The fossil fuel industry is responsible for the worsening climate impacts you see in the news. Today, we look at one of the most visible, most frightening faces of the climate crisis: wildfires.
The post Fossil Fuels Did This: Wildfires appeared first on 350.
by El Habib Ben Amara
Ecological restoration is often approached as a technical challenge, but lasting recovery depends on restoring the cultural relationships that once sustained landscapes. Drawing on the traditional oasis communities of the Algerian Sahara, El Habib Ben Amara examines how modernization disrupted systems of water sharing, architecture, agriculture, and collective memory that had evolved over centuries. The article argues that environmental resilience cannot be rebuilt through engineering alone. Recovering local ecological knowledge and the social practices embedded within it is essential to restoring degraded ecosystems and creating sustainable futures rooted in both culture and place.by Brett Wilkins
“I don’t feel like there is a ceasefire at all,” said a man who witnessed an Israeli missile attack on a hospital.“I don’t feel like there is a ceasefire at all,” said a man who witnessed an Israeli missile attack on a hospital.by Michael K. Smith
Michael K. Smith examines Israel’s historical military and security relationships with governments and armed forces across Latin America, arguing that these links shaped counterinsurgency campaigns, authoritarian rule, and human rights abuses during the Cold War and beyond. The article traces alleged Israeli involvement in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Colombia, and other countries, connecting these histories to contemporary security policies under leaders such as Nayib Bukele. It contends that methods first developed in Palestine were later exported to the Americas, influencing state violence, mass incarceration, and repression, while highlighting enduring debates over accountability, international solidarity, and the legacy of theseconflicts.by Ellen Isaacs
The growth of the Democratic Socialists of America has renewed debate about the future of the US left. Ellen Isaacs argues that DSA’s electoral strategy and commitment to reforming capitalism through existing institutions divert energy from building an independent, mass working-class movement. Examining the organization’s politics and the record of DSA-backed officials, the article contends that meaningful social transformation cannot be achieved through elections alone. It calls instead for workplace organizing, militant collective action, and a revolutionary understanding of capitalism as the basis for achieving a society beyond exploitation and inequality.by Abayomi Azikiwe
Parallels can be drawn between MAGA in the United States and retrograde elements domestically, as well as other Western imperialist states.After more than a half century studying, teaching, writing about and participating in the California labor movement, I am completely clear about one simple lesson: when we are united, we win, and when we allow ourselves to be divided, we lose.
This is, of course, not an original idea. We might look to Abraham Lincoln’s “A house divided against itself cannot stand” on the eve of the Civil War as one similar observation among many others along the way. But the difficulty, over and over again, is that powerful forces are always working to divide us, and they succeed all too often. And they are doing it again right now.
This year California’s unions have an unprecedented opportunity to tap the well-deserved anger its members are feeling toward the anti-union Trump administration and its ultra-rich supporters in our state. Two ‘tax the rich’ ballot measures, Prop 3 and Prop 40, will be voted on by the state’s electorate on November 3.
Prop 3 is a currently existing tax on the wealthiest two percent of income earners. Last year it brought over $14 billion into the state treasury to support public education, as well as other public services. But it is temporary. If allowed to expire it will cause devastating reductions in an already-strapped public education system. Prop 3 proposes to make it permanent.
Prop 40 is a proposed temporary wealth tax on the state’s couple hundred billionaires. It would assess a one-time tax, to be paid over five years, on the billionaires’ collective hoard of two trillion dollars—a sum bloated by their federal tax cuts engineered by Trump and his congressional allies. The amount to be raised—one hundred billion dollars—will prevent cuts in Medi-Cal spending that otherwise will throw millions of the state’s poorest families off of their health care.
Neither of these taxes will harm in the slightest the well-off people who will pay them and they will benefit all Californians who wish to be educated and healthy. A no-brainer for the labor movement, yes?
The state’s unions are in two camps supporting one or the other. There are only a handful of unions on board both measures. There are reasons for this, as there always are. Some of the reasons are better than others, but what they add up to is trouble for the state’s working families and the entire labor movement if either of the measures fail to pass.
The obvious direct harm would be to students and patients, but it radiates outward from there to their families and communities. That’s easy to see. How does it harm the state’s unions? In general, unions, when they have their heads screwed on straight, understand the necessity for the rich to pay their fair share of taxes. Without that, the responsibility of supporting social services falls on the shoulders of the working class, union members and non-members alike, who generally are willing to take on their fair share, so long as their employers, large corporations and the rest of the capitalist class are doing so too.
