News and updates

DSA SF voted unanimously at the August general meeting to join the No New SF Jail Coalition.

The coalition is a partnership between a growing number of activist and political organizations to permanently close the jail at 850 Bryant, which has been slated for demolition for over twenty years due to seismic instability.

The looming crisis, however, also presents an opportunity for San Francisco to do better than simply building a new jail in its place. Ultimately, if a new jail is built, the city will continue to rely on incarceration instead of tackling the social problems that are actually at the root of crime and injustice. The coalition instead demands increases to supportive housing, mental health, diversion programs, and decriminalization that would make a new jail unnecessary.

The coalition also opposes any stopgap solutions like transfers to existing jails or electronic monitoring that would take on the same role in the city’s political ecosystem as 850 Bryant: preventing long-term investment in social solutions to social problems.

DSA SF is proud to join other organizations including Critical Resistance, the Coalition on Homelessness, ACLU of Northern California, the SF Tenants Union, and Supervisor Matt Haney to demand that our city government close 850 Bryant and invest in non-carceral alternatives.

Ever wonder about all those billionaires out there? Who’d they crush to get their money and what do they do with it all? Wonder no more as DSA SF’s Writing Committee hosts Billionaire Story Hour, an event to expose their dirty secrets and educate the masses!

Join us for Billionaire Story Hour on Wednesday, August 14 from 6-8pm at Knockout, 3223 Mission St. in San Francisco. We’re looking for people who would like to present! Bring your own billionaire story or email us at writing@dsasf.org and we’ll supply you with material. Or, simply join us for an evening of lively storytelling as we relate the antics and offenses of some of the world’s most reviled billionaires. Come to learn, laugh, and understand billionaires’ power and be inspired to put it back in the hands of the people.

Admission is free and Knockout will be selling drinks as usual. Accessibility information: This event will have amplified sound. Knockout is located on the ground floor.

Want to present and tell us all the dirt on a billionaire? Questions? Email writing@dsasf.org today.

Come commemorate two years of DSA SF this Friday! DSA is hosting a party at the Tenderloin Museum to celebrate the growth of our chapter these past two years. The event is free, but we’ll also be raising money to send our delegates to DSA’s National Convention this August.

This event is great for first-time attendees! A facilitator will be available 15 minutes before the scheduled start time to orient new members.

Our keynote speakers for the event will be Professor Emeritus of Geography at UC Berkeley Richard Walker, current candidate for SF District Attorney Dean Preston, and DSA SF Co-Chair Rose Kleiner.

Appetizers will be served.

Details:
Friday, July 19, 2019
7:00 PM – 10:00 PM PDT
Tenderloin Museum, 398 Eddy St. San Francisco

The 2019 DSA National Convention is right around the corner and DSA SF is getting ready to make the most of it. In our last general meeting we elected a diverse group of incredible organizers to represent us in Atlanta. Congratulations to Kaylah W., Darby T., Jennifer B., Jen S., Otto P., Rose K., Aelia P., Shanti S., Evan M., Jon X., Faiq R., Nishikant S., Gabriel M., Lia R., Brace B., Shahid B., Hae Min C. Sasha P., Alexander P., Elizabeth M., Drew D., and Charles D., and thank you for your service to our chapter!

The chapter also unanimously endorsed Pass the Hat, a national resolution that would help build and maintain smaller DSA groups outside of metropolitan areas by providing a $100-per-month stipend to all chapters.

Next up on the convention prep checklist is our June 13th Resolutions Walkthrough meeting. Our chapter’s delegation will be presenting research and summaries of the resolution compendium for this year’s convention, and we’ll be discussing the more contested resolutions as a chapter. These are decisions that will affect all of DSA, and our delegates need to know what the chapter thinks about them, so come make your voice heard!

DSA SF’s Justice Committee held its second Brakelight Replacement Clinic of the year on June 8, 2019, at the San Francisco Christian School, located in the Outer Mission.  Members of the committee and other volunteers replaced neighbors’ brakelights, free of charge, and conversed with neighbors about socialism. Earlier this year, the Justice Committee held the clinic in the Bayview.

Originally founded by New Orleans DSA in 2017, the Brakelight Replacement Clinic is a practical way of pushing back against the over-policing of communities of color by taking steps to minimize chance encounters between civilians and police.  It’s also a great way to meet our neighbors. During San Francisco’s Bayview and Outer Mission clinics, our hardworking volunteers spoke to dozens of neighbors and replaced over 50 brakelights.

This event is a great opportunity for volunteers of all levels of experience, whether they know how to change a brakelight or not.  Interested in organizing a clinic for your neighborhood or signing up for a shift in the future? Get in touch with the Justice Committee at justice@dsasf.org.

Members of DSA SF’s Socialist Feminist (SocFem) working group joined community organizers and sex workers at Oscar Grant Plaza on June 2, 2019, in a rally and celebration in honor of International Sex Workers Day, also known as International Whore’s Day.  

International Sex Workers Day, observed annually on June 2, honors sex workers and brings attention to inhumane working conditions, exploitation, and unequal access to justice faced by sex workers around the world.  The day’s activities challenge oppressive patriarchal standards of morality and deeply-rooted stigma that harm sex workers and take away their economic agency.

The date commemorates an eight-day occupation of a church by a group of sex workers seeking better working conditions in Lyon, France, in 1975, and is commemorated in various cities around the world.  This year, Bay Area sex workers and their allies rallied for the total decriminalization of sex work, which would allow sex workers more autonomy, independence, and freedom from criminal prosecution.

