Socialism

Transcript

With the backing of DSA, Somerville City Councilor-at-Large and democratic socialist Willie Burnley Jr. is challenging two-term incumbent Mayor Katjana Ballantyne.

Burnley’s campaign comes as Zohran Mamdani’s upset in the New York City mayoral race stunned the world. Mamdani made international headlines on June 24th by defeating a powerful ex-Governor born into a political dynasty and backed by the entire Democratic Party establishment.

Mamdani and Burnley are DSA-endorsed members of their local chapters, and their political styles are similar. They are both self-described organizers. Both have employed creative campaign techniques and developed robust field operations on a scale that addresses the needs of two very different cities, while tackling broadly felt working-class issues. For Zohran, it was freezing the rent, making buses fast and free, and universal childcare. For Burnley, it’s affordable social housing, uplifting union rights and tenants’ rights, and increasing resources for K-12 students. The campaign has hosted creative events like a cannabis-infused fundraiser, and its volunteers are already knocking on doors five days a week.

Working Mass spoke with Willie over video call to ask him about his background, his historic campaign, his work on Somerville City Council so far, and – of course – his views on what is most important for Somerville’s future.

Denzel has deep roots in this city. He is a lifelong Detroiter. He has been an activist since his college days at Michigan State University. He is a founding member of Black Youth Project 100, an organization that fights against the “school-to-prison pipeline” that undermines the futures of young people of color. Denzel was also an elected Detroit City Charter Commissioner, and served as communications director and advisor for U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib.

DSA has already backed him in the past, in his run for Detroit City Clerk in 2021. This time DSA members are pouring a lot of resources and time into his campaign, in the Electoral Committee and beyond. Denzel is a self-identified and unapologetic socialist, and a lot of us are looking at the current political climate as an opportunity to elect such candidates, a climate which is reflected in our growing membership in the last year.

Americans are crying out for representation that openly addresses their economic anxiety instead of gaslighting them that everything is just great, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did in 2024. Voters want something different. And many of them are open to listening to someone willing to say, for example, that billionaires shouldn’t exist, and that immigrants are a vital part of our community who should not be rounded up like dogs. Denzel is one of these candidates.

We call on our fellow socialists to join our fight for public transit in four ways:

• Push your chapter to use public transit. Like public libraries, public transit budgets rise or fall with public demand. If the coordinated Montgomery bus boycott ended racial segregation, a coordinated bus-riding effort by California DSA chapters could force more public investment. A great place to start is making all chapter meetings, socials, and events fully accessible by transit!
• Join your local transit coalition so we can fight on a unified front. There are pro-transit organizers already at work near you; see this joint letter that Move California sent to Sacramento legislators for 100 different organizations!
• Make public comments at agency board meetings. Because the monthly BOD meeting of your local transit agency is probably underattended, your public comment can directly influence decision makers. Use your two or three minutes to air socialist perspectives and solutions! You can show solidarity with Peninsula DSA by commenting in person or via Zoom in favor of SB 63 at the next SamTrans meeting on Wednesday, July 2. (Details at peninsuladsa.org/public-transit.)
• Support your local transit workers (e.g, ATU, SEIU, TWU AFL-CIO). Santa Clara County’s Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) workers proved so essential that a Superior Court judge ordered them back to work on March 26, 2025. Imagine the transit we could win when we stand in solidarity with the workers who provide it.

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/30356079

Since June 2024, we have been building a communist encyclopedia, Revolupedia, to provide easily-understood explanations to Marxist theory and allow for further study.

Overtime, our project and community has expanded to maintain hundreds of articles, a library of texts from Marxist thinkers, and detailed quotations.

We welcome all communists to join our effort to build a revolutionary compendium, whether anti-revisionist Marxist–Leninist or Maoist!

revolupedia.net

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/30028880

See the stickied comment below for an explanation and statement of our purpose, based on simple back-of-the-napkin math

E: if someone could please link this community to r/aspen and r/roaringforkvalley I would greatly appreciate it. I’ve been IP banned by the all powerful AI mod monster, like many folks on Lemmy

A short and well written book (about 60 pages) that encapsulates the ideas of socialism quite well in a plain and easily understandable manner, with the issues of 1911 mirroring our current predicament well.

Excerpt:

When the worker gets his first job the world about him takes off its mask. He sees it as it is. Hours are long and most work is monotonous. Any child or young person naturally very much dislikes this first harsh experience of the world of the working class. His games and fun-making are given up. His physical growth is stunted and his mind dwarfed more or less. Long ago nearly all of the young men who went to work for wages began by learning a trade. This trade was very often extremely interesting to them. It educated their minds and developed their bodies. If they were apprenticed at eighteen, then, perhaps at twenty one, they were sure of steady work and good wages. Today very few of the working people learn a trade. They work in some factory, store or office at tasks which they perform as well in a month as they do in ten years. If the young wage earner is vigorous in mind and body he revolts at this labor and makes a desperate struggle to secure an education or otherwise make it possible for himself to rise out of the working class. The stronger and healthier his body and the keener his mind, the harder does he fight. But he finds, except in very rare instances, that the doors of opportunity are closed to the children of the >workers.

If the young worker learns one of the trades which still remain in modern industry, he finds after he has learned it that it also is being abolished by the invention of new machinery. He may go to night school and complete a course of study, or take a correspondence course in mechanics or some other form of applied science. If he does he will discover that his knowledge, gotten at such sacrifice of time, savings and effort, will not raise his wages. There are now so many educated poor people that their pay is on the average much less than that of skilled workers in the trades. Another hope of the young workers, men and women, is to save money and start in some small business. Others have risen and become wealthy. Why not they? So, by giving up all pleasures, by overwork and pitiful economies, does the young worker make his start in business. If he has been fortunate enough not to lose his money through some bank swindle, he at last, after years of effort, tries his luck. The best data we have show that more than nine-tenths of those who engage in small business fail utterly. The small portion who "succeed" do so by working night and day, Sundays and holidays. Even they make but meager livings, no better on the average than the wage-workers.

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