Member Statements on PCRO6: Make We Power DC a Priority Campaign

Member Statements
1

Statement IN FAVOR

Joe R.

I’m writing a member statement IN FAVOR of granting We Power DC priority campaign status in 2025.

I really appreciate the long-term strategic planning and thinking demonstrated in We Power DC’s application. In New York, the DSA-backed Build Public Renewables Act – arguably the most significant piece of Green New Deal legislation in the country, and almost certainly at the state level – required a multi-year project along the lines of what We Power DC has proposed here. This campaign presents an opportunity to build relationships with unions, politicize and polarize working class people against a corporate, for-profit utility, and develop our chapter’s ability to not only develop and propose our own legislation but attempt to set the terms of the political debate in the region by canvassing and wheatpasting year-round. This is an important goal for the chapter and DSA, one that has been articulated previously by the chapter’s Political Engagement Committee; it would also be highly beneficial to develop this capacity for a Socialists in Office (SIO) program and put us on the path to acting like an actual worker’s party.

We Power DC also deserves credit for being the only formation to provide a clear, detailed budget for how they would use priority campaign funds. With the recent formation of the Green New Deal Working Group, providing We Power DC with these chapter resources is an important step towards building the capacity needed not only to win public power in our region, but to win many ongoing and future fights for green social housing, schools, transit, and more.

Please vote YES to grant We Power DC priority campaign status in 2025!

In solidarity
Joe R

2

Statement IN FAVOR

Matt S.

My name is Matt S (he/him), and I am one of the co-chairs of the We Power DC Campaign. I have been involved in We Power for just over three years, and am writing to urge you to support our bid to be a priority campaign for the coming year. This year, we are presenting this campaign under the broader auspices of the newly-launched MDC DSA Green New Deal Working Group.

I will provide a brief background about municipalization and the benefits of public power, describe the work we have done in recent years, and then lay out our rough plan for the upcoming few years.

Currently, DC’s electricity is provided by Pepco, an investor owned utility that profits gratuitously off of the provision of a fundamental human need: electricity. While this model is common, it is not universal: about 15% of US residents are served by publicly owned utilities. We Power DC is among the dozens of campaigns across the country that aims to bring our utility under public control. The benefits of public power are manifold: public utilities have lower rates on average, are far better equipped to fight the climate crisis and transition towards clean energy, are democratically accountable to the residents that they serve, and can provide excellent union jobs. My comrades will discuss these points in greater depth.

We Power DC was formed in 2019 through the combined effort of several DC environmental organizations. In 2020, the campaign created the “No Pepco Pledge,” asking local DMV candidates to commit to not take any campaign funding from investor owned utilities or fossil fuel companies. Through the pandemic, We Power organizing focused on enacting and maintaining the utility shutoff ban and reducing debt from for those unable to pay their utility bills.

After re-launching as an MDC DSA campaign in 2021, We Power launched the Public Power Pledge for the 2022 democratic primary, committing candidates to support the creation of a public utilty. That year, we had 8 candidates in local races sign the pledge, including 3 current councilmembers (Parker, White, and Nadeau).

Over the past two years, We Power DC focused on building relationships with legislators, researching public power legislation, and working in coalitions to advance related environmental and energy justice goals. These sub-campaigns brought about notable successes:

  1. The Stop Project Pipes campaign successfully pressured the DC public services commission to deny Washington Gas’ plan to use hundreds of millions of ratepayer dollars for new natural gas infrastructure
  2. The campaign to permanently ban utility shutoffs, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, successfully lobbied councilmembers Briane Nadeau and Zach Parker to introduce shutoff ban legislation for electricity, gas, and water in 2024.
  3. Finally, in collaboration with Empower DC and CM Parker’s office, We Power wrote environmental justice legislation that would protect overburdened poor and working class neighborhoods from pollution, which was introduced last fall, had a hearing this past March, and is expected to be re-introduced and passed in 2025

This past year, we power has also worked on a white paper on municipalization in DC. We’ve also mobilized significant opposition to Pepco’s proposed rate hikes, sending ~150 comments to the PSC docket, and ~150 letters to council members urging them to reject the hike entirely. As a result, the PSC approved a rate-hike that is ~35% lower than what Pepco initially requested.

