A Caucus of Maine DSA
Preamble
They say that as Maine goes, so goes the nation. With that in mind, what might we learn about the future of the United States from Governor Janet Mills’ administration? In many ways, the emergency heating bill recently signed into law encapsulates Mills’ leadership and foretells a grim future. At the start of her second term, before a draft of a budget had even been introduced, Mills pushed through a bill which she alone authored that spends much of the projected budget surplus on $450 checks to 800,000 Maine taxpayers. This is the second round of such checks starting a trend that begs the question: why should the government ever pool resources? For two campaigns Mills has promised to veto any bill that would increase taxes. Why waste time and resources building democratically-controlled state institutions if it will only demonstrate how the state can improve people’s lives? The message from Mills’ administration is clear: “Just give the money back to the people and make them take care of themselves. The government would only get in the way.” This attitude of the Mills administration echoes Ronald Reagan’s pronouncement in his 1981 inaugural address that “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” demonstrating Mills’ adherence to the pervasive neoliberal consensus which seems to have gained a second wind in these turbulent times.
This emergency heating bill is multi-faceted. It adds a waiver for companies to circumnavigate the prohibition on high sulfuric concentration natural gas; a prohibition established in order to prevent acid rain. In this way Mills is perhaps most emblematic of Biden’s approach to fighting climate change. The Maine Won’t Wait plan tries its best to use market incentives to funnel private capital investment into the state while holding back any possible transformative change like a consumer-owned, democratically-controlled electrical grid. This surrender to the market means price volatility will prevent any limits on dirty energy generation, and, if anything, will lead to further deregulation.
Tacked on the end of the bill is a three month continuation of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. While this fund has subsidized hotels throughout the pandemic, housing over 1,000 refugees across the Greater Portland area, it is unclear if there is any plan to support these people when the program runs out of money (as it did for a period in late 2022). State inaction and reliance on market solutions continues to funnel tax money to landlords and business owners while abandoning working-class communities to their fate. The crisis of tenants’ rights in Maine will continue to loom large in the coming years.
Maine is an anemic state, crippled during LePage’s terms by his enforced austerity, a status quo normalized under the Mills administration. The state is so underfunded that the state legislature is basically a volunteer role accessible only to small business owners, lawyers, landlords, or retirees. This poverty of leadership has left increasingly weak political parties on the state level which focus more on control of the Governor’s office than on policy development or constituent engagement. With no active political machine present, the far right has been able to grab many Republican seats. While leaders like LePage were skittish around the abortion question this past election, the Republican base have hyper focused on school boards, where they push moral panics around mask policies and transgender issues. Progressive activists in the Maine Democratic Party’s legislative ranks were eager to push through transformative change after eight years of LePage, but have been consistently stymied by the undefeated veto pen of Janet Mills. While individuals have made well-intentioned efforts in the state legislature, there is no organized will to overrule the Governor. Many progressive legislators retired this past term with the recognition that nothing will fundamentally change during Mills’ second term.
There are still signs of hope. Across the board, where people had a choice, voters rejected bans on abortion. DSA continues to train thousands of organizers across the country. Democratic socialism is a winning message in many candidate races across the country, and partly inspired by Maine DSA’s own success, ballot question campaigns have become a staple of DSA’s electoral toolkit.
Locally, Maine DSA has recently finished a two year marathon. In such a short period, the chapter has succeeded many times over in our electoral struggle: we put Public Power on the statewide ballot for 2023; won four out of five ballot initiatives in our People First Portland campaign; swept the Portland Charter Commissioner’s election with endorsed progressive reformers; and, in the face of unprecedented opposition, built on our previous victories to achieve a strengthened rent control law at the ballot box in Portland this past fall. With our dedicated member led organization we’ve demonstrated the ability to effect serious change across the state.
