What is a DSA SF Priority Campaign?
A Priority Campaign is an intersectional and cross-chapter effort to achieve measurable goals in no more than three priority topics per year. With this focus, we are able to dedicate labor, money, and time to those areas we democratically determine are most important to winning socialism. Our Priority Campaigns for the year of 2022-2023 are:
Free Muni Full Service
Email: freemuni@dsasf.org
In the midst of a self-declared climate emergency, high rates of traffic injuries and fatalities in our streets, and record wealth inequality, the City must prioritize Free Muni and Full Service for a safe, equitable, future-oriented transit system.
While SFMTA and Mayor Breed claim we cannot have fare-free transit and full, dependable Muni service, we know this is a false choice. Accessible, reliable transit is essential to providing San Francisco access to our jobs, our basic needs, and our community.
The goal of Free Muni Full Service, a priority campaign of DSA SF, is to build a transit justice coalition within San Francisco. This coalition will engage in community outreach, rapid response, direct action, and vision translation to identify an effective path towards FMFS aligned with communities’ visions, and feasible both politically and financially.
Sign up here to get involved and stay in touch about the campaign, and read this op-ed about why San Francisco needs Free Muni Full Service!
Our vision for the campaign:
- Build a solid, long-lasting coalition, engaging current and future Muni riders, transit workers, disability justice advocates, abolitionists, climate activists, and other affected communities.
- Collectively fight for abundance, not austerity, envisioning a public transit system that is physically, financially and practically accessible to all—with frequency, reliability, complete coverage, safety, and disability needs met.
- Democratize SFMTA to overcome the structural and historic issues with lack of leadership and vision from SFMTA and city officials.
- Abolish fare enforcement and end criminalization for non-payment, which disproportionately harms BIPOC.
- Require equity, workplace protections, just treatment and continued employment for all transit workers.
- Create a safe and environmentally just transit system that will help San Francisco meet its Vision Zero and Climate Action Plan and goals, end car and fossil fuel dependence and become a truly transit-first city.
- Achieve a transit system for the people: Free Muni, Full Service.
Completing the Ballot Measure Campaign
Email: electoralboard@dsasf.org
DSA SF elected our Electoral Board to execute the chapter’s electoral strategy and implement our Ballot Measure Chapter Priority. DSA SF’s electoral work serves to empower our chapter to take on capitalism through the state; it’s one pillar of our dual power approach. It also helps us grow our ranks, because a lot of electoral work involves reaching everyday San Franciscans on timely issues that impact our daily lives.
Our chapter has had a number of electoral wins citywide, including electing Dean Preston – a DSA SF member – to the board of Supervisors and 2018’s Prop F which won a free tenant attorney for anyone facing eviction. Our current vision is to run our own ballot measures and candidates from our ranks that further our revolutionary principles and priorities, build our membership, and turn our hardworking reputation into one that sets the political agenda. We aim to build an electoral infrastructure that trains members in-house in the most impactful voter persuasion tools. From field and turnout to messaging and fundraising, we’re using proven electoral methods to spread the word about socialism at the ballot and in our neighborhoods with programs like the D5 Eviction Free Zone, which we’ve recently kicked off a campaign to support.
We are already qualified for the November 2022 ballot. To get involved, please join our Slack channel, and sign up for our Fundraising, Outreach, and Research committees.
We train new comrades! No experience necessary!
A Better DSA is Possible
Email: better@dsasf.org
It is impossible for us to build socialism without building solidarity with each other. Capitalism alienates us from our labor and each other, so the work of being a comrade in a socialist organization means creating a space where we are grounded in ourselves, each other, in our relationships, and in our community. We must intentionally build this socialism.
This priority builds upon our current Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty (BLIS) priority by working to build the structures necessary to resolve the leading issues uncovered by the BLIS anti-oppression audit.
As it pertains to mobilizing members, this priority is necessary for DSA SF to be a winning organization. Our chapter must be a space that supports a mass movement. To that end we need to develop better ways of relating to each other and to our work. And we need to socialize new members – from their first interaction with the chapter – that we are invested in this together, and that there is a space for them to join in our collective struggle.
Here’s how we win:
- Build the structures called for by the result of the BLIS priority’s chapter anti-oppression audit
- Review and propose reforms to the grievance process, incorporating broad chapter input and principles of transformative justice
- Create and socialize a culture of congenial political struggle and increased trust and solidarity among the membership, especially across organizational silos, differing political ideologies, and divisions imposed and violently enforced by capitalism
- Review and edit the chapter’s Code of Conduct in alignment with the above