The Brach’s factory closure hit working families in Chicago. To fight back, these families took the struggle from the shop floor and made it international.

The post Chicago labor’s fight against child slavery in Côte d’Ivoire appeared first on EWOC.

We don’t have to do this alone. We don’t have to FEEL alone. Socialize and organize because we’re in this together, fighting for a better world!

The post Fighting apathy and algorithms appeared first on EWOC.

[[{“value”:”

By: Zac Bears and Jessica Farrell

This article was originally published in Convergence Magazine in 2024.

MEDFORD, MA – For decades, residents in Medford, Mass have voted many of the same people into office time and time again. City politics was, and in some ways still is, defined by long-standing conflicts between individual elected officials and their supporters. Political leadership roles were passed down to family members across multiple generations. Important proposals were approved or denied for who was supporting them just as often as they were for their merits. Facing the dual impact of incredibly restrictive state laws on municipal finance and lack of comprehensive planning and growth of the city’s tax base, Medford’s public infrastructure crumbled and the local government provided fewer city and school services. 

After the Great Recession, the public schools cut dozens of positions, many of which never returned. Huge staff cuts in the Department of Public Works means the city outsources basic maintenance of streets and sidewalks. Many of our recreation, school sports, and arts programs are entirely funded by fees or managed by private nonprofits and donors.

All of this in a city where residents were voting for more progressive officials at the state and national level, where residents were seeing our neighboring communities improve far more rapidly, and where more residents were demanding the basic services, support for public schools, and the safe, well-maintained infrastructure they deserved.

These were, and still are, conditions where a movement for change can grow. Does this sound similar to your community? If so, the potential for change may be closer than you think.

Where We Live

Medford’s nearly 65,000 residents reside on both sides of the Mystic River five miles from Downtown Boston in a historically middle and working-class community. The city has one of the country’s oldest historically Black neighborhoods in West Medford, and a strong immigrant history with large Irish and Italian communities putting down roots here in the mid-20th century alongside fast-growing Haitian and Brazilian communities today. 

Unlike neighbors in Cambridge, Somerville, and Everett, Medford has not grown a large commercial tax base to support city services or public schools and is largely dependent on residential property taxes to fund the city budget. Today, residents face skyrocketing housing costs and decades of underinvestment in streets, schools, and city staff. Hundreds of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance is now coming due, and because of Proposition 2.5, a 1980 MA ballot question that limited municipal property tax authority, high property values don’t equate to more tax revenue to fix these major problems.

Starting from the Bottom

Galvanized by the far-right victory in the 2016 national election, a small group of progressive residents founded Our Revolution Medford (ORM) in early 2017 to take action for progressive change at the local level. We developed our own local platform based on city issues, and while we occasionally share invitations and information for statewide and national Our Revolution events, the movement is entirely locally grown and directed and receives no outside funding. Eight years later, ORM has grown from a small backyard gathering to a citywide movement that elected majorities on both the Medford City Council and Medford School Committee.  

Our initial conversations in 2017 quickly turned to the need for political analysis, desire to see candidates commit to real policies, and to fill in massive information gaps in a community with little-to-no local news media and scant public space for pre-election discussion and debate. We asked: who can we trust? Who can we influence? We brought together a group of people who could build trust and share the burden of paying attention to city government to help each other analyze what’s going on.

We reached out to lists of local residents we knew supported the Bernie Sanders campaign and movement, community organizations focused on change, and candidates for local office in the 2017 municipal election who seemed to share our values. Our initial membership was deeply intergenerational, from college students to retirees, and stretched across ideologies, including long-time local progressives, young socialists, frustrated parents, people facing housing displacement, and everyday folks who shared our values but didn’t choose a political label.

Three major strategic values soon followed from those meetings: (1) a clear focus on building power, (2) making the necessary preparations for successfully wielding power, and (3) growing our capacity through relationships and trust across the community.

Before 2017, many candidates for local office ran on city pride and local social and family connections. Their campaigns lacked specific policies or opinions on policy. Few discussed strategies to address major long-term fiscal and economic challenges.  Our initial efforts to shift power were grounded in information-sharing and transparency, staking out clear policy positions and informing voters about what incumbent candidates believed and supported based on their votes and comments in Council meetings.  

Strong support for progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Ed Markey in our community showed us that the majority of residents wanted to see progress and transformative change. We decided early on that the best way to build power was to focus on organizing residents around city policy and government by creating grassroots policy campaigns and having a laser-focus on electing new members of the School Committee and City Council so that we could put those policies into place.

