DSA-LA’s Childcare for All Campaign
DSA Los Angeles voted to approve a universal childcare priority resolution at the 2021 and 2022 local conventions. While the authors of the resolution did not submit a universal childcare priority resolution at the 2023 DSA Los Angeles local convention, they hope to continue the campaign work at a smaller scale in the chapter. This article represents a summary of lessons learned in the campaign.
It is a crisp Saturday morning in Plummer Park, in West Hollywood, California. There is already a line of children creeping around the swing set, eager for their turn. Other children will sheepishly ask their parents if they can approach a picnic table covered in a red tablecloth full of crayons, bubble kits, and frisbees, all emblazoned with the slogan “Childcare for All”. While the kids play with the free toys made available at the picnic table, their parents will speak with the volunteer organizers of the Democratic Socialists of America, Los Angeles.
If there is anything DSA-LA members involved in the chapter’s Childcare for All (C4A) campaign have learned over the last two years, it is that parents love talking about their kids. That’s why a key part of the campaign has been putting on “Family Field Days,” events hosted in parks across Los Angeles County that provide fun activities for children while parents talk with campaign organizers about their struggles with childcare. Through hundreds of in-depth conversations, socialist volunteers were able to gather information about the devastating realities of raising a family in California. These conversations informed the core tenets of the chapter’s demand for universal childcare: that it should be free at the point of service, locally accessible and play-based, and create unionized, public childcare jobs.
Chapter volunteers set up their displays in parks and playgrounds, a perfect setting for discussions with parents.
To have thoughtful engagements with working parents in LA County, campaign organizers realized that Family Field Day volunteers would need to be conversant about the current childcare services available across Los Angeles. To ensure that, organizers in the C4A working group educated themselves and developed a “Childcare Navigator Training,” where members could be trained to understand the complex network of child care resources available in California. This included mapping the byzantine network of public, chain, and family-owned childcare centers and understanding the complex, means-tested funding schemes that determine if a family qualifies for discounted childcare, often in the form of subsidies. Despite not having many core members that had first-hand knowledge of accessing childcare, researching and putting on this workshop allowed DSA-LA members to speak fluently about where to find more information about publicly-funded childcare in Los Angeles, while also acknowledging the severe limitations of a means-tested program. Another goal of the workshop was to ensure DSA-LA members could provide these resources to parents in their communities, and in the process lead to authentic, trusting relationships that required multiple points of contact. For example, if a parent wanted to learn more about signing up for Head Start, the DSA-LA organizer they talked to could follow up with resources and develop that relationship, further embedding our organization in our local communities.
The Family Field Day and Navigator Trainings are just two elements of a much broader universal childcare campaign undertaken by DSA-LA membership. Through these tactics and more, DSA-LA has been able to build a strong analysis about the critical need for universal childcare, parent contacts for recruitment, and develop leaders that can use the skills they learned to make future chapter initiatives more impactful. Public education events and Family Field Days helped to develop organizers in local branches. Our San Fernando Valley and West Side branches established a continuous presence in a number of neighborhoods within their respective regions throughout the campaign.
The chapter has also done important work establishing itself as a political force in the childcare arena. Even after the end of our priority campaign, the chapter can continue to strategize with our chapter’s elected members on the city council and LAUSD school board to craft policy proposals rooted in our socialist analysis.
By embedding ourselves in our local communities and committing ourselves to social investigation, we positioned DSA LA organizers to craft a campaign that was at the heart of one of the most salient issues for the working class, showing that we can build a Los Angeles for all – no matter how small.