Now, looking forward:

Municipalization is a very long-term campaign, and as it will require council legislation, we plan to spend the next two years building a groundswell of support that will make public power a powerful political issue that we then aim to advance with legislation from a friendlier DC council in 2027.

Here’s what it will take to get us there:

In 2025, we plan to ramp up our outward-facing efforts through a campaign of door-to-door canvassing and wheat pasting to build support for public power, modeling similar campaigns elsewhere. This will allow us to capitalize on the widespread resentment of Pepco, provide political education about the public power alternative, and bring in new organizers.

Our research team will continue to work on our municipalization white paper, with the intent to publish with a splash in the spring, which will serve as a crucial political education tool for councilmembers and coalition allies—we’ve learned from years past that to be taken seriously by CMs and other key stakeholders, such as unions, we need to show that we know what we’re talking about. We plan to draft the necessary legislation this year as well.

Finally, we plan to expand our political education work and communications footprint through a series of public-facing events, including a canvassing launch event, a socialist night school, and a walking tour next fall.

When we reach the 2026 primaries, we intend to use our momentum to help push DSA-endorsed candidates into council, with public power as a central issue.

For more information about the campaign, please see our priority campaign application, which includes a detailed budget for our priority campaign funds for the coming year.

With the looming specter of an extremist right wing government taking power in January, now is a crucial moment to advance the fight for climate justice locally, build local resilience, and fight against the capitalist class that keeps our neighbors under the boot and quite literally in the dark. I urge you to support we power DC for a 2025 priority campaign.

3

Statement IN FAVOR

Vee B.

As socialists, we know that the struggle for a just and equitable society is inextricably linked to the struggle for control over the means of production. In the case of our energy system, this means taking power away from corporate profiteers like Pepco and putting it in the hands of the people.

We Power DC’s campaign for public power is a crucial step towards building a democratic and sustainable energy system that serves the needs of our community, not just the interests of the wealthy and powerful. By supporting this campaign, we are not just fighting for a more just energy system - we are building a movement that can challenge the very foundations of corporate power in our city.

This campaign is about more than just energy policy - it’s about democracy, justice, and the kind of society we want to build. It’s about recognizing that our energy system should be owned and controlled by the people, not by corporate elites. It’s about using our collective power to create a better future for all of us, not just the privileged few.

By supporting We Power DC as a priority campaign, we are committing to a vision of a more just and sustainable energy system. We are committing to a movement that is rooted in solidarity, mutual aid, and collective action. We are committing to using our power to challenge the status quo and build a better world.

Let’s stand together in support of We Power DC and build a movement that can create real change in our city. Let’s show that we believe in a different kind of energy system - one that is owned and controlled by the people, not by corporate elites. Let’s make public power a reality in DC.

4

Statement IN FAVOR

Harrison P.

  • Even with DC’s ambitious climate goals, Pepco has used its corporate influence to slow-walk or even block our transition to green energy. This is mainly because programs like residential solar cut into their profits.
  • Additionally, privately-owned utilities like Pepco are incentivized to keep their infrastructure and energy sources dirtier for longer. They see no reason to invest in battery storage, efficient power lines, or buy greener energy if coal power is cheaper. Their greed will continue to poison our planet, our communities, and our fellow workers.
  • Public utilities have the freedom to be much more aggressive with their climate transition because they don’t answer to a stock price. Additionally, because public utilities are not only regulated but typically fully owned by municipalities, they need to stick to climate mandates at a stricter degree.
  • I urge everyone to vote in favor.
5

Statement IN FAVOR

John M.

I am in support of making We Power DC a priority campaign of the chapter in 2025. The climate crisis is here, and as socialists we have a responsibility to do all we can to stop it in its tracks and reduce the suffering it will cause the working class. This is an incredibly difficult task that requires taking down the capitalist system at the heart of climate change. And public power is a real solution. It targets the source of the problem by socializing a monopoly capitalist firm, materially benefits the working class by lowering utility bills and ending shutoffs, and gives us the leverage we need to clean our energy grid. It won’t be an easy fight, but most fights worth winning aren’t. And so I encourage chapter members to continue to invest in this campaign and vote for We Power DC as a priority campaign in 2025.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Tom M.

As a member of We Power DC for the past three years, I strongly urge comrades to vote for We Power DC to be a priority campaign for the upcoming year. As the priority campaign application noted, electricity is a human right, but one that about 80% of DC’s low-income population is unable to afford debt-free. This means that agitating against Pepco and other energy providers represents an important and increasingly popular way to radicalize our neighbors and improve our lives.

There are many reasons to support WPDC as a priority campaign. This statement will highlight two of them.

The first reason to support WPDC as a priority campaign is because the unique niche it occupies within the DC climate community makes it an important driver of local change and an important recruiting tool for Metro DC DSA. WPDC is unabashedly ecosocialist and focused on DC, both of which set it apart from other climate groups in the area. The ecosocialist lens is crucial for actually pushing for radical changes, not reforms. This, combined with WPDC’s local focus, makes it, and through it Metro DC DSA, a natural landing place for DC-area ecosocialists and climate-concerned people to come organize. I myself first came to Metro DC DSA through We Power because I wanted to engage in climate organizing.

The second reason to support WPDC as a priority campaign is the campaign’s demonstrated ability to evolve to become more effective. Any effective campaign needs to display the ability to evolve to meet emerging circumstances and to learn from its mistakes, and WPDC has done so. This past year, we were presented with the opportunity to join in coalition with other climate organizations to organize against Washington Gas’s application for hundreds of millions of DC residents’ dollars to engage in wasteful spending. While our goal is usually taking over Pepco, not fighting Washington Gas, the campaign realized that this was an invaluable opportunity to build stronger bonds with DC-area climate groups, council members, and other DC residents and to grow as organizers. The campaign ended up being a success as Washington Gas’s application was denied and WPDC gained new organizers. Another example is the way the No Pepco Pledge/Public Power Pledge has evolved over time. At first used as a signal of support behind the campaign, we eventually became aware of how ephemeral that support really was. We increasingly used the Pledge instead as a recruiting method for new members, and developed a pledge with stronger language to remove ambiguity about elected officials’ expectations.

Electricity—and through it, warmth, food, connection, and safety—is not something that should be left to the market. Please support We Power DC’s priority campaign application.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Sharon H.

  • Through this campaign, we’re pursuing not only “public power” in the form of a publicly owned utility. We’re also pursuing “public power” in the form of community control - placing DC’s energy future into the hands of residents with the most at stake in the energy transition.
  • Under our current system, when we read about the decisions made by Pepco and Washington Gas, it feels like we have no direct say. Our energy systems are owned by corporations headquartered hundreds of miles away, and are regulated by commissioners that we did not elect - hardly any of us even know who they are. A publicly owned utility changes that.
  • Public ownership encourages transparency and clear investment into our grid. For one, our electricity is not being used as a vehicle to make a stockbroker rich. But even more, the people running a public utility will also be using it. A service utilized by the same people running it encourages quality, efficiency, and transparency, while also offering a straightforward way for residents to make their heard.
  • As we know, the energy transition is a deeply local undertaking that intersects with so many other issues and priorities that communities face, from housing quality to disaster resilience. Public ownership will give a central voice in decision-making to community members and local leaders who are the experts on what renewable energy solutions will work best for their specific communities.
  • In addition to providing a voice for District residents, establishing a publicly owned utility will empower the workers who are on the ground building out our renewable energy solutions. A public utility, designed and implemented with input from labor leaders, can help avoid unfair labor practices across the renewables supply chain, which are a major risk of a privately-run transition, and ensure that our transition is truly just for workers.
  • Beyond achieving a just transition, pursuing a publicly owned utility for DC will set the stage for community control and worker power across a number of different issue areas that are priorities for Metro DC DSA, and will be instrumental to building socialism in DC and beyond.
8

Statement IN FAVOR

Carl R.

Comrades, please vote IN FAVOR of We Power DC’s priority campaign application. We Power has a well thought out, actionable plan to build power year over year to eventually win municipalized power, the only way we will both achieve democratic control of a core sector of our economy and a decarbonized energy sector. Clawing away the ability of capitalists to extract profit from a public good is exactly the work we should be doing as a chapter, and We Power has explained how they will do this by activating workers in this struggle. Please vote FOR We Power DC as a priority campaign.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Ayesha M.

Hi friends! I’ve been an organizer with We Power DC since 2021 and a DSA member since 2022. In the past 3 years, I’ve seen the campaign achieve important wins for DC’s residents, democracy, and the climate. With your support, it can accomplish much more over the next year as a priority campaign.

