Richard Hofstader, drawing from sociologist Max Weber, distinguished in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1964) between the “intellectual” and the “professional”: the former a free critic of our ideas and social fabric; the latter living off his skills, not for them. At the turn of the 21st century, however, academia—the primary site of the siloed away “intellectual”—resembled little of what it did only decades earlier. No longer was the University of California free to all residents of the state as it had been for over 100 years. With decreased state funding for university operating budgets, public (and nonprofit) universities had become less and less of a public good: transformed instead into an increasingly premiumized hazing ritual imposed on working people seeking mythologized class mobility: “degree mills.” Fittingly, university academics simultaneously featured more specialized contingency in an increased reliance on residual low-wage intellectual labor. The minting of ever more of these graduate and non-professorial workers has, naturally, led to the rise of unions through which they fight to represent their interests. 

Universities today are increasingly research-oriented and produce important advancements in fields such as climate science and disease prevention—as well as continuing their educational missions (in an albeit ever more ancillary, impoverished form). After years without raises, and a 16-year legislative fight to win collective bargaining rights, graduate workers won a union at the University of California in 2000 with the United Auto Workers. Today, UAW represents over 60,000 workers across the UC system (and over 125,000 in higher education across the country) with jobs in various research, teaching, and staffing capacities—30,000 of whom at UC are currently fighting for a new contract, and 10,000 of whom are fighting for their first. The expansion of academic worker unions in the UC system and beyond isn’t only about ensuring equitable working conditions in higher education, but about fighting to protect and expand the University as a public service which produces public goods.

Statize or politicize

After the Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court ruling in 2018 stripped public sector unions’ ability to collect fair-share fees and forced them to cultivate active membership, they were left with two paths, per Chris Maisano: statize, and become junior partners to government employers; or politicize, and fight “to put the level and quality of public services on the bargaining table.” UAW 4811, as well as its UAW Region 6 siblings at USC (Local 872), Cal State (Local 4123), CalTech (Local 2478), and beyond are doing exactly this politicizing effort by undertaking one of the biggest efforts to increase funding for public goods in California history: fighting to authorize Senate Bill 895, and through it $23 billion in grant funding from the state for public research.

UAW is leading the way in large part due to the fascist Trump regime’s attacks on higher education, and research in particular. As long ago as in Ancient Greece, the pursuit of knowledge for the public has been politically fraught. In The Apology, Socrates, facing the death penalty, defends himself from his accusers against charges of “corrupting” Athenians by leading them to criticize orthodoxy and thereby expand the knowledge of the public. Today, research workers are under siege in a similar manner—attacked by the climate-denying, anti-vax, anti-education regime for improving public knowledge about our world and lives through examination and experimentation. In the absence of funding from the state government, climate science has grown reliant on funding from the National Science Foundation, lifesaving health research likewise on funds from the National Institutes of Health. Rather than relegating these discoveries to the proprietary knowledge of capitalists in the oil industry or big pharma, respectively, federally funded research has still served the broader public by making scientific discoveries available to all for decades.

Hollowing out

That research, and the now union jobs which produce it, however, have been imperiled by Trump’s attacks. “The Trump administration’s attacks on research funding—cutting the budgets of funding agencies, firing staff responsible for reviewing proposals, withholding money for funded projects—are hollowing out this workforce,” says Ahmed A., a postdoctoral scholar at UC Irvine, financial secretary for UAW 4811, and member of DSA-LA. “Postdoctoral Scholar and Academic Researcher hiring has slowed down, and we’re seeing a massive uptick in layoffs. In 2025, the size of both bargaining units has decreased, and this trend shows no sign of stopping.” This decline in jobs will take another year to play out in the admission numbers for graduate workers who make up the bulk of the rest of research staff at UC.

These cancellations have targeted health and science which runs contrary to reactionaries’ “MAHA” and climate denial narratives. At UC Irvine, the NSF grant which funded the Climate Justice Initiative (CJI)—a longstanding research project studying health effects of climate change and pollution on Southern California communities—was abruptly cut in 2025, resulting in the attempted layoff of eight UAW-represented researchers, which would have effectively ended the project. Because workers were able to fight through their union, these researchers were able to win their jobs back, and thus to continue this vital research. CJI demonstrates how the damage of these cuts extends even beyond research institutions, says Thi T., a Postdoctoral Scholar at UC Irvine and member of Orange County DSA who works on the project: “Our community partner organizations in OC broadly rely on a patchwork of their own federal grants that have gotten disrupted.”

