Events & Actions

Tuesday, September 30 (8:00 AM – 4:30 PM): ICE Out of SF Courts! (In person at 100 Montgomery)

Tuesday, September 30 (6:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Immigrant Justice Healing Circle (In person at 1916 McAllister St)

Wednesday, October 1 (6:30 PM – 9:00 PM): New Member Happy Hour (In person at Zeitgeist, 199 Valencia)

Thursday, October 2 (7:30 PM – 9:30 PM): TOWG Reading Group: “Housing the City by the Bay: Tenant Activism, Civil Rights, and Class Politics in San Francisco” (In person at 1916 McAllister St)

Friday, October 3 (8:00 AM – 4:30 PM): ICE Out of SF Courts! (In person at 100 Montgomery)

Friday, October 3 (6:30 PM – 8:00 PM): Municipal Social Housing: Learning from Seattle’s Win (518 Valencia)

Saturday, October 4 (10:30 AM – 12:00 PM): DSA SF x EBDSA: No Space for ICE Canvassing (In person at Portsmouth Square Park, 745 Kearny St)

Saturday, October 4 (1:00 PM – 3:00 PM): International Day of Action: Oakland Arms Embargo Now! (In person at Oscar Grant Plaza, Oakland)

Saturday, October 4 (4:00 PM – 6:00 PM): Divestment Strategy Session (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, October 5 (5:30 PM – 7:15 PM): HWG Reads “Capitalism & Disability – Selected Writings by Marta Russell” (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister St)

Monday, October 6 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Labor Board x SF EWOC Local Meeting (Zoom and in person at 1916 McAllister)

Tuesday, October 7 (6:00 PM – 7:30 PM): Ecosocialist Bi-Weekly Meeting (Zoom)

Wednesday, October 8 (6:45 PM – 9:00 PM): October General Meeting (Zoom and in person at Kelly Cullen Community, 220 Golden Gate Ave)

Thursday, October 9 (5:30 PM – 6:30 PM): Education Board Open Meeting (Zoom)

Thursday, October 9 (7:00 PM – 8:00 PM): Immigrant Justice Court Action Orientation (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, October 11 (12:45 PM – 4:00 PM): Homelessness Working Group Outreach and Outreach Training (Meet in person at 1916 McAllister)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events for more events and updates. Events with a are especially new-member-friendly!

ICE Out of SF Courts!

Join neighbors, activists, grassroots organizations in resisting ICE abductions happening at immigration court hearings! ICE is taking anyone indiscriminately in order to meet their daily quotas. Many of those taken include people with no removal proceedings.

We’ll be meeting every Tuesday and Friday from 8:00 AM to 4:30 PM at Immigration Court at 100 Montgomery. We need all hands on deck. The 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM window is when we most need to boost turnout, but if you can’t make that please come whenever works for you. 1 or 2 hours or the entire time! We’re also holding orientation sessions for folks, but that is not required to attend. See the Immigrant Justice Court Action Orientation event for more details.

Municipal Social Housing: Learning from Seattle’s Win

Two DSA SF-backed ballot props in 2020 were meant to enable and fund social housing, but mayoral opposition has blocked the funds being spent for that purpose. Seattle’s victory offers a lesson in how we might beat that blockage. In February, Seattle’s House Our Neighbors passed a ballot proposition with dedicated funds for a social housing developer. The campaign won by 26 points over opposition from Seattle’s mayor and most of their city council.

Join us at 518 Valencia on Friday, October 3 from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM for a conversation with Seattle organizer Eric Lee (House Our Neighbors, Seattle DSA) and our own Shanti Singh (Tenants Together, DSA SF).

RSVP here!

Stop the World for Gaza! Arms Embargo Now!

At least 280 shipments have left the Oakland Airport in the first 6 months of this year, carrying deadly military cargo to maintain Israel’s F-35 fleet. On Saturday, October 4th at 1:00 PM, we’ll link arms at Oscar Grant Plaza in Oakland and re-energize ourselves for the fight ahead and demand killer cargo out of OAK! If you’d like to join the DSA contingent, check out the #palestine-solidarity Slack channel.

