Tag: Education

  • The Peculiar and Continuing Importance of Anti-Black Racism in the U.S.

    By Blair Goodman — Political Education Working Group, Madison DSA

    Madison, right now

    Across Dane County, our campaigns against jail expansion, corporate developers, and layoffs at TruStage all run into the same brick wall: a system that divides and disciplines labor along racial lines. Anti-Black racism isn’t an add-on to class struggle—it’s a core method by which exploitation keeps reproducing itself. This piece offers a framework for connecting those dots in our local work.

    1) Capitalism’s birth in racial slavery

    Modern capitalism was built through dispossession and enslavement—the twin thefts of land and labor. Plantations were early financial instruments linking human bondage to credit, insurance, and global trade.

    W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction showed that enslaved labor was integral to world capitalism, and that the Civil War’s “general strike of the slaves” was the first mass withdrawal of labor in U.S. history. He also named the wages of whiteness: the social privileges that kept white workers tied to their own exploitation.

    2) The logic of racial capitalism

    Cedric Robinson and Oliver Cromwell Cox argued that capitalism didn’t create racism—it modernized it. Racial hierarchy became a tool for managing labor, marking some workers disposable and others “deserving.” Whiteness functioned as property and as discipline: a counterfeit privilege that fragments the class.

    Each transition—from slavery to sharecropping, from industry to mass incarceration—reshaped rather than removed racial rule.

    3) Ruling-class strategies of division

    From Bacon’s Rebellion to Reaganomics, elites have used racial politics to stabilize profit.
    After Reconstruction, terror and “Black Codes” rebuilt cheap, coerced labor.
    In the industrial North, corporate leaders hired across color lines to break strikes and then incited mob violence to keep unions weak.

    The New Deal’s exclusions of agricultural and domestic workers preserved segregation inside the welfare state. Later, Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” and Reagan’s “welfare-queen” myth converted white resentment into a new austerity consensus.

    4) Anti-Black racism in the contemporary economy

    • Labor: Black and brown workers dominate low-wage logistics and care work; white workers are overrepresented in management and tech.
    • Policing and prisons: Incarceration functions as labor discipline under the 13th Amendment exception.
    • Finance: Redlined credit and predatory loans siphon wealth from Black communities; the 2008 crash transferred billions to banks.
    • Environment & health: Toxic exposure, food deserts, and hospital closures show how profit literally costs lives.

    Corporate “diversity” rhetoric and right-wing culture wars both mask this structure.

    Resistance—from teachers’ strikes to warehouse walkouts—shows multiracial solidarity can still rupture it.

    “Anti-racism isn’t a distraction from class politics—it’s how we build working-class power that can actually govern.”

    5) What this means for organizers

    • Integrate racial analysis into every campaign. Whether the issue is housing, healthcare, or wages, trace how racial inequality shapes the field of struggle.
    • Center Black working-class leadership. Leadership development and cadre training should deliberately cultivate Black and marginalized organizers—not tokenism, but strategy.
    • Reject false binaries. Universal demands (like Medicare for All) only transform society if implemented through racial justice.
    • Challenge whiteness as a relation. Build reflection and accountability—not guilt—into your organizing culture.
    • Connect local fights to systemic critique. Show how each campaign teaches lessons about racial capitalism and how collective action can dismantle it.

    The goal is not moral reconciliation but power: a unified multiracial working class capable of governing society in its own interest.

    6) Political education & collective memory

    • Pair readings of Black Reconstruction, Black Marxism, and Hammer and Hoe with local labor history.
    • Map your shop or neighborhood: who gets which jobs, services, protections—and why?
    • Debrief campaigns not only on tactics but on leadership and racial dynamics. Document lessons so they become chapter memory.

    Political education isn’t a classroom—it’s the loop between struggle and understanding.

    Use this next week

    • Bring this piece to your WG or union meeting; connect one paragraph to a current Madison fight.
    • Host a 60-minute discussion using the five organizer implications above.
    • Send local examples (housing, policing, labor) to #redmadison for follow-up coverage.

    Sources & further reading

    • W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935)
    • Oliver Cromwell Cox, Caste, Class and Race (1948)
    • Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism (1983)
    • Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
    • Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016)

    About the author: Blair Goodman helps political education at Madison DSA. This piece is part of our ongoing effort to tie local campaigns to a rigorous understanding of racial capitalism.

    🗒 One-Page Printable Discussion Guide

    For WG meetings, study circles, or union caucuses (60 min)
    Goal: connect theoretical insight on racial capitalism to immediate campaigns in Madison.

