What happened on Saturday that changed everything?
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by Swapnasri Sarangi
Women in rural and tribal communities play a vital role in conserving forests, managing natural resources and sustaining household livelihoods. Their daily dependence on forests gives them detailed knowledge of biodiversity, seasonal cycles and sustainable harvesting practices. Yet patriarchal institutions and unequal rights often exclude them from decisions about the commons they help protect. Even provisions for women's participation in community forest management frequently result in token representation rather than meaningful authority. Swapnasri Sarangi argues that recognising women's ecological knowledge, securing their rights and ensuring their active participation in governance are essential for equitable resource management, biodiversity conservation and the future of forests.by Becca Renk Foster and John Perry
Jeffrey Isaac Jarquin was deported from the U.S. by ICE and upon arrival in Managua was sent to prison by Nicaraguan authorities. Corporate media has decried the detention of a “torture victim” and “political prisoner,” but failed to do a cursory background investigation into Jarquin, who was himself convicted of torture, arson and robbery in Nicaragua in 2018.by Johnnie Jae
Native people have been fighting the sanitization of Columbus’s story for decades. The idea of replacing Columbus Day arose as early as 1977, when Indigenous representatives raised it at a United Nations conference inby Pamela Ferdinand
Gifts, payments, free meals, and other marketing ploys by pharmaceutical companies heavily influence doctors to prescribe more drugs, choose less appropriate treatments, and drive up prescription costs, according to a systematic review of 93 studies. These prescribing choices can expose patients to drugs that offer fewer benefits, cause more side effects or are unnecessary, while increasing health system costs, the review found.by Dr Gideon Polya
Dr Gideon Polya examines estimates of the death toll in Gaza, arguing that the widely reported figure of 74,000 Palestinians killed substantially understates the total impact of the conflict. Drawing on epidemiological studies, medical experts, humanitarian researchers and journalists, he argues that deaths caused by deprivation—including the lack of food, water, shelter, sanitation and medical care—must be counted alongside deaths from bombardment and other violence. Citing research published in The Lancet and assessments by public health experts, Polya estimates that the combined toll from violence and deprivation could reach one million. He also examines the role of Western media in reporting these deaths.by Neelakshi Joshi
Cities once at the forefront of climate action are witnessing growing resistance to environmental policies. The rise of right-wing populism, socioeconomic insecurity, public distrust and the financial costs of climate transitions are weakening support for climate goals. From efforts to dilute climate targets in Dresden to opposition against bike lanes and 15-minute cities, climate policies have become political battlegrounds. Neelakshi Joshi examines the forces driving this urban greenlash and argues that climate action must confront social injustices, counter misinformation and address citizens’ concerns to build support for a fair and lastingtransition.by Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor
The continued threats to medical facilities, following three years of systematic destruction of the healthcare system and despite the knowledge that depriving the population of treatment leads to deaths, indicate the specific intent required for genocideby Margaret Kimberley
Progressive candidates rarely remain so after winning public office. Zohran Mamdani is no exception, but his capitulation to New York zionists angered his supporters, and the people he hoped to placate are still working to make him a one-term mayor.California is the fourth largest economy in the world, with a growing number of billionaires, and an expanding crisis of poverty due to concentration of wealth and divestment from public goods like education and healthcare. This has been exacerbated by the Trump administration’s HR1 (“the big beautiful bill”), which cut $1 trillion from Medicaid nationally, resulting in a $100 billion cut to Medi-Cal, and a $20 billion cut to Calfresh, public programs that support our most vulnerable neighbors.
After the California Federation of Labor Unions, led by Lorena Gonzalez, voted at its August 4 convention to endorse two ballot measures to tax the rich – Propositions 3 and 40 – California DSA took the opportunity to reach out with a proposal: a California “Tax the Rich Day” on October 10. Gonzalez liked the idea, and the Labor Fed entered into a partnership with California DSA and SEIU-UHW (the proponent of Prop 40).
In 2012, the California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and a progressive tax coalition organized across the state in an effort that culminated in the passage of a measure that put a tax on the top 2% of income earners in California in order to fund public education and healthcare. This year, voters will decide on whether to make that tax permanent via Prop 3. It currently generates between $5 to $15 billion annually. If it does not pass, the tax will sunset in 2030, and 1 in 6 public school teachers will be facing layoffs.
