Bill Christeson holds a sign calling for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, November 12, 2025, outside the U.S. Capitol. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Well, now we have it. On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released another batch of documents related to notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Among them were several emails about Donald Trump. One was from Epstein to his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell back in 2011. He wrote: “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump.. [victim] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there[.]” (Excuse the spelling and grammar errors, that’s all Jeffrey.)
By now, we’re all familiar with what “spent hours” meant in the context of rich, powerful men and Epstein’s victims—particularly given the reference to ‘barking,’ which has to mean going to prosecutors or the media.
Epstein also wrote to the author Michael Wolff in 2019: “[victim] mara lago … trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop[.]” This appears to be a reference to Maxwell picking up victims at Mar-a-Lago—raising the question of whether Trump was mad at Epstein’s abuses, or for “taking our people,” as he said in July.
This certainly puts some more intrigue on the seating yesterday of Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), the 218th vote on the discharge petition in the House to release the Epstein files, as well as the Trump administration’s increasingly desperate campaign to stop that vote.
But I have just one question: Was President Biden’s pick to run federal law enforcement, former Attorney General Merrick Garland, kicked in the head by a particularly irritable mule right before assuming office in 2021, and did he thereby spend the next four years wandering around the Justice Department bumping into things and saying, “It feels like I am forgetting something. Where am I?” Because otherwise his term in office is looking like the greatest law enforcement failure in American history, and Biden’s decision to nominate Garland the most catastrophic personnel decision by any Democratic president since James Buchanan.
As we at the Prospect have covered for years now, this is only the latest in about 10,000 stories implicating Trump in Epstein’s abuses. Let’s review some highlights again!
2002: Trump tells New York magazine: “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy … He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
2003: As part of an incredibly revolting book celebrating Epstein’s 50th birthday, Trump sends a birthday note with a hand-drawn note of a pubescent, nude female form, and a poem reading in part: “Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that? … A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday—and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
2008: Epstein is finally investigated for sexual abuse of minors. Then-U.S. attorney Alex Acosta grants Epstein one of the most bizarre sweetheart deals in American legal history, in which Epstein not only secretly pled to a much lesser charge of soliciting an underage prostitute, but also got all his unnamed accomplices immunized forever.
2011: Epstein sends the above email.
2016: Epstein claims in another email that he is hanging out in Trump Tower a week after the election.
2017: Trump nominates Acosta, who has no relevant experience, to run the Department of Labor, which he does until 2019.
2019: Epstein is finally indicted for sexual abuse. A few months later, he apparently commits suicide under the most suspicious circumstances imaginable.
2022: Maxwell is convicted of conspiring with Epstein to abuse children, and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
2025: Trump, back in office, fires the prosecutor who successfully prosecuted Epstein. His lawyers have a meeting with Maxwell. She subsequently says that Trump definitely didn’t do anything wrong, and then she is transferred to apparently the cushiest prison cell in the Western Hemisphere, according to a recent whistleblower report, which includes a service puppy.
That is leaving much out, including Epstein saying on tape that Trump was “my closest friend for 10 years.” I’d argue that this recent email is the most directly damning single piece of evidence, but in context the weight of it all is overwhelming. Any fool can figure out what was going on here.
So why are we only hearing about these emails now? They came from Epstein’s personal email account. Are we really to think that the Biden-era Justice Department could not find or get access to this, when the Trump-era DOJ clearly did? It was a regular Gmail account, for crying out loud, and Epstein, being dead, could not fight them in court. The Epstein estate happily honored the request this year for the birthday book. Google would have tripped over themselves obeying a legitimate order, which could have been obtained easily, to turn over the records of the most notorious pedophile in the world.
Indeed, the incriminating email is actually seen as part of a reply from Maxwell, and the “Gmax” address was known from previous court proceedings. It simply beggars belief.
Given Garland’s other behavior—like the fact that he dragged his feet for months on prosecuting Trump directly for January 6th, and as a recent book by Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis reported, halted the investigation for weeks to avoid influencing the 2022 midterms, even though Trump was not on the ballot—I think it is at least plausible that Garland knew about these emails, and refused to leak them or (better yet) have Trump prosecuted just like Maxwell, because he was obsessed with performing political neutrality. By this view, it is unsporting not to give your high-profile political opponents every possible benefit of the legal doubt, to the point where they get away with grotesque violations of legal procedure, and skate on many crimes.
Let’s not let the rest of the Democratic apparatus off the hook. These emails were released by House Oversight Committee Democrats. That committee existed from 2019 to 2022, when Democrats held the House majority. Yet there was no effort to subpoena this material.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump ran for president three times, and we have photographic, audio, and video evidence of his relationship with Epstein. Outside of maybe a couple of billboards with unknown funders in the South during the 2024 primaries, the Epstein issue never came up in a paid ad from Democrats in any of those campaigns. In fact, the candidate who ran on the Epstein files in 2024 was Trump! “When they go low, we go high” is a syndrome that Democrats are afflicted with, but letting your opponent off the hook from a scandal that would have toppled virtually anyone in the world who had this kind of evidence against them is mind-blowing.
An important task for the leader of any republic is to prevent rebellions or insurrections. That’s why the Constitution formally enables the suspension of habeas corpus in such circumstances. Biden had a relatively easy task compared to Abraham Lincoln. All Biden had to do was enforce the law against a man who broke it in the most blatant fashion imaginable; or failing that, ruin him politically by any means to hand. Even if these emails could not have been published through the normal process, which they almost certainly could have been—thousands of other Epstein emails were unsealed in early 2024—Biden and/or Garland should have just leaked them. Preventing a fascist from becoming president is more important than stuffy adherence to the letter of Department of Justice internal rules.
The fact that there is written evidence indicating that Donald Trump either knew about or was somehow involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile ring, and the Biden administration failed to either find or publicize it, might just doom the American republic.
Ryan Cooper is the Prospect’s managing editor, and author of How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. He was previously a national correspondent for The… More by Ryan Cooper
Protesters rally outside the Starbucks at 62 New Scotland Avenue on Saturday, September 27, 2025, in Albany, New York.
(Jim Franco/Albany Times Union via Getty Images)
As its workers fight for a living wage and for the company to address hundreds of labor violation complaints, Starbucks Workers United says it’s prepared for the “biggest and longest” strike in the company’s history.
As hundreds of Starbucks workers go on strike across the US to protest the company’s unfair labor practices, its union is telling customers to boycott the company in hopes of pressuring it to return to the bargaining table to negotiate its first union contract.
“As of today, Starbucks workers across the country are officially ON STRIKE,” said Starbucks Workers United, the union representing nearly 10,000 baristas, on social media Thursday. “We’re prepared for this to become the biggest and longest [unfair labor practices] strike in Starbucks history.”
The strike comes after negotiations between the union and the company stalled out in April. Last week, 92% of union baristas voted to authorize a strike as the company’s lucrative holiday season began. They are hoping to turn the company’s annual “Red Cup Day,” during which it gives out free reusable cups to customers, into a “Red Cup Rebellion.”
The union says three of its core demands remain unmet. It has called for the company to address “rampant” understaffing, which it says has led to longer wait times for customers and overwhelmed staff, while simultaneously leaving workers without enough hours to afford the cost of living.
It also seeks higher take-home pay for workers. Starting baristas make just over $15 per hour, which data from MIT shows is not enough to afford the cost of living in any US state when working 40 hours a week. According to the union, most Starbucks workers receive fewer than 20 hours of work per week, rendering them ineligible for benefits.
