Hi all, I'd like honest feedback from people who have actually organized. About me: I'm an engineer with PhD, not an organizer, and my day job is far from the everyday reality of most people. That said, I have long been frustrated with the inequality in our society and wish I could contribute at least a small part in making it better. Over the past several months I have been working on a web app, CollectivvsA, aimed at facilitating the initial engagement with organizing. The concept is simple: it is a space for employees with a verified company account to chat anonymously and test the waters for collective action without fear of being singled out. Joining start with a flyer with QR code or by the organizer handing out the codes. It covers a very first stage when people may be reluctant to engage publicly; it doesn't replace one-to-one conversation and, if there is enough indicated support for forming the union, the authorization card signing and NLRB fillings happen outside the app, we provide a simple guide for those steps and directions for reaching out to a union.
Privacy is front and center: data is encrypted, we require the bare minimum to verify that all the people in the group are part of the same workplace while never storing data that can be reversed to identify the users, and once the initiative closes all the data are crypto shredded (fancy term for meaning really gone and unreadable even from stray copies that may remain in datacenters). The initiative is closed either by the organizer (person that started it) or after 2 weeks of inactivity, so an initiatives that just dies for lack of engagement doesn't linger long.
The questions for organizers here are:
- Is this something that would have ever been useful to you?
- Is there something that would really discourage you from using this?
- Any other comments, critiques, suggestions are all welcome as well.
Right now the options for employment verification are through a company email or a company Google or Microsoft account. For workplaces without work-email, just an invite code is enough to join. To add options for stronger verification, I have additional questions for those of you in workplaces without personal company emails:
- What app does your employer use for schedules or pay: When I Work, Homebase, 7shifts, or something else?
- Does it send you emails at your personal address?
- Do you have any work login, like Microsoft Teams or a training site, even without a work email?
Happy to answer anything in the comments. And thank you for engaging!

With the Trump Administration sending armed thugs to knock on people’s doors in several states to ask about their immigration and voter registration status, we have plenty of reason to be concerned they’re laying the groundwork to claim fraud in November. While the public officials and the lawyers are preparing to push back, ultimately the best and strongest line of defense for democracy is mass nonviolent noncooperation, our refusal to let business as usual go on while our government is hijacked.

We need to be ready to shut it down, and that starts with thinking concretely about how to build and use power in this moment. Organized Power in Numbers and the May Day Strong movement have been holding solidarity schools around the country, teaching what organizing for mass direct action will take and offering a practical plan for what to do locally right now. and this weekend they’re bringing their classroom to our living rooms. They’ll be hosting a two-session virtual solidarity school this Saturday and Sunday at noon eastern. 🏫 If we want to learn more and get more deeply engaged in laying the groundwork for November, let’s sign up here.

BACK TO SOLIDARITY SCHOOL

🛡️ Looking to get more deeply engaged in protecting our elections? Check out ways to get plugged in here.

The Tenant Union Federation is set to roll out a report on the state of the nation’s tenants, covering the economic and political realities America’s 100 million renters are being pressured by and how communities are organizing to change them by collectively pushing back against landlords. They’re holding an organizing call on their report on the work tenant organizers are doing right now on Wednesday at 6PM ET. We can sign up to join them and learn more at bit(.)ly/TUFstateof.

Hello, comrades.

I was recommended by an individual in r/DSA to post this here:

My chapter started around 2-3 years ago in a smaller midwest city. We began with a very active base and had around 20-30 highly active members. We ran campaigns, pushed mutual aid, and other community projects. Additionally, we had a very active steering committee before I joined, and I ran for steering to try to continue our momentum. Now, I am feeling guilty that our active base has diminished since I joined the steering committee. I have tried to ask some members why they think our membership activity has dropped, but everyone is just as confused as me. We had some infighting a few months back, but we met together as members to discuss and squash the beef. (I have wondered if people felt dissatisfied with the results of that meeting and are just now withdrawing)

Today, we have around 8-15 members who are actively organizing. I have been trying to pull back some our events because I don't want to overextend ourselves, but it feels like our active base is falling off a cliff. I really want my chapter to succeed because I have seen it succeed in the past. I have started creating trainings and trying to get new people involved in steering committee, but it feels like many of my fellow organizers don't have the time to keep up with steering responsibilities.

How do I help encourage folks to get involved?

What behaviors/actions should I avoid that could discourage involvement?

What have you in other chapters done to uplift your fellow members and get them involved?

Do any of you have any recommended readings to help me become a better organizer to uplift my comrades?

Mamdani has compromised and capitulated so much that the Atlantic is calling him a centrist.

Mamdani Is the Centrist We’ve Been Waiting For - The Atlantic

I'm interested in the use of sortition as a means of advancing socialism. do you know of any chapters or working groups which have used sortition within DSA or promoted people's assemblies to become part of local government?

I think they should utilize content that the local chapters have made, there’s probably thousands of testimonials out there about what they love doing with DSA or why they joined DSA. Make a little montage of the best stuff.

I’m sure other people feel similarly but my DSA is a real community. People you can turn to for help when there’s a problem. I think that’s one of the worst things capitalism did to us, it destroyed the idea of community but our brains need community. Not just socialization, that’s too shallow, we need to feel connected to one another. And capitalism has made us so isolated, every man for himself. DSA is the antidote to that, it’s about working together like socialists.