    Agenda (60 minutes)

    • Opening check-in (10 min): one moment you’ve seen race and class intersect at work or in organizing.
    • Read-aloud (10 min): paragraph 5, “What this means for organizers.”
    • Small-group discussion (25 min):
      • How does anti-Black racism operate in our current campaign or workplace?
      • Which of the five organizer implications feels most urgent here?
      • What concrete change in practice could reflect that insight?
    • Report-backs (10 min): one takeaway per group.
    • Closing commitment (5 min): each participant writes one action step to test before the next meeting.

    Materials

    • Printed or digital copy of the essay
    • Whiteboard/poster paper for mapping examples
    • Optional: QR link to MADSA events page

  • Jail Communications Campaign Victory

    By the Jail Communications Coalition

    We fought hard, we fought smart, and we won! The Abolitionist Working Group and our community coalition for free jail communications campaigned against a 3-5 year, exploitative contract between the Dane County Sheriff and Smart Communications, which the Dane County Board of Supervisors voted to reject on September 18, 2025. 

    The contract would have meant continued financial exploitation of jail residents and their families, keeping human connection for those awaiting trial behind a paywall and denying jail residents physical mai through the dehumanizing and inefficient practice of mail scanning. We are celebrating and learning from this win, and continuing to fight for the rights of jail residents and their families to stay connected. 

    Getting Started 

    We began thinking about the jail communications contract process in July of 2024, when a comrade remembered that the current jail communications contract was going to expire soon. In response, we began a long period of intensive research on the request for proposal (RFP) process, the County’s current jail communications system, alternatives to for-profit jail communications corporations, successes in other communities, and probable positions of current Board members. 

    As we expected, the sheriff’s office fumbled the opportunity to present a more just communications system. The County Board was informed of the end of the current contract too late, forcing an extension of the contract to allow time for the RFP process, committee discussions, and votes on the contract. The RFP process resulted in only two proposals, and the chosen proposal by Smart Communications was sent to Board committees this June. AWG was ready to oppose the contract and sprung into action. 

    Our Coalition

    This victory would not have been possible without a coalition of community members working together or the extensive preparation that the Abolitionist Working Group did leading up to this summer. When the contract was sent to the Public Protection & Judiciary Committee (PP&J), there was very little notice to the board or community, and an immediate response was required. Thankfully, we were ready. Members of MADSA’s Abolition Working Group turned out to a PP&J committee meeting to testify, where we met like-minded community members opposing the jail communications contract also ready to advocate. A Signal chat was formed among these community members, and advocates across the left joined in to form a loose coalition, including community organizers from MADSA, LGBTQ Books to Prisoners, the Politicized Healers Network, and many other local advocates. Working as a coalition, we benefited from a diverse array of experience, skills, and contact with County Board Supervisors, and together, we fought against this contract every step of the way. 

    The coalition included people with lived experience and loved ones impacted by the justice system. It included social workers with expertise about addiction, nonprofit workers with expertise about navigating the carceral system, and business leaders with expertise designing and administering RFP processes. It included people with established relationships with board members, and others who had never spoken at a board meeting. We didn’t have a name, or a charter, or a long list of logos from sponsoring organizations. What we did have as a coalition was energy and focus towards a specific goal, one that motivated us to work across political differences to create a unified front against exploitation. 

    This loose coalition started building working relationships and together synthesized an ask: that the board deny the Smart Communications contract and instead adopt a system of jail communications that would be free to residents and their families and that would be accountable to tax payers. We identified possible barriers – the upcoming county budget process, the sheriff’s unfounded claims about drug trafficking, and bias against justice-impacted community members. From our long-time fight against the building of a new jail, we also knew that connecting with county board supervisors from outside of Madison would be essential. 

    We would need to rely on all of our diverse areas of expertise, because in a budget year, fighting against a contract that would have paid the county for a monopoly on jail residents communication and data was going to be an uphill battle. This work required us, as a coalition, to trust one another, be open to new ideas, respect each other’s expertise, and celebrate each other’s efforts. We had to be agile as conditions and timelines changed, engage fully in the work when we were able, and recognize that we didn’t need to agree on every word or idea to share the same vision and goal. Being in a coalition required more work, but we accomplished so much more than we could have alone. The sum was greater than the parts. 

