Enjoy your March National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 18-person body (including two YDSA members who share a vote) which functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, get involved with the Mutual Aid Working Group, join AfroSoC, apply for the Growth & Development Committee Steering Committee, 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 — Fascism is Capitalism in Decay
• Growth & Development Committee Steering Committee Application: Open Through 4/1
• State of DSA Reports — Listening Session #2
• MAWG All Members Meeting for Spring 2025
• AfroSoC is BACK with a New Executive Committee!
• Extension of National Political Education Committee Application Window
• Apply for the National Budget & Finance Committee
• Fundraising Committee Office Hours

From Our Co-Chairs — Fascism is Capitalism in Decay

“Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.” – Karl Marx, The Grundrisse, 1857

Jumping headlong into dialectical and historical materialism might not be the usual theme of our newsletters, but in this era of cartoon supervillians like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, we think it’s worth remembering that, while these Uncle Pennybags caricatures are the most prominent faces launching “shock doctrine” attacks on our already tattered social safety net, they are simply extra-vulgar representatives of the forces of capital that have always been exploiting and oppressing the working class.

In many ways, it’s useful to point to Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire and the richest man in the world, hooting and hollering his way through the dissolution of our children’s schools and our parents’ social security. He makes the contradictions of capitalism clearer and more terrifying than they have been in our lifetimes. While Musk initially seemed to offer a liberal, technocratic, very online veneer to the ascendant new green tech sector of capital, socialists called bullshit years ago on this union-busting capitalist. The mask has now come off. Musk is a scion of global apartheid, as he makes explicit his sympathies with fascism that justify the large-scale labor exploitation and imperialist resource extraction that underlie his super-profits. 

As socialists, we are disgusted to see so little pushback to Trump’s amped-up second-term agenda from their neoliberal capitalist political “opposition” in the Democratic Party, nor from the donor-controlled institutes of higher education that are rolling over one by one to hand over students like Mahmoud Khalil to ICE thugs, nor from the hospitals that are pre-emptively refusing gender-affirming care for our community members who are in genuine need. We must remember that, for all the grotesque buffoonery that Musk and Trump (and their rogue’s gallery) put on display, when it comes down to it, they’re representing their class interests, and the ruling class at large seems to be just fine with it.

Fascism is capitalism in decay, and November’s election peeled off a bandage that covered a bone-deep rot. But as socialists, we know the cure. The working class is the agent of change. We outnumber the capitalists (and the goons who do their dirty work in institutions of power) by orders of magnitude, but we can only fight back if we’re organized in huge numbers across capitalism’s forced divisions, and that’s what we’re doing. While Democratic Party elites suggest it’s time to stand down, we know we must fight for full-throated demands by ordinary people for everything we need not just to survive, but thrive.

DSA chapters across the country are working alongside the Federal Unionists’ Network to organize federal workers to push back against the dismantling of their various agencies. We’re showing up in city council meetings to demand that sanctuary laws be passed to protect queer and trans members of our community. We’re standing with teachers and postal workers across the country to fight for education and the right to access information, and to protect and expand good union jobs. We’re fighting back against hospitals as they refuse to offer gender-affirming treatment and we’re demanding that universities across the country offer safe learning environments where students don’t have to fear being snatched by ICE. 

Our solidarity doesn’t stop at our borders, either; we continue to fight for Palestinian liberation and safety, against escalating military action in Yemen, against expansion of US military bases across the Pacific, against unjust embargoes that punish the working people of countries around the world, and alongside our comrades everywhere as they organize antifascist strategies for mass politics against a globally-ascendant right wing. 

We are proud to be among the convening organizations of the National March on Washington on April 5 to stop the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza — join us in DC if you can! The moment could not be more critical, and it is our responsibility to fight back against the Trump administration’s attempts at repression and come out in massive numbers.

We are stronger when we are organized, and that means putting ourselves into motion to fight for common socialist goals. It means organizing our time, our talents, and our resources. It means honing ourselves into socialist organizers who are ready with strong analysis and the organizing tools to put that analysis into real on-the-ground wins. It means building an enormous, strong, and flexible political instrument that’s ready to take on the capitalist class on every terrain: at the ballot box, the workplace, our homes, our broader communities, and the streets. 

If you’re not plugged into your DSA chapter yet, we encourage you to get involved today, whether it’s offering your time and skills to local work or a national committee (lots of fresh opportunities for the latter are below!), running for delegate for DSA’s biennial convention this summer, or even simply increasing your dues payment by a few dollars per month to help keep our organization stable and funded. 

We will see you in the fight!

Growth & Development Committee Steering Committee Application: Open Through 4/1

The Growth & Development Committee is seeking new applicants for its Steering Committee! Nine member leaders will be appointed by the National Political Committee to direct GDC’s work guiding membership growth, retention, chapter support, training and more. Applications will be open until 11:59pm PDT April 1st. Apply here.

State of DSA Reports — Listening Session #2

The Growth and Development Committee is launching a series of Listening Sessions as part of its State of DSA Reports project to bring organizers together to share experiences, reflect on our victories, and identify ways to tackle the challenges we all face.

Our second session is Thursday April 3rd at 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT/6:30pm MT/5:30 PT, and will focus on activation and politicization. Once a member is engaged, what does continual development look like in your chapter? We’ll be talking through political education, leadership development, and democratic processes — come tell us what you think!

MAWG All Members Meeting for Spring 2025

DSA’s Mutual Aid Working Group (MAWG) has returned! We are here to help members and chapters organize mutual aid projects and offer our guidance with incorporating into the organizing work already happening across DSA. We believe in mutual aid as a positive force within DSA’s organizing work and hope to see it play a larger role in our impact as an organization. Our first all-member meeting of the year is coming up on Thursday April 3rd at 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT/6:30pm MT/5:30pm PT! New and returning members are welcome as we discuss the future of mutual aid in DSA and hear from members on how MAWG can be of help!

AfroSoC is BACK with a New Executive Committee!

On February 28th, with 46 votes cast, the AfroSoC Caucus elected a new Executive Committee for 2025! Congratulations to Ciné J., Mary B., AJ W., Abel A., Syjil A., Jane M., Christopher W., Michael G., and Nxongotelo M. on their leadership!

Are you a BIPOC DSA member looking to engage with AfroSoC? Get involved by filling out our interest form to join our Slack, enlisting your local AfroSoC chapter, or signing up for a Working Group or Committee to help rebuild our national activities. Plus, don’t miss our Quarterly General Body Meeting on Thursday 4/10 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT — Zoom link coming soon!

