By Ian AM and Jess N

With 16 resolutions and four amendments, the ramifications and nuances of the decisions presented for the 2026 annual convention for Metro Detroit DSA are enough to make your head spin if you’re a new member not thoroughly steeped in internal politics, caucuses and coalitions.

Let’s demystify that.

Beyond all the resolutions, amendments, debates, factional squabbles and general commotion ahead of convention, the broader political divide in our chapter boils down to three big questions:

1. Do you want Metro Detroit DSA to center ambitious, external-facing campaigns that deliver meaningful wins for our communities, like Money out of Politics or electing Cadre candidates like Chris Gilmer-Hill or Denzel McCampbell? Or should we focus on internal political education, reading groups and following the lead of smaller left or liberal advocacy groups?
2. Do you want Metro Detroit DSA to grow more accessible to every member of the working class so that it may evolve into a true mass movement as part of a National DSA with membership in the millions? Or would you rather Metro Detroit DSA maintain some degree of exclusivity with smaller ranks so that it may center more committed, ideologically pure members who have read “enough” theory?
3. Do you trust your comrades that you elect to handle administrative decisions so that we can meet the urgency of this polycrisis with decisive action? Or would you rather we spend valuable organizing time at GMs relitigating every decision of the democratically elected Steering Committee?

As a Metro Detroit DSA member attending our annual convention, most every vote you cast will essentially support one side or the other of these three key decisions.

For example, the Unity in Action resolution proposes we vote, as a chapter, to elect nine members to a commission to deliberate and propose structural changes. These proposals would take effect only if the membership voted to adopt them.

In other words, it creates a democratic and multitendency body tasked by the membership with developing proposals that address complex organizational challenges. In doing so, it streamlines the process of drafting and proposing effective yet broadly popular structural changes, which is a complex undertaking in and of itself.

For clarity, every member already has the power to make these proposals with or without the passage of this resolution. Creating a commission dedicated to this purpose simply ensures that proposals to organizational issues will indeed be created for members to consider.

The argument against this resolution is that it is anti-democratic to elect any other member to perform a specialized task for the chapter. The claim is that members should lead. It remains unclear why the chapter members we ourselves would elect to this commission would not count as “members leading.”

It’s ultimately a decision between a party-like structure focused on outward facing organizing vs. an absolutely “flat” participationary democracy — one with a high bar for participation in decision making and a focus on internal debates among factions.

DSA has had this debate before. In fact, this was the main debate in DSA nationally in the period leading up to the 2017 and 2019 conventions. Eventually, the side favoring a party-like structure won decisively.

It’s a good thing they did, because that orientation is the one that has allowed DSA to grow to over 100k members nationally and to achieve historic victories like the election of Zohran Mamdani in NYC.

Resolution 8 proposes that general meetings include a balanced mix of 30 minutes for political education, 30 minutes for working group and committee updates, and 60 minutes for our democratically-endorsed campaigns. It also gives the democratically elected Steering Committee the ability to be flexible with setting the agenda based on the needs of the organization and our membership.

Conversely, the amendment proposes 60 minutes of virtually every meeting be devoted to political education and reactive discussions of current events, with no requirement that it include any discussion of campaigns or other actionable next steps. Under this amendment, discussion of our campaigns and outward facing organizing would strictly be reduced to 35 minutes.

And so it is essentially a decision between prioritizing external-facing campaigns or internal political education.

At the end of the day, the decisions that we will collectively make at convention are not as complicated as they may seem.

We are deciding whether we wish to focus our efforts inward on those already “in the club,” or focus outward on the working class that we are trying to organize.

And we are deciding whether we trust the comrades we democratically elect — to unpaid and demanding volunteer positions — to act with integrity and handle administrative matters in good faith, or whether we will let factional resentment convince us that no comrade in a leadership position can be trusted with even the most basic tasks.

My co-author and I trust our comrades to elect effective leaders and to hold them accountable by voting them out the very next year if they fail to meet our standards.

We’re here to organize on campaigns that deliver working class wins that matter and involve our community.

And we’re here to build a mass movement that includes as many members of the working class as possible, all fighting to beat fascism and win socialism in our lifetimes.

Are you?

Beyond the Slogans, What’s Convention Really About? was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Ian A.M.

Labor and political education are two of the most important spaces for our efforts to build socialism in our lifetimes here in Metro Detroit. In this article, I’m arguing for three amendments that empower every member.

Amendment to R16: A Level Playing Field for an Open, Fair and Democratic Debate Series

As a “big tent” organization with a range of political traditions and tendencies, it’s vital that our members understand the various and often conflicting visions for the future of our chapter and organizing work.