    Our Tactics

    Our subsequent efforts were strategic and unfolded as we went: 

    • We intentionally recruited community members through social media and activist networks from a variety of districts in the county to register and speak at committee meetings
    • We documented which supervisors were for and against us, making note of the particular issues and concerns folks had and what arguments might sway those who were uncertain
    • We developed relationships with board members who were on our side to equip them with arguments against the Smart Communications Contract
    • We published in Tone and the Cap Times to appeal to the broader community 
    • We developed a list of plain-language talking points, each with specific details and citations, and organized to ensure that a variety of talking points were presented at every opportunity for public comment
    • We didn’t wait for the all-board meeting, but instead showed up at every committee meeting leading up to the board vote. Close to 20 community members spoke against the contract at each committee meeting, 50+ community members registered opposition and even more folks contacted their supervisors directly, saying “vote no”. 
    • We conducted extensive research about
      1. The harm caused by charging for communications
      2. Alternatives to charging for communications, and
      3. How other activists have fought and won the right to communication for incarcerated people elsewhere. 

    And finally, after an already long fight, when the full county board vote was delayed by two weeks, our coalition made one final push to convince board members that this contract was not in the best interests of our county. Knowing that board members had already heard emotional and ethical appeals, the coalition focused on showing the Board that they had other options. County supervisors needed to know about the abundance of alternatives and how other counties and states are implementing communication at no-cost to incarcerated people and their families. 

    A team of four from this coalition, including DSA members Aedan and Brenda, spent a week and a half creating a presentation focused on 11 specific, well-researched examples of communities where jail and prison communications systems are administered without fees to residents and their families. The presentation also included data from government and nonprofit reports, peer-reviewed research, and news articles. Most notably, this presentation highlighted work in La Crosse County, WI, Champaign County, IL, and Elkhart County, IN after Aeden conducted interviews with county board members, detention center personnel, and sheriff departments who testified about the benefits of offering free phone calls in their facilities. 

    We invited all Dane County Supervisors to the webinar, and 8 joined the call, along with 2 lieutenants from the sheriff office, the sheriff himself, and a high-ranking staff member for County Executive Melissa Agard. Due to rules about public record and when and how the board convenes meetings, we offered the presentation as a webinar instead of a discussion, and board members were invited to reach out privately with any clarifying questions. The presentation slides and a recording were sent immediately following to all the board supervisors.

    The Result

    During the summer, and in response to our advocacy, both the Public Protection & Judiciary and Personnel & Finance Committees had voted to send this contract to the full board with recommendations to deny the contract, based on several concerns, including:

    • The harm caused by fee-based jail communications systems and the isolation they inflict on both jail residents and their loved ones
    • A lack of data privacy and ambiguity in this contract about data ownership
    • Ethical and financial concerns about Smart Communications and their leadership in particular
    • The risk of lawsuit based on Smart Communications pattern of violating 1st and 4th amendment rights
    • The lack of notice and transparency from the sheriff’s department in the RFP process.

    Our summer of advocacy efforts, and year of research prior, then culminated in September. On September 4, 2025 the full Dane County Board planned to take up the issue for discussion. Just hours before the meeting, Sheriff Barett, who had previously claimed denying residents physical mail was non-negotiable, introduced a new contract that eliminated mail scanning. This in itself was a win and showed the power of our community’s voice. It also threw off-guard both community members prepared to give comments and the board supervisors prepared to discuss and vote on the former contract.

    We spoke up against the contract anyway. Every public comment given was strongly opposed to the contract. Already frustrated by Sheriff Barett’s late submission of this substitute contract, the Board voted to table the item and re-take the issue at the September 18 meeting, not only in light of community members’ concerns, but also to give Supervisors a chance to read the contract before voting. At the Board’s meeting on September 18, 2025, further public comment wasn’t allowed based on procedural rules, and it was during those two weeks between meetings that we presented to the board about alternatives. 

    Board members, having been educated by members of the community at large and our coalition in particular, stood to voice their discomfort with for-profit jail communications and the poor data privacy practices that this contract would include. During debate, multiple supervisors asserted that the county needs to improve communication for incarcerated people without causing financial burden, referencing the information and examples our coalition shared. Finally, two issues went to vote. First, whether to adopt the sheriff’s revised contract and second whether to approve the proposed contract. Both versions of the contract were denied by the Dane County Board of Supervisors in a landslide. 

    What’s Next

    In an ideal world, the jail wouldn’t exist. We would have strong community-directed systems that promote real healing and accountability without the carceral state. Humans in our county would not be kept in a cage, however gilded the new jail will be, simply because they’ve been accused of wrong-doing and don’t have money for bail. This is a world we will continue to fight for. And because of this specific push against one particularly exploitative part of the injustice system, we have a real shot at making sure incarcerated members of our community have the right to connect with their loved ones. 

    With the current contract set to expire, and with county board members engaged and committed to adopting a more ethical communications system, we look forward to working together as a coalition to continue resisting exploitative practices and advocating for systems that affirm the dignity of our jail residents and their families. 

  • Neutrality is a Lie: The Academy Under Siege

    by Dahlia Green

    American higher education is under assault.

    Research funding, whether for sciences or humanities, has been cut off. The thugs of ICE descend upon college campuses, abducting students who dared speak out against the American-backed genocide in Gaza. International students are subject to a campaign of terror and arbitrary restrictions justified on vague “national security” grounds, a paper-thin disguise for racism and a targeted anti-intellectualism.

    The most prestigious and wealthy universities, those that can best defend themselves, have responded to this assault by rolling over. Administrators have rushed to gag their students and faculty, to invite the regime to monitor their output for ideological deviation, and fork over whatever bribes the the state demands. In some cases, these lackeys of capital have used the opportunity to settle scores with their faculty, slashing positions and trumpeting the closure or gutting of departments and programs they disapprove of with a malicious glee. They have not used their privileges to stand up to the assault on their staff, students, and supposed values; they have done everything in their power to ensure its success.

    The representatives of the loyal opposition have said little in response, barely bringing themselves to condemn the practice of disappearing dissidents they themselves would rather like to disappear. Jeffries and the liberal establishment he represents have decided that the universities are not popular enough for them to defend. They deem this to be another of Trump’s “distractions”, which they should ignore to talk about the more comfortable, “electable” topics of social security or law and order. These heirs to the Copperheads will not save us.

    Into this carnage step the gentlemen (and it is almost all men) of the Academy who think they have found the answer to this crisis.

    Writing for the Dispatch, Evan D. Morris cries for the sciences to be set free from the humanities. After all, he says, it is the fault of the ideologically astray, “woke” humanities that the axe has fallen upon universities, not the dutifully apolitical sciences! Mr. Morris lets his contempt for the humanities blind him to the reality at hand. He conjures a fantasy in which he can throw the English department to a bear in order to escape, not realizing that he will be next on the menu. In doing so, he becomes a collaborator in waiting, a delusional toadie of the regime. Pity him, for such fools do not tend to outlive their usefulness.

    In contrast, Jacob Hale Russell & Dennis Patterson, both humanities professors at Rutgers University, set out to save the university, humanities and all. Writing in the Guardian, that bastion of the British Liberal, they bemoan the assault on higher education, the decline in public trust in universities, and the tendency of administrators to throw their faculty under the bus. They rightly regard this as a crisis – but one which is strictly institutional, rather than political. In their worldview, the problem is not that universities will no longer be spaces of open political struggle, but that they have been so in the first place.

    Their solution is for the academy to further retreat into institutional redoubts, to extricate itself from the very field of politics where this battle is now being fought. They propose, in other words, to vacate the field of conflict before the battle has even been fought, retreating behind a shield of legitimating, institutional neutrality.

    Such a position is the equivalent of burying one’s head in the sand, of substituting lofty sounding phrases like “freedom of inquiry” for a hard reckoning with the grim realities facing higher education. Russell and Patterson hail the “Chicago Principles” while failing to engage with the fact that the University of Chicago has begun the liquidation of its humanities grad programs and cracking down on “DEI”, executing the program of the regime alongside empty pronouncements of academic freedom.

    The “neutrality” they trumpet is a false hope, little more than a smokescreen for the shock troops of the right in their effort to dismantle higher education. Perhaps, as Russell and Patterson say, an error was made in the past regarding the left’s discursive strategies, that “safetyism” was a mistake. Even so, we cannot change the past, and no amount of performative neutrality will stay the axe. Attempting to adopt a position of neutrality will only embolden and strengthen the assault on universities, not stop it.

    Indeed, many colleges already adopted so-called neutrality in response to the wave of protests that swept college campuses in the last two years. This supposed neutrality has not coincided with a flourishing of free inquiry, as Russell and Patterson would have us think, but an intensification of the assault on campus groups condemned by the state and right-wing activists! 

    What then, is to be done? 

    The true solution lies in embracing the political nature of the struggle now ongoing on college campuses, in fostering consciousness and solidarity among students and staff alike. We must organize ourselves, in unions, in professional organizations, in student organizations, and we must work together to fight. Graduate assistant unions and professor’s associations must create a united front to resist pressure from administrations and the state to curb free inquiry and end the very existence of academia. 

    Administrations which fight must receive full support in their struggle, while those that capitulate must be fought at every turn, pressured into reversing course. Administrators have generally proven to be cowards, and so we must make it a more unappealing proposition to go to war with their own university than it is to comply with the state’s directives. If they are punished for assisting in the assault and rewarded for resisting, the hope is that some might find some spine. 

    This will not be easy. It will require hard work, cooperation, and a willingness to endure hardship. Yet the advancement of human knowledge is far too precious a pursuit to abandon without a fight.