Extension of National Political Education Committee Application Window

The National Political Education Committee is seeking members with experience as educators both inside and outside of DSA to help us expand our national political education programs and provide chapters with up-to-date resources for their own local programs. We have extended the previous application deadline to April 6th, and encourage you to apply and pass the application along to your chapter’s poli-ed and/or communications team, as well as comrade-educators in your circles.  Please see the application form for further details. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to the Political Education Committee at politicaleducation@dsacommittees.org.

Apply for the National Budget & Finance Committee

DSA’s National Budget & Finance Committee is seeking applicants to fill a limited number of seats on the committee. Applications are due by April 7, 2025.

Budget & Finance is the national committee that works with the national Treasurer and staff to oversee our financial strategy, guide the NPC and Convention in allocating resources, and ensure transparency in our budgeting processes. It is a small working committee made up of members who have special interest or expertise in financial matters, budgeting, and related topics. The committee is currently starting work on the 2025 budget and planning for our next national convention.

Meetings are weekly, currently on Tuesdays at 5:30 ET. Due to the importance and specific required expertise for this work, potential committee members will be screened for credentials, background, and experience. If you’re a numbers nerd, current or ex-chapter treasurer, or have other finance/budgeting experience through DSA or externally, we encourage you to apply!

Fundraising Committee Office Hours

Join DSA National Development Director Tiffany and members of the Fundraising Committee on Tuesday, April 8th, 7:30pm ET/6:30pm CT/5:30pm MT/4:30pm PT for Fundraising Office Hours! We’ll keep a call open for any chapter leaders to ask questions about fundraising, including how to get ready for the 2025 DSA National Convention and how to support your chapter’s local work. Sign up here.

The post Your National Political Committee newsletter — Fascism is Capitalism in Decay appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Federal workers have many of the same rights as private-sector workers with a few crucial distinctions.

The post What are my union rights as a federal worker? appeared first on EWOC.

Note: This report was written by the 2024-25 Executive Committee and originally presented to Madison Area DSA membership ahead of the March 2025 Chapter Convention. This public-facing version has been edited or abridged in some places.

Executive Committee

• Bonnie W, co-chair (she/her)
• Adithya P, co-chair (he/they)
• Jason M, administrator (he/him)
• Nathan J, treasurer (he/him)
• Halsey H, communications coordinator (she/her)
• Alex P, membership coordinator (he/him)

Introduction

The re-election of Donald Trump and the chaos of the first 100 days of his return to office have dominated the headlines and occupied the minds of our members lately. But as our annual convention meets in this uncertain and uneasy environment, our chapter should take time to reflect on all that we have accomplished since our convention last March.

This report is not intended to be an exhaustive account of everything our chapter and members have done in the past year. Rather, we intend to highlight critical achievements, pressing challenges, and new opportunities that will help guide future decision making. Every contribution made by our members, no matter how large or small, is crucial in building the organization and world that we need and deserve: one ordered on the flourishing of human potential, and not endless exploitation and accumulation.

What We Did This Year

Madison Area DSA is a membership organization, funded entirely by dues, optionally paid by our members directly to the chapter on a monthly basis, and from national DSA on a quarterly basis. Our numbers, our time, and our money are the resources we have to fight back against a rising fascist tide. Growing and maintaining our membership, therefore, is an organizational imperative. We are pleased to report that in this moment of national crisis, our chapter has attracted many new members, and reactivated lapsed members, who are motivated and ready to work in socialist organizing.

• Just this month, Madison Area DSA reached 440 members in good standing (MIGS). This set a new all-time high for the chapter and surpassed the previous membership peak in 2021. Since the November 2024 Presidential Election, we have added over 100 new members.

• Our chapter’s average meeting attendance over the last year was about 44 people, or 38 if only members are included. From April through October attendance was mostly in the 30-40 range, while post-presidential election there has been a large increase–about 80 in November, dipping to the 50s for December and January, and then over 90 in February. The February meeting is the largest known MADSA meeting ever!
• After moving from two chapter meetings each month to one in late 2023, this year the executive committee (Exec) decided to lengthen the monthly chapter meetings from 90 minutes to 2 hours. This was in response to both an increase in business (from regular chapter-wide deliberation over the School Meals priority campaign to political education to the fall election and DSA’s response), and a sense that discussions were not being allowed enough time to build collective political analysis and understanding.
• In early March 2024, we endorsed the Wisconsin Uninstructed campaign to urge then-president Biden to stop the genocide in Gaza. In close collaboration with UW-Madison YDSA, we hosted four neighborhood canvasses and two campus tabling days, contributing to the 47,800 Uninstructed votes in the April primary election. This was a very fast moving, highly intensive campaign for organizers and volunteers.
• A number of YDSA and MADSA members attended or otherwise contributed to the UW-Madison Palestine encampment protest (aka Popular University for Gaza) that started at the end of April and lasted for almost two weeks. MADSA also endorsed and had different levels of organized involvement with several other solidarity actions over the course of the year: the War Profiteers Out of Madison rally in June (protesting a weapons manufacturing conference), the Not Another Bomb rally in August, and All Out for Lebanon in September.
• At the December chapter meeting following the election, members voted to organize within the local People’s March as well as develop a People’s Platform on which local elected officials could run. MADSA members played a large role in planning the local People’s March which occurred on January 18th, and the chapter had a well-organized contingent present.
• One goal that Exec identified this year was providing more political education opportunities to members. While there is still work to do in this area (for example re-forming a political education committee/working group or similar), there has been fairly regular inclusion of political education programming in chapter meetings, and a reading group around Marx’s Capital (Volume 1) started up in the fall. Other notable political education events for the year included hosting a talk by Professor August Nimtz in April, “Beyond Lesser Evils: Rethinking the Importance of Elections”; and the annual Socialism Conference in Chicago, which the chapter provided financial support for members to attend.
• This year, our chapter made the following electoral endorsements: DSA member Heidi Wegleitner for Dane County Board of Supervisors (uncontested, won), DSA member Francesca Hong for State Assembly (uncontested, won), DSA member Maia Pearson for state assembly (contested, did not win), and the 2024 Madison City and School November Budget Referendums (won). Out of all of these campaigns, we meaningly contributed volunteer time and energy to Maia Pearson’s campaign. Maia was running a slim campaign with only a few volunteers, and our chapter significantly expanded the communications and canvassing her campaign was able to do. Despite this, Maia did not win her race.
• We have a suite of Working Groups, Committees, and Campaigns, and this year they accomplished a lot, from helping new folks unionize their workplace to abolitionist political education to pressuring the school board for free school meals for all. For more information on what our chapter working groups and committees did this year, please see the other reports further down in this document.

Co-Chair Report and Reflections

Bonnie W, co-chair

Adithya P, co-chair

We have been proud to serve as your Madison Area DSA co-chairs for the past year. We have both served in multiple leadership roles in MADSA over the past several years (including as chapter admin and co-chair respectively in 2023-2024), and this informs our reflections shared below.

