Events & Actions

Tuesday, September 22 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (in person at 1916 McAllister St and zoom)

Wednesday, September 23 (6:00 PM – 7:30 PM)  What Is DSA? (in person at Latino Community Room A of the San Francisco Main Public Library, 100 Larkin)

Thursday, September 24 (5:30 PM – 8:00 PM)  Phonebank for Prop I  (in person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, September 24 (7:00 PM – 8:30 PM)  Organizing Mindset Training Series (in person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, September 25 (5:30 PM – 8:00 PM)  Movie night: The Battle of Chile Part Two (in person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, September 26 (11:00 AM – 2:00 PM) Yes on I Lit Drop (in person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, September 26 (11:00 AM – 12:00 PM) No on Prop D Lit Drop (in person at McCoppin Square Park, 1200 Taraval)

Saturday, September 26 (2:00 PM – 5:00 PM) HWG Outreach and Outreach Training (in person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, September 26 (3:00 PM – 4:30 PM) Decolonization Studies (in person at 1916 McAllister)

Sunday, September 27 (11:00 AM – 1:00 PM)  Canvass Workers with SF EWOC! (in person, meet at William McKinley Monument)

Sunday, September 27 (5:00 PM – 6:00 PM) Tenderloin Healing Circle Working Group (zoom)

Monday, September 28 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM)  Tenderloin Healing Circle (in person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Monday, September 28 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Homelessness Working Group Regular Meeting (in person at 1916 McAllister and zoom)

Tuesday, September 29 (5:30 PM – 7:00 PM) Social Housing Working Group  (in person at 1916 McAllister and zoom)

Thursday, October 1 (5:30 PM – 8:00 PM)  Phonebank for Prop I (in person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, October 1 (6:00 PM – 7:00 PM)  Education Board Open Meeting  (in person at 1916 McAllister and zoom)

Thursday, October 1 (7:00 PM – 9:00 PM)  Organizing Mindset Training Series (in person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, October 2 (5:30 PM – 8:00 PM)  Movie night: The Battle of Chile Part Three (in person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, October 3 (6:00 PM – 9:30 PM)  International Solidarity Potluck (in person at 1916 McAllister) 

Monday, October 5 (5:30 PM – 8:00 PM) Yes On I – Social Housing Working Group Lit Drop (3100 26th St)

Monday, October 5 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM) Labor Working Group Meeting (in person at 1916 McAllister and zoom)

---

Organizing Mindset Training: Basebuilding 101, How to Have an Effective Organizing Conversation

Every Thursday at 7:00 PM from September 17 through October 8 at DSA SF Office, 1916 McAllister St

Talking to people is central to effective organizing, but how do you embark on an organizing conversation? Organizing Mindset Training is a four-part event series that goes in depth into every aspect of the organizing conversation so that it’s a sharpened and ready-to-use tool for any campaign. After this training, participants will:

• Learn about the differences between organizing, advocacy, and direct services/mutual aid
• Understand of the role of an Organizing Committee and carrying out an organizing strategy
• Overview the Organizing Conversation and get in-depth practice for each step
• Develop the ability to have multiple successive organizing conversations with a person, with the goal of getting them more involved in your organizing

Attendance of all four sessions isn’t required, but it is encouraged! 

RSVP HERE

---

Rally to Save TPS!

Join us this Thursday, September 24, 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM at the Ferry Building as we stand with Haiti Action Committee, AROC, PYM, Bay Resistance, PRISO, and many others organizations calling for the extension of TPS (temporary protected status) for refugees and other vulnerable members of our community.

---

Decolonization Studies: Session 2

Come join your friendly neighborhood socialists for the second session of Decolonization Studies! On Saturday, September 26th 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM at 1916 McAllister we’re discussing a collection of texts chosen to elevate our understanding of decolonization and socialism, reading is done beforehand and participants are invited to the DSA office for an in person facilitated discussion. Please feel free to come to the session even if you’ve only partially completed the readings or you missed the first one! Masks are required and provided!

RSVP HERE

---

Yes on Prop B Mobilizations

We have two exciting mobilizations this upcoming week to support a public bank in SF! On Saturday, September 26th at 11:00 AM we’re meeting at the SEIU 1021 office (350 Rhode Island St. #100) for a progressive unity mobilization with Yes on I and No on D!  Note that non-endorsed campaigns (DJ Brookter, Reina Tello, Virginia Cheung, and Ryan Hazelton) will also be present, so please use your judgment for lit drop participation with those campaigns. RSVP here. 

On Sunday, September 27 at 11:00 AM we’re mobilizing in Park Merced at Juan Bautista Circle. Note that non-endorsed campaigns (Reina Tello, Virginia Cheung, and Ryan Hazelton) will also be present, so please use your judgment for lit drop participation with those campaigns. RSVP here.

See you this weekend!

---

Canvass Workers with SF EWOC!

The SF local of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) wants more workers to be aware of their power and potential for collective organizing! Join us as we do some direct canvassing with workers on Sunday, September 27th at11:00 AM. We’ll be meeting at the William McKinley Monument in the Panhandle, walking down Haight St, and ending with a beer at Zeitgeist.
No experience with direct canvassing is necessary! We’ll start with a training for everyone, then split into groups and make our way through the Haight. We will (discretely) inquire if workers are unionized, what their issues are, and try to make contacts in order to start union campaigns.

EWOC is one inspiration for Zohran Mamdani’s new Office of Worker Power in New York, and the local there has reached many workers through events like this one. If you’re interested in bringing that sort of movement to SF, come out on Sunday the 27th! Sign up here

---

International Solidarity Potluck

The immigrant justice group is hosting an international themed potluck! You are encouraged to bring a main dish, appetizer, drink or dessert from a country of your choice to share! Come hang out and eat delicious food! All are welcome!

Please RSVP and sign up to bring food!

---

REPORTBACK: Organizing Mindset Session #1

We held the first of the four sessions comprising the Organizing Mindset training on 9/17, from 7-9PM. Caitlin and Julien co-facilitated, and the session’s goals were to have attendees come away with an idea of the differences between organizing, advocacy and direct services/mutual aid, and to understand the role of an Organizing Committee and carrying out an organizing strategy.
It terms of what went well:

• We had 20 attendees of various organizing experiences and seniority/experience in DSA.
• There was good attendance from IJWG, whose charter includes a goal for all members to go through organizing trainings.
• The Raining Rocks scenario (used to differentiate between organizing, advocacy, and mutual aid strategies) seemed to be well liked by people.
• It was good to have examples of campaigns with different stages of OC development.
• There was good engagement from the attendees, and we didn’t have the issue of only a few louder people doing more of the talking.
• We feel like the attendees left having an understanding different strategies and what is an OC, so we achieved our goals for session #1.
• Though we ran 30 minutes over the scheduled calendar event, not too many people seemed antsy to go or left early.

In terms of what could be improved:

• There’s opportunity to improve in the engagement of IJWG, especially those who were involved earlier on in the working group but not so much recently.
• We went over our scheduled time by 30 minutes.
• When we had a few examples of different types of OCs, providing more structure/guiding questions/talking points would’ve been useful to more clearly illustrate each campaign, how OCs played a role, how the OC formation went, etc.
• We need a better check in process with Solidarity Tech QR code, perhaps with a greeter at the door to direct people to check in.
• We ran out of name tags.
• We had a higher attendance than expected, so we shouldn’t use the tables so that we can have more chairs and room for people to spread out and/or group up.

