Thousands of DSA members across the state of California came out to local events on June 14, dubbed “No Kings Day”, swelling the ranks of protests from San Diego to Eureka. Here are a few snapshots drawn from the organizing of our local chapters.

East Bay

East Bay DSA brought out members to several events. Chapter co-chair Juan Canham told California Red, “I think it's a moment when our chapter’s commitment to using a diversity of strategies to combat fascism really came together, allowing us to be active on many fronts. As a chapter that encompasses a multitude of political tendencies it's not often that everyone is active at once but everyone I know in the chapter was active in some way on Saturday, some attending multiple events.”

EBDSA sent a sizeable contingent to the “No Kings” march in Oakland. The Oakland action went far beyond what the official organizers expected in terms of turnout. The sun was out, the vibes were good, and “the members spoke to a lot of people fed up with Trump, about how we have to defeat Trump but also the entire rotten system that brought him to power.”

On Friday night EBDSA got word from organizations it is working with that ICE had sent mass text messages to migrants in immigration court proceedings to report the next day Saturday at the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) office in SF or face an “infraction. Canham said, “ISAP is a private company that runs ICE’s alternatives to detention program. It is not located in a government building. Weekend reporting is unheard of. This could only mean one thing: mass arrests.”

He added, “With little notice, and despite already being committed to three other actions on Saturday, we decided that this was critical work and sent out the call to our entire list, with the caution that we did not know how this was going to go down (earlier in the week a peaceful protest outside of the ICE office in San Francisco resulted in arrests). At 7 am on Saturday many in the chapter answered the call prepared for the worst, but between us, community and faith groups there was sufficient turnout to deter ICE and SFPD from escalating. This ended as a successful 2-day community picket where ISAP didn't even try to open the office and ICE weren't visibly present. Instead 50 plus migrants were welcomed by lawyers who gave them help with their cases.”

All of this was occurring on the same day as a previously scheduled EBDSA event, a Labor Notes Troublemakers school that the chapter had been organizing for months with a coalition of unions in the East Bay. It brought together several hundred union members, labor activists, and local officers, to build solidarity, and share successes, strategy, and inspiration.

Marin

Marin DSA worked with a local immigrant rights group to organize a “No Kings, No Oligarchs” rally in downtown San Rafael attended by over 1,500 people. The rally featured many speakers, including chapter members who talked about defending social programs for seniors and working people, protesting the genocide in Gaza, and defending democracy by fighting oligarchy. The chapter partnered with other local organizers to speak about workers rights, protecting immigrants in our community from ICE, and US imperialism. Marin DSA co-chair Curt said, “It was the largest protest our chapter has ever organized and the second largest protest in Marin County since Trump took office.”

Anaheim

Orange County DSA sent a team to Anaheim No Kings Day, where one of the chapter co-chairs give a speech about how direct action is necessary and the Democratic Party gives no hope for liberation, and distributed chapter literature.

San Jose

Silicon Valley DSA comrades joined the San Jose “No Kings” rally. An estimated 12,000 people attended. One of the featured speakers was the chapter’s Rheanna, who reminded the crowd of recent events like Trump’s firing of scientists, the militarization of the local police department, and the incursions of ICE. She said, “We are going to build a movement so big so deep and powerful that no president, no King, no fascists will stand against us.” She invited the crowd to come to the next SVDSA meeting and get trained up in rapid response to be able to protect themselves and their neighbors. “Remember, we keep each other safe!” she said to cheers. [see video of her speech]

Peninsula DSA

Peninsula DSA, situated south of San Francisco, sent members to events in Pacifica, Colma, and San Mateo as well as to the big demonstration in San Francisco, to show up in solidarity and talk up DSA. Allison C reported, “We got 25 people to sign up for our newsletter, plus more folks scanned the QR code off our palm card. We definitely plan to bring more flyers (we passed out 100 plus) and signage next time.”

Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Melville House, 2023, by Yanis Varoufakis

“What’s in a word?” is the title of Chapter 2 of Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, where Yanis Varoufakis notes, “It is tempting to think that it does not really matter what we call the system we live in. Technofeudalism or hyper-capitalism, the system is what it is, whatever the word we use to describe it. Tempting perhaps, but quite wrong. Reserving the word ‘fascist’ for regimes that genuinely fall into that category and refraining from using it to describe regimes that, however nasty are not fascist, matters hugely.”

Varoufakis is fully aware of the odd angle—at least from a more traditional Marxist perspective—from which he is approaching the topic of his latest book. He argues that capitalism, the dominant mode of production on earth for the past two hundred years, has been replaced—not, as hoped for through generations of the left, by socialism, but by a new type of economic structure he has dubbed “technofeudalism”, and which, he says, is turning out to be even more ruthless, destructive and difficult to dislodge than capitalism.

Varoufakis, a former finance minister in Greece during the radical phase of the Syriza government, frames his analysis with the story of how his father introduced him, as a child, to understanding capitalism through the development of the forces of production throughout history, beginning with the Iron Age. By the time Varoufakis is an adult, his father poses the question to him that becomes the starting point for the book: “Now that computers speak to each other, will this network make capitalism impossible to overthrow? Or might it finally reveal its Achilles heel?”