DSA SF x EBDSA: No Space for ICE Canvassing in SF Chinatown

The DSA SF Immigrant Justice Working Group and East Bay DSA Migrant Defense Working Group are leaving No Space for ICE! Join us on Saturday, October 4, at 1:00 PM to distribute red cards and other Know Your Rights materials to businesses and community members in SF Chinatown. We will meet at Portsmouth Square Park to share materials and train before we canvass. You can RSVP for the event here! Wear DSA merch if you can, or put a DSA pin on a visible part of your clothing.

New to canvassing? No worries! There will be a brief how-to training before we go out in pairs or small groups.

Steal This Story, Please! at the Roxie

DSA SF is proud to be a community partner with the Bay Area Premiere of Steal This Story, Please!, a documentary about award-winning journalist and host of Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman. The film will be playing on Saturday, October 4th from 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM at the Roxie Theater. Expected guests include Amy Goodman and the directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin.

Steal This Story, Please! is a gripping portrait of the trailblazer whose unwavering commitment to truth-telling spans three decades of turbulent history. From the front lines of global conflicts to the organized chaos of her daily news show Democracy Now!, Goodman broadcasts stories and voices routinely silenced by commercial media. Get your tickets here!

DSA SF Homelessness Working Group Reads: Capitalism & Disability: Selected Writings by Marta Russell

Join DSA SF’s Homelessness Working Group as we read through Capitalism & Disability: Selected Writings by Marta Russell. We’ll be meeting every other Sunday evening starting in September for 4 or 5 sessions at 1916 McAllister. The next session is Sunday, October 5. For more info, register here: bit.ly/martacd and check the events calendar for latest details.

Save the Date: Palestine Study – Understanding Zionism and Imperialism for Palestine Liberation

What does socialism have to do with Palestine? What did the founding of Israel really look like? How do we fight the genocide in Gaza here in the Bay Area? Join DSA SF on Sunday, October 19th from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM for the upcoming Palestine Study exploring the foundations of Zionism and how we fight imperialism for Palestinian liberation.

Immigrant Justice Court Action Orientation

Come one, come all to 1916 McAllister St for our court watch orientation! You’ll learn how we are resisting ICE , how you can help, and participate in a biweekly art build. Bring questions and anti-ICE slogans! This event will take place every other week on Thursdays starting at 7:00 PM and the next one is October 9th!

DSA SF Tenant Organizing Reading Group – “Housing the City by the Bay: Tenant Activism, Civil Rights, and Class Politics in San Francisco”

San Francisco has always had an affordable housing shortage, but solutions outside of the private sector have long been neglected or overlooked. Join us as we learn about the history of one proposed solution: public housing.

Our four-part reading group will meet every other Thursday at 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM hybrid in person at 1916 McAllister and Zoom with RSVP to discuss John Baranski’s book “Housing the City by the Bay”. The next meeting will be Thursday, October 2nd.

If you wish to join please RSVP here!

Behind the Scenes

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

Interested in helping with the newsletter or other day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running? Fill out the CCC help form.

SIGN ON: Fight Authoritarianism with the “Full Force” of the Working Class

Organizations and unions: Sign on to this letter and add organizational info here.

As Trump continues to sow terror on the working class, we, the undersigned organizations, are committed to protecting our rights to organize freely without fear of state repression. Engaging in peaceful protest and criticism of the government and the current social order is essential to democracy and freedom.

This weekend, Trump published a draconian directive to federal agencies to surveil and disrupt individuals and organizations who exhibit supposed “indicators of violence” including “anti-Americanism”, “anti-capitalism”, “extremism on migration, race, and gender”, and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality”. These are obvious signals to repress anyone who criticizes corporations, ICE, Israel, transphobia, patriarchy, Christian nationalism, and anti-abortion policies.

Trump then announced on social media that he would deploy military troops to Portland and use “full force, if necessary.” Oregon is not being targeted for federal intervention because of any actual threat to safety here, but because we have a proud history of demonstrating working-class power such as in street mobilizations, labor militancy, and our recently elected left-leaning Portland City Council. The business lobby alongside both liberal and conservative politicians tried to create the perception of Portland being a crime-ridden warzone in recent years – and now even they are opposed to troop deployment here. 

If Trump sends federal agents or the National Guard to Portland, it will do nothing to solve the daily crises – created by capitalism and made worse by Trump himself – that working Oregonians already face: housing insecurity, low wages, unstable employment, underfunded schools, cuts to public programs, escalating climate disasters, and corporate control of nearly every aspect of our lives.

We condemn the attempts to intimidate working class people, especially immigrants, and contrive an “emergency” to further repress our right to organize and protest.

We declare ourselves part of the century-old movement against fascism.

We pledge to protect members of our organizations, our families, our immigrant neighbors and our communities against Trump’s intimidation and violence. We pledge non-cooperation and resistance against illegal, unconstitutional violations of our human rights. We encourage all dissidents to organize at work, at school, in their neighborhoods, and in their faith communities.

We pledge to mobilize the power of our members in collective actions, as we know how:

• Withhold our labor or creatively deploy our labor
• Coordinate direct actions such as pickets, marches, rallies, vigils, and caravans
• Engage in civil disobedience such as sit-downs and sit-ins
• Display our union banners and wear our union gear at work and in public
• Display yard signs and window signs expressing our unity against fascism
• Encourage individual federal agents and National Guard troops to disobey unlawful orders
• Encourage our members and all resisters to participate in surveillance and rapid response to ICE, federal agent, and troop activity

People power is the only way to stop authoritarianism and create a better world that we all deserve.

The post Against the Militarization of Portland appeared first on Portland DSA.

“Nobody cares, work harder.” 

I watch my parents work themselves to the bone, while they are constantly exploited by the people for whom they work, and the capitalists who are oh so nice enough to afford them a place to live, while taking every opportunity to take more without reason and say, “That’s just how it works.”

My people sacrifice their bodies to erect buildings for companies that will exploit and discriminate against them. They leave their homeland, ravaged by corporations, corruption, colonialism, and imperialism, to build homes they may never be able to afford themselves.

I came across a forum post in which users were venting about their frustration, no, their hopelessness, in not being able to find a job in a system that requires you to have one to afford the most basic human necessities. 

I sat back and read as many admitted they just don’t see an end in sight, and were looking at heartbreaking alternatives to ease the suffering.

But we’re told we just need to “work harder.”

“Work.” Rich, coming from those who don’t seem to understand its meaning.

“But you don’t understand, if you work hard enough, you too will one day own capital. You, too, will one day be a big shot!”

Okay, even if that were true, then what?

What happens when we’re all filthy rich CEOs? At the expense of exploiting other countries, mind you, but that’s a whole other story.

Who will perform the labor?

“You just hire others to do it for you! Better yet, you can replace them all with AI or overseas laborers and pay THEM pennies on the dollar.”

But I thought the capitalist dream was that we all become big shots?

Do you see how that’s an inherently flawed “plan?”

Our participation in this capitalist system leaves us with two options: sell our labor at a tremendous loss, monetary and quality-of-life-wise, or exploit our fellow humans.

What kind of a choice is that?

We work ourselves to death, and for what? Low wages, maybe some benefits, and to be tossed aside at any given moment while CEOs rake in the fruits of our labor.

We’re then, if lucky enough, forced into gig work, meaning even longer hours, less pay, no benefits, and still, the company giving you the wonderful privilege of “being your own boss” takes their unfair cut of your labor.

And if you manage to start your own business free of these parasitic owners, congratulations, you are now in competition with them. 

Do you see how hard we’ve been working and continue to work? Do you see how easy these corporations, these capitalists have had it at YOUR expense?

You know what, maybe we do need to work harder.

We need to work harder to take back our labor.

Our time

Our dignity

Our lives.

