Silicon Valley DSA (SV DSA) adopted a resolution in support of Proposition 50, also known as the “Election Rigging Response Act.” This state constitutional amendment will appear on the November 4 special election and would allow the California legislature to sidestep the bipartisan commission currently in place and draw a congressional district map for election years through 2030, in response to the Republican Party’s aggressive efforts to gerrymander congressional districts. 

SV DSA recognizes this “redistricting arms race” is a predictable outcome of a broken political system and winner-take-all voting methods that stifle political pluralism and prevent the emergence of new working-class parties. 

DSA actively opposes movements that entrench minoritarian rule at the national level in advance of a far-right agenda. SV DSA believes that, should California fail to respond to these actions, the Trump administration and its allies become further empowered to continue violent and extremist policies that disproportionately harm working-class communities, immigrants, and people of color. 

Concerns were raised by members prior to the resolution vote that alignment with Proposition 50 conflicted with the organization’s movement of championing a free democratic and socialist world. However, as DSA is committed to a framework for ballot measure endorsement of campaigns that would build class consciousness, root socialists in the multiracial working class, and have winnable and transformative objectives, it was ultimately decided endorsing this amendment was an imperative, preventative measure necessary toward the organization’s ongoing efforts to thwart a rogue administration imposing authoritarian rule.

The socialist movement recognizes the evil entrenched in the political system, with both Democrats and Republicans complicit. SV DSA recognizes the passing of Proposition 50 is integral to furthering our advocacy and organization toward measures that align with the democratic socialist movement of restoring power to the working class. Endorsement of this proposition specifically strengthens the foundation of a left-labor coalition in the Bay Area and statewide by creating a specific opportunity for SV DSA to support campaigning initiatives of local organized labor and allied organizations. Silicon Valley DSA has been working actively alongside South Bay Labor Council and other organizations for the purpose of supporting Proposition 50, creating and distributing educational materials that articulate how the current political system is rigged and how a socialist vision offers a democratic alternative. Through canvassing, phonebanking, and tabling, members have been active in the community to frame the redistricting issue with a clear socialist analysis. 

While the passing of Prop 50 would restore voice taken from fellow Americans under the redistricting in Texas, it’s not ideal. Prop 50 merely holds back the tide while organizations like SV DSA continue efforts to combat the far-right agenda and work towards a world where everyone’s basic shelter, food, and healthcare needs are met. While SV DSA efforts include the exercising of mutual aid through our Free Store, organizing for and defending immigrant rights, and pushing back against dictatorial gatekeeping systems through education and de-programming, a chapter priority is organizing for Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), which would disrupt the current electoral duopoly, expanding voter voice and creating a system precluding the “tit-for-tat” nature of amendments like Prop 50 altogether. 

Already in use statewide in Alaska and Maine and in cities like New York City, San Francisco, and Santa Fe, RCV is a proven electoral reform that strengthens democracy by ensuring majority support, reducing negative campaigning, and empowering voters with greater choice. With RCV, if a voter’s first choice candidate is eliminated, their vote would transfer to their second choice, a process that continues until a candidate earns majority support. This eliminates the concept of a “wasted vote” and increases support for independent and “third party” candidates, encouraging a focus on issues rather than party affiliation. Candidates are more likely to campaign to all voters and even build collaboration among themselves to build rapport rather than tearing each other down, as they rely on each other to advocate to their supporters. 

DSA believes a better world is possible: one where we democratically decide on how society is structured for the common good rather than the profit of a few. Join us at https://siliconvalleydsa.org/join/

The post SVDSA Supports Prop 50 appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.

Mayor-President Sid Edwards and the Metro-Council are currently debating how to proportion the parish's budget. You know that the Baton Rouge police have a history of abuse and violence, and you know that the best way to prevent crime is to fund communities through social programs, homelessness support, good jobs, parks, transportation, schools and other people-centered approaches. The police can only respond to crime, but we can have a safer city by tackling the root causes. Hiring more police officers or paying them more will not address these problems, and they could make them worse.

In this bonus episode, we keep the mics rolling with Kelly Latimore as we discuss icons, Bonhoeffer, and subversive religious practices.

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One of our members, Erika Ballou, a Clark County judge, was suspended without pay by the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline for 6 months. The official reason: refusing to send a single Black mother to jail.

Judge Erika Ballou did what most people would hope for in a judge and that’s showing compassion. The Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline thinks differently though, calling her compassion a bias against the prosecutors. We at Las Vegas DSA do not see compassion as a bias and we stand with Erika Ballou.

