The NLRB cannot get an injunction to immediately have a member of a union organizing committee reinstated.

The post The Supreme Court’s Starbucks ruling is a gift to bad bosses everywhere appeared first on EWOC.

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, July 24 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, July 25 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, July 25 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, July 26 (12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, July 26 (7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.): Guillermo Kane Q&A (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, July 27 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Team Jackie Mobilization w/ Harvey Milk Club (Meet at Holly Park, 625 Holly Park Circle)

Saturday, July 27 (1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Platform / Education Meeting (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Sunday, July 28 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Healthcare Workers for Extreme Dean Door Knock Mobilization (Meet at the Panhandle at Fell and Baker)

Sunday, July 28 (1:00 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.): No Appetite for Apartheid Work Session (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, July 29 (6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): Ecosocialist Monthly Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, July 29 (7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Organizing 101 (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, July 31 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, August 1 (5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): Phonebank for Extreme Dean (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, August 1 (6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialist Working Group (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, August 3 (10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.): Extreme Dean Door Knock Mobilization (Location TBD)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates.

Events & Actions

Turnout Tuesday for Dean Preston, Every Tuesday!

It’s all hands on deck as we close in on the final months before the election this November! Join the Extreme Dean team every Tuesday from 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. at 1916 McAllister to call Dean’s supporters and get folks fired up about weekend mobilizations.

Turnout Tuesday Volunteer Appreciation Tonight!

We’re having a Volunteer Appreciation event for our Turnout Tuesday volunteers TONIGHT (July 23rd)  from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at Club Waziema at 543 Divisadero Street! Come celebrate all our volunteers’ hard work so far and learn how to get involved in the campaign!

Join the National Union of Healthcare Workers as they mobilize for Dean Preston this Saturday, July 28th from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.! We’ll be meeting at the Panhandle at Fell and Baker before heading out to talk to Dean voters about electing a candidate who’s for the people, not the powerful.

Sign the BAD! Petition

Bay Area Divest! (BAD!) is a new coalition that believes we must invest our public funds in our communities, NOT in repression, war, or genocide! DSA SF officially endorses BAD!, along with East Bay DSA, AROC, Palestinian Youth Movement, AFSC, Palestinian Feminist Collective, JVP, CodePink, and several other great organizations. Please sign the petition to join BAD! in refusing to allow our public funds to go towards supporting genocide and occupation.

Behind the Scenes

The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and newsletter, etc. Members can view current CCC rotations.

To help with the day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running, fill out the CCC help form.

YDSA stands in solidarity with the student protesters of Bangladesh who are facing brutal repression and terror from their government. Student protests began at the start of July against a quota reserving much of the civil service to descendants of veterans of the Liberation War. This system unfairly benefits supporters of the Awami League, Bangladesh’s authoritarian ruling party, and contributes to systematic governmental corruption. Through strikes and demonstrations, the students brought their schools and universities to a standstill. In response, the government has struck back with horrific violence. More than a dozen people have been murdered by police and armed supporters of the government with hundreds more injured including children. The government calls for calm while it accuses the students of treason and cuts off internet access. Yet the students of Bangladesh have continued their protests in spite of the regime of repression. As internationalists, the YDSA stands with the struggle of the oppressed worldwide. Across the world, the youth are leading struggles against common systems of exploitation. The students of Bangladesh are an inspiration to us in our united struggles

The post Solidarity with the Bangladeshi Student Protestors appeared first on DSA International Committee.

This article sums up the third and final day of the 2024 YDSA national convention. Deliberation Block 4  Deliberation began with Resolution 16 – “Ecosocialism Beyond the Green New Deal.” R16 seeks to recognize the legislative gridlock that the Green New Deal has fallen into and politicize our ecosocialist vision beyond reform efforts. The amended…

The post Inside the YDSA Convention: Day 3 appeared first on YDSA.

DSA Cleveland’s Public Pressure Non-Campaign Activity for Trans Rights was passed unanimously at the February 2024 general meeting. The “non campaign activity” was NOT a priority project of Cleveland DSA, therefore it did not have an elected leadership body and other privileges of being a priority. From February-April 2024 DSA sent members to make public comment at meetings where the restrictions on trans health care were being considered, including the Ohio Health Advisory Board, Ohio Department of Health and Department of Mental Health. DSA members also attended a public meeting of the Cuyahoga County Board of Health to bring up our concerns about anti-trans legislation. We made 345 phone calls and sent countless emails and public comment submissions. We engaged 58 DSA members and community members in this work. We also worked directly with Abortion Fund of Ohio on an education event. At the end of the authorization period for this activity, it was ultimately the lower Ohio courts that opted to block and stall the implementation of HB 68, and interest in mass action over the issue died down.