We decided early on that the best way to build power was to focus on organizing residents around city policy and government by creating grassroots policy campaigns and having a laser-focus on electing new members of the School Committee and City Council.

These two tactics took on specific forms. For grassroots policy campaigns, we held public events to educate residents about specific issues (for example, pushing to increase the low Payments in Lieu of Taxes or PILOTs from large tax-exempt institutions like Tufts University), discussed topics in ORM meetings, and held city council watch parties over a group chat. The chats help mobilize residents to reach out to elected officials and attend city meetings and connect residents’ everyday experiences to the actions of local government.

Our direct electoral work was even more focused and ambitious. Adapting a model successfully used in Richmond, CA and popularized by the Incorruptibles, we ran a “candidate slate” to help us overcome the financial and structural barriers progressive candidates face.

In Fall 2017, we formed a slapshot slate of candidates who were already running, pitched in personal funds to get some palm cards printed, canvassed a couple of times, and then stood at the polls on Election Day. Four of five of our endorsed candidates won, including one whose narrow majority survived a recount. This showed us that every single vote really mattered and gave us a wedge to grow in the subsequent years. Start small – with discipline and building a culture of organizing, there’s always room to grow.

Building Cycles of Organizing

Each win built on the ones before, with three School Committee Members and two City Councilors winning in 2019 (one of whom is Zac Bears, co-author of this article and ORM’s first member-turned-candidate), and eight out of nine endorsed candidates winning in 2021, including the first Asian-American person to serve on the Council, and securing majorities on both the City Council and the School Committee. Opponents who didn’t see us coming were surprised. Ten of 11 endorsed candidates won in 2023, including six of the seven who ran for Council seats. Several ORM-endorsed candidates won more than 50% of the vote, a rarity in the past even for long-time incumbents, and the top vote-getters for both Council and School Committee received more votes than the re-elected incumbent Mayor and the most votes for either office in at least 20 years.

While the idea of the platform and slate began with the Richmond Progressive Alliance model, we have greatly expanded it over the past six years. Each election cycle, we conduct an extensive community outreach and editing process to revise the Medford People’s Platform (MPP) and update the endorsement process we launched in 2019. We reach out to dozens of community organizations and major stakeholders, engaging hundreds of residents with surveys and public forums. We hold community workshops on the questions of who is included in decision-making, what are our core values, and what policies we want to see implemented in our city. 

The result? A platform that we all agree to work towards, even though most members do not agree 100% with every point. Each successive election, we have expanded the process, engaging more residents and updating the platform to address changing conditions and celebrate hard-won victories. Candidates endorsed by Our Revolution Medford commit to support the platform; the platform shapes messaging and outreach for our coordinated electoral campaigns and provides the basis for a clear understanding of success and accountability after candidates win. 

Now in its third iteration, the 2023-2024 Medford People’s Platform is focused on housing justice, racial justice, public health, and a shared vision for a welcoming, vibrant, and forward-looking local government that provides residents with the city and school services they deserve. The two biggest priorities are raising revenue to invest in a new Medford High School and Fire Headquarters and implementing transformative housing production, zoning reform, and economic development plans to fight housing displacement, grow the city’s commercial tax base, and build more vibrant local business and cultural districts. 

Our work is purposeful and committed but joyful as well. We have consistently placed a high value on community-building. During each local election cycle, we grow the movement by building stronger relationships and growing our capacity to organize. Each non-election year, we sustain that movement-building through virtual city meeting watches and discussion spaces, and we hold regular general meetings. We focus on city government actions to hold elected officials accountable while supporting the good work done, and we hold social events to be in community with each other.

Historic Challenges

Inauguration day in January 2020 was a celebration of our successes. The months that followed showed the limits of our power, and then the limits of government and society. The COVID-19 pandemic struck Massachusetts and Medford hard. After just two months of Council meetings, we were in lockdown and dozens of Medford residents were getting seriously ill and dying, especially in our senior housing facilities. Shock pervaded the community, with highways and skies quieter than anyone had ever experienced. But in less than a month, Medford was able to implement videoconferencing for public meetings and the City Council began to meet again.

ORM-endorsed elected officials pushed hard for state and federal support, implementation of strong pandemic responses to protect residents from serious illness and death, resources and training for online learning to minimize the unimaginable disruption of the pandemic on kids, protection for residents facing housing displacement, and provisions for public meetings to continue to occur in a safe manner. 