The effort by a small cadre of ultra-conservative ultra-rich to divide and confuse the California working class over this issue has been underway since late last year. The sociopathic greed of a dozen or so megalomaniac tech bros have propelled them to spend an astonishing $125 million against the Billionaire Tax. Their arguments are simple and false, but when you have that kind of money to burn we enter the territory of Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels’ infamous advice that a big lie repeated enough times becomes true. Mailers, digital ads, right wing think tank “studies” and now an $87 million television buy are demonstrating two things: that the ideas of our contemporary right wing anti-tax propagandists owe much to fascist thinkers; and that the effectiveness of such a campaign is enhanced when it has largely gone unanswered by the proponents of Prop 40 and Prop 3.
Prop 40 proponents haven’t answered in kind because they don’t have that kind of money at their disposal. But they also haven’t shown that they are building the kind of grassroots union campaign—big coalition, major mobilization of rank and file members in phone banks, canvassing and visible street demonstrations; in other words, the best tools at unions’ disposal—that it will take to defeat the billionaires.
Prop 3 proponents haven’t answered because the attacks—so far—have only been against the billionaire tax, and the Prop 3 coalition leaders do not seem to understand that there is a higher principle involved here than the violations of labor coalition-building protocols committed by SEIU-UHW. The higher principle is, quite simply, the general good of the entire California working class—not to mention understanding the damage that will be done to momentum around the country for tax the rich campaigns (most recently successful in places like Massachusetts and Washington state) should the Billionaire Tax be defeated. A defeat will also hurt the chances of future progressive tax campaigns here in California.
IWW leader Big Bill Haywood explained to striking Lawrence textile workers in 1912 that while the AFL organizes “like this”, the IWW organizes like this: a fist. The lesson is still the right one.
In 1912, during the massive “Bread and Roses” strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Industrial Workers of the World leader Big Bill Haywood spread out his fingers during a speech and told the crowd, “This is how the AFL organizes”, and enumerated the different craft unions organizing separately from one another. He noted that individual fingers could be easily disabled. Combining his fingers into a fist, the miners’ union leader roared, “This is how the IWW organizes”. Acting upon that lesson led the Lawrence workers to victory. But memory within organized labor of that point has been, time after time, victim to a deadly historical amnesia.
The California Federation of Labor Unions meets on August 4 to debate and vote on Prop 3 and Prop 40, among other issues. A vote to endorse both measures is in the interest of every union in the federation and every one of its more than two million members. The delegates to the meeting would do well to heed the words of Haywood and not succumb to narrow trade-conscious interests and the barrage of lies launched by their class enemies. Instead, it’s time for a unified labor movement to lead.
Back to newsletterUTLA bargaining team members on 4/12/2026.
It’s become tradition in Los Angeles that when teachers strike, it rains. At 3 am on April 12th, 2026, the 150-member bargaining team of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) was still negotiating with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), with only two days before the planned strike of 37,000 teachers in the second largest school district in the nation. They would be joined by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99, which represents custodians, bus drivers, and maintenance staff; Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), which represents middle management such as principals; and DSA-LA in solidarity. The three unions striking together would be more than 70,000 workers.
It is the 26th bargaining session for the 2025-2027 UTLA contract, and it is pitch-black outside in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighborhood, with thousands awaiting news of whether their daily lives will be upended in just two days. The walkout would have been the union’s third strike in seven years, following a six-day strike in 2019 and a three-day solidarity strike with SEIU Local 99 in 2023. Before those two strikes, UTLA had not struck since 1989.
Just before 4 am on April 12th, the UTLA bargaining team came to a tentative agreement (TA) with the district administration after more than 14 months of negotiations. Later that day AALA followed suit with its own TA, and at 2 am on April 14th, just six hours before the planned three union strike, SEIU Local 99 reached its own TA with the district. By maintaining a credible strike threat, UTLA won a historic contract that fixed broken salary scales for the first time in decades; secured an average salary increase of 13.86%, with a minimum increase of 8%; established paid parental leave for the first time; protected workers against subcontracting; preserved Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP) funding; and won breakthrough Special Education agreements, among many other gains—all without actually striking.
Moments after TA is reached on 4/12/2026, Meredith Schafer, UTLA Research Director (left), Cheryl Coney, UTLA Executive Director (center left), and Brian McNamara, UTLA Organizing and Representation Director (center).
