Below are the candidate statements/personal bios for the Nov 2024 Labor Working Group Co-Chair Election.
Zachary T. (He/him)
Have been a LWG co-chair for the past year. Worked hard to grow our lists, build our organizing strength, and host Know Your Labor Rights trainings. In the next year I want to use the onboarding/social chair position to further develop LWG and make a robust network of connections in the metro DC labor movement
John Sherman (He/him)
John Sherman is an incumbent labor working group co-chair and a member of Metro DC DSA since 2019. His labor work for the Chapter has included a series of organizing schools and trainings. He has also made strengthening our chapter’s ties with local unions in all industries a priority. John is a recent appointment to the National Labor Commission’s Steering Committee. Outside of DSA, John is a member of Plumbers Local 5 in Washington, DC and an officer at the Northern Virginia Central Labor Council (AFL-CIO).
Dominique Lee (They/them)
Dominique Lee currently serves as the Parent and Community Organizer for the Prince George’s County Educators’ Association (PGCEA) - located in one of the top 20 largest school districts in the country. Prior to moving to the DMV, Dominique worked on several political campaigns in their home state of Wisconsin and organized for Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign in rural New Hampshire.
In addition to their political campaign work, Dominique served in numerous leadership roles at the local and state Democratic Party level. Those experiences gave them direct insight and understanding to the failures of the Democratic Party and has in turn, fueled their passion to join and actively participate with DSA.
Inspired by the late labor organizer Jane McAlevey who believed there was no other efficient nor effective way of making change than with labor unions, Dominique made a shift in their career to the labor movement in 2020. They served as a bargaining team member and steward for their local union and today, continues to serve as an Associate Member of the Campaign Worker’s Guild where they help bargain contracts for political campaign workers across the country.
Their day to day work focuses specifically on building a strong labor and community coalition. They want to use their current knowledge and experiences of coalition building in the DMV to further labor solidarity by increasing communication, and training unions to expand public access to their work and build stronger public campaigns.
John Ocampo
John O has almost 20 years of experience in the labor movement. He has been a member of CWA, worked as a union organizer at UE, NNU, and SEIU and was a salt in the restaurant industry. As a UE staffer, he helped get the eventually successful Politics & Prose union drive off the ground in 2020. He is on leave from his UE union job for the next year to be a stay-at-home dad. Along with his family, he has been volunteering with the chapter’s Labor Working Group since last year (wheatpasting for the labor history tour, helping to organize union organizing schools, phonebanking and knocking on doors in Fairfax in support of the FEA union campaign, walking practice picket lines with flight attendants and airport workers at DCA, organizing Red for Bread action in support of the Starbucks workers union, etc.) and became an official DSA member in April 2024. John hopes to help the LWG develop and execute a strategic plan to initiate and support new organizing efforts in the area, e.g. via EWOC, targeted outreach, and the recruitment of salts, stand in sustained solidarity with workers in struggle, and win workers over to DSA and the cause of socialism.
Sheely E. (They/them)
Sheely E. is a rank-and-file labor organizer, democratic socialist, and Columbia Heights resident running for Communications Chair of the LWG. Born and raised in Maryland, they’ve been a member of MDC DSA since moving back to the DMV in 2022 and have been regularly attending LWG meetings for the last year or so. Prior to joining MDC DSA, Sheely spent four years doing journalism, research, and organizing in Salt Lake City, leading multiple publications and dozens of college media workers in covering labor, electoral politics, local government, and more.
Sheely found a home in the labor movement while organizing a union and bargaining its first contract at their day job, where they work on the communications team of a DC criminal legal reform nonprofit. They joined DSA to help build the collective power needed to fight for and win a just society.
In 2025, Sheely wants to revamp the LWG’s internal and external communications systems to better recruit and engage members, expanding the group’s ability to organize workers and build solidarity across the district. Whether reaching people through social media, email, web, or text, they want to aim all communications toward building capacity and organizing workers.
Sheely’s excited by the opportunity to invest in the group’s comms function next year — and already brainstorming ideas. Feel free to message them on Slack with any thoughts or questions — they’d love the chance to chat and earn your vote!
Sylvia Greenstein (She/her)
Sylvia Greenstein joined DSA in 2022 to help build socialism and improve people’s material conditions. She joined the Boston chapter, where she worked as part of the labor working group on various campaigns, including Starbucks and Amazon unionization efforts, the Teamsters contract Strike Ready campaign, and the UAW strike. She moved to DC and plugged in to MDC DSA this June and has primarily been a part of the Labor and Bodily Autonomy working groups. She has also done union organizing outside of DSA, including working on a campaign to organize student workers while at college. She is a member of Teamsters local 639 and works at UPS.