The union has drawn a contrast between its workers’ pay, which averages less than $15,000 a year, and that of CEO Brian Niccol, who raked in a total compensation package of $96 million in just four months after taking over last year.
“Too many of us rely on SNAP or Medicaid just to get by, and most baristas still don’t earn a livable wage. In a majority of states, starting pay is just $15.25 an hour—and even then, we’re not getting the 20 hours a week we need to qualify for benefits,” said Jasmine Leli, a barista and strike captain from Buffalo, New York, where the first Starbucks store in the nation voted to unionize back in 2021.
The company has gone nearly four years without recognizing it. While it claims to have engaged with the union in “good faith,” the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has found Starbucks guilty of over 500 labor law violations, making it the worst violator in modern history.
These have included illegal firings and disciplinary actions against union organizers, the illegal withholding of wages and benefits, threats to close stores that unionize, and illegal surveillance of employees. More than 700 unfair labor practice charges made against the company remain unresolved, including 125 of them filed since January.
According to an estimate from the Strategic Organizing Center, Starbucks’ union-busting had cost the company more than $240 million through February 2024. That money was lost in the form of legal fees and payments to consultants, as well as productivity lost due to anti-union store closures and captive audience meetings.
“Things have only gone backwards at Starbucks under Niccol’s leadership,” Leli said. “But a fair union contract and the resolution of hundreds of unfair labor practice charges are essential to the company’s turnaround.”
The union has argued that in order to meet their demands for a fair contract, it would cost less than a single day’s sales.
The strike begins just days after 85 US lawmakers—led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—sent letters demanding that the company stop union-busting and negotiate a fair deal with its employees.
“Starbucks is not a poor company,” the Senate letter said to Niccol. “Last year, Starbucks made over $3.6 billion in profit and paid out nearly $5 billion in stock buybacks and dividends. In fact, in the first three quarters of the year, Starbucks made $1.7 billion in profit and paid out over $2 billion in dividends. Last year, you made $95 million in compensation for the four months you worked in 2024, roughly 6,666 times more than what your average worker was paid for the entire year.”
“Despite that extravagant spending on executives and shareholders, Starbucks refuses to reach an agreement with its own workers even though you are less than one average day’s sales apart from a contract,” it continued. “Starbucks must reverse course from its current posture, resolve its existing labor disputes, and bargain a fair contract in good faith with these employees.”
The strike will begin at 65 stores across more than 40 US cities, with rallies scheduled in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Columbus, and Anaheim, among other locations. The union said the strike is “open-ended,” with no set end date, and that baristas across more than 550 unionized stores across the country are prepared to join in.
“If Starbucks keeps stonewalling a fair contract and refusing to end union-busting, they’ll see their business grind to a halt,” said Michelle Eisen, a spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United, who has worked as a barista for 15 years. “’No contract, no coffee’ is more than a tagline—it’s a pledge to interrupt Starbucks’ operations and profits until a fair union contract and an end to unfair labor practices are won.”
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
New texts raise more questions about Mayor Daniel Lurie’s vetting of newest supervisor, Beya Alcaraz
by Joe Eskenazi November 13, 2025 (MissionLocal.com)
Mayor Daniel Lurie and his District 4 Supervisor appointee Beya Alcaraz take a merchant walk on Irving Street on Nov. 7, 2025. Photo by Junyao Yang.
Update: Four hours after publication of this piece, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced that Beya Alcaraz had resigned as supervisor.
In a series of text messages obtained by Mission Local, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s new pick to lead District 4, Beya Alcaraz, wrote that she paid some of her former pet shop workers “under the table,” apparently misreporting her business expenditures and skimping on paying taxes by doing so.
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She texted that her taxes “will be less, since I pay people under the table now…” and estimated that her business held perhaps $75,000 in cash “on top of the reported revenue.”
Alcaraz also wrote of writing off dinners and drinks with friends or “clients” as a business expense, and then sometimes receiving cash back from her companions.
Mission Local verified that the messages are from Alcaraz’s cell number.
Accounting professionals said that while business owners cutting corners and writing off personal expenses is common, the potential tax-dodging is more serious.
Jerry Dratler, a retired accountant and the former chief accounting officer of Williams Sonoma, said that behavior of this sort is “pretty prevalent” in this and every city, among businesses small, medium and large. He said the practice of overstating business expenses by paying for non-work events — and then being remunerated in cash — was “a foot fault.”
But he saw Alcaraz’s texts as tantamount to an admission that she filed false tax returns — “and that’s pretty damn serious. That goes beyond being a sloppy business operator.”
Texts between new District 4 supervisor Beya Alcaraz and Julia Baran, who took over Alcaraz’s former pet store.
Lurie on Friday tapped Alcaraz for the District 4 seat left vacant for 20 days after the departure of recalled former supervisor Joel Engardio. The March 28 text messages further cloud the appointment of Alcaraz, a 29-year-old with no experience in government or serious involvement in community service. It also raises more questions about the vetting and decision-making process by Lurie to select Alcaraz.
In a statement, Alcaraz said, “I don’t owe a dollar in taxes, and I paid the young people who came to work in my store because I believe in my core that young people in my community and every community deserve to be paid for their work. I worked seven days a week to keep my business open through the pandemic and always ensure that my employees were paid, and I’m going to use that experience every day as I work to make life easier for small businesses and families in the Sunset.”
A statement from the mayor’s office read “Supervisor Alcaraz knows how hard it is to run a small business in San Francisco. She’s going to bring the same grit and determination she brought to her business to her new role advocating for families and small businesses in the Sunset.”
The mayor’s office did not answer questions regarding if it knew about Alcaraz’s alleged business practices, or condoned them.
Lurie has rejected the notion that his nomination was a misguided or cavalier endeavor. Alcaraz was “absolutely” vetted,” he told a gaggle of reporters including Channel 7’s Monica Madden. “She can’t help that she’s 29 years old.”
Mayor Daniel Lurie and his District 4 Supervisor appointee Beya Alcaraz take a merchant walk on Irving Street on Nov. 7, 2025. Photo by Junyao Yang.
The March 28 text message exchange was between Alcaraz and Julia Baran, who took over Alcaraz’s pet store, the Animal Connection, from Alcaraz in May.
Baran’s experience taking over Animal Connection from Alcaraz was also the crux of a story published by the San Francisco Standard on Nov. 10 — Baran shared documents showing that Animal Connection “was in the red by tens of thousands of dollars” between 2020 and 2023. Baran also spoke of and shared videos depicting Animal Connection as beset with rodent infestations, a foul odor, “squalor” and a stash of dead pets sitting in the freezer.
When the prospective buyer Baran asked Alcaraz about work schedules for pet shop staffers, Alcaraz noted that “my under the tables come in as needed. And then I have another under the table seasonal hire when the boarding gets busy!”
In the text exchange, Alcaraz said she estimated there was an additional $50,000 to $75,000 in cash on top of the reported revenue in the business’ ledger. Baran replied “Between the two under the table you’re paying them about $30K a year, so I figured it was at least that.”
While the business listed expenses of $35,000 for taxes and licenses, Alcaraz texted “It will be less, since I pay people under the table now, but that’s payroll taxes and sales tax mostly.”
Dratler noted that it is “not illegal per se” to keep messy books. “But if you use that information to file your tax return?” That, he says, is different.
Sharky Laguana, the former president of the small business commission, said that the behavior described in the text messages is unambiguously illegal. But he said he still has sympathy for Alcaraz and all small business owners.