“We averted a strike. We shot down the district's arguments with figures that backed up what we've been saying all along,” says Gloria Martinez, now UTLA president. (She was UTLA treasurer and a lead officer for the UTLA bargaining team during the 2025-2026 contract negotiations. She was also a DSA member and plans on rejoining, she says; she’s just been busy.)
What Martinez is speaking of is LAUSD’s narrative of austerity, used during every cycle of contract negotiations for years. Regardless of how good or bad the economics of the district are at the time, such as having over $5 billion dollars in unrestricted reserves as a “rainy day fund” at the end of the 2024-25 fiscal year equaling 35% of total spending, the CFOs of the district sow fear and doubt. They mainly do this through economic projections that in one year, two years, three years, the district will fall off a fiscal cliff, and so they claim their hands are tied. To be fiscally responsible, the district cannot spend another dollar more, if their economic projections are to be believed.
“When you have a multibillion-dollar organization like LAUSD who can invest in PR machines that use budget figures to scare off folks into believing they can't afford what workers are demanding, I think that it creates confusion and hesitancy and allows for that fear and uncertainty to creep in,” adds Martinez.
The figures UTLA mustered to combat the administration’s scarcity and austerity arguments came chiefly from the UTLA research team, UTLA staff members who were with the UTLA bargaining team during the contract negotiations. LAUSD administration argued it could not spend a dollar more because when it looks toward the future, it expects that it will not have enough money to afford what the union is demanding. The UTLA research team investigated how accurate LAUSD’s past financial predictions were. California school districts are required to do a three-year projection of their budget, and when you consider LAUSD’s projections for where they would be three years out, every year from the 2013-2014 school year through 2024-2025, a pattern emerges. Historically, on average, the difference between what the district projects and what they end up with one year later is off by 57 percent. Two years out they are off by 268 percent and three years out they are off by 888 percent.
This would be similar to a friend asking to borrow $2,000 from you because, they say, they are $2,000 in debt, only for you to later discover that they actually had $16,000 in the bank. They keep saying this to you every year. For 10 years. Understanding this track record deflated much of the fear and doubt the UTLA bargaining team first experienced when the district’s negotiation team began presenting how badly their finances would deteriorate over the next three years if it agreed to the union’s proposals.
Though the UTLA research team is essential for countering the administration’s claims of scarcity, it was not the only reason for UTLA’s victories.
“The main reason we were able to win without going on strike this time was that we had a credible strike threat. We've become an organizing and strike-ready union through the efforts of many people who have helped transform UTLA since 2014, including members of the Educators Organizing for Power (EOP) caucus and DSA members,” says Ryan Andrews, a UTLA bargaining team member, EOP member, and DSA member. “We talk with every member of the union, understand the issues they care most deeply about, and involve them in organizing. That's how we built the power to cut through the district's austerity narrative.”
A union which for 30 years before 2014 had become a low-participation organization is now a union which is known for winning its contract through being strike-ready, even without actually going on strike. This change began in 2014 when Alex Caputo-Pearl, a DSA member, and the Union Power caucus slate running with him were elected to leadership in UTLA. The new leadership’s years spent rank-and-file caucus organizing with Chicago’s Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators germinated a change in UTLA. Five years later in 2019, under Caputo-Pearl, UTLA would go on strike alone for 6 days in the rain and win pay increases, first-ever enforceable class size caps, more nurses and librarians, an LAUSD call for a moratorium on charter schools, a first-ever Community Schools initiative, and racial justice victories, among other gains.
Four years later in 2023, this change in the union proved durable as the next UTLA president, Cecily Myart-Cruz, led UTLA to strike in solidarity with SEIU Local 99 while UTLA was in its own negotiations with LAUSD. After striking for three days again in the rain, UTLA and SEIU Local 99 won their contracts, with UTLA winning significant pay raises, further lowering of class sizes, enshrining the Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP), and an expansion of Community Schools initiatives into the UTLA contract, among other victories.
Three years later, UTLA has won again, and though there was no strike for teachers to march through a downpour, I and others in the bargaining team at 1 am got caught in the rain just hours before the TA, keeping the tradition alive and well.
“What we can learn from this contract is listening to what is felt throughout the city, the issues that impact the workers and our community,” Martinez says when I ask what lessons the union should carry into 2028, when UTLA and many other unions across the country will again negotiate contracts. “We have a system that is failing them. Standing up for the issues that are deeply felt allows us to consolidate that collective power, it allows us to change the narrative.”
Over 30,000 for UTLA, SEIU Local 99, and AALA 3/28/2026 at Grand Park.