From 2017 to 2021, serving in the minority or with a slim majority meant we needed to build coalitions and consensus within the City Council and School Committee, and many of our more ambitious and long-overdue policy proposals were stymied before reaching passage or rejected as too ambitious by the mayor or city and school administrators who hold outsized power compared to the elected legislative bodies under our city charter. 

With many progressives now in elected office, we see conflicts between people fighting to maintain the status quo and people who want to see the city grow and change play out constantly, with persistent arguments that people who have lived here across decades and generations and those who own property have more of a right to the city than residents who arrived more recently or who rent. 

Transformation is in the Details

The progressive majority elected in 2023 has brought a major change in the tone and approach of the City Council. For the first time ever, the Council has created, voted on, and published a governing agenda for the 2024-2025 term that outlines major initiatives. A new Council committee structure helps clarify when and how the Council develops ordinances and conducts administrative oversight. Meeting agendas, schedules, and files are published through a new online portal. Updated Council rules contain a table of contents, guarantee remote participation by members of the public through hybrid meetings, and no longer contain arcane language to make the rules clearer and more accessible to the public. 

Transformative initiatives and ordinances are moving quickly, with the Council voting to create an independent Department of Elections, passing the first Zoning Ordinance Recodification in 60 years, as well as passing ordinances updating snow removal policies to improve sidewalk access, several environmental and civil liberties ordinances, and a new budget ordinance that formally establishes an open and transparent budget process as city law.  

We’ve also faced new, unexpected barriers. Our budget cycles lay bare the major short-term and long-term budget crisis facing Medford. Prior to 2023, budget cycles had a similar rhythm. Mayors would submit a proposed budget close to the June 30^th deadline, some years riddled with errors. Councilors would demand accountability and attempt to set the facts straight during budget hearings held with less than ideal information to make decisions. Councils would attempt to hold strong and often would win small improvements, but year after year, residents would see service cuts to city departments and Medford Public Schools. 

In FY24, the Council once again had serious concerns about the use of one-time federal funds for permanent operating budget positions as well as the lack of a long-term plan to fund the giant liabilities the city faces for school buildings, city facilities, streets, sidewalks, and our water and sewer infrastructure. While a budget plan released by Councilor Bears and supported by Councilors Collins and Tseng did not move forward in its entirety, major pieces were secured by an agreement reached between Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn, Council President Nicole Morell, and Councilor Bears and ratified by a June 2024 Council vote to approve the Mayor’s budget. 

Since then, the City Council passed the city’s first-ever budget ordinance and in collaboration with the Mayor and School Committee leadership placed three referendum questions on the November 5, 2024 election ballot to raise revenue for the first time in the city’s post-Proposition 2.5 history. If voters approve these anti-austerity ballot questions, they would enable the city to raise revenue necessary to increase funding for the Medford Public Schools, build a new Fire Headquarters, and fund an in-house sidewalk and pothole repair crew in our Department of Public Works.  

Planting Seeds of Change in Your Community

You are reading an unfinished story. We have won great victories by bringing together residents in a collaborative, joyful, and values-based political movement, and we also understand that single victories will not automatically create the positive change we want to see in our community.

We hope our model can help you build the progressive community you want for yourself, your family, your neighbors, and your friends. Please don’t hesitate to be in touch with us so we can fill in the gaps and help you learn more about what we’ve built here in Medford.

Zac Bears is a lifelong resident of Medford, MA and a graduate of the Medford Public Schools and UMass Amherst. Public education and the labor movement have been the foundation of Zac’s life–including transformative experiences as a student activist and opinion journalist at UMass Amherst, director of the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (PHENOM), and as a member of AFGE, union staffer at AFSCME, and staff member at Massachusetts Jobs With Justice. Zac has been a Medford City Councilor since 2020 with a key focus on funding public services and supporting working families.

Jessica Farrell is an organizer and archivist. She worked in libraries, archives, and nonprofits for 15 years. Since 2024 she has owned and operated Redstart Works, consulting on library and archives projects that expand the commons. Her commitment to free access to information compels her to fill civic information and data gaps in her communities. Her commitment to the commons compels her to advocate for the expansion and funding of social services, including libraries.

The post Step By Step, We Built a Movement to Transform Our Local Government appeared first on Working Mass.

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Enjoy your September National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 25-person body (including two YDSA members who share a vote) which functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, hear from the Mexican left, help stop deportation flights, and more!

