Chapter Priorities

Drafted and adopted by the entire membership of East Bay DSA, this 2020 East Bay Democratic Socialists of America Priorities Resolution proposes a strategy for what we can best organize for in the coming year, with unity and urgency, toward achieving a democratic socialist world together. This document serves as the base for guiding the work of the chapter and of our committees until our next convention. This document was voted on September 13th, 2020, and ratified by the Steering Committee after being edited for style consistency on October 6th, 2020.

COVID-19 has upended the world as we know it, exposing and magnifying the pre-existing inequalities in our society. Thousands of working-class people—disproportionately people of color—are dying from unsafe working conditions or lack of healthcare. This global pandemic has resulted in an economic recession that has left millions of people unemployed and unable to pay rent. The powerful are using this crisis as a springboard for an agenda of austerity and corporate bailouts, and ordinary people are being pushed to their limits and grasping hold of collective liberation. The racist police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and thousands of others have simultaneously ignited a surge of protests, direct action, and organizing. The uprising has surpassed the Civil Rights movement in scale and has provoked a national movement to defund the police, which DSA has taken up as a priority.

The injustices of this period are the direct result of racialized capitalism. An international ruling class has become wealthier than any in history, enriching themselves through price-gouging, ecological pillage, and the labor of exploited workers. To prop up their rule, the ultra-wealthy few increasingly drop any charade of liberal democracy, as they brutally divide and conquer working people using the lines of race, gender, and borders.

The growth of the Democratic Socialists of America to 75,000 members offers the best opportunity in generations to provide a unifying force between these struggles, one able to coordinate and build socialist ideas among millions of working people.

In the pre-COVID era, we won California for Bernie Sanders. Bernie’s ultimate electoral defeat was not a failure, but reminds us that there are no shortcuts to democratic socialism. It demonstrated the power of collective action and has grown DSA by the thousands. We inspired people across the world with a truly working-class program.

At the center of our struggle for social and economic justice is the working class. The working class is the only social force with both an interest in fighting for deep social transformation and the leverage to win it. Disruptive actions like strikes and walkouts that stop the engine of profit, and mass protests like the ones rippling across the country have the power to bring change. Our chapter is committed to organizing strategically to bring the working class into mass action in class struggle against capitalism and all forms of oppression.

Our road to democratic socialism will require growing, democratic, leftwing labor unions. It will require engaging in electoral campaigns to win state power and eventually achieve a fully independent worker’s party. It will require an unwavering solidarity in fighting oppression. It will require socialist internationalism and solidarity with struggles against global capitalism and imperialism. It will require a commitment to our own collective political education. And it will require DSA to further become a multiracial, democratic, mass organization.

What is the democratic socialist world we seek to build? We organize for a just society, where working people make the decisions that determine our destiny. We organize for a society free of oppressions of race, gender, sexuality, and borders. We organize for a world where basic needs—education, healthcare, housing, and the environment—are never commodified for profit, but instead provided freely for all. This is the socialist world we want.

Center Black & Brown Liberation Movements

Racism is an essential element of capitalism, which divides the working class and reproduces racialized disparities in wealth and social status. To bring that system to an end, we must center socialist Black and Brown liberation struggles in our chapter’s work because the fight for BIPOC liberation and against imperialism has been central to the development and continuity of socialism in the US, because of their fundamental critique and confrontation with capital. Our fight against the systems that oppress us must be as deeply interwoven as those systems. Our liberation is collective. We know that the fight against racism is not ancillary to the fight against capitalism, but integral to that fight. We seek to put these politics into practice.

We must embrace existing BIPOC resistance and liberation struggles, including mass movements like the George Floyd Uprisings, in the Bay Area––from high school students to established non-profits and working class institutions. As we do this, we must continue to offer an anti-racist socialist analysis and vision to the conditions of the working class, and the shortcomings of the existing institutions. We must see ourselves and East Bay DSA as agents within Black and Brown struggle––a fundamentally working-class struggle––and not outside of it.

East Bay DSA will:

Support and develop BIPOC leadership as we organize in East Bay communities like Richmond, Hayward, and East Oakland
Continue to launch and develop diverse YDSA chapters
Prioritize and commit to developing BIPOC members through affirmative action in all our elections, committees, and working groups
Support militant BIPOC rank and file and unorganized workers
Develop strategies to increase DSA’s credibility as a working class institution and to retain new members of color

Empowering and Building YDSA

Young people are integral to the development of a mass multiracial working-class movement. YDSA organizers are the DSA organizers of the future; as such, fostering YDSA’s growth will benefit DSA at large both in the present and the future. YDSA is also more diverse than DSA as a whole, and expanding to more high schools and community colleges can allow YDSA to become even more reflective of the diversity of the working class.