We are against this suspension and attack on the livelihood of one of our members from a biased court system which disproportionately targets Black and Brown people. Judge Ballou served as a public defender for 15 years and was sworn in as a judge in 2021. She has faced constant attacks from the court system because of her compassion.In 2022, she was attacked by the Las Vegas Police Protective Association and Joe Lombardo who called on her to resign for “anti-police” rhetoric. Even before being sworn in as a judge she was attacked as a public defender for wearing a Black Lives Matter pin.

We at LVDSA see the double standards of a system which targets judges that show compassion to marginalized people and their struggle against an unjust system. We call on community leaders, elected officials, and the people of Las Vegas to defend Judge Ballou and condemn the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline’s decision to suspend her.

By Phil K.

DSA members and allies rally for Medicare for All outside of Rep. Doris Matsui’s office in downtown Sacramento.

In April of this year, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Debbie Dingell introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2025, the legislation for single-payer universal healthcare, along with over 100 Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate who signed on as co-sponsors.

Sadly, but not unexpectedly, Sacramento’s two Representatives—Doris Matsui and Ami Bera—are currently NOT co-sponsors of the bill. Despite the urging of a vocal and diverse local coalition for Medicare for All, including Sacramento DSA, Matsui and Bera refused to sign on, signifying their defense of a highly inefficient, profit-based system that makes it extremely difficult for half of U.S. adults to afford healthcare when they need it.

While the Trump administration accelerates the corporate attack on the working class and cuts funding for popular, necessary programs like Medicaid, Democrats like Matsui and Bera fail us by not pushing for the most effective solutions to problems that Sacramentans face every day.

It’s not enough to simply oppose Trump’s cuts when we have a status quo where more than half of Californians are skipping medical care due to cost and more than a third of Californians have medical debt. We spend about twice as much per person as other industrialized countries, but millions of people, many with insurance, still can’t get care. In combination with steadily worsening wages and economic conditions under decades of both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations, it’s no surprise that so many Americans have lost faith in politics.

Single-payer universal healthcare is the bare minimum of pro-working class policies that we desperately need, and we need elected officials who will actually work to pass it. The fact that half of elected Democrats in the House and a majority of Democrats in the Senate don’t support Medicare for All is both a disgrace and political malpractice that facilitates the rise of Trumpism.

However, the reality is that because of how entrenched the healthcare corporations are in our political system, too many politicians will not support it unless we build enough political power to either force them to support it or replace them. This is a long-term fight and it’s going to take a deep commitment to grassroots organizing and a willingness to engage in a diversity of tactics.

Sacramento DSA will continue to fight for guaranteed healthcare on both the federal and state levels. We urge readers of this blog to sign our petition, call your rep, and demand that they co-sponsor Medicare for All. Stay tuned for more blog posts on different aspects of our fight for healthcare justice over the coming months, and join our chapter’s Healthcare Committee to get more involved.

Members of Sacramento DSA deliver letters to the offices of Reps. Doris Matsui and Ami Bera urging them to co-sponsor Medicare for All.

This is an opinion piece written by an individual member and was not voted on by membership. Opinion pieces from members do not reflect the opinions of other members and are not chapter approved statements.

The dynamism and explosiveness of the Suntrapp Workers United (SWU) strike has been hugely activating for LGBTQ, labor, and political activists all over Salt Lake. It is rare that you see new unions in this state and in the food service industry. It’s even rarer you see those unions strike! SWU have taken a stand against their employer for their dignity and their right to control their own working conditions. They know their power lies in their labor and solidarity, and are causing a crisis for their employer in order to meet their demands. As a result, the vast majority of Salt Lake is behind the SWU strike and have been turning out in huge numbers to support it. Every night the bar looks almost completely dead; the end is in sight.

A strike is meant to put a business in crisis—that is precisely what makes it powerful. But when the business in crisis is a beloved small business, there is always opposition that feels it’s not “right” to unionize a small business. Is it ‘right’ for the workers to cause a crisis for an employer that has this kind of romantic cultural value, something that is increasingly rare and fleeting in a society where multinational corporations have almost completely erased the market for small businesses? This problem can be initially confusing for people trying to understand socialist politics, as progressive liberalism tends to prop up minority owned small businesses as agents of broader societal improvements.

In the DSA, we seek to understand this through a class analysis. Socialism is a project to change the world we live in, and so we have to understand the world objectively. Who controls society? By what mechanisms do they control society? Who is oppressed? How can we liberate the oppressed, and turn society on its head? In class society, the infrastructure and resources which we depend on to survive are controlled by a tiny minority of the population, which we call the ruling class or the capitalist class. They dominate society not just by controlling our workplaces, but also the state, the government, the police, the military, education, mass media, and cultural institutions. We seek to put workers collectively in charge, not just of their workplaces, but all these sections of society. In order to achieve this monumental task, we must build a mass movement of workers who understand the necessity of creating worker organizations to leverage the only advantage we can have over the capitalist class; our superior numbers and our indispensable role in the economy. We recognize trade unions as one form of worker organization which engages workers in the struggle against capitalism, so Salt Lake DSA supports and engages in efforts to build unions in Salt Lake City.

