Every year the chapter conducts a census of the members and creates a report on how the dynamics of the chapter function along with vital information about demographics. Read the report here.

The post 2024 CNJ DSA Chapter Census appeared first on Central NJ DSA.

The National Political Committee is looking for nominees to serve on the National Political Education Committee from May 2025 through April 2026! As the DSA committee charged with providing a socialist political education to its members and the public, NPEC welcomes members with substantial roots in diverse areas of DSA, across a range of organizing and education experience. We also ask that chapters and official national committees, working groups, and caucuses to submit nominations.

Applicants should be prepared to devote 8 hours a month to committee business, though those with less availability will still be considered. Applicants should also be prepared to contribute to substantive discussion on the content of political education material as well as partake in its implementation. This implementation can occur across (but is not limited to) any of NPEC’s four standing subcommittees:

• Chapter Support, which holds regular workshops to support local political education programs, develop DSA members’ skill base, and connect chapters with experienced mentors
• Events and Speakers, which hosts national political education events year-round on basic socialist ideas and critical issues
• Curriculum, which develops an expanding library of ready-to-use political education materials
• Communications, which broadcasts and furthers our committee’s work through social media, our podcast, and our newsletter, Red Letter

Chapters, national committees and working groups, and caucus steering committees (or equivalent) must email their nominee’s contact information (name, email address, and phone number) to politicaleducation@dsacommittees.org by 3/24. All DSA members interested in joining NPEC, whether nominated by a DSA body or applying as an individual, must apply via this form by Monday, April 6th. Appointments by the NPC will be announced by 4/30 to begin their terms on 5/1.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to the Political Education Committee at politicaleducation@dsacommittees.org, reach us on the DSA forums, or RSVP here to join us for an online information session on Sunday, March 16th 2-3pm PT/5-6pm ET

Welcome to another Town Meeting Day.

Last year, Champlain Valley DSA’s Burlington-focused voter guide lamented the brevity of the Queen City’s ballot following Democratic city councilors’ unusual refusal to allow voters to consider a citizens’ initiative condemning Israeli apartheid, even though more than 1,700 residents had signed the organizers’ petition. And now, the same thing has happened again.

One question, six towns (or more)

This time around, however, activists didn’t limit their efforts to Burlington. The Apartheid-Free Community pledge – drafted originally by the American Friends Service Committee – will appear on ballots in Winooski, Vergennes, Montpelier, Brattleboro, Newfane, and Thetford. Hearteningly, as it turns out, the Burlington Democrats’ contempt for democracy may be unique within Vermont; across the state, other city councils and select boards have determined to let the people have their say.

Coincidentally, Champlain Valley DSA no longer exists: Green Mountain DSA – a new chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America seeking to represent all of Vermont (or, at least, all but the sliver belonging to our Windsor County comrades in Upper Valley DSA) – has replaced it. On our first Town Meeting Day, we endorse the Apartheid-Free Community pledge in every municipality whose ballot contains it.

The text is the same in all six places. Vote yes on Article 5 in Winooski, Article 7 in Vergennes, Article 13 in Montpelier, Article 2 in Brattleboro, Article 38 in Newfane, and Article 23 in Thetford. Please tell your friends, or you can send them this video or this op-ed written by GMDSA’s co-chair for the Times-Argus.

On behalf of the Shelburne Progressive Town Committee, a member of Green Mountain DSA also plans to propose the Apartheid-Free Community pledge from the floor at Shelburne’s Town Meeting Day, along with a resolution advocating for healthcare reform. GMDSA endorses this effort as well. If you’re planning to attend an in-person town meeting where you live, consider doing the same thing!

Winooski

Due to a procedural error last time around, Winooski must vote again on its Just Cause Eviction charter change, which passed by a huge margin in 2023. You can learn more about Just Cause Eviction, a policy that protects renters, here.

Municipal charter changes must travel through the statehouse. Burlington, Essex, and Montpelier passed Just Cause Eviction in 2021, 2023, and 2024, respectively, but none of them has won permission to implement it. And with the Vermont General Assembly trending rightward, its immediate prospects don’t look good.

But tenants will keep fighting, and someday the tenants will win. GMDSA endorses Just Cause Eviction. Vote yes on Article 4 in Winooski.

Randolph

The Orange County town of Randolph has 4,774 residents. At that size, one might expect it not to have a police force. Jericho, Georgia, and Waterbury are all larger than Randolph, and none of them employ police officers.