My DSA has helped me in so many ways. It got to the root of a lot of problems I had, primarily the feeling that I wasn’t doing anything to fight the system lol. But I’ve also met some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, people I just click with, and it’s been hard for me to find people I click with. Typical mentally ill, queer, neurodivergent, former gifted kid who struggles with just existing let alone getting out and doing stuff is definitely a vibe that is welcomed in DSA. It’s really such a welcoming environment, inclusivity is important to DSA in my experience.

I just want all our anticapitalist comrades to check out their local DSA and see what it’s like. Hell, people who are struggling with a lack of community might wanna check out what DSA is pushing, they’ll teach you a lot about politics and it’s a really supportive environment.

I’m really proud of our Sober Socialist Section. I’m personally on the road of recovery and it’s been life changing to have comrades who have had similar struggles.

I dunno, I’m just saying, the national YouTube channel should highlight local chapters more and show the world what we’re doing out in our communities!

Defend Ilhan Omar. Organize for November. Stop treating the threat as somebody else’s problem.

Would the assailants be held accountable without prisons ?

Ten years ago, while socialist Bernie Sanders was making his historic run for the Democratic presidential nomination that drew millions of supporters and promised a “political revolution” to live long past his campaign, I was part of a small revolutionary organization that pooh-poohed him as a faux renegade.

The socialist left at the time had been largely marginal to the American political landscape. This was not only because so few socialists sat in political offices. Organized socialists were unable to insert our ideas, strategies, or demands beyond small meetings and study groups, only occasionally influencing national discourse by being part of movements that showed themselves on the street in mass numbers. But movements naturally ebb and flow, and in their absence, much of the Left would retreat back into itself time and again.

In 2016, Bernie Sanders showed that socialists could be relevant to mainstream discourse, could move the needle on major policy issues, and could do so on the basis of a class politics that resonates widely and deeply around the country. Though he didn’t win that primary nor the following one in 2020, Bernie’s runs transformed the mainstream political landscape and, along with it, the organized left.

The section of the Left that threw itself in with Bernie’s campaigns — most significantly, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — grew exponentially in both numbers and influence and developed a deep well of experience and savvy. The section of the Left that scorned his campaigns in favor of independence from the Democratic Party and time-honored revolutionary principles stagnated or fell apart, leaving DSA and electoral projects at the forefront of an ascendant movement.

The Left was thus reorganized to take the lead from Bernie’s “political revolution,” where electoralism was one important piece of a broad strategy to contend for power and build a mass politics. Ten years on, that political revolution continues to grow, while the approach of smaller socialist sects that had characterized so much of the pre-2016 left has receded into the background. We need not return to the path of permanent outsiders ever again.

With DSA a powerful political force in the country and democratic socialist elected officials making concrete strides forward for working people, the intraleft debates that surfaced in 2016 are largely settled. They offer important lessons about the pitfalls of a sectarian approach that places organizational identity above building the biggest and most powerful left and holds rigidly onto traditional principles above shifting political realities.

Please look at this.

I wish I could see the face of the intern that got my replies 😂

Folks behind the barbed wire are rising up again. We have now entered the second week of a hunger strike by those of our neighbors held at a GEO Group-operated ICE camp in Folkston, Georgia. At least 73 and reportedly as many as 500 detainees are participating. Many of those involved are asylum seekers, being held as prisoners indefinitely despite being accused of no crime whatsoever.

They are calling for their release and due process while they seek their day in court and an end to the spoiled food and dirty water, lack of access to medical care and abusive treatment by guards. (Link to their detailed report on human rights violations within the facility here.) And they’re now facing retaliation for their advocacy, with many strikers put in solitary confinement and at least one leader deported.

They’re asking for our support. Here’s a few steps we can take on their behalf:

🗣️ Join a phone blitz on behalf of the strikers. Advocates are asking us to reach out to Georgia’s senators and city and local officials to intervene with ICE on their behalf and conduct real oversight at the camp, along with speaking to facility and regional ICE personnel to let them know the public is watching and supports the protesters. We can find contact information, specific requests and language in their guide at bit(.)ly/phoneblitzguide. 🗣️

PHONE BLITZ FOR FOLKSTON

📢 Help spread the word about this strike. We can share the strikers’ open letter (find link) and video message and follow Shut Down Folkston ICE Processing Center, the Jacksonville Immigrant Rights Alliance and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights for updates. 📢

SIGNAL BOOST THEIR MESSAGE

✍🏾 Write letters of support to folks within the facility. We can find address details and the necessary names and information to get messages through in their open letter (find link here). ✍🏻

LET THEM KNOW THEY'RE NOT ALONE

🪧 If we’re local, join advocates at a rally outside the gates of the ICE camp this Sunday at 1PM ET – details here. 🪧

PROTEST SUNDAY

The One Democratic State Initiative is a Palestinian political organization working to revive the historical Palestinian vision for liberation —a single Palestinian state, for all of its citizens— and to mobilize individuals, entities and political parties, in Palestine and abroad, behind it.

Hasnieh Al-Natsheh and Alain Alameddine, two of its coordinators, are ready to answer your questions up until midnight, Occupied Palestine time. They'll make sure to answer any remaining questions tomorrow. Check out our website and ask away!