We have three more sessions to go, so we’ll be incorporating this feedback into the next three Thursdays. If you want to attend the Organizing Mindset, come to the office (1916 McAllister) from 7:00 PM – 9:00 PMon 9/24, 10/1, and 10/8! 

---

REPORTBACK: Prop B and Prop I Lit Drops!

On Saturday and Sunday, Prop B and Prop I held two join mobilizations in the Richmond. Our comrades turned out to drop lit and support the affordable housing vision of these two ballot measures. We’ll have mobilizations every weekend for these campaigns, show up so we can win big in November!

---

REPORTBACK: Haight Ashbury Street Fair

DSA SF was out in the community on Sunday for the Haight Ashbury Street Fair! It was great to talk to neighbors about our two endorsed ballot measure campaigns that we are helping to lead for the November 3 ballot: Yes on B & Yes on I!

That’s “B” as in a Bank for the People! A SF Public Bank will keep money flowing on Haight St instead of towards Wall Street.

And “I” as in I want affordable housing, social housing, and rent relief with no new taxes!

This is a guest episode from Fran Quigley's podcast, "We Can Do Better." He discusses the way the arms industry has captured our political and economic life with Stephen Semler. If you like the episode, please consider subscribing to the We Can Do Better podcast, and sign up for the Substack newsletter: https://endpovertynow.substack.com/ Check out Fran's book, "Religious Socialism" along with several other recommended readings on our website: https://religioussocialism.org/recommended-reading/

by Douglas Dollinger

I thought my friends in ROC DSA might appreciate a bit of an update on your northern neighbour. What follows deals with the astounding rise of militarism in Canada under the Liberal prime minister Mark Carney. My American friends – I am myself half-American – will doubtless note some similarities between the rhetorical approaches of the Canadian and American governments, despite recent disagreements between the two countries and a flurry of ill-tempered threats by the American president against Canada. 

Mark Carney would have Canadians believe military spending is good for the economy. He is on track to move military spending from $70B this year (2026) to $150B in 2035, an astronomical increase. This, he has argued, will create all sorts of economic benefits for the Canadian people – a high rate of investment, good jobs, etc. He is dreaming. It has been amply documented by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, among others, that military spending creates fewer jobs per dollar spent than spending on education or health. But Trump whispered 5% and Carney and the Liberal Party jumped. Not out of sheer sycophancy, although sometimes I do wonder; no, Carney jumped because he is a neoliberal: Health care and education are costs; military spending is an investment. The distinction is a subtle one, granted. In other words, like most conservatives, he believes big government is bad, unless it comes in the form of policing, national security, business subsidies, financial bail-outs, and war-making.

Like most conservatives, too, he committed the money without either campaigning on the increase or consulting Parliament. Of course, given that the opposition in Canada is the Conservative Party, which has never stopped whining about the cash-strapped military, Carney has faced almost no criticism from opposition leader Pierre Poilievre and his happy troupe of militarists. Interestingly, Carney recently announced the purchase of 12 submarines from Germany. These will be used, Canadian military analysts affirm, to “contain China” and protect the Canadian Arctic from Russians. Needless to say, however, it is the Americans who have actively challenged Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Passage for decades, as the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies has documented. This however can simply be forgotten.

With fresh water becoming a highly endangered resource in many parts of the United States, it is a safe bet that American politicians will not sit on their hands and watch the Southwest become uninhabitable. Who has a lot of fresh water? Canada. If Canadian defence planners are aware of this looming danger, they seldom mention it; indeed, given the close integration of the Canadian and American military, it might be a bit much to expect the Department of National Defence even to consider the possibility. In all, Mark Carney has made no bones about building a war industry in Canada, taking up a proposal from his well-heeled friends at the Business Council of Canada, longstanding advocates of bolstering military spending in Canada. And so military Keynesianism is in full march. 

Carney’s record on Gaza, to address a related matter, would suggest he is only too happy to stand in the shadow of the American colossus, and so it is probable that the Canadian military will continue to serve as a kind of branch plant to the American military under the guise of NATO. Gaza is important here. If Canada cannot establish an independent stance on Gaza, it is difficult to conceive of its developing an independent stance on any critical geopolitical issue. Carney made the bold statement that Netanyahu would be arrested if he entered Canada, but just a few weeks back Netanyahu graced Canadian airspace and thus its territory with his august presence and Ottawa went dark. So much for the bold talk. It does not even seem clear that the Canadian government issued an objection, never mind scrambling the jets to force the Wing of Zion to alter its course.

Meanwhile, as NATO moves east, Canada will have little choice but to jump on the ”contain China” bandwagon – indeed it was the American president who called for the 5% increase in the Canadian defence budget. Ever the Canadian stalwart, Carney obliged without hesitation. Note the refusal here to dignify the frequent threats to Canadian sovereignty by the American president. These can be dismissed for the most part for what they are, the deranged ejaculations of a political distemper called the Republican Party, but the American threat to Canada is nevertheless real. Those who believe the United States will respectfully acquiesce to Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic need to study American history. A country that can steal almost half of Mexico can certainly steal portions of the Arctic. Nor should anyone be surprised if this theft comes with the usual rhetorical embroidery about national security, which has become for all practical purposes the modern American substitute for Manifest Destiny. Carney talks big but carries a tiny stick, more twig than stick. Israel, again, provides a pertinent illustration.

Despite the fact that just about all of the Jewish Holocaust experts in Israel have declared what is happening in Gaza a genocide, the Canadian government under Carney has not found its way to using the G-word, the best explanation for which is that it would ruffle American feathers, since it is the American government that has been cheerleading the genocide and otherwise supporting it without reserve. None of this can be mentioned: Canada must be a good partner and this means not stepping on the toes of the global hegemon. So much for Canadian independence and sovereignty. As the United States invades country after country – those foreign wars just keep happening for some inexplicable reason – Canada, hewing as always to the American line, courageously asserts that it is Iran that represents the source of international terrorism. Canadian officials utter such nonsense with a straight face. If knowledge is recollection, as Plato taught, then it becomes very hard not to see these individuals as heralds of an astonishing historical ignorance. Has Iraq been forgotten? What about Afghanistan? Vietnam? Nicaragua? Guatemala? Dominican Republic? Grenada? Panama? Libya? Laos? Cambodia? El Salvador? Yemen? Cuba? Haiti? Somalia? And now Iran. But no, you will not find a Canadian official in the government of Mark Carney with the courage to suggest, much less declare, that the United States has endorsed terror as a political instrument. The facts do not matter; they can be forgotten.

Only a particularly deep form of ideological blindness can fail to see the terror standing behind what some Americans call “endless wars”. It is also this form of blindness that leads someone like Madeleine Albright, former American Secretary of State, to say that 500,000 dead Iraqi children – the documented result of Western sanctions on Iraq – was a price worth paying to bring down Saddam Hussein, a dictator whom the American government was only too happy to support when he was killing Iranians with American-supplied munitions, including chemical weapons. Canada voiced no objection. It is of course simply too impolite to point out that the American government supported Saddam Hussein for years. It crosses the ideological line and violates the bounds of what is considered serious and responsible political discourse. Power does many things: One thing it does quite well is to establish the limits of permissible discussion. Its most effective weapons in this respect are the words “terror”, “terrorists”, and “terrorism”. 

