meet the candidates

Marc k. (Los Angeles)

Organizing Experience: I have been a member of DSA since 2019 and have held various leadership positions and organized on a number of campaigns that incorporated labor as a critical piece of the strategy. I was DSA-LA’s Labor Committee Co-chair in 2020 and 2021, Campaigns Coordinator in 2024, and chapter Co-chair in 2025. I have also served on the Steering Committee of the Green New Deal Campaign Commission from 2021 to 2023. I am a rank-and-file member of SEIU Local 1000 where I have served on my union’s Bargaining Committee in prior years, and currently am active in my union’s political action committee where I am organizing for my union to endorse DSA-LA’s candidates who are running for office. Overall, I see my work in DSA and in the labor movement as focusing on building a left-labor political force that orients the labor movement to working with the socialist movement to merge and unify our efforts to bring transformative and last change to society. 

Vision: I believe the National Labor Commission has established a solid foundation for DSA’s labor organizing and we need to continue to advance the horizons of that work. I look forward to the next two years having a strong effort to deepen the NLC’s connections with chapters through the Solidarity Captains, and utilizing that network of comrades as not only a national-to-chapter connection, but as a leadership development pipeline that will be vital to sustaining our organizing as we look to expand our capacities and projects. Next, given my recent experiences organizing within my union to secure endorsements for DSA candidates, I believe a training school on how to navigate and organize within your union’s political action committee would be a really powerful project especially as DSA is making advances and winning with our electoral organizing and running more cadre candidates. Finally, shoring up our industry networks and sustaining them as active spaces for discussing and formulating organizing strategies, sharing information, determining points of leverage and power, and providing mutual support to ongoing unionization campaigns and organizing drives within unions. 

Shay S. (Cleveland)

Organizing Experience: I have been a rank and file member of UAW (at Sierra Club), then union staff for the Amalgamated Transit Union in Cleveland, organized my workplace at Sunrise Movement, and have been a salt, and am a barista and bargaining delegate with Starbucks Workers United. I joined DSA in 2014, and co-founded the Cleveland chapter in 2015. I have served two terms on chapter steering, and been honored to better connect SBWU and DSA nationally and on the ground.

Vision: We must build on our strike support that galvanize DSA chapters into action alongside workers, as well as continue to develop our Workers Organizing Workers program in major campaigns such as Amazon Teamsters and Starbucks Workers United. DSA Labor must also continue to build with immigrant workers from members building sanctuary unions to workers at workers centers. Last, certainly not least, we must build our members’ and their unions’ strike threat now until May Day 2028 as workers themselves engage in international solidarity from Palestine (Labor for an Arms Embargo) to Cuba.

Tanner W. (Nyc)

Organizing Experience: I joined DSA about 10 years ago. In my time, I've started a YDSA chapter and served on the OC of another for 2 school years, along with the national Bernie Sanders coordinating committee. I've been active in electoral work in NYC-DSA since 2019. From 2021 to earlier this year, I was a member of UAW Local 2325, the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys (ALAA), where I was a chapter chair and member of the Executive Board for 3 of my 4 years. As chapter chair, my chapter negotiated a second contract which won 25% raises for all members, and a credible strike threat kept management from raising our healthcare premiums. In November 2023, our union was one of the first labor union's in the US to pass a ceasefire resolution which I whipped for in every step of the process, from drafting to passing in the Joint Council to the membership vote. After the resolution passed, the union came under attack from its own members via several lawsuits which also named me directly, as well as from the United States congress in the form of subpoenas and requests for information from the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce. I was elected to an outreach committee which met with UAW lawyers, congressional representatives and their legal teams, and other first amendment legal experts to resist this intimidation attempt from congress, defy the RFIs, and defend our resolution. As part of the Labor for an Arms Embargo Campaign, I worked with ALAA to pass an arms embargo resolution which names DSA directly. I have since gotten a new job and am training to be a high school social worker and working on getting a job in the UFT, where I am already a member of the MORE caucus.

Vision: Through nationwide rank-and-file networks, "sections" within labor unions comprised of DSA staff and rank and file members, and further bolstering WOW and EWOC, DSA's will build its influence in the labor movement over the next two years and work towards a general strike in 2028 and an arms embargo of Israel as soon as possible. As a DSA member with plenty of electoral experience as well as experience within the labor movement, I will work to create more coordination between DSA's national and electoral work. This coordination will allow us to better wield influence of our SIOs and further grow our network of electeds across the country. With more electeds and more labor endorsement power, we can enact policy changes which will perpetuate the cycle of unions building power and laws being changed to give workers more power (e.g. the PRO Act campaign of 2021).