SocFem has supported sex workers’ rights to work and organize in the past and collaborates with community partners to support former and current sex workers.  Like any other workers, sex workers deserve dignity, empowerment, and the ability to found unions and collectives to advocate for better working conditions.

Interested in organizing with women, trans and non-binary people, and cis-male allies to fight issues stemming from the intersection of capitalism and the patriarchy?  SocFem meets the second Wednesday (6:00-8:00 p.m.) and third Saturday (2:00-4:00 p.m.) of the month.

Supervisor debates tend to be sleepy affairs, especially six months before a special election. But last Monday over 200 people came out to hear Dean Preston and Vallie Brown in their first debate.

Dean proposed doubling the amount of a housing bond from $500 million to $1 billion, buying up land to build social housing on, and piloting a free muni service. Brown got booed for claiming she lives paycheck-to-paycheck while owning property in San Francisco.

The campaign continues to inspire D5 residents to rethink what’s possible in San Francisco. Volunteers come out every Thursday night to phone bank and on Saturday mornings to knock doors in the neighborhood. About 70% of voters at their doors support Dean after speaking with a canvasser.

If you want to help get the word out about Dean, come to a phone bank or canvassing event! Too nervous to talk to strangers, but don’t mind telling your friends about Dean? Volunteer to host a fundraising party! More of a reader than a talker? Join the policy research committee! It’s easy to plug in, and there’s no better way to learn critical organizing skills and level up your activism.

Find out more about the campaign and get involved at votedean.org.

What’s May Day?

May Day is a day for workers to unite in solidarity across the globe. Although it started in the United States, it isn’t widely recognized here. The holiday emerged from the radical struggles of the nineteenth century and commemorates workers and activists who fought and died for the workplace protections that we enjoy today.

In 1889, the International Socialist Conference declared that May 1 would be an international holiday for labor in commemoration of the Haymarket affair of 1886. What is the Haymarket Affair, you ask? It’s a story of heroism in the face of power. Over 200,000 workers banded together across multiple industries to leave their workplaces and demand an eight hour workday. The next May Day–and every May Day since–workers across the world have gathered to protest a world in which production is motivated by profit, not human value.

But in the United States, powerful interests have tried to erase May Day. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland moved it to the first Monday in September to obscure its radical history. Dwight Eisenhower later proclaimed May 1, 1958 as “Law and Order Day,” signaling the beginning of an attack on unions and labor rights that continues up to the current day.

But times are changing. Mobilization is on the rise. In the last few months alone, DSA SF has helped secure union contracts for workers at Anchor Brewing and Ford GoBike. Meanwhile, polls show that the majority of Americans view organized labor favorably, and the legacy of May Day teaches us that solidarity among workers is an incredibly powerful force.

Get Involved!

In DSA-SF, we see the month of May as an opportunity to double down on the wins we’ve achieved, strategize for those yet to come, and honor the workers and organizers who made all of this possible. We’ve got events scheduled all month long!

On May 1st, International Worker’s Day, join DSA-SF and EBDSA comrades– along with workers from Anchor Brewing and ILWU–as we fight the privatization of the waterfront and a billionaire’s land grab to build an Oakland As ballpark at the expense of unionized dockworkers and working class West Oakland tenants.

On May 4th, come picnic with Bay Area DSA chapters in Marx Meadow in Golden Gate Park.

On May 12th, meet us at a Dogpatch WineWorks in the heart of San Francisco’s historic warehouse district as we engage in a wide-ranging conversation with labor activist David Ranney, who gave up a tenure-track position in academia to engage in a 20-year struggle as a labor and community activist in Chicago, working in factories to make ends meet. His new book, “Living and Dying on the Factory Floor,” is the culmination of 25 years reflecting on his life in the labor movement, and a testament to a lifetime of struggle against capital in solidarity with working  people.

On May 16th, cheer with us at the Tenderloin Museum as we hear from workers and organizers from DSA-SF, Anchor Brewing, the Transport Workers Union, and the Tech Worker’s Coalition. Learn about the risky, underground world of organizing a winning union drive.

On May 23rd, join us again at the Tenderloin Museum as we take stock of one of the most important moments in our nation’s history — the 1934 San Francisco General Strike led by Anchor Brewing’s own Internal Longshoremen and Warehousing Union.

Keep on fighting, comrades, and Happy May Day!

Amidst a national assault on organized labor, standing with workers has never been more important. Workers at the VCA Animal Hospital in the Mission have been fighting for a fair contract in 2019. While members of the ILWU bargaining committee continue to make concessions to meet the needs of the company, VCA has dragged their feet on every issue.

Short staffing and lack of training remain contentious issues that management refuses to budge on. Doctors have been laid off in order to “handle short staffing issues” in other departments. The single on-site oncologist has accepted a position elsewhere and in response VCA is closing the department and a service which it has offered for at least 19 years instead of reinvesting in needed care.

Despite the decades-long neoliberal effort to cripple unions, workers and their allies are still resolved to tip the balance of power at VCA toward those who do the work. Over a hundred ILWU members, DSA SF comrades, Anchor workers, and Supervisor Hillary Ronen came out in solidarity with veterinary workers last Thursday, April 11th, to send this message to VCA management.

These workers deserve a fair contract – now! 

DSA San Francisco has officially endorsed The San Francisco Slate for Democratic Socialists of America’s National Political Committee! We are extremely proud to back three amazing women who have helped build our chapter. Find out more about Jen, Jenbo & Darby at http://sanfranciscoslate.com