In response to HR1’s cuts to Medi-Cal, Service Employees International Union - United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), a labor union of over 120,000 healthcare workers across California, advanced a ballot measure, Prop 40, to create a one time 5% tax on the wealth of billionaires, payable either all at once, or via 1% increments over 5 years. This is anticipated to raise about $100 billion and to provide adequate funding to cover the gap in Medi-Cal’s budget wrought by HR1. This tax applies to any billionaires who were residents of the state at the start of 2026, or who will pay state income taxes for the year (at the start of 2026, around 216 billionaires lived in the state; presently, there are around 240).
California DSA endorsed both measures earlier this year, and has been coordinating canvasses, phonebanks, and communications in the run up to election day as we work to build a stronger left-labor pole capable of taking on the billionaires.
Coming just a week after Bernie Sanders held rallies in San Francisco and Los Angeles to promote Prop 40, the day of action featured multiple local rallies and canvasses in which DSA members joined their local labor councils and union members to spread the class-struggle message that it was high time for the working class to take on the ultra-rich. In the lead up to Tax the Rich Day, Gonzalez blasted out an email, titled “It's time to Tax The Rich!,” in which she promoted events on California DSA’s landing page, and wrote:
“I think we can all agree: billionaires have too much damn money. … No matter where you are in California, there is a protest or a canvass event near you this Saturday, October 10, where you can join our fight to tax the rich and pass Prop 3 and Prop 40, and to defeat Prop 41 and Prop 42!”
Actions took place that day across 8 cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose, the Inland Empire, and the East Bay. The Labor Federation promoted and celebrated them on social media
https://bsky.app/profile/californialabor.bsky.social/post/3mxkcazz6422v
https://bsky.app/profile/californialabor.bsky.social/post/3mxkco3ub422v
https://bsky.app/profile/californialabor.bsky.social/post/3mxkd5m24vk2v
https://bsky.app/profile/californialabor.bsky.social/post/3mxmvzfrkbs2v
In Hayward, an East Bay city south of Oakland, East Bay DSA joined forces with the Alameda Labor Council for a tax the rich rally and canvass. The Labor Fed posted that “the East Bay did not come to play!” East Bay DSA, since August, has been partnering with the Labor Council to provide volunteers for phone banks and canvasses of the labor council’s 130,000 union members in Alameda County, focused on passing Props 3 and 40 and re-electing DSA-endorsed school board candidates in Oakland.
East Bay DSA’s posters, signs and banners, designed by David Solnit and fashioned at an EBDSA art build, have been featured at canvasses, like this one on September 19.
Inland Empire DSA heard the call from CA DSA for a Tax the Rich Day on October 10th, and put together a rally in collaboration with SEIU-UHW and PSL at City Hall in downtown Riverside. Over fifty volunteers from Inland Empire DSA, SEIU-UHW, PFP, PSL and Teamsters 1932 as well as Riverside City Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes showed up in support of taxing the state’s billionaires. Volunteer organizers led a march around City Hall and the surrounding area and held a tabling event in front of City Hall to speak to passers-by about how vital passing Proposition 40 (and defeating Propositions 41 and 42!) is to save our healthcare system and provide necessary funding to education and food assistance in the state. Immediately afterward, volunteers headed down to the SEIU-UHW headquarters in downtown Riverside to phone bank for Proposition 40, and IE DSA will be hosting joint phonebanks with SEIU-UHW weekly from now until the election.
Angelenos turned out to canvasses in South Central and the Eastside to talk about LA City Council District 9 candidate Estuardo Mazariegos and Congressional District 34 candidate Angela Gonzales Torres alongside the need to pass Prop 40 to redistribute power from billionaires to working people. Later that day, a comedy and karaoke fundraiser capped the night off in support of efforts to tax the rich.
California DSA’s statewide working group will be meeting Tuesday, October 20th, at 6pm in order to continue planning and coordinating efforts in support of Props 3 and 40. You can RSVP here: https://www.californiadsa.org/calendar/tax-the-rich-wg-2026oct20
The California Federation of Labor Unions Prop 40 will be hosting a phonebank in support of Prop 40 on October 21st and 5:30pm: https://www.mobilize.us/caaflcio/event/1056391/
“You can sleep when you’re dead.”
