East Bay DSA Joins With Federal Unionists to Fight Trump’s Attacks
The EBDSA crew outside the Oakland Federal building
On Friday July 11 the East Bay DSA “Fighting Oligarchy” campaign shifted from internal organizing and planning to organizing on the streets. Nearly twenty DSA and Federal Unionists Network (FUN) members turned out on a sunny downtown Oakland afternoon to test our idea that we could recruit federal workers and the broader public into the struggle against Trump’s attacks on federal workers, collective bargaining rights and vital services by canvassing outside a federal workplace.
To avoid prohibitions on soliciting on federal property, we set up our table across the street, at the foot of a pedestrian mall where many federal workers come out for lunch. We began by hearing inspirational remarks from Sol Hilfinger-Pardo of the FUN, and former East Bay DSA co-chair Keith Brower Brown, about the attacks on workers and our opportunity to establish a place to fight back in solidarity.
Over the next couple hours, we had a lot of good conversations and signed up several dozen people, most of them federal workers. In our debrief we agreed that the event validated our premises and marked a successful beginning to the public dimension of the campaign.
FUN leader Hai Binh Nguyen, right, discusses shared concerns with UAW 4811 leader Iris Rosenblum Sellers at the Labor Notes conference in Oakland on June 14
East Bay DSA’s Top-Priority Campaign
Six weeks earlier, East Bay DSA’s annual convention adopted the “Fighting Oligarchy” campaign, which had been in the works since March, as a priority resolution. The membership voted separately to make the fight against the Trump oligarchy the chapter’s top priority for the coming year. The campaign resolution provided that “a central focus of our campaign” will be solidarity support of the FUN, “a group of self-organized federal workers who play a strategic role in the national struggle, and here in the Bay Area.”
Mark Smith of DSA SF, a founder and national steering committee member of the FUN and president of Local 1 of the National Federation of Federal Employees, was on hand to help motivate the resolution at the convention. As he notes in a short video promoting the campaign launch, “There are over 2 million federal workers across the country” (3 million including postal workers) “and tens of thousands of us right here in the Bay Area. We’re the ones delivering essential services the working class depends on, getting social security checks delivered on time, putting out wildfires, delivering your mail, answering phone calls from veterans in crisis, and keeping your food and water safe.”
Outside the ATU union hall for a solidarity photo on June 29
The Role of Labor Notes
A few weeks later, campaign organizers spread the word to 400 rank-and-file union members at Oakland Technical High School for a day-long Labor Notes event, the Bay Area Troublemakers School. Labor Notes was a critical incubator of the FUN, which coalesced at a meet-up of federal employees at the national Labor Notes conference in Chicago. FUN’s co-founders modeled their new network on Railroad Workers United, another group of self-organized rank-and-file workers from multiple unions within the same sector that also had its roots in a prior Labor Notes conference.
Leaders of the FUN joined the Oakland event as participants and featured speakers. Hai Binh Nguyen, a FUN leader at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, spoke at the opening plenary, and Mark Smith, a Veterans Health Administration worker, spoke on a panel about “Fighting Cuts and Layoffs” with local public-sector workers.
East Bay DSA convention shows solidarity with federal workers. (Photo: J. Martin)
An Energizing Public Meeting Brings in New Members
By the end of June, campaign organizers, who had been meeting weekly since the convention, led our inaugural event: a political education and member engagement session that filled the hall of Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1555.
We were fortunate that Alex Pelletieri of New York City DSA, and a member of DSA’s National Political Committee, was in town to open the meeting. Leading a familiar chant—“When workers’ rights are under attack, what do we do? STAND UP, FIGHT BACK!”—Pelletieri then broke it down for the audience. He laid out the attacks on workers, unions and the working class, and how the Federal Unionists Network is leading the charge in fighting back.
“For people to get involved in the fight for a better world,” he concluded, “they have to believe that one is possible. They have to believe that the people around them have their back. So the FUN and DSA are giving us hope. In the face of horrific attacks from Donald Trump, we are providing a place for working class people to fight back.”
Six leaders of the Federal Unionists Network were on hand, three of whom spoke on a compelling panel moderated by former East Bay DSA co-chair Zach McDonald. Representing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Veterans Health Administration, the panelists described the attacks on federal workers and unions, the impacts of those attacks on the broader labor movement, and some of the ways they erode programs, protections and services on which the working class and general public depend.
