Electoral Committee report
As reported at the September 23 State Council meeting, the California DSA electoral committee struggled to identify candidates for our Assembly Slate program. We have spent the last few months discussing plans to pivot our projects so California DSA can still advance democratic socialist politics and support DSA chapters in California in the 2024 electoral cycle.
Though we will not be campaigning for a legislative slate next year, the committee still intends to produce a finished legislative program with the planks that CA-DSA delegates voted on earlier this year. We will preview key elements of it at the December State Council meeting.
Additionally, we are inviting all DSA members in California to join us in three key electoral projects for the 2024 electoral cycle:
Using the legislative program, and in collaboration with other DSA chapters in California, we intend to produce a voter guide measuring legislative candidates up and down the state against our legislative program.
Dating back to the early 1900s Progressive Era, California’s regular ballot measures are an exciting and simultaneously infuriating method of direct democracy, and just like every other major election year, 2024 will see campaigns for several significant ballot measures put to voters. The electoral committee is recruiting members to research these measures and then propose a slate of endorsements and a campaign plan to engage California DSA chapters through 2024.
Finally, DSA’s national convention in 2023 adopted a resolution encouraging democratic socialists to run candidates for school boards. Public schools remain one of the last bastions of public services in the United States despite being under attack from billionaires, the neoliberal charter movement, and increasingly, far-right efforts to target trans and queer youths and suppress intellectual freedom. Our committee is aiming to support this effort in collaboration with the national campaign to help local chapters identify and execute school board campaigns to defend public education!
All three of these projects are still in early planning stage, but all members are invited to sign up to help us with any of these three projects here:
