really were. It commemorates not polite requests for dignity, but the throwing of bricks, the breaking of barriers, the raw and necessary fury of people who had been pushed too far. Those who now seek to edit this history, to remove some of its participants from the record, seem to miss the fundamental lesson of what they’re trying to erase: that oppressed people will not quietly accept their own erasure, that solidarity is stronger than state power, and that the very actions they’re commemorating prove the futility of their sanitization effort. They seek to remove transgender people from the story of a riot that began, in part, because society tried to deny transgender people’s right to exist—a historical echo that would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

This is why we must act now, together. Not just transgender people, but all who understand that when they come for one community’s history, they pave the way to erase others. Every activist, every ally, every person who believes in truth and dignity must stand together.

What can we do? We document. We archive. We create underground histories and public demonstrations. We build networks of resistance that transcend individual identity. We teach our children not just about Stonewall, but about every attempt at oppression and how we fought back. We turn their acts of erasure into fuel for our collective memory and action.

Most importantly, we recognize that this is not just about preserving history—it’s about protecting our future. When they try to erase transgender people from Stonewall, they are trying to erase the possibility of transgender youth seeing themselves in history, of understanding their place in a long line of resistance and triumph.

Let this attempt at erasure be the spark that ignites our collective resistance. Let every blank space they create become a canvas for our truth.

Let this attempt at erasure be the spark that ignites our collective resistance. Let every blank space they create become a canvas for our truth. Let every silence they impose become a chorus of our voices. Together, we will not just preserve our history—we will make it impossible to erase.

The time for passive observation is over. We must act with the urgency of people watching their own existence being questioned, with the determination of communities who refuse to be written out of history, and with the solidarity of those who understand that an injury to one is an injury to all.

Who will join us in ensuring that our stories survive? Who will stand with us in turning this moment of erasure into an era of unprecedented visibility and power? Our history is not just words on a monument—it lives in our actions, in our unity, and in our unwavering commitment to truth and justice.

The future is watching. What will we show them?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

by Gregory Lebens-Higgins

Listen to an audio version of this article here.

The confrontation with capitalism requires a mass movement of workers unified in common cause. The working class cannot risk division, and must resist the isolation of large segments of its membership. In the prelude to the Civil War, Northern abolitionists appealed to worker solidarity, recognizing, as Marx did, that “Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.” Their arguments inform the ongoing struggle against the prison-industrial complex.

Slavery and the Working Class

On the eve of the Civil War, there were 3,952,838 enslaved Black people in the United States. “Slave Codes” commanded absolute subjugation to their enslavers, maximizing their exploitation for forced labor. They “were not considered men,” describes W. E. B. Du Bois in Black Reconstruction. They had no right of petition, property ownership, or marriage; could not contract or sue; and faced punishment at will. 

“The whole legal status of slavery,” says Du Bois, “was enunciated in the extraordinary statement of a Chief Justice of the United States that Negroes had always been regarded in America ‘as having no rights which a white man was bound to respect,’” referring to the 1857 Dred Scott decision that declared Black people noncitizens.

Moral horror at slavery had long provoked objections to the practice. As early as 1688, Quakers circulated petitions in support of emancipation. They found textual support in the Bible, and appealed to the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

At the 1833 founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, opposition was also grounded in religion: 

“Therefore we believe and affirm … that all those laws which are now in force, admitting the right of slavery, are therefore before God utterly null and void; being an audacious usurpation of the Divine prerogative, a daring infringement on the law of Nature, a base overthrow of the very foundations of the social compact, a complete extinction of all the relations, endearments, and obligations of mankind, and a presumptuous transgression of all the holy commandments—and that therefore they ought to be instantly abrogated.”

The Anti-Slavery Society and others also found inspiration from the liberal principles of individual rights found in the Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal.”

Northern workers, focused on their own difficult conditions, often remained indifferent to the plight of enslaved Black laborers. Some even suggested that enslaved peoples experienced preferred treatment on account of the social duty of a master to care for his servant. “How much better, then, we ask, is the condition of some of our white laborers than some of our black southern slaves?,” posed Working Man’s Advocate in 1844. Others worried about competition from free Blacks.