“The law requires employers to collect and remit taxes for payroll and withhold workers’ taxes. There is no dispute that is what the law requires,” he said. “With that said, there are a lot of cases where the ability to get paid under the table helps people who are on the edge of poverty. It helps people who are immigrants.”
On top of paying workers under the table, Alcaraz wrote in the texts that “I also live off a big portion of the non cash revenue. I spend expense [sic] a bit of money on my personal life so I can use it as a tax deduction. E.g. I pay for my dinner and drinks with my friends or ‘clients’ as a business expense and then they may or may not pay me back in cash. When you see meals and entertainment, office meals, travel, etc that’s usually what that’s for.”
Baran is 26 and, like Alcaraz, a city native. She said she is not paying workers under the table or writing off nights out as business expenses. Following publication of the Standard article on Friday, she was contacted by the mayor’s office. After she shared several photos and videos of wretched conditions in the pet shop, a mayoral aide texted “Are there specific actions you’re hoping we can do to remedy the situation?”
Baran tells Mission Local that there are: “They should own up to what they did, apologize and promise to do better.”
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Managing Editor/Columnist. Joe was born in San Francisco, raised in the Bay Area, and attended U.C. Berkeley. He never left.
“Your humble narrator” was a writer and columnist for SF Weekly from 2007 to 2015, and a senior editor at San Francisco Magazine from 2015 to 2017. You may also have read his work in the Guardian (U.S. and U.K.); San Francisco Public Press; San Francisco Chronicle; San Francisco Examiner; Dallas Morning News; and elsewhere.
He resides in the Excelsior with his wife and three (!) kids, 4.3 miles from his birthplace and 5,474 from hers.
The Northern California branch of the Society of Professional Journalists named Eskenazi the 2019 Journalist of the Year.More by Joe Eskenazi
From State Senator Scott Wiener (senator.wiener@outreach.senate.ca.gov)
San Francisco SF Marin Food Bank, Find Free Food – Food Pantries Near You | SF-Marin Food Bank St. Anthony Foundation, 121 Golden Gate. The Dining Room: breakfast: 7 am; lunch: 10 to 1:30 pm; afternoon hot meal: 2:00 pm. GLIDE, 330 Ellis Street. Daily Free Meals: breakfast: 7:30 – 9:00 am; Lunch: 11:30 – 1:00 pm; Dinner: 4:00 to 5:00 pm. Daily. Soup Kitchen. Salvation Army, Kroc Center, 240 Turk. Joan & Sally’s: 9:00 to 12:30 pm, Monday to Friday. City Team Ministries Food Pantry, 164 6th Street. City Team Onsite Food Pantry: Monday, 10 am; Tuesday and Thursday at 1 pm. Haight Ashbury Food Program, 1525 Waller Street. Saturdays, 11:30 to 1:15 pm. Free The Need in SF, Food Day: Fridays at 11 am, call (415) 587-6685 for current location. Bayanihan Equity Center, 1010 Mission. Supplemental Grocery Program: 1st and 3rd Thursdays, 3 to 4:30 pm. Call to enroll, (415) 255-2347. Project Open Hand, Various locations. Community Nutrition Program: Community Nutrition Program Locations and Hours | Project Open Hand. Call to enroll (415) 447-2379. Meals on Wheels, Home Delivered Meals for seniors (60+). Call the SF Department of Disability and Aging Services’ Information, Referral, and Intake Line at (415) 355-6700.
San Mateo County YMCA Community Resource Center, 840 W Orange Avenue, South SF. Food Distribution: 2nd and 4th Thursday each month, 9 to 10:30 am. Second Harvest of Silicon Valley, Get Food | Second Harvest of Silicon Valley Roberta Cerri Teglia Center, 285 Abbot Ave, 3rd Floor, Daly City. Congregate Meals (60+): Tuesday and Thursday, 12:30 to 2:30 pm. Call (650) 829-3800 to enroll.
Local restaurants (Must show your EBT card and ID) Devil’s Teeth Baking Company, Devil’s Teeth Baking Company Up to 4 free breakfast sandwiches per week for SNAP recipients available at all three locations: 1 Embarcadero Center, 3619 Balboa and 3876 Noriega. Open Daily, hours vary.
Rusty Ladle, Rusty Ladle, San Francisco Free tomato or chicken soup or hot dogs for kids 12 and under, parents get 25% off select items. 3645 Lawton Street, SF 94122. Wednesday to Sunday, hours vary.
Tacos El Patron (SF), Free kids’ meals for SNAP recipients, child must be present. 1500 South Van Ness, #100, SF 94110. Open Daily, 10 am to 10 pm.
Al Pastor Papi (SF) Up to 4 free burritos per family per week. Beans & rice or chicken options and bottled water. 232 O’Farrell, SF. Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am to 8 pm.
1. Friday, 10:30am – 12:30pm, Protest Against the Israeli Consulate
456 Montgomery St. SF
israeli consulate NOT welcome in the Bay Area
Come and join Noisemakers Against Genocide (NAG) and autonomous activists in letting the israeli consulate know that they are NOT welcome in SF Bay Area!
Bring noisemakers, drums, banners, whistles, horns and flags to make a proper ruckus!
Join JVP Kids & Families, East Bay Families for Ceasefire, & Beyt Tikkun for this family friendly Shabbat extravaganza in support of the Oakland Peoples’ Arms Embargo on Friday, November 14th.
We will start at Grand Lake Theater for flyering and banner drop for the Oakland Peoples’ Arms Embargo at 5:30 PM. Then, we will move to a Kabbat Shabbat – with additional kid-friendly programming – and vegetarian Shabbat Potluck with Beyt Tikkun at the First Unitarian Church of Oakland (865 14th Street Oakland) at 6:30 PM. Option to start eating alongside Kabbalat Shabbat services for our kiddos and families that eat on the earlier side.
3. Friday, 6:00pm – 8:30pm, Report-back from Bay Area Refuse Fascism Volunteers in DC—Nov 5 it began—Trump Must Go Now
First Unitarian Universalist Society of San Francisco TSK Room 1187 Franklin St SF
Doors open 6:00pm
Program: 6:30pm
Learn first-hand about November 5th – the beginning of an unrelenting, nonviolent struggle in the nation’s capital — a movement to bring about the Fall of the Trump Fascist Regime.
– See videos and photos from the Nov. 5 march & rally – Hear in-person accounts from on-the-ground volunteers – Discuss how to sustain and grow the momentum to make this unifying demand a reality: TRUMP MUST GO NOW!
Speakers: George Martin, Rossing Branch Secretary of Fired Rössing Executive Branch Of The Mineworkers Union Of Nambia (NUM) Marcia Kauatjitotje, NWU Husab Mine Eagle Nightwatch MASWU Fired Lourens Ricarto Soroseb, Namibian Haseb mine Security Workers Union Fired For Union Organizing At Husab Mine South African Socialists Sadare Oladimeji. Trade Unionist & Revolutionary Socialism, Nigeria
The growing world economic crisis, wars and Trump’s tariffs are having devastating results in South Africa and Namibia. At the same time the massive privatization of public services and frontal union busting attacks on workers in Namibia, South Africa and Nigeria are intensifying. Join workers from South Africa and Namibian miners and trade unionists from the Rossing and Husab uranium mines in Namibia who will speak about the ongoing struggle.
Workers are again facing apartheid conditions and being forced into contract labor the system that operated under apartheid in South Africa and Namibia which was a colony of South Africa under the apartheid regime.
There will also be a discussion about the recent threat of Trump to militarily attack Nigeria. They will also report on their work to defend their fellow union members and also discuss the linking up of this struggle with workers in the United States and around the world.