The original resolution, R16, proposes a series of five debates for our general meetings discussing these topics. Holding debates regarding our organization, political theory and how we approach our work is indeed a critical and healthy measure for our chapter’s democracy. I suspect most members, despite tendency or caucus affiliations, would agree that a debate series is beneficial.

However, the resolution bases the series of debates on the book A User’s Guide to DSA. This is a publication that is now a few years old and doesn’t necessarily reflect the current status of debates in DSA today.

Besides, should we really ask our members to buy a specific niche book in order to understand the debate series they’re agreeing to at convention? The topics are not listed anywhere in the resolution, nor readily available online anywhere the book is listed for sale (Labor Power Publications, Amazon).

In short, members are being asked to agree to debates with almost zero context, and it’s not realistic to expect most members to proactively seek out this information in less than two weeks while they are also seeking to understand the ramifications of 15 other resolutions and three amendments.

This amendment allows the full membership to have a say in the topics of the debate to ensure all perspectives are presented fairly and given equal consideration.

In brief, the amendment empowers any member in good standing to submit a topic for consideration, and allows the full membership to vote on which five of the submitted topics should be selected for the debate series. For transparency, members submitting a topic must state any caucus affiliation.

A healthy debate starts with bringing everyone and all perspectives to the table to set the terms and topics. This amendment does just that.

Amendment to R4: Ensuring Democracy in Political Education Leadership and Sessions at General Meetings

As democratic socialists, we believe in member-led democracy and the core tenet that all members should have a say in how our chapter operates. That includes political education, a function and committee of the chapter that exists to support your own political development.

Therefore, you should have a say in the leadership of the committee and what topics and material are covered at the political education sessions at general meetings.

This amendment has two key pieces. First, it allows any member in good standing to propose and vote on the topics for this year’s political education sessions at general meetings.

Secondly, it grants every member in good standing the right to vote for the Chair of the Political Education Committee.

At first blush, you would be forgiven for thinking these are terms that every member of an explicitly democratic organization would find agreeable. The argument I’ve most often heard in opposition to this amendment is that in order to have a say in your own political education and the design of sessions facilitated for your benefit, you must first make time to routinely join the Political Education Committee’s meetings, which these days take place exclusively in person.

While that’s reasonable enough on paper, at present, only 10–20 members of our 1,300 member organization routinely find time in their busy lives and other crucial organizing efforts for the Political Education Committee’s meetings. In short, that means political education sessions for around 200 members at our general meetings are decided by a self-selecting group that represents less than 2% of the full membership. That is not a healthy democratic process, least of all for something that can be as partisan and contentious as political education.

It’s time we empowered the full membership to have a say in their own political development by letting them choose both the Chair of the Political Education Committee and the topics for our general meetings.

Amendment to R13: Creating Industry Specific Subcommittees for More Effective Labor Organizing and Ensuring Labor Chairs Are Also Selected Democratically

As our organization experiences a second wave of historic growth, our efforts to support labor organizing are expanding accordingly.

Like the above political education amendment, this amendment to R13 has two key elements. The first is creating industry-specific subcommittees for labor organizing. The second is empowering every member in good standing to vote for the Chair of the Labor Working Group.

To better allow labor organizers to coordinate and share knowledge on how to navigate the unique challenges and landscape of their industries, this amendment proposes the creation of several subcommittees to support organizers in specific fields: teachers, healthcare workers, service workers, non-profit workers, auto workers, and more.

This amendment takes inspiration from the commendable initiative many teachers in our chapter have already taken to form their own subcommittee to advance organizing among teachers and find solidarity with one another.

The Amendments of R4 and R13 Bring the Political Education and Labor Chairs to the Exact Same Democratic Standards as the Membership Engagement, Electoral, and Socialists in Office Chairs.

It’s important to note that across the chapter, members in good standing already exercise their right to vote for the chairs of the Membership Engagement, Electoral, and Socialists in Office Committees.

These amendments do not impose any new standards but bring the Political Education Committee and Labor Working Group up to the same democratic processes as these other committees. They establish a more level playing field and give you a say in how your own chapter operates in these vital spaces.

Every member in good standing should have a say in who leads organizing efforts within our chapter, even if they cannot make time to join a specific meeting. After all, it may not align with their work schedule, they may be busy with childcare, are chronically ill, are already at capacity with other vital initiatives within the chapter, have transportation difficulties, lack internet access, etc. That shouldn’t preclude their ability to vote on leadership.

What’s the Difference Between a Working Group and a Committee, Anyway?

Great question! The truth is our bylaws do not make a clear distinction between working groups and committees. At present, the two function identically in our chapter, as smaller groups of chapter members working together toward a certain interest, niche, or set of projects of the chapter.

So long as our bylaws do not make a clear distinction between these two types of bodies and how they should operate, they should be governed under similar practices.

