The Denver Democratic Socialists of America (DDSA) echoes national DSA’s condemnation of the American-Israeli aggression against Iran. These unprovoked strikes have already killed at least 85 people at an elementary school for girls, the images of blood-stained backpacks mirroring the carnage and unrestrained slaughter of Gazan children we have all witnessed for the last two years. This is not coincidental – the brutality inflicted on Palestinians was never going to be limited to the land between the river and the sea, but was a step towards normalizing a more unmasked version of American imperialism around the world. From the unlawful abduction of Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela to the brutal blockade against the Cuban people, from Palestine to Iran, we are witnessing a dying empire lashing out in desperate attempts to reinforce its might around the world, for the benefit of a ruling class and no one else.

This is a time for radicalization, organizing and action. While our unhoused neighbors suffer on Denver’s streets, our immigrant neighbors fear ICE raids and the working class struggles more than ever, there is always money for another imperial war. The insatiable hunger of the military industrial complex means that our ruling class will never address the needs of the people for health care, housing and child care. The oppression and carnage waged abroad in our names will turn into increased surveillance, incarceration and political targeting at home. We condemn the Trump administration for their arrogant, reckless aggression and also condemn the cowardice and tacit support for war against Iran from Democratic Party leadership, who have demonstrated that they are beholden to the interest of their donor class over the needs of working people.

DDSA mourns the lives lost in the American-Israeli attacks and demands a cessation of hostilities against Iran, a withdrawal of military assets from the Persian Gulf and the region, an end to unilateral coercive measures against Iran, and a return to diplomacy on the part of the United States. We call on the people of Denver to organize and participate in mass mobilizations against the attacks on Iran, contact their representatives in Congress and demand that they vote for the Iran War Powers Resolution, and join Denver DSA and its Internationalism Committee as we continue to struggle against American imperialism in West Asia and beyond.

No to imperialist war, yes to the sovereignty of the Iranian people! No war but class war!

We’re launching a campaign called Trans Sanctuary Davenport: we want Davenport City Council to pass an ordinance that protects people who are receiving or providing gender-affirming or reproductive healthcare.

At a time when the State of Iowa and the Federal Government are restricting the rights of trans people and denying them healthcare, along with further restricting access to abortion, we work to ensure that the third-largest city in Iowa will do whatever it can to protect bodily autonomy and not submit to external pressure.

Traditional party priorities are dramatically misplaced when it comes to trans rights. The Democratic Party is supposedly the thing that stands between us and fascist control of our bodies. However, their willingness to abandon marginalized groups means we are not willing to trust them with stakes as high as these and must demand they act for their residents. The rise of the far-right and the GOP’s near-total control over Iowa’s government have left the Democrats willing to abandon people. Too many prominent Democrats like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Iowa’s own Rob Sand have embraced far-right talking points around trans people, foolishly hoping that dabbling in right-wing cultural war issues will make the Democrats somehow more appealing. Trans community members are the sacrificial lambs in their quest for power.

As socialists, we’re committed to building solidarity with all working people: an injury to one is an injury to all. We reject dabbling in hateful and exclusionary rhetoric to somehow win over voters. Instead, we’re building a movement of working people and aligned organizations to fight for our rights.

We’re not alone: we’re doing this campaign as part of DSA’s Trans Rights & Bodily Autonomy Campaign. We’re working alongside DSA chapters who’ve been able to pass similar legislation in Columbia, MO, and Ithaca, NY. While we want an ordinance passed today, as part of DSA’s political program Workers Deserve More, we want Medicare for All, a universal healthcare system free for anyone in the U.S. that covers gender-affirming care and abortions.

This fight is for Davenport, but we’re part of a global movement for social and economic justice.

My name is Jason, I am a Teamster and a member of the CT Democratic Socialists of America. Iran is the latest victim of a capitalist class that knows time is running out: as the pressures of climate change and the mass migration it has caused bears down on them, they have decided to embrace the fascist far right, dreaming that through war abroad and ICE terror here at home, they can hold on to the wealth they have stolen from working people around the world.

These robber barons want to convince Americans that their enemies are in Tehran, Caracas, Havana or Gaza. But my enemies live on Billionaire’s Row in Manhattan and work on Wall Street and in DC.