Back to newsletterCanvassing in Irvine.
Brief overviewA candidate no one had heard of entered a statewide race no one really knew about and ended up with more than half a million votes. Oliver Ma’s campaign for Lieutenant Governor was California DSA’s first statewide candidate race and will not be the last.
Across the board, people were excited about Oliver and about his platform, too [see accompanying article with chapter campaign reports]. Affordable housing, free healthcare, abolishing ICE, ending the genocide in Palestine—a platform familiar to us as socialists, but one that many voters are just now warming up to.
This race was a familiar story: we were up against long-serving politicians and candidates with deep pockets; we needed a mass movement of organized people to challenge that.
With the support of DSA members, DSA chapters, and committed volunteers, this campaign showed that California voters, more than 620,000 of them, are supportive of Democratic Socialism and are ready for change.
Lessons LearnedOliver’s campaign was heavy on social media.
Going viral on social media is not enough to win elections, but it can be an extremely valuable tool when used intentionally.
You may have seen Oliver on TikTok, Instagram, or even on one of your favorite streams talking boldly about Democratic Socialism and the importance of building a government that works for people, not corporations. Nearly every single volunteer I met or leader I trained certainly told me they had seen him online. And, of those people, many told me this was their very first time engaging politically. These volunteers helped us reach out to hundreds of thousands of voters across the state and they might not have ever even known about this race if it wasn’t for social media.
Motivating someone to turn out and vote, especially if they do not usually vote or if they feel abandoned by the current government, is often a more challenging task. It requires more than just seeing a few cool videos on the feed, so you can’t count only on social media if you want to build power (and win). Ultimately it was the conversations we had with voters in their communities, and on their phones, about the issues that matter most to them. Of course, those conversations are much easier if they have seen your candidate on social media before, but that alone is not enou
Crowd canvassing at No Kings in downtown Los Angeles.
The things we are fighting for as socialists are broadly popular, even if the term “socialism” is not. We talked to voters all across the state in all different communities, but we so often heard the same issues coming up. Housing costs are rising. Healthcare is unaffordable. Everything is unaffordable. People should be safe in their neighborhoods, at home and abroad. What we have going now really isn’t working for working people.
This gave us the chance to talk about how corporations and billionaires are often at the root of all these issues—and then about how Oliver was going to use the powers of this office to improve conditions for working people and tackle the issues impacting their daily life.
As socialists, we can diagnose that capitalism is broadly at the crux of nearly every problem, but it’s not always easy to have that conversation.
The author with Oliver at an “ICE Out” protest and march in L.A.
Running candidates who are Democratic Socialists allows us to talk about these broadly popular ideas. Then electing those candidates to positions of leadership, and power, can fundamentally change the lives of the working people in the communities they serve.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s New York is proof that it is possible, and those wins on the east coast have reverberated across the country.
When voters saw “DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST”at the top of Oliver’s literature they often asked us, “Like Zohran?”. This easily opened the door for us to have a conversation about DSA and socialism that might have been more challenging or less explicit otherwise. If voters didn’t know Zohran, or even if they were not sure about the whole DSA thing, we were still able to have those important conversations with them about their struggles and our common enemies.
We might not have ever had these conversations with our community members if we did not show up in their neighborhood to knock on their door and talk about this election and this candidate.
The time to prepare for the next election cycle is now
Building and refining chapter infrastructure and process takes time, but time is always of the essence during an election year. Start having conversations now about your chapter’s endorsement timeline, process, and electoral program. Consider what it would take not only to endorse a candidate, but also to win. Does your chapter have tools you need? Do your members have the skills they need? If not, what can you do now to be prepared for the next electoral cycle?
Socialism continues to gain momentum. We have the opportunity to build power for working people at the local and federal level; but it will take an organized mass movement to win.
Back to newsletterCalifornia Red asked several chapters to assess their participation in the Oliver Ma campaign for Lieutenant Governor, California DSA’s first foray into a state constitutional officer race. Their responses give us snapshots of the challenges and gains experienced in emerging chapter electoral structures at a time of rapid membership growth and new leader development.
Inland Empire DSA knocked 600 doors for Ma.
Inland EmpireThe Inland Empire chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America’s electoral committee had not been active for nearly three years, but the energy and the excitement that brought in a flood of new members eager to reproduce the work done in New York needed to materialize here in our chapter. Thus arose from the collective imagination of our membership a yearning, an ambition, a dream—to build something, as workers have done throughout time immemorial, building a machine… the canvassing machine.