“This administration is attacking federal workers from all directions,” said Bethany Dreyfus, a FUN leader who works at the EPA, and is president of AFGE Local 1236. “They are firing our newest employees, laying off those in mid-career, and leading the most experienced out with early retirements. But without people in these positions, the workforce will be too small to ensure that vital services get to the American people.”
After hearing from the speakers, participants reviewed the campaign’s goals: build a broad working-class movement in the East Bay by engaging local federal workers in the FUN, and by connecting their fight with local political and labor struggles and with the fights of other union workers (e.g., teachers, nurses and academic workers) to serve our community.
Participants then broke out into small groups to begin planning public events, political education programming, research, communications and member engagement activities for the coming months. They also signed up to join the public launch: a tabling and canvassing action at the Ronald Dellums federal building in Oakland a few weeks later.
"Having East Bay DSA on board has been really energizing,” said Hilfinger-Pardo, who works at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “There is incredible potential in organizing the 2 million federal workers in this country, but it is no small task. So when DSA helps us organize, it puts wind in our sails. We're really excited to see how this partnership develops."
Canvassing Federal Workers
The action at the Dellums Federal Building was the moment we had all been waiting and planning for. In remarks before we fanned out to talk with federal workers, Hilfinger-Pardo, a member of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) Chapter 335, said “We have been very active in our union for years now because we have to fight every single day for our collective bargaining rights,” adding that “Right now, the federal workforce is under attack in an unprecedented way.” She concluded that “today is just the beginning” of a campaign that will “create those connections” between federal and non-federal workers so that “we continue to grow and strengthen each other through collective action.” [See video]
Former East Bay DSA co-chair Keith Brower Brown pointed out the massive betrayal of the Trump administration in cutting 17 million people from Medicaid a week earlier. “We're going to capitalize on that,” he said. “We're going to build a movement that can keep pushing not just to fix these cuts and defend these workers, but keep pushing for the kind of universal social programs that we all deserve.”
The event proved that many Californians are looking for an opportunity to get involved in the fight. A dozen pairs of DSA and FUN members fanned out across the mall on both sides of the building and on the sidewalk. Another pair was turned back by security as they made their way to the cafeteria. Our campaign lit (written and designed by California Red editor Fred Glass) provided a political framing for the conversations and included QR codes to sign up with the FUN and connect with DSA.
Besides connecting federal workers with the FUN, we used the opportunity to begin to achieve another goal of the campaign: connecting federal and local struggles. A few days after the canvass, healthcare workers at the Alameda Health System, the county’s public hospital and clinic network, held a rally at Highland Hospital in Oakland to call on Governor Newsom to fully fund MediCal. We shared information about that event during our picket.
As we debriefed, exciting new ideas came up. Could we develop a “canvass in a box” so that pairs of canvassers could easily and nimbly come out again, soon and regularly? Could we design a poster with a QR code, and poster-canvass the nearby businesses frequented by federal workers? Could we plan an event at a nearby national park?
“So many federal workers are new to organizing,” MT Snyder, chair of the FUN’s Bay Area organizing committee, said afterwards. “DSA's campaign gives us a huge opportunity to learn from experienced organizers and build our own skillsets while engaging members of our unions.”
More Events to Come
In the next month, we will hold a political education event, “Trump 2’s Crusade against Labor,” which will feature speakers and a discussion about DOGE and the disastrous effects of slashing the American scientific and social safety nets. East Bay DSA’s new “Socialism Beats Fascism” Committee is hosting a public meeting featuring the “Fighting Solidarity” campaign on August 5. And we are planning a social event to bring together FUN members, socialists and local workers.
We will also be supporting a DSA-endorsed, FUN-led event on July 23, “Federal workers say: ICE Out of Our Workplace! ICE Out of ALL Workplaces!” at San Francisco City Hall.
The summer’s organizing will culminate with mass actions on Labor Day, an opportunity for us to reach many more federal workers, members of other unions, and the broader working class.
“Trump’s attacks on the federal workforce and public services aim to create a climate of fear, precarity and desperation for all working Americans,” said campaign co-chair Zach McDonald. “But we can unite millions around the expectation that working people deserve good jobs and all the protections and programs federal workers deliver that we depend on. That’s what federal union members are fighting for, and that’s why it has never been more important for us to stand together.”