In the past, We Power’s priority status has helped us recruit more members, build community knowledge about municipalization and our campaign, get the word out about urgent actions to halt money grabs by Pepco and Washington Gas, grow strong environmental justice coalitions, and much more. As threats to working class families, the climate and our DC community in particular grow more intense in the coming months, priority status for We Power DC will help our campaign continue fighting to ensure that DC’s working class families can keep the lights on, that the District can stay on track to meet its climate goals, and that environmental justice is prioritized throughout.

Priority campaign funding will be essential to help us meet our primary 2025 goal: making public power a formidable campaign issue in 2026. To do this, we will need to create and disseminate political education materials and host forums to discuss what municipalization could look like and what it could mean for workers and residents. We will also need to buy and print materials for wheatpasting and canvassing. These activities are important not only for building support for municipalization but also to ensure that we address the needs and concerns of DC’s working class residents.

Being a priority campaign will also help We Power DC recruit and mobilize new members. Continuing to grow our membership will be necessary to help us build our capacity for legislative engagement, political education, canvassing, bolstering our partnerships with local environmental justice groups, and other important campaign objectives. We Power DC’s recruitment also supports the chapter and DSA at-large: for myself and several of my fellow We Power DC organizers, We Power DC was an on-ramp to joining and becoming more involved in other aspects of DSA.

We Power DC continues the fight to ensure that our utilities serve people, not profit. I urge you to vote to give We Power DC priority campaign status so that our chapter can continue effectively championing this work.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Claudia D.

Pepco has had too much control for too long. They hold a monopoly over the distribution of electricity to DC residents and are currently facing scrutiny for manipulating their spending data, allocating money to unapproved projects and demanding $180 million for additional spending even though reports show they over-earned what they projected for several years and pocketed all of it, despite the fact that they are mandated to return a portion to residents as utility credits.

From 2020-2023, Pepco bills have increased by 21% and are projected to increase by an additional 12% by 2026.

High bills have led to over 20% of DC residents stuck in debt to Pepco. That means 1 in 5 of our neighbors, friends, and family are trapped in utility debt. To make matters worse, if you take a look at the numbers you’ll find that of all the customers Pepco considers low-income, 80% are in utility debt.

A publicly owned utility like the one we power is fighting for in DC will cut out the corporate shareholders and their greed-based model. Keeping rates both fair and affordable directly improves the lives of people like us here, and at the end of the day, affordability is a winning issue.

Pepco, the Public Service Commission, Exelon, Fossil Fuel Companies, and all their associated shareholders are holding out hope that our flawed model for electric utilities will be too confusing to track. Making it all the more necessary to ensure that residents are organizing to hold our Public Service Commission to account and eventually replace them. We Power DC is currently the only group actively campaigning for public power in the district.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Claire M.

We Power DC is in the best position we have been in the years I’ve been involved as an organizer – thanks to the investment of this chapter in our work as a priority campaign. Now is not the moment to back down, and I urge you to vote for We Power DC as a priority campaign for 2025.

Frankly, We Power has tried lots of things that worked, and many that didn’t. But either way, we’ve consistently learned our lesson. As a result, our plan for 2025 is the most developed strategic plan we have ever created and our campaign structure is more effective than it’s ever been. Our plan for the coming year is:

  1. Designed for recruitment: We’ve developed campaign tactics (a mix of canvassing, wheatpasting, and research) in part due to their ability to recruit new organizers by appealing to different types of people, develop tangible organizing skills and knowledge of public power, and move folks up a ladder of engagement we’ve already developed.
  2. Focused on leadership development: All of our existing core leaders have also committed to 1:1 leadership development to organize in our own partners (and someday, our replacements). We have clear goals for building the capacity of our leadership team, and a realistic step-by-step process to meet them.
  3. Clearly budgeted: We’ve already developed a line item budget for 2025 expenses, to address past failures to fully take advantage of our budget. All our spending plans are linked directly to organizing goals.
  4. Realistic and scalable: We’ve set realistic goals for our work to ensure we spend our time on the most important priorities. But we also chose tactics that would allow us to recruit and scale our work up easily as we build power and capacity.