Demonstrating the ability of organization to empower everyday working people to effect change in their lives is the most important task for Maine DSA. We need to push back against the increasing alienation and isolation many feel. So far, we have provided a compelling political home and community for organizers on the left. However, to ensure longevity for our organization we need to focus on our chapters ability to reproduce itself. We must support our elected leaders and ensure that they are held accountable by the membership. By preventing burnout, enabling cadre to rotate out of leadership and to stick around as mentors. Simultaneously, we need to guarantee room for questions about norms and dissent of current strategy. By avoiding dogmatic thinking and embracing debate, we keep our organization’s self-assessment as a living, growing thing. By teaching members how to turn their questions into actions, we develop a community where no one is treated as disposable.
Because the state of Maine is so austere, we must place a higher value on the importance of labor unions who still hold onto resources. Doubly so, when it comes to our relationships with these unions. In some instances, local unions have funded our campaigns and fought alongside us for radical change. But in 2022, the Maine AFL-CIO joined the corporate opposition against our Pine Tree Power ballot question. This cooperation between the owning class and some portion of the working class in an effort to defeat a socialist reform intended to benefit workers has a striking similarity to the 2022 defeat of our Livable Portland question, which, if successful, would have abolished the subminimum wage. In both cases, we can see capital attempting to claim that the totality of labor is on their side. We cannot allow deception to stand. We must broaden and deepen our connection with organized labor on every level. Not just between individuals, but also as institutions fighting together for the working class.
2020 was a cataclysmic year that started off a chain reaction of cascading crises that we are still in the middle of three years later. During this turbulent time, Maine DSA has built on its victories by putting Public Power on the state ballot, and enhancing Portland’s rent control ordinance. Now, we must restabilize the chapter and defend our victories. We must demonstrate that changes in the law are consequential and can not just be ignored by the capitalist class.
Maine DSA is not some savior waiting in the wings, ready to swoop in to prevent the next disaster. What unites the working class is that there is no one coming to save us, only ourselves, and we can let every worker and tenant know they are not alone in that daily struggle for survival. To foster that hope in their heart for a better world. To know that they have the ability to change it; that every cook can govern. That Maine DSA is an awaiting vehicle heading towards liberation that won’t reach its destination without them.
Regenerative Leadership
Perspectives
The neoliberal turn of the 1980’s dismantled the New Deal promise of government, but also decimated civic organizations across the country, as detailed by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone. Maine is at the bleeding edge of this development. There aren’t many active community organizations in Maine, and even fewer with plans on how to develop leadership internally and pass on institutional memory. A number of factors play into this — our small population just north of 1.3 million; the fact that Maine youth leave the state in droves, resulting in this being the oldest state demographically; and that Maine is quite spread out geographically with limited transit infrastructure. All of these coalesce to make healthy, continued organizational development an extremely tough thing to achieve, let alone maintain.
Add on top of this the fact that within DSA, leadership has largely emerged from a self-selecting group of activists. After Bernie’s run in 2016, there were so many people joining that no proper mentorship program was developed. This is true both nationally and locally. This reliance on passive recruitment has meant many chapters have not had the chance to develop methods to grow membership and leadership in a healthy way. Many of our own chapter’s leadership positions have been filled through non-competitive elections, or at times simply not filled at all. We need to focus on building member engagement and a healthier transfer and expansion of leadership. It’s how we will grow our capacity and establish institutional memory within our organization.
The retention and burnout problem runs throughout the entire organization of DSA. It is not just something we can recruit our way out of. It comes from how we treat leaders, and how dissent from the ranks is received. The problem is exacerbated as we push new members into leadership faster as we struggle to fill elected seats. We had two leaders resign this past term, and both of them came from the mismanagement of political conflict. Some of this comes from inexperience with criticism, or treating routine decisions with life or death seriousness. It is essential that leaders within DSA are able to make mistakes, recover, and learn from them. We should strive to support each other even while in disagreement. Conflict should never be a surprise. It is important to be forthright with your political positions even if that would put one at a disadvantage. We hope the introduction of caucuses to the chapter will push conflict to center on ideas rather than personalities.