 Fighting for the future of public research and education

The decrease of funding (particularly policies like capping indirect cost rates for granting agencies, which pay for day-to-day operations and facilities maintenance) to institutions has also cut into the quality of instruction, while providing cover for administrators to keep raising tuition for students. Some departments have seen instructional budget cuts of 50% or more as management offsets operations (and ballooning executive compensation) costs onto instruction. “There aren’t enough courses offered for undergraduates to complete their degree requirements quickly, while graduate students still struggle to find work,” says Trevor S., a teaching assistant at UC Irvine, and officer for OC DSA. “There is a high demand for teaching and a high supply of qualified instructors, but everyone somehow still loses. Fewer and fewer courses are being offered and class sizes keep growing.”

While UAW and others have successfully killed many grant cancellations in court, and the proposed federal budget for 2026 ended up restoring most funding for research—the targeted cancellation of federal grants which go against the Trump-prescribed narrative will persist for at least three more years, if not longer. This is why UAW is the primary sponsor of the California Health and Science Research Bond Act. SB 895 would put the largest bond in state history on the November 2026 ballot, $23 billion dollars over 10 years to fully fund public health and climate research. This funding would also take the pressure off of educators, caught in the University's targeted austerity which is driving down the quality of public education and forcing students to pay more. While funding at the federal level may never be truly secure again, UAW workers offer a model for how to win funding for the public good by organizing—one which DSA members can learn from and join because, as Thi T. puts it: “California communities face multi-billion dollar climate and environmental catastrophes every few months. We need multi-billion dollar solutions today.”

It’s going to be imperative that DSA members across California organize to protect and grow public research and education through every possible avenue as we move deeper into Trump’s second term. The passage by popular mandate of UAW’s bond this November will set the stage for public workers across the country to follow suit, safeguarding public goods and services when under siege by reactionaries at a national level. In 2026 California has the opportunity to lead the way in protecting the health and climate of all people, in the U.S. and around the world—as well as to strengthen and politicize the union of science, labor, and socialism!

Yes, it is no longer the holiday season. But due to technical issues preventing some California Red readers from taking our Holiday News Quiz offered in December, we are offering a reprise opportunity to take the quiz and win Socialist Prizes! These include books, posters, pamphlets, t-shirts and more. Don’t hesitate—it’s working now. Winners will be announced in the next issue. Note: If you took the quiz and successfully made it to the end and submitted your answers, don’t worry; we still have your entry and you are still in the running.

Rules: Find the answer to the quiz questions in a 2025 California Red article or articles, give the answers, cite the articles, and send it along.  Helpful hint:  All the older news articles containing the answers are on the California DSA website and are archived here. 

At California DSA’s State Council meeting in December, around fifty members from across the state came together to reflect on our interventions into Prop 50. Chapters around California ran canvasses which we used to talk with our neighbors about the need to not only oppose the far right’s increasing encroachment on our democracy through redistricting, but to commit to organize, and to get involved in DSA in order to help build out a positive program that can respond to the existential threats we face. In the span of about a month that the campaign ran, DSA members talked to over 3000 people about the strategic merits of redistricting in this moment, and about how people can get involved in longer term efforts to protect our immigrant neighbors, and protect public workers, and transform conditions at the municipal level.

People over billionaires

We heard from Estuardo Mazariegos, DSA-LA endorsed candidate for LA City Council, on the developing People over Billionaires program that ACCE (Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment), DSA, and other community and labor organizations have been coordinating actions around, including recent marches through wealthy enclaves, including La Jolla, Beverly Hills, and San Francisco to call out the billionaires’ agenda, and to build support for a peoples’ first agenda to prioritize education, climate justice, solidarity across borders, and dignity for working people.

Álvaro López, a member of NYC DSA, talked about the Zohran campaign and NYC’s process for scaling up field operations from the campaign launch through election day, and the leadership and skill development the chapter was able to build over the campaign as its membership almost doubled.