—Benjamin Franklin
There are just two weeks to go before one of the most consequential elections in the history of California. Driving the existential nature of this election is the onset and growth of the fascist cancer within American capitalism, pushed into metastatic overdrive by the election of Donald Trump to his second term in 2024.
In the two years since, he has checked every box in any rational person’s understanding of what the word “fascism” means. As a result we are facing End Times Fascism— the term (and the title of their new book) coined by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor—meaning that this time around, fascists are sucking us down the chutes of climate destruction, democratic devolution, and rapidly eroding institutional means to reverse the tide.
While all of DSA’s endorsed election campaigns throughout the state are important and contribute in various ways to the anti-fascist cause, I will go out on a limb to suggest that the campaign that can best serve the anti-fascist struggle is the dual effort to tax the rich via Props 3 and 40. Why?
Here we find an unprecedented opportunity—not one, but two tax the rich ballot measures up for a vote in one election. Each is essential to the wellbeing of the working class—one for education, the other for health care. Loss of either would be a disaster and a boon to billionaires.
Conversely, passage of both would send an urgently needed message: that the wealth of the rich is not invincible, because an organized working class can be the greater force.
Money shores up the power and power shores up the money
You recall those two photos of Elon Musk early in 2025: wielding with sick glee a chain saw to demonstrate what his DOGE project was doing to the helping services of the federal government, and his Nazi salute at a MAGA rally? These were accurate signals of an emboldened and newly unified far right sector of capital, melding the formerly antagonistic interests of fossil fuel and big tech, brought together by Trump to supercharge the development of AI and its evil twin, data centers, under the control of corporations.
The combined resources of these two capital sectors united in support of the fascist program is the reason why political spending hit record levels in the 2024 elections, and why it is on track to break the record again this year.
As Klein and Taylor make clear, mix hitherto undreamed of quantities of capital with Christian nationalism, perpetual war in the Middle East fanning the flames of religious fantasy along with the climate crisis, reckless investment in AI, the Trump administration’s removal of all federal regulatory controls, and you have the perfect cocktail for apocalypse. The richest people in the world think they can escape the dystopia they are consciously unleashing—to island bunkers, to the Rapture, to outer space—as they run the rest of us over the cliff and the earth to the end of its tether.
Here in California the billionaires’ push to defeat Prop 40 will set new spending records for ballot initiatives. That’s pocket change from their bloated portfolios. The campaign to pass Props 3 and 40 directly challenges the fascist program, valuing human need over uncontrolled profitmaking, saying yes to life and to the earth, and reducing the purses of the superrich and thus their power. If we win, we demonstrate that the power of people can outweigh the power of money.
Time to Overdo it
I’m asking everyone who reads these words to add just a bit of work—something, anything— to election work you are already doing in the next two weeks to help get Props 3 and 40 passed.
I’m not arguing that anyone should stop their campaigning for a local city council candidate or US congressional seat and replace that work with the Prop 3 and 40 tax the rich campaign between now and November 3. I’m saying something else, and I admit it runs against the grain of the advice that a lifetime of activist labor and socialist politics has led me to consistently offer comrades and other activists, which is, “Don’t overdo it.” Passion for political causes can easily tip over into burnout, which is not helpful for the long run. But we are up against an enemy that is literally attempting to destroy the long run. And so I make an exception this time so that it’s not the last time.
In other words, for the next two weeks, let’s overdo it.
Our final California DSA Tax the Rich Working Group meeting of the campaign is this Tuesday night at 6 pm; join us to hear what we’re planning. You could also join the Prop 40 phone bank on 10/21 at 5:30. Here is tonight’s Prop 3 phone bank link.
It can also be simpler. You can grab a posterboard from an art supply store and make your own sign for Yes on 3, Yes on 40, Tax the Rich and stand on a street corner with a friend or two. You can put a sign up in your window. You can call your friends and tell them to vote yes on 3 and 40 and no on 41, 42, and 43. You can download flyers and pass them out in your workplace.
With your help taxing the rich is possible. Once we’ve done that we can rest (contra Franklin, we don’t have to wait til we’re dead) recover from burnout, and breathe the air of a world slightly less imperiled by fascism.
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