Maine DSA Outside of Portland
The experience of the working class is not comparable across the breadth of Maine. There is a stark divide between the main economic modes of the northern and western ends of the state, in which forestry and agriculture remain primary economic drivers, and the Downeast region, where the last gasps of Maine’s heavy industry is held together by a vast service sector, ballasted by Maine’s massive tourism industry. A geographically isolated rural peasantry, and an urban proletariat fully reliant on the whims of the petty bourgeois that are funneling money into the state and shaping its development (both actively and passively).
It must be a key focus of Maine DSA to expand outside of Portland. We often cite that the densest majority of the membership is within Portland. While that is true, it does not prohibit us from attempting to expand outside of Portland. We are already beginning to expand into York county. As we develop further localization within our org we should look towards cities with the most potential to replicate the success that has been seen in Portland. This means open referendum laws, and a population that is majority tenant. This will require finding or developing organizers who can self-sustain, and implement a local specific set of demands.
We did not expand from the chapter from Southern Maine DSA to Maine DSA for prestige. While our outreach to northern Maine remains limited, there is nowhere north of Bangor with the critical density of class-conscious workers necessary to precipitate an organization which can span hundreds of square miles. By using our chapter’s infrastructure in Portland, we can ease the administrative load of prospective organizers in more remote parts of the state. We aspire, ultimately, to be a party which can act in the interests of all of Maine’s working peoples, industrial, service, or agricultural; townie or migrant.
Tasks
- The 2024 Chapter-wide Campaign should focus on regenerative leadership. The first iteration could function as ‘at-large steering committee members’. While supporting membership development a proposal could be formed for an internal campaign that focuses on restabilizing our foundation.
- We need to offer member workshops focused on themes like dissent and constructive criticism; familiarizing members with both national and chapter structures; and leadership workshops for both new and experienced members.
- Develop new ways for members to relate to the chapter outside of the normal activist role. This can look like a recreational sports league, or a support group for parents. By providing new ways to relate to the chapter, we allow members to rest while still maintaining contact with the chapter.
- Make inroads into the Lewiston/Auburn area. It is no secret that our chapter has been very Portland-centric since its inception in 2016. This past year, the membership subcommittee has made valiant efforts to expand our chapter’s reach into the Biddeford/Saco area with some notable success. We believe that in 2023, Lewiston/Auburn offers the next best stepping stone, and would help broaden our membership. This outreach can take a number of forms, but we believe the two best issues to begin this endeavor are the Maine Public Power campaign and making contacts with Western Maine Labor Council so we can listen for what issues can be acted upon.
Centering Labor
Perspectives
The long trend for unions in America hasn’t been great. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of employed workers in unions has fallen from 20.1% in 1983 to only 10.3% in 2021. Here in Maine the picture is only a little better, where 12.4% of our workforce is unionized. And while these numbers are not encouraging, the recent uptick in organizing is. The successful drive at Amazon in Brooklyn, the explosion of organized Starbucks shops, the victory of TDU in the Teamster’s recent leadership election, as well as teachers and nurses willing to strike in order to be heard, all of these have been glowing developments for American labor.
Labor is on the rise in Maine. From the very small to the very large, new organizing campaigns in Maine have found success in the past few years. Workers across the service sector and particularly in care work found victory, including at Preble Street Resource Center, Sexual Assault Support Services of Midcoast Maine, and ACLU of Maine. Notably, nurses at Maine Medical Center won their recognition campaign, and drove onward to successfully beat back a decertification campaign supported by management. Workers at the Portland Museum of Art won their year’s long organizing effort to join UAW 2110. Baristas with Workers United won hard-fought campaigns at two Starbucks locations and Little Dog Coffee Shop. However, capital’s response has been swift and harsh, with the most raw force leveled at chain service industry locations like Starbucks and Chipotle, where corporate leaders have been unafraid to engage in blatant union busting techniques. The shuttering of an Augusta Chipotle location, the closure of a Portland Starbucks location, and the year-long delay in the recognition of the Bates Educators and Staff Organization serve to demonstrate the severity of capital’s backlash, as moderated and facilitated by state institutions like the National Labor Relations Board.