This engaging approach of a dialog with his father, a touchstone throughout, serves the book well, keeping things relatively simple and straightforward as Varoufakis lays out his picture of the new mode of production. At the center is his understanding of the transformation that tech capital (which he renames “cloud capital”) has inflicted on humanity: the conversion of billions of us into “cloud serfs” willingly albeit unconsciously volunteering to labor for nothing to reproduce cloud capital for the benefit of its owners. 

How does this happen? As we switch on our computers, access the web, and lend our eyeballs to cloud capital we hand them a free gift. By clocking our clicks and following our eyeballs, the tech corporations are able to refine their targeting of our wants and desires continuously; the individual cloud serf decisions add up to mass analytics that guide ever more focused algorithms for pitches and sales individualized just for us. Cloud capital, in the form of corporations like Amazon and Apple, does continue to employ workers (“cloud proles”) in their brick-and-mortar facilities and extracts surplus value from them the old-fashioned way: through the labor process and capital accumulation. But the bulk of wealth collection now occurs, Varoufakis asserts, on platforms that have replaced markets on the web. He calls this form of wealth accumulation “cloud rent”.

Yes, he says, these platforms look like markets. But markets—as in exchanges of goods and services, and a key part of the definition of how capitalism functions—are the lesser part of what happens here, on sites he calls “cloud fiefdoms”. The bulk of the income for cloud capital comes from extraction of rent from the mostly modest-sized capitalist app developers who have to use the platforms to sell stuff to us—at an average cost to the developers of thirty percent of the transactions. The people who sell things on the platforms Varoufakis terms “vassal capitalists”.

All of this represents for Varoufakis a process that looks a lot more like how wealth was accumulated during feudalism—through ground rent, with serfs handing over a portion of what they produce on the land lent to them by its owners, feudal lords—than in capitalism, where surplus value is extracted through the difference between wages paid to the worker and the larger amount the worker generates for the capitalist.

Varoufakis’s explanation of how we got here relies on a reworking of the marxist understanding of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. During the centuries-long emergence of capitalism out of feudalism the two modes of production were intertwined and coexisted. But eventually one part (surplus value production, creating profit) became dominant and the other (rent) operated in the shadows cast by its giant rival. Yet, rent survived, and ultimately and opportunistically today has taken on a new and monstrous form. In this way technofeudalism represents the revenge of the undead rent over profit. As Varoufakis puts it, “cloud capital is overpowering terrestrial capital, sucking cloud rent increasingly out of the global value chain” (169).

Interspersed within the more abstract discussion of the comparative dynamics of feudalism and capitalism are useful explanations of various recent real world developments. Like David Harvey, Varoufakis has a knack for making Marxist political economy understandable and clear. (The book helpfully includes an appendix where he defines all his terms.) Where did this cloud capital power come from in such a startlingly short period? Two sources: the enclosure of the internet commons, or privatization of what started out a public resource; and the massive transfers of public funds to private hands following the 2007-8 crash and Great Recession. The combination of the two created the primitive accumulation of cloud capital, which “differs from other kinds of capital in its ability to reproduce itself at no expense to its owner, turning all of us into cloud serfs.” But that’s not the only way it reproduces itself.

With the banking implosion of 2007-8 two things happened. The national central banks determined these businesses were too big to fail, so they shoveled huge amounts of cash to them. But to balance all this money-printing, their governments imposed austerity on the working class. Since the masses were in no position to buy new product lines, capital invested in non-productive enterprises like real estate and the stock market—and tech. Since there was no risk to the investment, having come from free central bank money, profit was optional. Hence the proliferation of startups and tech companies with soaring valuations while returning no profits for years.

Varoufakis spins a number of provocative implications out of this picture. In his final chapter he proposes what a new economy and society would look like if we could construct one free of profits and rents. But he also informs us that getting from here to there is a daunting challenge, larger than the one we faced under the rule of capital, which at least for a time gave us the opportunity to construct social democracy from class consciousness and union power. With technofeudalism, the proliferation of precarious employment, shrunken unions and the dispersal of community, social democracy is currently impossible, says the author. Organizing the working class is still necessary, but not sufficient. Now we need to build a bigger, broader alliance with all willing partners.

Like any analytic or political tradition, Marxism needs to renew its categories and rethink its presuppositions as the world changes in order to remain relevant and accurate. Technofeudalism represents a serious effort to accomplish this necessary task. I am not fully competent to assess the diagnostic picture Varoufakis presents in this book. For one thing, I don’t have the statistical chops to determine if the amount of value being removed from the global capitalist system by cloud rent has actually surpassed the volume of worldwide profit generated by labor for capital.

Solving this single equation should decisively answer the question as to whether Varoufakis is correct in his central argument. If you’ve made it through Volume One of Capital, that—along with not having slept through late neoliberalism—is really all the reader needs to follow the discussion in Technofeudalism. But following the discussion and being able to assess its correctness are two different things.