In the South, white laborers were either employed in reinforcing the system of black subjugation, or poor farmers who could not afford a plantation but enjoyed their status above those enslaved at the lowest rung of society. They “could not for a moment contemplate a fight of united white and black labor against the exploiters,” says Du Bois. 

Some abolitionists recognized the implications of a working class divided by slavery, and appealed to Northern workers with economic arguments. “American slavery must be uprooted before the elevation sought by the laboring classes can be effected,” urged a resolution of the 1847 Boston Convention of the New England Labor Reform League.

The existence of slavery disciplined an already divided labor movement. White workers were forced to compete with slave labor, degrading “free labor” to the lowest status and protections. 

“Slavery blights the industry of the nation by making labor disreputable. It degrades the laboring population assimilating them to slaves. It leads our statesmen to imagine, and sometimes say, that the laboring people are incompetent to self-government, and thus it emboldens them to treat them as slaves,” declared the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Convention in 1836.

Expounding such arguments, abolitionists faced accusations of being “socialists” and “communists,” their call for freedom a slippery slope toward the abolition of all private property.

Slavery also exacerbated regressive political power. Slaveholders benefited from the inclusion of enslaved people—despite their inability to participate in government—in a state’s total population, at a rate of three-fifths. This determination resulted in additional seats in the House of Representatives, and votes for president in the Electoral College.

“That slavery governs the American people, is indisputably true,” argued Frederick Douglass in an 1850 address delivered in Rochester, New York. “What power has given this nation its Presidents for more than fifty years? Slavery. What power is that to which the present aspirants to presidential honors are bowing? Slavery.” 

Workers fought en masse for the emancipation of slavery in the American Civil War. As Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais describe in Labor’s Untold Story, 

“Trade union members joined the colors so unanimously that many locals in all parts of the country were dissolved for the duration. In Wisconsin, for example, the National Typographical Union had to disband Local 23 when virtually all of its members left for the front. The Spinners Union of Fall River practically disappeared during the first few months of the war because of enlistments. Entire companies of Illinois volunteers were composed almost exclusively of members of the Miners’ Union and in Brooklyn the Painters’ Union resolved to fight as a unit against the slaveholders’ conspiracy and ‘for the maintenance of the flag of our country.’”

Approximately 186,000 Black soldiers enlisted in the Union Army as well, many of them formerly enslaved, and leaving Southern plantations in what Du Bois describes as a “general strike.” This fighting force was backed by the power of Northern industry (and the labor of Northern workers), overwhelming Confederate capacity in the production of weapons and supplies.

Unfortunately, these formations failed to maintain solidarity in the post-War context. “The proletariat is usually envisaged as united,” says Du Bois, “but their real interests were represented in America by four sets of people: the freed Negro, the Southern poor white, and the Northern skilled and common laborer. These groups never came to see their common interests, and the financiers and capitalists easily kept the upper hand.”

Freedom for the formerly enslaved was limited to political freedom (even this quickly restricted), without the economic resources necessary to escape their continued subjugation by capital. The South reasserted racial domination with Black Codes and Vagrancy Acts that mandated labor, and the laboring class was “cut in two,” says Du Bois. “The resulting color caste founded and retained by capitalism was adopted, forwarded and approved by white labor, and resulted in subordination of colored labor to white profits the world over.”

The subsequent history of a divided labor movement illustrates the legacy of this failure: segregated labor unions, racialized strikebreaking, failure to organize the South, and the export of racialized extraction to overseas colonies.

Prison and the Working Class

Slavery was outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. But an exception remained for its continuation “as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” With the reassertion of racial hierarchy following Reconstruction, incarceration became a means for capital to reconstitute the plantation.

U.S. carceral systems hold the largest prison population in the world at over 1.9 million people, with millions more caught in a network of surveillance and control under probation, parole, and community supervision. More than one percent of working-age adults are incarcerated, while sixty percent were employed prior to arrest (and now face additional barriers to future employment). 

