A plea from a civil servant: do not let them overwhelm you into apathy. We must stay united, informed, and proactive.

This is the first in a regular series of articles by Todd Chretien focusing on Maine politics and society from a socialist point of view. Todd Chretien is a farmer, translator, and author who was recently elected co-chair of Maine Democratic Socialists of America. He will try wicked hard to write at least a couple times a month.

Since Trump’s election, the Maine Democratic Socialists of America chapter has been growing rapidly. We’ve got hundreds of members all over the state and 90 percent of them are (at least) a full generation younger than me. We have a few stalwarts from before my time whose experience in politics and the labor movement enrich our chapter and an even smaller handful of leftist children of the 80s like myself. Speaking in gross generalities, I think this makes me both more conservative and more radical than most MDSAers. The small number of people who became socialists in the 80s and early 90s looked to the movement’s past and to Marx and other theorists for inspiration because prospects for a broad-based socialist movement appeared so faint. International Paper broke the union in Jay, McKin poisoned our drinking water, and the Androscoggin stunk and bubbled in the summer, while Reagan handed out blocks of surplus cheese, threatened the world with nuclear annihilation, and massacred Salvadorans and Nicraguans. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive… yah, right. 

Many in my political generation adopted an outsider ethos, guided as much by punk rock rebellion (The Clash, Public Enemy, Dead Kennedys, Stiff Little Fingers, The Pogues, and, again and again, The Clash) as working-class struggle. We were right to reject Reagan, but—speaking for myself—failed to sufficiently appreciate the tenacious elements of solidarity that stood up against his attacks, even if they were losing battles most of the time. Be that as it may, punk rock socialism helped a small layer of dissidents preserve the idea that the working class has the right, and the power, to challenge the power of the elite. 

In contrast, as difficult as the world is today, my Millennial and Gen Z comrades have drawn inspiration from Bernie’s campaigns, Black Lives Matter protests, trans courage and visibility, and Starbucks workers organizing unions, all of which have shown up proudly here in Maine. Socialism unites all these struggles and identifies capitalism as the machine that produces and reproduces all the muck, from the climate crisis to the genocide in Gaza. Socialism is a common sense force that can be built brick by brick and my younger comrades expect working-class people to join us based on our movement’s good work. Socialism advocates solidarity amongst and between everyone who’s kept down and left out as the way to fight back and it proposes simple solutions that everyone can understand: tax the rich and spread the wealth. The rise of this generation of socialist activists—in their tens of thousands across the country—is a profoundly important development, without which any notion of building a significant working-class challenge to the millionaires and billionaires is doomed.

Back in 2016, DSA skyrocketed from 5,000 members to 50,000 nationally as a radical rejection of Trump. Today, through ups and downs, we’re even larger. In Maine, that influx gave us the strength to organize. Over the last eight years, we’ve won some (raising the minimum wage in Portland electing two socialists to city council) and lost some (challenging CMP). Through it all, we’ve faced difficult debates, our fair share of burnout, and a few missteps. But we’ve been buoyed through it all by a general sense that most working-class people were moving closer to the left and that fact would, in one way or another, express itself in national and state politics.

Unfortunately, I think the conditions that defined this period of optimistic socialism have changed significantly and we will have to adapt our strategy. It remains true that HUGE (to paraphrase Bernie) numbers of people reject capitalism and the two-party system and a significant layer of these people want to hear what socialists have to say. However, Trump’s reelection marks an important turning point. He has built a sort of mass movement Reaganism. And he is stronger precisely because—as strange as it is to say—he understands the need to build a social movement that can unite disparate political trends (Proud Boy fascists and Evangelicals) and potentially hostile class forces (Elon’s tech-broligarchy and desperate small business owners). More frightening, he has clearly recruited an important section of the state apparatus and the ruling class to his project; at a minimum, they are willing to go along for the ride. 

Meanwhile, Democratic Party leaders are twiddling their thumbs—the Senate, even Bernie, confirmed Marco Rubio unanimously—hoping that Trump’s assault on the status quo in the interest of the One Percent will knock just enough centrist voters from the MAGA column back to the “America is Already Great” column to win back the House in 2026. Now, it’s possible that the Democratic leadership could be proven right in narrow electoral terms, but Trump and his movement may well be more durable. I hope I’m wrong, but I tend to think it is. In fact, I think it’s downright dangerous to minimize his strength at this point. If that’s right, then Trumpism will have to be defeated and replaced with a positive and radical alternative, not simply a return to the status quo conditions that led 77 million people to vote for the Orange One.

Here in Maine, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills’ budget speech last week provided a master class in defending the status quo. But we should reject any complacency that says “it can’t happen here.” After all, Paul LePage vacated the Blaine House only six years ago and Trump already commands a majority in District 2. Worse, despite her demonstrative political talent and administrative competence, Gov. Mills is proposing an austerity budget that will lead to layoffs, cuts in public school funding, and a reduction in public services. It will push greater tax burdens onto local governments, forcing cities and towns to draw blood from a stone. And Trump’s slash and burn at the federal level will trickle down, leading the governor and her majority in the legislature to deepen the relatively “mild” budget cuts under consideration today. While Trump and his billionaire pals ought to bear the brunt of the anger these cuts will produce, the majority party in the statehouse usually pays the price at the polls.