Whether his answer is correct or not, Varoufakis has asked the right questions in a book that plumbs some of the murkier depths of how our world works today.

By: Chris Brady

HADLEY, M.A. – The sleepy town of 5,000 near Amherst is usually known for its annual asparagus festival and university move-in day traffic. But in mid-2022, Hadley shocked the nation when workers at the town Trader Joe’s voted to certify a union election, the first in the country. A Minneapolis location soon followed and stores in Oakland and Louisville after that, rounding out the independent Trader Joe’s United (TJU). Several worked with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), co-organized by Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE), to organize their workplaces.

However, three years after the favorable unionization vote, the Hadley store still doesn’t have a contract. Trader Joe’s has proven a vicious negotiator and union-busting innovator. TJU’s founding president Jaimie Edwards was fired on May Day, 2025, after ten years at the store.

From High Turnover to Interstate Independent Unionism

Retail workers face egregious working conditions sector-wide. Inconsistent scheduling, inconvenient hours, and minimal workplace protections or benefits are common. The precarity of workers’ employment and high staff turnover has made these sectors historically more difficult to organize.

According to crew member Ellie Arsenault, management targeting employees with bogus write-ups for trading shifts is common.

Management plays this game of setting people up to kind of get them in trouble and get them fired, essentially. There were a lot of things like that, and I think people are just kind of tired of it. We need protection and we don’t want management to just arbitrarily decide these things. 

Arsenault added to Working Mass that identity can play a role in harassment from management. Some crew members made transphobic comments that management left unaddressed especially during the TJU organizing drive, often targeting queer workers, an authoritarian company culture recently exposed in a January 2025 report from Fast Company showing how Trader Joe’s has allowed rampant sexual assault and physical safety issues to go completely unaddressed in the workplace.

When Trader Joe’s workers began organizing in 2022, the union wasn’t popular with all workers. Unionists faced major obstacles in persuading older coworkers with better interpersonal relationships with management. Earning their support required hard, one-on-one conversations from organizers to make sure the vote made it over the line. Some workers even pursued a “de-unionization” effort through the NLRB, which ultimately failed, but was backed by the influential National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and culminated in a written testimony for the House of Representatives.

These challenges to solidarity were unsuccessful. While one Trader Joe’s shop that organized under the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) in New York City was shut down on the eve of going public as a unionbust from the boss, working together, the Minneapolis and Hadley stores both voted to unionize and have been embroiled ever since in contract negotiations.

Three Years Without Contract 

Trader Joe’s has no interest in bargaining in good faith, or for that matter, bargaining at all. The company is going for blood by targeting the jugular of American labor law itself: the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). While the NLRB has always been limited, the attack by Trader Joe’s illustrates the ferocity and finality with which the company intends to fight the union. Trader Joe’s won’t stop at busting one union; they want to bust the entire system of American unions’ legal apparatus, too.

Union negotiators know the bosses’ inventory well, and though Trader Joe’s is attacking on multiple fronts, they also use tried-and-true tactics. The boss will obfuscate, delay, and deny any attempt at negotiation rather than follow the law – common union-busting tactics to break rank-and-file morale. Trader Joe’s would rather talk in circles about meeting logistics instead of pay and benefits and find any way to manufacture delays.

Robert Hönisch, a worker-organizer at the Minneapolis location, noted to Working Mass: 

Trader Joe’s has engaged in numerous delay tactics to try and delay bargaining and try and make us argue about stuff that’s just not true. This is kind of the nature of their legal council, the law firm that represents them, and how anti-union in this company can be. Examples include them bringing up stuff that’s just not pertinent to bargaining, not wanting to engage in good faith on very small issues, and management demanding that we have in-person representatives at bargaining, while showing up to bargain without bringing their own in-person company representatives. 

Trader Joe’s has reprimanded employees for wearing union pins, fabricated stories about pro-union employees assaulting management or overcharging customers, and created a culture of surveillance and disparagement of any union activity. Trader Joe’s even offered lower retirement benefits to unionized stores. 

Targeting Organizers

Former TJU national president Jamie Edwards was not the only anti-union target. Emerson Azevedo was also fired.

Azevedo suffers from a history of seizures. In May 2025, he had a seizure at work. Emerson’s union colleagues called an ambulance. A week later, Emerson returned to the store to receive paperwork to be medically cleared by doctors, a condition necessary for him to return to work. Although he was still experiencing residual nausea, Emerson informed Hadley management he wanted to return to work but couldn’t pursue medical leave because he didn’t have a primary care doctor yet. Management seemed amenable to Emerson’s wish to come back to work.

The doctors, however, would not clear Emerson because management filed for involuntary medical leave despite Emerson’s explicit non-consent. The doctors insisted that they could only clear him when the medical leave claim finished filing. Trader Joe’s was holding up his medical leave paperwork, forcing Emerson to scramble to find a primary care doctor within a limited timeframe, leaving him completely vulnerable in a time of need. In other words, the boss weaponized healthcare to create a series of hoops for the unionist to jump through to keep his job.