Hopefully, with the passage of the Unity in Action resolution (R11), these ambiguities will be clarified with new bylaw language proposals.

Altogether, the amendments to R4 and R13 bring democracy to the full membership for two key organizing efforts in our chapter and offer you the chance to guide your own political education.

It’s Your Chapter — You Should Get a Say in Political Education and Labor was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Over the Christmas and New Year holidays, I re-watched the films of George Lucas’s Star Wars science fiction franchise. Although Star Wars is very well-known, it also has been almost 50 years since it first came out, so a quick synopsis is that it starts with a galaxy under the rule of a democratic but ineffectual government called the Galactic Republic. Internal strife and an outbreak of civil war lead to a politician, Palpatine, being able to seize absolute power and install himself as Galactic Emperor. The formation of the Galactic Empire inspires the rise of the Rebel Alliance. Over the decades, the franchise has produced nine films, which have a timeless quality, showing little awareness of current political and cultural trends but being archetypical enough that many of its themes can be applied to contemporary challenges.

The drivers of the story are individuals who are sensitive to a semi-sentient spiritual force (i.e., the Force). The concept of the Force is influenced by animism and eastern mysticism (George Lucas identifies as a “Buddhist Methodist”). The Force is variously described as being generated either mystically by all living things or by special cells in the body called midi-chlorians. Those born sensitive to the Force can sense the feelings (empathy) and thoughts (telepathy) of others as well as control matter through telekinesis. It seems also that mastery of the Force can be attained either through controlling one’s passions or embracing them fully. The latter leads to the “Dark Side of the Force.”  

At the start of the franchise, this Force has become the focus of two diametrically opposed religious orders of light-saber wielding warrior monks. The Jedi seek to control their desires to focus their use of the Force toward duty and selfless service to others in order to bring peace and justice to the galaxy. The Sith, on the other hand, embrace the Dark Side of the Force and use it to accumulate power for themselves. Palpatine turns out to be a Sith who almost destroys the Jedi through the help of the Jedi-turned Sith Anakin Skywalker, who is renamed Darth Vader when he becomes a Sith. Darth Vader betrays the Jedi but at the end of Episode VI turns back to good and gives his life to save his Jedi son, Luke Skywalker, and defeat Emperor Palpatine. Vader could be seen as a sort of dark messiah who overcomes evil through self-sacrifice after turning good. 

In re-watching the films, I was interested in the ways that both the Jedi and the Sith play a significant role in transforming the galactic civilization. The Jedi act as guardians of the Republic, safeguarding peace and justice. When the greedy Trade Federation attempts to invade the peaceful planet Naboo to exploit its natural resources in Episode I, the Jedi are called in to negotiate with the Trade Federation, though negotiations turn out to be short. When a league of separatists (instigated by the Sith) begins to threaten the Republic, the Jedi intervene at the First Battle of Geonosis in Episode II, albeit with the help of a clone army. It is also ultimately a Jedi who defeats Galactic Emperor Palpatine in Episode VI and restores peace and freedom to the galaxy.

The role of the Jedi is not limited to politics and society. It is also implied that they play a role in the accumulation of knowledge and the advancement of science. The Jedi Library on the urban planet Coruscant contains all knowledge known by the galactic civilization. In the Expanded Universe, which contains novels and games created by fans to expand on the canonical films, there are Jedi researchers who specialize in specific scientific fields, including archaeology, linguistics, geology, astronomy, and biology.

Other than the obvious role of the Sith in creating the Galactic Empire, it is also implied that the Sith actively encourage capitalistic exploitation and extractivism. In the recent Disney Star Wars spinoff shows such as Andor, Imperial officers talk of “profit.” A major plot element of Andor is the Galactic Empire inciting unrest on the planet Ghorman to create pretense for genocide so that the Empire can remove the current  population and strip-mine the planet for a valuable mineral, kalkite.

Intriguingly, the Sith never appear to indulge in the luxuries that come from ruling an empire. Their lifestyle remains austere and monastic. In this way, they resemble Karl Marx’s description of early capitalists in volume I of Capital. The capitalists see themselves only as profit-making machines and shun indulging in the profits for the sake of luxury because that would make them less competitive. In this way, the Sith resemble the ideal capitalist. They have made exploitation and oppression for their own sake a calling as much as the Jedi have made peace and justice a calling.

The actions of the Jedi and the Sith are reflected in real-world religious orders. Because it is my background, I will focus on examples from the Christian tradition.  One specific example is the Jesuits, who have a mixed history both in opposing and reinforcing imperialist oppression and exploitation at different times. An example of the latter is the role of the Jesuits in the Spanish conquest of Guam in the 17th and 18th centuries, where Jesuits acted as agents of Spanish colonialism, encouraging militarization, forced Catholicization, and replacement of the Indigenous culture with European culture. In contrast, the Jesuits have also been advocates and protectors of Indigenous people in Latin America, trying to shield them from the worst excesses of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism during reduccion (forced relocation). 