Three points should be noted here. First, the terrorist is always out there somewhere – in Iran, say, or Cuba, or China. Western nations, by contrast, never commit acts of terror. For instance, leveling Gaza, a small strip of land full of unarmed civilians, is not an act of terror, nor is Israel a terror state. The United States has been bombing Iran in what all acknowledge to be an illegal war, but no, it is simply the height of indecency to so much as suggest that the United States is practicing terror. Canada understands this and has not raised an eyebrow. Second, once a government has been dubbed a terrorist state, Western political leaders free themselves of any obligation to exercise diplomacy, since it is axiomatic that one cannot negotiate with terrorists. War becomes the one option left, which goes a long way toward explaining what otherwise remains a mystery to millions of Americans, the reality of endless wars. Third, once the label is attached to an official enemy, the military machinery of the West, and there is no greater in the world as Trump never tires of reminding us, can be brought to bear without moral scruples of any kind, and whatever horrors this produces – take a look at Gaza or Iraq for current examples – will be dismissed as a legitimate response to terror. Israel, remember, is only defending itself. In this regard, the West is always responding to terror but never committing it. 

The West, after stripping much of the globe of its valuable resources, enslaving millions of its inhabitants, and otherwise subjugating foreign peoples to regimes of terrible violence, has never suffered, so our leaders would have us believe, from an obsession with terror, with terror more specifically as a means of domination and control. Colonialism was an act benevolence, of kindness towards our darker brothers and sisters. For instance, the death of millions in India under the British Empire was either simply a mistake – a kind of huge clerical error – or it was an act of legitimate self-defence against restless, petulant, and ungrateful natives. The ideological mainstream in which people like Trump and Carney excogitate has little or no room for such reflections on Western terror. Nor is any thought given to what such pervasive violence might say about what we call Western values, meaning here not our espoused but our actual values, the ones that motivate our behaviour. 

Mark Carney wrote a book on values, so one might be tempted to think that he would be able to provide some useful guidance on what all of this might say about the values we hold dear; however, because he thinks inside the principal assumptions of the Washington consensus, he is as blind as a bat when it comes to identifying our actual values. There is thus little reason to expect any enlightenment from Mark Carney and the Liberal government of Canada. Canada once had a reputation – not altogether underserved – for its role as a peace keeper. Canada is now effectively Americanizing its approach to defence. Militarism has become the order of the day.

The post On Canadian Militarism first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

By filling city council meetings, educating the public on mass surveillance, and cooperating with like-minded allies, DSA members in Westland shot down a Flock contract renewal.

By Dave N. and Kathy E.

In July 2024 the city of Westland signed up for a trial run with Flock Safety that would last until August 2026. Flock’s cameras are Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR) that mark the date, time, and location where a vehicle passes.

Flock claims that its technology does not scan human faces, but its cameras are able to fingerprint cars based on minute details like rust or bumper stickers. The technology is similar to that used in facial recognition software. These services are sold to law enforcement and advertised to cities as a tool for safety (e.g. tracking stolen vehicles or resolving car accidents). In reality, police officers have used this technology to stalk ex-spouses, target women seeking abortions, and aid ICE raids.

Given privacy concerns, civil rights, and the actual safety of citizens, it was in the interest of any resident of Westland to shoot Flock down. We learned, however, through hearing from citizens at Westland city council meetings and by talking with council members, that Westland is a very pro-police city. Even with a DSA-endorsed socialist, Mike McDermott, as council president, the majority of the council were convinced by the police department’s arguments for Flock. Upon approval in 2024, ten new Flock poles were placed in the city.

In 2025 Metro Detroit DSA began organizing in western Wayne County by forming a geographic working group that became known as Socialists Organizing Western Wayne (SOWW). In the beginning, we were learning about one another, how to organize, and even what socialism meant. After six months, we had grown to over 20 members with 15–20 consistently attending meetings. Organizing around the Flock contract turned into our first real project.

The group’s main goal was to find a way to guarantee four council votes (a simple majority) against renewing the Flock contract. Elijah Nemr led the anti-Flock campaign. He was a relatively new DSA member who leveraged his technical background to facilitate meetings, organize members, research, and speak at Westland city council meetings and other civic events.

Most of the city council members are openly pro-police. Mike was able to guarantee one vote besides his own, from the only Republican, Emily Bauman. Mike’s ability to gather two more votes was hampered by a law prohibiting four or more council members to meet in private. SOWW’s Flock sub-group saw that public pressure was the main way to gather two more votes.

Mike proposed two approaches to achieve this pressure, and we executed both: the inside and the outside. The inside approach was to have SOWW members attend city council meetings and speak publicly to council members. We also spoke to the other residents attending the meetings to create public anger and gain more support.

The outside approach was for SOWW members to canvass in neighborhoods and distribute petitions to pressure Westland not to renew the contract. While canvassing we learned that most people didn’t understand the difference between Flock cameras and CCTV cameras. CCTV cameras require a warrant or a subpoena to access the footage, while Flock cameras upload information to an unaccountable database that law enforcement can access at any moment. Once we showed examples of police who misused the technology and explained how Flock cameras didn’t require warrants, residents immediately became disturbed and supported our efforts.

One of the strongest tactics we used was to leverage a wide array of talking points when addressing city council. We got help on our petitions from our sibling group in Ferndale, the Ferndale Area Organizing Committee (FAOC), which had successfully pressured Ferndale not to renew its Flock contract. FAOC gave us many resources, literature, and debate strategies that had been effective there.

We began forming speeches personal to each Westland resident about why they opposed Flock. For example, we have several mothers in our group and one of them, Liz, decided to highlight the predatory threats Flock cameras posed to children. At a council meeting, she stated:

As a parent, I’m deeply concerned about the ever-increasing levels of surveillance our children are being raised to believe is normal. There are many stories emerging of Flock’s inability to keep the sensitive information they collect safe, further raising concerns about this kind of surveillance technology and how it impacts our youth.

Liz’s story, along with framing that focused on the safety concern that Flock cameras pose, immediately garnered public support. This video of one public comment session shows Liz and others who spoke about why they oppose surveillance.

We allied with the president of the Westland Democratic Club to put more pressure and speak out against Flock to the council. We consulted with independent journalists and collaborated with other organizations such as The People’s Assembly. Peoples’ Assembly and DeFlock (a national open-source project that maps Flock cameras) sent speakers to our council meetings. The first meeting of July showed the fruits of these efforts — instead of SOWW members being the main public commenters on Flock, multiple constituents who had not spoken before on the topic rose to voice their concerns about the cameras.

That meeting was the boiling point — within a few days, councilwoman Melissa Sampey posted to Facebook the council’s decision not to renew the contract and to let it expire. Sampey’s post revealed the force behind this decision: “Community Engagement Matters.”

Mike McDermott is our only SIO on city council, and SOWW demonstrated that a DSA geographic group can multiply the efforts of our SIOs. We built an issue campaign to create public pressure on elected officials, through a unified group that devoted time to forming relationships with constituents. Attending Westland Democratic Club meetings and Westland cultural events allowed us to create allies, and those allies came out and spoke against Flock.

SOWW also cultivated organizing skills, and new members gained memorable organizing experience that they can take beyond the Flock campaign. SOWW trained new organizers to speak publicly, compile literature, and canvas.

Growing as an organizer also requires personal development. One of our new members, Kate, said she was “inherently a socially anxious person, but working with such a supportive and motivated group really helped me feel comfortable speaking up.” People are motivated to try things they struggle with when it’s for a greater cause and for others; that’s a core tenet of organizing. The support and camaraderie in SOWW made a space to develop future organizers.