In Maine, as is true across the US, labor unions are shackled not only by the oppositional force of employers, capital, and the state, but also by the self-restraining model of business unionism that has come to define the structure, outlook, and strategy of all major unions. Though there are radical members in many unions, the overall vision of organized labor in Maine is one of labor peace, compromise, and defeatism all informed by a scarcity mindset. This is an understandable reaction considering capital’s uncompromising defeat of labor through neoliberal policies. This negative spiral must be corrected, and can only be corrected through growth, democracy, and a class-struggle approach to unionism. New organizing, strengthening internal democracy and accountability, and heightened militancy must be labor’s focus if we are to prevail against the ever growing wealth and power of big business.
Despite this dismal survey of the state of organized labor in Maine and the US, on the whole, Maine’s labor institutions are more vibrant and worker-centered than in many other states. Maine has four regional Central Labor Councils which serve as a coordinating body in between unions and between the unions and outside political and civil society groups. These bodies, as well as industry or issue specific councils (e.g. Maine Construction and Building Trades Council, Maine Climate Labor Council, Maine Labor Alliance) may serve as fruitful sites for engagement between socialists and labor unions. Additionally, the Maine AFL-CIO remains strong in its ability to influence the lawmaking process, as demonstrated by the resounding defeat of LePage’s proposed “Right To Work” laws in 2015, and more recently in the victory of Rep. Scott Cuddy’s renewable energy workforce bill. Even so, the state federation has run into same roadblock that has so frustrated progressives in the Democratic caucus: the Mills veto. In 2022 alone, Mills prevented the adoption of union-backed laws on binding arbitration, whistleblower protections, and farmworker organizing. This axis, toward reform and against the Governor’s neoliberal consensus, is one on which Socialists and Labor are currently aligned. We can deepen our ties to the Maine AFL by supporting reform efforts backed by the AFL, and asking their support for our reforms (a strategy successfully demonstrated in the People First Portland campaign).
There’s little doubt by those attuned to the labor struggle that our state is seeing a resurgence in union activity. However, developing firm labor relations in Maine DSA has been a story of starts and stops. The current Labor Solidarity working group is not the first attempt at establishing a chapter organ to work with local union labor. Unfortunately, outside of relaying communications from Southern Maine Labor Council (SMLC) or Maine AFL-CIO, or joining the occasional picket line, and some initial attempts at industrialization, our chapter’s efforts have not progressed to the level of engagement we desire. Compounding the issue, Maine DSA has come into conflict with labor on quite a few of our most recent ballot initiative campaigns. The chapter stepped back from an initiative to limit cruise ships in Portland after negotiations with the International Longshoremen’s Association, who saw the law as a threat to good union jobs on the waterfront. Maine DSA endorsed Question 5 in Portland’s 2022 Charter Amendment election, a measure opposed by the Portland Educators Association which, if it had succeeded, would have allowed the School Board autonomy to adopt it’s own budget. Most frustratingly, IBEW 1837 and later the Maine AFL-CIO both announced their opposition to the Pine Tree Power ballot initiative, citing concerns over the effects that consumer-ownership might have on the union’s ability to collect dues or go on strike.
These contradictions come from two related places. First, from the lack of discussion and coordination between DSA’s policy efforts and the unions as stakeholders in the preparatory phase of these campaigns. Second, from the contradictory role that business unions take in defending their employers as the providers of the means of production necessary for union members to continue to earn their wage.
While these particular contradictions and disagreements with labor may be specific to our conditions in Maine, this surface level solidarity with organized labor isn’t regional; tailism has been a recurring issue for DSA with regard to unions nationwide. We must change this if we are to successfully build a working-class political movement. Maine DSA must make firm connections with local unions, establish regular lines of communication, attend labor council meetings with consistency, and formalize personal relationships with decision makers. We will earn the respect of the already-organized labor movement and through the process, begin to share the socialist analysis and strategic vision that the movement lacks.