In other words, we’ve taken the best of our organizing – strong leadership development and investment in training that has allowed our campaign to strengthen even when leaders move on – and placed it at the center of our work.

And I know this strategy works, because it worked on me. We Power was my first home in the chapter, and the investment of my fellow organizers is what made me believe I had something real to offer this movement. To say We Power DC has transformed my life isn’t saying enough. It made me into an organizer, it turned my socialism into something I lived rather than just believed, and it put me in the center of a community of people doing the same. And I am certainly not the only one.

That is what We Power DC has to offer this chapter as a priority campaign. That and the promise of one of the biggest socialist wins this city could see in the coming decades. So comrades, I urge you to vote for We Power DC for priority status in 2025. Let’s take our utilities back from the capitalists who stole them from us.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Kenneth B.

WePower DC is a critical priority for our chapter. As the climate crisis intensifies and our communities come under greater and greater threat, we are running out of time to take decisive action to build a sustainable, green future. That said, change will not come overnight, and we need to be careful and deliberate in how we invest our resources. WePower’s three year campaign plan demonstrates the kind of long term, strategic thinking we as a chapter need in order to change the world we live in and build a future where our energy comes from renewable resources and members of our community don’t have their electricity shut off because they can’t pay for it. The kind of decommodification sought by the WePower campaign would represent a meaningful step towards a socialist future and, while it will surely take years of work, is a measurable and achievable goal.

I am excited to see WePower’s plan to increase canvassing and wheatpasting activities in support of the campaign. These fun, engaging tasks are well suited to absorbing new members who might not be able to contribute to legislative or policy focused work, and provide a sense of constant activity and momentum that is critical to keeping a project going. I for one can’t wait to participate in canvassing or wheatpasting on behalf of WePower, and I hope they get the resources they need to fully realize the potential of these activities.

Finally, I think making WePower a priority campaign is important to build momentum for the Green New Deal Working Group. There is no socialism without ecosocialism, and it is critical that we agitate along ecosocialist lines and build a strong movement to make our community more resilient to climate change and implement a just transition to a green future. Infrastructure built over the course of the WePower campaign can easily be repurposed after the campaign’s conclusion to organize for other elements of the Green New Deal, such as social housing, expanded public transit, and expanding public green spaces.

In short, WePower is a thoughtful, strategic campaign that will grow our power, engage and absorb new members, and build lasting infrastructure that can be used for future campaigns. This is the sort of campaign we need going forward and I believe WePower’s priority status for 2025 will truly open a new chapter in the history of our chapter and the socialist movement in DC. For all of these reasons, I hope you will join me in voting to make WePower DC a priority campaign for 2025.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Advait A.

We Power DC should be a priority campaign of the chapter in 2025 because public power is a powerful climate and affordability solution that builds socialism in our city. In order to address the abysmal mix of dirty energy on the regional electricity grid run by the monopoly PJM, we need collective bargaining power. A public utility that serves over 700,000 residents would have that power – real power to clean our grid. It would also be motivated by service to people, not ever increasing corporate profit that raises electric rates, puts people in debt, and ultimately leads to hundreds of residents getting their power shut off every month. We Power DC has developed a strategic, realistic plan to get us closer to realizing this future in 2025, and so I urge you to vote in favor of We Power for priority campaign status.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Tim S.

I’m writing to encourage you to join me in voting for We Power DC for continued priority campaign status. You almost certainly know about the urgency of the climate crisis, the distorted incentives capital imposes when it manages essential services, and the necessity of utility sovereignty, which my comrades have discussed at length in live debate and in their statements, so I’m going to talk about what We Power’s priority status does for the chapter.

We Power is really good at developing leaders. It has turned over its core leadership at least twice since I joined in 2021, and it has improbably gotten stronger and more united each time, rather than weaker and more fractious. This happens because We Power delineates responsibility really effectively: it has standing subcommittees that actually do get staffed and are actually active, and that means that a broad array of talents can find their place on the campaign. New people can and do come in totally fresh, motivated by their focus on climate and utility justice, and very quickly become effective leaders on the campaign. In many, many cases they become actively engaged with other parts of the chapter in ways that members who come in through other working group silos frankly do not. We Power wasn’t the only part of my development as a leader, but it was an important part, and three We Power leaders – Claire, Marli, and I – will serve on steering in 2025.