As of late, I have run out of patience and time to speak at length on the unmitigated war crimes and international offenses our country’s government takes upon the international community.

But whatever excuses may exist in terms of continued inaction (of which none are permissable or valid) from our people here in Louisiana does not exist when it comes to Cuba. Louisiana holds the majority of US exports to Cuba as a state, but we suffer severe economic losses every time we are forced unilaterally by the Federal government to abandon trade. Despite these antagonisms by the government, the people of Cuba have only sought to help us in Louisiana.

When Katrina hit and the Bush administration left our neighbors on rooftops, without power for weeks, wondering how our lost family were doing, the Cuban government requested to send 1586 doctors and 86 tons of medical supplies. Cuban doctors waited for days in hopes that their plea to help their Gulf neighbors would be heard. How did the Bush administration respond? They denied the aid in an effort to not allow any positive sentiment to be built. They left us to die, whether that was on Danzinger Bridge, in the currents, through lack of power, or from dehydration/heat exhaustion/starvation.

And this was not a rare phenomenon of Cuban solidarity. Most of the Global South depends on Cuban doctors to constantly supplement what are often overstretched healthcare systems in countries repeatedly destabilized by the US in the name of neoliberalism and democracy, which we oh-so-enjoy here in the states.

Now we claim to free Cuban, Haitian, Iranian, Palestinian, and other peoples all by starving, bombing, blockading, and couping the country. When will that pit in your stomach finally become a tumor and kill off your humanity? When will we finally admit that we can no longer abdicate responsibility of our government’s actions onto the usual rotating-villains offered up by those in power? When will we finally see that our neighbors have a shared history and existence with the international body?

Cubans never put a chemical plant in my backyard. Cubans, while our country was still pushing Jim Crow’s “separate but equal” lie, were overthrowing literal slave plantations and taking their destiny into their own hands. Cuba held room for Assata Shakur when our country sought to persecute her. Cuba fed and educated their people while our government sought to make our living standards so threadbare that we could lose everything in missing a week of work.

Join Baton Rouge DSA in the coming months as we work to help our neighbors understand the interconnectedness of our struggles with the people of Cuba’s struggles. As workers, our enemy is the same: billionaires who dream all day long of returning us to slavery plantations while they continue to do more and more of what has been detailed in the Epstein files and decades of US intelligence documents.

In the meantime, while we work to build campaigns to assist the Cuban people, please visit https://international.dsausa.org/cuba-solidarity/stop-the-siege/ for more information on ways you can donate to keep people alive while they attempt to kill thousands through this illegal siege.

Viva Cuba

Cam C, Co-Chair of BRDSA

The hammer of U.S. imperialism falls again, causing death and destruction across the Middle East. In partnership with the genocidal Israeli regime, the Trump Administration is engaging in gunboat diplomacy to enforce its terms on Iran. But following America’s unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and re-imposition of deadly sanctions, Iran expresses a rational hesitancy to disarm.

This time, we’ve heard little about “weapons of mass destruction” or “defending democracy.” The ruling class is not even bothering to manufacture consent for its crimes. The lesson of Vietnam and Iraq has only been increased recklessness. These actions will continue to isolate and overextend the grasp of the U.S. empire.

The working class has no desire for this conflict. ROC DSA is organizing opposition into a force capable of seizing the gears of war. Capitalists rely on our labor to manufacture their bombs and to fight their wars. We refuse to be complicit in their violence.

The band sings in an uplifting tone

about things that bore down on them

till nothing was left of the city but bones,

till skin shrieked in the wind,

tattered flags menacing the visitors

who could afford a way out.

We were there, we saw it all, it didn’t

surprise any except those now stretching with

the insane delirium of holding on.

I stay around for too long again

I listen to the same song

I think the same scene

ripe and real for adaptation

till it gets too old and rotten.

Floating eyes encircle the

cerebral barge

like pigeons.

I’m a performer spinning plates,

or handling rings from limb to limb.

I disappear in the whir.

I am dancing again to the same melody,

recollecting a broken mirror’s piece

obsessing over the movement, what was said,

the same words telling me about death

hushing me into a liquor-and-panic-induced coma.