And to make sure you get our newsletters in your inbox, sign up here! Each one features action alerts, upcoming events, political education, and more.

• From the National Political Committee — Amid Hard Times, Democratic Socialism Goes Mainstream
• Live from the Global Sumud Flotilla — Humanity is on Board to Stop the Genocide! Join Us Friday 9/19
• RSVP for DSA Political Exchange Call with MORENA Starting Saturday 9/20
• Spanish Speakers: Housing Justice Commission Weekly Spanish Practice Beginning Tuesday 9/23
• Sign Up for Stop Avelo Power Mapping Workshop Tuesday 9/30
• Join Our Growth and Development Committee’s Membership Drive!
• Apply to Join the Democracy Commission (DemCom) 2025–2027! Deadline Saturday 10/18
• Apply Today to Become a Discussion Forum Mod!

From the National Political Committee — Amid Hard Times, Democratic Socialism Goes Mainstream

“Freedom is always the freedom of the dissenter.” — Rosa Luxemburg

As Trump’s administration accelerates its attempted crackdown on dissent — demanding the deportation of Palestine solidarity activist Mahmoud Khalil and others, using economic threats to force TV networks to silence even mildly-critical hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, allegedly planning a broad-based “crackdown” on liberal and left wing organizations, and whatever fresh fascist schemes appear in their alphabet soup — we stand proud and firm knowing that we, as democratic socialists, are not only on the right side of history but the popular side of the present. 

As democratic socialists, we are on the side of and among the people. And we’re not just saying that because it’s a cool-sounding socialist slogan — we have evidence! A new national poll from Jacobin and the DSA Fund finds that democratic socialist leaders and left-wing policies are broadly popular. More and more Americans are not just seeing what we stand for as radical — against an economic system rigged in favor of corporations and the wealthy, it’s practical!

That confirms what many of us know as DSA members. From years of knocking doors for campaigns, tabling, and talking to people in our communities about the projects we’re taking on collectively, we know from firsthand experience that working class people are hungry for an alternative and very receptive to ideas about how we make it happen. When we communicate plainly and lay out organizing plans together that people can believe in, it can powerfully cut through all the noise from a ruling class that wants to keep us divided and distracted while they plunder our planet and pick our pockets. 

As DSA member Zohran Mamdani gets closer to the mayorship of the wealthiest city in the world, DSA chapters around the country are running candidates to expand socialist power on city councils and in state houses, and through our work in housing justice, labor organizing, and campaigns grounded in ecosocialism, socialist feminism, abolitionism, trans and queer liberation, and more. As we keep raising expectations and winning power with the strength of our organization, we’re reaching millions of people to see that a better world is possible — and that DSA is building the organization that they can join to build it together. 

The crackdown on dissent is genuinely scary, but we won’t let it stop us. We believe in a path to socialism, even inside the belly of the beast, that comes from collective mass action — like labor and rent strikes, peaceful public protests, community-powered elections and ballot initiatives, and economic pressure campaigns like Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) in solidarity with Palestinians, to end our government’s support for apartheid and genocide. 

When the ruling class’s greed and incompetence opens up a power vacuum, like when the New York City establishment decided to run two corrupt machine Democrats against each other, they leave a lane wide open for organized socialists to move in. DSA was ready for this moment after years of steady organizing to build an electoral bloc of Socialists in Office in New York, who aren’t there to simply advocate for bills in government and let us hope for the best from the outside — they organize with us and show up with us on the streets to stand up for justice for us all. We will continue to be ready. Keeping on with our organizing work is how we build our organizing chops, expand our base, and be ready when those moments come — which is to say, it is the most powerful thing we can do right now.  We continue to march forth with things like a mobilization call to support the Global Sumud Flotilla (scroll down for info about an exciting live stream!), organize together to defend our immigrant neighbors, increase support of Starbucks worker organizing, support our nationally-endorsed electoral slate, and so much more.

We are in DSA because we believe in a better world, one in which people’s basic needs are met, where we make decisions democratically about our living and working conditions, where the violence of bigotry and division are no longer a subject of debate, but simply a thing we remember from the darker days. 

This is an important time to continue bringing new people into our organization, and to motivate our members to keep building working class power together in our communities. We’re safer and stronger when we are pulling together toward our common goals. We’re about to ramp up a big fall recruitment drive — now’s a great time to make the ask of people in your life to join DSA! Dues are one of our collective resources (consider raising yours today!), our experience and skillsets as organizers are also, the power that comes from moving in unison with hundreds and thousands of people is another… and courage is too. Pool that courage together and we will not fail.