And there’s a need for those organizers: our work on ending mass surveillance is far from finished. Inkster, Livonia, Garden City, and Romulus all have Flock contracts. Our group needs to carry this momentum to one of these cities, but we need to decide soon.

SOWW was created to organize locally alongside our Socialists in Office (SIOs) — Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, State Representative Dylan Wegela, and Westland City Council President Mike McDermott — where their districts overlap in Westland, Romulus, Inkster, and Garden City.

If you are interested in the work we do, please contact Jill Rossiter, Elijah Nemr (Elijah S), or Kathy Elrick on Slack or fill out our interest form.

David N. has been an active member of DSA since July 2025. He is not a part of any caucus. In SOWW he has contributed to power mapping Westland, town hall organizing, and mutual aid.

Kathy E. has been an active member of the chapter since 2023 and is co-chair of SOWW. She started hosting DSA coffee socials in western Wayne County in 2024. She is uncaucused and active in starting a local DSA, community garden collaboration in Norwayne, and Mutual Aid 101 and 102 events.

---

Flock Off: How Westland DSA Members Pushed Flock Cameras Out of Their City was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Julia Z & Jake S

WORCESTER – Students have returned to Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Freshmen are being shuttled through new student orientation, professors are dusting off their syllabi, and returning students have long soaked in their remaining days of freedom. Many new students were no doubt won over by WPI’s aggressive promotion of its cutting-edge Robotics Engineering, Computer Science, and AI undergraduate programs along with its highly-celebrated R1 Research University status. Many are surely excited for the “project-based learning” described by eager campus tour guides, ready to sell them a vision of high-tech projects on a charming New England campus.

But a university campus is much more than its students,  teachers, and overpaid administrators. WPI may claim non-profit status on its tax filings, but in order to compete in a cutthroat higher education industry, it still carries all the fixtures of a corporate enterprise — in many ways, becoming more a landlord/buffet/hedge fund/private police department conglomerate that offers college degrees on the side — including a massive staff force to keep the lights on, the students learning, and the tuition dollars rolling in.

So who are the faces that keep those lights on? Who does everything from preparing curriculum, to the research that won WPI its R1 status, to taking out the trash and setting the tables for big donor wine-and-dine sessions? And, more importantly, why are they increasingly becoming self-organized into trade unions to represent them against the interests of WPI’s endowment managers?

Working Mass sat down with representatives of three organized labor unions at WPI, plus the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), to talk about the importance of their work, their organizations, and their conflicts with the bosses on campus.

Trades, Groundskeeping, and Custodial Staff

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 32BJ

SEIU 32BJ is the international union representing facilities workers at WPI. Without their labor, repairs and maintenance on buildings would go unaddressed, trash would pile up in every classroom and office, and the grass on the Quad wouldn’t get cut — in other words, the campus itself would probably become an overgrown ruin. Every few years, by being organized in their union, facilities staff negotiate a contract with WPI to lay out fair wages, decent benefits, and dignified working conditions. Between every contract cycle, the contract needs to be enforced; the staff, through their union, sometimes find themselves continuing to battle with WPI’s administration to follow the terms of the agreement that both parties have already signed. Mark, a union steward elected by fellow custodians to address such problems on the job, told us about a recent fight, and how the union united his coworkers to push WPI toward a fair resolution that protected their jobs and made their lives easier.

About a year ago, the administration brought in consultants from Core America to evaluate the campus practices, supposedly as a checkup to make sure everything was properly staffed and maintained. Core America went to work to cut good union jobs and clamp down on upkeep costs. Part of what they developed was a proposal for communal trash bins in office buildings: rather than entering individual offices to pick up trash and recycling, office staff themselves would take on the work of custodians and deposit their trash in a larger, central bin. Less time spent gathering trash meant WPI could try to get away with paying fewer custodians to do it. The plan would cut five jobs and open the door to more “reorganizations” (i.e., more cuts).

As Mark said, nobody thought to talk to custodians themselves about the change. Not only was WPI trying to skip past a contractual obligation to negotiate over these changes with the people who do the work, it wouldn’t even have worked out the way they wanted.

“They don’t know anything about our jobs,” Mark said, of the administration and their outside consultants. “If you had office staff doing this, I’d be spending more time getting everything into the right bin than I would have spent just walking through their offices anyway. President Wang used to work at a school that tried this idea out, and that’s exactly what happened.”

Union representatives called a meeting with management and were quick to demand the plan be reversed. Union members took collective action by delivering a petition to back up what their reps were saying, and WPI backed down. Core America’s recommendation wouldn’t go through. Mark reflected on the outcome:

We got them to open those five positions back up. Did you know they don’t approve purchases in May until the fiscal year ends? At certain points in the year, we have to be really careful with the supplies we have left. Students pay tens of thousands a year to go here, and management has tens of thousands to spend on these consultants, but they want to cut our jobs and make us ration toilet paper?

WPI estimates the annual cost of attendance while living on campus — which is required of first- and second-years — to be just shy of $85,000. The total evaluation of its endowment sits at well over half a billion dollars.

According to Propublica, in the fiscal year ending June 2025, WPI’s Chief Finance Officer — who reportedly interfaced with Core America consultants — was paid roughly $600,000, while the school’s President took home just over $1 million total.

Resident Advisors

United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2322

Resident Advisors (RAs), Residential Mentors (RMs), Community Support Assistants (CSAs), and Community Development Mentors (CDMs) come together to form a union affiliated with United Auto Workers Local 2322. Student workers in any of these four positions perform key roles in keeping students safe, submitting requests for maintenance and repairs, and building community amongst undergraduate students. Without their labor, the dorms would be less safe, less maintained, and much more lonely places to live.

We met with Zoey and Dom, two union stewards for this group of workers, which voted to unionize in 2024 and won its first contract with WPI the following year.

One core reason the Res Advisor Union (RAU) formed was to challenge constant changes to job descriptions imposed by  WPI. In fact, WPI only had a single Res Advisor role, but very soon after RAs won their union election, the administration proposed breaking the job into its current roles, removing most RAs from on-campus housing. Admin claimed this would lighten the workloads of RAs, but Zoey and Dom know it was another cost-cutting measure. Most of the new roles would receive no meal plans, no housing, and less pay. Moreover, RMs would be charged with developing a meaningful relationship with 75 or even 85 students at a time, where in their old role, RAs were only expected to handle around 35.

“This seemed to be the personal project of the Dean of Undergraduate Students,” Zoey told us, “but nobody wanted to actually engage with us to figure out a solution that would actually work.”

During intense contract negotiations, RAs went on strike from October 31 to December 15, 2025, after which the RAU won a decent contract with WPI that includes just-cause firing, increased pay, housing vouchers, meal plans, and workload caps. And while many of the job description changes were ultimately accepted, they’ll be implemented gradually over a 2 to 3 year phase-in period with a joint Union-Management Committee to oversee the transition. If the new roles aren’t working for Res Advisors themselves, the union will return to the negotiating table in 2028 with an opening to fight again for a better system.

Graduate Student Workers

United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2322

Several hundred graduate student workers are organized under the WPI Graduate Workers Union, WPI-GWU, a UAW Local 2322 affiliate. Most doctoral students, and many master’s students, often work as Research Assistants (RAs) or Teaching Assistants (TAs), with others working as administrative staff while pursuing their graduate degree. As a teaching and research institution, the value of this work is obvious. Without TAs, grades wouldn’t be submitted; without RAs, WPI would attract no grant funding; without administrative staffers, very little work could get done at all. Although faculty generally direct teaching and research, graduate workers perform an enormous share of the day-to-day work: office hours; proctoring exams;  grading student work; running experiments; and applying for research funds.