More recently, Jesuits have worked to oppose European and U.S. imperialism in Latin America as shown by figures such as Ignacio Ellacuria in El Salvador and Ernesto Cardenal in Nicaragua. Jesuits have also distinguished themselves through their work as scientists, such as the planetary astronomer Guy Consolmagno and his work on meteorites, and activists for global peace, such as anti-Viet Nam war activists Daniel and Philip Berrigan (a Josephite).

It is less common for religious orders to make specific social causes their primary mission in the way that the Jedi, but there are modern examples, such as the multi-faith Order of the Sacred Earth which was founded specifically to advocate for protection of the environment and lacks connection to a specific religious tradition.

In this way, the order of the Sacred Earth draws on both science and faith to work toward justice and peace. Lutheran theologian Thomas Hoffman has proposed the concept of exomissiology, the investigation of possible dialogue with extraterrestrials about religion in a way that resists imperialism and colonialism, preserving cultural diversity and autonomy. 

Today, most religious orders are in decline, but members of religious orders continue to inspire real social change. Historically, religious orders have been at the cutting edge of mysticism and spiritual development. Religious orders are likely to continue to have an influence on the direction of spirituality and religion even if they are no longer as influential as they were in the past.  

Throughout history, religious orders have played both the role of the Jedi in being guardians of peace and justice and agents of social and scientific progress and of the Sith as agents of oppression and exploitation, shaping the course of their respective religions. Modern religions must decide whether they will choose the path of the Jedi or the Sith. Our future may depend on it.

The post The Jedi, Religious Orders, Social Progress, and the Advancement of Knowledge appeared first on DSA Religious Socialism.

Popular education is a method of teaching that centers the voices of students starting from their unique perspectives and situations.

The post How to use popular education to build worker power appeared first on EWOC.

“The animal is immediately one with its life activity. It is not distinct from that activity; it is that activity. Man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he directly merges. Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity.” – Karl Marx, “Estranged Labour,” Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

Writing is one of the most important inventions in human history. It allowed us to build civilizations, to coordinate social structures across vast distances, and to fuel humanity’s social, political, and scientific development into the modern age. Thanks to the written word, we can read the exact thoughts of scholars who lived many thousands of years ago, communicate complex ideas to millions of people, and build the democratic political movements capable of remaking society for the benefit of working people.

It has never been more important to preserve and expand our ability to write and communicate clearly. Original writing is now being severely devalued by a current of anti-intellectualism, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, and an unprecedented public disinvestment in education. This is why Midwest Socialist wants to encourage Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members in the greater Midwest to develop their own skills at writing and communication.

Learn, Learn, and Learn Again

During the heyday of the democratic socialist movement in the first two decades of the twentieth century, deep engagement with Marxist theory was considered a prerequisite to leading workers in their struggle against oppression. Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Eugene Debs, Antonio Gramsci, and countless others spent years developing tomes of political theory while they organized tirelessly to overthrow capitalism. They did not see organizing and theorizing as two separate activities, but as two integral parts of the same effort.

In the twentieth century, socialist governments considered mass political education an essential step in building a post-capitalist society. In 1961, Cuba sent 250,000 educated people into the countryside to teach millions of poor workers and campesinos to read, virtually eliminating illiteracy on the island within a few short years. The methods developed during this campaign served as an example for the entire Global South, and the model was successfully implemented in other countries around the world.

Socialist states with highly literate populations took this idea a step further. In East Germany, government-sponsored programs established spaces to encourage workers to express themselves creatively, including through prose and poetry. These programs would have been considered wasteful and useless in a capitalist society, but the socialist government of that country saw value in the political development of the working class through creative pursuits.

Closer to home, universal public education is one of the greatest surviving accomplishments of the working class movement in the United States. The collective knowledge of humanity is our birthright as working people, and it is our responsibility to engage with these ideas and educate ourselves.

A Hollow Education

The relevance of political broadsheets and hand-printed pamphlets has declined precipitously in the last hundred years, but the necessity to write clearly and convincingly has not. We live in a time when a significant percentage of young Americans are falling behind in school, when college students at our nation’s most prestigious universities are incapable of reading a whole book, and when AI is taking away the livelihoods of creative and intellectual laborers on an unprecedented scale. In this context, reading, writing, and learning have taken on new significance.