A SEIU United Health Workers (UHW) Political Organizer and DSA member, Maky P, gave a presentation on HR1 (the so-called “big beautiful bill”) and its impacts on public education and social safety net programs like Medicaid. Delegates deliberated and voted in favor of endorsing the state Billionaire Tax ballot measure, currently circulating petitions for signatures [see “We Need to Tax the Rich” in this issue of California Red]. Over the coming months, chapters will take up local endorsement votes and a statewide working group will create resources to build out campaigns to make the case for taxing the rich in order to tackle wealth inequality and agitate around a broader socialist vision. Members interested in getting involved can fill out this interest form.

Seattle DSA calls on Mayor Katie Wilson to reconsider her refusal to commit to shutting down the vast network of surveillance recently unleashed across our city. 

Across both Washington State and the United States, we have seen Flock license plate reading cameras used to arrest and deport immigrants and strip others of the right to protest, and there is no doubt that the Trump administration will continue to expand its use of this surveillance in order to strengthen its authoritarian regime. Seattle must not allow for this data to be collected, as there is no doubt the Trump administration will access and use it. We must fight against each and every way Seattle’s government is complicit with fascism. 

The Seattle Democratic Socialists of America stand in strong opposition to any and all policies that make it easier to surveil, harass, and deport our neighbors.  We fundamentally reject the premise that living in a permanently surveilled police state makes anyone safe.

It is unconscionable that Seattle’s city government would continue to maintain these systems while other cities have removed them, and Seattle’s own Surveillance Advisory Working Group have advised Mayor Wilson to do the same. While Mayor Wilson has claimed to be a socialist, we feel obligated to point out every major socialist program we are aware of gives clear guidance on what socialist policy regarding mass surveillance should look like.

We encourage all members of the community to engage the incoming Wilson administration to take a stand on this issue, to reaffirm her commitment to protecting our city from the expanding American police state, and to commit to taking measures to claw back the freedoms that have already been taken through mass surveillance in our city.

The Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are calling for action to stop the violence of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as new video footage shows ICE agents shooting and killing ICU nurse Alex Pretti.

The call comes just days after agents gunned down Renee Good, a Minnesota mother, prompting thousands to take to the cold streets of Minneapolis and beyond and demand ICE leave their community alone.

“Across the country and around the world, we have just witnessed yet another public execution at the hands of ICE,” Milwaukee DSA Co-Chair Andy Barbour said. “It’s horrifying to see the Trump administration and so many of our political leaders continue to empower such brazen acts of violence, but we must remember that there are more of us than there are of them—we will not rest until ICE has been abolished.”

DSA organizers across the country are asking members and allies to join the call against ICE and their backers by telling Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to stop an ICE funding bill the Senate is voting on in the coming days.

Milwaukee DSA is Milwaukee’s largest socialist organization fighting against imperialism for a democratic economy, a just society, and a sustainable environment. Join today at dsausa.org/join.

by Gregory Lebens-Higgins

On May 25, 2020 George Floyd was murdered by a police officer who kneeled on his neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds. In the wake of the incident, captured on video, an outpouring of rage coalesced in protracted protest across the country. Tens of millions turned out to demand change. A militarized response of tear gas and rubber bullets only underscored the extent of police brutality. 

Floyd’s murder was far from the first incident of modern police violence to reach public consciousness. Rodney King’s brutal assault in 1991 set off riots after the involved officers were acquitted. The killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Elijah McClain, Breonna Taylor, and far too many others before and since have established a rhythm that is metabolized as part of our cultural fabric. In Rochester, officials “knowingly suppressed” evidence of Daniel Prude’s fatal encounter with police, without charges. 

While Derek Chauvin was sentenced to prison for Floyd’s murder, little has been done to address the affliction of police killings. Beyond the occasional punishment of individuals, no systematic reckoning has taken place. The limited reforms implemented in the wake of Floyd’s death only serve to direct more resources toward policing, which remains an institution of protection for private property and class control. Rochester police receive more than $100 million annually (over 15% of the budget), while the Police Accountability Board – approved overwhelmingly by Rochester residents in 2019 – has been stripped of its authority to discipline officers and deprived access to materials necessary to perform its duties.