Stephen is a doctoral student in Biomedical Engineering, a co-chair of WPI-GWU, and an officer in Local 2322, which not only represents grads and res advisors at WPI, but thousands of academic and non-academic workers across New England, including similar workers at UMass Amherst and the University of Vermont.

The GWU won its first contract in 2023 after several months of tough negotiations. Prior to the contract, grad workers could barely afford to live in Worcester, and a litany of safety problems plagued their research labs. Stephen told us that some of his colleagues were forced to live on food stamps and simply couldn’t make rent. The ambiguity of their student-worker status even led to delays and complications in receiving worker’s compensation for lab injuries.

Their first contract changed everything. Stipend and hourly pay increased as much as 20%; graduate workers were guaranteed paid time off for the first time; WPI now covers the cost of many grad workers’ health insurance, and they now enjoy clear definitions of what’s expected of them at work. Workload caps, just-cause firings, and even new protections and benefits for international students were enshrined in the agreement.

Teaching and Research Faculty

American Association of University Professors (AAUP)

Professor Dan DiMassa is Vice President of WPI’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). At WPI, the AAUP doesn’t function like a traditional labor union, but still represents the organized interests of full- and part-time faculty. Despite the reality of a totally unequal power imbalance between faculty and the university administration that holds hiring and firing authority over them, labor law treats faculty as “managers,” and restricts their rights to organize unions at private institutions like WPI.

According to Professor DiMassa, the AAUP chapter at WPI formed in 2018 to deal with the administration’s attempt to rewrite parts of the faculty handbook. Their changes would have undermined academic freedom, putting the right to adjudicate disputes over academic integrity into the hands of trustees and administrators. Since then, the AAUP has also been forced to confront management  over COVID-era cuts to faculty retirement  benefits, which have only been partially reversed.

At WPI, the AAUP chapter often works through the faculty governance system, which is the main mechanism through which faculty can have a say in the development of university policies. Through this channel, despite lacking legal rights to negotiate a union contract, faculty organized under the AAUP have won new tenure-track jobs and enfranchised a new category of teaching faculty. Faculty governance isn’t a perfect way for professors to get what they need, but because they’re organized and can unite in collective action, their conditions stand a chance at improving.

Dan told us that the AAUP truly sees the interests of faculty and students as aligned. Both share a common investment in the core educational functions of a university: teaching and research. For the whole system to work, students and faculty alike need to build and maintain an environment of academic freedom where their thoughts can be tested and challenged. Robust faculty governance — capable of  struggling against the power of professional university administrators charged with driving up revenue while cutting down on costs — plays an important role in that process.

Without its workforce of wage labor, WPI would cease to function, just like any other private enterprise under capitalism. And just like at any other workplace, it’s when workers organize for collective action in their own interests that they can challenge the boss to improve their lives, their workplace, and the world around them. Workers keep the world running, and the working class deserves to run the world!

If you want to hear more from Resident Advisors and graduate student workers about their work, their lives, and their labor unions, head to working-mass.com and type “WPI” in the search box!

On Wednesday, November 11 at 5:00pm, WPI YDSA — the campus section of Central Mass and Worcester DSA — will facilitate a town hall featuring members of each of the worker organizations we interviewed in this article!

Come hear about upcoming contract negotiations of the graduate student workers and facilities staff, and learn more about what it means to be in a union as a part of the working class!

Julia Z and Jake S are members of Central Massachusetts & Worcester DSA and contributing writers for Working Mass.

The post Stiffing Workers, Rationing Toilet Paper: Who Really Makes WPI Run? appeared first on Working Mass.

By Asanti M.

The conversation surrounding healthcare access is more than an abstraction of cost and risk, it’s life and death, and people are dying. I know because I’ve pronounced them. I know because I’ve cleaned their lifeless bodies. The burdens of the ailing are only compounded by the general disservice of our institutional frameworks. The nebulous jargon tossed around boardrooms and between pundits materializes in the financial reality that confronts the humanity of the unfortunate and the ailing. I’ve seen eyes full of pain, the walls of life crumbling around them, forced to discuss the finances of death, because let me be clear, dying is a very expensive endeavor here in the States, and God forbid you attempt to hold on to life!

The junction of societal divides is never so transparent as the time spent dying in Intensive Care. How perverse a world we’ve been forced into when the sick and dying are seen as another avenue for profit. When the burden of ailment and disease ceases to be a collective human struggle and becomes the burden of one. Oh what a beautiful freedom we have here in the States to accumulate our wealth from wherever we please, the opportunities are endless; no rite, no life stands too sacred as to not fall at the altar of Capital. Oh what freedom we’re blessed with! Blessed are those whose conscious is freed from the suffering of their brothers and sisters; blessed are those whose life is freed from the collective struggle against ailment. There’s a pity as lifeless as my patients, offered to those unfortunate enough to be poor. As if their lack of wealth taints their souls and damns them not in the next life, but right here in this one. How many hours should they have to work to pay off the death of their father, of their daughter, of their son? Fret not, those numbers are meticulously calculated by the profiteers who mandate we exist in such a carnivorous system.

We’re told by those with the wealth of a small nation that there’s no money to alleviate this collective suffering within the bounds of the current structure. If that’s truly the case, then it’s time we rid ourselves of the current structure. Any system that allows for such obscene levels of wealth to congeal into individual hands while the multitude counts pennies on their death beds must go. What principle do you cling to, to justify the needless death and stress of the sick? What sort of perverse freedom precludes the Preservation of Life! Blessed are the stars and stripes! If only the poor had sacrificed more to accumulate Capital, maybe their death wouldn’t be so distasteful; maybe their death wouldn’t be burdened by bills, and they could focus on their grief. What a sordid freedom the nation takes pride in. Our government cries, “how much”, “at what cost”, as they calculate the expense of expanding Healthcare. Look in this bed, there lies your cost! There, lifeless and grey! Can the nation not see the cost! Is it the grey? Maybe if we cast them green and stamped “e pluribus unum” on their forehead they would see. What a beautiful freedom we have here. Six Hail Marys, Lord let it be known that my brother has died at the altar of Capital in the sordid name of our perverse Freedom!

The post Six Hail Marys: Thoughts of an ICU RN first appeared on Red Fault.

By Nolan R.

This article was originally published in Democratic Left: Find it here

We all know the narrative by now: socialists are too radical, fringe, and unpopular to win any kind of lasting power. “Enjoy your time in the sun, lefties, because any moment now the hammer of reasonable, moderate thought will come crashing down and send you back to the depths of political obscurity with your collective tail tucked between your legs.”

Variations of this line are repeated constantly across the country by national media and prominent members of both parties. They repeat it like a mantra, both because they need it to be true and because they would rather eat glass than honestly engage with our ideas. Unfortunately for them, the recent streak of socialist victories has proven there is immense hunger for a working-class movement in this country. In fact, DSA may be more popular among Democratic voters than the Democratic Party itself. One out of three Democratic voters now identify as democratic socialists, and even among those who don’t, two-thirds would be comfortable voting for one.

How does the media react when a socialist wins against allegedly insurmountable odds? They minimize. They put Zohran’s victory down to personality and social media presence, not policy. When a slate of DSA candidates won across multiple levels of government, they said that’s just New York. When DSA won in Denver, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Detroit, well, those are all reliably blue areas, so what’s the big deal?

On the other hand, they pounce on any whiff of failure as an opportunity to discredit the entire movement. Fox News triumphantly declared Kai Newkirk’s loss in Arizona a “setback” for DSA even though Newkirk only became a member days before requesting an endorsement, and was not endorsed in his primary. Similarly, they label progressive politicians like Abdul El-Sayed “commies in camouflage” despite his self-identification as a “capitalist who believes in regulation.” Their goal is to erase nuance, lumping anyone to the left of Stephen Miller into the same communist boogeyman so they can tar us all with the same brush.

Francesca Hong started her campaign for governor of Wisconsin as a little-known state assembly member going up against the full weight of the Democratic establishment and still managed to come within a razor-thin margin of the nomination as an open socialist in a swing state. Outspent by several orders of magnitude, she relied on a robust canvassing operation of enthusiastic volunteers. Her narrow loss proves the viability of insurgent socialist campaigns even in states conventionally considered moderate. To the New York Times, however, the results represent a brick wall for DSA’s momentum.

It would be much more sensible, pundits and political operatives argue, to nominate safe, unchallenging centrists who promise nothing and deliver less. Otherwise, we might spook the independent voters, sink the Democrats in the upcoming midterms, and doom us all to a freshly empowered Trump administration. The goal is to browbeat the voting public into believing that holding principled positions opens the door to fascism. If Democrats stand for nothing, then there’s nothing for Republicans to criticize, right?

This narrative is bullshit. It assumes that independent voters’ politics lie smack dab between Republicans and Democrats, but the reality isn’t so simple. While most independents describe themselves as moderate, they also tend to hold an assortment of incongruent beliefs, such as support for universal healthcare. Rather than diehard centrists, they often refuse to identify with power (hence the independent label) and feel abandoned by both parties.

Corporate media endlessly promote pundits who complain that Democrats have gone too far left instead of admitting that many voters are disillusioned by the cycle of optimism and disappointment that comes with electing milquetoast Democrats. Millions of Americans voted for Obama or Biden with the earnest belief that they would get the change they were hoping for and then they were duped into supporting a vessel for the capitalist status quo. Despite the hand-wringing, independents and the politically disaffected are fertile ground for DSA’s growing constituency.

Each DSA win forces the mainstream media to move the goalposts and adjust their narrative. They argued that AOC and Zohran were outliers, that we could only win in New York City, that we couldn’t win in swing states like Michigan. Now, they’re arguing that we can’t win in competitive races against Republicans. How will the narrative shift again when we prove them wrong?

In all likelihood, they’ll double down on the idea that DSA’s success will hurt Democrats in the midterms. After the midterms, they’ll likely argue that while socialism may be gaining in popularity, our policies will inevitably fail. No electoral success will prod the hostile media into fairly appraising our program or our candidates.

At the end of the day, we shouldn’t internalize the bad-faith criticisms of the corporate media and the party duopoly. The fact that the media can’t stop talking about us, that they’re so obviously terrified of an ascendant Left, means that we are on the right track. We will harness this energy and attention that’s being focused on us, and we will ride that wave to victory.

We are now the largest socialist organization in the history of the United States, with 120,000 members and counting. Our names and our ideas are echoing in hushed tones throughout the halls of power. The president and the speaker of the house describe our movement in apocalyptic terms while the Senate holds McCarthyist show trials alleging connections to terror. While they lie about our goals and our methods, they are right to be afraid. We threaten to seize the reins of power that the ruling class has taken for granted for so long and to deliver them into the hands of the people.

More than ever, it seems that a better world is possible. Keep winning, DSA.

The post Socialists Can Never Win — Until We Do first appeared on Red Fault.

by Travis Covitz

This month, I re-read To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee for the first time since my freshman year of high school (which overlapped with the first wave of Black Lives Matter uprisings). Mockingbird was written by Lee (a Southern white woman) in the early 1960s; it follows the girlhood of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, who is white and the daughter of a lawyer, in Depression-era Alabama. A major plot point of the book is Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, defending a local Black man who has been charged with rape of a white woman. Atticus is posed as a noble white hero in contrast with the ‘backwards’ racists in the countryside. Reading in 2026, the juxtaposition of the police brutality in Ferguson and the lawfare in Mockingbird seems like it was just begging for commentary. But at my school in the Phoenix, Arizona suburbs, where we had a very small Black population, I have no memory of such a conversation. What I do remember is, at some point during the year, one of the few Black girls in my grade commented that the murder of Michael Brown echoed the murder of Trayvon Martin. I know that she saw the parallels between Scout’s fictional world and the world we found ourselves growing up in. 

My mom has always been a huge fan of Mockingbird and the Finch family in particular. As the youngest in her family, my mom related heavily to Scout’s perspective as a young child surrounded by adults. Perhaps because of her connection with Scout, or perhaps just because of her own liberal white sympathies, my mom glorified Atticus as a paragon of virtue. I remember seeing a lot of discourse in 2020 about how white people preferred quoting this fictional white lawyer, instead of living Black people, to demonstrate their values of racial justice. My re-reading of Mockingbird was, in part, a desire to revisit the character of Atticus Finch and see just how valiant he really was. Was he a principled anti-racist or a white savior? I found myself thoroughly underwhelmed, but not surprised, with how Atticus actually behaves in the book. And then I read the sequel.

Go Set A Watchman takes place in that same small Alabama town, centered on that same Finch girl (who is now a woman), about two decades later. Scout is in her mid-twenties (actually very close to my current age) and visiting her hometown on a trip away from her life in New York City.  She is forced to confront the imperfections in the moral characters of her father (Atticus) and lover (Hank), who have joined the local white Citizens Council in protest of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Watchman was only published in 2015, and takes place after the events of Mockingbird, but it is actually more interesting than a mere ‘sequel’. Lee wrote Watchman in the 1950s, as the first draft of this story, only for it to later be edited into the narrative we know as Mockingbird. 

Reading Watchman greatly enriched my appreciation of Mockingbird – but I think that Watchman was only able to be so profound because of that decade of relationship I already had with the Mockingbird story. I felt that the loss of Atticus’ heroism, rather than a betrayal, was a very plausible continuation of the character. In fact, I think that character journey is an important one to read for white readers who, like the young Scout, saw Atticus as a perfect gentleman. In my experience, Mockingbird is used by liberal Americans to assuage their guilt over racism, by allowing them to reassure themselves that they’re ‘one of the good ones’. It paints a picture of racism as a personal problem rather than a political one. The subtextual rebukes to this narrative which I found in Watchman actually allowed me to more deeply appreciate the world that Lee built. By showing how a kind, honorable white man – who treats Black people as equals in daily life – can still feel so threatened by the idea of Black people in power that he organizes to prevent it, Watchman illustrates how racism is a political issue, not just a personal moral failing.

In Watchman, Scout is positioned as the moral hero in contrast to Atticus, but not necessarily enlightened, which I feel is the correct choice for the character. She is still learning the ways of the world, but we can see that she has deep moral convictions that ground her. If Scout had been written as perfect, it would have ruined the whole story, which is about coming-of-age and realizing that your heroes are only human. My revisiting of Lee’s work has been its own coming-of-age story, after all. Even though I generally appreciated the direction of Watchmen, I disagree with some of the political conclusions Lee offers. But this way in which I disagree with Scout paradoxically makes me relate to her even more. Just as her long-time deification of Atticus was confronted by a painful reality when Scout realizes she has her own moral positions, I had to realize my own values are based on the people I live and organize with – not just the books I’ve read.