We wanted to host a large scale demonstration occupying the Cuyahoga County Department of Health, this also did not happen. We hosted a smaller demonstration in the Cuyahoga County Board of Health parking lot where we distributed literature to the workers there. The culmination of the work on this project is a plan for a Trans Liberation Priority Project. While the authors of this proposal believe it holds untapped potential, they did not recommend it for approval due to a lack of developed leaders ready to take on the four elected roles; legislative researcher, project administrator, comms coordinator and membership coordinator. DSA new members and observers should note that although we do not have ongoing work in every issue-area we have experience and projects prepared for prioritization when chapter capacity and external circumstances align, we are ready and we need your help.

The post Reporting Back: Fighting for Trans Rights – A Public Pressure Campaign appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

What Jarkesy and Loper Bright mean for labor organizing and interactions with the NLRB

The post What Do the Recent Supreme Court Rulings Mean for Labor Rights? appeared first on EWOC.

DSA International Committee applauds the courage and determination of the Kenyan people in their tireless struggle against the imposition of the now-withdrawn 2024 Finance Bill. Amid fierce state repression, including the murders of as many as 200 protesters by police forces, thousands continue to mobilize, demanding the resignation of President William Ruto.

Protests against the 2024 Finance Bill, which promised to intensify an increasingly dire cost-of-living crisis, have united Kenyans of all ages, genders, and ethnicities. The Communist Party of Kenya describes the situation as, “not merely about an imposed IMF finance bill, [but] a potent manifestation of the deep-seated inequalities that plague Kenya. Millions of our people languish in abject poverty, while a stinking corrupt elite flaunts their ill-gotten wealth with shameless opulence.”

Austerity economics continue to ravage the working poor, unemployed, and landless in cities and rural areas all over the world. When we speak of austerity and neoliberalism, we lay responsibility first and foremost at the feet of the United States, which holds greater institutional power over the international financial system than any other nation on Earth. And it is US imperialism which guarantees, through force and subversion, the conditions necessary to reproduce austerity for billions across the world, generation after generation. Kenya is but the latest site of resistance to the mercenary demands of the US-led capitalist world system.

President Ruto’s government is fighting for its survival on multiple fronts. As Kenyans vehemently reject the draconian proposals of the 2024 Finance Bill, Ruto faces widespread domestic opposition and a substantive legal challenge for contributing more than one thousand police officers to a US-backed invasion of Haiti in service of the imperialist Core Group.

Haiti remains captured, controlled, and terrorized by Western forces, its treatment yielding minimal opposition across the Americas. Nevertheless, Kenyans have refused to sit by idly as they are enlisted as proxies to meet the military objectives of colonial powers and their collaborators in the region.

Kenya’s future belongs to its people. So, too, does the future of humanity depend on the persistent organizing and solidarity of socialists in the United States— a solidarity that must include willing sacrifice. Ours, too, is a struggle against the depravities of capitalism, the violence of imperialism and militarism, and the illegitimacy of anti-democratic rule over the working masses. We gain strength from our comrades in Kenya, and support every effort to advance their struggle and the struggles of all peoples around the world for justice, land, and dignity.

The post DSA IC Stands with the Kenyan People against Austerity and Imperialism appeared first on DSA International Committee.

Project 2025 calls for a dramatic weakening of employment and labor law, as well as a counter-mobilization of the working and middle classes against the labor movement.

By Henry De Groot

The Threat of Project 2025

Much has been written in the last few weeks about Project 2025. But what does it mean for the labor movement?

As the increased threat of a second Trump term and what that entails fosters widespread concern about potential authoritarian measures, article after article points to the concerning content of the 900 page Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership. 