The post The Capitalists Are Right: We Need to Work Harder first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

by Ida Bly

David Rovics and Kamala Emanuel sang a concert in Madison on September 4^th.They call their duo “The Ministry of Culture.” Madison DSA and WORT-FM helped sponsor this performance. This evening of folk-style music offered abundant moments of truth-telling and authenticity.

There were about 35 people in attendance, in a range of ages, at Muso on Winnebago Street. Muso hosts acoustic music events without amplification. In this case, the pleasing harmonies contributed by Kamala Emanuel greatly enhanced the songs David sang while playing guitar. Attendees responded warmly to Rovics’ songs, including his most well-known song, “St. Patrick’s Battalion,” with driving rhythm and a refrain containing the lyrics: “we witnessed freedom denied…we fought on the Mexican side.” It’s the story of Irish immigrants who switched sides during the Mexican-American war of the 1840s. Having recently faced the choice of “death, starvation or exile” in Ireland, they found the Mexicans’ cause more compelling, staving off an invading army, in a parallel to their struggle against the British.

Rovics and Emanuel also sang the tongue-in-cheek “I’m a Better Anarchist than You,” encouraging us to poke fun at ourselves, and to work across sectarian lines. Another popular song with a singable chorus was “If Only it were True,” which recounts the absurd right wing charges against Obama as being a tree-hugging, socialist, immigrant-loving, peace-loving Muslim. DSA members can identify with the song’s sentiment, given the bizarre, fact-free accusations of socialism slung as an insult toward various and sundry figures who are anything but.

There were also new songs about Gaza, including “From Auschwitz to Gaza.” Another brand new song was “Zahid” about a US Veteran who is a beloved long-time local resident of Olympia, Washington, and uses a wheelchair, lingering now in ICE detention in solitary confinement in Tacoma. The concert also included the song, “In Wisconsin in 1854 (Song for Joshua Glover)” (see sidebar article).

Prior to the main act, local singer Tom Wernigg opened the night with his country-tinged, humanistic, singable, and informative songs that have a deep vein of humor. He sang, “I don’t like genocide…under any guise”. The sarcastic “My Minivan…it’s my best friend” included the line, “I like my burgers with freedom fries.” We hope Tom in his signature hat will perform more often in Madison.

Rovics and Emanuel concluded their performance to applause. Returning to the stage for an encore, they sang “Behind the Barricades“ [2001] acapella with the passage: “As the movement grows there will be hills and bends—But at the center of the struggle are your lovers and your friends—The more we hold each other up the less we can be swayed—Here’s to love and solidarity and a kiss behind the barricades.” It was a tremendous and satisfying finish to a great night.

Muso performance space

Muso created a magical and whimsical backdrop for the event. The proprietors have roots in the Act 10 uprising and long-running Solidarity Sing Along at the Wisconsin Capitol since 2011. Muso puts a strong emphasis on pure musical experiences, especially participatory events. The venue has continued to improve over the last year. We enjoyed comfortable seating augmented by luxurious sofas piled with comfortable pillows, a bookshelf-lined wall, fanciful stenciled woodwork and colorful paper mobiles. There was even a break between sets to enjoy refreshments and visit with others at the event. Muso has great potential for more political and socialist-themed gatherings.

Music in Social Movements

David Rovics is a singer with anarchist politics, connecting many movements over the decades. He describes his “songs of social significance” as being “about life on earth” or, variously, as “songs to fan the flames of discontent.” His works touch on dozens of contemporary struggles including immigration, war, labor, gentrification, capitalism, environmental struggles, high rents, and so on. He is particularly notable as a prolific song writer. Never shying away from difficult subjects, he also writes about bicycles, bonobos, and visions of a better world we can create.

One of my favorite songs is “We Just Want the World” [1998]. It speaks to our fondest wishes: ”closing down munitions plants…shutting down the oil rigs/ And turning towards the sun…we don’t want your dead-end highway/ We just want the world.”