This means that Maine DSA faces a new political period and will need to develop and improve on our practice in order to continue growing and sharpen our skills. The platform we adopted at our January statewide conference does a solid job of setting out those challenges in terms of protest action, local elections, and united fronts alongside unions, immigrants and trans organizations, indigenous peoples, and local communities. We also aim to spread socialist ideas through study groups, publications, social media, and educational meetings and conferences. Our strategic goals in the coming couple years are, first, to play a significant and honorable role in resisting Trump’s attacks on working people and, second, to increase our membership and organizational capacity.

I think that makes sense. But in addition to these practical tasks, we should add a dash of punk rock socialism to the mix without spoiling Maine DSA’s optimistic socialism recipe. Combining the best of our generations will give us a better chance to achieve our common goals.

The post DSA could use a dash of punk rock appeared first on Pine & Roses.

Other Surveillance Technology Proposals Pass Council, Despite Community Opposition

By Siobhan M.

CAMBRIDGE — Community members flooded a meeting of the Cambridge City Council on Monday evening, successfully pushing the City Council to shunt back to committee a proposal for a surveillance drone for the Cambridge Police Department. The Council, over many residents’ strong objections, voted 6-3 to approve two other surveillance proposals: a device to unlock cell phones seized by police, and automated license plate recognition technology to allow police to track residents. The city’s unelected chief executive, City Manager Yi-An Huang, brought all three proposals on behalf of the Cambridge Police Department.

47 members of the public registered to speak at the meeting, the vast majority of whom spoke in opposition to the surveillance technology. “I’m terrified that the federal government has announced they’re going to go after my friends who have spoken truth to power about Palestine, and I do not want the Cambridge police to have more tools to do the same” said Dan T., a member of Boston Democratic Socialists of America, during the meeting’s public comment period. Dan stated this as part of a comment in which he also advocated for a municipal housing voucher program. Affordable housing was noted by many commenters as a better use of public funds than surveillance technology.

DSA was far from the only group standing up to this proposed expansion of the surveillance state. MIT’s Coalition Against Apartheid and Harvard’s Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee put out a joint statement urging community members to oppose the proposals, and many students and university workers answered the call. As “a union organizer and a community organizer,” Hanna M., a grad worker at MIT, said she has “had lots of firsthand experience with Cambridge PD, who shows up to even the smallest community actions with numbers, technology, and force that I would call comically unnecessary if it wasn’t also deeply chilling…a main use case of this technology is surveilling civilians who are exercising their right to protest.”

Some community members also highlighted the toll these proposals would take on surveilled communities. “Everyday surveillance puts significant wear and tear on the human body, elevating blood pressure and heart rate, ultimately resulting in chronic illness and staggering rates of poor mental health,” said Somaia S., a medical student. “Surveillance technology is not what Cambridge needs and is in direct opposition with the well being and good health of our community.”

While the Council’s majority seemed unconcerned by automated licence plate recognition technology, commenters noted it is a powerful tool to aid police misconduct and repression. Across “hundreds” of documented cases, police misused license plate readers “to get information on romantic partners, business associates, neighbors, journalists and others for reasons that have nothing to do with daily police work.” Virginia police were also caught using theirs to build databases of individuals attending political rallies.

While the community was able to fend off surveillance drones in Cambridge, they have been adopted by police departments across the country to monitor protests. An estimated 1,400 law enforcement agencies now use drones, with “event monitoring” seen among police as an increasingly necessary function. Yale PD, who arrested 48 pro-Palestine demonstrators at a sweep of a student encampment on April 22, 2024, were later revealed to have compiled a massive trove of information on the protestors, including drone images and social media profiles.

The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) was slated to help fund all three Cambridge PD proposals. UASI is a federal grant program of over $500 million a year to militarize and increase the surveillance capacity of state and local governments, as well as private nonprofits. Alongside other programs like the State Homeland Security Program (SHSP), this process of militarizing police departments functions as a giveaway of more than $1 billion per year to private weapons and surveillance contractors. UASI and SHSP were initiated in 2003, shortly after DHS’s founding, alongside other DHS elements like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP). These DHS programs collectively serve to spy on and repress working class communities and political movements while lining the pockets of capitalist war and surveillance profiteers.

As part of his opposition to all three surveillance proposals, Boston DSA’s endorsed Cambridge City Councillor, Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, raised concerns about the surveillance technology also being used to enforce a future federal abortion ban.

Concerns about the Trump Administration’s potential misuse of surveillance data are entirely justified, but the surveillance and abuse of protestors has often been a bipartisan project. Democratic Party-led cities across the country used police to crack down on protests against American support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, including in Cambridge and Boston. Alejandro T., an MIT undergraduate student, recalled that “as students protested the complicity of the universities in the genocide of Palestinians, Cambridge PD aggressively arrested students as they peacefully protested. They had 5-6 cops pinning down individual students. They slammed students into the ground and caused multiple injuries in the process.” 

A militarized, capitalist-controlled police force, armed and outfitted by private arms and spyware dealers, will always be an opponent of the better world we strive to build. Socialists, and all those fighting America’s police state at home and imperialism abroad, must continue to stand against government surveillance no matter which capitalist party controls it.

Siobhan M. is a member of Boston DSA and UAW 2320. The views expressed herein are her own and do not represent her employer.

Photo by Pok Rie: https://www.pexels.com/photo/grey-quadcopter-drone-724921/

Submission from a member of Cleveland DSA

Note: This post has been updated on Feb 10 to reflect the amended language of the Building an Independent Party chapter resolution, which removed and added passages to the language based on our discussion with DSA compliance.