Project 2025 outlines concrete steps which could be taken to overhaul the departments of the executive branch. The document is this presidential cycle’s version of the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership; the first Mandate for Leadership was drafted prior to Reagan’s 1980 election, and included many of the policies which typified his neoliberal assault on the working class. The Heritage Foundation is one of the original and central pillars of the neoliberal billionaire network, which includes other organizations including the Federalist Society, the Manhattan Institute, and the American Legislative Exchange Council. Founded in 1973 by right-wing activists Paul Weyrich and Edwin Feulner, as well as billionaire Joseph Coors of Coors Brewing, the foundation sought to implement the conservative strategy laid out in the notorious Powell Memo. 

Project 2025 is close to Trump and his entourage but shouldn’t be seen as identical to Donald Trump himself. There is a clear contradiction and differentiation between the more traditionally neoliberal preferences of the right-wing billionaires represented by the Heritage Foundation and the more working and middle class elements of the MAGA movement which Trump mobilized as his own personal army. Project 2025 presents both but generally defers to MAGA orthodoxy. 

While the Democrats have drummed up Project 2025 to energize their base, Trump claims that he knows “nothing about Project 2025.” But Trump is a habitual liar, and the proximity is undeniable; 6 of his former cabinet advisors as well as more than 140 Trump Administration staffers have contributed to the Project 2025 effort. Moreover the ideas very closely mirror the 2024 Republican Party platform which was more directly drafted by Donald Trump’s team. 

In terms of Project 2025’s labor angle, Trump’s former Secretary of Labor, Patrick Pizzella, was one of the senior Trump officials involved in drafting Project 2025. The chapter on the Department of Labor is written by Jonathan Berry, a frequent contributor to the Federalist Society on labor and employment law.

In just the last few days, labor has expressed growing concern about Project 2025. The Center for American Progress laid out Project 2025’s attacks on the NLRB, Labor Notes recently published an article “Project 2025: Eliminate Unions,” and several unions have come out with statements with concerns about its contents. The American Federation of Government Employees warns that Project 2025 calls for the termination of up to 1 million federal employees, IBEW Local 2222 highlights the planned attack on overtime, and the Wisconsin AFL-CIO issued a general warning about the far-right threat of Project 2025.

We should be careful neither to underestimate nor exaggerate the threat posed to labor by a second Trump term. There is nothing in Project 2025 which would “eliminate unions” in their entirety, and much of the hype around Project 2025 is part of the Democratic campaign narrative that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy and the constitutional order.

But we would also be remiss if we were to consider a 2024 Republican victory as simply a more open and honest version of the Democrats’ pro-business agenda. There are elements in the Republican Party who absolutely would prefer a more typical Republican administration; but many of these forces rallied around Nikki Halley and were roundly rejected. If — and it is not clear which plans are serious and which are bluster — Trump carried out the full program of Project 2025, it would entail the mass deportation of 10 million undocumented Americans, massive expansion of presidential powers, deportation of Palestinian demonstrators, hundreds of thousands or millions of layoffs of civil servants, and other policies that go beyond naked corporate interest.

I have written elsewhere on the larger prospects of authoritarianism under a second Trump term. They are very serious. Ultimately, only Trump knows what his plans are for a second term. How far he is willing to move past the pro-corporate agenda of his first term in taking on a dangerous authoritarian direction is known only to him.

The Corporate Wish-List for Employment and Labor Law

Jonathan Berry’s chapter outlines a systematic attack on US employment and labor law.

In terms of employment law — the rules which affect all workers regardless of union status — Project 2025 lays out several damaging policies. 

Berry calls for stripping many of the protections offered to marginalized groups under the law. Project 2025 would “Rescind regulations prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, and sex characteristics,” including allowing for discrimination against trans people in hiring and firing. Project 2025 would also strip several important race-based protections from employment law. And the proposal would allow employers to deny abortion coverage.

The initiative would also erode overtime protections, expanding the overtime calculation period to 80 hours over two weeks instead of 40 hours over one week. And Project 2025 would allow employers to provide earned paid vacation instead of overtime pay.

Even more radically, Project 2025 undermines the very role of federal employment law as the national floor for workplace standards. One policy proposal would allow states to exempt themselves from federal employment law, allowing for lower state minimums to prevail. Another would allow for unions to accept work conditions below the federal minimums during collective bargaining. 