His pieces have been called “song stories,” and in many cases use a specific event to symbolize a much larger issue. Rovics’ historical references have also been compared to what folk singer Utah Phillips called The Long Memory, a connected view of history that can help us see where we want to go. In this moment especially, we need singers and cultural workers to help illuminate our history because it is intentionally obscured by the ruling elites. David Rovics has a large catalog of music on Palestine, dating back at least twenty years but particularly voluminous in the last few years, with new songs coming out regularly on the topic.

For his troubles, Rovics has suffered the demonetization of his YouTube channel in the last year, a major threat to a performer’s financial stability. Just this week, YouTube removed his song “I Support Palestine Action.” His events have been cancelled for political reasons, and he has endured government surveillance during his stops, even in New Zealand and Scandinavia. This reminds us of something we know very well from TV’s top comedians lately: cultural workers put themselves at risk. If our enemies know how powerful cultural workers can be, why don’t we?

I first saw David Rovics perform in Madison at the First Congregational Church on the corner of University Avenue and Breese Terrace in the early 2000s, as part of the Earth Day to May Day events. He also performed at Wil-Mar Community Center around 2009 — on that visit his friend and legendary labor troubadour Anne Feeney was in the audience (his tribute to her: “I Dreamed I Saw Anne Feeney”). On August 25, 2024, Rovics and Kamala Emanuel played on the Madison Labor Temple lawn, with sponsorship of the Family Farm Defenders, with the Raging Grannies as an opener (See the Grannies’ video clip and lyrics listing from that event here).

David Rovics was interviewed by Brian Standing on the WORT-FM show, The 8 O’Clock Buzz in 2024, touching on the role of music in protest gatherings, and that interview can be heard here:

More recently, host Martin Alvarado interviewed David Rovics on Global Revolutions on WORT-FM radio on Mon. Sept. 1, 2025, in the 3rd hour, minute 2:04-2:27. The archive of this brief interview is still available for a while. In this interview, David reported witnessing a Labor Day Parade in Rockford, Illinois, on their way up to Madison to perform this year. Although it was a massive nationwide day of protest with the theme “Workers over Billionaires,” these cultural workers did not get invited to participate, enjoying it instead as spectators.

It was a notable omission, especially because Rovics has made remarkable contributions to the labor movement’s songbook, writing original songs on topics such as Mother Jones (“Pray for the Dead and Fight Like Hell for the Living”), May Day (“The First of May,” and “When the Workers of the World Unite”), “The Battle of Blair Mountain,” the IWW “Ballad of a Wobbly, the Depression (“Union Makes Us Strong” [2010]), the Wisconsin Uprising “We Will Win (Song for Wisconsin)” [2011], and “Tax the Rich” [2011]. Rovics’ bluegrass classic, “Minimum Wage Strike,” is at least as relevant today as when he wrote it in 1998. His song “Joe Hill,” (written on the 100^th anniversary of Joe Hill’s death in 1915) is about a labor organizer who was condemned to death by the state of Utah, and was executed by a state firing squad. How strange it is that the state of Utah may again execute someone by firing squad, if recent events at Utah State University play out as expected. The Death Penalty Information Center wrote a post about this. The current case is nothing like Joe Hill’s, and yet it is amazing how history echoes!

Rovics’ song “Everything Can Change,” about organizing, has a valuable message. We need our organizations of course, but these are just part of larger movements. Our organizations ebb and flow, and only partly contain our capacious aspirations. We need art, music, feasts, festivals, and culture that can carry us from one organization, movement, and phase of life to the next. We need to build deep community that can sustain us for the long haul.

It’s a mistake when our organizations forgo art and music. We deprive ourselves of the succor of music and poetry when our protest events do not include them. Author Barbara Ehrenreich, who was active in DSA, made the point that movements are more than their organizations, and need vital cultural elements to make them strong. The Poor People’s Campaign has made art and music an important component of their work. Preaching to the choir is not pointless, and even left-brained people need encouragement, connection, and learning –- preferably in handy formats to integrate into daily life, such as songs you can sing in the shower or while cleaning the house, as well as before the city council, at a protest, or on a picket line.

