News and updates

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Today members of DSA SF as part of the #NoPGEBailout coalition protested the California Public Utilities Commission’s emergency meeting to approve $5.5 billion in private funding for PG&E’s bankruptcy restructuring.

Statement released by the #NoPGEBailout coalition:

Dozens of Family Members, Ratepayers, Interrupt California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Hastey “Special” Meeting to consider $6 Billion PG&E Bailout

At a last minute, hastily organized meeting of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), dozens of protestors from the No PG&E Bailout Coalition demanded that the CPUC stop the illegal proceedings, and not move forward with preemptively offering billions of dollars in public funds to PG&E, the corporate utility, which it regulates.

Protestors chanted “Shame” and “Wall Street Bailout: We Say No” and read the names of the 88 people killed in the 2018 Camp fire, while the CPUC commissioners voted to first declare an emergency action, allowing them to forgo public process, and then to authorize loans from wall street banks to bailout PG&E if the utility declares Chapter 11 tomorrow, January 29th.

“The CPUC is enabling PG&E’s criminal negligence that killed 86 in the Camp fire with a $6Million bailout on the backs of already struggling ratepayers in California. We denounce the attacks on Community Choice energy programs and we denounce the PG&E Bailout!” – Jessica Tovar, Local Clean Energy Alliance

“We owe it to the victims of Paradise, Sonoma, and San Bruno to radically restructure what our gas and electric system looks like. What the CPUC did today by authorizing PG&E to take out these loans without discretionary review is going to create even more situations of putting profit over people. We have the opportunity to change our electric system to one that’s safe, public, and ensures everyone the right to access and the CPUC blew it.”

• Faiq Raza, San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America

The No PG&E Bailout Coalition committed after the meeting to pressure Governor Gavin Newsom, the legislature, and the CPUC to stand up for a democratic, public, local, renewable, safe energy system for all Californians.

There were 600 marches in different cities this year. The theme this year was the “women’s wave” to celebrate the 127 women elected to congress. In San Francisco, the rally was co-hosted by Planned Parenthood, and about 60,000 people turned out for the march this year. Last year there were 80,000.

We marched with the socialist and labor contingent alongside International Socialist Organization and Worker’s Voice.

In a special meeting in 2017, the chapter voted to expand the steering committee from 5 seats to 7 seats. We held elections for interim seats during our January 2019 general meeting.

We welcome Matt McGowen and Ash Perry to the Steering Committee!

Elections for full-term will be held during the June general meeting. Nominations for steering committee start in April.

As the largest socialist organization in San Francisco, DSA SF is proud to be selective in our electoral endorsements. We don’t endorse in every race, and we consider endorsement only if a significant number of members express interest. Campaigns undergo a thorough process of research and debate before we ever hold a vote, and must meet several rigorous standards, chief among which is the capacity of the ballot measure or candidate to build real power for the working class.

DSA SF members voted to endorse three campaigns in the November 6, 2018 elections:

• Tony Kelly for District 10 Supervisor, our first local candidate endorsement
• Yes on Proposition C, also known as Our City, Our Home
• Yes on Proposition 10, also known as the Affordable Housing Act

Tony Kelly for District 10 Supervisor

Tony Kelly is a longtime activist with a strong record of fighting for racial and environmental justice in District 10. His years of work alongside Greenaction on the Hunters Point Shipyard contamination scandal—in which the Navy and its contractors covered up the existence of radioactive waste beneath housing developments, while City government turned a blind eye—have demonstrated his commitment to the wellbeing of his community.

Tony is a proud socialist and member of DSA SF, and his platform includes bold approaches to issues of housing and homelessness; systemic racism and police brutality; creation of a public bank to divest the city from corporations that exploit workers and destroy our planet; and getting big money out of politics. Tony is the only major candidate in District 10 who has not taken money from developers, lobbyists, or corporate interests, and the City Hall machine is fighting hard against him.

Long ignored by even their own representatives in City Hall, the people of District 10 deserve a Supervisor who will truly fight for their health, dignity, and rights. And all of us, as San Franciscans, deserve a government that will stand up to the capitalist class as it attempts to turn our city into a playground for the rich.