Background

Although Madison Area DSA existed since the 80s, its modern era (like most other DSA chapters) began in late 2016 following the first Bernie Sanders presidential run, and the chapter grew quickly but unevenly in leaps and bounds over the next few years. From 2020 to 2021, in the context of the COVID crisis and racial justice uprisings, the chapter almost doubled in membership from around 240 to 440. 

However along with the new members and radicalizing political landscape came internal challenges. All chapter activities moved to Zoom in 2020, which, over time, negatively impacted our ability to form relationships, work together, and resolve conflict. Chapter leaders also faced difficulties in trying to bridge the sometimes siloed, federated nature of our working groups. Efforts to set chapter priorities at previous conventions had mixed results, as most proposals were passed but lacked the focus and collective buy-in to be truly prioritized by the chapter.

These factors, in addition to a period of internal conflict in 2022 and the burnout and exodus of some former leaders disillusioned with DSA, initiated a slow decline in active membership and capacity in our chapter starting in 2022. This mirrored the membership trend in DSA nationally. 

When we joined the executive committee for our first term in 2023, most of the chapter’s active leadership core had disengaged from the chapter, and most exec positions were filled by first-time leaders facing the difficult task of assuming the mantle of both administrative and political leadership. Despite these difficulties, the reduced activity also presented an opportunity to address MADSA’s long-standing issues with siloed working groups, lack of political cohesion, and leadership turnover.

Over the course of 2023, we helped make changes which helped to set the chapter on an upward growth trajectory by the end of the year. We began holding hybrid chapter meetings instead of Zoom-only and reduced meeting frequency from twice to once a month. We started hosting in-person chapter socials. We focused more on membership development at the chapter level and took advantage of support and training opportunities from DSA member-volunteers and staff.

Chapter leadership also made a substantial effort to rethink the 2024 MADSA Convention. We made the Convention a one-day in-person event instead of a two-day virtual event, as it had been for the previous 3 years. We did most voting in-person at the event, instead of virtually after the event, which was a significant shift in chapter culture and helped reestablish decision-making as a collective, participatory process rather than an individual, isolated task. Lastly, in order to refocus the chapter on a unifying strategic mission, we moved away from voting through a slate of chapter “priorities” in favor of voting through one priority campaign.

Politically, the year 2024-2025 was defined by the fight for Palestine and the election of Trump, sharpening the urgency of our organizing. For our chapter, it was a year of growth, campaign work, and renewed political clarity. Through it all, we made key interventions to build our chapter’s strength and impact—now, we take this moment to reflect on what we learned and where we go from here.

General Membership Meetings

Our goal was to increase attendance at general membership meetings and make them a central space for chapter-wide decision-making, discussion, and accountability. To achieve this, we committed to holding one chapter meeting per month, with a social afterward to encourage connection. We experimented with a second monthly meeting in late October but saw little additional engagement, so we stuck to the monthly model. Structurally, we aimed to include updates, political education, and discussion of ongoing campaigns in every meeting, though this wasn’t always feasible. A key shift was increasing the number of votes held at meetings—encouraging working groups and members to bring organizing proposals forward in a ready-to-vote format. This helped move decision-making out of smaller groups and into the general membership, creating a culture where members expected to participate in chapter-wide discussions and strategy. We also improved meeting promotion and divided up meeting roles more intentionally.

These efforts helped increase attendance, with average meeting participation rising from 19.6 in 2023 to 32.2 in 2024, even before the post-election surge. General meetings have become the lifeblood of the chapter, reversing the previous dynamic where working groups were the primary spaces for organizing. While newer members sometimes hesitated to speak or vote against proposals, participation remained high, and the shift toward more in-meeting decision-making helped integrate members into the chapter’s organizing process.

Note: Meeting attendance figures may not be 100% exact for some months.

Increased Transparency

To improve transparency of the executive committee, we made the #executive-committee Slack channel public, allowing members to see our discussions and deliberation. We also created and maintained documents explaining chapter resources and processes (like the chapter Quick Start guide, tutorials on how to use our texting platform, etc), making it easier for members to access important information. Additionally, we strove to share bi-monthly executive committee reports, which were shared via Slack and email to keep the chapter informed on exec votes, membership, the treasury, etc. Unfortunately, we failed to release a report between Oct. 2024 and March 2025.

Nevertheless, these efforts received positive feedback through word of mouth and our exec survey, showing that members felt positively about increased transparency. We recommend the next executive committee improve on this by making minutes of exec meetings more readily available to general membership and provide a record of decisions made by Exec in written or verbal reports at chapter meetings.

Commitment to External Work

We took on a number of large external-facing campaigns the past year, including the Uncommitted primary campaign in early March, the launch of the School Meals Campaign in April, support for the UW-Madison Palestine encampment in early May, the Maia Pearson State Assembly primary in June and July. School meals work continued through the fall and winter, interspersed with other initiatives like coordinating local Palestine solidarity rallies, the October endorsements of local budget referendums, and the People’s March in January.

As outlined elsewhere in this report, we saw major successes in some of these efforts. There was a collective sense of urgency to meet the political moment in 2024, as well as a shared desire among active membership to re-establish our presence locally after spending most of the previous year rebuilding the chapter. Madison DSA’s profile grew with increased media coverage and local visibility, and our increased presence was an important factor in our post-election membership growth and causing more people to see our chapter as a potential political home for them.  

A recurring theme across many of the campaigns was that they often came together on short notice or with extremely aggressive timelines. Many also happened concurrently or immediately after other efforts concluded, and were bottomlined by a small group of the same chapter leaders who were juggling multiple projects and other leadership responsibilities. This resulted in an organizing environment where we deprioritized the crucial steps of debriefing and reflecting on work we had done in favor of taking on new work.

Chapter leaders had less time to devote to important questions of larger chapter strategy and political leadership, and spent less time communicating with other members and leaders and maintaining alignment on shared organizing goals. Falling into a rut of doing the work and losing touch with a guiding political vision is a prime recipe for burnout. Despite these shortcomings we see a lot of room for growth in the chapter this year, especially with many newer members looking to start new chapter work. We look forward to seeing new projects take shape and get developed collectively by membership.

One shortcoming of our priority campaign selection process at last convention was encouraging members to develop fully-formed campaign proposals before bringing them to chapter convention. The School Meals Campaign won majority support from membership both for David O’s strong vision, but also for the level of development and detail in the proposal. However, this led to some pitfalls when actually running the campaign, where despite David’s support other members struggled to build confidence and a sense of ownership organizing around the issue, and too often deferring on political and strategic questions to overburdened campaign leadership. 