Hearing Difficult Truths

One of the motivations for listening to Rovics’ music is that hearing the truth brings cleansing release, even when it is challenging. Particularly now, one longs for the truth, as science is being sidelined, and the gains of the Enlightenment erode. One’s mind and senses feel polluted, as the disgusting residue of falsehoods accumulates. The obsequious worship of power pervades our airwaves and hardens our souls. There is also a struggle to make meaning of our experiences, living here in the heart of Empire, passing people sleeping on the street, taking in the horrors on TV and the crossing of red lines around the world. It is helpful to gather together to seek shared understandings.

While cringing at the sorrows, we reach for the serenity of wisdom. I often think if I understood better how things got so bad, it might help me know how to move forward. This is why learning about socialism is so important now.

David Rovics’ culture work includes essays published in Counterpunch and other places. David’s archive of music is accessible for free at www.davidrovics.com. He also has a presence on Blue Sky, Tiktok, X, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, Substack, YouTube and Songkick. You may tune into his podcast “This Week with David Rovics” – with music, history and current events here. He also has a new memoir out in the form of an audiobook, called My Life as a Protest Singer. To get full access to this and other special material, there is a subscription-based Community-Supported Art program available through his website.

The morning after his performance in Madison, Rovics and Emanuel left for Woodruff, far in the north of Wisconsin, to continue to bring this music to new places, and new people. Rovics often performs for free in parks, at protest gatherings, and on picket lines. Having wrapped up the Midwest tour for now, the next stop is a tour of New York and New England starting in October.

Sidebar: Song for Joshua Glover

Rovics’ and Emanuel’s concert included a song written last year about Wisconsin history, “In Wisconsin in 1854 (Song for Joshua Glover).” It is about the Fugitive Slave Act period when the federal government forced local police to cooperate with slave catchers. But it is also a triumphant tale of rebellion by the local population against this unjust law. After a mob of Wisconsinites helped Glover escape from jail and leave the country, the state of Wisconsin declared the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 unconstitutional in 1854. The people of Wisconsin made a singular, definitive pushback, and effectively ended this law through this one instance of cross-racial solidarity, and public collective disobedience. It usually takes more than one.

Phil Busse (a Madison native) wrote a guest column that ran in the Wisconsin State Journal on May 5, 2025, “Arrest of Milwaukee judge hearkens back to 1850s” explaining how the Joshua Glover incident has important parallels to the immigration struggle embodied by the Judge Hannah Dugan case, set to go to trial in Milwaukee in December.

In 2021, the city of Toronto commissioned a statue of Joshua Glover for a city park. The design is well worth looking up online, and includes Glover in a top hat and with Afrofuturist elements. After escaping the US, Glover lived out the rest of his long life in Canada but also suffered a short bout of imprisonment there, and was denied a proper burial. There have been recent tributes to Glover, including a commissioned song called “Freedom Heights” with a video version spliced with images of Toronto’s pro-basketball Raptors team members. There is also a new mural to Joshua Glover on the I-43 underpass in Milwaukee. There is a new mini-documentary film (“Liberty at Stake”) too. The Republican Party intentionally highlighted the Joshua Glover incident during their convention in Milwaukee in 2024, aiming to claim the abolitionist roots of their party’s founding in Ripon, Wisconsin. But it is an open question whether the Party would make the same effort today, less than one year later. In any case, it is an important historical incident that is too little known, even here in Wisconsin.

Also relevant is David Rovics’ song “In Between Milwaukee and Chicago” written in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha.

On the topic of statues and murals, it is truly remarkable how many long-overdue historical markers went up only after the protests spurred by George Floyd’s death in May 25, 2020. I saw three examples of this on a recent visit to Jackson, Tennessee. Historical markers were recently put up there to the late-1800s lynchings on the courthouse lawn, the 1960’s Woolworth’s lunch counter sit-ins, and to honor their native son, Gil Scott-Heron, the world famous jazz poet and spoken word artist (“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”). This history languished, ignored in plain sight, until the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd forced local communities to rectify their long silencing of history.