Electing Tony Kelly will help us begin to build a city for the many, not the few.

Sign up to volunteer for Tony Kelly!

Yes on C

Prop C is one of the most ambitious pieces of homelessness legislation that San Francisco has ever seen on the ballot. The premise is simple: tax the rich to house the poor.

If passed, it would enact a small (0.5%) gross receipts tax on companies making over $50 million a year, the revenues from which would fund a set of comprehensive services to alleviate and prevent homelessness in San Francisco:

• Permanent, supportive housing for 4,000 homeless youth, families, and adults
• Mental health and addiction services
• Emergency shelters for 1,000 people
• Homelessness prevention services, such as rental assistance and eviction defense

According to the most conservative estimates, there are more than 7,500 homeless San Franciscans at any given time, and many advocates believe the actual number is several times higher. Enormous waitlists for shelter beds can leave people on the street for months. We live in one of the wealthiest cities in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, and yet people starve in the shadow of billion-dollar skyscrapers.

Large corporations like Square and Stripe have poured incredible amounts of money into defeating this measure, because to them, a negligible tax increase is worse than our most vulnerable neighbors dying in the streets. Even after the Trump administration handed them a massive tax break, wealthy capitalists are unwilling to pay their fair share.

It’s time we made them.

Sign up to volunteer for Yes on C!

Yes on 10

Prop 10 is all about expanding rent control and keeping rental housing affordable throughout California. Thanks to a 1995 law known as Costa-Hawkins, cities are prohibited from creating new rent control laws, which limit the actual cost of rent, and vacancy control laws, which limit how much a landlord can raise the rent after a tenant moves out. Prop 10 would repeal Costa-Hawkins.

If Prop 10 passes, cities would have the ability to enact both types of laws for the first time in more than 20 years. In San Francisco, for example, we could expand rent control to units built after 1979. We could ensure that when you move out of your rent-controlled apartment, the next tenant doesn’t have to pay ten times what you did. In short, we could finally start addressing the affordability crisis that is driving thousands of working-class people out of the city each year.

We face an uphill battle in this election. Landlords and real estate lobbyists have spent millions of dollars spreading lies about Prop 10, and we need all the help we can get to pass this historic reform.

Your landlord is scared we’ll stop them from reaping enormous profits and perpetuating the housing affordability crisis. Let’s show them they should be.

Sign up to volunteer for Yes on 10!

Join DSA SF in voting Tony Kelly for D10 Supervisor, Yes on C, and Yes on 10 on November 6, 2018!

The bourgeoisie is laying a trap. For the past five years, in some form or another, the forces of global capital, which take (in part) the form of the governments that form the EU and the USA, have been calling for a war of annihilation upon the people of Syria. “Human rights are being violated!” they wail. Human rights! Coming from the class that keeps the masses of the world in penury and misery, such yelling is less than empty. The United States and its partners in the European Union wish to destroy the institutions of the Syrian state and replace them with quisling dogs amenable to the capitalist class of the exploiter nations. The Democrats, Republicans, the whole of the capitalist class line up behind the landlord Donald Trump and chant with him: Human rights for Syrians—at the barrel of our guns!

When an A-10 Warthog shoots a thousand bullets a second into farmland, poisoning the soil with depleted uranium tips, who exactly is being gifted these vaunted “human rights?” When NATO member Turkey invades Afrin, causing a massive amount of the population to leave or face arrest and torture, do they bring “human rights?” When the US blocks importations of cancer medicine into Syria to punish the people, do they think this perverse cruelty is going to somehow bring about “human rights”?

Do these rights include housing, a job, a fair wage, food, medicine? Or do “human rights” for the US and NATO mean just one thing: The right to be exploited by transnational companies assisted by a puppet government dependent upon the forces of US capital? It isn’t necessary to melt down and inject 50 hours of Parenti lectures to come to the conclusion that these so-called “human rights” don’t mean a thing when they’re brought in on the wing of a warplane. Our decimation of Libya, our free-market regime change in Iraq, not to mention our wars of annihilation upon the Koreans and Vietnamese people (remember their story of nuns being killed in South Vietnam, and ghost boats off of Tonkin!) make it clear: America brings only death, destruction, and punishment if it is denied a market.