Also in this vein, Berry calls for the NLRB to loosen rules on employee misclassification, allowing employers to deny workers rights by classifying them as “independent contractors,” and calls for “safe harbor” for any employer using independent contractors as long as they provide workers with benefits. This would allow for the expansion of the misclassification which allows Uber and Lyft to refuse basic worker rights to their drivers.

In terms of labor law — the rules covering union rights and collective bargaining which are generally enshrined in the National Labor Relations Act and enforced by the National Labor Relations Board — Project 2025 calls for several policy changes which would dramatically weaken the US labor movement.

Berry calls for several rule changes which would make it harder to unionize. This includes a return to the 2019 Alstate Maintenance precedent, which imposes an 8-part checklist on what counts as protected concerted activity. This means employers would have broader powers to fire employees for expressing concerns about and within the workplace. Berry would also eliminate the recent Board changes which expanded the role of “card check” elections.

The chapter also calls for a limited interpretation of “joint-employer” precedent. This means large companies could more easily use subcontractors or shell companies to frustrate union efforts by denying they employ the workers at all.

Berry also calls for the elimination of the NLRA’s Section 8(a)(2) prohibition on company unions, calling for the establishment of “Employee Involvement Organizations.” This would revive company union tactics which have long been illegal, but in recent years have nonetheless been taken up by Uber and Lyft.

Berry’s chapter also calls for an attack on common union strategies for building power for working people outside of direct unionization. This includes the expansion of “duty of fair representation” to allow for employees to argue that a union’s political contributions violate its duty of fair representation to its members. And Berry also calls for increased financial scrutiny of workers centers, the union-adjacent non-profits which the labor movement backs to run campaigns and support workers outside of the traditional sectors of the labor movement.

Employment and labor law are weak even under Democratic administrations. But they nonetheless codify decades of gains in working conditions and union rights which were won only through hard fought struggle. If enacted, Project 2025 would set us back by decades and dramatically weaken the labor movement’s ability to organize new workplaces, deliver strong contracts, and fight for working people in society as a whole.

Corporate Attacks, Sector by Sector

In addition to the specific attacks on the US labor relations system outlined by Berry’s chapter and summarized in the section above, Project 2025 proposes various other policies which amount to a sector-by-sector attack on the labor movement. While these attacks don’t go so far as to “eliminate unions” as Labor Notes describes Project 2025, they are still a serious threat.

Perhaps the sector most directly in the crosshairs of Project 2025 is the government sector. The plan proposes expanding by 10x the number of political appointees, from around 4,000 today to up to 50,000. This means that some 46,000 civil service jobs would lose protections given to ‘neutral’ civil servants and instead be subject to political calculations in hiring, firing, and promotions. As noted above, AFGE also warns that an additional 1 million federal workers could be laid off as part of drastic cuts to government departments.

Project 2025 would also dramatically undermine unions in all sectors which rely on federal contracts. This includes getting rid of the mandate for federal contractors to pay prevailing wages and enter into project labor agreements, which would open a “race to the bottom” in working conditions on infrastructure projects. This would especially affect the conditions in the construction sector.

The education sector is also a major focus of Project 2025. The document proposes bans on teaching critical race theory, gender studies, and other progressive curricula which could dramatically reverse the expansion of anti-establishment ideas over the last decade. And more materially, the plan to dissolve the Department of Education could mean more than $80 billion in cuts to the department’s federal programs, which help provide subsidized meals, fund schools in poor districts, and much more. Cuts to financial transfers from the federal government to poor school districts could result in mass layoffs of educators in these districts.

Although it isn’t specifically listed in Project 2025, the 2024 Republican Party platform does call for the deportation of “pro-Hamas” radicals active on campuses. Carrying out such a deportation campaign would likely mean targeting graduate worker union activists, and actual deportations would likely just be the most extreme action of a larger campaign of harassment and intimidation of pro-Palestinian activists. This attempt to revive McCarthyism could conceivably be extended further to other unions outside the university sector. In the past, Republicans enforced an anti-communist oath in order for union leaders to access the NLRB, and Trump would have the power to revive similar mechanisms — like banning access to unions which are critical of Israel — to especially disenfranchise the left of the labor movement.

It is likely that the 900 pages of Project 2025 contains far more additional attacks on the various sectors of the US economy. More research is needed.

