Meet the Candidates
Vote May 17–23!
Check your inbox for details from our chapter leadership.
Hear from us at the Candidate Forum!
Steering Committee Candidate Forum: May 16th 1:00PM-3:30PM
Our chapter’s Bernie campaign led the way to Bernie’s victory in the East Bay, brought in new leaders, developed new tactics, and proved that democratic socialism can rally the multiracial working class.
Since Bernie’s California victory, things have drastically changed and we’re now in the middle of a global pandemic and economic depression. The powerful are pushing an agenda of privatization and corporate bailouts on the one hand and blaming and oppressing immigrants and people of color on the other while millions of working-class people will die from lack of healthcare.
But the working class is fighting back! Frontline workers are organizing for better protections and hazard pay, and tenants are withholding rent. Bernie’s campaign inspired millions and the COVID-19 crisis has radicalized millions more. Our task is to merge these into a single, multiracial, working-class movement against racism and oppression and for democratic socialism.
1. Rank-and-File Worker Power!
We should rebuild a militant, democratic, and left-wing labor movement by developing rank-and-file worker-leaders permanently organizing in the workplace.
- Build a rank-and-file jobs pipeline in our chapter, organizing ourselves into strategic industries, supporting graduating YDSA activists in getting rank-and-file jobs, and supporting members entering the labor movement
- Support the Emergency Worker Organizing Committee (EWOC) in helping workers organizing during COVID-19
- Continue local solidarity work alongside OEA teachers, SEIU 1021 healthcare workers, and AC Transit workers of ATU 192 and promote new organizing, like Tartine Union and others
2. Fight Racism and Oppression
Solidarity means uniting the multiracial working class against oppression and exploitation. We must demand universal programs that guarantee Black and Brown people housing, food, medical care, education, and the full fruits of their labor — and confront oppression by fighting to defend and expand reproductive rights, end housing and job discrimination, and win open borders and end deportations.
- Prioritize diversifying East Bay DSA by building YDSA chapters at community colleges, placing socialists in rank-and-file jobs alongside the multiracial working class, and recruiting from our Bernie contacts
- Build campaigns to tackle capitalist racism head-on, like our Classroom Justice Campaign against school closures and our AHS Solidarity campaign
- Build the strength of labor to win anti-racist demands and protect frontline workers
- Integrate anti-oppression politics into all our campaigns, communications, and political education
3. Fight Austerity and Privatization
As a depression economy takes hold, we can expect a wave of corporate bailouts, budget cuts, and privatizations, even as a lack of strong public programs cost lives before COVID-19. Only an organized movement alongside our allies in public sector unions can reverse this destruction of the public good.
- Fight budget cuts in Oakland Unified School District and the Alameda Health System
- Win Schools and Communities First in November
- Develop local strategic campaigns against austerity and privatization
- Organize tenants and the unemployed and underemployed against landlords and billionaires and leverage their power to demand rent forgiveness, eviction moratoriums, fully-funded universal social programs, and a jobs guarantee with a living wage
4. Message Towards the Masses
Through our communications and political education, we need to win Bernie supporters and rank-and-file workers to our long-term vision and get them involved in the socialist project.
- Develop Majority into a powerhouse that competes with local media and reaches a broader audience
- Expand our capacity for investigative journalism and multimedia and creating more social media shareables
- Earn press coverage for our campaigns and actions
- Expand our Socialist Night School programming to include panel discussions and advanced programming and emphasize highlighting international perspectives
5. Build a Multiracial, Democratic DSA
We need a mass organization that can carry out the mass politics we believe in. Bernie’s campaign demonstrated that democratic socialism can mobilize the multiracial working class, but East Bay DSA’s composition doesn’t reflect that. Growing DSA also requires us to make our chapter more democratic and give members control over substantive decisions.
- Launch a recruitment campaign, specifically to diversify the chapter.
- Expand our Spanish-speaking capacities and multilingual materials to reach a broader audience.
- Build leadership development engines that promote the development of non-white and non-male leaders.
- Expand our mobilizers program to check on our members and contacts during COVID-19, plug them into campaigns and political education, and activate them as socialist organizers while continuing our organizer trainings.
- Take an organizing approach to our democracy by actively turning out members to General Meetings and looping them into debates.
6. Bigger than Bernie
Over 2 million Californians voted for Bernie in 2020. Through DSA’s Bernie campaign we spoke to over five thousand Bernie supporters throughout the East Bay and hundreds have joined DSA since Bernie suspended his campaign. For those inspired by that campaign, who fought for someone they didn’t know, DSA is their political home. Our job is to welcome them home.
- Unite Bernie supporters by adopting Bernie's platform as DSA’s and encouraging partner organizations to co-sign this platform.
- Recruit Bernie activists and supporters we identified through the campaign into DSA.
- Develop a roadmap to form an independent working-class party in partnership with Bernie coalition organizations.
- Recruit DSA members and allies to run for office in 2022.