A Socialist Organizer's Guide to 2024

A month-by-month guide to the labor fights, social movements, and electoral battles that will help shape the year 2024.

(Photo by Towfiqu Barbhuiya on Unsplash)

Labor struggles. Mobilizations against Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. A general election that no one is looking forward to. Wars, more climate catastrophes, and unpredictable fights and threats. This will be an intense year. What follows is a short “user manual” for DSA and other movement activists to the next 366 (it’s a leap year!) or so days, broken down by month and with highlights for struggles in specific cities. (And many thanks to Dan DiMaggio who gave a more complete analysis of the labor struggles in 2024 last month for Labor Notes, which I relied on for piecing together most of the major labor struggles to come. Dan also covers what’s at stake and who the major players are in each of the union contract fights.)

This month-by-month review of the year to come also suggests some of the big questions the US Left needs to answer for 2024. There are many, but three big sets of questions are:

1. Is there a way to escalate or transform the mobilizations against Israel’s genocide in Gaza to keep up the momentum and the pressure on the Biden administration? And should the Palestine solidarity struggle in the US try to intervene in the upcoming primary elections in some way, by disrupting rallies and campaign events to raise awareness about the genocide and strengthen popular opposition to it?

2. What, if anything, does the Left have to say about the general election this fall? A perennial (and often frustrating and exhausting) debate, but in a system that invests so much power in its president an inevitable one. In the unlikely scenario that the courts actually remove Donald Trump from the ballot, how will the Left respond? Will DSA and movement activists make a big showing at either or both of the major party’s national conventions? Will activists disrupt campaign events of either or both parties in the fall, with equal or different levels of intensity? And should DSA support a “lesser-evil” vote for Biden or abstain from that question entirely?

3. Big labor struggles present the brightest opportunities in 2024. From postal workers to dockers, brewers, artists, teachers, and telephone workers, US labor will be on the march and in the streets. There is even the possibility of big strikes in some key battleground states during the general election. Can labor and the Left build on the militancy and energy of 2023 in the new year? And can we use these struggles to offer an alternative vision of the future to millions of people who are already fed up with what Democrats and Republicans will be serving?

A Month-by-Month Guide

January

The Iowa caucus for the GOP will be held on January 15 and New Hampshire holds its primary election for both parties on January 23. Although both Joe Biden and Donald Trump look to have a lock on their parties’ nominations going into 2024, there’s always room for the unexpected to happen. These elections might tell us how likely that is.

February

Contracts expire for 28,000 UFCW workers at the Michigan grocery store chain Meijer, 7,000 AT&T Mobility workers in the Southwest, and 5,000 Teamster brewery workers at Anheuser-Busch. The Anheuser-Busch breweries are in St. Louis; Newark; Los Angeles; Houston; Columbus; Jacksonville; Merrimack, New Hampshire; Williamsburg, Virginia; Fairfield, California; Baldwinsville, New York; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Cartersville, Georgia. Workers in UFCW are also organizing efforts to reform their union.

March

The vast majority of delegates for both parties’ conventions will be chosen in March, with the bulk of elections happening on Super Tuesday on March 5. If there is going to be an upset of some kind in the Republican primary, the main action will take place in March. Likewise, if leftists are serious about organizing a challenge to Biden’s coronation — as some have floated — it will almost certainly need to happen by this point.

Russia is also scheduled to hold elections for president between March 15 and 17. Presumably the outcome has already been decided by authorities in favor of Vladimir Putin. In the past, rigged elections in Russia have been the trigger for big protests, but in a much more repressive wartime climate a repeat of those demonstrations may be off the table.

April

Contracts expire for 9,000 CWA AT&T workers in California and Nevada and 7,000 UAW members at Daimler Truck North America in North Carolina.

Labor Notes will hold its biennial national conference in Chicago, bringing together thousands of rank-and-file labor activists and leaders.

India will hold general elections in April or May. The party of the neofascist prime minister Narendra Modi will almost certainly win, but if there’s an upset or blowback it will be a big deal.

