By: A

In a digital discussion, a comrade brought up this article, entitled “The Teamsters have a MAGA problem. Here’s why,” on the current state of The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) militancy and nativism, written by Luis Feliz Leon, with the suggestion that we ought to spend some time reflecting on it. This prompted a number of replies whose topics ranged as follows: making sense of the endorsement of current IBT president Sean O’Brian (SOB) by the reform caucus Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), the general response to Trump by the U.S. labor movement, the role of labor staff in response to Trumpism/MAGA, the levels and positions of power within different unions, the role of workplace versus staff organizing, and strategic job placement.

Throughout all of these topics, there seemed to be agreement on a main point: We as DSA members need to engage in political reflection on the current status of the labor movement in light of the prominence of reactionary forces. This article is an attempt to set-up and illuminate this conversational space.

Where to start?

My initial response to this article was to ask about which part we needed to focus on. This was for two reasons. (1) The article covers a lot of territory, linking up current struggles to a multiplicity of past labor struggles with similar issues to descriptions of ICE activity to examples of current bottom up organizing under the Teamsters banner. There are lots of pieces to touch on, so what are the important ones? (2) Comrade Leon’s central thesis is clear but extremely broad, and composed of two points:

• Teamster Militancy paired with Political Nativism is a “strategy that destroys the very foundation of working-class power.”
• If we are to reject this strategy in order to build a class-wide labor movement, then we ought to build a culture of class solidarity within unions.

What socialist would disagree with the imposition to build political class solidarity against political nativism? Surely, then, we ought to take up the set of practical questions under this general imposition.

To take up Comrade Leon’s framework and generate more productive practical questions, I will here seek to explore the relationship of the Teamsters organizing efforts to our own here at Metro-Detroit DSA. I presuppose that, roughly and not absolutely, the Teamsters are Organizationally Militant without being Politically Militant and that our chapter of DSA is Politically Militant without being Organizationally Militant. Thus, there is a question of what each entity might learn from the other. What follows is an enumeration of sets of questions for (1) current and future Teamsters labor organizers in Detroit and (2) Metro-Detroit DSA members.

§ What should current and future labor organizers in Detroit do?

The section in Comrade Leon’s article entitled “Fit to Rule” picks out the aspects of TDU that are working, or not, and two strategic paths which are deemed unsatisfactory: romantic denunciation and narrow pragmatism. The former takes on ideological struggle without material struggle, and the latter material struggle without ideological struggle. The strategic path forward, he proposes, is rather to develop a “robust political education program geared towards developing the political consciousness of militant workers.” To which “TDU can play an important role in showing how it can be done.” The key strategy to a revival of the labor movement is to establish a base of labor militancy with a superstructural ideological militancy. The class war must be fought in the realm of ideas as well as material gains. We cannot have one without the other.

For current labor organizers, both rank-and-file and staff, there must be a widening of strategic scope to include this ideological struggle. We must do ideological mapping not only of favorability towards union efforts or contract issues but also towards broader political issues to gauge political orientation. Just as unions are not won through policing for purity, neither will a socialist orientation of rank-and-file workers be won through those same means. So, educative tactics and programs must be developed according to what moves the needle.

Following this line, what are the right questions to ask?

Ideological Mapping

We might stay with the same categories of sympathy to the cause, just with socialism as the object of sympathy rather than a union effort. But how will we distinguish levels? Additionally, it seems that we need to expand the types of antagonism since far more people will be antagonistic to socialist ideas and that we need to be effective with more types of people in the long-term. What types of antagonism to socialism are there?

Organizing Tactics

In order to have tactical organizing conversations, we ought to develop ladders of logical steps to connect the meaning of socialism with concrete, everyday struggles. This requires, also, that we have a more embodied, developed understanding of our own commitment to socialism. When a coworker expresses their exhaustion from but necessity of their job, how does your sympathy for their situation connect to a project for a better world? Most importantly, how can we express such a sentiment without ending up in a ‘heady’ conversation where socialism becomes an intangible concept? This will be another test of our own education. Do we know how to repeat the phrases we have been taught or do we understand the world at a deeper level such that we are able to pull others up with us?

Organizing Programs

What sorts of reading groups/lectures can be implemented into the organizing program? What free time does the rank-and-file have for this? Are there groups of people who already enjoy reading or are there better medium(s) that people are already attuned to? Are there experienced lecturers/teachers among the staff or rank-and-file?

Educative Interventions

Are educative interventions–like 1-on-1 dialogical investigations and popular education–part of the correct strategy for our current moment? How might the expansion of unions in the labor workforce itself operate as an educative mechanism? Are education programs currently feasible within specific unions?

§ What should Metro-Detroit DSA members do?

Although I am a fairly new member to the chapter, I have already noticed an in-effect lack of organizational militancy within MD-DSA. We are proud to have 1200 members on paper, about 100 members at monthly chapter meetings, and dispersed groups of 5–30 participating in any given committee. We need to learn from the Teamster’s Organizational Militancy, especially since we already have plenty of Ideological militancy in educative programming.

I say that this observation is in-effect as an organization because there are plenty of individual organizers within the chapter who are highly motivated, hardworking, and remarkably effective in their own right. The point here is not to begin directing blame but to find which questions help us bridge the gap.

When I was the chair of a Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter, I ran into this same organizational problem. A handful of activists were doing everything, some supporters attending and helping, and most of the base was disengaged. In an autopsy of my time leading the chapter, I found a major problem to be that my leadership was tailing the members. With the expectation that members would constitute the directing force of the chapter, I took the role of the steering committee (SC) to be the busy workers that carry out the commands of the membership. I and my fellow SC members quickly became overwhelmed with the amount of work it takes to simply maintain the operation of the chapter. Thus, our main goal became to preserve the chapter rather than to lead it.

The diagnosis of the problem is with the lack of clear authority within the organization. Who was responsible for what? The membership was looking to the steering committee for what the chapter ought to do and we were looking right back, with no one going anywhere.

This question of authority has broken out within the chapter in response to Trump’s war on Venezuela. On January 3rd, 2026, many members of MD-DSA flocked to the Slack channel for direction and leadership. Many discussions broke out about other organizations’ events and some finger pointing about who ought to be directing a unified Democratic Socialist effort. There was a lack of clarity of responsibility and, consequently, of authority. This brings us to the set of questions I think we need to face.

First, how should authority figure between leaders and members in MD-DSA? Are we avoiding the tailing problem in our leadership? Is there a hierarchy of authority among committees? How do we prioritize the work of the chapter among our commitments (if we do so at all)? What are the relationships between new and experienced members? Is there a generational pass-down of organizing knowledge occurring in the chapter?

Next, there must be a learning process in organizational tactics. What types of learning materials are made available to new members to transition them from a regular person interested in politics to an active organizer? Which habits of organizing are the basics to be taught to all members? What is our progression ladder of on the ground organizing skills?

Lastly, there must be a program to instill organizational militancy within the chapter. How can we instill a sense of responsibility towards the chapter in our members? (1) How are we to learn to be dutiful and responsible towards one another? Are members supposed to see their participation in DSA as a part of their own personhood? These are questions I welcome members to contemplate as we continue to grow MD-DSA as a whole. (2)

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1. If members only participate when they want, their membership is contingent on their desires rather than their moral obligations. But this is not an easy distinction to make.
2. I hope that the reader encounters every question as individual considerations in their own right and not as rhetorical remarks to be skipped over.