On Saturday, November 15th we will gather for a peaceful rally and march in the neighborhoods where some of our country’s wealthiest corporate billionaires live. They try to insulate themselves from realities on the ground and the real life pain and suffering they are causing while they enrich themselves. They need to hear from us. These events are also happening in San Diego, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley on the same day.
We need to let them know that if the country keeps moving in the oppressive direction it is going, they will not be able to count on the consumer participation and financial assurance they depend on. Companies like Tesla and Target have begun to learn this.
Our families and communities are under attack, with the federal government grabbing people off the streets without due process and cutting vital services such as food assistance and healthcare. We face all this, while a small group of very powerful and wealthy corporate billionaires get even richer.
We will not be focusing on any particular homes, but instead march peacefully in the community in the spirit of unity and love, not division and hate.
November 15th is not a one-off action but the beginning of sustained campaigning to help the corporate billionaires open their eyes to the harm they are fueling.
6. Saturday, 12Noon – 2:00pm, Trump Regime Take Down (every Saturday)
Corner Van Ness & O’Farrell SF
We do not consent to Trump and his billionaire allies taking a chainsaw to our government and our economy for their benefit! San Francisco is a sanctuary city and We the People need to defend the values that make it so. Let’s stand united and oppose the endless assaults on our communities, our civil rights, the rule of law, and our democracy.
What you can do: • If you’ve got signs, flags, cardboard cutouts, or any protest visuals you want to make, bring ’em! We also have spare signs to lend. • If you have whistles, drums, cowbells, or other noisemakers, bring ’em! • Musicians are welcome and encouraged. Sing the song of democracy!
This weekly event is hosted by Indivisible SF and 50501 SF (organizers of the San Francisco No Kings March
7. Saturday, 2:00pm – 4:00pm, Panel: Fascism, ICE, Project 2025 & Why We Need a General Strike
Bernal Heights Library 500 Cortland SF
Join a forum on the ICE raids, militarization of our cities, the government shutdown and the calls for a general strike by Brandon Johnson, the Mayor of Chicago and Sara Nelson, President of AFA-CWA.
Working people are under assault from the fascist immigration raids to the attacks on public education, public services, healthcare and the government shutdown to the US support for Israeli genocide and the Trump’s war on Venezuela and Colombia.
The danger of martial law and the use of the National Guard, ICE and US troops to institute a fascist take-over is growing and it is funded with $170 billion from Trump’s budget earlier this year. This panel will also look at how working people are being affected and why some unions are taking action including UAW NOLSW-LAE which had a one-day work action with a picket of the ICE office in San Francisco.
The call by Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson and AFA-CWA president Sara Nelson on No King’s Day for a national general strike will be discussed and how working people and unions can build support for such action to stop the war on working people, unions, the poor and immigrants.
Speakers: UAW NOLSW-LAE Cheryl Thorton – SEIU 1021 SF Community Healthcare Chap. Chair Sang Hae Kil – SJSU Professor & CFA Leader Lisa Milos – UPTE Members For Palestine. Steve Zeltzer – WorkWeek Ricardo Ortiz – Labor Researcher & Puerto Rican Internationalist
Now that we are almost at the end of the first year of the new administration nationally, Statewide, and Citywide, where does our vaunted and fair City stand? Tim Redmond who is the publisher of 48 Hills, San Francisco’s online independent news and culture site will provide some answers. Etc. etc.
Tim will discuss the latest news surrounding the very new situation we citizens find ourselves in. and how it is playing out on the local level, based on his insider’s knowledge about the local and national players. He will also offer various suggestions on what ordinary citizens can do to play a role that will lay the path for the future of our City and country..
9. Sunday, 2:00pm, ANNOUNCEMENT: EMERGENCY RALLY FOR SUDAN
Meet at:
415 Mission St.
SF
After more than 940 days of an apocalyptic war, the world has finally turned its eyes towards Sudan amidst a backdrop of UAE-backed RSF massacres, famine, and blockade in Sudan’s western capital, El Fasher.
Join us as we march in unity against Mubadala Investment Company in San Francisco, one of the many financial centers of the UAE’s imperial influence
Since October 2023, historian Assal Rad and journalist Sana Saeed have closely tracked media coverage of the genocide in Gaza, highlighting how much of it aligns with the Israeli narrative and distorts key facts — contributing to widespread misinformation and disinformation.
Our speakers will present examples of headlines that obscure the facts, and we will have some time to practice our media literacy skills!
Dr. Assal Rad is a historian of the modern Middle East. She works on research and writing related to U.S. foreign policy issues, the Middle East, contemporary Iran, and Israel/Palestine. Her writing can be seen in Newsweek, The National Interest, The Independent, Foreign Policy and more, and she has appeared as a commentator on BBC World, Al Jazeera, CNN, and NPR. Assal completed a PhD in History from the University of California, Irvine in 2018 and is the author of The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
Sana Saeed is an award-winning journalist and media critic known for her sharp analysis of how media shapes public perception. She previously hosted the shows Backspace and The Occupation Style Guide at AJ+ that illuminated the ways mainstream news frames narratives around war, colonialism, and resistance. Since October 2023, she has been at the forefront of critically exposing how U.S. media propaganda is used to justify war crimes and shape public discourse around the genocide in Gaza.
BOATS DEPART FROM PIER 33 EVERY 15 MINUTES FROM 4:15 – 6:00 AM. ALL BOATS RETURN BY 9:00 AM. TICKETS $15.50, CHILDREN UNDER 5 FREE TICKET BOOTH OPENS 3:30 AM, LIMITED TICKETS ON SALE DAY OF EVENT. ADVANCE TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
The event is wheelchair accessible. Please respect the special seating for elders and handicapped and feel free to bring your own chairs and blankets, No drugs, alcohol, marijuana use or sales are permitted on the island. Visit ITC’s webpage, www.iitc.org or IITC’s Facebook event page for updates. For media requests, contact IITC’s San Francisco Office, (415) 641-4482, Morning Star Gali, morningstar@treatycouncil.org, (916) 996-6580, or Marina Hernandez, marina@treatycouncil.org, (650) 255-1594.
All are welcome to join us to honor our ancestors and give thanks for the survival of our Nations, cultures, and ways of life. We will also commemorate the 1969 Alcatraz Occupation that sparked the national and international Indigenous Peoples’ movement for justice, rights, and truth in history.
A successful political playbook for fighting climate change and expanding democracy from the New York socialist movement
Climate inaction is already causing widespread suffering and devastation around the world. How can citizens take collective action? Fabian Holt argues that we must go beyond protest and direct action, and turn to the potential of hybrid organizations that bring together social movements and political parties. One such “movement party” with recent political success is the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA), which has become the city’s main organization for movement climate politics, running multi-year climate pressure campaigns and a slate of climate-focused electoral campaigns, as well as spearheading the first Green New Deal legislation in the country, the New York State Build Public Renewables Act of 2023.
Organize or Burn situates the NYC-DSA in the history of the democratic socialist movement in the United States, combining a political history of the insurgent international left with a richly textured local ethnography of the organization’s place in the climate movement and relationship to the Democratic Party. Holt argues that NYC-DSA has developed a distinct approach to political organizing that has broad relevance to citizen climate mobilization. The organizational innovation specifically involves integrating micro-level organizing in individual campaigns and macro-level organization-building, synthesizing approaches from traditions of social movements and electoral campaigns in the US. Ultimately, Holt shows that NYC-DSA can offer powerful lessons in how political collective action can be meaningful in the present moment of political turbulence, from the very concrete perspective of a local movement world. An engaging read for political organizers, scholars, and concerned citizens, Organize or Burn provides new insights and solutions for the climate crisis.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) departs the Capitol after the Senate passed a continuing resolution to end the government shutdown, November 10, 2025. Credit: Francis Chung/POLITICO via AP Images
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) has to go. That’s the conclusion of multiple Democratic groups, House members, and candidates after Schumer oversaw his caucus implode ahead of passing a continuing resolution to fund the government with nothing more than a meaningless promise on the Affordable Care Act subsidies. Preserving health care was the whole point of the government shutdown; Democrats and workers nationwide begged Schumer to hold the line. Now, they say he has disappointed them for the last time.
No Senate Democrats have joined their colleagues in seeking Schumer’s resignation and none responded to requests for comment from the Prospect. But every single one of them has the power to force a vote on Schumer’s continued control of the caucus. If they wanted to, one of Schumer’s colleagues could bring forward a motion to amend the Democratic Caucus Rules to say that he should lose his leadership position if a set number of members disapprove of him. The motion would be “self-executing,” resulting in Schumer’s removal at the same time that it’s approved.
“Most Senate experts would say it’s highly unlikely,” said Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute, who wrote about how to push Schumer out in March, the last time he blinked and enabled a government funding bill that President Trump promptly violated. “But if the members are really pissed off, this is a mechanism they have.”
Under the Rules for the Democratic Conference, members can make rule amendments by submitting proposals directly to the conference for consideration, with one week of notice, Schuman said.
The language comes toward the bottom of the rules in Section 14, which is titled “Committee on Conference Rules,” referring to an internal committee of senators who set the standards for the Democratic caucus. It states that committee members, whose names are not made public, will review the rules each Congress, “and may recommend changes to the Rules as the need arises.”
It also states that “Individual Members of the Conference may bring proposed changes in the Rules to the Committee on Conference Rules or directly to the Conference for its consideration, providing Members of the Conference with the text of the proposed changes to the Conference Rules at least one week before Conference consideration. In either instance, the Members proposing the changes shall retain sole discretion on the wording of such changes.”
What this means is that any member of the Senate Democratic caucus can bring a challenge to Schumer’s continued leadership up for a vote. They would only need a majority of the caucus, or 24 of the 47 members, in order for the vote to succeed.
Such a motion would probably prompt Schumer to leave before it came to a vote, Schuman added. “If you had a bunch of members who signed on to something like this, you’d probably see people step aside rather than be kicked out.”
The Prospect asked every senator, except for those who negotiated and voted for the continuing resolution, if they would bring a motion to remove Schumer or support one brought by a colleague. None responded. The silence reflects what Schuman calls a “very clubby” body of electeds; he noted that no one has ever tried to use caucus rules to oust a leader.
Among the senators excluded from the outreach were Sens. Angus King (I-ME), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who reportedly negotiated the continuing resolution. None can be primaried next year; King and Hassan are serving terms that run until January of2031 and2029, respectively, and Shaheen is retiring.
Multiple Democratic House members have called for Schumer to step down from his leadership position, including Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Mike Levin (D-CA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Democrats in other positions across the country have criticized the capitulation, including the governors of California and New York, Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul, and the mayor-elect of New York City, Zohran Mamdani.
Immediately after Democratic senators folded, the progressive movement Indivisible launched what it said was the largest primary campaign it has ever run since forming almost a decade ago. “We need you in the fight for a stronger, better Democratic Party willing to defend our communities, our rights, and our democracy from the fascist threat of the Trump regime,” the group said on its sign-up page. It called on everyone who is “fed up with being failed by our leaders again and again” and wants to “elect the fighters we need in this moment.”
Several candidates seeking to win a seat in the U.S. Senate have criticized Schumer and called for him to resign, including Graham Platner in Maine, Zach Wahls and Nathan Sage in Iowa, and Seth Moulton in Massachusetts. None of them are candidates that Schumer is backing in primary elections next year.
Even Shaheen’s daughter is angry. Stefany Shaheen, a congressional candidate for New Hampshire, said in a statement posted to social media that any continuing resolution must fund the Obamacare tax subsidies that will expire at the end of next month. “Otherwise, no deal.”
Schuman said that barring a rule change that would remove Schumer, the other options Democratic senators have to kick him out are soft measures. Senators can write public or nonpublic letters, they can shout at each other, or they can give a speech on the floor. They can also discuss Schumer’s failure in campaign advertisements, or keep it in their back pocket and try to use it as leverage in the future. Other than that, the rules include no specific provision for removal of a leader unless they’re convicted of a felony.
Whitney Curry Wimbish is a staff writer at The American Prospect and can be reached at wwimbish@prospect.org. She previously worked in the Financial Times newsletter division for 17 years and before that… More by Whitney Curry Wimbish
This article was produced by Capital & Main, an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. It is co-published here with permission.
The Department of Homeland Security suddenly moved up the implementation of a rule change that gives the Federal Protective Service, the agency charged with protecting federal buildings, more power to charge people with crimes for a variety of activities on or near federal property.
The regulation, which went into effect on Nov. 5, prohibits a wide range of activities, including creating a loud or unusual noise, distributing informational materials and flying drones. It makes it illegal for people to wear masks to conceal their identities if they break any federal or state law or local ordinance. It forbids obstructing access to federal property or impeding operations there and specifically calls out photography and videography.
Pedro Rios, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S./Mexico Border Program, said he’s concerned that vague definitions in the regulations will give officers too much discretion.
“It seems overly broad and would provide federal agents flexibility to determine broadly how the new regulations are being violated,” Rios said.
Though the proposed rule was introduced on Jan. 15, just days before President Donald Trump took office, current DHS Secretary Kristi Noem decided to move up the timeline because of the administration’s concerns about anti-ICE activities, according to a press release from the department. The rule was set to take effect in January 2026.
“DHS is using every tool possible to protect the lives of our law enforcement as they face a surge in violence and lawlessness at many of our federal facilities. We’ve seen rampant violence against law enforcement including our officers shot at, rammed by vehicles, assaulted and threatened,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
The new rule forbids obstructing access to federal property or impeding operations there and specifically calls out photography and videography.
“Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, we will not tolerate violence perpetuated by Antifa and other domestic extremists who are targeting federal property and law enforcement. Law and order will prevail.”
Videos of interactions between the public and ICE officials have raised questions about at least some of the agency’s claims of aggression against its staff.
Volunteers who have been monitoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests on federal property are worried that the new rules will affect their ability to document the agency’s actions, including potential human and civil rights violations during arrests.
“I question as to why they would move towards preventing people from documenting what’s happening inside,” Rios said.
He worried that the government would use the rules to cover up misconduct by ICE.
Since May, volunteers with several San Diego groups, including Detention Resistance, have monitored arrests in the immigration court hallways and at the ICE offices where people go periodically to check in or pick up paperwork. Whenever ICE makes an arrest, the volunteers film with their phones.
That included a video of ICE officers arresting Sayed Naser, an Afghan man who previously worked with the U.S. military in his country and who had shown up for a court hearing as part of his asylum case. Because of the video, veterans have rallied to support other Afghan allies with upcoming immigration court hearings.
On Wednesday, the first day of the new regulations, faith leaders and Detention Resistance volunteers stood in the brown hallways on the second floor of the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building in downtown San Diego. That’s where ICE has offices for people who are required to check in periodically with its officers.
One faith leader stood praying with a family outside the waiting room for the check-in appointments. Another stood near the elevators that lead to the basement holding cells—the route that ICE officers typically use when they arrest someone at a check-in.
Around 10 a.m., two of the family members walked out of the waiting room, their faces distraught. They spoke briefly with the faith leader who had prayed with them before leaving quietly. A few moments after they left, two ICE officers led a woman—their other family member—to the elevators, her mascara wet on her face.
The volunteers sprung into action, filming and following from a distance to capture the interaction. One volunteer softly offered words of support, referring to the woman as compa, or friend, the word that volunteers use for everyone with hearings or check-ins. In less than a minute, the woman was gone.
Rios is also worried that the new regulations could affect protesters in the plaza outside the federal building.
“The way it reads, they would prevent people from expressing themselves in ways that would be criticizing the administration or its policies,” Rios said.
As he spoke, he stood watching a weekly demonstration organized by San Diego labor leaders. Last week, the Thursday morning protest featured mariachi, ballet folklorico and dozens of people marching around the plaza.
At one point, organizers called on Rios to address the crowd. As he described ICE arresting a mother shortly after she dropped her children off at school, the crowd yelled, “Shame!”
Rios said that the administration appears poised to put Border Patrol agents in charge of certain ICE operations, causing concerns that the already violent arrests around the country will grow more so. Rios said that those in border regions, including San Diego, already know the difficulties and risks of living under the thumb of Border Patrol.
A student from the University of California, San Diego, told the crowd that international students on campus are afraid to go to class because of ICE’s actions.
Once the speeches finished, the demonstrators walked in a circle around the large, triangular sculpture in the plaza, and the mariachi band played. Some members of the crowd danced as the crowd chanted for justice for immigrants.
Russell Vought, Office of Management and Budget director, outside the West Wing of the White House, September 29, 2025, in Washington. Credit: Evan Vucci/AP Photo
A legal office in the White House, at the behest of Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, has decided to redefine the word “earnings” in order to bankrupt the largely dormant Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The continuing resolution to fund the government would bar the White House from firing any workers at CFPB, however, despite this new claim that it cannot legally obtain any money to pay them.
In a notice filed in the ongoing federal court case between the agency and the union representing the workers it wants to fire, the CFPB, currently led by its acting director—also Vought—claims that the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which writes legal opinions for the executive branch, has determined that the agency cannot request any further money from the Federal Reserve to finance ongoing operations, meaning that all funds will be exhausted by “early 2026.”
It’s yet another attempt to dismantle an agency that Congress established by statute, based on tortured textual readings. This comes at a time when credit card, student loan, and automotive loan delinquencies are at or near record highs since the CFPB was established in 2010. As unemployment increases, having a zombie regulator of consumer debt would be catastrophic. But that’s what Vought has determinedly sought for months.
Under the statute that created CFPB, the Bureau receives its funds not from congressional appropriations but from a transfer from the Fed, which previously had responsibility for numerous consumer financial protection laws. The CFPB requests funds on a quarterly or annual basis, and the Fed transfers the funds, available “from the combined earnings of the Federal Reserve System.”
The current Supreme Court deemed the funding structure of the CFPB lawful in 2023.
Earlier this year, Vought declined to seek a draw from the Fed because he said CFPB had an adequate amount of funding. Since then, funding for CFPB has been cut roughly in half by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which reduced the cap on the amounts CFPB can draw from the Fed.
But recently, Vought has put forward the rather outlandish notion that “the Federal Reserve currently lacks combined earnings from which the CFPB can draw,” and asked OLC for an opinion on the subject. The OLC’s response, which was filed with the court, notes that since 2022, costs at the Federal Reserve (including operating expenses, and interest on excess reserves to depository institutions) have exceeded revenue (mostly from securities and interest income and service fees for things like check clearing). In 2024, the Federal Reserve lost about $77.6 billion.
Since the Fed is losing money, there are no “combined earnings” (“combined” meaning all of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks across the country) from which CFPB can draw its portion, according to OLC. “If the Federal Reserve has no profits, then it cannot transfer money to the CFPB,” the memo says.
The OLC memo puts forward a strained definition of “earnings” as solely “profits,” even though earnings could also mean gross earnings. Indeed, in the Fed’s financial statement, it posts the loss as “net earnings,” meaning it had to modify the term in order to accurately define it. The statute only says “combined earnings,” and reading it to suggest that the CFPB may draw on Fed funds to prevent financial scams only in years when the Federal Reserve is a moneymaker defies all logic. Incidentally, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors would have to close up shop if this argument about combined earnings is correct, yet somehow Russ Vought and the OLC are not demanding the immediate elimination of the sole monetary policy body in the United States.
Even within its memo, OLC defines “net earnings” as “net income” but then just defines “earnings” as “profits,” rather than income, which the Federal Reserve has more than enough of to fund CFPB.
This is not a new theory. For a few years now, former Harvard professor Hal Scott hasclaimed that the “combined earnings” language in the CFPB statute means that it cannot receive money when the Fed operates at a loss. Georgetown Law professor Adam Levitin has previously made quick work of this argument. “It’s hard for anyone to fairly get to Scott’s reading of the statute without being seriously motivated,” he wrote. “It is not a call to heed the law, but a call for the President to ignore the law based on his own arbitrary whim, usurping the powers of both Congress and the judiciary.”
Levitin has reserved similar scorn for the OLC’s legal maneuvering. “OLC has long had a measure of respect and credibility for its independence,” he wrote. “But with opinions like this, the OLC has squandered that reputation … It is just another political apparatchik office.”
Many of the CFPB’s functions are statutorily obligated, and failing to adhere to them would violate the constitutional requirement that the executive branch take care that the laws are faithfully executed. What little deregulatory work Vought is eagerly engaged in would also have to stop.
The OLC memo suggests that CFPB could simply request appropriations from Congress. This is, of course, something that conservatives have long called for, to make CFPB dependent on Congress and therefore put at the whim of powerful men fattened by bank contributions. The whole point of the CFPB’s funding structure, which again was found constitutional by the current John Roberts–led Supreme Court, was to insulate CFPB funding from politics.
To be sure, under Vought the agency has been all but shut down, with the majority of its staff no longer doing any work. Vought has attempted to fire the vast majority of CFPB employees over the past several months but has been stymied by the courts. This OLC memo is the latest attempt to achieve that mass firing by putting the CFPB into bankruptcy.
There is a problem for Vought, however. The continuing resolution to end the government shutdown includes a section prohibiting the Trump administration from carrying out any reductions in force through the duration of the funding approved, which ends January 30. According to the text, this prohibition holds “without regard to the source of funding.” In other words, even though CFPB has not received any money from congressional appropriations, the prohibition means that CFPB staff could not be fired.
That puts Vought’s team in a tricky situation. They cannot fire any CFPB staff, yet they claim they will run out of money in early 2026. Even if they could take money from the Fed, the halving of the statutory cap means that the agency can’t fund the current staff levels. Yet it can’t fire anyone either.
Attorneys and former CFPB employees suggest that the court that’s hearing the case is unlikely to buy the argument that a Fed that fails to turn a profit cannot fund CFPB, and that they read the Vought/OLC effort as an attempt to get around the injunction on firing staff that is currently in place. In response, the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CFPB staffers, could file a motion to force CFPB to request funds from the Fed as emergency relief.
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David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. He is the author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power (2020) and Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered… More by David Dayen
“We’ve been fighting for a very long time, and we’re at the point now where we’re done—and workers will go on strike by Thursday if this company does not come back with some new proposals and resolve all of these ridiculous Unfair Labor Practice charges.”