When asked if Emerson’s paperwork limbo was in retaliation to his union organizing, Ellie responded, “most definitely.”

Due to public outcry and TJU organizing, Emerson was finally reinstated at work with backpay in June 2025. Emerson’s story resonates with workers with chronic conditions everywhere. Corporations will use any leverage they have to crush worker power. 

Trader Joe’s treated former TJU union president Jamie Edwards with a death by a thousand cuts method of unionbusting. They reprimanded Jamie twice for overcharging customers. When Jamie asked if management had looked at the alleged transactions to verify the overcharge, they said they had not. They failed Jamie’s performance reviews, pretended Jamie punched their manager, and screamed at customers. Jamie’s coworkers testified to management that these instances never occurred, but that wasn’t the point. Trader Joe’s was not interested in truth, and was merely looking to take out its most prominent opponent and shop floor worker leader.

Two weeks after stepping down as TJU president, Jamie was illegally fired. Unfair Labor Practices (ULPs) have been filed with the NLRB for both Jamie and Emerson’s cases. This tactic has been replicated across the country as different Trader Joe’s locations struggle for union rights, most notably in the Essex Crossing, New York location – where a union vote ended in a contested tie after Trader Joe’s cracked down on organizing activity hard. It’s clear that the boss continues to develop new and more underhanded methods to target workers for organizing, as workers continue to weather the storm in their fight for a contract that paves the way for genuine dignity in the workplace.

To support the union, readers can contribute to Trader Joe’s United and to Jamie’s solidarity fund. 

Chris Brady is a member of Boston DSA and contributing writer to Working Mass.

The post Trader Joe’s United Fights a Third Year Against Unionbusting Tactics appeared first on Working Mass.

Events & Actions

Tuesday, July 22 (8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.): ICE Out of SF Courts! (San Francisco Immigration Court, 100 Montgomery St.)

Tuesday, July 22 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Social Housing Reading Group: SF Analyst’s Report (Zoom)

Wednesday, July 23 (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Tech Worker Reading Group: You Deserve a Tech Union (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, July 23 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Independent Outreach (Meet at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, July 24 (6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Electoral Board Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, July 24 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Immigrant Justice Working Group Meeting (Zoom)

Friday, July 25 (5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Electoral Education: Zohran x DSA’s Victory (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, July 25 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Maker Friday: Zine Edition (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, July 26 (1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.): Excelsior Know Your Rights Canvassing (Meet in person at Silver Ave & Mission St)

Saturday, July 26 (1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.): Cuba Reportback (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Sunday, July 27 (1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.): Oakland Ballers vs Northern Colorado Owlz baseball game + “Halloween in July Night” (In person at Raimondi Park, 1800 Wood St, Oakland)

Monday, July 28 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Socialist in Office (SIO) Subcommittee Regular Meeting (Zoom)

Monday, July 28 (6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Tenderloin Healing Circle (In person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate)

Monday, July 28 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Labor Board x Divestment Priority Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Tuesday, July 29 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, July 30 (6:45 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.): Tenant Organizing Working Group Meeting (Zoom and in person at Radical Reading Room, 438 Haight)

Thursday, July 31 (5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.): Education Board Open Meeting (Zoom)

Thursday, July 31 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Immigrant Justice Office Hour (Zoom)

Saturday, August 2 (12:45 – 4:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Outreach and Outreach Training (Meet in person at 1916 McAllister)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates. Events with a are especially new-member-friendly!

ICE Out of SF Courts!

Join neighbors, activists, grassroots organizations in resisting ICE abductions happening at immigration court hearings! ICE is taking anyone indiscriminately in order to meet their daily quotas. Many of those taken include people with no removal proceedings.

We’ll be meeting every Tuesday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30  p.m. at Immigration Court at 100 Montgomery. We need all hands on deck, even if you can only participate for 1 or 2 hours.

Social Housing Reading Group

What could social housing look like in San Francisco, and how do we get there? Join DSA SF for a reading of the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s report on how the city can build its own publicly owned, deeply affordable housing. We will also read the SF Berniecrats report, Housing for the 99%, which lays out a vision for social housing for all in San Francisco. Join us at 1916 McAllister today (Tuesday, July 22) from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

DSA SF Tech Reading Group

On July 23rd from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., come join DSA SF and Rideshare Drivers United tech workers for our next monthly tech reading group.

We’ll be reading an excerpt from You Deserve a Tech Union by Ethan Marcotte. This event is hybrid with food provided at the DSA SF office at 1916 McAllister St.

RSVP here to access the link to the reading! See you there!

Electoral Education: Zohran x DSA’s Victory

Join us Friday, July 25 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister for an open discussion about the very exciting Zohran campaign, how they did it, and how it’s shaping the national discussion about electoral politics in the United States and in our national organization! .

Audience: EVERYONE! Whether you’re new to movement or been following the Zohran campaign for a while, we hope this will be interesting for us all!