In the past year, YDSA in the East Bay has grown from two to seven chapters, making us one of the most active regions in the country. It is crucial that we maintain our success, and because student bodies inherently have high turnover, sustained support is necessary to retain and build upon this strength.

East Bay DSA will:

Reaffirm the role of our existing YDSA Coordinator
The purpose of the YDSA coordinator is to grow and strengthen YDSA chapters and develop leaders within chapters
In addition to working with existing chapters, the coordinator should actively recruit students into DSA and work with them to develop chapters at their institutions
The coordinator should prioritize non-white, non-cis-male, high school, and community college students
The role will be limited to one specific person, but the coordinator may themselves choose to deputise further members in an unofficial capacity
Establish a system of mentorship for YDSA members
The existing coordinator will work with current YDSA members to prepare them to take on the role in the future
Future coordinators should, whenever possible, be former YDSA members
Educational materials should be prepared for leadership development
Ensure that YDSA chapters are provided with resources such as financial support and materials
The coordinator will work with the Steering Committee to connect YDSAs with these resources

End the Wars, at Home and Abroad

Imperialism is an essential aspect of capitalism. As socialists living in the belly of the beast, we have a responsibility to work to dismantle the US empire.

The task is more urgent today than ever before. In an era of intersecting crises, the ruling class retrenches further into policing and militarism in order to put down resistance. Poverty, food insecurity, and paramilitary terror spread around the world as coups and invasions absorb more nations into the neocolonial system. Populations in the US are increasingly unable to meet the basic needs of survival as resources are channeled into an extravagant military budget. The threat of nuclear war has never been greater, and the US military remains one of the world’s largest polluters.

Militarism is tightly connected with policing and the maintenance of white supremacy. This was illustrated recently as the National Guard, regular military, and militarized police deployed against participants in the uprising. All this fits neatly with the racist history of US foreign policy, marked by white-settler nationalism, expansionism, and American exceptionalism.

East Bay DSA will:

Work with the newly reconstituted DSA International Committee on its campaigns, such as the BDS campaign against Israeli apartheid and the No War campaign against sanctions on Iran.
Fight domestic militarization by joining campaigns such as those against Urban Shield, use of chemical weapons and less-lethal projectiles by police, and deployment of National Guard and regular military against protestors.
Conduct political education about the historical development and current dynamics of US imperialism; its centrality to global capitalism; anti-colonial, anti-imperial struggles; and the new cold war with China.
Build capacity for mass mobilization in emergency situations by working in coalition with existing anti-war, migrant justice, and climate/environmental justice organizations in the Bay Area.

Housing

The Bay Area is an epicenter of our nation’s housing crisis caused by colonization of Indigenous land, racial segregation, and capitalism. COVID-19 has driven this crisis into a graver collective emergency. The working class must unite to stand up against real estate and its allies and demand the cancellation of rents and mortgages, an end to evictions, and immediate shelter for the houseless.

In the long term, we seek the decommodification of housing because capitalist housing markets cannot provide for people’s basic right to shelter. We demand social housing that is racially and income integrated, democratically run, ecologically designed, high-quality, permanently affordable, and off the private market.

These goals will take a mass movement of working-class tenants, houseless people and homeowners standing in solidarity, organizing at the point of exploitation and state repression. Such a movement must intersect with the movement against the racist police state, as we seek to defund police, decriminalize houselessness, and redistribute resources toward systems of care and mutual security like social housing. To these ends, East Bay DSA and the Social Housing Committee will:

East Bay DSA will:

Work on strategic near-term housing campaigns in coalition with working-class organizations, as decided by the Social Housing Committee, including efforts to organize DSA members as tenants, agitate and organize tenants who are unorganized, especially in geographies not covered by existing tenant organizations.
Mobilize to prevent mass evictions and foreclosures and to support houseless East Bay residents through direct actions, including eviction defense, and mutual aid.
Mobilize to support legislation canceling rents and mortgages, controlling rents, removing restrictions on strong rent control, and creating social housing.
Popularize our vision of green social housing as health, racial, environmental and gender justice through political education and collaboration with other committees like the Racial Solidarity Committee on efforts to defund police and tax the rich.