The canvassing machine became a collective project and an inside joke that inspired our membership to think of the endeavor as something we were building and refining through grass roots organizing. In total we knocked over 600 doors in Perris and Riverside.
Overall, the campaign was a success for our chapter. Although we fell short on Election Day, the campaign gave our relatively new Electoral Committee invaluable experience running a serious electoral effort alongside a strong democratic socialist candidate. Members were highly engaged throughout the campaign, gaining practical organizing experience through canvassing, phone banking, and having meaningful conversations with voters about the issues and our vision for the community. Those experiences strengthened both our members' skills and our chapter's capacity to run future campaigns.
The campaign also highlighted several important areas for growth. We learned the importance of beginning our organizing earlier, establishing clear leadership roles, and building stronger campaign infrastructure from the outset. These are foundational lessons that will make our future electoral work more organized, efficient, and effective.
Perhaps most importantly, the campaign helped grow our chapter. We recruited new members directly at our canvass launch locations, and many people were motivated to get involved after seeing a local DSA chapter actively supporting a viable democratic socialist campaign. While Oliver did not win the election, the campaign was far from a loss. It strengthened our chapter, developed new organizers, expanded our active membership, and left us better prepared to run even stronger campaigns in the future.
Said one Inland Empire member, Crystal: “Canvassing for Oliver Ma was heartwarming. It was a unique experience in that the candidate we canvassed for actually came out to knock doors with the people! Amidst the backdrop of an otherwise fascistic and suffocating reality, there are people willing to commit their hearts and time for humanity. It’s a beautiful thing to see.”
Long Beach DSA Electoral Politics Committee members gather to phonebank for Oliver Ma.
Long BeachDSA-LB is proud to have endorsed Oliver Ma for Lieutenant Governor and campaigned for his candidacy in Long Beach. The June 2026 primary marked our chapter's first statewide endorsement, first Voter Guide, and our Electoral Politics Committee's first significant experience with electoral campaigning, canvassing and phone banking. Although Oliver's election outcome wasn't what we had hoped for, campaigning for Oliver significantly boosted our chapter's electoral politics skills, which we are carrying forward into the November election. DSA-LB is now campaigning for the Billionaire Tax initiative; we have built a Billionaire Tax Now ("BTN") Working Group and are putting the skills we honed for Oliver into action for BTN and future campaigns. We're grateful to Oliver for running and can't wait to see what all of us in California DSA do next.
Orange County DSA and UAW Local 4811 members gather to canvass in Irvine.
Orange CountyOliver Ma’s campaign came at a time when our chapter was rebuilding our electoral committee from the ground up. When we held the candidate endorsement forum for Oliver, we saw new faces excited to ask questions of a candidate they completely aligned with. One of the campaign’s strengths that we really benefited from was its goal to recruit new DSA members and engage them in electoral work. Through the campaign, we not only grew our electoral committee, but the chapter as a whole and new leaders began to emerge. The campaign provided the tools for many of us to learn how to canvass and phone bank and many members who had never knocked on doors for a candidate before participated in canvassing. Oliver’s mission and his platform made it easy to talk to voters in our community, and we started to have hope that California could be a place where massive change could take place.
Kern CountyOne of our biggest lessons from this election was simple: be early.
If possible, avoid entering an election cycle while still in Organizing Status. By the time we were ready to engage seriously, other organizations had already endorsed candidates, including candidates we believed offered less to the working class than Oliver. Many of our members and the broader activist community were also already committed to other campaigns.
Kern County also needed to start earlier and organize more intentionally around the campaign. As campaign captain, I did not do enough to build internal enthusiasm, recruit volunteers, and turn an endorsement into sustained member participation.
At the same time, we were trying to bootstrap an electoral operation while still building the chapter itself. We were developing structures, relationships, and organizing capacity in real time.
Those are growing pains, but they are also lessons. Endorse early. Organize early. Assign clear responsibility.
For us, an endorsement is not an aspirational checking a box, but a mandate to put momentum behind what we believe in.
Contributors:Odeh G. and Lawrence C. are members of Inland Empire DSA. Odeh is chapter co-chair.
Sidra G. is a member of DSA Long Beach Electoral Politics Committee and serves as Communications Coordinator of the Chapter.
Kathryn M. is an At-Large member of the Orange County DSA Steering Committee.
Robert F. is on the Kern chapter Steering Committee.
Jack R. provided editorial support.
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