May

The contract for 100,000 National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association members expires. NRLCA members carry the mail in more rural parts of the country. Postal workers are legally prohibited by federal law from striking, though they famously did anyway in the Great Postal Strike of 1970. The contract for thousands of American Federation of Musician TV and film workers also expires in May. AFM represents musicians across the country though by the looks of their social media most of the contract campaign actions will take place in LA and NYC.

Many states and cities will have primary elections around this time. DSA activists will be out in our neighborhoods making the case that we can provide a real alternative to the Democratic Party. (I’m particularly excited about a new campaign just launched by my friend and comrade JP Lyninger for Louisville City Council in Kentucky, whose election is on May 21.)

South Africa will also hold national elections in May. The ruling African National Congress is polling badly compared to past elections, though will still probably come out on top. South Africa has a long history of social struggle and Left politics. Combined with the country’s recent troubles that could make the political situation there an important focus point for the international left.

June

The contract for 25,000 Chicago Teachers Union members expires. The CTU’s strikes in the 2010s were some of the most important labor battles of that decade. Will CTU inspire labor activists around the country again?

State and city primary elections continue. New York DSA chapters are fielding one of the largest slates of DSA candidates for the state legislature, and primary elections in the Empire State are on June 25.

As November’s general election approaches, the quadrennial debate on the US Left about lesser-evil voting will almost certainly move into full swing by the start of the summer.

Mexico will also hold its general election on June 2. The left-wing nationalist party MORENA is extremely popular and its candidate Claudia Sheinbaum has a super-majority lead in the polls at the start of 2024. There’s much to be learned from the Left’s successes in Mexico. Europe will also be holding elections from June 6 to 9 for the European Parliament, which is a democratic fig-leaf for the EU’s technocratic elite. Prospects for the Left in Europe look bleak, while the far right’s share of seats in parliament there is projected to increase significantly.

July

Two major contracts expire for 60,000 IATSE film and TV workers. The bulk of these workers are in Hollywood, but about a third are elsewhere in the country. There’s also a new reform caucus organizing in IATSE, CREW, which could be a factor in the contract battle.

Republicans will hold their national convention in Milwaukee from July 15–18. Some kind of national mobilization against it is likely.

August

Contracts expire for 16,000 CWA AT&T workers in nine states in the South and for 13,000 Philly teachers. In the Philly teachers’ union the Caucus of Working Educators is pushing for a stronger contract campaign.

Democrats will hold their national convention in Chicago from August 19-22. A demonstration or mobilization against the convention is also likely.

September

The presidential election will kick off in full swing after Labor Day. It’s hard to know what the election will look like — Will there even be debates, or significant field campaigns and rallies in the battleground states? But it will be the major focus of national politics, and DSA members will have to decide if we have a perspective we want to push aggressively in the fall or whether, like in 2020, we’ll effectively abstain from the general election process.

Major contracts also expire for 220,000 American Postal Workers Union members in big cities across the country, tens of thousands of International Longshoremen’s Association workers on the East and Gulf Coast docks, and 30,000 International Association of Machinists and Aerospace workers at Boeing in Washington. That could set up an interesting dynamic where the two major parties have to respond to major labor struggles up and down the country.

October

The general election will be in full swing.

Brazil will hold municipal elections. In general they’ll test whether the center-left Workers’ Party (PT) has done so far under Lula’s new presidency, and whether the far right is growing, holding steady, or falling back. In São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, the left-wing socialist party PSOL is running the activist Guilherme Boulos in a coalition with the PT. Boulous’s wing of PSOL is trying to tie the party closely to the PT and Lula’s presidency, which has been resisted by left-wing tendencies inside PSOL including the Socialist Left Movement (MES).

November

The presidential election will happen on Tuesday, November 5. If 2020 is a precedent, the results may be up in the air or contested for some time after. This could be a month of big struggles and massive demonstrations. And while most aspects of the general elections will be bleak, socialists in the US should keep our eyes on Puerto Rico, which will also be going to the polls on November 5. There the left-wing Citizens’ Victory Movement is building off recent electoral successes and also joining an alliance with the left nationalist Puerto Rican Independence Party.