Attacks on employment law, labor law, and aggressive campaigns in at least several major sectors of the economy would all combine to be a tremendous assault on working people broadly and union power more specifically. Unions would immediately be thrown on the defensive — a posture which we have just broken out of with new organizing. Unions would have to devote tremendous resources just in fighting off legal cases and defending against cuts.

Although even if carried to its conclusion, Project 2025 would not entirely eliminate unions. But there is a potential for a broad elimination of bargaining units through the combined strengthening of decertification campaigns, legalization of company unions, and expansion of independent contractors.

Under such conditions it would be incredibly challenging to advance new organizing. Even after the modest improvements to the NLRB under Biden, it is still far too weak — but under Project 2025’s plan it would be actively hostile against the labor movement.

The Labor Politics of MAGA

While the erosion of employment and labor law as well as the specific attacks on various sectors which are outlined above would be serious in their own right, they do not entail the totality of Project 2025’s plans for and threats to labor. 

In terms of labor, the threat we are facing cannot be reduced to legal changes to the technical mechanisms of labor law, nor cuts or policy changes to individual executive departments. We also face a political threat — the counter-mobilization of the working class by the right.

Trump’s MAGA politics have their own working class angle which distinguishes them from more traditional pro-corporate politics, and are a key part of Trump’s success. 

Since the 2016 Republican primary, Trump has differentiated himself from the rest of the Republican Party through his anti-elitist appeal to economically dispossessed sections of the American working class, especially white workers and downwardly mobile middle class people in the ‘Rust Belt’ and other de-industrialized areas of the country. Promising pro-worker ‘America First’ trade policies and immigration policies which promise to protect the labor market for native-born workers, Trump was able to develop these sections into a loyal base.

The Heritage Foundation did not back Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries. But over the last eight years the establishment of the conservative movement has had to accommodate itself to Trump and his political vision. Project 2025 attempts to balance between corporate politics-as-usual and the economic nationalism of the MAGA movement, but largely defers to MAGA priorities, resigning its more traditional views to meager counterpoints sprinkled weakly throughout the 900-page document.

In fact, the anti-union strategies of the more traditional conservatism have already for years relied on a certain degree of counter-mobilization of workers in order to block the labor movement. Appealing to workers is, after all, the goal of every anti-union drive and decertification campaign, and anti-union forces are always looking for useful anti-union stooges to develop into plaintiffs in the next anti-union lawsuit.

Project 2025 extends this more traditional approach of mobilizing working people against their own interests. The expansion of opportunities for decertification, challenges to duty of fair representation, and rules which empower union busting would all further empower the existing type of anti-union counter-mobilization. And the legalization of company unions would go even further in terms of mobilization of working people against their own interests. These “Employee Involvement Organizations” could be stood up by corporations in order to block or otherwise cut across genuine union efforts. If these company unions are allowed to achieve exclusive bargaining representative status, they could even “negotiate” to adopt standards beneath federal minimums under the Project 2025 plan.

But MAGA goes further, by outlining a counter mobilization of certain sections of the working class and middle class which transcends the workplace for the political field. This begins with Trump’s appeal for workers to vote for him on the basis of his economic nationalist program. But it extends beyond the polls, calling on these workers to organize for MAGA politics within society, developing them into a countermobilization directed against the organized masses of the labor movement and other social movements.

The pressure of these forces was evident by Sean O’Brien’s appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Although O’Brien used the platform to level attacks at corporate America, the result of his speech was providing working class cover for Trump and his agenda. O’Brien called Trump ‘tough’ and said that J.D. Vance “cares about working people, even though the AFL-CIO has given Vance a voting score of 0.

For O’Brien, speaking at the RNC may be less about trying to win special privileges from Republicans, and more so that it gives him internal political cover from the numerous MAGA supporters within his membership. This pressure is widely felt by union officers, especially in blue collar bargaining units. By developing this fight within the labor movement, MAGA politics help to divide the labor movement so that it cannot present a clear united front against Trump.

MAGA politics also call for mobilization of reactionary sections of working people against the most progressive elements of the labor and social movements. During the pandemic, the MAGA movement was able to engage further layers of working people through the development of parent groups opposed to or frustrated by COVID-19 policies. The increased focus of parents on the education of their children allowed for this energy to be transitioned into a movement against progressive educational curricula in general, with a new crop of right-wing activists running for school boards in order to curtail critical race theory, gender studies, or other progressive topics from school curricula. The mobilization of these elements comes into direct conflict with the teachers unions, which is not only one of the most progressive and militant sections of the labor movement, but also perhaps the section which has the broadest connections with working people as a whole.