One lesson from this is that to build stronger leadership and buy-in, more members need to be involved in the process of developing strategies and vision for external campaigns, even if that means taking more time for campaigns to take shape and launch. More members taking ownership in this process is key to the further political development of the chapter.

Depoliticization

This reflected another chapter trend in 2024 – a depoliticization of the way we assessed our work internally and externally through an explicitly socialist lens.

While general membership weighed in on questions of strategy for ongoing work, these discussions sometimes de-emphasized the political dimension – not just considering what work to take on and why, but taking time to question and examine the ideological priors undergirding those strategies. This stemmed from a lower level of political development among active chapter membership and leadership compared to several years prior, and a lack of confidence applying a socialist analysis to our organizing methods and understanding of history. 

For example, the school meals campaign’s original proposal invoked the legacy of the Black Panthers’ free breakfast programs. However the campaign and chapter never set aside time to learn and discuss the historical context those programs arose from, analyze how those conditions did or didn’t map onto our own, and reflect on what other lessons to take from previous generations of socialists. 

Our attempts to place more emphasis on political education were haphazard, although we see significantly more chapter interest and opportunities to reprioritize this in the coming year. Developing members’ confidence in applying a socialist analysis informed by theory and history to their work is an important step to building a larger body of leaders and organizers in the chapter. While we made significant steps in building our organizing practice last year, we hope this year the chapter combines that with more engagement with socialist theory, further sharpening our practice.

Member and Leader Development

Our goal and continual challenge as a chapter was to re-engage membership by developing more members into active participants and future leaders. To do this, we made a number of changes to practices. Our February 2024 membership drive reinstitutionalized the practice of structured listwork of our membership; listwork being the practice of tracking outreach to and development of members. Listwork had not been done in the chapter in several years. This year, the practice was maintained in some working groups and campaigns. Exec also started doing listwork periodically to better track engagement and leadership development of active chapter members. 

We also focused on delegating more entry-level tasks—such as setting up for meetings and processing sign-up sheets—to newer members, helping them build familiarity with chapter operations. Exec held two Leadership Roundtable retreats in June and December with working group and committee leaders to talk about membership development and strategize about collective work.

We had major success with revamping our monthly New Member Orientations (DSA 101s) and putting more emphasis on organizing new and prospective members to attend. Over the course of the past year, we made major overhauls to the presentation and our distribution of organizing labor around the events. In the fall we began regularly textbanking new and prospective members and had two members running the orientation, improving attendance to 5-8 people a month. This increased exponentially following the election, and we overhauled the format to meet the demand. Our November NMO had over 50 attendees, and we enlisted other chapter leaders to help facilitate breakout groups. Attendance remained above 30-40 in the last two months, and we began delegating more meeting roles to other newer members on the revived Membership Committee, which has yielded positive results. We intend to continue with this format going forward and encourage other chapter bodies to consider similar practices for delegating more responsibilities for meetings and events.

This year, we saw growing pains balancing continued internal membership engagement with a renewed focus on external-facing work. Our February 2024 membership drive helped develop many active members who took on larger leadership roles following the 2024 Convention on Exec, working groups, and the school meals campaign. We struggled to backfill their contributions on the membership committee, and a significant amount of membership work between the March convention and November election was performed by our membership coordinator Alex P and other members of the executive committee.

In the coming year, we recommend chapter leaders increase focus on membership development, such as the training series we held in February covering 1:1 organizing conversations and strategic campaign planning. Another area of emphasis for the chapter this year should be focusing more attention on leadership development and supporting current chapter leaders. Due to previous leadership turnover and loss of institutional memory, many new and existing leaders in the chapter did not receive as much support as needed to ensure they were in a position to succeed and help develop other leaders behind them. New and existing working group leaders were placed in difficult positions and some were unaware of all the resources and tools available to them through the chapter and national organization. This led to leaders being tasked with too many responsibilities and stretched thin.

Overcommitment also led to constantly planning and coordinating new actions and events, and we too frequently fell into the trap of core leaders taking on too many tasks themselves in order to meet tight deadlines. This came at the expense of opportunities to develop other members, creating a cycle where potential new leaders were less prepared to step up because they hadn’t gotten enough experience in lesser roles, because those were being done by existing leaders who were too busy to develop new leaders. One example of this was the YDSA-led People’s Org Fair the weekend after the election. Seeing the event planning well behind schedule, several members of the executive committee stepped in the week before the event and took on significant responsibilities planning panels and developing programming themselves, rather than working to identify other members who could be asked to take on these tasks.

Following our co-chair terms, we intend to help build more intentional leadership development opportunities in the chapter for both current and prospective leaders, and we hope to start breaking the cycle of leadership burnout and turnover that has plagued the chapter in previous years. We believe that with the influx of new members we have many potential new leaders who can develop and step into elected and middle leadership roles across the chapter in the coming year.

The Coming Year

As we look ahead, it’s clear that there is always more to do. In a time of rising fascism and ongoing attacks on workers’ rights, the pressure to act is constant. But our mission is not just to act—it’s to act strategically. We must sharpen our socialist analysis to understand the political conditions of our city and country, using that understanding to choose fights that will build worker power and grow our capacity. A healthy chapter and a strong socialist movement require both external organizing—strategic campaigns, coalition building, and political education—and internal work to sustain ourselves, from leadership development to communications and membership outreach. Balancing these priorities is challenging, but we make small advances every day. To grow, we must also reflect, assess our choices, and improve through collective discussion and report-backs, and we encourage every working group, committee and campaign to make these a regular part of your organizing.

At the heart of it all, people stay in the fight because of each other—because of the relationships they build, the struggles they share, and the trust they develop. Strengthening the social fabric of our chapter is just as important as our organizing. We encourage everyone to plan and attend socials, talk to one another, talk to other chapters, and also build community connections beyond DSA. These relationships, particularly connections to DSA leaders across the country, have been central to our personal growth, which we’ve brought to the chapter and we encourage others to do the same.

As co-chairs, we’ve learned so much over the last year, and we’re energized by the growing number of people stepping into leadership and bringing new ideas. We welcome the diversity of political thought, debate, and even disagreement—because through these discussions, we sharpen our analysis and build a stronger movement. We encourage everyone to stay involved, step up, and help shape the future of our chapter!

Treasury Report

Some financial information has been redacted from the public-facing version of this report.