After an action packed September General Meeting, two important shout-outs are in order:

First, we voted to kickstart a No Appetite for Apartheid Campaign here in Madison. No Appetite for Apartheid is a DSA National campaign launched by the Palestine Solidarity Working Group to pressure grocery stores to become Apartheid Free Stores by dropping companies and products that participate in Israeli apartheid and theft of Palestinian land. The campaign is powered by a number of chapters and coalitions across the country, and the Madison Area chapter will now be engaging in that work as well! As socialists, we stand in solidarity with all those facing settler-colonialism, and as Americans it is our duty to work from within the empire to end American imperialist violence around the world. At the September General Meeting, the chapter voted overwhelmingly to reaffirm this commitment by being the force for change in our own city. We look forward to an apartheid free Madison – and we need your help to get there. To get involved in this important work, join the #palestine-solidarity channel on Slack, check the chapter calendar for upcoming No Appetite for Apartheid (NA4A) planning meetings and events, and read more about the national campaign here.

Second, we voted to charter an Electoral Working Group to formalize the work already being done by the Power Mapping Committee as we prepare for local elections and work towards a statewide electoral strategy. If electoral work is your jam, you’ll definitely want to check out an upcoming EWG meeting, help canvas our neighborhoods with your MADSA comrades, and mark your calendars for the members-only town hall with Rep. Hong on September 29. Why a town hall with Rep. Hong? Well if you haven’t heard, Francesca Hong – a MADSA member and endorsed state legislator – is running for governor! We are excited to see where this campaign goes and to working with Fran on building the democratic socialist movement in Wisconsin. To that end, we must now engage in the process of democratically deciding if and how to get involved in the gubernatorial race. The town hall will be the first step in this process, where members will have the opportunity to ask Fran any and all questions – so don’t miss out! If you’re not yet a member, join DSA today to be able to attend.

If all that isn’t enough action for you, we have so many more exciting events and opportunities to get involved in our growing movement for a better city, state, country, and world, so get your calendars out and read on for all the details.

In this newsletter:

• Thu. September 25, 6-8:00pm: Beyond the Two Party System: A Socialist Way Forward
• Sat. September 27, 10:00am-12:00pm: Coffee with Comrades!
• Sun. September 28, 11:00am-12:30pm: Wretched of the Earth Reading Group
• Mon. September 29, 6:30pm: Members-Only Town Hall with Rep. Francesca Hong
• Sat. October 4, 2-3:30pm: October New Member Orientation
• Tue. October 7, 6:30pm: Copaganda Book Talk with Author Alec Karakatsanis
• Sun. October 12, 5-9:00pm: Halloween Carnival & Queer Liberation March Fundraiser
• Wed. October 15, 6:30-8:30pm: October General Membership Meeting

San Mateo County Opts In to Regional Funding Measure

Follow-up to Get on the Bus: Retaking Bay Area Public Transit

Bay Area public transit notched a generational win for operational funding thanks to grassroots organizers and transit advocates. Throughout 2025, Peninsula DSA (PDSA) in suburban San Mateo County engaged transit riders and activists to save light rail Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART, 178,000 weekday riders) and commuter rail Caltrain (37,000 weekday riders) from looming fiscal cliffs and severe service cuts. 

In partnership with Transbay Coalition, PDSA organizers reached people via many channels, including PDSA’s social media; flyering BART and Caltrain stations and talking to riders; posting to r/BART and r/Caltrain on Reddit; mobilizing PDSA chapter members via email, text messages, and our own Discord server; and a successful coalition rally during rush hour at a major transit hub in Millbrae. Our underlying message to transit riders? Demand San Mateo County opt in to SB 63!

PDSA identified SB 63, Senator Scott Weiner (District 11) and Senator Jesse Arreguín (District 7)’s 2026 five-county regional funding measure, as a priority campaign for our chapter. The Senate bill authorizes a 2026 citizens ballot initiative campaign to raise new funds to sustain BART, Caltrain, Muni (San Francisco), and other transit agencies in the Bay Area as they continue to recover their pre-COVID ridership. The tens of millions of dollars in new dedicated revenue would save these fixed-rail operators from massive service cuts that would render them virtually unusable.