Tasks
- Build up our chapter’s labor activity. The Labor Solidarity Working Group should strive to meet on a regular schedule, and work to expand the attendance of their open meetings. They should orientate their meetings towards new attendees at every meeting. This will put the working group charter system through a stress test, while also providing a space for newer members to learn about Maine DSA’s meeting culture. The ultimate goal should be to transition into a standing committee.
- Part of improving communication and trust between Maine DSA and unions will require one or more representatives regularly attending labor council meetings in order to establish personal relationships with influential union members, show face for our organization, and keep up to date with important union news.
- Make it a point to establish conversations with unions regarding the Pine Tree Power ballot initiative and attempt to get as many as possible to either publicly support it, or pledge not to come out against it. This not only links in to a major campaign of our chapter, but could also be a great first step toward Maine DSA becoming an articulating agent for socialism with local unions.
- If we are serious about centering labor as an issue in Maine DSA, we should educate and activate members by offering at least one workshop on how to start organizing your workplace. This should involve participation from one or more experienced union organizers, and be advertised widely with member attendance strongly encouraged.
Defending Our Victories
Perspectives
It should be news to no one that Maine DSA membership and our chapter activity is highly concentrated in the Portland area. The population of the state is concentrated to a similar extent; almost a quarter of Maine’s population lives in Cumberland County. Portland is also Maine’s most powerful economic engine, accounting for over 30% of the state’s GDP. Public policy in Portland and the surrounding municipalities has an immediate and outsized impact on the social and economic health of Maine writ large. We saw this clearly when Janet Mills preempted our earned paid sick leave ordinance moving through Portland city council.
For a while we worried that state intervention would reverse the victories of the People First Portland campaign, as was threatened in Minnesota. Instead the landlords came after us directly through the courts. The Southern Maine Landlord Association filed a civil suit against the city of Portland, that Maine DSA was able to join in on to defeat. On the hazard pay front we were able to find a DSA member to bring suit against their employer, Whole Foods, but unfortunately we were unable to prevail in that lawsuit. Some bosses opted into hazard pay, others were pressured by workers, and some taunted their workers that they would never pay. Because of jurisprudence no other worker could find a lawyer to file suit on their behalf until the Whole Foods case was decided. There were other options they could have pursued, and some did. But partly because of the pandemic, partly because we didn’t expect to win, Maine DSA was caught flatfooted and was absent from many of these workplace struggles. In the future we must do a better job defending our victories. Not through technocratic courts where the goal is to find the exact limit of our legal rights, but through a mass base of organizing empowering every worker to contribute to the fight.
Shortly after Maine DSA swept the charter commission race in 2021 we started to see a new base get very organized in Portland. Gradually a group of homeowners in Portland have been expressing their reactionary views louder and louder. It’s unclear when it started exactly. It may have been the removal of school resources officers, or maybe it started with a tweet from Charter Commissioner Nasreen Sheikh-Yousef. In any case they have increasingly been getting organized, and sending increasingly unhinged emails to all the electeds they oppose. This is the force that mobilized against workers around the hazard pay vote at the start of 2022, and they are increasingly in alignment with business interests.
We do not need to guess what capitalist elements would wish for Portland’s future; Bar Harbor articulates it clearly. Unless resisted in an active and organized fashion, Portland will become what could euphemistically be described as a tourist’s paradise: year-round working class residents squeezed out by the vice grip of depressed wages and exorbitant rents, to be replaced by a population of migrant laborers bereft of legal protections and kept in line by the threat of deportation. Our enemies will never need to worry about another Portland ballot initiative once the last remaining voting block in the city is the landlords and business owners. The victories attained in Portland set the example for what is actually possible in the rest of the state. Conversely, if the forces of reaction are able to break our base in Portland, there is no longer a Maine DSA.