Over the past two years genocide has been broadcast daily on our social media feeds. Atrocity after atrocity – including the bombing of hospitals and universities, killing of journalists, collective punishment, starvation, and torture – abetted by liberal complicity in funding and rhetoric. Again, millions demonstrated their disapproval and demanded an embargo and other policies to end the violence. The response to these acts of conscience was more brutal police repression, including in places of learning. The lesson for students protesting on college campuses was the taste of tear gas. 

The second Trump Administration has witnessed the descent of federal agents upon our cities with the purpose of abducting our neighbors. Again, those who have tried to stop the violence have become its victims. In the past month we witnessed the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. These are only the latest in numerous killings by immigration agents across the country. 

The violence now exacted by ICE is a continuity of systems of policing and dehumanization that have been permitted for far too long. The Trump Administration may have removed the final restraints, but the structures had already been built in the preceding decades by both parties. The response now must not end at reforms that create nicer or gentler forms of deportation and control. The unrestrained accumulation of profit will always unravel any limitations on ruling class capacity for total domination. Our demand begins with “Abolish ICE,” but continues by dismantling all systems of repression used to keep the working class in place.

The post On the Continuity of ICE Violence first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

By: Travis Wayne

DORCHESTER, MA – The brisk wind warned of an oncoming Arctic storm that afternoon of Friday, January 23, 2026. Rank after rank of one thousand banner-waving union and community members simmered at the mass rally at the South Bay Mall, a sprawling complex that includes outposts of ICE collaborators Target and Home Depot. 

Massachusetts unionists were there to honor their siblings across the country, in Minneapolis, where the people paralyzed the streets and the economy at the same moment – leading the nation’s first general strike in eighty years. One hundred thousand workers marched in frostbiting temperatures as they flirted with another uprising in a city home to uprisings. 

Back in Boston, SEIU purple flew next to UNITE HERE white-and-red beside the bright blue of the Boston Teachers Union (BTU), each marching in proud step with one another, behind and in front of the red flags and “Abolish ICE” signs of the socialist organizations. The building trades crowded around and amidst the ICE watch verifiers and immigrant community leaders.

A change had occurred. Labor had united. The Greater Boston Labor Council (GBLC), representing one hundred thousand workers alone, had led the charge. In honoring their siblings together, Boston labor issued a warning to the secret police: if we can organize this in a few days with solidarity alone, imagine what happens when you come to Massachusetts?

The General Strike in Minneapolis

The political capital for an uprising did not appear overnight in Minneapolis.

ICE invaded the Twin Cities in a rampage, going door to door abducting relative after relative, in flagrant violation of the helpless courts. The ferocity of ICE’s occupation of Minneapolis boiled to a head with ICE’s execution of verifier Renee Good on January 7, 2026, which spurred on mass mobilization by the people alongside the unions whose members were being disappeared one after another.

Minneapolis is a city with a memory of mass uprising, with many organizers holding lived experiences of the George Floyd uprising of Black Lives Matter less than six years ago. Those bonds were reactivated with their ties of solidarity, at organic and grassroots levels, since the Floyd uprising also included wildcat walkouts by Minneapolis workers and political closures by businesses – both of which also happened on January 23, as part of the general strike.

These non-traditional supports to the general strike were many. Another one was the consumer boycott. By designing the general strike not only around the shut down of work, but also of consumption through shopping and social reproduction through education, the unions aimed to shut down all of society at once. For one day, the city would stop.

The infrastructure for organizing was sustained differently this time compared to the more mass character and mosaic organizational matrix of the Floyd uprising, when autonomist actors set the AFL-CIO headquarters aflame: this time, labor took leadership, including the AFL-CIO.

The coordinated synchronization was a demonstration of effective rapid response. SEIU Local 26 – whose membership is largely made up of immigrant janitors currently targeted and disappearing under ICE terror – proposed a mass day of action to a table of progressive unions. This crystallized into a Day of Truth and Freedom: the Minneapolis general strike. Every single major union signed on. The masses went on a political strike under the auspices of a non-strike as they shut down the city’s economy. The nation’s first general strike in eighty years commenced.