The importance of maximum funding

But of course there’s a catch: Politicians chose to give both Santa Clara County and San Mateo County, the two wealthiest counties of the five, the option to decline to participate in the group project or opt in at a lower tax rate than the other three counties. Transit riders like us immediately understood exactly how important it is to get maximum funding for our county, which relies on Caltrain for more than just Giants games and has six BART stations, including an essential stop at San Francisco International Airport (SFO). 

But transit riders aren’t the decision makers in San Mateo County. That’d be SamTrans, the county-wide bus system, or more specifically, the nine members of the Board of Directors. To save BART and Caltrain, PDSA members and allies attended the monthly SamTrans Board of Directors meetings to push them to think beyond San Mateo County’s borders and invest in regional transit for the people through SB 63. Our consistent pressure tactic—whether in person, via Zoom, or by email—was making well-coordinated public comments in support of opting in to a progressively funded regional funding measure. 

Comrades and allies used our time at the podium to share personal transit stories and educate the Board members, most of whom never use transit, on how transit cuts would negatively impact local SamTrans riders and San Mateo County residents. We also took the opportunity to push for funding SB 63 with a gross receipts tax (0.112% tax on the top 2% of businesses) instead of a regular regressive sales tax (of ¼ or ½ cent) that would hit low-income SamTrans riders the hardest. 

Final Showdown with SamTrans

The August 6 SamTrans Board meeting, when the Directors voted on SB 63, was highly unusual. Chair Jeff Gee refused to hear or discuss any public comments focused on the gross receipts tax, despite the hundreds of emails on that topic that we had encouraged transit riders to send to the Board of Supervisors and other influential political bodies. PDSA member Marc S used his public comment to gesture to gross receipts anyway: “The proposed sales tax, compared to other tax options, might not even prevent all cuts. Participating in SB 63 today is the bare minimum [to] address the San Mateo County residents' need for affordable, safe, and equitable transit both within the county and around the Bay Area.”

In the eleventh hour, California Assemblymember Diane Papan was given the floor and used her time to advertise her own overreaching amendment to SB 63 that called for “accountability” regarding how other counties would spend the funds at their transit agencies, while repeating misinformation about how BART operates and railing against “taxation without representation”—the Boston Tea Party was mentioned. (Note: San Mateo County would already have a seat on BART’s Board of Directors, and the vote and oversight Papan desires, if politicians hadn’t opted out of the network in the 1960s!) “The fiscally conservative rhetoric came from the fact that none of these board members seem to know there are citizens of San Mateo County who rely on transit to get around,” said Becca W, a PDSA member who publicly commented. “But now with this public pressure, they are well aware.” 

Even so, PDSA’s s organizing efforts paid off. The SamTrans Board voted 8-1 to opt in to SB 63 to raise new revenue to fund the transit agencies in the five-county Bay Area: Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and San Francisco. (The one dissenting vote was Jackie Speier.) SamTrans opted in at the higher ½ cent sales tax rate, a huge win considering they had been leaning toward opting out of the measure before our campaign kicked into gear. The public records of their official correspondence shows SamTrans received more than a hundred emailed public comments specifically in support of SB 63, exceeding their average inbox haul by a factor of ten.

Coordinated Public Transit Is the Way Forward

Assuming the citizens’ ballot measure is approved by a simple majority of voters in November 2026, the five-county Bay Area will have a new shared revenue source for maintaining current levels of service for public transit. Because Bay Area residents and visitors cross county borders all the time, it only makes sense that we plan and fund projects together. Robust public transit networks will be key in building a green future where a polluting private car is no longer the only viable option for getting around San Mateo County. 

Of course, with inflation and tariffs, even more money will be necessary if transit operators are to deliver faster, rider-friendly, affordable, and coordinated service around the region. Though the gross receipts tax didn’t make it into the final bill, keeping Bay Area transit operational with an assist from wealthy San Mateo County allows PDSA organizers the space and time to plan our next strategic move to win better (and eventually free!) transit for all.