Claire Valdez<\/a>. Besides New York, DSA-backed candidates hold state-level offices in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Colorado, Minnesota, and elsewhere, in addition to city councils around the country.<\/p>\nAs a socialist in office, Sanchez says he\u2019d push for health care and housing for all; pro-worker measures like a $20 living wage, repealing the state\u2019s anti-union \u201cright to work\u201d law, and paid leave for every worker; reproductive rights; free public college; protecting the Okefenokee Swamp (a wetland along the Georgia-Florida border); shutting down a local toxic chemical plant; and securing state funding to improve Atlanta\u2019s notoriously bad transit system (funded by counties and the city, it\u2019s the only major urban public transit system that receives no state money).<\/p>\n
He’s looking to develop an inside-outside model like NYC-DSA\u2019s, where elected officials remain part of the movement. \u201cI don\u2019t just want to be a legislator,\u201d he says, \u201cI want to be an organizer bringing people to the Capitol.\u201d Eventually Sanchez hopes others will join him in office, building a slate. Atlanta DSA is also seeking to run candidates for city council \u2014 another power center that could help with the Cop City campaign \u2014 and school boards.<\/p>\n
Sanchez is running in Smyrna, a town right next door to Marietta. His district is a promising one, a majority-minority area that voted 40 percent for Sanders yet is currently represented by a moderate white Democrat whose donors have included Lockheed Martin, Chevron, and other pillars of the community. If Sanchez wins the Democratic primary, the seat will likely be his: no Republican has run there in years. In 2017, a libertarian socialist staged a campaign, getting 40 percent of the vote, without even telling DSA or mobilizing its forces.<\/p>\n
Sanchez has a matter of fact and low-key manner, but he seems confident. Talking with him, you get the impression that he and his DSA chapter can pull this off and much more. \u201cWe can start something big here,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n
\n \n\n\nThis post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At nineteen, in 2016, Gabriel Sanchez cast his first vote: for Bernie Sanders. Now, at twenty-six, Sanchez has just launched his campaign for Georgia state house and was endorsed by the Atlanta chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) last week. Sanchez, who grew up in the northwest Atlanta suburb of Marietta, told Jacobin by [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1646,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388161"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1646"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1388161"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1388842,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1388161\/revisions\/1388842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1388161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1388161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1388161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}