Public schools are under attack in the U.S. Compounding the damage of decades of chronic disinvestment, Republicans and Democrats alike have established charter school systems across the country that take state money to fund academies – often with reactionary pedagogical mandates –  and predatory, unstable for-profit schools through “school voucher” programs. These efforts take away resources from public schools and leave students behind. This is in addition to the current administration’s broad anti-intellectual right-wing attacks on science, history, tolerance in the classroom, and the basic principle that education should serve students rather than the state’s extremist political agenda.

Furthermore, all modern forms of mass media are deliberately constructed to turn working people into passive consumers of carefully curated political messages that shut out the possibility of radical change. They shamelessly promote unjust and insane wars, give billionaires and their servants unlimited airtime and space to advance their own agendas while marginalizing progressive voices, attempt to smear left-wing candidates for public office, and turn people away from transformative social and political structures.

AI is just the most recent extension of the centuries-long effort to control what working people know, think, and feel. A recent meta-study by the Brookings Institute highlights the dangers of using this untested technology in classrooms. Evidence is mounting that students and adults alike suffer a “cognitive debt” when they over-rely on chatbots to perform intellectual tasks, rendering them incapable of the basic skills needed to function in society and sharply limiting their ability to develop any kind of meaningful political consciousness.

This is why Midwest Socialist does not accept AI-generated writing and strongly discourages the use of AI writing programs. For too many, an ‘AI-assisted’ piece of writing is the end of a conversation rather than the beginning of one. It is an excuse not to engage with ideas, a way to treat essays and creative writing projects as problems to be solved, published, and put away as quickly as possible rather than an exercise in critical thinking and creativity. In this context, the adage “if you couldn’t be bothered to write it, I can’t be bothered to read it” takes on new meaning.

At a time when it appears possible to offload every intellectual exertion to an unthinking machine, engaging with ideas seriously and honestly is quickly becoming a revolutionary act in itself. Despite all the hype from tech companies, working people are still quite skeptical that AI will benefit society in the long run. We can consciously reject the implementation of technologies that don’t serve the needs of the working class.

Why We Write

“Our task is to make thinkers out of fighters and fighters out of thinkers.” – General Gordon Baker, revolutionary educator

All progressive transformation finds its energy from the creative labor of working people. To give an example from American history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the face of the New Deal and arguably its most important champion, but he did not implement it. It required legions of skilled, educated, and competent artisans, craftspeople, engineers, laborers, administrators, artists, writers, and countless others working toward the unified goal of transforming society. We are going to need millions of engaged, curious people eager to work to better society. We will build the future we deserve through a combination of organizing, community building, and unshakable solidarity.

Right now, none of those efforts are where they need to be. In the context of economic stagnation and repression at home and abroad, the fight for a better world can at times feel hopeless. Individual action is not enough to reverse the long-term trends of illiteracy and intellectual shortcutting that have plagued our society for decades. We need robustly funded schools, mass political education, a media not beholden to private interests, and an economy that fosters creative pursuits as more than products to be packaged for consumption. But that effort starts by building our own capabilities, collaborating with others, and working tirelessly to create and sustain the kinds of unapologetically socialist institutions that will build a better society.

There’s a reason every child is taught to write essays in school. Writing teaches us to organize our thoughts, to engage with primary sources, and to express ourselves clearly and succinctly to a wide audience. These skills are essential to any political movement. We cannot rely on capitalist-controlled media and obsequious AI to do our thinking for us.

If it is indeed true that every cook can govern, as the old saying goes, then any DSA member can write. Not every single person must become a journalist, theorist, or polemicist. There are a million ways to contribute to our struggle. But if you wrote stories on lined notebook paper in the fifth grade, composed multi-paragraph social media posts in response to articles you see online, or simply have had ideas and perspectives on our work and movement, we want to hear from you. 

If you would like to write for Midwest Socialist, contact us through our Google form. Be sure to read our Editorial Policy before submitting. We publish op-eds, articles about leftist history, interviews, left-wing reviews of recently released media and leftist classics, and other forms of writing, and we are particularly interested in original journalism about events happening in the Midwest.

If you have an idea that you need help turning into an outline, an outline you need help turning into a draft, or an article you’re wrestling with, our Editorial Board offers Zoom appointments to discuss your ideas and help you build them into a publishable article. The editorial board doesn’t guarantee that every individual article will be published, but we will work with you to build your project into a piece we can all be proud of. Once you’ve submitted a draft, we will make edits and send a final draft ready to be published.

Writing is a skill that takes time and practice, just like learning a language, mastering a trade, or playing an instrument. The only way to improve is to jump right in, and Midwest Socialist is a great place to get started. We look forward to reading your work.

The post Why You Should Write for Midwest Socialist appeared first on Midwest Socialist.

We are excited to announce our first federal endorsement for 2026!