Nathan J, treasurer

1. As our chapter grows, there is a greater need to accurately budget, which in turn requires tracking transactions in a ledger. Besides getting in the habit of budgeting and maintaining a ledger, a cash handling policy was adopted and a reimbursement request form (https://madison-dsa.org/resources/) was created to improve traceability of transactions.
2. Balance: our chapter is financially stable and the balance of funds grew over the past year (April 2024 – March 2025). Budget details are included below, but here is a high level overview.
3. Opportunities for growth: while it is nice to have a growing chapter balance, our chapter can afford to spend more money on outreach. Of our expenses, approximately 35% is for overhead expenses (rent, software, transaction fees, etc.), approximately 50% is for internal chapter development (meetings, conferences, food, etc.), and approximately 15% is for outreach (campaigning, tabling, public events, etc.). Overhead expenses and internal chapter development are necessary but should be viewed as serving the purpose of ultimately growing the chapter through outreach and making a difference in the community.

Membership Report

Alex P, membership coordinator

Adithya P, co-chair

• Membership Numbers
  • As mentioned above, Madison now has over 440 members in good standing as of 3/8/2025, our highest total ever. Members in good standing (MIGS) refer to members up to date on dues, granting them full voting and participation rights within DSA.
  • This time last year, the chapter had about 325 MIGS. Counting constitutional members (members whose dues lapsed within the last year), MADSA has over 490 members today versus around 430 last March.
  • Madison saw a net gain of 56 MIGS (from 312 to 368) over the 2024 calendar year, an 18% increase. Of the 50 largest DSA chapters, only 3 grew at a faster rate than Madison over the same time period. DSA membership nationally grew by 4% during this time.
  • Madison saw a net gain of 108 MIGS (from 326 to 434) in the 4-month period between the election and the end of February, a 33% increase in membership. Of the 50 largest DSA chapters, only 4 grew at a faster rate than Madison over that period. DSA membership nationally grew by 21% during the same time span.
• Membership Trends
  • We saw a MASSIVE bump in membership following both the presidential election and inauguration. This rising trend will likely subside sometime in the next few months, but has not as of yet.
  • As one might expect, interest in the chapter most often correlated with recent chapter activity in public spaces, be it tabling, protest participation while wearing/bearing DSA identifiers, or ongoing campaign actions. This has in part allowed us to maintain our numbers even in periods where National has seen slight membership declines.
  • By far most new members coming to our chapter are ones who have self-selected joining (ie they found us, we did not find them). Going forward, it should be the goal of our membership strategy to utilize campaigns to make more direct asks of people to join our organization. Every action, big or small, is an opportunity to recruit. 
• Membership Committee
  • Following the last convention, much of the existing membership committee participants were heavily involved in other leadership roles in the chapter. The formal organization of the committee went on hiatus during this time, but has since returned in early 2025. The committee is now meeting regularly (every other Wed.) and has been steadily growing in numbers.
    • Much of the infrastructure for comprehensive membership outreach is already established, but will require more hands on deck to utilize. Further growth and development of committee members should be prioritized in the coming year.
  • New Member Orientations have seen a complete re-work, moving towards a more interactive, discussion-centric model intended to allow us to learn about the myriad reasons new and returning members are seeking work in our chapter and organization. 
  • Active efforts have been taken to ensure that at least one chapter social event occurs every month, utilizing a more collaborative planning process that hopefully will see a greater variety of events being sponsored. Additionally, members have been empowered to reach out to others in the chapter more informally to organize smaller social gatherings to build more direct ties of solidarity. 
• Other Work
  • Chapter membership tracking and listwork has been significantly revamped, mostly to integrate automated member tracking and communications through ActionNetwork. Using this, we’ve been able to keep better tabs on what actions members are engaging in, how active they are with chapter events, and automating outreach to inactive and dues-lapsed members. Going forward we hope to see a greater degree of use and integration with ActionNetwork among other working groups and committees in the chapter. 

Communications Report

Halsey H, comms coordinator

The big development in the last year is that we now have a communications committee that meets on a monthly basis. We’re starting to set up some roles and recurring tasks for different platforms, and we have a solid group of people who are doing some great graphic design, for social media and print propaganda materials. We have been posting regularly on our social media, and have a team of people working on making sure we have daily engagement, but there is definitely room for more people to get involved and support that work. Comrade Emerson M. has been making weekly posts across all of our platforms with all of the events coming up each week, and this has been very helpful for making sure we have more regular content and that members and prospective members have somewhere they can always check to see what’s going on. Our email newsletter has gone out roughly twice per month, and that and our other email communications have very good engagement.

Right now we’re working on creating some templates and how-to guides to get more people plugged in to comms work, to diversify the type of content we’re able to put out, and to make it easier for people throughout the chapter to get their events promoted. We’ve had a lot of success building the capacity of our comms committee, and I’m hoping we can continue to improve our ability to reach people in person and online in the coming year, and to post more photos and videos of all the cool stuff we have going on in the chapter – especially when we have members give presentations or speeches, because that content does really well.

During the early morning of March 18, as people were asleep or preparing suhoor to begin their Ramadan fast, the Israeli occupation forces openly resumed the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. Over 400 Palestinians were murdered in a single day, including 174 children – one of the largest child death tolls in Gaza ever recorded.

Israel’s recent assault follows several violations of the recent ceasefire, including a weeks-long siege on Gaza cutting 2.2 million people off from food and electricity. This recent genocidal escalation and brazen refusal to abide by the ceasefire lays bare the intentions of the Zionist project: the theft of Palestinian land and the annihilation of the Palestinian people.

In the face of this inexcusable violence, our commitment to the Palestinian solidarity movement and to the liberation of the Palestinian people will only strengthen.

People today are increasingly seeing past the bankrupt morality of the pro-genocide bipartisan consensus. As a result, both parties have attempted to silence activists, and have increased the political repression of anti-Zionists. In the Bay Area and across the U.S., ICE has targeted immigrants who’ve spoken up against fascism and for Palestine. People like Mahmoud Khalil – a leader of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University, who was arrested off the streets walking back from iftar and has been threatened to lose his green card without due process. Moreover, local students, workers, and faculty have faced harassment, expulsion, firing, arrest, and more for their principled advocacy for Palestinian liberation.

In the face of such odds, people have continued to stand strong and speak out against the genocide: thousands filled the streets across San José, San Francisco, and the U.S. this week in protests against the ceasefire violation. The Palestinian solidarity movement is only growing in power, and no government repression will stop it.

To end the immediate genocide for good, we must march onward and continue the struggle for Palestinian liberation, by fighting for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and by securing an arms embargo. We must fight at every level, from local businesses, to city councils, to county supervisors, to state legislatures, to Congress and the highest levels of government, to cut off all U.S. support to the genocidal state of Israel. In Silicon Valley, we must also fight big tech companies, which have created dangerous AI weapons and tactics of surveillance, often first unleashed on Palestinians before being used by police and military here in the U.S. This is our duty as socialists in the Bay Area, as the cause of liberation here, in the heart of the tech industry fueling the war machine, is inextricably linked to the cause of liberation in Palestine.

