Revolution at the Ballot Box
Revolution at the Ballot Box
A Dialogue for Revolutionaries
Sponsored by League of Revolutionaries for a New America
Our quality of life, our survival, our historic strivings, our cherished ideals, and all the love we feel for each other are at stake in the next two years. Regardless of the final vote count, the 2022 midterm elections mark a turning point in the movement for people’s basic economic needs and freedoms. People have laid hold of the ballot not just to secure elected positions, but as an organizing weapon. They are creating the terrain and the conditions for the larger battle in 2024.
Featured Speakers include:
Carroll Fife is the Councilmember for Oakland’s District 3. After decades of public service as a community organizer, Carroll was called to run for office by the people with whom she organizes every day. One of the founding members of Moms for Housing, Carroll has fought both in the halls of power and in the streets to protect the human right to housing.
As Councilmember, her priorities are to divest from police to invest in the community, get every unsheltered person in Oakland into housing as quickly as possible, and create progressive tax structures to correct social and racial inequities. Her historic winning campaign, supported by virtually every endorsing organization in Oakland, was powered by over 1000 active volunteers and has transitioned into a permanent political organization dedicated to passing transformative legislation and building a progressive majority on the Oakland City Council.
Melinda Lavon is a mother, midwife, and community organizer based in Lawrence Kansas. She currently serves as Membership Chair of Lawrence Democratic Socialists of America and is on the General and 2nd Congressional District Committees for the Kansas Democratic Party. Melinda was the Chair of Vote No Kansas, a political action committee full of organizers from DSA and Sunrise, and worked with a broad coalition of groups around the state to defeat the Kansas anti-abortion amendment. This next election cycle Melinda is serving as the Chair of the Progressive Caucus for the Kansas Democratic Party and as Chair of the Vote Kansas PAC.
Crystal Sanchez is the current Western Regional Director for the National Union of the Homeless, the president of the Sacramento Homeless Union, and co-founder of a 501 3C non-profit called Sac Soup, which stands for Sacramento Solidarity of Unhoused People. Crystal is an impacted voice as a former ward of the court foster group home youth, which led her to homelessness at the age of 18. She currently has an Associate Degree in criminal justice and is working on her Bachelor’s Degree in criminal justice, crime, and behavior. She has fought on the front line with other impacted voices to change the narrative on social justice issues.
Martha Escudero is a housing activist who began occupying one of the 13 vacant CalTrans-owned homes in El Sereno with her two daughters as part of the movement that seeks to address the inequities stacked against unhoused and housing-insecure families during the pandemic. As fellow-reclaimer Benito Flores said, “Reclaiming a home is an act of civil disobedience. When there are many vacant homes–3 vacant homes per unhoused person–it’s a very clear injustice created by the government itself. So we act in civil disobedience taking the vacant homes to make the problem public, so that the whole world knows.”
General Dogon has been a Human Rights Organizer in the Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN) for almost twenty years. He was raised on the same Skid Row streets he now defends, and educated himself while serving time in the California Department of Corrections. He has dedicated his life ever since to educating others and organizing people to resist injustice and exploitation. With LA CAN, he has confronted the priorities, tactics, and inhumanity of the Central City Association’s Business Improvement Districts in their campaign to displace the old Skid Row community and rebuild downtown for the wealthy.
Suggested Reading: The Road to Real Democracy and the Midterm Elections
https://rallycomrades.org/2022/10/the-road-to-real-democracy-and-midterm-elections/
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