This post is inspired by Chad’s new segment of the same name in our General Meetings.

With the second Trump presidency here and already disrupting so many lives, we are going to be in crisis mode for the foreseeable future. This will encourage a tendency towards reacting to crises, as opposed to responding to them. During this time, we must ground ourselves in our shared principles and perspectives to avoid the tendency towards liberalism.

As happened last time the Cheeto was sworn in, we have seen a bump in new members joining our chapter – which is a massive source of hope for me personally! At the same time, turnover within the movement and specifically within our chapter is predictably unpredictable. Leaders step away for a variety of capitalism-related or burnout reasons. When this happens, we often lose important institutional knowledge and continuity from previous internal chapter debates.

In our flurry of activity since I joined in 2021, I’ve seen some of the same political debates play out again and again in our chapter. It hasn’t been because circumstances are vastly different and we needed to re-evaluate past decisions, though. The debates often center around our theory of power, how we relate to liberals, coalitions, or NGOs, or the money in our bank account. From what I understand, this pattern even predates my time at DSA.

In the time I’ve been involved, I’ve certainly seen a coalescence in our perspectives towards DSA as a mass party, our endorsement criteria and process, our expectations for future electeds, and our desire to have independent messaging which directly ties our work to socialism. That’s not to say every member agrees, but there seems to be broad strategic alignment in these areas which were previously fractured in the chapter.

But the unfortunate truth of Cleveland DSA is that we haven’t been great at documenting our reflections on our past work/decisions, codifying our shared strategic vision, or educating new members on these perspectives as they’ve developed and merged over the years.

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In this piece, I’m hoping to shed light on our chapter’s formally established perspectives. I think it’s especially important for newer members to know and understand our chapter’s history so that we can avoid repeating the events of the past and keep the chapter growing as a political force.

This is not to say that we should never repeat a particular debate. Instead, I’m calling for our chapter to operate in a way that once the majority does agree on a particular perspective/vision, we make sure our record-keeping reflects that and, ideally, develop educational materials for new members that reinforce that shared perspective. 

Our chapter would benefit greatly from the development of education materials anytime we take a decisive stance on a political question. A great candidate for this treatment in my opinion is the passage of the Building an Independent Party resolution at the 2024 convention. (More on this later.)

In this way, we will learn and retain information as a chapter, rather than as a group of individuals.

Additionally I’d love to call for others to write their own reflection on the chapter.

Our Chapter’s Strategic Vision

The Democratic Socialists of America is a big tent organization which does not require agreement with its national platform or “purity tests.” As our chapter grows and develops politically, we pass resolutions to formally establish our perspectives based on what we have learned through practice. These perspectives guide our tactical decision-making as we undertake the historic task of bringing democratic socialism to the masses.

As established in our Member Handbook, our theory of change is as follows:

“…collective power can be wielded for tremendous good when done so with wisdom, care, and effort; that our capitalist society is tremendously weighted against regular, working people, and critically: that we can win, especially if we engage in deep organizing. We believe that through shared struggle and political education, we can build a democratic, multiracial, working-class, explicitly socialist movement, in Cleveland, Ohio.”

From the National DSA Constitution:

“We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships. We are socialists because we are developing a concrete strategy for achieving that vision, for building a majority movement that will make democratic socialism a reality in America. We believe that such a strategy must acknowledge the class structure of American society and that this class structure means that there is a basic conflict of interest between those sectors with enormous economic power and the vast majority of the population.”

How We Codify Our Strategic Vision

In addition to our foundational documents, a number of resolutions passed at our 2024 convention* formally established some of our chapter’s perspectives around questions like our messaging strategy, our anti-drug war stance, our perspective on DSA as a political party, and our desire to form a formal relationship with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee.

The “Whereas” clauses of a resolution, although not binding, reflect the author’s perspective towards the work in the “Be it resolved” sections. In this way, we put forward perspectives which inform our tactical-level decisions.

Thus, although the Democratic Socialists of America and our chapter are “big tent” organizations, individual political views do not supersede our democratic mandates. Acceptance of a democratic mandate does not require the individual to agree with the direction or political undertones of that mandate because the “big tent” allows for factions/caucuses and internal organizing towards differing political perspectives.

Putting on my Cleveland DSA Historian hat, I’d like to highlight some perspectives and priorities we established at the 2024 Chapter Convention. (As an aside, Damion also provided us with some excellent opening remarks.)

Passed at 2024 Chapter Convention*

These are the resolutions that passed that I think were important for establishing the politics of our chapter. I’ll provide a brief rationale for their importance for each. Any emphasis (bold or italics) is mine.

Campaigns (Projects) Communications Strategy

This resolution establishes the need to craft messaging that ties our work to the movement for socialism:

“[Be it resolved,] …at minimum, a blog post announcing the campaign and talking points that will be shared with membership to help them articulate how the campaign relates to the struggle for socialism.”

It also reflects the chapter’s broad support of building a mass political party to advance socialism:

“[Whereas,] in order to build the kind of mass political party we need to advance socialism, we need to illustrate how our campaign (project) work ties into socialism more broadly.”

Provide harm reduction materials & anti-drug war propaganda at DSA events

This resolution is a great example where we can do low-lift work with a high return. I’m proud that our chapter has been engaged in the community doing NARCAN distribution. I’m not sure if we produced the literature described here but if we haven’t yet, reminder that we are mandated.