My eyes open in terror:

Oh no, another day.

The man claimed to be my friend,

he who had met me at that instant.

He crept alongside me, and behind,

sometimes even in the front of me,

I was reminded of Poe’s story of the doppelganger

I started to believe in him

He managed my social engagements,

work life, home life, the entirety of life by the end.

He arranged my funeral, though I wasn’t even dead.

He had drawn out every plot point in the narrative

till no one else listened to me,

till no one else seemed to care.

It wasn’t until I visited the kingdoms of other families,

across the street and down the block

when I realized they had managers too.

These managers all got together

and played cards one night a week,

they traded trinkets, undisclosed boxes,

whatsits, and photo albums,

possessions of all sorts.

They migrated, traded, kept track

of all accounts, their statistics neatly compiled

in separate but equal binders, each

labeled for their jurisdiction, their territory.

They recorded everything: timelines and calculations,

import/export dramas and the latest culture and gossip pages.

Industries were run from our very houses,

and on through the ages,

just history recording itself through the

mindful maps of these ‘Iowa nice’ neighbors.

It’s January 10th, 2026, the morning of our Mutual Aid distribution event, and it’s cold and windy outside of the Davenport Public Library. My fellow DSA members and I prepare the items we have spent the last few weeks fundraising and shopping for: coats, sweaters, socks, blankets, bus passes, boxes of food and hygiene items, and entertainment. Groups of unhoused people gather to wait in the biting wind while we scramble to get everything organized and displayed, some of them understandably on edge upon seeing items they needed that were limited in stock and therefore not guaranteed to go to them. More than once, an entire rack of coats gets blown onto the damp ground, and after struggling to find our tarp, we had to improvise, at one point using our own QCDSA banner to display some of the clothes so that the people receiving the goods could get clean and dry items. Some of the organizers cannot come due to illness and other circumstances, and some show up despite sub-optimal health just to get the event off the ground.

And yet, as the day goes on, the energy is surprisingly relaxed. Jovial, even. Over the next two hours, friendly conversation can be heard among DSA members and the unhoused comrades alike, old friends and acquaintances reuniting. Heather greets everyone upon arrival, asking their name and current home city as she assigns them numbers on post-its, a first-come-first-served system we employ to avoid confusion and maintain fairness. JJ pours people cups of hot chocolate and cup noodles, taking care to learn and use everyone’s names and asking them about their life. Other members hold the racks of coats steady, organize clothing by size and gender, and display hygiene items for easy access. As people start picking through items they need, Heather shows me the homemade coloring books she put together before they are all taken. The pages full of vibrant images are put together in neat folders and carry uplifting messages. Besides the coloring books, we have copies of our zine and stickers providing education about us as an organization, which come in handy as multiple people ask how they can get a hold of us to give back when they are in a position to do so. Several express frankly that these events save lives.

As people pick through the items, taking some for themselves and for loved ones, sharing smiles and conversation, I feel warmed at what our community can do to help ourselves through difficult circumstances. Although there is joy in this revelation, there is also anger. Anger that the systems that be, far from normalizing this kind of collective action, actively exploit the working class and create the circumstances that lead to homelessness. Anger that, as good as it feels to have avenues of direct action, these events do not and cannot solve the issue of homelessness in the Quad Cities. I am angry, but anger, like joy, is energizing. For me, that energy is going straight back into organizing with the DSA. We cannot undo the ills of capitalism with any singular event or strategy, but working with my comrades on the Mutual Aid Distribution this month was a spot of light that will help me carry on another day.

If you want to get involved in our mutual aid efforts, you can start by joining the Mutual Aid Working Group meeting over Zoom on March 4th at 6PM.

The Quad-City Worker is launching a brand new video platform, starting with a YouTube channel you can find at youtube.com/@qcworker.

This platform will be a new place for members to share a socialist perspective on the problems and opportunities that face the working class in our community.

We hope you will help us by submitting videos that describe relevant local news, explainers of our government’s injustices, updates on the work the QCDSA is doing, and other things you hope will inform and mobilize.

You can find the YouTube channel here.

You can submit your video or essay here.