Don’t Mourn. Organize

We must educate ourselves in the labor movement about the specifics policy threats posed by Project 2025, as well as the larger threat of a descent into authoritarianism. Now more than ever, it will be necessary to rely on the strength of our class which grows from its economic position in society. If Trump wins in November, it will be necessary to build tremendous mass movements of working people, through street demonstrations, political strikes, and other direct actions, in order to resist and turn back the tremendous attacks which are now being prepared.

We are not defeated yet.

Henry De Groot is the Managing Editor of Working Mass. He is active in the Boston DSA Labor Working Group, and a member of the DSA caucus Reform and Revolution.

If voters pass Propositions 5 and 33 on the November 2024 state ballot, we will take a couple of important steps toward addressing the housing crisis in California. That’s why California DSA has endorsed the ARCH campaign—Affordable Rent-Controlled Housing. 

California voters on November 5th can take back control over local rents from the developers and real estate industry that have stymied rent control efforts for decades. By passing the Justice for Renters Act—Prop 33—cities and counties will regain the ability to set rent rate regulations by repealing the Costa-Hawkins Act that currently prohibits vacancy control and other rent control policies. 

For good reasons, California DSA has made this effort our priority campaign. Housing costs are the largest driver of poverty in California. Real estate comprises roughly 45% of all financial assets globally. These are related phenomena: the consolidation of real estate by large holding companies has accelerated gentrification, displacement, eviction, rent burden, and homelessness. Rent increases are a major driver of inflation. Speculation and absentee landlordism are rampant. Urban redevelopment and the privatization of public housing into “affordable” housing has not resulted in the alleviation of poverty, but merely its relocation. 

As socialists, we say enough: everyone deserves a home, regardless of their ability to feed the rent-seeking economy! Passing Prop 33 is a strong step toward making housing a human right.

Build Social Housing

California also needs to de-commodify housing and to improve public infrastructure. Prop 5 would lower the voter threshold from a two-thirds supermajority to 55 percent to approve local general obligation bonds and special taxes for affordable housing and public infrastructure projects. This would make it easier to generate public funds toward housing that is built as a public good, rather than as a commodity investment.

The California DSA ARCH campaign will work with pro-tenant state-wide housing coalitions and will complement local fights this November to win tenant protections, elect rent board members and support pro-tenant DSA-endorsed candidates. All DSA members engaged in electoral work are encouraged to include Prop 33 and Prop 5 materials in your canvassing and outreach. 

Passage of Prop 33 and Prop 5 would reset the table for housing organizing. In both cases, socialists and our allies would start from a stronger foundation to improve the lives and economic conditions of workers, specifically their right to housing, while being disadvantageous to the interests of capital. Although these propositions do not fully achieve the policies we want, they will make it much easier to win those policies.

The coalition supporting Justice For Renters/Prop 33 is led by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which has organized two prior initiatives to repeal Costa-Hawkins, and is very active in local and state housing issues. ACCE, which is a community-based organization that engages grassroot supporters in pro-tenant struggles throughout California, and organizes progressive campaigns state-wide, is also playing a lead role in the campaign. Labor unions including UNITE/HERE, United Teachers Los Angeles, United Union of Roofers, San Francisco City College Federation of Teachers, and the California Nurses Association, along with a diverse array of advocacy groups including Housing NOW!, CHIRLA, IE Votes, ACLU-SoCal, ADA, the Poor People’s Campaign and Housing is a Human Right have endorsed Prop 33.

Working class solidarity and militancy

Realtors and landlord-friendly legislation like Costa-Hawkins are just some of the ways that Real Estate capital shapes the world we live in. The fight does not begin or end with any one piece of legislation. We aim to investigate, educate, and organize in and across our communities, drawing inspiration from and working collaboratively as tenants in struggle. In this work we seek to build a campaign that fosters working-class solidarity and militancy that carries into the next fight, wherever and whenever (and whatever) it is.

Now is the time to join the California DSA ARCH campaign for Affordable Rent-Controlled Housing. 

• Fill out the interest form to join the campaign. 

• Have your DSA chapter and local organization pass a support resolution.

More about Prop 33

More about Prop 5