Yet Randolph does have its own police department, and that police department has requested a budget of $820,937 for fiscal year 2026. Including generous supplements from the town’s American Rescue Plan Act allocation, spending has grown rapidly since fiscal year 2022, when the town paid just $343,960 for law enforcement services.

The Randolph Police Department serves the Randolph Police District, not the entire municipality. The residents of the Police District, specifically, must therefore approve or reject the police budget as an independent article rather than as a component of the townwide vote on Randolph’s annual general fund expenditure. As a result, they have a chance to say no to this particular form of municipal spending without saying no to the rest.

Like many other parts of Vermont, Randolph appears recently to have begun moving toward austerity. The Orange Southwest School District has proposed cutting $1.1 million from its new budget in order to avoid property tax increases in Randolph, Brookfield, and Braintree. Yet the Randolph Police Department has bet that the growing cheapskate attitude that has emerged out of Vermont’s cost-of-living problem will make an exception for expensive policing.

We hope they’re wrong. GMDSA endorses a “no” vote on Article 5 in Randolph. It won’t abolish the police, but it’ll send Randolph’s bloated cop budget back to the drawing board.

Candidates

The membership of Green Mountain DSA did not vote to endorse any candidates for public office on Town Meeting Day this year. But our Electoral Working Group recommends the 17-candidate slate endorsed by the Vermont Progressive Party.

We’re especially pleased to see Progressives in Windham, Lamoille, and Addison counties running for select board and school board positions. In Burlington, East District and South District candidates Kathy Olwell and Jennifer Monroe Zakaras both face competition for open seats.

Victories in those races would give Progressives a majority on the Burlington City Council. Burlington’s ballot also includes a critical vote on a $152 million bond for improved wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, upon which plans for new housing depend – we recommend a yes on Question 3.

School budgets

Taking a hint from the stronger-than-usual showing for Vermont Republicans in November’s legislative elections, school districts have aimed to head off an anticipated taxpayer revolt on Town Meeting Day by slashing their budgets preemptively. Hundreds of school employees will lose their jobs, but that may not be enough to satisfy voters in some towns.

In 2024, Vermonters shot down about a third of the school budgets across the state, forcing cuts that hurt students, teachers, and families alike. This year, we recommend voting yes on every school budget.

Town Meeting Day is Tuesday, March 4, 2025. Please email us at hello@greenmountaindsa.org if you’d like to join a canvass between now and then (here’s one option), or if you’d like to see an item on your town’s ballot included in this guide. 

You can check your voter registration here. 

Enjoy your National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 18-person body (including two YDSA members who share a vote) that functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, join a call hosted by the International Migrant Rights Working Group, hear from Amazon organizers who went on strike, get involved with the Mutual Aid Working Group, and more. 

And to make sure you get our newsletters in your inbox, sign up here! Each one features action alerts, upcoming events, political education, and more.

• From Our Co-Chairs — Organizing Amidst the Chaos
• Immigration 101: No Human is Illegal hosted by the International Migrant Rights Working Group 
• DSA Amazon Priority Campaign
• Pitch an article to Socialist Forum
• Check out Democratic Left’s new website!
• Nationwide Abolish Rent Reading Group
• Announcing our new SC and calling for members to join MAWG!
• Organizing Fair for At-Large Members on 3/2
• Convention Planning Committee

From Our Co-Chairs — Organizing Amidst the Chaos

“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.” – W.E.B. Du Bois

Dear Comrade,

There’s never been an easy time to be a socialist in the USA, but organizing amidst the chaos of this second Trump administration – where Elon Musk, the richest man alive, attempts to dismantle our public services one by one; where Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-science nepo baby, is attempting to roll back crucial public health initiatives (and life-saving SSRIs); where the Democratic Party, the only opposition that holds formal power, is throwing their hands in the air and saying that nothing can be done – is uniquely exhausting. But that’s the point, right? Overwhelm is intended to lead us to inaction and despair. But because we have a strong socialist analysis and a theory of change that is continuing to prove correct, we do have hope; we do have stamina; we do know that a better world is possible, and we do know that an organized working class is what will get us all there.

Just this week, we’re seeing DSA chapters throw down with the Federal Unionists Network to turn out hundreds and thousands of people for events to Save Our Services and fight for federal workers, as they become one of the hottest new targets for Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)” cronies.

We keep showing how we are so much more than the sum of our parts, and even as the fire hydrant of bad news continues to spew uncontrollably, this analysis and the actions we take to combat it are leading to significant DSA membership growth (over 10%, with no signs of slowing, especially as chapters across the country take on intentional recruitment campaigns to meet this moment). But our work is not just about the numbers — it’s about building power for the working class, and we are seeing signs of that power everywhere.

We’re drawing hope and inspiration from the dozens upon dozens of chapters who are finding ways to show up and build connections with the broader working class in their areas, from strike support on hundreds of picket lines to know-your-rights trainings for targeted migrant workers from border to border; from abortion aftercare kit building events to protests led by DSA chapters from New York City to Chicago to Los Angeles to defend trans youth’s access to healthcare and demand that hospitals and university systems refuse to comply in advance with Trump’s anti-trans orders. 

And DSA chapters continue to rack up major wins — just a few among them recently:

• East Bay DSA were leaders in the successful movement to push Alameda County to divest over $30 million from Caterpillar, one of the primary targets of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions Movement (BDS)
• Seattle DSA helped achieve a major working class victory with the passage of Prop 1A, which will tax wealthy businesses to pay for a massive investment in social housing, estimated at around $50 million per year
• Philly DSA threw down and saw victory as a major partner in the Save Chinatown coalition, working alongside and building crucial connections with a variety of community organizations to halt the building of a new stadium that would have razed a historic working-class majority-AAPI downtown neighborhood for the sake of billionaires
• Pittsburgh DSA organized with the Not On Our Dime campaign to get over 21,000 signatures to get on the ballot this May, well above the necessary threshold, for a referendum that would prevent the city of Pittsburgh from investing or doing business with any government actively committing genocide, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing, in solidarity with Palestine.

If you are part of any of this work already, please know that your comrades across the country and throughout the world are drawing inspiration from you and your local comrades. If you’re not already jumping in on a local project or campaign, there’s no time like the present. Find your chapter, join a meeting, and get to work – we need you! If you don’t have a chapter in your area, join us for an At-Large Organizing Fair on March 2 to find out ways to either start a local chapter or plug into national DSA work!

We also know that not everyone has time, energy, or emotional capacity to dig into organizing work, but may have other resources to share. If that sounds like you, please consider becoming a Solidarity Dues payer, or even simply upping your current dues amount by a couple bucks per month. We know that we will never beat the capitalist class with money alone –it’s our organizing and people power that will get that job done. That said, we won’t beat them without money, either, and your monthly dues help fund the work of your own chapter and pay for nationally-shared resources, from tech tools to staff support, that make these big wins possible.

As always, we remain fiercely proud to be in this fight alongside each and every one of you.

In Solidarity, 

Megan Romer and Ashik Siddique
DSA National Co-Chairs

Immigration 101: No Human is Illegal hosted by the International Migrant Rights Working Group on 2/25

As we prepare against the ongoing attacks on migrants, it is important that we have a shared understanding of what reforms currently exist, what they actually do, and how we got to where we are today. Whether you’re new to DSA or new to the fight for immigrant rights, join DSA’s International Migrant Rights Working Group on Tuesday, February 25th at 7 pm CT/8 pm ET as we dig into the ever-changing issues involving immigration and go over the basics of what you need to know, where to start, and what you can do for the long-fight ahead.

This will be the first of many events in our newly-launched chapter organizing support program. This call is open to everyone, so please share widely to anybody interested in DSA! RSVP here.

DSA Amazon Priority Campaign

Last fall, the NLC membership passed the Amazon Priority Resolution, designating DSA Labor resources and capacity towards organizing Amazon’s 1.5 million workers. Organizing Amazon is Do or Die for the American Labor movement and the Left. We are launching the Amazon Priority Campaign on Sunday, February 23 at 8pm EST/5pm PST! Come hear from Amazon organizers who went on strike and are fighting for a first union contract, learn about how you can support local campaigns, and find out how you can get a job to organize. Amazon workers are leading the labor battle of our generation, will DSA step up to the challenge and fight with us?

Pitch an article to Socialist Forum

The next issue of Socialist Forum will be asking members how the U.S. Left should respond to a world on fire, metaphorically and quite literally. The recent years have been brutal, but there is great potential for the left to expand and grow its power if we are willing to analyze the political situation as is and learn from one another. We also welcome pitches on any other topic of potential interest and use to DSA members. First drafts will be due on Monday, March 24th. if your pitch is accepted. Please send pitches (~250 words) that include the following to socialistforum@dsausa.org by Friday, February 28th to be considered: 1) a general description of the topic, 2) your argument, unique perspective, or intervention, and 3) why you think our audience would be interested or should engage with this issue. See full call for pitch description here.

Check out Democratic Left’s new website!