Solidarity Now and Always,

Megan Romer and Ashik Siddique
DSA National Co-Chairs

Live from the Global Sumud Flotilla — Humanity is on Board to Stop the Genocide! Join Us Friday 9/19

The DSA International Committee will be hosting an important conversation with some of our global movement partners, livestreamed directly from the decks of the Family, one of the ships on the Global Sumud Flotilla, in order to find out more about the goals and strategies of the Flotilla itself, as well as to help build a solidarity network for Flotilla participants, who are being actively targeted by the Zionist state for their humanitarian work.

Come join us tomorrow, Saturday 9/19 at 12pm ET/11am CT/10am MT/9am PT to hear first hand about what is going on with the Flotilla, and to share ideas about how to continue to strengthen international solidarity against the genocide in Gaza and in support of Palestinian liberation. DSA members in good standing are invited to register here.

RSVP for DSA Political Exchange Call with MORENA Starting Saturday 9/20

Saturday 9/20 and 9/27, we’ll be participating in our first ever political exchange with the Mexican left political party, MORENA! Both events will start at 12pm ET/11am CT/10am MT/9am PT, and will run for two hours each.

Part 1 (Saturday 9/20) will focus on the histories of both organizations and organizing conditions in their respective countries. RSVP here!

Part 2 (Saturday 9/27) will focus on members in office. You can sign up here. We will have 3 very special guest speakers for DSA, including Rashida Tlaib! Don’t miss out on this very special occasion!

Spanish Speakers: Housing Justice Commission Weekly Spanish Practice Beginning Tuesday 9/23

Practica tu español con la Comisión para la Vivienda con Justicia (CVJ)!

Aprendiste español en el colegio o en el trabajo y quieres mejorar? Unete los martes a las 9pm ET/8pm CT/7pm MT/6pm PT para practicar con la CVJ. Te pondremos en un cuarto de Zoom con otra persona para que practiquen juntos. Si quieres también tenemos guiones si necesitas ayuda!

Sign Up for Stop Avelo Power Mapping Workshop Tuesday 9/30

Avelo Airlines is profiting from deportation flights, tearing our communities apart. We need good strategy to make sure we can affect their bottom line while making it clear that any airline that deports our people cannot continue to operate. Are you wondering how your local chapter can join the fight to tell Avelo Airlines that we won’t stand for this?

Join us Tuesday 9/30 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT for a 1.5 hour power mapping strategy session! On this call, you’ll learn the best strategy for your chapter to force Avelo to drop their contract with ICE.

Join Our Growth and Development Committee’s Membership Drive!

We’re in the throes of fall, and that means it’s time for a Fall Membership Drive! With us approaching election day for some extremely exciting DSA Campaigns (wink wink), we want to make sure we are turning DSA’s campaigns into hotbeds to recruit new socialists and organizers/soon to be socialists.

But to build off the momentum of our work, we will need everyone’s help making this drive as successful as possible! Fill out the form here to get involved.

Apply to Join the Democracy Commission (DemCom) 2025–2027! Deadline Saturday 10/18

Authorized in 2023, the Democracy Commission (DemCom) developed reforms to strengthen democracy across DSA. Its proposals were overwhelmingly adopted at the 2025 Convention, and the body has now been reauthorized to support chapters and the NPC in implementing them.

DemCom will assist with chapter rechartering and bylaws review (2025–2027), visit chapter meetings to support implementation, report regularly to members and the NPC, develop best practices in tandem with chapters, and promote democratic governance. 

There are open seats on the Commission. Please fill out the form here to apply. The application deadline is Saturday 10/18. Commissioners are expected to attend regular meetings (8PM ET, Monday evenings, plus some weekends), work with chapters to implement reforms, and report on progress and challenges.

Apply Today to Become a Discussion Forum Mod!

The Discussion Forum Moderator Council wants YOU to apply to be a forum mod to help build out forum use, ensure constructive and generative discussion and debate on the forums, and lead the way for keeping our internal communication platform representative of the big tent! More details can be found in this forum topic, which also includes the link to apply!

The post Your National Political Committee Newsletter — Amid Hard Times, Democratic Socialism Goes Mainstream appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

By: Rob Switzer

The following is a post I made on Facebook that was not intended to be published. It was mainly written to vent and just to show friends the kind of things I deal with as union steward at my workplace, which is a Food and Commercial Workers meat market where I have been working for five years as a butcher.

Someone suggested this piece would work as a demonstration of how power functions in the workplace. Note that the stories included are not official union activities and could theoretically be accomplished in any workplace. However, it is worth noting that the union-provided protections we have and my status as a quasi-authority figure very likely embolden my coworkers and me to assert ourselves in ways that we otherwise might not.

A couple of weeks ago, I was informed that a coworker of mine was sent home, suspended, and written up. He had allegedly gone shopping, prepared a lunch, then had his lunch, all on the clock. He was being accused of deliberate and extended time theft, which of course is a fireable offense.

Coworker said this was not true, and I asked him to send me a screenshot of his punches on the time-keeping app we use. He did so. Upon cursory inspection, it was obvious that he had in fact neglected to clock back in from his early break, and was therefore actually off the clock during these events.

We had a meeting with the store manager, and Coworker brought the write-up itself, which included the clearly false accusations, and even had his receipt stapled to it, showing what he bought and when he bought it (while he was off the clock, remember). The store manager saw my point and understood, but told the worker that he had to be more careful about punches; this time it wouldn’t be held against him.

But I wasn’t satisfied — the shift manager who had originally made these accusations was still operating under the belief that my coworker was a time thief. So I informed him the next morning that the worker wasn’t on the clock. “Yes he was!,” he told me. “No he wasn’t!,” I retorted. “Yes he was!” he shouted back. He agreed to let me show him the screenshot. We walked to my locker to see my phone. The shift manager looked at it and I could see his mind spinning. He exclaimed something like, “Well, he probably would have done it anyway!”

About ten minutes later he approached me and apologized, admitting he was wrong and that he should have investigated better. He seemed to hide for the rest of the day; other workers noticed and told me. I made sure everyone was aware that someone had just been written up and suspended for something he demonstrably did not do. Someone chanted, “Steward! Steward! Steward!” which was pretty amusing.

Fast forward to today. We had about six first-shift meat cutters/handlers working. It was getting close to 2:30, our usual out time. But overtime was posted, meaning management can hold us later if they want to.

We had ten cases of bacon that had to be bagged and vacuum-sealed. No one likes doing this; it’s tedious. But it’s part of the job. So when I was done with my other work for the day, I took it upon myself to start.

Right around this time one manager came into the cutting room and said, “We’re getting ready to prep up!” That basically means we’re being cut loose as soon as we clean up. Two of the cutters promptly left, leaving four of us behind. We finished the bacon; we were all getting ready to leave.

Then a different manager came in and said he wanted us to make sure the bacon got vacuum-sealed before we left. Usually what we do is bag it all and let one of the afternoon-shift cutters handle the sealing. There were four of them there today. Why couldn’t one of them do it? We all were ready to leave, and had already been told we could leave.

I told the manager I thought this was bullshit. That’s literally a one-person job. Are you actually asking three of us to stand around and watch someone vacuum-seal 10 cases of bacon? In so many words, he said that yes, yes, he was asking that.

I talked to the other three workers individually. Everyone agreed they were ready to leave. So let’s leave, I told them. I went and talked to the manager, and we had a little argument. “I have other stuff for them to do; I want you to seal the bacon, blah blah blah.” He stormed off and said something like, “Just get it done and you can leave.” I don’t think he understood; I was telling him we had already decided we were leaving.

We rolled the sealer machine into the cutting room, and one of the second-shift cutters started sealing. He was clearly free to do this. I checked in with everyone to make sure we were all walking out in solidarity. And then we did. It will be interesting to see if there are any consequences tomorrow.

Epilogue: There were no consequences, other than a manager mentioning it to me in disapproval. I hope our action stands as a lesson to my coworkers that we have power when we take actions in solidarity.

Adventures of a Union Steward was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Better health, stronger families and fairer spending – all for about 63$ per paycheck

The post Five Interim Policies to Bridge the Healthcare Gap appeared first on Democratic Left.

When the girls of Sugared + Bronzed — a salon chain specializing in spray tanning and sugaring hair removal — first heard about labor unions, we didn’t expect that workers like us could have a union of our own.

The post How Sugared + Bronzed workers won their historic salon union appeared first on EWOC.

Brazilian political party PSOL reports on the 2025 DSA National Convention and reflects on their participation as invited guests.

The post DSA National Convention Strengthens the Building of the Socialist Left in the United States appeared first on Democratic Left.