“Whereas, there is a pressing need for a politically minded response to engage the public and to dismantle the narrative around the drug war;”

This resolution also establishes a direct political education element and membership growth opportunity:

“Resolved, that the DSA shall allocate $300 for the development and distribution of class-conscious, anti-drug war literature to be presented alongside harm reduction materials at events, with the aim of attracting individuals engaged in this issue into DSA.”

Building an Independent Party

This resolution establishes locally our agreement with the decision at the 2023 National Convention to “Act Like an Independent Party.”

For those unfamiliar with the original resolution, the goal is to establish political independence (in both practice and perception) through rejection of Democratic Party discipline in favor of internally democratic organization.

“[Whereas,] …It means political independence and a rejection of Democratic Party discipline. And political independence requires organizational independence in the form of a membership-based internally democratic political organization. 

All electoral work must therefore be oriented toward building DSA’s organizational skills and capacity as well as towards building popular perception of DSA as politically independent of both major capitalist parties.”

The specifics of this resolution in the “Be it resolved” section are going to become extremely important if/when we move towards having Cleveland DSA cadre run campaigns. I’d encourage a full read/re-read! (And in my opinion it’s .) Highlights:

“[Be it resolved…] Cleveland DSA must put forward a politically independent socialist point of view in all messaging and any campaign materials used by the chapter must be DSA branded…”

“It is the official position of Cleveland DSA that the purpose of DSA running candidates for elected office is to build a democratic socialist movement outside of the state that is in opposition to the existing state…”

“Chapter electoral work should be oriented toward building the skills and capacity of the chapter to run campaigns.”

“If a DSA member gets elected, the Chapter shall form a Socialists in Office (SiO) committee with the elected comrade(s) as ex officio members. Cleveland DSA will only endorse candidates who agree to meet with the SiO to maintain an open dialogue regarding policy positions. The SiO will provide reportbacks to membership.”

Towards an EWOC branch

This resolution is important because it has the potential to strengthen our chapter’s relationship with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee and National DSA. It would more directly/explicitly tie our work towards socialism with the organic workers’ movement. It’s also very ambitious and I hope we don’t lose sight of its aims in 2025:

“… [Be it resolved,] The EWOC-trained organizers, a local coordinator, and the advanced organizer will launch the branch and start accepting leads from EWOC. Preference should be given to leads in DSA Cleveland’s zip codes. There is an expectation from EWOC to take leads outside of our immediate area. 

EWOC organizers are responsible for meeting with their assigned leads and developing leads into campaigns. Organizers are expected to support at least one sustainable campaign or several soft leads. 

EWOC organizers are expected to train and onboard new EWOC volunteers. EWOC expects volunteering to be open to non-DSA members. 

EWOC training, meetings, socials, fundraisers, and worker support events will be considered DSA Cleveland events unless specified otherwise. EWOC organizers should avoid scheduling in conflict with priority campaigns, general meetings, and committee meetings…”

Winning the Battle for Democracy

This resolution was primarily to affirm the National DSA Political Platform stance on the American political system and to call for National DSA and our electeds to more explicitly indict the undemocratic state form. It’s honestly an exciting read and clearly establishes the political environment we find ourselves in in this moment.

“[Whereas,] the historical tendencies towards the concentration of capital in few hands and the concentration of people in few states has rendered any constitutional paths that may once have been open to the socialist movement forever closed, obstructing progressive reform and leaving those reforms already won through historical mass struggle defenseless as the political servants of the capitalist class conspire to strip them away.

The DSA has pledged to fight for a “a world organized and governed by and for the vast majority, the working class,” which is clearly impossible under the current Constitutional regime and cannot be won through the antidemocratic channels of reform laid down by the Constitution.”

The following is such a powerful statement of what we must do to reform the state into one worth contesting in the electoral arena:

“[Be it resolved,] Cleveland DSA affirms, from the DSA Political Platform, that “the American political system was not made to serve the working class” and that “the nation that holds itself out as the world’s premier democracy is no democracy at all” by officially raising the demand for a new and radically democratic constitution, drafted by an assembly of the people elected by direct, universal and equal suffrage for all adult residents with proportional representation of political parties, and rooted not in the legitimacy of dead generations of slaveowners and capitalists, but that of a majority consensus of the working masses. 

Additionally Cleveland DSA urges DSA as a whole to take up a stance of opposition to the Constitution, openly indicting it as antidemocratic and oppressive, encouraging all DSA members in elected office to do the same, taking concrete actions to advance the struggle for a democratic republic such as agitating against undemocratic judicial review, fighting for proportional representation, delegitimizing the anti-democratic U.S. Senate, and advancing the long-term demand for a new democratic Constitution. We declare that to be a socialist is to fight for an expansive working-class democracy in which the state and society are democratically managed by the majority. In the U.S. this means demanding a new Constitution…”

*All links are currently members-only access. Please contact membership@dsacleveland.org if you cannot access these documents. I’ll be motioning at a future SC or General to make these publicly available.

Other Outstanding Democratic Mandates

In addition to some of the work above which is ongoing, we have other outstanding chapter-level mandates to keep sight of:

• Our Home In Cleveland (office space)
• Merch Madness (ordering up to $400 worth of shirts)
• Winter Collection (more merch)
• Standing Authorization for Steering Committee to Authorize Fundraising Concerts

Some progress has been made on each of these, but I suspect not all members are aware of this ongoing work. Even in the steering committee, we’ve had difficulty remembering various authorizations or the details of them, like the concert planning one.