Maker Friday: Zine Edition

Join us for Maker Friday: Zine Edition on July 25 at 1916 McAllister from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.! We will learn how to make zines, brainstorm ideas for them, and make them. All are welcome, no experience necessary, come connect with your fellow comrades while making fun content to pass out.

Know Your Rights (KYR) Canvassing with Immigrant Justice

Join the Immigrant Justice Working Group this Saturday (July 26) for Know Your Rights (KYR) canvassing! We will be distributing red cards and KYR posters to businesses and community members in the Excelsior. Our meeting point will be at the intersection of Silver Ave & Mission St at 1:00 pm. New to canvassing? No worries! There will be a brief how-to training before we go out in pairs or small groups.

Cuba May Day Brigade Reportback at the Office

Join us this Saturday (July 26th) from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. at the DSA SF office at 1916 McAllister for a reportback from the 2025 May Day Brigade in Cuba! You’ll hear a comrade’s firsthand experience of the socialist program in Cuba, its medical and educational systems, the May Day events that occurred in Havana, the challenges the Cuban people are currently facing, and their revolutionary optimism that we should adopt in the face of our organizing in the belly of the beast.

We’ll be blasting some classic Cuban tunes to get us in the revolutionary spirit, and there will be snacks and refreshments. Hope you can come!

Summer Social(ist) Events!

On Sunday, July 27th at 3:30 p.m. we’ll be going to the Oakland Ballers vs Northern Colorado Owlz baseball game + “Halloween in July Night” (at Raimondi Park) – We will be sitting in the 3rd Base GA2 section. Tickets are $15 each, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds (just reach out to us if you need help buying a ticket!). RSVP here and purchase tickets here.

Support the Blue Bottle Independent Union

Nestlé is one of the biggest corporations in the world charged with decades of human rights violations in the global south. They’re now in our backyard intimidating baristas with surveillance, firing, and bad-faith bargaining. Last week, baristas in four Bay Area locations of Nestlé-owned Blue Bottle presented management with a super majority of union cards and demanded voluntary recognition. Instead, Blue Bottle fired one of the organizers, B.B. Young. This comes at an especially bad time for B.B. since their husband was also recently laid off.

Blue Bottle workers are asking for our support

• Donate at this GoFundMe page 
• Sign the petition to demand that the company voluntarily recognize the Blue Bottle Independent Union
• Join the Blue Bottle Independent Union email list  or follow on Instagram to stay in touch
• If you are an employee of Blue Bottle, fill out this intake form to get involved with organizing the union at your own store

Reports

What You Missed at Last Week’s Electoral Board Meeting

At the Electoral Board meeting on July 17, the Electoral Board discussed several items:

• Legislative updates from the Socialist in Office Subcommittee
  • Please join the new #socialist-in-office Slack channel to receive more frequent updates from the subcommittee!
• An upcoming meeting on  with Jackie Fielder’s office to advance our Divestment priority
• A letter campaign to support Jackie in her sole dissenting vote on the City’s budget which forces austerity and potential future actions such as an op-ed
• A Zohran Mamdani themed discussion event happening this Friday at 5:30 in the office!

If you would like to be involved in these conversations, join the Electoral Board on Thursdays at 6:00 p.m. via Zoom or the office at 1916 McAllister and find us on Slack at #electoral-discussion.

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.

Steve Thornton has been an activist in Hartford since moving there in the 1970’s after graduating from the University of […]

By: Chris Viola

Last month, from June 27 to 29, The Emergency Workers Organizing Committee (EWOC) held its first ever in-person conference: The “United & Win” Conference, co-hosted by Labor@Wayne. The location: right here in Detroit, on the campus of Wayne State University. Hundreds of labor activists from around the United States and Canada attended, and members of our own DSA chapter made up a large contingent of organizers, volunteers, and attendees for the event.

EWOC was born in the early days of COVID-19. DSA members–many of them volunteers and workers on the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign–teamed up in its creation with the militant United Electrical Workers (UE) union. The idea was to help workers confronting COVID in their workplaces to organize for the protections they needed.

One of EWOC’s early victories was helping workers at a Michigan Taco Bell win hazard pay, paid sick leave, and personal protective equipment necessary to work during the early days of the pandemic. EWOC has stayed busy and has grown in the five years since, turning attention to the growing number of union drives in the time of Starbucks and Amazon organizing. Currently, EWOC has more than 400 volunteer organizers, 200 additional volunteers, and is supporting over 350 active campaigns.

How does it all work? A worker dealing with problems in their workplace fills out a form and a trained volunteer reaches out within 48 hours. The initial conversation may be with a newly-trained volunteer, and depending on the situation, the worker could end up talking to more specialized and experienced organizers. It could be a campaign to win a single demand, or it could lead to the process of unionization.

This is the distributed model of organizing used in the Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign, UAW’s fight for “one member one vote” and direct leadership elections in their own union, and Starbucks Workers United winning over 600 unionized stores. It works by proactively giving as many workers and organizers the tools and support they need to win in their workplace. Workers who reach out and the volunteers who work with them both gain valuable skills and experience to take on increasingly bigger fights.