Author: Andrew O

It is impossible to organize without a positive vision of the future. Placing a point on the horizon allows us to steer our ship towards that guiding star. I do not speak for the chapter here, but for myself and in hopes of spurring comrades to think about and voice their own visions of what our chapter can and should be. This document outlines what is actively and passively in my mind when I am arguing for or against something in the many debates within our chapter. These goals inform my politics and decisions. I have roughly outlined a long-, medium-, and short- term set of goals for our chapter. These goals are ambitious–as they must be for us to truly change the world.

DSA Cleveland can and should become an organized and independent political party. We should become an organization capable of building and providing mutual and material good for the working class of Northeast Ohio. This ability must be built outside the control of the state and of capital. Our membership must be militant and organized; our chapter democratic, transparent, and politically well-developed.DSA Cleveland is not and cannot simply be the left wing of the Democratic party. We are capable of being an independent party, with our own identity, program, and support base. DSA is uniquely positioned within American politics to become a true opposition party. Our message is a winning message, we have strong theoretical guides to build off, and our base is only limited by our capacity to organize.

Simultaneous to our electoral and reformist goals, it is essential that our chapter is working towards independence from the state. Our goal is not to take over the levers of power. Our goal is to build a new world.  We must create radical structures of mutual care to support our comrades and fellow workers. All of us will be required to build skills in mutual aid and true community defense, whether via food, medicine, shelter, or otherwise.

Building a new world will be the hardest fight any of us have ever seen. In order to weather it together, we must be organized and we must be militant. Each of us must build ourselves and those around us into the leaders we are all capable of being. Worker-leaders will need to be prepared to fight against the state, capital, and the disasters (natural and otherwise) that will put our entire project at risk. It is up to us to organize ourselves into a working class that can stand up to what is to come.

We will only be able to truly organize worker-leaders if we are seeking to be as democratic and transparent as possible. If we are to build a democratic world, we must start now. Member-led, bottom-up democracy cannot survive with incomplete information or an uninformed membership. Discussion and debate must be open and accessible in all ways. Structures must work to preserve the voice of the minority and to increase the general body’s democratic control of the chapter. We must ensure our elected leaders, both inside and outside of the chapter, are accountable to membership both in principle and in fact. Our membership needs to be politically mature and developed so each member has equal control over our organization.

This chapter can be a powerful base born of and built by the working class of Northeast Ohio, but it will not be easy to achieve. Movements like ours have been defeated in nearly every instance they have been built. We have yet to see a single one survive, let alone thrive, within the imperial core. In order to guide our actions, our chapter needs to work together to learn and teach ourselves political theory. We must grow our chapter through the best available methods of organizing. DSA Cleveland’s structures need to ensure our values democracy, transparency, and accountability are protected. This will only be possible if our membership is educated and knowledgeable on the history of these structures as well as the process to change them.

Every person is capable of being a great organizer. We must work together so that each of us reaches this potential. Unlike under capitalism, we want to make ourselves as replaceable as possible. Within our chapter and within our lives, we should constantly seek to organize ourselves, our neighbors, and our comrades. It is our responsibility as comrades to cultivate a wide variety of skills and pass them on as often as we are able. Organizing and teaching are frequently one in the same. For the working class to take over the world, we must make sure that each of us can lead it, together.

The idea of organizing the whole worker, as laid out by Jane McAlevy’s No Shortcuts model of organizing, is the single most effective organizing model I have encountered or tried. It is not infallible, or gospel, nor should it remain fixed and unchanged as we bring it into the various contexts and work that we are doing. It is, however, essential that we are building our organizing from this model if we want to create a truly militant and organized chapter, organization, and working class. The No Shortcuts model is frequently a lot of work, time, and energy. Not to put too fine a point on it, organizing itself is hard and there is no way to shortcut the process. If we are to build a truly organized working class that extends outside of self-selecting activists, we must do the hard work of organizing ourselves first.

To ensure we are making the best use of our capacity, our tactics, and our time, we must base our organizing, our work, and our politics in a political theory. It is our responsibility as socialists to actively cultivate and examine our own theory of politics. We must read, argue, and live our theories of politics together. Theory cannot be learned in isolation. Theory is not simply words in a book. Learning theory is, in and of itself, part of the radical work to win the future. We are each already working from our own theoretical base, whether or not we have examined it. We must come together and have our political theories debate, clash, and build our chapter. 