We do have the motion tracker now though, which is up-to-date with all motions made in 2025!

Dissent to Current Mandates

As mentioned above, acceptance with a chapter decision doesn’t mean you must agree with the decision. When votes are close or the sides are polarized, internal organizing is the solution. Factions and caucuses may be formed, vote whipping is permitted (provided you aren’t using chapter resources for these purposes).

But an important distinction is that posting dissent across Slack is not the same as internal organizing. It can certainly be the starting point, but we are all here because we believe in collective power and democratic decision-making. Our chapter business is run by Robert’s Rules so that we can openly debate, amend, and vote on decisions. This form of active, engaged, participatory democracy is vastly different than sending messages online and allows for much greater access and involvement across our chapter.

Our Unresolved Political Questions

There are still some outstanding topics we’ve yet to officially form positions on which we can expect to see some polarization on. These include resolutions that did not get debated on the convention floor, plus a meaty topic we only ended up discussing in a small group at a chapter convention plenary – our electoral strategy.

• “Points of Unity for Coalition Work”
• “Chapter Labor Strategy” (however we did vote to create the Labor Chair position)
• Our Electoral Strategy – Discussion Session coming up Feb 22nd!

If you’re interested in working on resolutions around these topics but need some help, my DMs are open! I can either help you or find someone who can.

Luckily, on these topics we aren’t starting at zero. There’s already great writing on these topics and examples we can point to as we develop our positions. I’m hoping especially with the electoral strategy discussion that we will sharpen our perspectives and vision.

I’m taking my Cleveland DSA Historian hat off so that I can directly state my political vision for our chapter.

My Political Vision for Our Chapter

My hope for our chapter is that we work to routinize this cycle of debate/deliberation, codification, and education that will be vital to our political progression as our chapter grows. My long term vision for our chapter is to advance towards some form of programmatic unity.

Programmatic unity is how we can institutionalize our learning so that our organization doesn’t depend too heavily on its long-time members. Acceptance of (not necessarily agreement with)  a program or platform would allow our chapter to move forward as a political body, clearly articulate “where we’re going” to our newer members, and prevent the awkwardness and polarization that comes from repeating the same fundamental debates every few years. To be clear, none of the below is something I’m trying to actively organize for right now but what I see on the horizon that would unify and strengthen our chapter for the long-run.

• Establish a tasks and perspectives doc to guide our decisions on priority projects and non-campaign activities
• Establish topic-specific reading groups within our education committee and an official curriculum
• Get members to publish more reflection pieces on our blog following big chapter decisions or highly contested decisions
• Advocate for programmatic unity at the national level
• Establish a chapter program to unify our local work

Would love to see some response posts if this sparked ideas for any of y’all!

In Solidarity,
Megan R

Feb 5, 2025

The post Where We’ve Been & Where We’re Going appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

Remembering the 8-week Strike on its 113th Anniversary

By Ben Cabral

LAWRENCE – On January 11, 1912, women textile workers walked off their jobs in protest of a cut to their pay. The industrial action would quickly grow to include more than 20,000 textile workers, and last for 8 weeks, becoming one of the most important labor struggles in Massachusetts and US labor history, and earning the name “The Bread and Roses Strike.” But what made this strike so important?  

In part, the importance of the strike was because it was waged by workers – ‘unskilled’ or semi-skilled, women, immigrants – who had largely been written off as ‘unorganizable’ by the conservative union establishment of the American Federation of Labor. But in spite of being written off by the establishment labor movement, primarily immigrant women from at least 51 different nations were able to band together, overcoming significant language and cultural barriers, to challenge the power of capital and win their primary demands addressing low wages, and unsafe working conditions. 

The Bread and Roses Strike also was marked for the role played by some of the titans of the labor movement in the early 20th century, including Industrial Workers of the World leaders Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurly Flynn.

The strike saw the implementation of many new tactics and substantial victories that created a blueprint for subsequent strikes which helped to expand the labor movement beyond the relatively privileged layers of native-born, high skilled workers organized by craft, and into the far larger layers of semi-skilled industrial workforce of the mass-production industries. Although it would not be for another two decades that the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) split from the AFL in order to fully embrace this industrial model of mass-organizing, this later split would not have been possible without the earlier efforts at industrial organizing which were, in part, kicked off by the Bread and Roses Strike. The historical impact of this strike means it is important for the modern labor movement to study its development and be able to implement the lessons of this strike, to win the rights that the working class deserves.

Slaves To The Loom

The city of Lawrence, Massachusetts was founded in the 1840s explicitly as a one-industry town to expand the textile industry out of Lowell, another nearby textile hub. By 1912, Lawrence was the textile capital of the United States, with a workforce made up primarily of Southern and Eastern Europeans, specifically Poles, Italians, and Lithuanians, as well as some Russians, Portuguese, and Armenians. There were also some smaller immigrant communities in Lawrence, most notably Syrians. The majority of the city’s black population also worked in the textile mills, although they made up a small percentage of the overall workforce. Many of these immigrant workers were women and children, who were intentionally hired after the mechanization and deskilling of textile mill labor, who could be paid significantly less. 

The working conditions in the mills were appalling. Poet William Blake summed it up perfectly as “these dark satanic mills.” Workers were regularly forced to work 6 days a week for 60 or more hours.¹ Workers were frequently killed, maimed, or seriously disabled due to workplace accidents, while others died slowly from inhaling toxic fibers and dust. The life expectancy of a textile worker at this time was about 20 years lower than the rest of the population. In fact, over a third of workers in the Lawrence mills died before the age of 25, and 50% of children born to workers died before the age of 6.²

Early Organizing

Even before the strike broke out, and in response to the terrible conditions outlined above, there was a high degree of organization among the textile workers. There was an AFL union, the United Textile Worker, which claimed to represent several thousand of the more skilled textile worker, but in reality this union only counted a few hundred dues-paying members, evidence of its weakness even among the “organizable” minority of skilled worker, more likely to be native born men. Far more energetic was the organizing of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which had been active in Lawrence for 5 years prior to the strike. The IWW in Lawrence had 20 different foreign language chapters operating in the city to accommodate the various immigrant communities in Lawrence at the time. The Italian Socialist Federation (ISF), part of the Socialist Party of America, was also active in Lawrence at the time, and had some overlap with the IWW. In addition, many of the immigrant workers had experiences in cooperatives and unions in Europe and were able to use those experiences once they got to the United States. 

In fact, the workers had already been organizing, forming “shop committees” in the various textile mills to democratically relay their demands to the textile bosses, with organizing assistance from the IWW. In the fall of 1911, mill owners had refused to meet with the shop committees to discuss the upcoming cuts to working hours. The workers wanted assurances that their pay wouldn’t be reduced, since wages were already incredibly low. The mill owners’ refusal to meet with the shop committees agitated workers, who had also been struggling against long hours, horrible working and living conditions, and high infant mortality rates, along with the poor pay. 

Although the Bread and Roses Strike is often painted as a spontaneous action, it was actually these years of organizing, at least half a decade prior to the strike, which enabled workers to take the flashpoint of reduced wages and turn that into a massive 8 week strike.

The Strike Breaks Out

On January 11, 1912, a number of Polish women working at the Everett Mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts opened their checks and discovered that their pay had indeed been cut by 32 cents due to the slightly reduced work hours.

32 cents may not sound like a significant reduction in pay, however, wages had already been so low, about $8.76 a week, that this reduction was substantial. This group of Polish women proceeded to shut off their machines and started marching around Lawrence, taking to the other mills to notify the other workers of their strike over the cuts in pay, and later that night, word of what happened at Everett Mill spread around the workers’ tenements. The women of the Everett Mills’ brave actions clearly struck a nerve, as the next day, on January 12, some 10,000 workers shut off their machines and went on strike across the city. On the first day of the strike, workers slashed the belts on their machines and threw bricks through factory windows to protest their low pay and horrible working conditions and their bosses’ refusal to listen to them. And as news of the strike spread, farmers wanting to support the workers drove to Lawrence in order to donate whatever they could for food.³

Joseph Ettor of the IWW and Arturo Giovannitti of the ISF took the lead and formed a 56 person strike committee with 4 representatives from 14 different nationalities. This created a strong worker-led democratic leadership team with strong roots among the various sections of the workforce. This model was uncommon if not unique at the time, and stood in direct contrast to the typical AFL craft union model where the union bureaucracy had final say on everything. This robust democracy, which ensured representation for all the ethnic groups in the city, created a deep sense of belonging and unity for the workers which proved crucial when the United Textile Workers (UTW) tried to break the strike, claiming that they were the union that spoke for the workers. Because the workers felt such a strong sense of ownership in their movement, seeing the IWW as their vehicle for collective power, they stood behind the IWW leadership and ignored the UTW.

Another important aspect in building community among the workers was the effort made to cultivate deep connections between workers outside of working hours. The women in the city deliberately formed networks in the different ethnic neighborhoods of Lawrence. The language and cultural barriers were overcome through community spaces like soup kitchens, ethnic organizations, and community centers. These spaces brought the various immigrant communities in the city together, creating a sense of connection and commitment to each other. 

During the strike, the workers did more than hurting company profits by keeping factories closed and destroying mill property. In addition, they also actively worked to build mass support. They organized massive marches through the city with singing, chanting, and banners. The call for higher wages (Bread) and workplace dignity (Roses) was a consistent theme, and led to the chant from which this strike gets its name “We want bread and roses too.” Workers also entered stores in large numbers around the city to halt operations and create further disruptions. A key aspect to this strategy was to keep the pressure on the mill owners through these large public displays and keeping the mills closed, while also avoiding any unnecessary provocation or property destruction. The strike leaders were very aware of the need for public support and were deliberate in maintaining a positive image in the public as much as they reasonably could. 

These tactics would prove to be crucial in making sure material support was available to the strikers to help them maintain the strike and withstand the retaliation from the capitalist class.

Mill Owner Retaliation

The mill owners, the City of Lawrence, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts reacted to the strike with mass violence, revealing to the workers of Lawrence that the government was not a neutral party, but rather clearly in the pocket of the capitalist class. Police and state militiamen were called in to beat back the striking workers and protect the mills. Police used clubs to beat workers as they marched through the streets and picketed at their mills, while state militiamen stood around the mills with their bayonets pointed at the picketing workers. The police even killed two strikers, Anna LoPizzo and John Ramey, during a struggle between striking workers and scab workers that were being brought into the mills. The authorities later charged Ettor and Giovannitti as accomplices to the murder of Anna LoPizzo, even though they were nowhere near the scene when her murder actually took place. This was clearly an attempt by the state to disrupt the strike by targeting two of its leaders. 