The conference was yet another tool for worker-organizers made available by EWOC, and perhaps the most versatile. The convention featured more than 25 workshops to hone organizers’ skills and panels to celebrate victories and inspire future campaigns.

Workshops ranged from training, such as NewsGuild’s Learn It, Do It, Teach It, to Remote Organizing by Collective Action in Tech. Panels ranged from Organizing in the Federal Sector with the Federal Unionists Network to Solidarity Across Movements, a panel featuring workers fighting for common good causes: Starbucks Workers United fighting for LGBTQ+ rights, a worker with No Tech for Apartheid, and a university unionist fighting against their research being used in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. A few sessions were recorded and will likely end up viewable on EWOC’s YouTube channel.

Panels and workshops were only half the fun, though. Social events were a short jaunt from Wayne State’s campus. Before the kickoff Friday evening, a member of our DSA chapter and fellow UAW activist, Dianne Feeley, led a tour of the Detroit Industry Murals by Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

After the opening plenary, we were treated to words from an EWOC staffer, Megan Svoboda, and one of Wayne State’s Labor School Staff, Sean O’Brien (not that Sean O’Brien, he was quick to point out). Detroit DSA hosted a party at Northern Lights Lounge where we saw the commingling of dozens of conference attendees and Detroit DSA members.

The next evening there was a social gathering at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). Exhibits such as “Code Switch: Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art” and “Fuck Your Green Light” were introduced by the artists. A few attendees came early or stayed after the conference just to go to a Tigers game or tour local attractions such as the Motown Museum or Greenfield Village.

The camaraderie was off the charts all weekend. I felt like I was constantly meeting someone new or someone I sort of knew on social media. lt felt like we were all sharing a part of ourselves by having this conference in our backyard, with events that were tied to the city itself. Big thanks to everyone at EWOC for choosing Detroit — a city rich with labor history — for their inaugural conference!

During the closing ceremony, participants were asked to give a short takeaway from the weekend. One comrade — through tears — said that he was so inspired by everyone’s stories that he was starting to feel that even he could make a difference.

This is the central lesson I’ve taken from a lot of union and DSA events. People become drawn to organizations like DSA or EWOC perhaps due to what the organization has accomplished or what it’s working on, not knowing how they will fit. But it starts with that original belief that we can actually influence the workplace, community, and the world around us.

So, that first conversation you have on the shop floor, that first door you knock in a campaign, that first phone call you make in a phone bank, that first signature you get for a petition: You have people standing with you. You have DSA. You have UE. You have EWOC. You have comrades.

Metro Detroit DSA has recently formed its own EWOC group as a subcommittee of the Labor Working Group. If you’re interested in being a part of it, the next meeting is coming up on Wednesday, July 30th at 6pm at The Old Miami in Detroit.

Chris Viola is a MDDSA Member and a UAW worker.

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First-of-its-Kind Labor Conference Strikes Detroit was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Workers in architecture are fighting back against capitalists chasing the bottom line at the expense of climate and affordable housing.

The post Architecture Workers Are Building Power on the Job appeared first on EWOC.

by Liz Henderson

As spring turns to summer, the biodiversity of life bursts forth in all its glory. We stand witness to rebirth in the cycle of life. Add moisture and heat, and seeds, those tiny bits of seemingly dead organic material, sprout shoots and first small leaves. 

In a cold wet spring such as we have had, the baby plants have the capacity to wait for weeks for the right conditions. Then they go for it, growing inches in a day. You can almost see them grow. On a warm, sunny day, an asparagus shoot can add 12 inches in a few hours. A pea or bean plant can send out long tendrils, grabbing whatever string, fence or other plant is within reach, to climb towards the sun sending out the flowers that will become pods of peas or beans. The stalks of last year’s raspberries suddenly send out leaves and clusters of flowers that swifty transform into tiny green-white berries that just as suddenly turn red, then dark purple and swell with sweet juice attracting birds and humans to help spread their seeds. Warm spring breezes pulse with purpose—reproduce, this is your chance.

We live in an exciting moment in the history of the relationship between humans and plants. For millennia, indigenous peoples and peasants have observed plant life cycles closely. To feed themselves and their families year round they had to.  When crops failed, there was no supermarket to turn to. When you focus on growing things, you sense that we are part of the natural order. Agroecology emerged from that awareness. As Robin Wall Kimmerer has written so beautifully about Haudenosaunee gratefulness that Nature provides everything we need as long as we are responsible participants.

A peasant farmer in Mali or a French market gardener did not have a scientific explanation but they knew that plants depend on the soil for nutrients and that you have to replenish what you have taken out. The law of return. Sir Albert Howard, one of the founders of modern organic agriculture, learned about how to make compost and the power of mycorrhizae, soil fungi, from the Indian peasants the British Empire had sent him to teach how to farm. He had the humility to listen to those illiterate  experts in soil health. In this decade, academia is finally giving soil scientists the resources they need to catch up with peasant farmers.