To paraphrase Luxemburg, Mandela, and Mamdani: it was impossible till it was done – and the people were in the streets.

The Abducted and Mass Labor’s Consensus

Since ICE’s attacks on Boston began, anti-ICE resistance has tasted like the iron of labor.

A high-profile early ICE attack was SEIU 509 member Rümeysa Öztürk’s abduction from the streets of Somerville in March 2025. Thousands swarmed the Powder House Park in anger, before hundreds of workers led by the SEIU International demonstrated in April.

The largest private sector union emerged as an early leader in the labor movement against ICE in Boston. SEIU took the front line of labor resistance in public but also the private efforts to free their member, and by the time of the June solidarity rallies with abducted California SEIU leader David Huerta, all the SEIU locals in Massachusetts were unified and organized.

The Massachusetts AFL-CIO was also present, as were other unions, but ICE attacks became more ambient, targeted, constant. Meanwhile, strikes hit across the city as union after union organized for their own workers and interests. Each mobilization built a block for a wider movement.

In the home and in less organized economic sectors, Massachusetts workers often faced ICE without the benefit of the unions’ infrastructure. In Worcester, 25 people interfered to directly stop ICE’s bait and seizure of a grandmother and mother, an incident that preceded the higher levels of legal and now lethal punishment exerted by ICE on similar incidents of grassroots resistance. 

Other forms of resistance have been more response than direct. Ruth was freed through a mass coalition of community organizations and the efforts following the abduction of Allston Car Wash workers, including solidarity actions to train community members in ICE watch that followed, was organized by Boston University students and Allston-based organizers with Boston DSA. 

ICE watch trainings have grown in demand. As LA organizers patrol Home Depots, the networks of the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network continue to extend deeper and deeper into Boston neighborhoods. Different sections of the city each contains hundreds of volunteer ICE watch verifiers in their communities, embedded in workplaces and homes, connected by group chats that mobilize in moments with public announcements of ICE activities. LUCE holds trainings with organizations where every single seat is taken and the back room packed.

The abductions are close to everyone’s minds.

Standing Alongside ICE Watchers, Labor Faces ICE

The unions began rallying at the South Bay Mall around 3 PM on Friday, January 23 — with the Greater Boston Labor Council at the front. The Greater Boston Labor Council (GBLC), citywide leadership of the largest federation of workers in the United States, held a symbolic and practical position: all of labor was united.

Unions that sponsored the rally included the MTA, BTU, UNITE HERE 26, 32BJ SEIU, 1199SEIU, IBEW 103, AFT Massachusetts, Greater Boston Building Trades Union, UFCW 1445, IATSE 11, New England Joint Board, AFSCME 93, IUPAT DC 93, Sheet Metal Workers 17, the Massachusetts Nurses Association, among others.

Many of these unions have faced abductions. No longer is the story of the disappeared member or client rare.

Kathryn Anderson, one Chelsea schoolteacher, pointed out the endemic nature of abductions in public schools. She mentioned the abduction of multiple students before noting that “dozens of our students have had family members and loved ones detained… ICE was in our elementary school parking lot for hours this fall.” 

The SEIU simply amplified the anonymous voice of the wife of one of their members, Pablo, abducted by ICE, before translating from the original Spanish to English:

Being there locked up – he feels like he’s sick, depressed, while he’s been there. As the head of household, he covered all the expenses here and all the costs a family has. And it’s hard for me right now because I have to pay rent… we put our faith in God and hope he comes back to us soon. We know there are many people going through the same thing.

After the speeches concluded, and the final orator hopped off the pickup truck the unions had pulled up in front of Target, the mass of people began to picket the superstore. A far greater number of people holding banners and signs crossed back and forth, defying the mall’s property, than the customers that meekly trickled across the picket line into the store.

Evan, an electrician with Local 103 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), told Working Mass as the crowd marched:

ICE agents are lawless and ICE is a lawless, reckless agency with no oversight… there’s no reforming ICE. ICE is only 19 years old. Why keep it? Smoke that thing out.