Oliver Larkin is taking on one of the most war-mongering democrats in Congress, and DSA is proud to endorse him. Four Florida DSA chapters have already endorsed on the ground, canvassing and carrying petitions for Oliver. We will no longer allow billionaire-backed democrats to claim that we have to spend billions on war while healthcare is further decimated — we’re challenging them in the primaries with organized people who can’t be bought.

Oliver is part of a slate of candidates in the Socialist Cash Takes Out Capitalist Trash fundraising project!

You’ve probably received enough communications regarding this Saturday’s “No Kings” demonstrations, which will be held all across the country. At last count more than three thousand demonstrations are being organized, and there will no doubt be at least one near you.

In case you have been procrastinating, here is a link to find the demonstrations closest to you.

The first of these demos last June had a million or two people attend. The next one, in October, had at least five million. We’re aiming to double that this time, which would put us in striking distance of the 3.5% of the US population that research says is necessary to topple authoritarian regimes in the making. 

Against the backdrop of brutal anti-immigrant violence and preparation for election suppression at home, and clueless trade policy matched with deadly wars abroad, a growing number of Americans are coming out to the streets. These include people who have never been politically involved outside of voting every few years, and progressives who sat out the 2024 presidential elections because they didn’t think there was any difference between the two parties and the two candidates. Within DSA and the rest of the left this often took the form of denouncing the “twin parties of capital”. Which they are. But that picture, drawn without nuance, underestimated what fascism is and does.

Now we know. 

A reasonable question at this point is, ‘What sort of message should socialists be sending to the other demonstrators, and the world, a year into America’s fascist descent?’ You have the opportunity to weigh in on that as you make your protest sign. “No Kings” is a start, not a program. “Workers Over Billionaires” moves us closer to the ideas we need.

This mass demonstration of opposition is absolutely necessary, but not sufficient to stop MAGA from dragging us along on its road to hell. For that we need to be broadening the struggle with other tactics and strategies (mutual aid, mass strikes, non-violent direct action, and electoral politics) that build a powerful anti-fascist movement and lay the basis for moving past the failed politics of the past. What happened in Minneapolis/St. Paul on January 23—‘No Work, No School, No Shopping’—is the best example so far. DSA has joined with labor and community partners in the May Day Strong coalition, which understands “No Kings” as a step toward a sharper critique of capitalism on May 1. On that day we will see how prepared we are to advance beyond a nationwide demonstration to a national movement.

We’ll see you out in the streets this weekend. And then we’ll continue to train and educate and prepare ourselves for the struggle ahead.

In the February issue of California Red we ran a background article on the California DSA campaign we call “The Fair and Responsible Tax Plan for California’s Wealthy”, which embraces both measures currently gathering signatures to qualify for the November state ballot. That was the first in a series we are running between now and the election. Here is the next installment.—Editor

The unfathomably vast yet still growing level of California’s economic inequality

Our East Bay DSA crew of five had planted ourselves in the parking lot of a supermarket in North Berkeley on a warm mid-March afternoon. We were collecting signatures for the Billionaires Tax and the Protecting Education and Health Care Act. During our three-hour shift we did not do badly, gathering several dozen for each measure. Even better were the conversations, which ranged from informing voters about the nuts and bolts of the proposals to broader questions about economic inequality: how much money do billionaires have, anyway? What share of the total income of California, the fifth largest economy in the world, goes to the one percent? What would be the right amount of taxes for them to pay? And how do we get them to pay their fair share? 

We explore a few of these ideas and numbers below.

A cool million

It used to be hard for the typical working class stiff to imagine what a million dollars looks like. A million dollars? That’s what millionaires have, and I’m not even close to being one of those, we would say. But that was before a million dollars or thereabouts became the average price of a house in Los Angeles. It’s slightly below that statewide, and slightly above that in San Francisco. But you get the idea. Generally speaking, if you can afford a home, you know what a million dollars looks like—it looks like your house. (If you’re a renter, it looks like that house.)

A billion dollars was even more unfathomable. We didn’t have many in the United States until relatively recently; as late as 1990 there were just 66 of them. Now there are close to a thousand, and we’ve got 213 right here in the Golden State. Since we know that a million dollars looks like a house these days, we can imagine that since a billion is a thousand millions, it would look like a thousand houses. 

No one needs a thousand houses to live in, so most billionaires scrape by with just ten or twelve. Of course, being billionaires, they need somewhat larger houses than most people, so they might spend five or ten million dollars or even more—fifty million! A hundred million!—on their humble abodes. If they owned ten of those, that could put a pretty big dent in their billion dollar fortune. But guess what? The average wealth of a billionaire is not a billion dollars. It’s currently around 8.6 billion dollars, according to inequality.org. So that would be 8,600 houses. 