People hold signs outside of a closed Starbucks as employees strike on December 23, 2024 in New York City. Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images
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Four years after the first Starbucks store in the US unionized in 2021, workers across the country are still facing rampant union busting and still fighting for a first contract with the coffee giant. That is why a supermajority of unionized baristas with Starbucks Workers United recently voted to authorize an Unfair Labor Practice strike, which is set to begin on Thursday, Nov. 13, on “Red Cup Day,” in over 25 cities around the US. “Union baristas mean business and are ready to do whatever it takes to win a fair contract and end Starbucks’ unfair labor practices,” says Michelle Eisen, Starbucks Workers United spokesperson and 15-year veteran barista. “If Starbucks keeps stonewalling, they should expect to see their business grind to a halt. The ball is in Starbucks’ court.” In this urgent episode, we speak with Eisen about the impending strike and the state of the yearslong union struggle at Starbucks.
Maximillian Alvarez: Alright. Welcome, everyone, to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today.
Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership with In These Times magazine and The Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you.
My name is Maximillian Alvarez, and we’ve got an urgent episode for y’all today. By the time you hear this, Starbucks workers in over 25 cities across the country may be on strike.
Last week, a supermajority of unionized baristas with Starbucks Workers United voted to authorize an unfair labor practice strike ahead of the holiday season. The strike would begin on Thursday, Nov. 13, on so-called Red Cup Day, Starbucks’ annual corporate holiday.
In a press release from Starbucks Workers United, the union states “Union baristas announced Wednesday that they have authorized an open-ended unfair labor practice (ULP) strike with 92% voting ‘yes’ ahead of the critical holiday season. The vote comes after six months of Starbucks refusing to offer new proposals to address workers’ demands for better staffing, higher pay, and a resolution of hundreds of unfair labor practice charges.
“Union baristas are prepared to turn Starbucks’ Red Cup Day into the Red Cup Rebellion if Starbucks fails to finalize a fair contract by November 13th. The strike actions could hit (25+) cities as an opening salvo, and baristas are prepared to escalate if they don’t see new proposals and substantial progress toward finalizing a contract that addresses pay, hours and staffing, and the resolution of hundreds of ULPs.
“Workers United and Starbucks are not currently engaged in contract negotiations as Starbucks has refused to put forth new proposals that address union barista’s demands. Elected union delegates overwhelmingly rejected Starbucks’ insufficient contract offer in April 2025 which failed to improve wages or benefits in the first year of the contract and didn’t put forth proposals to address chronic understaffing.
“Starbucks’ failure to listen to and support their own baristas is moving them to take drastic action, which could include striking over unfair labor practices. Starbucks is the biggest violator of labor law in modern history with Administrative Law Judges in the National Labor Relations Board finding that Starbucks has committed more than 500 labor law violations. To date, Workers United has filed more than 1,000 (ULPs), including more than 125 since January (2025). More than 700 unresolved charges remain, including a set of national ULPs around bad faith bargaining and unilateral policy changes, and specific ULPs around retaliatory firings and discipline.
“‘Union baristas mean business and are ready to do whatever it takes to win a fair contract and end Starbucks’ unfair labor practices,’ said Michelle Eisen, Starbucks Workers United spokesperson, and a 15-year veteran barista. ‘We want Starbucks to succeed, but turning the company around and bringing customers back begins with listening to and supporting the baristas who are responsible for the Starbucks experience. If Starbucks keeps stonewalling, they should expect to see their business grind to a halt. The ball is in Starbucks’ court.’”
“In a letter to Starbucks employees that was released (last) Wednesday,” Dee-Ann Durbin reports at the Associated Press, “Starbucks’ Chief Partner Officer Sara Kelly said the union has proposed a 65% pay increase immediately and a 77% increase over three years, with additional payments for things like weekends or days when Starbucks runs promotions. Kelly also said some proposals would significantly alter Starbucks’ operations, such as giving workers the ability to shut down mobile ordering if a store has more than five orders in the queue.
“’Any agreement needs to reflect the reality that Starbucks already offers the best job in retail, including more than $30 an hour on average in pay and benefits for hourly partners,’ Starbucks spokeswoman Jaci Anderson said Wednesday.
“The union said that Starbucks is unfairly lumping together various economic proposals from the union to arrive at those pay raise figures.”
So, to talk about all of this, I am honored to be joined on the show today by Michelle Eisen herself. Again, Michelle is a 15-year veteran barista and a spokesperson for Starbucks Workers United. In 2021 Michelle and her coworkers in Buffalo, New York, formed the first Starbucks Labor Union in the United States.
Michelle, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. I want to start with where we are right here right now. We’re recording on Tuesday, Nov. 11. The strike date is set for later this week. Tell listeners more about what they may be seeing this week, where this strike is coming from, and what it tells us about the state of the union struggle at Starbucks.
Michelle Eisen: Yes, thanks so much for having me.
So, last week we announced that 92% of union workers voted to authorize a strike should the company not respond to our multiple requests for them to return to the bargaining table with new proposals that will address the outstanding issues, mainly more take-home pay for workers, better hours to fix the chronic understaffing in our stores, and to resolve the numerous, you said it, hundreds of unresolved unfair labor practice charges that are still hanging over their heads.
Starbucks is the largest labor violator of modern history. That is undisputable. And it’s hard to be a worker working in those conditions when you actually have to be afraid of your employer continually violating your rights.
We have made multiple requests for them to return to the table with these new proposals that will help settle these issues. Since labor relations broke down last December, they have failed to respond in any meaningful way, and really, in any way at all. They instead continue to misrepresent what the union’s demands are.
I think it’s absolutely comical, that 65% number that they’ve arrived at. They literally took all of [these] potential options that we presented them with last October. We were like, hey, we could do this, or we could do this and this, or we could do just this. Either way, what we’re trying to do here is get more take-home pay in these workers’ pockets.
They added them all together and came up with that number. That’s like going into a restaurant — That’s like going into a Starbucks, adding together every single menu item, and then being like, whoa, it costs a thousand dollars to eat here?
And they know that it’s disingenuous. It’s an actual misrepresentation of what went on in bargaining, and you have to question anyone who has to turn to flat-out misrepresenting of the facts to make themselves look better or to make the union look worse. What does that say about them as a whole?
Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah, “the math ain’t mathing,” as the kids say.
Michelle Eisen: Yeah, it’s discouraging, to say the least. But here we are, we’re two days out from Red Cup Day, which is, I believe, at least from the company’s own mouth, their biggest revenue day of the year. I worked many a Red Cup Day as a barista. It is not a pleasant day to be a Starbucks barista, that is for sure — And that’s when we were actually supported in the stores. It’s even worse now. And workers are saying, look, essentially, the clock is ticking. Let’s see some action in the next 48 or so hours or we will have to escalate.
Workers don’t want to have to go on strike. A strike is a hardship. I think that’s incredibly important for people to recognize. Workers are laying a lot on the line if they have to embark on this, but their hands are being forced. The company is not offering another option.
And so, we do what we can do, and the power that we hold is our labor, is our ability to produce these billions of dollars of revenue that the company reports every single year. And so, we’ll see what happens come Thursday morning.
Maximillian Alvarez: Just to tease it out even more for listeners, it sounds like right now the strike isn’t hinging on some nitpicky details on a couple proposals. It sounds like Starbucks isn’t responding to any of these proposals.
Michelle Eisen: The last offer, I won’t call it — I am hesitant to even call it an offer — That came from their side, when it came to the economic elements of the contract, was nothing. They said no. They didn’t engage with a single potential solution or proposal to what we were offering.