Meanwhile, GBLC’s organizing director marched with Worcester and Holyoke LUCE coordinators, alongside others, into Target to speak with the bosses. They were there to deliver the letter from labor against ICE collaboration.

Community supporters stood within the audience and picket line alongside their unionized siblings. Ken Casey, the son of a union worker and local teamster and lead singer of Boston’s own world-famous Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys, was on the scene. 

Casey stressed the importance of the general strike. He told Working Mass:

I like to see the thought of a general strike because I think in the long run it might be our only way out of this mess… if you’re talking about the workers in the unions, that’s the infrastructure to be the tip of the spear to make the change to put forth the effort to mobilize.

The anchoring community organizations of the anti-ICE movement moved in lockstep with labor. The vast ICE watch LUCE Immigrant Justice Network sent speakers and demand letter delegates alongside GBLC leaders, and Bonnie Jin, co-chair of the Boston DSA chapter that organized key anti-ICE demonstrations preceding the January 23 mass labor rally in Dorchester, emphasized the resolve held by Boston labor and its allies:

We are in solidarity with our union siblings. We also know we’re taking steps towards a general strike, not only with what we’re seeing in Minneapolis with so many different unions… but here in Boston. Right now, the federal administration has threatened Boston with funding cuts, and we know our union siblings are under attack.

Jin was right: even as one hundred thousand workers hit the streets of Minneapolis on general strike, Donald Trump announced the decision to cut funding to any municipality that does not cooperate with ICE – amidst his ongoing war on higher education institutions, whose dramatic cuts have impacted Boston’s labor movement, in particular.

Abolish ICE as ICE Kills Again

Meanwhile, Linkedin and Spotify both aired ads advertising $50,000 sign-on bonuses for ICE agents. Gradually, the fascist gangs that plagued previous eras began to disappear – maybe, as some rumor, the first in line to join ICE. There is minimal vetting based on the report of one major ICE critic’s ability to receive a job offer. The story was embarrassing enough to the Trump Administration for the regime to target the reporter. 

The tide of common sense had changed. A few hours’ drive further north into New England across the state line, one Southern New Hampshire DSA orator stood in the night – hand on mic. “Let’s be real, the moderate position is now to abolish ICE.”

Ken Casey, hands thrust in his winter coat pockets rather than on a microphone, laughed incredulously back in Boston. “Hell yeah, abolish ICE… how do you show up and snatch someone when they’re showing up for their hearing?”

The people dispersed as the sun set and the mass picket ended in Dorchester.

ICE slaughtered another in Minneapolis the very next morning.

Alex Pretti – an ICU nurse, an ICE watch verifier, a member of Local 3669 of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) – was beaten by six secret police agents in broad daylight. They smashed his head in before loading him with fifteen bullets of lead on the sidewalk.

The nurse was executed by ICE within a ten minute drive of the spots where George Floyd and Renee Good were murdered.

As the eastern seaboard descended into an Arctic spell that made Boston colder than Alaska, Rat City wasn’t the only one readying for an ICE invasion. There were rumors of Philadelphia preparing, too. The unions and community rallied again in hours in the cold night the evening of Pretti’s murder, the tone shifted from soaring resolve to fury among the assembled crowd. 

“No fascist USA,” chanted the people. “No fascist USA.”

Travis Wayne is the managing editor of Working Mass.

EDIT: The name of Kathryn Anderson was originally spelled incorrectly and one union left off. This has been modified and corrected.

The post Boston Labor Unites to Face ICE As Minneapolis Leads First General Strike in 80 Years appeared first on Working Mass.

“We have to turn thinkers into fighters and fighters into thinkers” — General Gordon Baker Jr.

By: A

In a digital discussion, a comrade brought up this article, entitled “The Teamsters have a MAGA problem. Here’s why,” on the current state of The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) militancy and nativism, written by Luis Feliz Leon, with the suggestion that we ought to spend some time reflecting on it. This prompted a number of replies whose topics ranged as follows: making sense of the endorsement of current IBT president Sean O’Brian (SOB) by the reform caucus Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), the general response to Trump by the U.S. labor movement, the role of labor staff in response to Trumpism/MAGA, the levels and positions of power within different unions, the role of workplace versus staff organizing, and strategic job placement.

Throughout all of these topics, there seemed to be agreement on a main point: We as DSA members need to engage in political reflection on the current status of the labor movement in light of the prominence of reactionary forces. This article is an attempt to set-up and illuminate this conversational space.

Where to start?

My initial response to this article was to ask about which part we needed to focus on. This was for two reasons. (1) The article covers a lot of territory, linking up current struggles to a multiplicity of past labor struggles with similar issues to descriptions of ICE activity to examples of current bottom up organizing under the Teamsters banner. There are lots of pieces to touch on, so what are the important ones? (2) Comrade Leon’s central thesis is clear but extremely broad, and composed of two points:

• Teamster Militancy paired with Political Nativism is a “strategy that destroys the very foundation of working-class power.”
• If we are to reject this strategy in order to build a class-wide labor movement, then we ought to build a culture of class solidarity within unions.

What socialist would disagree with the imposition to build political class solidarity against political nativism? Surely, then, we ought to take up the set of practical questions under this general imposition.

To take up Comrade Leon’s framework and generate more productive practical questions, I will here seek to explore the relationship of the Teamsters organizing efforts to our own here at Metro-Detroit DSA. I presuppose that, roughly and not absolutely, the Teamsters are Organizationally Militant without being Politically Militant and that our chapter of DSA is Politically Militant without being Organizationally Militant. Thus, there is a question of what each entity might learn from the other. What follows is an enumeration of sets of questions for (1) current and future Teamsters labor organizers in Detroit and (2) Metro-Detroit DSA members.

§ What should current and future labor organizers in Detroit do?

The section in Comrade Leon’s article entitled “Fit to Rule” picks out the aspects of TDU that are working, or not, and two strategic paths which are deemed unsatisfactory: romantic denunciation and narrow pragmatism. The former takes on ideological struggle without material struggle, and the latter material struggle without ideological struggle. The strategic path forward, he proposes, is rather to develop a “robust political education program geared towards developing the political consciousness of militant workers.” To which “TDU can play an important role in showing how it can be done.” The key strategy to a revival of the labor movement is to establish a base of labor militancy with a superstructural ideological militancy. The class war must be fought in the realm of ideas as well as material gains. We cannot have one without the other.

For current labor organizers, both rank-and-file and staff, there must be a widening of strategic scope to include this ideological struggle. We must do ideological mapping not only of favorability towards union efforts or contract issues but also towards broader political issues to gauge political orientation. Just as unions are not won through policing for purity, neither will a socialist orientation of rank-and-file workers be won through those same means. So, educative tactics and programs must be developed according to what moves the needle.

Following this line, what are the right questions to ask?

Ideological Mapping

We might stay with the same categories of sympathy to the cause, just with socialism as the object of sympathy rather than a union effort. But how will we distinguish levels? Additionally, it seems that we need to expand the types of antagonism since far more people will be antagonistic to socialist ideas and that we need to be effective with more types of people in the long-term. What types of antagonism to socialism are there?

Organizing Tactics

In order to have tactical organizing conversations, we ought to develop ladders of logical steps to connect the meaning of socialism with concrete, everyday struggles. This requires, also, that we have a more embodied, developed understanding of our own commitment to socialism. When a coworker expresses their exhaustion from but necessity of their job, how does your sympathy for their situation connect to a project for a better world? Most importantly, how can we express such a sentiment without ending up in a ‘heady’ conversation where socialism becomes an intangible concept? This will be another test of our own education. Do we know how to repeat the phrases we have been taught or do we understand the world at a deeper level such that we are able to pull others up with us?

Organizing Programs

What sorts of reading groups/lectures can be implemented into the organizing program? What free time does the rank-and-file have for this? Are there groups of people who already enjoy reading or are there better medium(s) that people are already attuned to? Are there experienced lecturers/teachers among the staff or rank-and-file?

Educative Interventions

Are educative interventions–like 1-on-1 dialogical investigations and popular education–part of the correct strategy for our current moment? How might the expansion of unions in the labor workforce itself operate as an educative mechanism? Are education programs currently feasible within specific unions?

§ What should Metro-Detroit DSA members do?