Thanks to the contribution of many great comrades, Portland remains a strong base of operation for our chapter. The latest attempt to uproot us was the Enough is Enough PAC, which while attacking us directly failed to defeat us with their red baiting fear mongering. They were our only opposition on question C (improving rent control) and failed miserably. Organized capital is not going to just give up either. This past December there was phone polling asking about how people felt about the referendum process in Portland.
Much of what set us up for success in the People’s First Portland campaign is all of the small committee work that we did in 2019 on housing and abolition. Simple work that built familiarity with the Portland city council, and the various political actors across the city. This work allowed DSA members to start developing relationships that webbed out across the city. It was from this foundation that we were able to put together several ballot questions so rapidly that were responding to needs, such as banning facial recognition software and rent control. With language being locked the moment you start petitioning for a ballot question, there is never time to get feedback during a campaign. This is why its vital to re-establish connection with other community organizations.
Electoral candidate races are often better at forming ties with the community, because they are able to incorporate feedback during their campaign. At the same time our chapter struggled greatly with endorsed candidates in the charter commission moving to the right, and contradicting the answers they gave us in our questionnaire. Not to mention our only endorsed city councilor voting to end hazard pay. It will be impossible for candidates to be a vector to build coalitions for Maine DSA, if the members do not trust the candidate.
Tenants’ Rights Crisis
Exorbitant housing prices can prove to be a death sentence for communities for a myriad of reasons, both covert and overt. At the most basic level, our wages are being expropriated by a parasitic class that provides nothing of any social utility; their wealth and status deriving solely from the threat of them picking up their toys and going home. A direct consequence of unaffordable rents is large homeless populations. In Portland, it is estimated that 1 in every 50 residents are living on the street.
These issues compound. When we give half of our paychecks to our political enemies, they can use this influx of capital to actively fight against our interests. They often use our rent money to support Landlord Associations or specific politicians who fight tooth and nail to defend the worst forms of tenant exploitation, intensifying the squeeze on working class tenants from multiple angles.
The stakes for tenant organizing have never been higher, and no cause evictions remain a harsh obstacle. Many of the tenants organizing with DSA against illegal rent increases were evicted over the course of 2022. Bearing responsibility for these consequences can put hesitation in the heart of the most militant organizers, but it is not our role to decide whether the risk is too great for tenants. To do so would be paternalistic. The role of socialists is to show how we can fight back. Tell no lies, mask no difficulties, and claim no easy victories.
Tasks
- Demand Portland do something other than give tax breaks and cash to developers to address the tenants’ rights crisis. Either further restricting short term rentals, or restructuring the Housing and Safety Office.
- Prepare a strategy to defend Portland’s referendum process. A compromise on the city council is likely better than fighting off some maximalist ballot question. We should push forward our own demands, so as to not be completely defensive. If the city council wants to take the power to make decisions from the public they should raise the pay for city councilors, so more people can run for those positions.
- Establish minimum-viable points of unity that potential candidates must share to gain endorsement, like not ending hazard pay during a record-setting wave of pandemic infections. But also how these points of unity might be transferable to a school board, or the elected board of directors of statewide consumer-owned utility.
- Build connections with community organizations that share areas of concern. Developing long lasting, organic connections can help Maine DSA better embed itself with local communities. This can take the shape of setting up multi-org meetings, attending other organizations’ events, or merely starting and maintaining a dialogue between leaderships.
Maine DSA is not some savior waiting in the wings, ready to swoop in to prevent the next disaster. What unites the working class is that there is no one coming to save us, only ourselves, and we can let every worker and tenant know they are not alone in that daily struggle for survival. To foster that hope in their heart for a better world. To know that they have the ability to change it; that every cook can govern. That Maine DSA is an awaiting vehicle heading towards liberation that won’t reach its destination without them.
We the undersigned support this vision for Maine DSA, and introduce ourselves as the Lighthouse Caucus.
Aaron B
Leo H
Wil T
Chris C
Tzara K
Todd B
Jo O