To build our power as a movement, we need you — yes, you! — to take a stand for justice and join an organization. The Bay Area has several groups fighting for the Palestinian cause: Palestinian Youth Movement, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Jewish Voice for Peace, Vigil 4 Gaza, and San José Against War. Additionally, we at Silicon Valley DSA have our own International Solidarity Working Group which supports Palestine solidarity. Our work includes the No Appetite for Apartheid campaign, where we educate local businesses on the Israeli apartheid regime, and convince them to boycott and remove Zionist food products from their shelves.

Together, through persistent organizing, dedication, and solidarity, we will fight Zionism, imperialism, and all forms of oppression. Together, we will win a better world. One where Palestine will be free!

The post SVDSA Condemns the Recent Genocidal Attacks on Gaza appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.

The Silicon Valley Democratic Socialists of America condemn the introduction of California Assembly Bill 1468 (Zbur, Addis), which seeks to distort ethnic studies curricula to focus exclusively on the “domestic” experiences of historically marginalized groups in American society.

We oppose the proposed restriction to focus on “domestic” experiences, because foreign policy evidently affects various ethnic groups in the U.S. today. Supporters of AB 1468 specifically want to hinder students from gaining a comprehensive understanding of the global context behind marginalized groups and injustices, such as the Palestinian Nakba in 1948. This is especially unacceptable given the ongoing imperialist genocide being waged on Palestinians by Israel with full U.S. backing.

A comprehensive ethnic studies curriculum should encompass both domestic and international perspectives, to fully educate students on the interconnectedness of global struggles and histories. Additionally, such a curriculum must not shy away from talking about U.S. complicity in past crimes against humanity – including, but not limited to, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, the transatlantic slave trade, and the U.S. Empire’s destruction of working people’s homes worldwide, such as in Vietnam, Korea, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Palestine. Understanding these contexts is crucial for developing critical thinking on how the past affects marginalized groups in the U.S. today, and why state-sponsored reparations are long overdue for various communities. AB 1468, on the other hand, dissuades these discussions and censors critical thinking.

The backers of AB 1468 have explicitly stated that ethnic studies classes should not discuss Israel and Palestine, and that they “don’t think that ethnic studies is a foreign policy discipline.” This constitutes an unacceptable erasure of the U.S. Empire’s responsibility for ongoing and past violence worldwide.

Silicon Valley DSA condemns AB 1468 as an attack on the foundational values of ethnic studies itself, as highlighted in the 2021 Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum: for students to “challenge racist, bigoted, discriminatory, and imperialist/colonial beliefs and practices on multiple levels” and “connect ourselves to past and contemporary social movements that struggle for social justice.”

We stand in solidarity with all marginalized communities, and all victims of U.S. Empire. We commit to supporting their struggles for comprehensive representation in educational curricula, and their needs for material reparations more broadly.

Join us in opposing AB 1468 by emailing your state legislators.

Join SVDSA!

Help us build democratic socialist power locally by joining SVDSA! Join our mailing list through the form below. We will get you set up with email & text updates, and reach out to you individually. Please also read our Code of Conduct for participating in SVDSA spaces.

The post SVDSA opposes AB 1468’s racist attacks on ethnic studies appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.

As part of our 2025 Migrant Rights Campaign, DSA San Diego is pressuring local school districts to defend students against ICE raids. Read more. [...]

Read More... from Migrant Rights Priority Campaign: Spring 2025 Update

The post Migrant Rights Priority Campaign: Spring 2025 Update appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America | San Diego Chapter.

I’m sure you’ve had the same conversation by now. A friend, family member or near-stranger calls and says, “Talk me down. I’m freaking out.” 

I fielded two of these recently. The first caller, an old friend and comrade, is not a newbie. After a couple decades on the left, during which she was an activist in a teachers’ union and leader in various union campaigns, she upped her game, getting herself successively elected as a school board member, City Council member and finally County Superintendent of Public Instruction, overseeing seventeen school districts. She served two terms, staying faithful to the progressive ideals she started with.

After retiring she joined DSA and continued to stay active in electoral politics in a support role. In short, she is not naïve or easily rattled. But on this occasion, she was feeling completely unnerved and overwhelmed. Why? By paying too much attention to the news, chock full of horrifying stories about Trump, Musk, Vance, and the other elected and unelected fascists in their ugly campaign to destroy the helping powers of government and make life for the multiracial working class as miserable as possible. 

She called because she was looking for human connection with a comrade whom she hoped could point to some rays of light amid the darkness. I told her that many people are resisting the fascist tide in many ways—in the courts, in all levels of government, and in the streets. New coalitions are being formed, and old ones resurrected. I mentioned the popup demonstration staged by FUN (the new federal workers network California Red reported on last issue) that I had attended. 

I told her the mainstream media is certainly not helping here. Its underreporting of the resistance is spotty, often politically unsophisticated, and fearful of taking on Trump. If you pay too much attention to it, it will freak you out and/or wear you down quickly—part of the goal of a fascist regime. She got off the call telling me that she felt a bit better, and promised she would more carefully titrate her media consumption going forward. 

In the middle of the call I saw my brother was trying to reach me, so I called him back—and found myself essentially returned to the same conversation, complicated by where he lives, a small conservative rural town. He said analogies with history (Germany 1933) were making him extremely nervous.  

In both conversations (and others like them) I gave two pieces of advice: watch your political media intake carefully, and find a group of like-minded people with a common resistance perspective and shared activity to join with—being careful to take on only the amount of work that won’t burn you out over the long term. It also helps to have a best guess big picture to work with.

Best guess: Three lines of defense

I—and I’m not the only one—see three lines of defense and broad areas of activity between now and the 2026 elections (if we are still having them by then). The first, a focus on the courts, leaves out most of us for strategy discussion and direct participation, as legal action mostly requires being a lawyer. But we can certainly participate in support campaigns, including publicity, education and organizing. Since the highest court in the land is in the hands of Trump appointees, this first line of defense may only get us so far, with its main utility buying time. It may ultimately be more effective for education of the public than actual legal redress—especially if the fascists choose to ignore and sideline the courts. For what it’s worth we note that of the eighty suits filed against Trump he has won 12 and lost 22. 

The second front is electoral—organize to overturn the thin majorities of Republicans (now a fully fascist party) in the House and Senate. It is critical that at least one house of Congress goes to the Democrats in order to block the worst actions of the trifecta held by Trump et. al. At this point there is no guarantee that there will be elections in 2026, or if there are, that they will be conducted fairly. So this part of the strategy requires state and local work around election protection, as well as a candidate selection process that makes certain no Trojan horses like Manchin or Sinema are among the Democrats running, and replacement of weak straws like Schumer among the current leadership. Then, of course, there’s actually electing candidates in 2026.

