Buffalo DSA’s Response to Buffalo Niagara Partnership’s 2025 Advocacy Agenda

We are a volunteer effort of class-conscious Western New Yorkers who have researched and organized against the BNP.

Here’s what you need to know:

Buffalo-Niagara Partnership stands for expensive, private healthcare on behalf of their health insurance company donors and board members.

Universal, public healthcare is what we need as people, patients, caregivers, and workers.

Unlike the “Advocacy Agenda” states, the child tax credit is not a solution to the childcare crisis.

Groups who might be actually concerned about the workforce should use their political power to advocate for direct cash payments to families to help with childcare costs, and a universal childcare system of well-paid caregivers.

BNP warns about the”benefits cliff” that means-testing creates, while advocating against universal policies that would solve the problem.

The solution is a state that provides support to all of us and encourages shared responsibility.

They want blank checks for their friends to make superficial improvements to our city while our existing housing issues worsen.

What we need is Good Cause Eviction and measures for Rent Control to start. We ultimately need public, social housing and anti-discrimination in New York.

BNP’s genius development ideas include a push for Buffalo to take part in over-investment in Al centers that fry our power grid and have little potential for actual adoption, while opposing environmental progress.

Building a tech bubble locally is an oversight that will lead to job loss in the future.

We have all the productive capacity we need to thrive, but the power is held in the wrong hands.

BNP’s scarcity mindset around taxes, as well as desire to protect and expand the private sector at great cost to the public, reflects their elite members’ preferences – not the scale and potential of New York’s economy.

A better Western New York is possible – if we get educated, build the independence, and political courage to prioritize the needs of working people.

The Butlalo-Niagara Partnership is structurally incapable of undertaking, or even guiding, such a task.

Political leaders should be held to account for their collaboration with them.

Take action with us:

• Read our full reports and share our materials – we are a volunteer effort!
• Sign our Back Off, BNP open letter exposing the relationship between our local corporate elites and politicians!
• Use our tools to contact your rep and demand they bring universal healthcare to a vote in NY this year!
• Share your healthcare story with us. Lets flip the script on the corporate for-profit care industry.
• Union Members: Advance a resolution in your union to support universal healthcare.

Mahmoud Khalil, Columbia University activist, was unjustly arrested by ICE on March 8th in what is a clear attack for his pro-Palestinian work on campus in the spring of 2024.

Mahmoud  was forcibly abducted from his New York apartment and now detained in Louisiana. ICE even threatened his wife with arrest, a US citizen who is 8 months pregnant. The Trump admin is attempting to revoke Mahmoud’s green card and deport him without criminal charges and without providing evidence.

In a post on Truth Social, President Trump applauded ICE for this arrest and promised more to come. In an earlier post, he claims they will freeze all federal funding for any school, colleges, or universities that allow so-called “illegal protest.” Coming from the guy that pardoned even the most violent of the January 6th Insurrectionists, we know this isn’t about legality but simply silencing speech he disagrees with.

First they came for Mahmoud Khalil and I’m gonna fucking say something!

Our comrades in NYC DSA have set up a few ways for you to take action now!

Call your members of Congress – using the provided script, demand action to secure Mahmoud’s release and protect the rights of activists.

Email your elected officials – urge them to take immediate action to stop the targeting of student activists and immigrants.

Let’s make one thing clear: we will not allow our communities to be silenced or terrorized. The fascists in the White House are hoping this will have a chilling effect on political speech and protest. And that’s why we need to be fired up!

The post Free Mahmoud Khalil – Protect Student Activists appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.

When we laid out our theory of power in 2022, we were organizing for a Green New Deal in a neoliberal Democratic administration over which the Left had limited power. We knew the following four years would be more of the same if we were lucky; now, we find ourselves at the conjuncture of Trump 2.0, which will be worse. Already, ICE is raiding homes and workplaces and chapters are in the streets trying to protect trans people and workers, while Democrats cower or criticize Trump for low deportation numbers. The Administration has launched a trade war, frozen research grants, escalated attacks on immigrants and transgender people, and started purging federal workers, with Elon Musk in charge of gutting the administrative state. Basic environmental protections like the Clean Air Act are under threat, even as we barrel past international emissions targets. 

Trump has already issued an executive order to halt future Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) spending, an unconstitutional attempt to reappropriate what Congress has already approved that will be challenged in court. As flawed and inadequate as it is, Biden’s IRA, still in its infancy, has just begun to bear fruit as a weak “green” industrial policy. Though unraveling the IRA would undermine job creation and economic growth in key Republican districts, that material fact may not be enough to save the legislation from forces dead-set on stopping our transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, even via mostly private means, and committed to precluding the state from acting on climate mitigation and adaptation. So far the direct pay provision of the IRA, a key component of the Build Public Renewables Act passed by some of New York state’s DSA chapters, remains unscathed.

