APRIL 17, 2026

Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America, uniting the DMV, is one of a number of big urban DSA chapters — and many more compact but potent ones within the country’s Blue AND Red corridors — that are building a true political Left across the US. All this as Trump, flailing, seeks a nationalist rush with brain-dead warmaking, and ill-trained ICE paramilitary irregulars layer white-nationalist terrorism atop our everyday capitalist yoke. This is the terrain on which we fight back, gain allies, and, more often every day, win.

• Your first step? Join DSA and fight to build socialism. We’re the alternative that works for people, not profiteers and their captive politicians. Still thinking about it? Be sure to get this Update every Friday in your inbox, member or not.
• Check out the breadth and scope of our Metro DC chapter — DMV branches, working groups, campaigns, current activities, and enduring values — right here. Get the full but concise picture at “Why You Should Join DSA/New Member Orientation” in a virtual version from 7 – 8pm on Wednesday, May 20
• How is our activism grounded? See the rich archive of our acclaimed Socialist Night School. Read the Washington Socialist, published since the 1970s, which is set to publish its spring 2026 issue this month. Ahead of time, several timely works of analysis: Big Tech’s role in apartheid and genocide (and local resistance), the US-supported UAE-RSF genocide in Sudan, and an overview of the suppressed history of the Black socialist tradition. Watch the latest MDC Dispatch video chronicle on YouTube for more recent coverage.
• Already a member? Join our Slack for real-time info on working group and campaign events, strategy/tactic exchange, and inspiration. Email slack@mdcdsa.org with your most recent DSA dues receipt to get access.

Just whistle: How Chicago kept ICE at bay [visual]
It’s illustrated. A webcomic version of how Chicago’s communities were able to quickly mobilize effective citizen resistance to ICE’s fascist behavior there. The lesson, enunciated by the head of Chicago’s powerful and activist teachers’ union: We mobilized quickly and effectively because our communities were already organized through past struggles and ready for this kind of emergency. Webcomic from Jewish Currents.

Government workers say they’re getting inundated with religion
On Easter Sunday, US Department of Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins sent out an email titled “He has risen!” to the entire agency. In the email, Rollins calls the story of Jesus Christ the “greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind.” One USDA employee called the email “grotesque” and said the wording made them think it had been written by AI. The USDA is not the only agency espousing overtly religious rhetoric: At the Department of Health and Human Services, the Small Business Administration, and the Department of Labor, federal employees have been alarmed to watch Christianity’s creep into the government since President Donald Trump’s return to office. WIRED

The Average Taxpayer Shelled Out Over $4,000 for War and Weapons Last Year
You spent about 50 days working and paying taxes last year just to feed the war machine—and 23 days working to pay those Pentagon contractors and their millionaire CEOs. Americans want a government that supports them when times are tough—not one that shakes us down for endless wars. Common Dreams via Portside

First Aid Kit: I Hosted a Mutual Aid Swap in My Backyard. So Can You! [visual]
It’s time to stop waiting around for those in power to save us. We, the people, can get everyone’s basic needs met. The experience: “lots of people got stuff. Lots of people brought stuff. And everybody stayed around, schmoozed and connected.” The instructions: “Be on the lookout for mutual aid events near you, and stop by to see how they’re run and meet the organizers. Or, you could just knock on your neighbor’s door and ask what they need. The more connections we make within our communities, the better we can support one another.” The Coyote (Berkeley)

Tascha Van Auken helped turn the D.S.A. into an electoral force. What will she do inside City Hall?
A sparkplug in NY DSA’s powerful role in Mamdani’s epochal trek to the New York mayoralty, she is now head of the city’s Office of Mass Engagement. It was “the nearly ten years that Van Auken had spent in leadership roles in the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, where, with a core of like-minded organizers, she had helped to transform what was once a sleepy vestige of the now old New Left into a central player in New York politics.” The New Yorker via Portside