The system has inherited the racial legacy of slavery. On average, Black people are incarcerated at six times the rate of white people; and constitute thirty-seven percent of prison populations, though only thirteen percent of the general U.S. population. These numbers are maintained by disproportionate policing and poverty in segregated neighborhoods.

Access to cheap labor incentivizes incarceration. A recent investigation by AP News found “No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years—including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery—it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.”

About sixty-one percent of U.S. prisoners report work assignments, many of them required. Inside prisons, they are expected to provide free labor mopping, cooking, or doing laundry. Hiring out by private employers (including KFC, Best Western, and Burger King) might be compensated, but low wages and mandatory fees make actual returns minimal. On the front lines in Los Angeles, incarcerated firefighters are typically paid only $5.80 to $10.24 per day. 

Incarcerated workers are denied the ability to assert class interests by organizing, protesting, or declaring a strike. Declining work can have consequences from visitation restrictions to “jeopardiz[ing] chances of early release,” finds AP.

Their incarceration is exploited by additional means—from the operation of private prisons, to predatory fees for phone calls, tablets, money transfers, and more—imprisoned bodies abused as rent-generating property. 

Prison labor is but one means by which the prison-industrial complex disciplines labor. Police impose the will of capital by upholding an order based on private property. Crimes against that order are harshly prosecuted, while the horrors carried out on its behalf are simply not considered crimes. 

Despite frequently being unionized themselves, police act in opposition to worker solidarity, using the threat of imprisonment and state violence to keep workers in line. During the recent Amazon strike, a picket in Queens, New York, was broken by the NYPD, evoking the violent legacy of Haymarket and Homestead. 

Police also carry out evictions and punish homelessness, reinforcing the precarity caused by the “innovations” of capitalism that constantly render segments of the population redundant. This surplus population “forms a disposable industrial reserve army,” says Marx, “of human material always ready for exploitation.” Rather than sufficiently provide for the unemployed, they are warehoused in prisons and shelters, made to respond to the fluctuations in labor demanded by the market. 

The conditions for hyperexploitation are reinforced by the ideological framework of racism, materializing in racial disparities in policing and imprisonment. From the murder of Fred Hampton, to the brutal response to the George Floyd uprising, police have been a tool of violent repression against racial justice movements.

The bourgeoisie understand the threat of a united working class. Thus they amplify and exploit division along lines of identity, obscuring the role of class.  Commenting on English/Irish working class relations in 1870, Marx observed: “This antagonism is kept artificially alive and intensified by the press, the comic papers, in short by all the means at the disposal of the ruling class. This antagonism … is the secret of the maintenance of power by the capitalist class.” 

Socialism provides the means for a dignified life to all—moving beyond individual freedom to hoard wealth, to our collective economic and social emancipation. Rather than being merely an individual moral failing, crime is the symptom of a society that does not operate on this basis. 

Prison abolition is praxis. Not an immediate realization of utopia, but a demand to dismantle the prison-industrial complex. This means restorative justice alternatives, non-police response to mental health crises, and funding schools, housing, food, and healthcare. By organizing for prison abolition, the working class operates for its own freedom, lifting the boot from off its neck.

The post Prison Abolition is a Working Class Interest first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

Unions are among our best tools for protecting our rights and each other and can lead the fight for an alternative: anticipatory defiance.

The post Unions Can Stop Trump’s Rollback of Civil Rights appeared first on EWOC.

On winter nights, Bowdoin College campus is usually quiet, and with a snowstorm on the horizon the silence that sets in is borderline eerie. Students shelter in their dorms; dining workers, many of whom live across town lines, are booked into local hotels so they aren’t prevented from working by the potentially dangerous weather coming overnight. Around the quad, many buildings closed for the night remain lit up and entirely empty.

But between Thursday, February 6 and into the night of Monday, February 10, the atmosphere took on a different edge, as Bowdoin Students for Justice in Palestine turned a rally in the student union into the first encampment of the new year—and the new administration. The Shaban al-Dolou Encampment was formed in Morrell Lounge, the main meeting area of the student union, out of donated tents and populated by a varying number of student activists. They named their space after a peer: Shaban al-Dolou, a Palestinian student who was burned to death by an occupation airstrike.