Our national publication Democratic Left has launched a new and beautiful website! Please check it out and read some great articles by fellow members. 

Nationwide Abolish Rent Reading Group

Join DSA members and tenant organizers around the country for a nationwide reading of the new book Abolish Rent, written by two co-founders of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis.

With unsparing analysis and striking stories of resistance, this deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement centers poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process. Rent drives millions into debt and despair and onto the streets, but tenants can harness our power and make the world our home. Together, we’ll learn from the book, share our experiences as tenants and organizers, and discuss how to create a future where rent doesn’t exist.

We will meet biweekly for 4 sessions (3/12, 3/26, 4/9 and 4/23) at 5pm PST/8pm EST. Please sign up here to receive the zoom link to join.

Announcing Our New Steering Committee and Calling for Members to Join MAWG!

The Mutual Aid Working Group (MAWG) just elected a brand new Steering Committee for 2025! We are working to support chapters and members in doing more mutual aid work, getting involved in their communities, and fighting fascism and capitalism with cooperation! Now more than ever we need to support each other as natural disasters and higher cost of living are destroying people’s lives. So, we hope new members get involved in our work and join MAWG! And we look forward to seeing you at our first all members meeting that will be announced soon! 

Organizing Fair for At-Large Members on 3/2

At-large members (members who do not have a local DSA chapter) are invited to join the NPC, a variety of national committees, and our organizing staff for a virtual At-Large Organizing Fair on Sunday, 3/2 at 2pm Eastern/11am Pacific. You’ll hear about ways that you can get plugged into all kinds of national work, learn about the process for starting a chapter locally, get filled in on the process for running as an at-large DSA National Convention delegate, and connect with other members across the country. Join us! 

Convention Planning Committee

Planning is in full swing for the 2025 DSA National Convention, to be held August 8-10 in Chicago. Keep an eye on our Convention Website and your email for ongoing updates on everything you need to know, including information about when and how to submit proposals, apply for scholarships, run your chapter delegate elections, and more!

The post Organizing Amidst the Chaos  — Your National Political Committee newsletter appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Cleveland DSA joins the rest of the Democratic Socialists of America in condemning President Trump’s immediate assault on immigrants, trans people, and workers through his recent slew of executive orders. These orders will not only make life worse for workers across the nation, they highlight the undemocratic nature of the US state, investing such powerful authority in its executive and judiciary to carry out these attacks while obstructing and limiting our proportional representation as workers in the legislature.

As socialists, we are not surprised that right-wing Republicans are joining their pro-capitalist, anti-worker economic policies with hateful culture-war rhetoric, which always go hand-in-hand—neither are we surprised that Democrats, equally committed to the status quo, have failed to put up any meaningful resistance to these efforts, with many falling directly in line. Despite these conditions, DSA will continue fighting for its program and loudly proclaiming that Workers Deserve More! While we prepare to defend each other, we will never stop demanding universal healthcare, a shorter work week, an end to the US war machine, a free Palestine, and a socialist economy that works for us all. 
It is our belief that only the organized power of the working class, whether at the ballot box or in the streets, can prevent Trump’s agenda from coming to pass. It is our mission to do everything we can over the next four years to build that power. To join us in resisting these attacks on working people and to build a socialist alternative to the two-party system, join DSA at https://dsausa.org.

The post Cleveland DSA Statement on Trump Executive Orders appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

Sam Z. is a co-coordinator of the DSA-LA Mass Transit for All campaign, and Correna T. is a co-coordinator of the bathrooms side of the campaign. 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

GNDCC: Tell me about your campaign and what you’re currently focusing on.

Sam Z: Transportation is the largest source of emissions in California. Los Angeles is the driving capital of the world, basically. So we find a transportation-motivated, Green New Deal-style campaign to be the most strategic and possibly most impactful.

Our entire chapter votes on our chapter priorities. In April 2023, the chapter voted to make public transit a priority campaign and then re-upped the campaign, so we’re currently in year two. We decided to pursue a two-pronged campaign: the first prong aimed at the county government, the second prong aimed at the city government. There are tons of ways in which public transit could be improved/expanded here as well as life for the working class in LA to be made better—and political and economic power built at the same time. 

The county transit system is governed by the LA Metro Board. LA County is huge—there are 88 cities within LA County. It’s a really powerful governing body. We decided to prioritize public bathrooms as a way to improve and expand transit for riders and for workers—especially transit workers. Our high-level goal is to expand publicly owned brick-and-mortar bathrooms at the LA Metro system level that are serviced by union workers.