Political Education

In order to develop a rigorous and competent critique of capitalism and better understand the obstacles confronting a socialist project, it is essential for chapter members to have access to a political education program that allows for the free development of ideas and that can address the theoretical and strategic questions such a mission requires.

East Bay DSA will:

Hold events which will expose members to key strategic and theoretical debates within the socialist left and will give space for members to engage in critical discussion on such topics
Continue the introductory Socialist Night School, while seeking to expand the diversity of assigned authors, to incorporate discussion on our priority focuses, and to feature critical discussion on current relevant topics
Develop an educational program for active members which will broaden and deepen their theoretical understandings, beyond the introductory ideas presented in the Socialist Night School
Work to integrate political education into committee meetings throughout the chapter
Initiate and participate in coalition events where speakers can address issues confronting a socialist movement
Highlight history and theory regarding socialism and the fight against oppression, and prioritize writers of marginalized identities in all our political education events.

Providing Members with Tools for Empowerment

A steadily growing core of dedicated East Bay DSA members is amazing progress for our chapter and DSA at large. Moreover, having a diverse movement of dedicated, confident, and prepared organizers is integral to wielding our power and fighting the injustices of capitalist structures strategically and efficiently. In order to create lasting progress, it is vital that we not only grow in numbers, but that we build infrastructure capable of more thoroughly training and preparing new organizers.

New members join the organization with varying levels of opportunity and life experience, and it is our job to make necessary organizing and leadership skills as accessible as possible. We need to prioritize sustainable growth and development of members. This will require putting in the integral work of educating, mentoring, and empowering members, not only with theory, but with tangible skills they can apply inside and outside of our organization.

DSA should be a left institution capable of transferring campaign experience and organizing skills to new movements and mass mobilizations as they arise, and transmitting those skills to the widest possible section of the working class. We need to set the expectation that new, established, and potential members will all find a place to grow as organizers when they join DSA, that we are a resource for building skills as well as building community, and that every person has the capability to lead or organize, they just need the tools for empowerment.

East Bay DSA will:

Expand our trainings to equip members with the tools necessary for becoming confident and effective socialist organizers.
Ensure each new member is contacted by an established member in order to orient them within the organization, and encourage a stronger culture of mentorship and relationship-building.
Expand our mobilizer program.
Host more social and introductory events, fostering a greater sense of community and solidarity.

Pandemic Response

The COVID-19 pandemic is the predominant political and social reality in the United States and the world and is likely to be so for the near future. Optimistic estimates for the availability of a vaccine, required for the resolution of the public health crisis, are the end of 2020, though this timeline may extend much further. Absent a vaccine, the public health crisis requires a continued and sustained slowdown of economic activity.

So far, we’ve seen unemployment, uninsured rates, and poverty climb as wealth inequality increases. Meanwhile, workers in essential industries such as logistics, nursing, transit, and food production and distribution are required to continue working in unsafe conditions while holding vital economic leverage. Public education workers are also engaged in fighting for safe school reopening.

It is an obvious fact that the current crisis is incompatible with a system in which the majority of the population must rely on congregating in physical proximity or in enclosed spaces to meet the basic needs of their survival.

Furthermore, the guaranteed monopolies to pharmaceutical companies developing successful vaccines or treatments ensures inequality in the distribution of the remedies required.

East Bay DSA will:

Orient our activities for the next year around responding to the political, economic, and public health crisis of COVID-19
Amplify and join workers' workplace struggles against unsafe and exploitative working conditions
Oppose to austerity measures
Agitate around social programs such as Medicare for All, expanding unemployment benefits, and an eviction moratorium
Advocate a massive redistribution of wealth as the only solution to the pandemic crisis
Link the current COVID-19 crisis to the broader system of capitalism and the responses outlined above as part of a broader struggle for socialism in our campaigns and messaging

Recruitment and Growth of East Bay DSA

Since the resurgence of DSA post-2016, our growth has been driven by self-selection and through limited social networks. As a result, the chapter remains a class-focused, but not class-rooted organization that is overwhelmingly white. Working class power is crucial to winning a socialist future. A mass, multi-racial organization of workers is an important tool to debate and strategize together to overthrow racist capitalism. To become rooted in the working class requires us to be strategic and organize for our growth. Socialist groups throughout US history have used recruitment to grow their numbers and build bonds within the working class. DSA should not assume that single-issue and single-constituency based organizations are the only political home for working class people; we should reject gatekeeping by NGOs in particular, as we seek to incorporate newly radicalized people into the Left. A socialist organization can provide a political outlook and big-picture context that others cannot, therefore recruitment should not be viewed as redundant or inappropriate. Therefore, in order to transform itself and build the power of the East Bay’s working class, East Bay DSA will:

East Bay DSA will:

Establish roles within the chapter solely dedicated to recruitment and retention of new members with input from the general membership,
Nurture existing social spaces and create new ones based on constituency, as landing pads for new members (i.e. Black, Indigenous and other people of color, parents, workers in a particular industry, residents of a neighborhood, etc.)
Initiate recruitment drives targeting natural leaders identified in our orbit and contact lists (Bernie supporters, YDSA chapters, union members, etc.)
Integrate recruitment as a goal within existing chapter campaigns and participation in mass movements, especially those that work alongside working class people of color.
Expand our geographic reach to a wider range of working class areas in the East Bay.
Develop our Spanish-language organizing capacity and communications, and work with committees to integrate Spanish and language justice principles into their trainings, events, and campaigns.

Transit for the People: From Jovanka for AC Transit to a Green New Deal

Jovanka's AC Transit Board campaign is generating excitement and energy that can fuel continuing Transit for the People organizing. Serving primarily working class and Black and Brown communities, public transit is a prime arena for creating multi-racial working class power in collaboration with East Bay DSA’s Green New Deal, Electoral, Labor, and Racial Solidarity Committees.

Before and after Jovanka’s victory in November, this project will work for the key goals articulated by Jovanka’s campaign:

Center low-carbon public transit at the heart of a Green New Deal
Speed transition to emission-free buses
Increase ridership and reduce policing by permanently eliminating fares
Expand service and union transit jobs
Beyond November, Transit for the People will build a grassroots campaign in the East Bay and work with DSA activists across the country on national GND strategies for public transit.

East Bay DSA will:

Campaign for Jovanka Beckles.
Strengthen bonds with ATU 192 and Labor. Transit unions and Labor are natural allies as we fight for expanded carbon-reducing, union jobs. We’ll build on the solidarity developed through Transit Equity Day 2020, ATU 192 contract support, and RideSafe campaign shared with Voices for Public Transportation (VPT).
Develop strategies to promote Transit for the People and generate the working class support required to win demands. We will organize community and labor support for Jovanka and other electeds fighting for our key goals. POC-led unions and VPT allies will amplify the multi-racial working class fight for the Green New Deal.
Build a replicable model of Electoral Campaign to Ongoing Organizing within East Bay DSA, including consideration of organizing a Bus Riders Union. Winnable, incremental victories bring improved conditions in our lives. These victories must be protected and expanded with increased class organization and power. Transit for the People strives to create a continuum from electoral campaign through long-term, visionary struggle.

Workplace Organizing

Workers are divided by race/ethnicity, gender, geography, immigration status, sector/occupation, and more. For the working class to win socialism -- a society based on social ownership and democratic control over the means of production -- it must first unite across divisions and actively recognize itself as a class. Workplace struggles and unions are a crucial site for the development of revolutionary class consciousness where the working class develops its capacity and confidence to fight and lead. While workers today are fighting back in unprecedented ways, there is still a long way to go.

In order to realize their potential, unions must facilitate workers’ ability to self-organize and build multiracial solidarity. These fights should be based in the realities of the shop floor, where the exploitation and oppressions of capitalism are felt personally and immediately, but must also expand beyond the confines of the workplace to transform society at large.

The present alienation between the socialist and labor movement, resulting from decades of ruling class attack, constitutes a key strategic barrier for advancing the socialist and working class movements. Therefore, the reintegration and mutual growth of these two movements is our strategic north star.

East Bay DSA will:

Encourage members to take jobs with the purpose of workplace organizing through the jobs program, and utilize the labor census to help them organize where they already are
Educate members and the public on the labor movement: its history, its present, and the challenges and opportunities ahead, including how the working class can be unified across social, sectoral, and geographical boundaries through connective struggles, such as the Black Lives Matter movement
Develop meaningful relationships with rank-and-file activists engaged in workplace and union organizing, such as through trainings and solidarity work
Develop meaningful relationships with progressive democratic local labor organizations that empower their rank-and-file members to self-organize

Class Struggle Elections

While as socialists we understand that we won’t elect our way to socialism, electoral politics are still significant to our project. Most working class people in the US conceive of politics through elections, meaning that they have high visibility. Further, socialist electeds can serve as extensions of working-class movements while in office, raising demands and growing our power both inside and outside the state.