Later when striking workers began to send their children to other cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, etc, police were present at the train stations and proceeded to beat and arrest the mothers there who were trying to send their kids to safety. Those same kids were forced to watch this ordeal, no doubt traumatizing them. 

But the mill owners did not stop with leaning on state repression, they also resorted to framing and discrediting the strikers. Mill owners hired a group of agitators to foment trouble among the strikers and even had a group plant dynamite near one of the mills in order to discredit the strikers. The man who was found to have planted the dynamite was not imprisoned, and was given a small $500 fine. It was later revealed that William M. Wood, president of the American Woolen Company which owned a number of the mills in Lawrence, had made a large payment to the man just before he had planted the dynamite.

The history of repression brought in by the state on behalf of the mill owners is a great reminder of who the state serves and the lengths they will go in order to protect capital. But the workers’ resistance, including their continuation of militant tactics paired with their savy appeals to public support, shows that even the unity of the capitalists and the state is no match for the unity of the militant working class.

The Strike Comes To An End

The stories of police brutally beating the mothers of Larence created outrage around the country. So much so that President Taft ordered the attorney general to investigate the strike and Congress began a hearing on March 2nd, 1912. Testimony from workers about the horrible working conditions and abject poverty dramatically shifted public opinion of the strike in favor of the workers. They highlighted diseases contracted by workers from inhaling dust and debris, deaths to workers due to workplace accidents, and others appalling stories. Specifically, a 14 year old girl named Carmela Toreli told the story of how her scalp was ripped off by one of the mill machines, which left her hospitalized for seven months. 

The massive shift in public support for the strikers, and the public pressure placed on the mill owners as a result, forced the mill owners to come to the table and discuss the demands of the workers. And by March 14th, workers and mill owners had reached an agreement that included a 15% wage increase for workers, an increase in overtime compensation, and a guarantee not to retaliate against the striking workers. This victory led to similar wage increases for 275,000 New England textile workers and workers in other industries as well. This result revealed the power of the industrial union model promoted by the IWW, and later by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), as opposed to the craft union model promoted by the AFL. Rather than trying to organize unions based on a specific job, the IWW focused on organizing unions based on industry as a means to unite all the workers in a given industry and allow them to have significantly more bargaining power and for the benefits of their wins to apply to more workers.

Meanwhile, Giovannitti and Ettor remained in jail for months after the end of the strike. Bill Haywood and the IWW threatened a general strike if they were not released. On March 10th, 1921, a 10,000 Lawrence workers protested for the release of Ettor and Giovannitti, and then later, on September 30th, 15,000 Lawrence workers went on strike to demand their release.⁴ There was even an international campaign for their release, with Swedish and French workers proposing a boycott of woolen goods from the US and protests in front of the US consulate in Rome. Fortunately, Ettor and Giovannitti, and a third defendant, who had never even heard of either of them and was at home eating dinner at the time of the killing, were all acquitted on November 26th 1912.

As many of the textile mills began to move south, efforts were made specifically by the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) to organize southern textile mills. CPUSA had begun organizing their own unions separate from the AFL, based foremost on their experience trying to bore within the AFL, but also in part being influenced by the Communist International’s (Comintern) position that world revolution was approaching due to the crisis of Capitalism and that communists should organize their own organizations, including unions. Southern mill towns were much more tightly monitored due to the mill owners’ tiger connections with local police, which made organizing much more difficult there. However, the CPUSA did have some early success organizing workers in the National Textile Workers Union (NTWU) which they organized through the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), including the famous strike at the Gastonia Mill in North Carolina. Ultimately, some of the high profile strikes by AFL unions and the rise of the CIO made many organizers within TUUL decide to rejoin the mainstream labor movement, which ultimately led to a dramatic reduction in the organizing efforts of these southern textile mills.⁵ 

Lessons of the Strike

The Bread & Roses Strike is a reminder of the power of workers when they are organized and militant. Immigrant women are one of the most vulnerable groups in the United States, and yet this group of immigrant women were able to use their collective power as workers to deliver one of the most substantial wins in American labor history. One of the most important factors of the strike was the community built by the women in Lawrence through workplace organizing. This was crucial to overcoming the vast cultural differences among the workers and cultivating the sense of obligation to each other and the solidarity necessary to withstand the state repression, and build the networks of support for the strikers that allowed them to maintain the strike for 2 months. The strike committee was also crucial in maintaining unity among the workers, specifically the move to ensure representation for each of the ethnicities present among the workers was in place. This is similar to the practice of “mapping the workplace” in order to find natural leaders among the workers, which is so important in any successful unionization campaign. 

Many leaders of the IWW ended up leaving the IWW in favor of boring from within the reactionary AFL union. This came as a result of the failures of the IWW mentioned above in the previous section. This was more in line with the general marxist-leninist position of how to interact with trade unions, which Lenin had described in “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder”. The basis for this position is that communists need to be doing their work within the unions that the mass of workers most commonly reside in, even if those unions are led by more conciliatory labor partners of the capitalist class. 

Remembering our power as workers and making sure that we are talking with and making connections with our co-workers and with our communities will be crucial for the labor movement. Winning more substantial victories will require the courage of rank and file workers, and also the solidarity of other workers to build support systems for striking workers and isolate the employers by refusing to cross the picket line. And this can only be built through deliberate community building and organizing like what was done in the lead up to the Bread & Roses Strike.