If you remember reading Mockingbird, and especially if you remember quoting Atticus Finch, I would highly recommend Watchman. It might be painful, but I think you will be all the better for realizing that even the Finches have flaws – and wondering what actual anti-racism would look like.

The post Narratives of Imperfection: Revisiting Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) and Go Set a Watchman (2015) first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

In December of last year, I started watching the television show M*A*S*H, which ran on CBS from 1972 to 1983. As a history nerd with a penchant for old TV shows I quickly became obsessed, watching every single episode in under six months.

For those unfamiliar, the show is a comedy-drama following the exploits of the personnel serving at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (M*A*S*H) during the Korean War (1950-1953). Intended as an allegory for the Vietnam War, the show tapped into the intense anti-war and anti-institutional sentiment of broad swaths of the American public of the time.

The show is unapologetically anti-war and progressive, unrelenting in its insistence that basic human dignity be upheld in the most horrific circumstances. It is extremely well-written and enjoyable to watch, a true classic of twentieth-century television. M*A*S*H may have premiered over fifty years ago, but it still has much to teach us today.

Best Care Anywhere

Alan Alda stars as Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, a gifted young surgeon drafted into the war. He has a penchant for pranks and a consistent distaste for military discipline. Alda’s performance is unmatched, and he is truly a once-in-a-generation comedic talent. His sardonic wit, impeccable comedic timing, and old-school slapstick gags combine to create a masterful performance. At the time of writing, the 90-year-old Alda is still acting and speaking out for progressive causes. He deserves to be recognized as one of the greatest American comedians of the twentieth century, standing alongside the likes of Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, and Steve Martin.

There was a significant amount of cast turnover spanning the course of the show’s run. Every time someone left, I was very nervous to find out who their replacement would be, and I wondered whether the new actor could live up to the standards of those departing. I was never disappointed.

Hawkeye’s original sidekick, Captain John “Trapper” McIntyre (Wayne Rogers) was a zany, sarcastic prankster. His replacement, Captain B.J. Hunnicut (Mike Farrell) is a grounded family man who often serves as a calming presence and voice of reason. Colonel Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) was the good-natured, borderline incompetent commanding officer of the outfit in the early run of the show; he was replaced in season four by the firm-but-fair, no-nonsense cavalryman Colonel Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan). The whiny, arrogant, and right-wing Major Frank Burns (Larry Linville) was replaced in season six by the blue-blooded and snobbish but cultured and honorable Major Charles Emerson Winchester III (David Ogden Stiers).

Rounding out the main cast are the two other characters who stayed for the entire series: the meek and kind-hearted Catholic chaplain Lieutenant Francis Mulcahey (William Christopher), and the career-driven and tough head nurse Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Loretta Swit).

The only character swap that is more ambiguous is the replacement of the boyish and innocent but preternaturally competent company clerk Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly (Gary Burghoff), who left the show in season eight. He was replaced by Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger (Jamie Farr), the Toledo-born, Lebanese-American cross-dressing soldier who spends much of the war attempting to convince the Army he has gone insane in pursuit of a Section Eight psychiatric discharge. Both characters are quite beloved by fans, and Radar’s departure marked a major turning point for the series.

The focus of the show is highly varied. Plots typically involve pranks and hijinx, Army bureaucracy, dealing with North Korean and Chinese POWs and Korean civilians, confronting racism, the psychological and emotional struggles of the staff, attacks by the enemy, interpersonal conflict that blurs the line between comedy and drama, and much more. The show also experiments with its own format, for example by filming an entire episode from the perspective of a wounded G.I. (S7E11), following a casualty in near-real time (S8E11), and depicting a soldier who is lingering as a ghost after succumbing to his injuries (S10E10).

M*A*S*H is based on a 1970 film of the same name and the 1968 novel that inspired it. Both works fall outside the scope of this article. The franchise received three spinoff series: Trapper John, M.D., which is not related to the show at all; W*A*L*T*E*R, the once-aired pilot for a show following Radar; and AfterMASH, which ran for two seasons. I would only recommend the latter to the most die-hard fans.

“There’s No Such Thing as an Anti-War Film”

In a real sense, this quote from the late French filmmaker François Truffaut is true. Accurately capturing the abject horror of war renders a movie effectively unwatchable as entertainment and impossible to distribute beyond an extremely limited audience. No such project could ever appear on network television.

At the same time, M*A*S*H avoids the typical pitfalls of other “anti-war” media that actually serve to glorify armed conflict or advance pro-war messages, such as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan or Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper. There are several reasons for this.

First, the surgeons in the show are not soldiers in the conventional sense. They are doctors first and foremost. Hawkeye, Trapper, and later Hunnicut only reluctantly submit to military discipline. The show does not depict frontline combat or give the sense that a victory on the battlefield is a victory for the cast. Direct engagement with the enemy is sporadic and never glorified. The show makes it explicitly clear that every advance of blue squares on the map in a general’s office sends countless teenage boys to the hospital in critical condition. The surgeons at the 4077th must perform “meatball surgery” on their shattered bodies in the hope of keeping them alive long enough to get them to a hospital in Seoul or Tokyo. This constant drumbeat of “incoming wounded” keeps the show grounded in its values, and many episodes focus explicitly on the unique stresses endured by wartime medical staff.

Second, overt displays of patriotism, love of country, and sympathy with American foreign policy goals for Korea are almost completely absent. The show’s thesis does not seriously entertain counter-arguments as to why war should be seen as a moral good or a regrettable necessity. Characters do express belief in traditional American virtues including justice, fairness, democracy, and equality, but it is rarely tied explicitly to patriotism. It is only foils like Frank Burns who demand loyalty, obedience, and paranoia as they salute the flag.

Finally, the more “gung-ho” officers, soldiers, and civilians who visit the 4077th are consistently depicted in a negative light. The doctors are often pitted against officers willing to trade young lives for their own glory, bigots of all stripes, war profiteers, adventure-seeking journalists, anti-communist witch hunters, the officious bureaucracy of the U.S. Army, and more. These figures are often drivers of conflict in the series. They nearly always either learn a lesson, receive some kind of comeuppance, or set up a serious and contemplative moment for the main cast.

The show is not intended as an attempt to shock the viewer with the horrific, gory reality of war. Its elements are packaged in a way that is palatable for 1970s TV. Episodes are by no means excessively violent, and they aren’t at all unpleasant to watch. But they do send an unambiguous and consistent message: There is no value in this kind of killing.

If any piece of popular media can be considered truly anti-war, M*A*S*H is it.

Questions of Taste

Most of the humor in the show holds up to modern standards. It is intelligent and well-written, and there are relatively few cases in which a joke is made that I consider to be in poor taste. In one early episode (S2E9), the doctors paint a soldier in partial blackface to teach him a lesson about racism after he requests that he not receive “the wrong kind of blood” (referring to the recent integration of the U.S. Army’s blood supply). The message is intended to be anti-racist, but this plot point couldn’t air today for obvious reasons.

Some of the accents of the actors playing Koreans are uncomfortably broad by today’s standards. Many Korean characters’ inability to speak English seems to render them unable to speak at all, though this is likely due to the difficulty of sourcing actors who speak the language fluently at a time when the number of Korean-Americans in the U.S. was much smaller than it is today. There are also a few cases in which a person being kissed against their will is played for laughs, most often Major Houlihan. For these reasons, and likely a few more that I missed, some viewer discretion is advised. By the standards of a fifty-year-old show, however, there isn’t much to cringe at.

