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Committees

Where the work happens

East Bay DSA has many committees engaged in the important work of the chapter, addressing the needs of its members and the larger community.

Steering Committee

The Steering Committee of East Bay DSA is the governing board of the chapter, generally supervises its affairs between regular membership meetings, and implements the priorities adopted by the membership at the last annual convention.

  • Co-chairs: Yari G. and Ella T.
  • Vice Chair: Laura C.
  • Recording secretary: Max M.
  • Contact: chairs@eastbaydsa.org

See more about the Steering Committee.

Labor Committee

If workers are to have the power in society to get their needs met, we must develop and grow the capacity to stop business as usual. When push comes to shove, capitalists and their political puppets care foremost about securing profits and property rights. Therefore, workers must build independent and democratic workplace organizations -- that is, unions and worker committees rooted in rank-and-file initiative and shopfloor power. Such robust labor organizations allow workers to articulate and advance their collective interests both as workers and as part of the broader working class.

The Labor Committee is made up of workers, rank-and-file union members, union staff, labor educators, and labor activists committed to building a strong, militant, democratic labor movement and its socialist wing, all of which are key to a rebirthed, truly mass socialist politics. To help bring about this revitalization, the Labor Committee engages in workplace organizing support, labor education, and solidarity work, and more.

  • Co-chairs: Nick R. and Zach W
  • Vice Chair: Jonathan M
  • Recording secretary: Tim T.
  • Contact: labor@eastbaydsa.org

See more about the Labor Committee.

Electoral Committee

The Electoral Committee organizes East Bay DSA’s electoral campaigns, and coordinates with EBDSA-endorsed elected officials. We cannot vote our way to socialism, but the state is nonetheless a key arena of struggle against capital, and electoral campaigns can be powerful tools to foster working-class militancy and build socialist power and organization. The Electoral Committee is tasked with long term electoral strategy, preparing home-grown socialist candidates to run for office, and running independent chapter campaigns to help them win.

See more about the Electoral Committee.

Climate Action Committee

The Climate Action Committee believes that all people, present and future, are entitled to a beautiful planet with a vibrant natural world that can sustain a good life for all. Moreover, because capitalism is deeply tied to the destructive extraction of resources and disruption of the ecosystem, it must be overthrown and replaced if that vision is to be achieved. The core logic of capitalism is incompatible with a healthy planet.

Capitalism’s antagonism to nature is right now most sharply expressed in the fossil fuel-caused climate crisis, and so this is where our focus is. Our broad aim is to build the capacity necessary to replace capitalism with an ecological society, by weaving together the ecological struggle with other anti-capitalist fights.

As a committee, we are currently exploring a variety of tactics and approaches, including: working with existing unions to build power for a just transition away from fossil fuel use, working with the rest of the climate movement to help move it in an anti-capitalist direction, participating in electoral campaigns to intervene in local struggles against fossil capital, and organizing political education.

We meet the second Wednesday of each month and you can find our meetings on the calendar. We hope you’ll join us in the struggle for a healthy and beautiful planet!

Housing Committee

The Housing Committee is organizing a movement of working-class tenants, homeowners, and houseless people fighting the California real estate lobby and corporate landlords, for housing that is universal, democratically run, ecologically designed, high-quality, permanently affordable and off the private market.

Our campaigns have included fighting in coalitions for local rent control campaigns in cities like Hayward, statewide ballot initiatives for strong rent control like Prop 10, tenant protections, direct actions, and electoral efforts to create taxes on speculators and the wealthy, all in order to disrupt speculation, spread socialist housing ideas, and seize power from landlords and capitalists.

We also popularize our vision of social housing through community education efforts, propaganda, and by supporting DSA chapters across the state to advocate for social housing.

Branches

We at East Bay DSA wish to grow our members from all corners of the East Bay, building on the success of our South Bay “Eden” Branch and our Solano/Napa County Branch. If you're a DSA member living in the East Bay and see the potential in your region for organizing local socialists, whether that’s a city, county district, city district, etc., reach out to us!

Political Education Committee

The Political Education Committee educates East Bay DSA members on socialist theory, history, and methodology through regularly occurring Socialist Night School classes and public lectures and events. Through these political education programs, socialist organizers will be able to understand their current context and their tasks ahead more clearly and gain the fluency they need to become public tribunes for socialism.

See more about Socialist Night School.

Meetings Committee

The Meetings Committee of Easy Bay DSA partners with the Steering Committee to facilitate general meetings within the chapter.

It's main focuses are securing venues for the meeting, liaising with the venue staff, ensuring all AV equipment is setup correctly, and generally ensuring both in person participants and remote participants have a seamless experience to enable members to partake in chapter-wide democratic decision-making.

See more about Meetings Committee.

Protect Abortion Working Group

The right to abortion is under attack. As socialists, we’re building power to demand abortion as a human right, in coalition with partners in the East Bay and beyond. Join our movement to fight right-wing attacks on our bodies and to hold the Democratic Party accountable to its promises

Racial Solidarity Committee

As socialists, we know that racism, imperialism, and capitalism go hand-in-hand. The Racial Solidarity Committee organizes to disentangle and shed light on the connections between racist and imperialist oppression and the capitalist paradigm which emisserates the working class as a whole.

We work to learn more about anti-racist movements of the past in order to apply lessons to today’s organizing.

We seek to make connections with anti-racist organizers in the leftist milieu to contribute a critical class consciousness while also learning how to address specific forms of oppression that affect our fellow comrades of color.

We cannot end racism and imperialism until we end capitalism - all working people, especially working people of color, have an interest in destroying capitalism and humanizing our society. True working class liberation must address the needs of people of color, and organized people of color must join broader anti-capitalist movements.

Solidarity!

See more about the Racial Solidarity Committee.

Chapter Coordination Committee

The Chapter Coordination Committee is where we work on the nuts and bolts of the systems that make the chapter tick. There are 5 teams, each with a team lead who will help coordinate the work.

  • Chair - Schedule and help coordinate Leads, Max M
  • Tech Team - Manages our Discord server, our website, and NationBuilder.
  • Meetings Team - Plans General Membership Meetings. Lead: Michael Sel
  • Office Team - Stocks, tidies, and keeps our office running smoothly. Lead: Quinn C
  • Editorial Team - Content strategy and review for the newsletter, Majority, email, SMS, and social media. Interim Lead: Nate A
  • Membership Team - Coordinates new member onboarding, membership development, and chapter socials. Lead: Yari G

Tenant Organizing Committee

Organize your building, or help your neighbors organize theirs! The Tenant Organizing provides trainings and support for people who want to build up the power to fight back against landlords.


Co-chairs: Hamsa E. and Inés D

Contact: tenants@eastbaydsa.org


See more about the Tenant Organizing Committee.

About Us

The East Bay Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are working for both an economy and society run democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.

Made with love by your East Bay DSA comrades 🌹