A speech from the second floor window of Morrell Lounge explained why they chose to name the encampment after Shaban al-Dolou,

He spent his last months recording the everyday horrors in Palestine… The constant bombing, the hunger, the intense, unending fear of children, families, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters… no individual has been spared. He was displaced and [he was] attempting to get his family out of Palestine. He was a student studying to be a software engineer. He was nineteen… he was nineteen years old and he was burned alive in a hospital. [Shouts of “Shame!” come from the crowd.] These are the tragedies that are happening every single day. More deaths than we can ever imagine. We brought this campaign to this campus in Shaban’s name and for all the individuals in Palestine. That is who we are fighting for. That is why we are here. Let’s not forget that. Let’s dig our roots into this knowledge. Thank you for being here. Thank you for supporting us. Thank you for supporting the people of Palestine.

The atmosphere was charged—tense sometimes—as students rushed past security or clambered through open windows to join the encampment. Yet it was jubilant at others, as students within Morrell led cheers from the second story and supporters outside blasted music and danced together. During the night, community members from a number of different groups—including Bowdoin Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, Maine DSA, PSL, JVP, PeaceWorks of Greater Brunswick, and Maine Coalition for Palestine—patrolled the sprawling complex at all hours, watching for a potential incursion by police or security. It was during these cold, small hours of the morning that a sense of uncertainty dominated.

For decades, students, staff, and faculty at Bowdoin have understood the “Bowdoin Bubble”—a sense that this small, exclusive liberal arts college tucked away in a quiet corner of Maine is uniquely isolated from the complicated workings of the rest of the world. Of course, the real world has always been reflected in the internal Bowdoin experience. Over two centuries old, the college has long been a bastion of wealthy whiteness, which comes with its own intense political identity. Though recent decades have seen a marked increase in non-white and low-income students, it’s debatable how well Bowdoin has adjusted, as the campus culture remains mired in assumptions around student privilege and accessibility, often leaving marginalized students frustrated or without the resources inherent to the experiences of their more privileged peers.

There have been political movements at Bowdoin in the past. It took over a decade of student organizing to convince the school to divest from the Apartheid regime in South Africa; more recently, in the late 2010s and early 2020s, students came together multiple times to advocate for better pay for service staff.

The encampment itself did not come from nowhere. It represented another step in more than a year-long campaign by Bowdoin SJP, including a campus referendum in which a supermajority of students voted to ask the College to “take an institutional stand against scholasticide in Gaza… and refrain from future investment… in certain arms manufacturers.”

But Bowdoin had never seen anything like the Shaban al-Dolou encampment. It showed.  Security on the first day was visibly confused and unprepared, regularly making phone calls to establish admittance procedures, and administration fumbled early on by electing to shut down the entire student union building.

For context, the renamed Shaban al-Dolou Union (formerly Smith Union) is the main student hub on campus. It is normally open 24/7 to campus community members, and houses three dining hubs—the grill, the cafe, and a convenience store—as well as the student book store, mailroom, a gymnasium, an art gallery, and several rec rooms.

The student encampment obstructed none of these operations. Morrell Lounge is a large open space dominated by chairs, couches, and coffee tables, where students would be working, hanging out, or sleeping anyway. On Thursday night, the first night of the encampment and prior to the building’s closure, the C-Store raked in money from the encamped students.

The administration’s decision to shut-down the whole building antagonized a normally politically apathetic campus. Admin attempted to frame the peaceful protest as “hostile,” necessitating the closure for staff safety. It’s difficult to say immediately after the fact how effective this piece of propaganda was, but as a former dining staffer at Bowdoin, it’s transparently ridiculous. After all, dining staff—deemed essential by the college—are expected to work through severe snowstorms, pandemics, and county-wide active shooter emergencies. As Fatah Azzam from the Maine Coalition for Palestine explained, “It’s not like they’re violating anyone’s safety or security or anything like that at all. They’re just sitting and saying, ‘We are here; we want you to listen to us.”