This unconditional support inevitably will lead to this problem we’re discussing at Suntrapp; what do we do when workers are unionizing against a small business? Do we support them, or do we condemn their struggle because it is against a small business owner? The answer should be obvious in the context of the class analysis above and the broader movement. It would not serve the mass movement or the organized socialist movement to make our support of unions conditional on the specific economic position of the business owners, picking and choosing which workplaces are “big enough” or “too small” for democracy. If the small business owner chooses to resist the union, they are resisting a part of the movement we’re building together.

However, there is a distinction to be made. In the simple class analysis above, do small business owners have the same socio-economic position as monopoly capitalists like Bezos, Buffet, and Musk? Are they equal members of that class which control all other aspects of society? Of course not. Capitalism and individual capitalists are not the same, and different capitalists have contradicting interests. Small businesses are much more precarious and must appeal to romantic notions of community, handicraft, and personalized experiences to stay afloat, since they lack access to the economies of scale which make large industry objectively more efficient. The owners may even do the most labor in their business, forced to exploit themselves due to the immense market pressures to stay profitable.

However, they are also not working class either. They control the working conditions of others, hire employees to work for less than they create just like any other business, and the only thing they risk is the possibility of losing their investment and becoming a worker. They don’t do these things because they are a “good” or “bad” person, but because the market forces them to make decisions to stay competitive. As a result, they occupy a middle, precarious position between hegemonic finance capital and the working class. They can be genuine community leaders, with close connections to workers, and contribute something meaningful to the world along the economic framework that our society functions. But it is also true that small business owners are materially motivated to oppose union efforts at their workplaces, and therefore will often choose to do so.

Class position alone does not always predict the decisions of an individual. Workers themselves can also choose to be enemies or allies to the working class movement. Millions of working class Americans are unconvinced of a socialist future, and often actively sabotage union efforts in their workplaces by scabbing or counter-organizing, just like business owners. Socialism is not about “good guys” and “bad guys,” it’s about who chooses to build the movement, and winning the majority to that cause. Small business owners are trying to escape the same conditions all workers are, and we can appeal to them on those grounds. Rather than seeking individualized liberation from exploitation by becoming a capitalist, the only sustainable and just solution to class society is participating in a historic effort to overcome class distinctions completely. Socialism will liberate elements of the small owning classes as well, as they will no longer need to struggle so desperately to escape being a worker. With a mass movement perspective in mind, and the disproportionate strength of the small owning class in the US, we will even likely need to win a section of this layer to our cause on the strength of our ideas and
organization.

The owner of Suntrapp, and all business owners confronted with a union, should see the union for what it is—a piece of the wider movement to transcend class society. If she cannot, we need not concern ourselves too much on whether or not she will voluntarily recognize the union. We will tirelessly organize, regardless of the opposition we encounter. As a result, we must confront a final possibility. What if Suntrapp closes completely? Are the workers still correct to organize and to strike?

If the owner chooses to close their bar (to be clear, it will be her choice; the bar can absolutely continue to operate with a unionized workforce) rather than maintain complete control over their employees, we would continue to support the SWU strike as a win for the organized working class movement. Socialists are not engaged in a project to build more small businesses. We know the organized working class has the power to transform our society; a nation of small businesses does not. The workers in SWU know the stakes, and understand their struggle in the context of a broader one. Every picket I’ve attended, the workers at Suntrapp emphasize their vision of transforming the entire food service industry in Salt Lake. If an owner is too proud and short-sighted to bargain with their employees, then so be it. SWU will carry their experience and knowledge to their next workplace with an intimate knowledge of the stakes and an understanding of themselves as members of a working-class movement. The community should also learn the same lessons; that we have the ability to take a stand collectively as a class.

Unions at large businesses face the same threat of discipline through closing businesses. Capital has moved entire manufacturing bases to more oppressed nations for ‘cheaper’ labor and less regulation, and will often threaten to discipline organized labor by accelerating that process. That does not mean we oppose the movement the ruling class is trying to punish. It should be clear that we do not evaluate support of a union effort based on the reaction of any business owner, large or small. We see it as an element of an international working class movement.

The post Suntrapp Workers United and Small Business Liberalism first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

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