The age of soil science is finally turning attention to the unexplored frontier beneath our feet. I attend regular meetings of the NY Soil Health Association (www.newyorksoilhealth.org) which is open to everyone. Their website is a treasure trove of resources and listings of soil health field days. We will be holding one in Rochester, Sept 16, 4pm – 7pm, at the Lexington Ave, urban farm with a focus on cover crops. If you attend, you will take home cover crop seed for your community garden.

If you have not yet done so, I recommend joining one of the many community gardens in Rochester, most of which are included on this slightly out of date list: monroe.cce.cornell.edu/horticulture/community-gardens-in-monroe-county. If you do not have time to commit to full membership, 490 Farmers has volunteer evenings every week at 5:30 and TapRoot welcomes volunteers for a variety of jobs: sites.google.com/taprootcollective.org/taprootcollective/volunteer. The Urban Agriculture Working Group will be hosting work sessions through the summer at gardens that ask for help. Everyone is welcome to show up! These are the sessions so far:

• Kailee Little Free Library Garden (133 Kenwood Ave. 14611) Thurs, July 24: 1:30pm – 3pm
• Phillis Wheatley Library Community Garden (33 Dr Samuel McCree Way 14608) Tues, Aug 5: 11am – 12:30pm
• Beechwood Beauty (672 Bay St. 14609) Fri, Aug 8: 10:30am – 12pm

Regular participation in a community garden is a way to reduce your food budget a little—but even more, a way to get to know people you wouldn’t meet otherwise. I have volunteered as a sort of organic adviser to the Magnolia St. Children’s Garden for four years. We have work sessions most Saturday mornings from 10 till noon. I grow some of the starts, find materials, and help people who fall behind catch up with care for their bed. My special job is teaching the neighborhood children to orient garlic bulbs and potato seed for harvests we share. No one is in charge of this garden—yet everyone chips in what they can—making a new sign, mowing the paths, or building a new compost system. 

Iletha Clifton, who lives across the street with her 97 year old mother, started it.  Dr. Bill Bayer joined his former patients in growing healthy veggies, found funding for garden infrastructure and brought his church group to mentor children in reading and academic skills. Three of the members collectively share close to 200 years of experience while others are totally new to gardening. A recent Afghani refugee maintains two beds where her focus is tomatoes, peppers and cilantro. This year, Monroe County funded a Food System Outreach Program that paid for garden improvements. Gardens had to make a very specific list of the equipment they needed and then the Cornell Cooperative Extension purchased those items and had them delivered.  Magnolia St. received materials for a new fence to keep the woodchucks out. So far, so good!

Another source of gardening information and inspiration is Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, NY (www.soulfirefarm.org). On top of their series of how-to videos, they have made a film of lead farmer Leah Penniman’s book Farming While Black. The Rochester Black Nurses Association and the Food Policy Council (FPC) are hosting a special showing of the film Farming While Black  on Thursday, July 10 at 6:30pm at The Little Theater in Rochester. Here is a link to the trailer. After the film, there will be a panel on the theme Cultivating Wellness: Mental Health Support Through Farming and Gardening. Panelists include Koi Mendez (local land steward and food justice organizer), Melanie Funchess (Director of Mental Health and Wellness at Common Ground Health), and Katie Nuber (Therapeutic Horticulturist). FPC member Dr. Celia McIntosh will be the moderator.

The post Getting Grounded: The Wonders of Biodiversity first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

On July 17th, a vigil was called by local organizers to call attention to the detention of Imam Ayman, a local clergy member detained by President Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Following the vigil, citizens peacefully protested at Roebling Bridge. The protest remained peaceful throughout.

Around 8:30 PM, the Covington Police Department (CPD) arrived in force, with a video captured from the scene showing a response of at least 15 squad cars for a small, peaceful protest. Police ordered protesters to disperse, and as protesters were in the middle of complying, CPD violently broke up the protest, dramatically escalating what had been a peaceful protest into a police attack on protesters. CPD officers were caught on camera firing rubber bullets at point-blank range against peaceful protesters, and arresting those who had complied with the order to disperse. Some of those arrested were brutally beaten, with multiple protesters requiring medical treatment at a nearby hospital. At least one journalist was also arrested by police despite continually signaling their status as a member of the press.

DSA Metro Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky strongly condemns the plain and obvious brutality deployed against this peaceful protest. Through their actions last night the Covington Police Department showed contempt for a peaceful vigil and demonstrated an active desire to cause harm under the cover of “keeping the peace”. These shocking acts are an echo of Donald Trump’s authoritarian streak with the very violence protesters came out peacefully to oppose; one big tyrant emboldens many little ones. This moment along with the police-assisted terror campaign of ICE demonstrates that Americans’ civil rights are limited more and more every day. Given this violent crackdown against peaceful protesters, we call on the Covington authorities to dismiss any and all charges against those arrested at the protest.

The following is the prepared text of a speech delivered at a July 17 rally organized by the Democratic Socialists of America in response to Rush Hospital’s decision to halt gender-affirming care for trans youth. The move, following similar actions by Lurie Children’s Hospital, signals a disturbing trend of Illinois institutions preemptively complying with the Trump administration’s attacks on trans healthcare. Published here with the speaker’s permission.

Hi everyone, my name is Lyra Spencer she/her, and I am the co-chair of the Chicago Chapter of the Democratic Socialist of America. 

I want to first start out by thanking everyone for being here today, including the various organizations that endorsed this event such as the Chicago Teachers Union, the Illinois Nursing Association, Howard Brown Healthcare Workers United, the Gay Liberation Network, the Party of Socialism and Liberation, Socialist Alternative, Illinois Nurses Association, Howard Brown Health Workers United and several IPOs.

Comrades, I wish we were all gathered here under better circumstances. I stand before you today because Rush Medical systems have caved to the pressures of the Trump administration, and have halted accepting new minor patients for gender affirming care. This comes off the heels of Lurie’s Children’s hospital, headed by CEO Tom Shanley, ceasing all gender affirming care for minors. The consequences of these two hospital systems’ actions means that children who need access to life saving treatment will have less options and likely longer waits to receive this life saving treatment. There are now fewer places available in Chicago that provide this life saving care, burdening the rest of the system in Chicago, and ultimately making it more difficult for all trans people to receive the care we so desperately need.

Now how did this happen? We are in Chicago, Illinois of all places. A trans sanctuary city. Is there a law in place that prevents these hospital systems from providing care to all trans youth? In short, no. Earlier this year the Trump administration signed an executive order attempting to ban gender affirming care for those under 19. Almost immediately after that order was signed it was challenged and halted in the courts. Even though this executive order is not law, just this order being proposed was enough for Lurie Children’s to immediately suspend all gender affirming care. Rush followed caving in fear of their medicaid funding being taken away. The reason why these are both so dangerous outside of directly harming some of the most vulnerable children in our society, is because fascism relies on compliance. The more we preemptively comply with fascists, the more we try to conceal ourselves, the more we hide and stray away from confrontation the more power we give them. With that power they become stronger and have an even greater ability to hurt us, our communities, and to bring harm amongst those we care the most about. 

Well comrades it is beyond time that we say enough. It’s time to mobilize, organize, and to unionize. It is time to join organizations like DSA, or the many orgs that are here today. The capitalist Democrats aren’t going to do this for us. The attorney general and Pritzker are letting this all unfold under their watch. No one is coming to save us, so it’s time that we take our liberation into our own hands and fight back against this fascist regime. That means using allies in the state and passing Alderwoman Fuentes’ resolution, which we helped draft to condemn these hospital systems. That also means taking to the streets, like what we are doing right now, to apply direct pressure to these systems. I have to add that this is not a fight we can take on our own, but must be waged through collective struggle. We need to be in organization with our communities and our coworkers in order to resist fascism. Our power lies in working class people standing together and organizing for change. Our power does not come from lawyers nor the good graces of private hospital administrators.

Comrades, the issues we are experiencing today are a direct result of the failures of capitalism. Fascism tries to redirect those failures towards an out group, rather than where it should be which is at the ruling class. It is no surprise that life saving gender affirming care was first limited by two hospital systems that are privately owned and that are non-unionized. This shows the absurdity of healthcare being treated as a commodity and a vessel for private owners to profit from. We must go beyond being on the defense and demand not only that access to life saving gender affirming care be legal and protected for anyone of all ages, but we must also demand that both gender affirming care and all healthcare must be made free at the point of service. It is beyond time that the Illinois government treats healthcare broadly as a human right and makes sure that all of its residents have quality, free healthcare.

Another point I want to touch on is that us trans people are not the only scapegoat of this fascist regime. As we speak, our neighbors are being ripped away from their families and shuttled off to modern day concentration camps. They have gotten so inhumane that they wait till church services, birthday parties, graduations, to tear apart these families and to leave children scared and confused. Whether it’s denying children access to life saving gender affirming care, ripping apart migrant families and leaving children traumatized and orphaned, or slaughtering children indiscriminately in Gaza, this administration has launched an assault on our most vulnerable youth. We need to stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with every group this administration tries to other. These isolation tactics will not succeed because we all deeply understand the sentiment MLK shared which was “an injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere.”

Lastly, I will leave everyone with this. My family is from rural Mississippi and my father, if he were alive, would be 79 years old this year. He had to drink from “colored” only drinking fountains. My aunts could not use the bathrooms of their choosing and had to use “colored” women’s facilities. Sound familiar? This struggle for civil rights has not gone away and those here who are standing up for trans rights are the successors to that movement, and our cause today is as just as the cause of my father’s generation. Never let anyone who would disparage working class organizing and mobilizing tell you that they would’ve marched with Doctor King, because if that were true they’d be right here today.

In closing we have a lot of work today folks, but we will emerge victorious. We will beat back fascism, guarantee healthcare for all, and Chicago will become the beacon for joint trans and working class power in the United States. That starts today by joining DSA or one of the many amazing orgs that cosponsored this event. 

The post Defend Trans Kids! appeared first on Midwest Socialist.