At the city level, our second priority is to intervene in a particular moment when, this year, voters in the city of LA voted to pass an unfunded pro-transit mandate that says: we want the city to fully implement the mobility plan. The mobility plan does a lot of good stuff: more rapid bus lanes, more pedestrian infrastructure, more bike infrastructure; all things that are not cars, basically. The mobility plan does not have any power. The ballot question that passed gave it some legal power, but no public budgetary power. So we decided that our campaign would focus on trying to get more budgetary power behind this implementation. Similar to bathrooms, this would make life better for working class Angelinos in terms of riding transit also for potentially lots of union workers who might be building more bus lanes, driving more buses, etc. That has involved trying to intervene in the city council.

Correna T: That second goal, we are pivoting a little bit in our campaign. Sam and a couple of other members have been meeting pretty regularly with our socialists in office. A couple of the staffers from the current city council electeds that we have have been meeting with them in order to try to get that funding for Measure HLA, whether it be some capital campaign, just include it in the city budget for next year, etc. As the city budget is super tight this year, that ask for $100 million or whatever it is to try to get new paved streets with bike lanes, etc. is hitting a wall. 

It’s been really good to develop that relationship. But last month, a new opportunity actually came up for a potential push as a campaign to instead work on a fare-free drive. There’s a city bus route that’s not run by the county metro system. It’s run by the city—by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation—and those buses have been free ever since the pandemic started. Due to all the budgetary cuts in the city, they are trying to reinstate fares as of January. There was a public hearing last month, and we, as a campaign, got together at our last meeting and voted to see if that’s something actionable that we can affect, to transition some of our city council-focused energy to fare-free rather than working on this capital campaign. 

Sam Z: The one other campaign description comment I wanted to add in is, especially in year two of our DSA-LA transit campaign, we are making sure that organized labor is at the center. Both in terms of the policy goals we have and in terms of the strategy. So for bathrooms and the city government-level transit build-outs and now fare-free, we have actively tried to build relationships with the relevant unions. That’s been somewhat successful on the bathroom side; that helped us do at least one motion at the Metro Board level. At the city level, It’s been a little trickier, but we’re still working on it.

Correna’s been super involved in trying to build our transit labor circle, which has been experimental and successful in some ways, and still growing. In an ideal world, our campaign would be members of DSA-LA who are also transit workers. We have tried to borrow some ideas from that kind of model from the East Bay DSA folks and their transit work. We’re not there. We have some transit workers; they’ve maybe thought about getting involved sort of on the periphery.

Correna T: There’s definitely been a lot of labor discussion and coordination on the bathroom side of our campaign that I can talk about, too. I was not as involved with the first year of the campaign, but the public services—as we call it—side of things, was more general. We were doing a lot of canvassing at stations, talking to folks about fare-free, talking to folks about what kind of services they wanted. Part of the reason, I think, that we focused on bathrooms here in year two is that Metro started a pilot program last year where they unfortunately partnered with a Silicon Valley startup company that provides public restrooms. They are free; you use this little QR code to scan and get into the stall.

And so we were like, They’re clearly acknowledging that there is a need for public restrooms, especially because Los Angeles is hosting the 2028 Olympics. That is a huge thing with Metro, that they’re going to do a car-free Olympics in Los Angeles somehow. And they’re acknowledging that there’s a need for things like public restrooms. We were like, There might be some leverage here with the board to increase this public service here. We started off canvassing folks about these restrooms. We’ve seen them there, they function, but we want brick-and-mortar restrooms. We want these to be built at all these stations, we want them to be Metro-owned and -operated.

Then, over the summer, we found out that not only were they using this third party contractor, but the employees who service them are gig-work employees. So they’re not even just part-time or full-time workers. They get paid 15 to 20 bucks per restroom that they clean, which, especially out here in LA, is ridiculous. It’s almost comical that they can even get people to service them. So that became our push, and that was a moment where we were able to successfully do some lobbying.

We reached out to TCU, the Transportation Communications Union, which is the union that represents all the unionized janitorial staff that actually work for Metro, that do all of the cleanings of the stations in the very few staffed bathrooms that they actually have. They reached out to their union leaders and presented this as an opportunity for them. Essentially, these are jobs that should be going to that union, and instead are being proposed to go to this gig work model. At the time, they were still a pilot program, but there was about to be a vote in the Metro Board to extend the program for the next four years. They’re talking about 64 bathrooms that are going to be potentially operated and cleaned by gig workers. This union that we partnered with was able to get an amendment through the Metro Board using their contacts. It didn’t stop the expansion of the program from happening, but it did make sure that we look into the opportunity of using union work instead.