Alongside these two frontline areas it will be crucial to construct robust non-violent direct action (NVDA) wings of our movement. Sit-ins, marches, occupations, other forms of civil disobedience and face to face confrontations against the people moving the country to dictatorship will gain news coverage and, with successes, provide information and courage for the long term. Such activities will bring in new recruits. (They will also require savvy and well-prepared security. Depending on how things unfold the MAGA forces might well unleash their violent rabble on peaceful demonstrations.)

There is at best a two-year shelf life on these two lines of defense, which is why development of street support for them is so critical; the latter will likely become the key component of what follows. If lines one and two crumble the final line of defense before full on dictatorship will be mass action. What might that look like? 

Here is where unions come into the center of the picture, and we must begin preparing now if there is to be any chance of success. Maximum impact on this far right government and oligarchy (which since January have become synonymous) will be earned when masses of workers refuse to work. The more that the consent of we the governed is withdrawn from the abuse we are suffering, the more leverage we will have.

Forward toward the…

I have never been one of those people who think it’s a good idea to call for a general strike to deal with a problem, even if the problem—say, the United States going to war under false pretenses—would deserve to be met with that solution. Why not? Because there are sound reasons why we’ve only seen around fifteen (depending on how you define them) citywide general strikes in nearly two hundred and fifty years of American history, and none since 1946. We’ve had exactly one national general strike, in 1886, which after achieving only limited success toward its goal of an eight-hour workday, brought on the first Red Scare. 

Called by the young American Federation of Labor (AFL) and supported by large sections of the Knights of Labor on May 1, 1886, the strike was honored by some three hundred thousand workers (in a non-agricultural workforce of around twelve million). It eventuated over a period of years the establishment of International Workers Day on May 1 in nearly one hundred countries around the world, but not here, the country in which the events occurred that inspired the holiday. In the wake of that setback, the eight-hour day movement had to wait nearly half a century before it became the law of the land.

This historical record might not encourage hope for a general strike’s success today. Neither does the current state of organized labor, which is weaker in terms of workforce density than it has been in a century, and contrary to what is required for a general strike, fractured along several fault lines. 

Don’t call: organize

But recent developments mean the political landscape is shifting. Many strikes erupted in 2022, the most important of which was the autoworkers’ victory over the Big 3. In its wake the UAW’s president Shawn Fain issued a challenge to the rest of the labor movement: line up your contract expiration dates for May 1, 2028 and prepare to act the way a united working class should act. No leader of a major national union has talked—concretely—like this for decades. 

Although we have seen no citywide general strikes since 1946, in 2018 the “red state revolt” of education workers featured anti-austerity walkouts that in their scale were essentially general strikes of public education. Currently in California a number of major urban teacher unions have been meeting and planning to bring these ideas together: a common contract expiration date and united action when the contracts expire. 

When Trump’s Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this month that it was cancelling TSA workers’ collective bargaining rights, Sara Nelson, head of the Association of Flight Attendants, responded that workers have “very few options but to join together to organize for a general strike”.

The wording is precise: not a call, abstractly, for a general strike, but to organize for one. This was the beauty of Fain’s call. Embedded in how he issued the call was how to make it happen. Even so, it will take a massive effort to pull it off. The plan was presented before Trump’s election with a three-and-a-half-year timeline—appropriate for scaling up this way. But given the speed at which the fascists are breaking government and completing their coup, we will probably need to move up the schedule. Is that possible?

An extraordinary event, a general strike takes a rare combination of circumstances to bring it about, let alone win.  Four preconditions are required:  widespread anger among working people; a high degree of cooperation in a strong enough labor movement; union leaders confident enough in their level of organization that they are willing to stick their necks out and call for it to happen; and a spark or symbolic incident that crystallizes people’s willingness to act.  

In light of the relatively small size of the labor movement today, coalition with other progressive organizations is crucial: finding common cause with community organizations representing working class, poor and otherwise marginalized constituencies, with international solidarity and anti-war movements, with NGOs of all types, will be important.

It is likely that building block actions will contribute along the way—sectoral strikes, demonstrations and occupations, with (best outcome) growing solidarity and tactical sophistication developing through successes and failures. Labor leaders will need to be convinced through this process that militancy is a practical matter. This will no doubt not be a linear process; more like a chaotic one, the lessons of which need to be considered on the fly, tested and retested. A general strike—the ultimate weapon of the working class—will result from intent, experience, reflection and a bit of luck.  

Attitude counts

That’s as far as my best guess can take us. I’ll close by emphasizing that unity of the forces of resistance to fascism and oligarchy is created by coalition building and enabled by an attitude not always present in the culture of the left. We are far too prone to being alert to openings to argue, to disagree, split, stay in silos, and allow purity of principle to keep us divided. This is especially the case within organized labor. Seeking differences is relatively easy. We are less used to (and less good at) seeking openings to find our common interests and purpose and then acting together as one. But without that attitude of openness and unity-seeking, coalition building becomes far more difficult.  

Fighting fascism is not a time and place for purity, single-issue politics or doing things the way we’ve always done them. It’s a time to set aside the narrow lens for a broad one. By all means continue to work on your social justice cause, the one that you have passionately cared about and pursued for years or decades, whatever that may be. But don’t let that divert you from the task of standing with others in the alliances that are now forming to build the strength necessary to defeat Trump, Musk and their fascist assault. We’re in this together or we’re not going to make it.

California DSA members will be among those marching on the state capital on April 24th to abolish Pacific Gas & Electric. Protesters plan to pack an 11 AM California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) meeting at 1516 Ninth Street in Sacramento, then rally on the Capital Mall at 2:30.

California Red readers understand already that decisions by private utility executives determine who among us will enjoy reliable, life-sustaining service—and who will be burned alive in utility-ignited firestorms. PG&E has been a long-time target of protests by DSA members and others, but this could be the year when we finally pivot from protest to actually breaking the utility’s god-like grip on our power supply.

The Investor-Owned Utility Act (SB 332) would immediately curb PG&E’s many corporate abuses that have impaired service reliability, inflated customer rates, and criminally endangered public safety. But equally important, SB 332 carefully lays the groundwork for replacing PG&E and other Investor-Owned Utilities (IOUs) with a “not-for-profit” public utility. 

 This is a very big deal.

Anytime your utility pleads guilty to 84 criminal counts of homicide—as PG&E did in 2020 after its equipment burned down the town of Paradise—it’s pretty clear you have problems. To deal with some of the most immediate ones, SB 332 would require annual audits of utility equipment, speed up “undergrounding,” and replace equipment that has outlived its usable life in high fire-risk areas. SB 332 would also: 

• Prohibit the shut-off of utility service for vulnerable ratepayers to ensure their health and safety needs are met.