The War on Syria, which has for years been waged by America and it’s NATO & EU allies, has been drawing to a close. To many Syrians, peace is almost on the horizon, and the task of rebuilding can truly begin. To America, a country is slipping out of reach, and must be brought into line.

We, as socialists, must stand and repeat the slogan: No to War! Any war America wages is unjust, no matter what humanitarian smokescreen is used to obscure the true reasons. We live in the belly of the beast, the heart of global capital and imperialism, and in order to fulfill our duty as socialist we must bite the intestines, piss on the guts, and clog the veins of this grotesque animal.

No to Imperialist War! No to murder and decimation!

This essay was written by a member of DSA SF. Thank you to the DSA members and many other community members who turned out to anti-war rallies this weekend.

On March 4, 2018, the San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America gathered in a special meeting to consider endorsements for local and statewide ballot initiatives appearing in the June 5, 2018 elections, as well as an early endorsement of the November 2018 statewide Affordable Housing Act ballot initiative, which would repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act’s ban on strong rent control and vacancy control.

June 5, 2018 Election

DSA SF has made the following endorsements and statements on initiatives being voted on in the June 5, 2018 election. The chapter has taken no position and made no statement with respect to any other initiative appearing on the June 2018 ballot.

• • Proposition C – Tax on Commercial Rents for Childcare and Education
    • Vote YES
    • Accompanying Statement: DSA San Francisco endorses a YES vote on Proposition C to raise the commercial rents tax on the largest businesses in the city in order to fund child care and early childhood education for most families while increasing salaries for the workers who make these services possible. We are disappointed that the proposal is means-tested, with income-based restrictions that limit which families can qualify. The strongest, most effective social programs are those like Medicare and Social Security, which provide universal benefits and thereby build solidarity across the entire working class. Nevertheless, we view Proposition C as a critical first step in creating a right to truly universal child care and family benefits. For this reason, we endorse a “YES” vote on Proposition C.
  • Proposition D – Tax on Commercial Rents for Housing and Homelessness Services
    • No Endorsement
    • Accompanying Statement: Proposition D would raise the commercial rents tax to provide some measure of new funding for middle-income housing and homelessness services, but it also contains a “poison pill” that would kill Proposition C — that is, if both propositions pass but Proposition D wins more votes, Proposition C will not go into effect. DSA San Francisco condemns Interim Mayor Farrell and Supervisors Cohen, Safai, Sheehy, and Tang for playing politics with this disingenuous effort to block Proposition C. We are appalled that these conservative Democrats chose to force affordable housing advocates to compete for funding with child care providers, many of whom are women of color who work for completely inadequate wages. We reject this crass attempt to break working class solidarity, and for this reason we make no endorsement on Proposition D.
  • Proposition F – SF Right to Counsel, City-Funded Legal Representation for Tenants in Eviction Cases
    • Vote YES
  • Proposition G – Parcel Tax for San Francisco Unified School District
    • Vote YES
    • Accompanying Statement: DSA San Francisco endorses a YES vote on Proposition G, which would institute a new parcel tax used to increase salaries and benefits for public school teachers and other employees. We are disappointed and concerned that a small percentage of this tax (estimated less than 5% of its value) would be used to fund existing charter schools, which are an anti-socialist, right-wing attempt to privatize and destroy public education. This said, in light of the teachers’ union’s strong support of Proposition G, we endorse this measure to help ensure that San Francisco will be able to pay its teachers and other public school employees a living wage and not lose them to the affordability crisis.
  • Proposition H – Use of Tasers by San Francisco Police Department
    • Vote NO
  • Proposition 68 – $4 Billion Statewide Parks, Environment, and Water Bond
    • Vote YES
  • Proposition 70 – Vote Requirement for Using Statewide Cap-and-Trade Revenue
    • Vote NO

November 6, 2018 Election

DSA San Francisco endorses a YES vote on the Affordable Housing Act, a November 2018 statewide initiative that would repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act and thereby give cities the power to institute strong rent control and vacancy control. We now join our comrades in a number of other DSA chapters, including DSA Los Angeles and DSA East Bay, in supporting the statewide ballot initiative to repeal Costa-Hawkins.