I think right now they’re at a bit of a standstill because there may or may not be a part of the union contract that requires that any janitorial or custodial work on Metro property be done by the union, but they approved to expand the program for this gig work company. So neither one of them is happening right now, and this is a place where we’re trying to wedge ourselves in there to see if we can influence it to go in one direction and actually do have the restrooms and make sure that they’re union labor. It’s been a really interesting connection/crossover there.

I can also talk about our labor circle up here, which is a little bit separate. This has been a really interesting thing, because we started off talking to riders. We were talking about doing lobby meetings, but it wasn’t until we had this union connection that some of our gears actually started turning and things actually started happening, which has been really cool to experience.

GNDCC: Tell me about the labor circle.

Correna T: It came partially from this union partnership that we had. But also, just in our canvases of riders, of workers, one of the things we were hearing over and over again was that even people who work for the same company, people who both work for Metro who aren’t contracted employees, just have no idea what’s going on. The lack of transparency between the bosses and the actual workers seems to be keeping a lot of people in the dark. They don’t know what people at other stations are doing, they don’t know what people across different departments are doing. So we felt like we, as DSA, had an opportunity to come in and create a space where workers could come together and talk about different issues that they’re facing. 

We’ve had two labor circles so far. Our third one is going to be this coming Sunday. A couple of really interesting things have come out of that. We’ve had workers who are contracted, whether they’re unionized or not, who have been able to talk to each other about different union pushes that they have. There is a group of workers right now that are being contracted through a nonprofit organization that are going to become part of Metro at some point in the next year. And we’ve been working really, really closely with them to see if they can get organized ahead of being pulled in-house so that they have cards ready to sign and an OC ready to make sure that their bargaining agreement is on par with what they’re wanting once they’re pulled in-house. So it’s been a really interesting space for us to be able to get workers together across all different parts of Metro. Even after the campaign ends in April, we’re really hoping that that’s something that we can keep going in conjunction with our labor committee. So that’s been a really cool thing for a lot of folks to be a part of.

GNDCC: Why should DSA members in LA get involved in this campaign, or DSA members in general get involved in public transit campaigns in their local chapters?

Correna T: I think transit is a really interesting issue, and I’m really glad we’ve been able to do a transit-focused campaign. It is a combination and amalgamation of so many different other areas of socialist ideals. It’s a Green New Deal campaign. It focuses on clean energy and on reducing our usage of cars. It’s a mutual aid concept, because a lot of our transit resources go towards homeless outreach and towards crisis intervention. The ambassadors that are on our transit system carry Narcan with them; they’ve saved over 300 lives. It’s also pro-labor. What we want is essentially a robust system that creates thousands of more unionized government jobs. So it’s a really interesting crossover of a bunch of different areas and ideals that DSA members I hope would carry. It’s a cool way to engage with a bunch of different topics. We’ve had a lot of really good energy from people coming from all different sides of that, which is pretty cool.

Sam Z: Yeah, I second all that, I think with the caveat that different campaigns should be run in different places based on their local politics and policy context. In LA at least, and translatable elsewhere, I would say something similar, but maybe I would phrase it like: do you think climate change is an existential crisis? Do you think that local air pollution and environmental injustice in cities is a horrific problem that we should not have? Do you think that public goods need to be expanded universally? Do you think we need way more union jobs? Then, boy, have I got a campaign for you.

Electric vehicles are not the future. They’re here, they’re for rich people. They’re probably going to come down in price, but we don’t want to be living in a future in which we are trying to mitigate the climate crisis and expand public goods where everyone’s still driving in their fucking solo cars. We’re going to need shit-tons of buses and trains, and the way to get to that future in which we have stronger societies, happier lives, things are not as expensive, and people have way better jobs and union workers have a lot more power, than we need to be running local public transit campaigns.

Correna T: I think it’s a really interesting topic of what it means to have a community and to build a community, because we’re so individualistic. Elon Musk wants us to believe that the future of climate justice is every individual person getting their own Tesla. Public transit to me—being on a bus, being on a train—is a physical representation of the fact that we cannot do this alone and that it takes community, it takes people coming together to actually solve this problem. If that means that you have to deal with the fact that people are kind of annoying on the bus sometimes, that’s what that means. And if that’s a sentiment that people in your local chapter are having, then maybe that’s an opportunity for a conversation about what it is that we’re trying to build here as an actual socialist community.