What We Stand For

The Capitalist system is designed by the wealthy elite to profit from exploiting the working class. We sell our labor to the owners of capital for a wage or salary that is significantly smaller than the value we create. We are subject to the tyranny of the capitalists: their ownership of our homes and workplaces gives them significant power over people’s lives, their immense wealth gives them nearly total control of our government, and their control of production ensures that people’s needs are not met.

We believe that to achieve true democracy, freedom from economic tyranny, and just distribution of resources, ordinary people must have a real voice in our government, our workplaces, and our neighborhoods. We need a democracy where we collectively control the economic drivers that dominate our lives, like housing, transportation, food, and sustainable energy.

The working class needs a mass movement to take the reins of society away from wealthy exploiters and put it into the hands of the people. This is Democratic Socialism.

To build such a mass movement, we fight to win things like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and Social Housing. We organize with tenants so that they have the power to negotiate with their landlords. We build Mutual Aid networks to ensure that people can get the resources they need. We do all of this so that, someday soon, the working class has the momentum necessary to liberate themselves and to take democratic control over their lives.

Like the sound of that?

State and Local Demands

The Southern Maryland Chapter of the DSA is made up of working people from
this area, who are attuned to the needs and conditions of our community. Our long term demand is nothing less than Democratic Socialism; but the following represents a list of short-term changes we would like to see on the state and local level:

Strengthening Democracy:

  • End Gerrymandering
  • Establish ranked-choice voting
  • End at-large commissioner districts in St. Mary’s County
  • Establish public election funds
  • Drastically expand availability of early voting and mail-in ballots

Economic Justice:

  • State-level Medicare for All
  • Municipal public broadband
  • Free meals for all students attending Public Schools
  • Increase funding for public libraries and expand operating hours
  • Free tuition at College of Southern Maryland and the University of Maryland System
  • Reparations for the descendants of enslaved people
  • Decrease State income tax rate for all brackets below $100,000 per year by 1%, add an additional bracket for those making over $1 million per year, taxed at 15%
  • Increase the state corporate tax rate from 8.5% to 15%
  • Disqualify the development of weapons systems from eligibility for the Maryland Research and Development Tax Credit.

Housing Justice:

  • Rent control
  • County-wide Tenants’ Unions
  • Implement a public social housing program
  • Ban discrimination based on income source (i.e vouchers)
  • Ban homeless sweeps
  • Abolish all zoning ordinances restricting mobile homes outside of development districts and mixed-use zoning districts
  • Reabsorb the St. Mary’s County Housing Authority into the Office of Economic Development and significantly increase its funding

Labor:

  • Increased union membership and activity
  • Expansion of free job-training programs in cooperation with local unions
  • $25/hour minimum wage
  • Unionize all county employees
  • Pass the Maryland Fair Scheduling Act
  • Stronger protections for collective bargaining
  • Statewide Green New Deal / Green Jobs Program

Environment and Transit:

  • Increased funding for county buses, quadruple frequency of routes, and add express routes to Metro stations and Martz bus lots
  • Expand MARC to Lexington Park
  • Expand the Metro Green Line to La Plata
  • Create bus system for workers on NAS Pax River
  • Conduct a safety study on Cove Point LNG Terminal and ban new fossil fuel pipelines
  • Switch to renewable energy sources and away from coal fired power plants.
  • Adopt minimum air quality regulations per WHO guidelines and require publicly viewable air quality readings in buildings over a certain size.

Civil Rights and Social Justice

  • Increase funding to harm reduction programs
  • More comprehensive reproductive health curriculum
  • Legal protections for those from out of state seeking reproductive care in Maryland
  • Defund the St. Mary’s County, Charles County, and Calvert County Sheriff’s offices, as well as Maryland State law enforcement, and use that money to invest in housing and harm reduction programs.
  • Enshrine into law protections for gender-affirming care, using the bathroom of one’s gender, and participating sports in accordance with one’s gender.
  • Recognize and respect the autonomy American Indian communities, and return a significant amount of state-owned land to American Indian organizations
  • Sever ties between state and local government and the state of Israel
  • Cancel all contracts between state and local governments and Israeli firms
  • Adopt a statewide resolution condemning illegal settlements in the West Bank and the blockade of the Gaza strip
  • Adopt a statewide resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza