Monthly Round-Up – December 2025

By a Comrade This article is written by a DSA member and does not formally represent the views of MADSA as a whole or its subgroups.  Welcome to Vol. 5 of the monthly round-up! The content in this publication overlaps significantly with our DSA newsletter and monthly General Membership Meetings. To sign up for the newsletter or check out an upcoming General Membership Meeting, visit: https://madison-dsa.org/events/ MADSA Adds a New Branch The chapter reported at our December General Membership Meeting that MADSA has nearly doubled in size since October 2024 – from 368 members then, to 643 members now! In … Continue reading Monthly Round-Up – December 2025

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 … Continue reading The Peculiar and Continuing Importance of Anti-Black Racism in the U.S.

Monthly Round-Up – October 2025

By a Comrade This article is written by a DSA member and does not formally represent the views of MADSA as a whole or its subgroups.  Welcome to Vol. 3 of the monthly round-up! The content in this publication overlaps significantly with our DSA newsletter and monthly General Membership Meetings. To sign up for the newsletter or check out an upcoming General Membership Meeting, visit: https://madison-dsa.org/events/ Union Efforts Continue in Madison In August we celebrated the successful union elections at Festival Foods, and Hilton Monona Terrace. Another union battle continues in Madison, however, led by healthcare workers at GHC, and … Continue reading Monthly Round-Up – October 2025

­David Rovics Concert in Madison

by Ida Bly David Rovics and Kamala Emanuel sang a concert in Madison on September 4th.They call their duo “The Ministry of Culture.” Madison DSA and WORT-FM helped sponsor this performance. This evening of folk-style music offered abundant moments of truth-telling and authenticity. There were about 35 people in attendance, in a range of ages, at Muso on Winnebago Street. Muso hosts acoustic music events without amplification. In this case, the pleasing harmonies contributed by Kamala Emanuel greatly enhanced the songs David sang while playing guitar. Attendees responded warmly to Rovics’ songs, including his most well-known song, “St. Patrick’s Battalion,” … Continue reading ­David Rovics Concert in Madison

Reading Group Report Back: Vladimir Lenin’s Imperialism

From April 20th to May 11th, comrades in MADSA completed a reading and discussion of Vladimir Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Originally written in the first half of 1916 and published as a pamphlet in mid-1917, Lenin’s work analyzing how and why imperialism emerges under capitalism remains a vital resource in developing a stronger understanding of key Marxist concepts and analyses. For most members of the group, it was their first time ever reading any literature written by Lenin. Most members felt the language of Imperialism was easy to understand and the text was a decent length with … Continue reading Reading Group Report Back: Vladimir Lenin’s Imperialism

Reading Group Report Back: Karl Marx’s Capital

…by a reading group member From November 2024 to March 2025, Madison Area DSA embarked on an ambitious political education project. A reading group formed to tackle Paul Reitter’s 2024 translation of Capital. The challenges of this book were clear and immense from the beginning. Marx’s words measure to a total of 710 pages with over 100 more pages of introductions and endnotes. It tackles a vast array of topics starting with a theoretical analysis of value, a mathematical assessment of the working day, and a historic review of the working class’s conditions across Great Britain. To call this work … Continue reading Reading Group Report Back: Karl Marx’s Capital