Although the full fate of the IRA is uncertain, we already know that compromise legislation has not spurred the kind of green economic populism this moment requires. As Thea Riofrancos and Daniel Aldana Cohen pointed out, our vision for a socialist Green New Deal goes far beyond the hybrid “Prius economy” promised by legislation like the IRA. The Prius economy is driven by the private interests of big capital, which push investment—including federal subsidies and loans—towards cars and suburban housing and electric jets. We intend to change that direction, fighting for public investment in public goods like mass transit, green social housing, parks and trails, and healthy schools, all built and operated with good union jobs. 

During the next four years, DSA will continue to fight for those policies at the state and local level. Because the federal terrain is more hostile, we think the task before us remains to build local power with legislative, labor, and electoral organizing in order to expand public services to tackle both the cost-of-living and climate crises. 

Building with Labor

DSA’s long-term orientation towards rebuilding the labor movement is at the heart of our strategy. Of course, Green New Deal organizing can help do that, but it’s also clear that labor power is essential to winning climate policy at the scale and speed needed. We encourage GND and labor organizers in chapters to support workers bargaining for fair contracts and walking the picket line, while we help them build enduring coalitions with labor to win local changes that, in turn, create union jobs, enabling further organizing. This is why every B4P campaign places just transition demands and the creation of green union jobs at the center of the strategy. This process of changing state terrain so it is more conducive to working class organizing – while also engaging in direct working class organizing – is key to class formation in this moment, and a role DSA is uniquely capable of filling.

We’ve already seen bargaining for the common good used to win Green New Deal demands in LA, where United Teachers Los Angeles won provisions for solar panels, green spaces, and electric school buses in their last round of contract negotiations. And the organized Left has the first real opportunity to organize a general strike on May Day 2028, with the UAW calling for unions to align their contract expiration dates so the labor movement can take action as a whole. The UAW also happens to be a model for the kind of rank-and-file reform that needs to spread throughout the labor movement. Through their contract negotiations they are setting the terms of the EV transition, and creating space for other climate demands, like a 32-hour work week. Our long term project of rebuilding the labor movement continues, and Green New Deal unionism can help us win the future the working class deserves.

Winning State Power

The GNDCC originally launched Building for Power partly as a way to build on electoral organizing and wins. Coalitions led by DSA, labor unions, and DSA electeds can fight for different elements of GND policy. We recognize this timeline can become vague and/or lengthy, but we also understand that electoral organizing and labor organizing, led and cohered by socialists, can build unique forms of pressure on state actors while also accelerating class formation in the local context. We also think that building and operating such broad-based but complex coalitions can help develop strong, skilled DSA chapters that can lead on not only winning GND policy, but responding politically and materially to the climate crises ahead. And we think it’s clear that mass coalitions with labor power can be a major bulwark against the right wing locally and nationally. 

Responding to crises 

DSA chapters are responding to the immediate threats their communities face under Trump 2.0, and members will continue to be called on to protect people and build networks of solidarity when disaster strikes. But the connections generated in disasters must outlive the moment of crisis. DSA’s task is to organize those relationships into lasting working class solidarity to address the political causes of crises.  

Ecosocialist formations can help their chapters respond to moments of crisis, while also preparing them for the future, by Building for Power. We have witnessed devastating hurricanes and wildfires in just the past four months, requiring rapid response from DSA chapters who will spend months helping their communities rebuild. Strong Building For Power campaigns can pivot to disaster response while also fighting to change the conditions that cause these crises in the first place, with policies like green social housing, public power, mass transit, and more. As we respond to urgent threats in the coming years, we cannot afford to lose sight of the long-term horizon: beyond reacting strategically in moments of disaster, our goal is to actively build the future we deserve.

Building toward the Future 

Restructuring our economy by returning the wealth created by our ecosystems and our labor back to us, where it rightfully belongs, is the work of our lifetimes. The crises we face are urgent, yet the public goods we are working to expand take years to build out, and there is no time to waste. An organized Left must keep pushing on the local level, where there is still ample opportunity for wins that build working class power and green public sector capacity. 

Already, we’re seeing Trump 2.0 take a more rapacious direction, precipitating emergencies at multiple levels. In this setting, it is true that chapters may become stretched responding to immediate demands more pressing than new bus lanes. But our view is that, through B4P campaigns undertaken now, chapters can build the leadership and organizing skills and expand the outreach and recruitment that will be essential to responding to whatever Trump dishes out. And the GNDCC will be there to support chapters that need to pivot their work to meet the moment. 

Join our upcoming campaign huddles if you are interested in creating a Building for Power campaign in your chapter: 

Building the Green New Deal: Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going
Wednesday, March 26, 2025 8:00 PM • Virtual

Building for Ecosocialist Power under Trump/DOGE
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 8:00 PM • Virtual

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. 

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.