East Bay DSA supports class-struggle candidates: socialists who are by, of, and for the working class and who will use their campaigns and office to foster working-class militancy and consciousness, draw sharp political lines with capitalists, and build socialist power independent of capitalist parties.

East Bay DSA should be electorally proactive, endorsing selectively and building our own electoral organizing powerhouse. This means rooting our electoral work in the organic movement of the working class, recruiting candidates from our organization and campaigns to run as class-struggle candidates, and avoiding progressives who may deserve our vote but not our resources.

East Bay DSA will:

Endorse and support only class-struggle candidates and ballot measures that:
Raise the expectations of the working class, unite them against a common capitalist enemy, and promote mass working-class movements outside the state;
Openly identify as democratic socialists;
Take no corporate, private prisons, law enforcement or real estate money.
Use the electoral campaigns that we engage in to meet the following goals:
Spread class consciousness and build the power and militancy of the working class;
Build DSA by growing our capacity and recruiting new working-class members;
Make and potentially win anti-racist socialist demands;
Strengthen relationships with key coalition partners, especially organized labor.
Develop an Electoral Committee and Endorsements Process that is capable of and empowered to identify strategic races, prepare our own candidates to run for office, do key research, communications, fundraising, and field work, and create a more rigorous endorsements process

Proposition 15 is the Number One Electoral Priority

If passed, Prop 15 will levy the largest tax on the rich in California since World War II, raising $10-12 billion yearly to fund schools and local services, with 92% of the revenue generated from just 10% of commercial property holders. The pandemic-induced Depression means California tax revenues will be hit hard, and budget and program cuts inevitable without new revenue sources, especially impacting working class communities of color. Prop 15 enables East Bay DSA to advocate for broader progressive tax goals within and while supporting the movement to Defund the Police. The measure is backed by a broad coalition of unions and progressive community organizations, and opposed by the most reactionary sections of capital. Work on the Prop 15 campaign allows East Bay DSA to strengthen its labor outreach and alliances, and educate our members on labor’s centrality to the socialist project as well as understand the importance of progressive taxation to raising class consciousness.

Therefore, East Bay DSA will make building a statewide Proposition 15 campaign the number one electoral priority of the chapter in 2020.

East Bay DSA will:

Coordinate the work of the East Bay DSA Labor and Electoral committees (and other appropriate bodies) to integrate our Prop 15 campaign with our other local electoral campaign goals and activities until November 3;
Align East Bay DSA work on the Prop 15 campaign with the goals and tasks delineated by the statewide DSA Labor Working Group, including education about the measure and recruitment to active involvement among our own members in August; outward facing voter engagement through our own activities, as well as through labor channels and the Prop 15 campaign itself, such as phone banking, text banking, virtual house meetings, and socially distanced human billboarding on the streets, in September; and GOTV in October.
Push local elected officials over time to implement the local funding with proper priorities.

Towards An Independent Workers Party

The Democratic Party dominates California politics. Nevertheless, even before the pandemic 150,000 people experienced homelessness daily while investors make billions off our rent, our state is poisoned by corporate pollution, underfunded schools fail our children, and billions are spent each year on incarceration.

The Democratic Party is funded by and serves the interests of capitalists. Meanwhile there is no comparable organization of and for the multi-racial working class. Without any major left alternative, unions and anyone who cares about justice and equality are trapped within the Democratic Party as junior partners to wealthy donors.

Mass workers’ parties, independent of capitalist interests, have historically been essential for organizing workers as a powerful and united political force.

East Bay DSA will:

Commit to a class-struggle electoral strategy and the eventual construction of a mass workers’ party independent of the pro-capitalist Democratic Party. While we recognize that it might not always be possible for all DSA-endorsed candidates to run independently of the Democrats, we reject attempts to take over the Democratic Party.
Explain where appropriate through campaigns and media that the Democratic Party primarily represents capitalists, who profit at the expense of working and oppressed people and the planet; and explain why workers need to construct their own political party. We encourage politicians and candidates endorsed by East Bay DSA to use their public platforms to do the same.
Explore future opportunities with unions and progressive allies for democratic socialist candidates to run independently of the Democratic Party since ballot access in California is not restricted by party, ultimately to form a new party of and for workers in California.