The member buy in this creates within We Power makes it serious about strategy, which in turn makes it both dynamic and democratic. We Power has tried a bunch of stuff that hasn’t worked well – heavy investment in tabling, a pledge that produced earned media but not follow through, research projects that weren’t clearly connected to key objectives – but has, importantly, iterated from those tactics. In the past two years, we’ve moved from a somewhat structureless, horizontal organizational form to a co-chaired internal structure with clearly delineated responsibilities, all, importantly, nested under a common strategic outlook that we’ve spent a lot of time developing. As a result, we’ve shifted focus from an exclusive focus on big, long-term, legislative goals to shorter term – and yes, kind of wonky – regulatory goals that, importantly, are much more tangible for DC’s working class than lofty stories about utility sovereignty and the energy transition. Our priority status helps with this because a lot of this work focuses on flipping the votes of extremely insulated Public Service Commission members, where targeted outreach using a mixed inside outside strategy is helpful, making access to both our tech tools and our volunteer base really crucial. This isn’t revolutionary, but it matters: we played a genuinely important role in preventing two significant hikes on utility costs, which would have been borne disproportionately by working class Washingtonians less equipped to replace old gas appliances, designed to make fossil fuel companies richer. We didn’t object to using a mass action strategy to do that, but on the time frame sudden proposals by capitalists gave us, it seemed like our best option was to take advantage of uninspiring inside game tactics, but they worked, and working class people are able to pay for their utilities because of it.

This strategic dynamism makes We Power effective and creates opportunities to bring in climate and environmental activists who we might not otherwise. The group’s efficacy, in turn, converts them into active DSA members and, in cases when they’re more climate progressives than socialists, tends to turn them into the latter as well. We want to build on this: our plan for this year, which I strongly encourage you to read, goes into a lot of detail about how we plan to use funds and about how we will execute direct outreach to agitate around utility justice issues, which connect to both our long and short term goals. More passive attempts at agitation, through media and tabling, haven’t worked, so we want to go talk to people about how Pepco is harming them and what they can do about it, and turn that into a base for our continued legislative work. In the long term, that’s a base for socialist goals more broadly, because collective ownership of our grid is a straightforwardly socialist objective, but we get there by taking control of the council with a politicized working class, and our plans for this year help get us there. I hope you’ll join me in voting yes, and in getting involved.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Emily N.

I am writing in support of WePower DC’s application for priority campaign status. As our time runs out to address the climate crisis, WePower DC presents a clear vision of the fundamentals we must achieve to build the world we deserve to live in. Publicly owned and democratically operated power is an ambitious goal to say the least, but it’s at the core of how we as socialists must approach climate justice.

In the last three years, WePower has demonstrated a willingness to get creative and explore a variety of strategies as they have built towards this clear, concrete goal. Their plan for 2025 is proof of this willingness to grow and develop new strategies to meet the moment. By shifting to a focus on community outreach and education, deep canvassing, and base building, We Power will build out an infrastructure within our chapter for issue-based canvassing, a model that other campaigns can evaluate as they seek to build a base of support and improve the conditions of the working class across the DMV.

I hope you join me in voting to make WePower DC a priority for our chapter in 2025 so we can continue to lead on the fight for public power and climate justice.

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Statement AGAINST

Alex Y.

I am only writing against priority status for We Power since we are in the fortune position of having more than 5 applications for priority status. This is the only of the 6 that is primarily focused on DC, and aware that DC may lose homerule, this submission isn’t clearly planning for a backup plan if that happens. We should all plan for the worst and hope for the best. This just feels like a continuation of what We Power has done in the past. And I would hate for us to have a priority campaign that isn’t able to take full advantage of it’s benefits of being one because their plans get upended. I would have liked to see more of a focus on the new GND working group in general as well as the other partsof it. For those reasons, I think this should be the one to not become a priority campaign for 2025.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Bakari W.

Hi I’m Bakari W and I urge you to vote YES on We Power DC’s Priority Resolution. As the current Political Engagement Committee Chair it’s extremely important to me that We Power has a (extremely) detailed plan for canvassing DC Residents in support of the Public Power Pledge. Utility bills and debt are a monumental burden on the working class, and an amazing way to politicize people. We would substantially grow our base in Wards 7&8 by going door to door for public power. I want very badly to connect directly with working-class people on municipalizing Pepco. But We Power can only fund the printing of canvassing lit and maximize volunteer turnout for those canvasses if you vote YES for its Priority Campaign resolution!