Ben Cabral is a member of Boston DSA and contributor to Working Mass.

Photo Credits:

“Bread and Roses Strike of 1912: Two Months in Lawrence, Massachusetts, that Changed Labor History” Digital Public Library of America online exhibition
https://dp.la/item/3420c6a58eb17c992594e2e0f110980e

1. Remembering the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike – AFRICANIST PRESS ︎
2. The Lawrence Textile Strike https://reuther.wayne.edu/node/8239 ︎
3. The Strike That Shook America ︎
4. Crossing Borders on the Picket Line: Italian-American Workers and the 1912 Strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts on JSTOR ︎
5. Trust the Bridge That Carried Us Over: The Failure of Operation Dixie 1946-53 – Cosmonaut ︎

by Jean Allen

“American workers can leave a company. Imported H1B workers can’t, Tech wants indentured servants, not ‘high-skilled’ workers”–Ann Coulter

In the closing days of 2024, the far right tore itself apart. At the center were statements by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both key leaders of the tech capital fraction of the Trumpist movement, that despite running on deporting 12 million people, the H1-B program should remain. The H1-B visa (category?) is a category of migrant selected for technical skills, and H1-B workers have long been the backbone of the tech sector. After Ramaswamy said that the need for H1-B workers came from an American culture which looks down on skills and a good work ethic, that “A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers”, the conflict erupted, shoved in front of those of us still foolish enough to be on Elon Musk’s Twitter. 

After a period when Trumpists mixed racist screeds about Indian-Americans with too-honest critiques of each other (see the Ann Coulter quote above), Trump eventually came down on it, announcing that of course he supports H1-B visas. This despite being against them in 2016 and despite running on a platform of mass deportations. To some commentators, this was a betrayal of Trump’s base in favor of big money.

The conflict, which appeared as one between white ‘Populists’ and migrant billionaires, was ultimately a play-act, because H1-B Visas can absolutely exist alongside the threat of mass deportations. Many liberal politicians have now called out Trump on the grounds of being insufficiently deportationist, a claim that Biden made and Harris stuck by. That is a fascistic and dead ended politics that we as socialists need to have an answer to, at the very least because it misunderstands what is really going on here.

Trump’s base is not really in ‘workers’ of any capacity–working class people in the United States are the least likely to be involved in politics–but the elites of suburbs and rural towns. These ‘gentry’ have key roles in their local economies, which are disproportionately dependent on agribusiness, resource extraction, and construction, all industries which disproportionately employ migrants. Why do they employ migrant labor? Because it is cheaper.

And that’s where the narrative usually ends, with that cheapness existing as a natural fact, as if someone’s nationality determined their wage, as if anyone makes a desperate journey to explicitly make less than their fellow workers. Our acceptance of this ‘natural fact’, this dehumanization cast as social science, is required for this discourse to work. Liberals get to pose as accepting and metropolitan for having the humane position that it’s good to exploit migrant labor, while conservatives get to pretend their racism is somehow pro-worker. That Trump’s base is in business owners who themselves hire migrant labor gets to exist solely as hypocrisy, as a moral failing of those individuals. That Obama and Biden deported more people than Trump is an easier fact to digest, since the Trumpist right can just ignore it.

All this stupid noise hides a deeper question. Why is the cost of migrant labor cheaper? Because their whole existence is kept clandestine through state policy and the threat of deportation! Because they are disallowed from joining unions, can’t vote, have to use false IDs and identification numbers, have to live in but not of this country. They are policed both by the typical murderous racism of our beloved officers of the law, and a special category of police meant specifically for them, who police a ‘border’ that extends over two thirds of the US population. These things do not exist separately from or to protect against the cheapness of migrant labor, they are the cause of it. Supporting H-1B visas, which are very tightly policed and explicitly tied to specific employers, is something that can absolutely coexist with mass deportationist politics. All of it serves to threaten and tighter regulate migrant labor, preventing them from participating in US society. This isolation then makes their labor cheaper.

Socialists should not get dragged into the worthless ‘debate’, where full human beings are reduced to their culinary tradition and the cheapness of their labor. We should work together with migrants to break down the walls the state erects between us. Full, political equality across the people who live in an area should be the norm, and as socialists we must fight for it.  Migrants should be able to form unions, should have the same speech protections as everyone else, should be able to vote and have IDs. We need to constantly critique these lack of political rights as divisions that the state is driving between migrants and other workers, and how all of that is in service of better exploiting all of us. 

I recognize that this might seem ambitious, after the bi-partisan passing of the Lankin Riley Act, which responded to an instance of violence by making all migrants deportable if charged with any crime.  This bill, voted for by our dear friend in Congress, Congressional Representative Morelle, shows how quickly a liberal position that exploited migrant labor is good bleeds into a support for that exploitation. But while the bi-partisan turn will create real suffering for people, we should not be afraid to face it.  The liberals are marching without orders and the republicans obviously have their own contradictions.  If we stand for the equality of peoples regardless of migrant status, we can win, and in winning, we will have built a greater world.

BREAK THE CHAINS! FREE OUR SIBLINGS! OUR LIBERATION IS FOUND FIGHTING FOR THE OTHER

The post Oppression & Exploitation & H1B first appeared on Rochester Red Star.