Although I am a fairly new member to the chapter, I have already noticed an in-effect lack of organizational militancy within MD-DSA. We are proud to have 1200 members on paper, about 100 members at monthly chapter meetings, and dispersed groups of 5–30 participating in any given committee. We need to learn from the Teamster’s Organizational Militancy, especially since we already have plenty of Ideological militancy in educative programming.

I say that this observation is in-effect as an organization because there are plenty of individual organizers within the chapter who are highly motivated, hardworking, and remarkably effective in their own right. The point here is not to begin directing blame but to find which questions help us bridge the gap.

When I was the chair of a Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter, I ran into this same organizational problem. A handful of activists were doing everything, some supporters attending and helping, and most of the base was disengaged. In an autopsy of my time leading the chapter, I found a major problem to be that my leadership was tailing the members. With the expectation that members would constitute the directing force of the chapter, I took the role of the steering committee (SC) to be the busy workers that carry out the commands of the membership. I and my fellow SC members quickly became overwhelmed with the amount of work it takes to simply maintain the operation of the chapter. Thus, our main goal became to preserve the chapter rather than to lead it.

The diagnosis of the problem is with the lack of clear authority within the organization. Who was responsible for what? The membership was looking to the steering committee for what the chapter ought to do and we were looking right back, with no one going anywhere.

This question of authority has broken out within the chapter in response to Trump’s war on Venezuela. On January 3rd, 2026, many members of MD-DSA flocked to the Slack channel for direction and leadership. Many discussions broke out about other organizations’ events and some finger pointing about who ought to be directing a unified Democratic Socialist effort. There was a lack of clarity of responsibility and, consequently, of authority. This brings us to the set of questions I think we need to face.

First, how should authority figure between leaders and members in MD-DSA? Are we avoiding the tailing problem in our leadership? Is there a hierarchy of authority among committees? How do we prioritize the work of the chapter among our commitments (if we do so at all)? What are the relationships between new and experienced members? Is there a generational pass-down of organizing knowledge occurring in the chapter?

Next, there must be a learning process in organizational tactics. What types of learning materials are made available to new members to transition them from a regular person interested in politics to an active organizer? Which habits of organizing are the basics to be taught to all members? What is our progression ladder of on the ground organizing skills?

Lastly, there must be a program to instill organizational militancy within the chapter. How can we instill a sense of responsibility towards the chapter in our members? (1) How are we to learn to be dutiful and responsible towards one another? Are members supposed to see their participation in DSA as a part of their own personhood? These are questions I welcome members to contemplate as we continue to grow MD-DSA as a whole. (2)

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1. If members only participate when they want, their membership is contingent on their desires rather than their moral obligations. But this is not an easy distinction to make.
2. I hope that the reader encounters every question as individual considerations in their own right and not as rhetorical remarks to be skipped over.

This article represents the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of The Detroit Socialist or Metro Detroit DSA as a whole.

“The Teamsters Have a MAGA Problem.” What should we do now? was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Seattle Democratic Socialists of America stand in solidarity with Minnesotans as they continue to fight back against the military-style occupation they are being subjected to by Immigration & Customs Enforcement.

This morning, on January 24th, a gang of nearly a dozen ICE & Customs & Border Protection executed a civilian in broad daylight and on camera. Acting with malevolent, unconstrained, and incoherent violence these officers beat the victim before shooting him while he was on the ground and motionless. 

Democratic politicians all over the country are failing to comprehend the problem or calibrate a response to the Republican party’s full embrace of a politics dominated by violence, authoritarianism, and impunity. This week seven House Democrats voted with Republicans to increase funding for the rogue police force that Trump has manifested in his cruel and corrupt image. There must be no equivocation on this issue; ICE must be removed from our cities, and the agency must be abolished.

These officers must be held accountable for their crimes, and there must be arrests, investigations, and prosecutions of the officers and leadership responsible for the deaths and damage brought about by this attack on Minneapolis. 

Seattle DSA stands with our comrades in Twin Cities DSA and encourages our Seattle friends to donate to their work resisting ICE’s reign of terror in their cities:

If you want to get involved here in Seattle join our next Immigration Justice Working Group training on how to respond to ICE in our communities as well as joining our canvassing efforts to expand the community response networks.