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Statement IN FAVOR

Winston Y.

I have organized with wepower’s research team since 2022 til several months ago, working on developing the argument for public power that will speak to policymakers, understanding and outlining the vision for a publicly owned utility, and drafting legislation. I’ve also participated in and led wepower sponsored reading groups to serve as a place for political education and recruitment. As a somewhat new organizer, the campaign has been an incredibly welcoming and positive environment that regularly brings in and develops new organizers and leaders, develops strategies collaboratively, and builds relationships with groups outside of DSA that help establish the chapter as a force to be reckoned with in the left. Please support wepower dc as a priority campaign for 2025 to continue this vibrant community and effective campaign

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Statement IN FAVOR

Marli K.

I’m writing in support of We Power DC (WPDC) as a priority campaign for Metro DC DSA. I’ve been a member of We Power DC since 2019 and have seen how the campaign has grown and benefitted from being a priority campaign in the past. WPDC is fighting the climate crisis and challenging the existing shareholder utility structure to fight for a public utility in DC that is accountable for the people. There is no better organization fighting for a democratically controlled, publicly owned electric utility than WPDC, and it should be a priority for Metro DC DSA again this year. The campaign has concrete plans for this year that will both contribute to DSA’s goals of winning socialism in the DMV and growing our chapter by bringing in new members, including:

  • Canvassing and wheatpasting: WPDC plans to begin monthly door-to-door canvases and wheatpasting to build support for public power. It will help establish a broader understanding of the issues and injustices associated with investor owned utilities, the specific ills wrought by Pepco and Washington Gas, and the tremendous benefits of the public power alternative. WPDC will also use this opportunity to get folks signed onto our Public Power Pledge and signed up for our mailing list, and hopefully, pull them into organizing. It will also provide an excellent step in our ladder of engagement—canvassing is an effective, time tested strategy for getting new organizers involved in a campaign. Finally, building up our ground game will help us demonstrate the strength of our movement to council candidates.
  • Develop white paper and legislation: In the research and legislative engagement workstream, WPDC plans to publish a white paper presenting the case for public power by April 2025, and draft legislation by the end of the year. The white paper, which is already in the works, will lay out both the “why” of public power (i.e. why a public utility is better for the people of DC) and the “how” (i.e. the legal landscape and legislative strategy). This will be a crucial political education tool for councilmembers and coalition allies.This white paper will form the foundation for our political education, community engagement, grassroots power building, and legislative lobbying efforts.
  • Political education: To enhance public understanding of the issues with our energy system, WPDC is planning a series of political education events in 2025, including: 1) A canvassing launch event/Public Power 101 session in February (along with more Public Power 101 events throughout the year), 2) a socialist night school on DC’s energy system and public power, and 3) an infrastructure walking tour focused on DC’s energy system
  • Expanded communications efforts: WPDC plans to scale up public communications efforts to enhance the campaign’s ability to politicize the ills of our investor owned utilities and communicate the importance of public power. This includes, among other specific efforts, creating a communications plan, revamping the website, and recruiting two new comms team members.

WDPC became my organizing home when I first joined the chapter, and I think that as WPDC continues to grow it will also continue to build the chapter and its leaders. I encourage other members to join me in voting for WPDC as a priority campaign to ensure that WPDC has funding and support from this chapter to win public power in the DMV.

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Statement IN FAVOR

Nate M.

I encourage MDCDSA members to vote for the We Power DC priority campaign proposal. This is a long-term issue that does face a challenging political reality in the near term, but in the mid-to-long term it is a key material issue for working people in the DC area and beyond. Though I haven’t been as engaged in the We Power effort as I have in other chapter activities, I have been consistently impressed by their level of organization and engagement with allied groups in the region. This level of organization and engagement, which has the effect of amplifying the chapter’s influence beyond what we could accomplish alone, was demonstrated again in the campaign’s convention presentation. It is important that we maintain these efforts and alliances now as times are about to get tough, or else they may not be there when we eventually have a friendlier political situation. In short, we need to consistently maintain We Power’s efforts if we want to achieve the long-term benefits we seek on this front.