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Connecticut has landed on the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) latest grant award-winner list. The national DSA announced it is pushing more than $40,000 into the hands of organizers across 11 chapters in four regions specifically “for Abolish ICE organizing.” Connecticut DSA is highlighted among the recipients.
The money is earmarked for building rapid-response networks that scramble when ICE is nearby, running “Know Your Rights” trainings and outreach, supporting mutual aid for people targeted by enforcement, and organizing communities “to fight ICE.” From Kansas City to North New Jersey, the DSA boasts, the goal is the same: get resources into the hands of people working to obstruct and ultimately abolish federal immigration enforcement.
Of course, the DSA is clear about its worldview: “ICE and immigrant criminalization are rooted in racial capitalism and US imperialism.” It says it is “committed to transforming the social conditions that reproduce violence and exploitation,” and that “when our communities are under attack, DSA will show up to defend them.”
In plain terms, Connecticut taxpayers and residents are watching a national socialist organization route funds into local efforts whose explicit purpose is to hinder ICE agents doing their jobs. Rapid-response teams such as Danbury Area Unites for Immigrants (DUFI), tip networks, and coordinated community action are the tools. “Abolish ICE” is the slogan. Mutual aid and rights trainings are the packaging.
DSA is also partnering with Organized Power in Numbers (@opinorgon Instagram), a Working Families Organization project focused on labor and community organizing in the South and Southwest, to co-lead Neighborhood Defense Team trainings. One such session is set for October 29, where participants are taught how to canvass neighborhoods and small businesses, invoke Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights during ICE encounters, and build local “defense” networks as part of the group’s Workers Over Billionaires campaign. These sessions have already trained thousands of volunteers this year on responding to enforcement actions.
Connecticut already has elected officials and local groups that have publicly called for ICE to leave the state or be abolished. Now the national DSA is putting cash behind that infrastructure—hotlines, trainings, rapid mobilization—to make those demands operational. At a time when federal authorities continue large-scale enforcement actions and communities in other states have seen confrontations, property damage, and interference with agents, the DSA is openly funding the counter-organizing apparatus in places that include Connecticut.
The post frames it as “building power.” But for those in the state who want immigration laws enforced and federal agents able to operate without obstruction, it looks like something else: outside money flowing in to professionalize resistance to ICE inside Connecticut communities.
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