To guide and instruct the ways we enact our theories and have our debates, as well as to ensure our chapters’ interests in democracy, transparency, and accountability are upheld, we must work to build structures that will withstand bad actors, both those intentionally seeking to harm our chapter and those unaware that they are doing so. It is a fact that any group seeking to change the world will encounter infiltrators and bad actors. This does not mean we should seek to find these individuals, rather we should put structures in place that are better than us, less fallible than us, and structures will be able to be upheld as we continue to grow and change as an organization. These structures should strike the difficult balance between being robust enough to withstand attacks on the democracy of our organization, but flexible enough that they can be changed as needed. 

Structures are not the only method to ensuring our chapter’s democracy, transparency, and accountability is upheld, rather they are one of the tools that we have. Building a culture that values these ideals and taking steps to make sure that each member is educated and knowledgeable on the history of our chapter, our goals, and these structures will give them an understanding of why the chapter is shaped the way it is. Our chapter is built of many decisions made by members, and it can be changed and rebuilt in the same way. Members should be empowered to seek changes to our chapter as they see fit. This will ensure each member has as much ownership and control over the chapter as any other member.

In order to achieve the medium- and long-term goals laid out above, DSA Cleveland needs to realign the chapter’s dedication and support for our priority projects. We must continue the progress made in Membership Committee and bring this same system of engagement to our Education and Communications Committees. Our Priority Projects and Committees must integrate themselves into mutually supportive work. Finally, each priority we take on must move us towards our ambitious electoral and material goals.

Our chapter was in one of our most successful and sustained periods of growth during the Cleveland Housing Organizing Project (CHOP) priority project. There were many external factors for this, but also a good number of internal factors. This priority project built much of what Cleveland DSA is today. The level of commitment to the project was unlike anything our chapter has done since. Some of this was the lack of things to do in person during the lockdowns, much of this was the availability of repeatable work with predictable schedules within the project, but the fact that the chapter truly took this on as a priority cannot be ignored in the success of the CHOP Priority Project.

Our committees must be integrated with our Priority Projects to carry our mutually beneficial work. To use Membership Committee as an example, as it is what I am most familiar with, we have seen great successes this year. The membership pipeline has been rebuilt into the most effective form I have ever seen thanks to the hard work of Chad and the rest of member committee. We cannot simply be organizing members that sign up for new member one on ones and pointing them towards our projects, though. Instead we must make the work of our committees and priorities inexorable from each other. We must work to build a parallel membership pipeline into our priority projects. We must have trained and experienced organizers built into all levels of our work. This will allow us to build the engagement and capacity of both our Membership Committee and Our Priority Projects. Our Education and Communications Committees should seek to build similar methods of integration with our projects and with each other. 

Finally, DSA Cleveland must build Priority Projects that lead us to our goals. Our chapter has an appetite for electoral work and for mutual aid work. That appetite in and of itself is not enough for us to take on this work. It is important that we take on this work because building skills in these areas are essential for us to build the future we want. We cannot take on priority work merely because the work is good or worthy of being done. Our capacity is limited, but as we build and organize towards a shared positive vision, we will grow, our capacity will grow, and our ability to affect change will grow. 

The membership of DSA Cleveland must treat each Priority Project as a step to build the skills of membership, the experience of the chapter, and the capacity we have. Taking each project as a definite step towards our goals will make it easier for us to take on bigger and more varied work in the future. Right now our capacity is limited. Our chapter has not yet successfully run two simultaneous Priority Projects. When we are able to string together several properly supported projects, we will grow our capacity and will need to add more projects to properly organize membership. If we squander our capacity and burn members out without building towards our goals, we will remain at our current size and ability, or worse.

I want to build a DSA Cleveland and a DSA that can take on the world. I want to ensure we, the working class of Northeast Ohio, build the future we want for ourselves. I have great ambitions for this chapter and am sure that we can build it into something great and powerful. If this vision of the future resonates with you, work with me so we can build it together.

1.  At the 2025 DSA National Convention, we adopted the Principles for Party-Building resolution. This resolution is an excellent framework for us to use as we pursue our electoral goals. I want to call special attention to points two, five, and eight.
2.  Northeast Ohio is our chapter’s area of operation, but our struggle is a global one and we cannot lose sight of that.
3.  We must build a concrete set of goals for our chapter and our organization. These goals are what we will fight for and implement when we win power. Our big tent–which brings us strength through a diversity of thought and perspective–can be raised over these points and debate over how to pursue and achieve them can flourish.
4.  You can read the chapter’s PDF copy in our drive. I believe it is essential reading for our organizers.

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