The contract for 50,000 University Professional & Technical Employees and AFSCME members at the University of California also expires in November.

December

A fight over the results of the presidential election could continue into December, as could popular mobilizations reminiscent of the anti-Trump protests in 2016. One or both candidates may also be planning their transition into power. DSA members and movement activists will have to figure out our role in resisting or putting pressure on this process.

Some Time This Year

The latest data for December 2023 from the Crowd Counting Consortium for mobilizations against Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza have not come out yet. October and November recorded major demonstrations against the genocide. We can expect these to continue into the new year. Whether the scale of protests shrink and their pace slackens — as is usually the case with mass mobilizations — is yet to be seen, and will likely be determined by unpredictable events in Gaza and the next steps of the IDF, Hamas, and other Palestinian resistance movements. Here’s hoping that mass resistance to the genocide grows stronger as time goes on.

As always, the year will almost certainly be punctured by new climate catastrophes, migration crises, and/or new and evolving military conflicts. The United States alone set a new record for itself in 2023 for devastating natural disasters. A record 300,000 migrants arrived at the US’s southern border last month, and Democratic Party city governments have started to turn against new immigrants. Data suggests that armed conflicts are rising around the world in recent years as new inter-imperialist conflicts, proxy wars, and civil wars break out. On the other hand, there’s some reason to think that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may move from open hostilities to negotiations this year, as both sides seem bogged down and unable to launch effective offensives.

If all goes well, the UAW’s new organizing campaign at non-union auto factories will hopefully make a big splash in 2024. We don’t know much in the way of details and I’m wary of making predictions, but Shawn Fain has built an impressive team of militant, left-wing, and democratic organizers and they’ve got ambitious goals for remaking the auto industry along fairer and more ecologically sustainable lines.

The contract for 26,000 Association of Professional Flight Attendant workers expired years ago and 19,000 TWU Southwest flight attendants are also fighting a grueling contract battle. Those fights could come to the fore at some point this year. Plus, 2023 saw an explosion of strike and successful union drives across US colleges and universities; there's every reason to think this will continue. Big organizing campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon will hopefully take new strides forward, and operations like the Rank-and-File Project and the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee will recruit and train new waves of shopfloor union activists.

If the US courts actually remove Donald Trump from the ballot — which seems unlikely given the Republican majority on the Supreme Court — that will also almost certainly become a huge struggle.

Argentina’s new far right “libertarian” president Javier Milei is threatening to tear apart the country’s welfare state and crack down on protests. Argentina has a long history of mass mobilizations and popular uprisings, so a showdown between the government and an alliance of social movements, labor, and leftists could come to a head in the next few months.

Venezuela is also supposed to hold presidential elections in 2024. If the elections are held without government interference, as promised, President Nicolás Maduro may lose to a unified opposition; a national conflict over the elections however could force DSA to explain its position on Venezuela. Ireland will go to the polls at some point later in the year. The left-wing nationalist party Sinn Féin is projected to do very well and could lead the next left-wing government in Europe. The UK will probably hold elections at some point in 2024. In the recent past the left in the UK under Jeremy Corbyn was an important reference point for DSA, but since 2019 Keir Starmer’s right-wing renovation of the Labour Party has shattered that. Starmer’s centrist Labour Party looks like the likely winner of the election by default because the Tories are so unpopular.

To end on a positive note: In a very exciting development, workers in Minneapolis-St. Paul successfully planned over the last decade to line up their contract fights to overlap in 2024. Expiring contracts cover thousands of workers, from janitors to airport workers and security guards. Contracts for teachers and education support staff already expired, and transit workers are also in negotiations. The Minneapolis-St. Paul experience could be an important test for the UAW’s plans to line up national contracts to expire on May Day 2028.

Know of a nationally or internationally important event that’s missing? Please let us know in the comments below.