The longer the encampment held out, the greater the sense of uncertainty. Since this was the first time Bowdoin had seen a direct action of this scale, it was impossible to say whether the higher-ups would cave or lash out in response. Over the next few days, admin continued to send out self-contradictory warnings, including veiled but confused threats of disciplinary action and moving-target deadlines. According to students inside and allied faculty, conditions in the encampment became increasingly hostile as administrative pressure mounted.

At SJP’s request, community members mobilized. Supply runs, letter write-ins, cop watches, and alumni pressure campaigns were organized to maintain the encampment, and students and locals alike rallied around the clock to support the activists.

The Bowdoin activists were up against a formidable foe. Bowdoin has many billions of reasons to remain committed to the status quo. It’s a private “little Ivy” that depends almost entirely on alumni and parent donations. The college’s leaders may feel they can’t afford to rock the proverbial boat and fund the latest football field makeover.

More insidiously, advocating for serious change at a small privileged school puts marginalized students at risk. With a student population of less than two thousand, and a campus culture dominated by workaholic perfectionism and political passivity, there is little safety net. The students in the Shaban al-Dalou encampment wouldn’t have had much in the way of padding from privileged classmates looking out for them. Many student activists face an outsized risk from a disciplinary suspension or trespass charge, which could carry life-altering consequences without the backing of family wealth or security. One of the crueler ironies of the past year and a half at Bowdoin is that the administration frequently insisted divestment would threaten financial aid—and then leveraged the loss of that aid against student protestors as part of their potential disciplinary procedures.

For many community members and more experienced organizers, this was one of the most important parts of their own participation: they wanted the students who were risking so much to know that, in advocating for Palestinian liberation, they had support from outside Bowdoin campus. They hoped that this support would encourage the students and give the administration pause, convincing them to back away from some of their more dire threats.

On Monday night, during a rally which attracted hundreds of supporters on the fifth day of the occupation, several Bowdoin deans were seen exiting the union through an adjacent building. Not long after, the Shaban al-Dalou encampment student activists agreed to disperse pending further negotiations.

The Bowdoin Orient quoted Olivia Kenney, Bowdoin class of ‘25 and one of the lead organizers: “The College has finally come and agreed to work with us in good faith toward a conclusion to this action.”

Within days following the dissolution of Shaban al-Dalou, Bowdoin SJP released a statement thanking supporters and recommiting themselves to the fight for justice in occupied Palestine. They also revealed that around sixty students were facing disciplinary measures, and eight were under temporary suspension, denied access to food and housing by a college that has frequently used both as a means of control.

It is as yet too early to know the totality of policies and punishments that will be discussed between Bowdoin SJP, FSJP, and a rattled administration, but a few things seem clear. Bowdoin has not divested any of its considerable wealth from the genocidal state of Israel and remains a campus dominated by a sense of liberal complacency. Following clean-up, the student union will once again be humming along on its operations, and depoliticized Bowdoin community members can get coffee and sandwiches without having to think, however briefly, of the suffering of the people of occupied Palestine.

At the same time, community members clinging to that sense of complacency may now be doing so a little more desperately. The student activists proved that the Bowdoin Bubble can be burst, and a window opened on to the global atrocities propped up by entrenched academic systems.

Local supporters will not soon forget the encampment, or allow it to be forgotten. And if and when Bowdoin does decide to follow the path of divestment, the names of its administrators will be invariably linked with this refusal of even basic economic justice.

Furthermore, Bowdoin students—those who camped inside and those who supported them from outside—have seen the enormity of the resistance against which they must push to affect change. Many are energized by their experience—angry but looking forward from Shaban al-Dalou with renewed commitment to global justice.

As SJP said in their most recent statement: “We did this for Shaban […] He was our peer, a student of computer science, a loving brother and a selfless son. He was our age when he was martyred by an Israeli airstrike. We named our Union after him to honor his memory, and today we rededicate ourselves to him. The movement is strong, and though the struggle will be long, victory is inevitable. Long live Shaban al-Dalou Union.”

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