Joshua A. (He/him)
Josh A is an organizer and elected officer with UNITE HERE Local 23 and proud MDC DSA member since 2020. He is also a member of DSA’s NLC SC, and he hopes to continue, both locally and nationally, contributing to growth of organizing, particularly the hard work of agitation and organizing conversations, build union power in all shops, and connect us in solidarity against the ruling class. Comrades should vote for someone with over a decade of experience and perspective that comes with a brother who started off in the rank and file and has organized others to take on the powerful to change their lives.
Gianna Chacon (She/her)
Hi comrades, Gianna Chacon is excited to be working with you all in the DSA labor group towards a vision of working class solidarity and class struggle. She is currently a rank and file Labor and Delivery RN with National Nurses United (NNU) at a local hospital in our community.
Gianna has spent many years in the labor movement and community organizing world. She started out in Chicago with the People’s Action–a community org that helped work on issues such as mass incarceration that set the ground to eliminate cash bail bond in IL. Additionally, She has worked with Reclaim Chicago to help elect socialist in office such as alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa and UNITE HERE! Local 1 during their Hyatt Hotel boycott. Following that. She started working with NNU as a staff union organizer helping to organize thousands of nurses across the country. This includes organizing campaigns in southern and northern California and in Maryland. She decided to become a rank and file member in 2020 and went to nursing school. Once She received her RN license in El Paso, TX and started working in a hospital, She joined the union and became a shop steward as a new graduate nurse. In El Paso she worked to help organize marches in support of the Black Lives Matter, volunteered with West Fund, an abortion fund, that provided needed resources to pregnant folks that required abortion care, helped run trainings with El Paso DSA chapter, and supported groups who fought for migrant justice. As a former union organizer with NNU, working with RNs and techs to unionize their facilities and take on the boss has deeply shaped my belief in the importance of building a militant labor movement.
Sam G. (He/him)
Hello comrades! I’m Sam, a shop steward at my workplace union and ex-barista. I’ve been a member of the chapter since March and have recently become a Solidarity Captain. I’m proud to have built many relationships with my service industry colleagues through interviewing them about union-busting in the coffee industry, stopping in regularly at Compass Coffee stores to learn about their unionization struggles, and standing on picket lines. These days I focus on supporting my coworkers in improving our working conditions and making our union strong.
I’m running for Labor Cochair because I want our chapter to become a home for the multilingual, multiracial working class, especially for workers in large yet underrepresented industries like the service sector. I have three priorities for the Labor WG: long-term solidarity support, overcoming language divisions, and becoming a resource for the DMV’s working class. First, I will regularly communicate with workers during unionization and strike campaigns so our chapter can continuously support their needs. Furthermore, my time in the service sector has shown me that language justice is crucial for organizing food service workers in DC: many restaurants are divided between English-speaking front-of-house staff and Spanish-speaking kitchen staff. I will develop our WG’s bilingual capacity for organizing trainings, to foster solidarity and communication between English- and Spanish-speaking workers. Finally, I will develop a digital format for labor-related resources that working people can easily access and make sure that Spanish versions are available. Looking forward to working with you all!
Eduarda S. (She/her)
Eduarda first got involved with DSA in 2021 when she founded the current YDSA chapter at American University. During her senior year, she mobilized hundreds of students with YDSA @ AU to pressure the administration to reach a fair contract with the SEIU 500 staff union. Afterwards, Eduarda became more involved with the Metro DC chapter when she joined the campaign to pass Initiative 82, collecting signatures and talking to voters.
Since then, Eduarda has grown as a chapter leader, having been elected as an MDC chapter delegate to the DSA National Convention in 2023, an at-large member of the 2024 MDC Steering Committee, and a co-chair of the Labor Working Group also in 2024. Her priorities as a chapter leader are to establish our chapter as a welcoming, energizing space for members new and old as well as build out our working relationships with local organizations and coalitions.
Professionally, Eduarda is the Solidarity Organizer at DC Jobs With Justice. In her role, she facilitates DC JWJ’s relationships with orgs like MDC DSA and unions like UNITE HERE, working to build coalitions to address labor and housing issues facing DC residents. Her experience as a professional organizer and chapter leader make her well-suited to continue her role as a Labor Working Group co-chair.