Center Mass Movements

This year has shown the power of mass movements to bring people into the streets to fight for systemic change by disrupting the accumulation of capital. In the street, we come into conflict with the State's repressive power––and into community with one another where visions of another world emerge.

The fundamental principle of mass movements is the refusal of delegation or representation. We activate the power we have when we act collectively to take our lives into our own hands. Movements prepare us to run society for ourselves––not for profit.

Mass movements are the most effective way for the working class to win material concessions from racialized capitalism. They are the most effective way in which we voice and fight for our demands in a political and economic system that is fundamentally designed to deny us power. Mass movements reaffirm our own power through direct contest with the State and are the way most people are radicalized. Protests and uprisings are likely to continue and intensify as unemployment and evictions increase,

East Bay DSA will:

Provide socialist analysis for mass education
Identify, support, and follow up with organic leaders, organizers, and participants as with the Berkeley High marches and the F*ck Your Curfew
Participate in direct action and civil disobedience trainings
Connect key sectors of labor to mass movements, as with the Juneteenth ILWU port shutdown
Use community organizing in the long term (e.g. building local solidarity networks and mutual aid teams––outside of the State) to build and strengthen the relational and democratic structures that can catch the sparks and fan the flames of uprisings to cultivate mass movements to realize a socialist society.

Campaign to Win California Single-Payer and Medicare for All

East Bay DSA is committed to fighting for a democratic socialist vision of single-payer healthcare, based on national DSA’s five principles; that means a single, universal program that’s free at the point of service, offers comprehensive coverage, and a jobs initiative and severance for those affected by the transition to a public single-payer system.

A California single-payer system like the one established by the Healthy California Act meets these criteria. It would decommodify health insurance and guarantee healthcare as a right to every resident of California, regardless of income, employment, or citizenship status. By uncoupling insurance from employment, California single-payer would build power for the working class.

If Biden wins in November, state single-payer in California is the most strategic policy step towards national Medicare for All. East Bay DSA should prioritize a campaign for CA single-payer in 2021, contingent on Biden victory.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a new urgency for reforming our broken market-based healthcare system. Socially determined racial disparities in health outcomes during COVID-19 must be addressed by a universal healthcare system that provides guaranteed comprehensive care, free at the point of service.

East Bay DSA will:

If Biden wins in November, organize with DSA’s National Medicare for All Committee and other California DSA chapters to pass statewide single-payer in 2021 through a wide range of tactics.
Pressure the Governor to submit a federal waiver request to capture federal resources and support for California single-payer.
Position statewide single-payer and Medicare or All as the best policy tool for addressing racial health disparities.
Agitate against insurance and pharmaceutical companies to build class consciousness around the issue.
Agitate for reproductive justice and sexual health as additional uncompromised principles of universal healthcare

Green New Deal

Under capitalism, there can be no future for human society. Capitalist pursuit of infinite growth has wrought an urgent and accelerating ecological crisis that will continue to destroy the lives of working class people unless we control our own ability to survive and thrive. Solutions must be rooted in improving quality of life if they are to gain popular support.

A socialist Green New Deal (GND) is more than a solution to existential ecological crisis. It is a vision for reorienting our society and economy to serve people over profit. A socialist GND stands against new and existing fossil fuel infrastructure and aims to create an economy powered by publicly owned, clean, renewable, energy by 2030. A socialist GND rejects market based solutions and instead places the resources necessary for survival--—energy, water, housing, transit, food—under public control. A socialist GND is a union job guarantee. A socialist GND acknowledges the historical legacy of environmental racism and directly improves conditions for Black, Indigenous, people of color, and other historically oppressed populations. A socialist GND prioritizes liberation of communities most affected by climate change and global extractive industry.

East Bay DSA will:

Build relationships with and agitate for an explicitly socialist Green New Deal among:
Local environmental organizations
Massive, growing youth-led climate strike movements
Labor Unions, especially utility and transit
Unorganized workers and members of the working class
Groups working for peace and international solidarity
Advocate for the state of California to take over the capitalist-owned PG&E and replace it with a public entity. This public entity must be democratically run, with decision-making power in the hands of labor and the public.
Collaborate with the national DSA Ecosocialist Working Group and other DSA structures across the country to evaluate our strategies collectively