The portrayal of the cross-dressing Corporal Klinger is particularly noteworthy as an early example of what I would consider positive trans representation in media. Klinger is not transgender in the modern sense. He openly admits that he dresses in women’s clothing only to convince the Army he has gone insane, though his wardrobes are quite involved and he obviously revels in the freedom of expression it affords him. Klinger never changes his name or pronouns, he refuses a Section Eight that would require him to admit to being a “homosexual,” and he returns to a regulation uniform and ceases to angle for a discharge after he replaces Radar as company clerk.

The most notable part of the performance is how the majority of the cast treats him with matter-of-fact tolerance, and the characters who scorn him (particularly Major Burns) are portrayed as bigoted and petty. Even from those characters, anti-trans rhetoric doesn’t go to extremes.

Other trans people have different opinions on this topic. They believe Klinger plays into a harmful stereotype of the “man in a dress” that has been weaponized by the cisgender majority to delegitimize trans experiences. Given how the show approaches LGBTQ+ issues more broadly, including Hawkeye and Trapper’s acceptance of a closeted gay soldier (S2E22), I am personally inclined to believe the showrunners approached the question of Klinger’s identity as carefully and sensitively as could be expected for the time. That said, readers are encouraged to form their own conclusions.

Goodbye, Farewell and Amen

The series finale is a two-hour tour de force. Its live broadcast was watched by over 100 million people nationwide, and to this day it remains one of the most-watched scripted television events in history. Directed by Alan Alda, the finale does an excellent job of capturing the heart of the show. The episode is perfectly calibrated in its bittersweetness, and it serves as a powerful, emotionally satisfying, and fitting sendoff.

There is one rather disturbing plot point in the episode relating to the ultimate reason for Hawkeye’s hospitalization. It isn’t graphically depicted and is handled with care, but sensitive viewers can choose to skip that section, which takes place from timestamps 38:51 to 41:25.

As the ceasefire is announced during the finale, the total number of U.N., communist, and civilian casualties is read out over the base’s loudspeaker system, serving as a memorial for all those killed and permanently scarred by the Korean War. Klinger’s question: “Vietnam? Where’s that?” is particularly poignant as a nod to the show’s origin as a critique of the Vietnam War.

* * *

M*A*S*H is solidly progressive in a way that socialist viewers will immediately recognize. None of the characters are socialists, nor could they be in a show set during the early Cold War. But we can still admire and praise the virtues the show promotes: Radical tolerance of those different from us. Scorn for the horror of war and cruelty in every form. Sacrifice for those who have nothing. M*A*S*H reminds us that we should not apologize for our values, that our most basic humanity must be upheld against the forces of imperialism, militarism, and hatred.

The doctors of the 4077th are unable to stop the unbelievable carnage around them. They can only do their best to help those who come through the door. In our own time of global crisis, we should strive to do the same.

M*A*S*H is currently available to stream in its entirety on Hulu.

The post M*A*S*H is an Antiwar Masterpiece appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

As CDSA forges ahead into a busy and demanding aldermanic cycle, membership is set to consider a new slate of potential endorsees at September’s General Chapter Meeting: four candidates for Chicago’s first fully-elected school board.

Before those votes take place, I’d like to make the case for why lending our chapter’s endorsement of all four candidates is critical to amplifying our “Workers Deserve More” program and furthering the class-struggle messaging that will help build out our movement and propel us to victory in February’s municipal elections. All four school board candidates under consideration (Hilario Dominguez, Jason Dones, Karen Zaccor, and Debby Pope) are self-identified socialists who have a clear-eyed vision for what it means to bring socialism to the Board of Education. 

But perhaps it would be illustrative to first share what the stakes are in these elections; in other words – what we stand to lose should charter and billionaire-backed candidates take these seats instead. 

Should a right-leaning school board take the helm after November’s elections, there can be no doubt that school closures would be on the table. This would be sold to us under the tired slogans of “fiscal responsibility” and “chronic under-enrollment.” It’s quite the masterful gambit, really. These schools are chronically under-enrolled because of decisions at all levels of government that have left Black and Brown neighborhoods starved of resources for decades. Now, those same actors are returning to demand the closure of schools that they intentionally underfunded.

A right-wing school board would likely forsake any attempt at progressive revenue streams from the state. Instead, it would likely close schools exclusively on the South and West sides of the city, just as it did in 2013. School closures aren’t just about underinvestment. They are a form of violence inflicted on the most vulnerable neighborhoods in this city. They leave communities divested, depopulated, and scarred. Today, the vast majority of CPS schools closed in 2013 remain in disrepair, a constant reminder for neighbors that Chicago has long valued the lives of certain residents over others. Additionally, school closures themselves are often antecedents to violence. Research has consistently demonstrated that areas immediately surrounding closed schools have seen higher rates of gun violence since 2013. 

Schools are community anchors and hubs where neighbors and their families convene to dream of a better tomorrow – one made possible only by the right to a free, accessible, and comprehensive public education. In many cases, they serve as centers for community programming, provide free summer enrichment programs, and welcome families that have recently arrived to the United States. When families are stripped of that right and forced to send their children to schools miles away at the behest of a school board that’s been bought and paid for by the charter school lobby, it’s an example of how the boot of racial capitalism continues to crush communities of color while enriching their oppressors. 

How can we seek to grow our presence on the South and West sides under the message of “Workers Deserve More” if we stand by while they’re given less and less? If “Workers Deserve More” is to be an actual vision for the implementation of democratic socialism, rather than a mere rallying cry, it must account for the workers (and their families) most likely to be affected by school closures: in Austin, Garfield Park, Englewood, and Auburn Gresham, among so many other neighborhoods on the South and West Sides. 

Furthermore, the election of a right-wing school board would likely mean cuts to services for students across the board. The first programs to go would likely be those that support Diverse Learners, students who require special education services. At a time when schools are already understaffed for the personnel that would accommodate these students’ needs (SECAs, paraprofessionals, etc.), it would be unconscionable to consider further cuts. Many students who receive accommodations and curriculum modifications have disabilities. As socialists, we must view this fight through the lens of disability justice. To ensure that every child, in every part of this city, has access to education as a tool of liberation, we must fight to expand funding for our Diverse Learners, not sit idly by while it’s rolled back.

While the prospects are quite somber should the school board swing right, there’s also much to be excited about should the board remain aligned with workers and their children. Just as with the City Council, we are fighting to build a bloc of school board members who have proven records as organizers for the working class. These candidates will mobilize the working class to demand the progressive funding for our schools that Governor Pritzker and the Illinois General Assembly have been refusing to answer for. 

With stable, progressive revenue, we can start to dream bigger. We can work with our bloc of board members to develop a coherent set of policy planks around education that transforms and integrates our schools even deeper into the fabric of the communities they serve. We can begin to imagine a district of Sustainable Community Schools, with wraparound programs like free healthcare, legal aid clinics, and nutrition education. Our district could also fund Universal Pre-K at age 3. Both of these are policies that school board president candidate Hilario Dominguez is running on.  It is a program we as a chapter can and should rally around.

So in the words of educators across this country: “Raise your hand if you’re here, CDSA.” We need to be here to fully fund our schools. Here to push back against the tide of corporate and billionaire money. Here to ensure that the schools in our black and brown communities are as well-resourced as any school in Lincoln Park or Lakeview, not shut down. And here to dream and organize around a better future for Chicago’s children.

The post Raise Your Hand if You’re Here: Why CDSA Must Intervene in the Board of Education Races appeared first on Midwest Socialist.