Minus the dozen they “live” in, that would leave them with enough money to purchase 8,588 more houses. I don’t know about you, but as the numbers climb my ability to translate the million dollar house into a clear image of the wealth of billionaires is beginning to get somewhat unequal to the task. And that’s before we try to imagine what the total wealth of 213 billionaires looks like. 

Trillions

It is reliably estimated that thanks to the ginormous growth of their fortunes during the past ten years (Trump I’s tax cuts, pandemic economy when there was nothing to invest in except stock buybacks, Trump II’s continuing tax cuts, massive AI bubble, and outright looting of public resources) our couple hundred California billionaires collectively own (hold onto your “tax the rich” baseball cap) two trillion dollars’ worth of assets. In California they’re doing a little better than the average 8.6 billionaire; they’ve each got around 9.4 billion. 

Although I just said I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around the houses when they added up to the average 8,600 houses each (adjusted now to 9,400), let’s try it out with trillions. That’s a thousand billions. So collectively our 213 ultra-rich people with their two trillion dollars would have, let’s see, carry the one, a bit over 1.8 million houses, at a million dollars each. 

You might think that that’s enough for anyone, and these individuals must be looking around for philanthropies to unload to. But no, according to a recent New York Times article, billionaire giving has fallen precipitously in the last few years as their ‘uneasy accommodation with fascism’ (fascism scholar Robert Paxton’s formulation describing the initial response of economic elites to the uncouth new political rulers) has grown considerably less uneasy—more like downright comfortable. The 213 billionaires in California have seen their total wealth grow by nearly a third in this period as the rest of us have been essentially running in place—and that’s not enough for some of them. 

If you listen to one of their loudest mouthpieces, tech mogul Ron Conway, the proposed billionaire tax is not only bad for his 212 other peeps; it’s way worse than that. He was recently quoted in a New York Times article with a sentiment that inadvertently revealed how that kind of bank account can warp one’s perspective: According to Mr. Conway, referring to the billionaire tax, “This is the greatest tragedy this state has ever felt.” Hmmm. I wonder whether the families of dozens of people who lost their lives and thousands who lost homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires in 2025 agree? Or if Japanese-Californians, 93,000 of whom were incarcerated during World War II, share that view? Or if Native Californians, whose population fell from a third a million people in 1800 to about 15,000 by 1910 during the genocide that did them in, would agree with Conway’s historical research? 

On the other hand

At the other end of the economic spectrum, California’s borders contain about 7 million people below the official poverty line, or 18% of its roughly 40 million people. But the official federal poverty line ($33,000/year for a family of four) is laughably (that’s probably the wrong word) below an actual ability to live. One measure of how many people are barely getting by in California is the number of MediCal recipients, dependent on the federal Medicaid funding stream for most of their care costs. Although California is a net donor to the federal treasury, it does rely on $20 billion per year from the feds to support MediCal. Some 15 million Californians are enrolled in MediCal.

Let’s move on from the tiny extremely rich and the very large poor slices of the state and look at the condition of the merely rich, the top 1% income earners, which includes the billionaires but extends downward to the merely well-to-do. Although calculations vary, the bottom rung of the ladder for a one percenter is just about a million dollars a year in income; the median merely rich, right in the middle of the one percent, is $3.6 million a year. Here’s chart to help us visualize how their share of total California income has grown over the past half century. 

That’s right, believe your eyes. The top 1%’s share of income in the Golden State has grown over the past half century from about one twelfth of total income to almost one third. Richest state in the richest country in the world? Yes, but a vast chunk of the riches seems to have ended up in the pockets of people who didn’t need the transfer. 

On the third hand, if all of the state’s total income had been divided up equally, every person in California in 2024 would have received around $80,000—which means that for a family of four, combining their incomes, the household would have had $320,000—just a little under ten times the official poverty line.  

“But that would be socialism!” cry the billionaires, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and probably quite a few temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Well, sort of. We’ll get into that some other time. One thing is clear: it would certainly be different from what we’ve got.

When HR-1, Trump’s Big Bad Budget Bill, first passed last summer, the California Medical Association warned of “catastrophic” consequences. They were right.

Residents of Glenn County now travel 40 minutes to the nearest emergency room, thanks to a 40% funding cut that forced the county’s only hospital to shut down. St. Johns Community Health in Los Angeles struggles to stay open, after seeing one-third of its operating revenue disappear. $50 million in cuts have forced the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to close more than half its community clinics; besides vaccinations, the clinics provided screening and treatment of tuberculosis and HIV. In Alameda County, Wilma Chan Hospital narrowly averted a layoff of 400 workers while the County searches  for new funding sources to keep them on the job.