They said, our reply is zero increase for the first year of the contract. That’s not an offer. That’s an unserious response to what is going on here. And what we’re engaging in is very serious. It is the difference between a worker being able to pay their rent and buy groceries or having to make the choice between the two.
This is a multi-billion dollar global corporation. We paid our CEO $98 million for the first four months of his employment with this company. They spent $81 million for a four-day managers’ retreat in Vegas just this June. It would cost less than both of those numbers to finalize a multi-year union contract with their union baristas. Less than a single day’s profit. Less than one single day’s profit could settle this. We need serious offers that have serious solutions.
Maximillian Alvarez: I want to take a step back for a minute. As I mentioned in the intro, you were there in Buffalo with the first store to unionize back in 2021, and we were covering that as it was happening. And every year since, I’ve been interviewing different Starbucks workers in different stores around the country. Many of those stores have been closed. Many of those workers have been fired. But the struggle has continued with each year.
But I want to ask, since we’re fortunate enough to have you here, if we could remind listeners of what’s happened in between those two critical points in time. Can you take us back to that union drive in Buffalo and remind us of where that push came from? What were the conditions that workers were fighting against and unionizing for? Let’s walk folks up from 2021 to now and give them a broad sweep of how the struggle has developed since then that has led us all the way to this point where workers at locations around the country are prepared to strike to get that first contract that they’re still trying to get.
Michelle Eisen: Absolutely. So, I started with Starbucks in 2010, which feels like an actual lifetime ago. I came to the company for a lot of reasons, but for a lot of the same reasons I think most Starbucks baristas do. I had another job in the arts, I was a stage manager. I needed some supplemental income, I needed access to healthcare, and this is what Starbucks was. They were like, hey, we have flexible hours. Hey, you can have access to healthcare if you work 20 hours a week. It presented itself as a solution.
And honestly, when I started with them, it was pretty much what it was cracked up to be. I got the hours I wanted, they worked around my production schedule, I had access to affordable healthcare. Things were pretty good. I felt pretty valued overall. Our stores were well-staffed. It was a nice environment, I got to interact with a lot of people, I got to learn about coffee. It was a cool gig.
And then things, as I think they do in any capitalist society, they start to slide. The guys in charge are like, how can we make this company more profitable? And if we can’t directly make it more profitable, how can we make it appear to be more profitable? And inevitably, what I think ends up happening in most cases is they look at it and they’re like, oh, we can’t necessarily make people spend more money, but we can spend less on the workers, which will make our bottom line look that much more exciting and profitable.
Maximillian Alvarez: Every goddamn industry that we cover, it feels like a bunch of MBA-holding douchebags in corporate offices have all come up with the same genius idea, which is, hey, let’s pile more work onto fewer workers, whether it’s the railroad industry, hospitals, schools, retail, or service jobs. This is the trend that I’ve been hearing from workers — And I interview workers for a living, but it’s just like, Jesus, this is happening everywhere.
Michelle Eisen: Because what do they have actual control of? They can’t technically control what the product costs, that’s out of their hands in most cases. They can’t control rent prices if they’re renting a space. What they can control is how many workers they put on the floor, what they compensate those workers, and how much work they intend to have each one do.
And that’s what inevitably ended up happening at Starbucks. We saw staffing levels go down, saw the responsibilities of each worker increase, and the compensation, for the most part, stays stagnant. And I say that because when we decided to organize in 2021, I was making $0.16 more an hour after being with the company for 11 years than someone who had been hired yesterday. So, what they did is they stopped investing in their loyal, tenured employees, and then the intention was bring people on. It became this churn and burn workforce.
So, that’s where we found ourselves in 2021. Not only did we find ourselves in that exact place, but we found ourselves in that place in the middle of a global pandemic. We saw policies being rolled out that workers in these stores were expected to carry out without any input from us, and they were rapid-fire. It was a pandemic. Things were happening. Safety procedures, health procedures, everything was changing day in, day out. None of those changes were being done with input from the people who are actually in these stores.
And for me, that was the kicker. It was like, how can you be expecting us to enforce policies when you haven’t even talked to us about how difficult these policies are going to be to enforce or you’re not supporting us while we’re being asked to enforce these policies?
On top of that, Starbucks was one of the few companies that stayed open through the entirety of the pandemic, which is, if you think about it, kind of insane, because this is face-to-face. It’s not a virtual job. I’m not a virtual barista. I have to go in every day and I have to be face-to-face with people. At this point, we don’t know what this pandemic is going to do. There’s not even a vaccine on the horizon — Whatever you feel about that, I’m obviously very pro — But regardless, we are being asked to do this.
And the company stayed open, and they stayed open under the guise of we are serving our communities. These baristas are essential. In the meantime, they’re raking in profits. Why? Because in the midst of this upside-down world, you could still go down to the corner to your local Starbucks and get your caramel macchiato. So, they were offering this tiny bit of normalcy in this complete chaos, and they were convincing the workers that it was important that we stay open to serve our communities. Meanwhile, we have the CEO at this point — We’re four CEOs in, by the way, since 2021. I think that’s important to note.
Maximillian Alvarez: I’ve lost count at this point [laughs].
Michelle Eisen: At that point it’s Kevin Johnson, and he’s on these financial shows every other day bragging, openly bragging about the amount of profit the company is bringing in in the middle of this pandemic. And myself included — And I’ve got coworkers who are working for this multi-billion dollar corporation — Now I’m here full-time because my other job was also an in-person job. The theaters shut down. So now I’m finding myself at Starbucks more hours than I generally did, and I’m still not sure I’m going to be able to pay my bills. And these things are not computing.
So, between them just not taking care of the workers who were bringing in this ridiculous amount of money in the face of this pandemic, at the very moment that they should be stepping up and doing better, we’re just seeing them do worse and worse and worse.
Organizing was not my first instinct. My first instinct was to get the hell out of there, and that is the decision I had reached just a few weeks before we decided to organize. I was like, I gotta go. I was hoping production work was going to start opening up in some capacity. I didn’t even know what I was going to do for health benefits, but honestly, by that point, the benefits costs had increased so much that it wasn’t even serving the purpose it was originally serving for me.
And then I was approached by a coworker about, hey, what if we unionize? And honestly, my first thought was like, yeah, let’s do it, because I was pissed. I was like, if they’re not going to take care of us, then we’re going to show them what we’re going to do. And then the secondary reason, which is the more lasting reason, was I was hopeful that it might work and that I wouldn’t have to leave, because I didn’t want to. I had been at that store for six years at that point. I’d been with the company for 11. I loved being able to go in there and see my coworkers, and we were in a really great community. I had regulars I’d known for years.
And so we decided to try. And I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t think it was going to result in what it resulted in. And I don’t say I didn’t think we were going to be successful. I did think we were going to be successful. What I didn’t expect was the company’s response.
I thought they were going to be upset at first, maybe a little hesitant. But I then expected them to get on the right side of history because, really, that’s what the company, that’s what Starbucks had always done. I had seen them make mistakes in the past. They’re obviously not perfect by any stretch of that word. But generally speaking, I’d also seen them acknowledge that a mistake was made and then get on the right side of things.
The fact that we’re four years in and they still are on the wrong side of this story is kind of mind-blowing to me. Disappointed is not a strong enough word. It’s more just like, what are you doing? You have an opportunity here to right this wrong, get on the right side of history, set the standard like you have always done, or claimed to have always done, and be applauded. Most of the world will forget the last four years even happened. All of a sudden Starbucks will be held up as this example of how to treat your workers and we’ll all go on our merry way. So, the fact that they’re still fighting is shocking.
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by Ryan Cooper November 13, 2025 (Prospect.org)
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