• Require prompt action to cap IOU rate increases for residential customers to no more than the basic inflation rate.

• Tie executive compensation to meeting specific safety goals.

The structural problem

So far, so good. But SB 332 also addresses the deeper, structural problem with IOUs: When utility shareholders pocket their profits, there is less money available to meet the needs of customers. Utilities can’t print money.  When shareholders skim profits and top executives award themselves fat bonuses, there is less money to provide service. Broadly speaking, the utility’s options at that point are to sacrifice reliability, compromise on safety, seek higher rates--or all three.

SB 332 solves this problem by creating a not-for-profit utility where shareholder profits—and executive bonuses tied to those profits—don’t exist because the utility’s sole allegiance is to customer service, and to the skilled workforce that is essential to providing it.

SB 332 states the problem succinctly:

Past and present experience demonstrates that the IOUs prioritize profits over the safety and well-being of the ratepayers and residents of California, and thus, to support public necessity and public purpose, must be replaced with a well-researched and structured successor entity that focuses on the needs of ratepayers, workers, fire survivors, and community members instead of shareholders.

Can the Legislature really do this? Yes! Article 12 of the California Constitution says private corporations providing power to the public are “public utilities subject to control by the Legislature.” The Legislature took the first step down this path in 2020 by creating Golden State Energy when PG&E was in bankruptcy and its future looked shaky. An alternative now existed—if only on paper. SB 332, introduced this February by State Senator Aisha Wahab, takes the next step by providing a blueprint and timeline for a real-world transition from PG&E to GSE.

Analysis and implementation

Here’s how it would play out: 

The California Energy Commission by June 30, 2026 will create a Study Team to perform a comparative analysis—and an implementation plan for replacing PG&E with a successor not-for-profit utility. By December 31, 2026 the Study Team will select an Advisory Council to represent diverse constituencies, including:

• Labor unions

• Tribal interests

• Low-income residential ratepayers

• Wildfire survivors

… along with experts in equitable rate design, distributed energy resources, and grid architecture, as well as experts in justice issues: environmental, energy, utility, racial and economic.

The Energy Commission, through a public process, will vote on the recommended successor utility by September 30, 2028. The Commission, again through a public process, will vote by October 31, 2029 on approving the implementation plan.

SB 332 gives the Study Team broad powers, including access to books, records and documents “of any nature” from the Energy Commission, from the Public Utilities Commission, and from the IOUs themselves. 

Legislators want to know if the successor utility is likely to achieve certain policy objectives, including:

• A demonstrable reduction in electricity costs for customers over a 30-year period.

• Increased transparency and accountability in governing structures, financial spending, and infrastructure decisions.

• Maintaining pensions and increasing benefits for utility workers, as well as increasing “good union jobs and inclusive workforce development” in the region.

Protecting workers during the transition

Wisely, SB 332 is acutely sensitive to the need to protect workers during the transition process. It directs the Study Team’s feasibility assessment to “safeguard or strengthen” worker benefits—including union protections—during and after the transition period, and to provide for workers’ rights and “a just transition for workers impacted by the decommissioning of unsafe, polluting infrastructure.”

By no later than 2032, SB 332 wants to “safely decommission” any unsafe and polluting infrastructure that is transferred to the successor utility. SB 332 also aims to decommission gas infrastructure and transition toward electrification—an important environmental priority in the era of climate change. 

Squaring the priority of safe, reliable and clean electric service with the priority of affordable rates is a huge task. Replacing PG&E is going to cost money. But leaving things the way they are also costs money—a lot of it. Gas explosions are expensive. Wildfires can be fantastically expensive. Damage from interrupted service, while less visible, is also expensive. SB 332 suggests financing mechanisms to help us invest in avoiding disasters rather than face the far greater costs of cleaning up after them. 

Electricity is the foundation of modern American life. SB 332 is designed to give us—the public—substantive control of our utility service—a chance to push back against exorbitant rate hikes and corporate wrong-doing. It is a critical first-step in reclaiming our right—everyone’s right—to clean, safe, reliable and affordable utility service. 

SB 332 is a very big deal.  For further information: stop-pge.org

On March 17, the Indiana State Police arrested a Central Indiana DSA member and activist Chrissy Smith who was attending a permitted rally in support of arts education at public […]

Thorn West: Issue No. 228

State Politics

• Former Orange County congress member Katie Porter is the most recent candidate to announce their candidacy for California governor. Current governor Gavin Newsom will be unable to run in 2026 due to term limits.

• Governor Newsom interviewed Steve Bannon on his newly launched podcast. It is the third episode to feature a friendly interview with a member of the far right.

City Politics

Los Angeles chief administrative officer Matt Szabo predicted a $1 billion budget shortfall in the next fiscal year in a presentation before city council, projecting the need for “thousands” of layoffs of city employees. The current fiscal crisis was precipitated by raises for LAPD officers, and is exacerbated by police liability claims. Mayor Karen Bass, released a statement warning that her draft budget for the upcoming fiscal year, due to be released within a month, will represent a “fundamental change in the way the City operates.”

Health Care

• As Republicans discuss cutting billions of dollars in Medicaid funding over the next ten years. Capital & Main projects the devastating cascading effect this will have on health care in California.

• Medi-Cal, California’s implementation of Medicaid, is $6.2 billion over budget, a result of rising pharmacy costs, and increased participation in the program. The state has borrowed from its reserve fund to partially make up the shortfall.

• There was a diagnosed case of measles in LA County last week, in a patient who had just flown into LAX. Press release from the LA County Department of Public Health here.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• Recordings made by an LAPD officer in the department’s Recruiting Division captured a stream of racist, sexist and homophobic comments from multiple officers across dozens of conversations. A probe is underway.

• [CW: police violence] LAPD officers shot and killed an unarmed driver during a traffic stop last week.

• Amid a budgetary crisis, advocates worry about the future of a successful pilot program that diverts emergency mental health calls to an unarmed crisis response team. LA Forward is hosting a zoom call to organize a defense of the program, here.

• Sheriff Robert Luna is suing the Los Angeles County’s Civilian Oversight Commission, seeking to withhold documents related to deputy misconduct that the commission has subpoenaed.

Housing Rights

• Funding for a federal emergency rental voucher program, which provides assistance to tenants facing homelessness, is projected to run out in the upcoming fiscal year.

• An audit has revealed that LAHSA, the organization which currently provides homelessness services across LA County, has been lax in tracking its use of funds. LA Public Press provides further details on plans at the city and county level to restructure how homelessness services are provided.

The post Budget Crises at City, State + Federal Level Put Vital Services at Risk appeared first on The Thorn West.