MediCal, California’s version of the federal Medicaid program, currently covers one in five working Californians and half the state’s children. A 25% cut in state and federal spending is expected to strip close to 3 million people of their coverage by 2028. People on Medicaid will lose access to reproductive health services.  

Nor has Medicare been spared. Refugees and asylum-seeking immigrants who were on  Medicare no longer qualify. Other non-citizens were already barred from the program. 

HR-1’s proponents claimed the only people harmed by Medicaid cuts will be those who should not have been getting benefits in the first place—what were once referred to as the “undeserving poor. ” The new law requires that any adult under 65 who is not caring for young children must provide proof of working at least 80 hours a month to qualify for Medicaid, so long as their employers met the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.  

“Too onerous”

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, most people on Medicaid already work, but may find it “too onerous to demonstrate compliance” with the work requirement. The UC Berkeley Labor Center estimates that this could account for more than half the Californians expected to lose their MediCal coverage.  Their hours may fluctuate; they may be laid off temporarily or change jobs; they may be self-employed, or work for an employer who is unable or unwilling to provide the necessary documentation. The same illness that required access to Medicaid could also disqualify you from getting it, if it keeps you off work for any length of time. 

Work requirements don’t come cheap; one of the ironies of HR-1 is that the cost of implementing them could offset any savings from  throwing people off the rolls. Georgia is a case in point. Medicaid is jointly funded by state and federal governments, and one of the best features of the Affordable Care Act to make federal Medicaid dollars available for states  that cover people who make  up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Georgia took the money, but added a work requirement. As a result,  Pro Publica reports that “most of the tax dollars used to launch and implement the program have gone toward paying administrative costs rather than covering health care.”  Worse, many Georgians who complied with the work requirement still found their coverage terminated. 

The targets of HR-1

HR-1 targets those who benefited from expanded access to Medicaid—including 5 million Californians—in other ways. They are now required to reestablish their eligibility every six months. Every doctor’s visit requires  a $35 co-payment. In California, providers who will take them on as patients will likely become harder to find, since the state will no longer augment notoriously stingy Medicaid payments. And no one on Medicaid can count on being reimbursed if they get medical treatment more than a  month before their eligibility is confirmed.

More than any other group, Californias’s immigrants will feel the impact of the cuts;  here, the state must assume its share of the responsibility. California was the first state in the nation to grant MediCal eligibility without regard to immigration status. This did not come easy or happen overnight; it was the product of a protracted, step-by-step struggle to extend state funds to cover those denied access by the feds—first immigrant children, then Dreamers, finally all state residents, whether “legal” or not. 

This victory for immigrant rights is now in peril.  California has responded to lost federal health care dollars by barring any new enrollment in MediCal for undocumented adults. Those already enrolled must pay a $30 monthly premium. Even one missed payment gets you dropped from the program, with no opportunity to reenroll. In fact, leaving the program for any reason, even temporary, means you can’t get back in. Those who remain enrolled must now pay out of pocket for dental care.

A weapon in the war on immigrants

How is it that that a state that boasts the world’s fourth largest economy could allow access to health care to be used as a weapon in Donald Trump’s war on immigrants, all in the name of “austerity budgeting”? Much of the blame lies with the health care system itself. A plethora of profit-driven private insurance plans, coupled with various public programs that try to patch up the system’s holes, make rampant administrative waste and glaring inequities inevitable, while driving health care costs through the roof. 

The state legislature is already on record in favor of a “unified financing” system that provides comprehensive benefits and equal access for all Californians, at a projected savings of $158 billion a year. AB 1900, the latest attempt to adopt a single payer health plan in California, fleshes out what the system should look like.  But it is strictly a policy bill; effective financing for a truly comprehensive, universal health care system in the state would require federal waivers that aren’t likely to happen as long as Trump is in the White House. 

That doesn’t mean the money isn’t already there. It’s just that so much it is in the hands of people who are exempt from equitable taxation. That’s the rationale for the Billionaire’s Tax, a one-time 5 percent state tax on assets over $1 billion. It would affect only about 200 people, but would bring in enough money to offset all the federal revenue cuts from  HR-1. 

A second measure, to extend Proposition 55, the Education and Health Care Act of 2026, would make permanent an existing state tax on incomes in the top 2 percent’s brackets, due to expire in 2030. It wouldn’t bring in any new revenue, but it should prevent further cuts to cash-strapped public schools and colleges, and sets aside money as well for children’s health.

Both measures are currently collecting signatures for the November ballot and are endorsed by California DSA. On March 15, East Bay DSA created a Tax the Rich Working Group to get them on the ballot and work for their passage.

Neither measure represents a long-term solution to the health care crisis. They’re more like applying a tourniquet to a cut artery—a stopgap measure, to buy time until you can get the patient to a doctor. But without it, the patient could die. We can’t let that happen.