California for the 99%
If there was anything that my battles in Richmond have taught me it is this: to bring real change we must unite behind our shared values, vision, and policy. We must put people before party, and the only way to do that is to focus on what will make a real difference for the 99%.
The changes that will make this difference for the 99% are very clear. We must bring living wages to working families, we must invest in every level of education from universal pre-K to tuition-free college, we must make healthcare a right for everyone and make housing accessible and affordable. These core issues are at the center of my platform, with many others, and are a large part of why my campaign has been gaining so much support from progressive organizations all across the state.
Running as a No Party Preference, corporate-free candidate, means that I actually have to earn every vote and endorsement. I don’t get the traditional automatic support that comes with the letter D next to my name and don’t have corporate donors pulling strings for me. But this is not a loss, because I can actually talk about and fight for REAL change. I can continue to take on Chevron and other corporate bullies, because they don’t own me. Instead I am supported by the exact group I am supposed to represent - YOU. While this seems radical to many who hold office in Sacramento, I think it is what democracy is supposed to look like. And I am inspired by all the support and energy this principle has brought to our campaign over the last few months!
From day one my campaign has been an organizing campaign, and I have found that every group I meet with, whether it’s an Our Revolution chapter, a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) group or a Green Party chapter, I quickly find a sense of unity behind the vision our campaign presents.
I’m just about to head out from Richmond for another trip through Southern California to meet with local organizers and hold a Los Angeles barnstorm event in our continued signature-gathering drive. Your support is what makes this campaign for the people possible. As you are able, will you dig deep today and join me with a donation of $45, $99, or even $270 to fund the next week of organizing in Southern California?
Click to Donate $45 to Organizing in Southern California
Click to Donate $99 to Organizing in Southern California
Click to Donate $270 to Organizing in Southern California
Look Ahead at 2018
2018 is going to be the year for corporate-free progressive power, because if there is anything 2017 showed us, it is that we can no longer allow a corporate stranglehold on our democracy. Last year, nearly every legislative action at the federal level -- and some at the state -- was bought and paid for by the 1% and corporate cash.
In the District of Corporations (D.C.) we saw the gutting of Net Neutrality and the passing of a extremely unpopular Tax Scam, which is the largest redistribution of wealth to the rich to date. We also saw multiple attacks on our healthcare, including the end of the CHIP program, massive deregulation of the EPA, all while the corporate puppets also increased the defense budget by $80 billion dollars annually. In addition, they have yet to take serious action to rebuild Puerto Rico. In California we saw the continued use of prison slave labor to fight fires, and our Democrat-controlled state government blocked SB 562 which would ensure healthcare for all. While these disastrous decisions vary in practice, they all have the same pattern: working and middle class families are robbed of every single crumb, while the entire loaf is handed to the rich and large corporations. Both of which are the biggest sponsors of our “representatives” every time they run for office.
So it is abundantly clear that if we want workers to have living wages, security and dignity, if we want healthcare as a right for all, if we want tuition-free university and affordable housing, we must get corporate cash out of our democracy. 2018 is our year to fix this broken system, and it can only happen if we have a massive wave of corporate-free progressive champions who will put people before profits, and finally bring some representation to the 99%!
That is the kind of campaign we are building and I cannot do this alone. I need your support to grow my campaign, so we can reach the hundreds of thousands of voters necessary to win this election. We know our values, our beliefs and our priorities are popular, we just need everyone to hear the message! So today I ask that you make a contribution of any size, to fuel my people-powered campaign and send a clear message that we are fighting against corporate values, and for human values!
Click here to make a contribution of any size to my people-first campaign!
The conditions are set for the political revolution in 2018, I hope you will join me in making it happen! Thank you.
SF Chronicle: "Ex-Richmond mayor looks to bring a Bernie Sanders approach to Sacramento"
Recently John Wildermuth, a political reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle covered our campaign, below are some highlights from the article. Check out the full story here!
For former Richmond Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, it’s time to take her city’s progressive politics on the road.
“I decided that at a certain point I had to do a statewide race,” said the 65-year-old McLaughlin. “If I ran statewide we could spread the Progressive Alliance farther and move it to a larger stage.”
The Chicago-born McLaughlin was one of the founders of the Richmond group, which ran a slate of progressive outsiders in 2004 to replace City Council members they said were both ineffective and too closely tied to Chevron, the city’s most powerful business.
After two years on the council, McLaughlin beat an incumbent mayor by 242 votes in 2006. She held that office until 2014, when she was elected again to the council, where members of the alliance now hold five of the seven seats. She resigned her seat this year so she could campaign to replace termed-out Democrat Gavin Newsom as lieutenant governor.
“We want to show the rest of the state how we did it, how we reduced crime, raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour and put in new rent control rules,” she said.
Midnight Beginnings
Tonight is the deadline for Gayle’s fundraising report, and I hope that you will make a donation of any size to show the strength of this grassroots movement. Large contributions are great, but when we can say that thousands of people have invested their hard-earned dollars in this campaign, that is the victory that we are looking for. Twenty-seven dollars, one dollar, these are appreciated and meaningful.
As some of you know, I have been working alongside Gayle for 15 years, and together we helped found the Richmond Progressive Alliance. Gayle is the real deal, and in her 12.5-years as an elected official, she never let us down. I cannot state too strongly the importance of putting a leader like Gayle into the California statehouse. We will have a people’s champion who will fearlessly take on the corporate greed that is choking our communities!
When we began this campaign early this year, our goal was to organize with progressive revolutionaries throughout the state. Already, Gayle has won the endorsement of 30 Our Revolution chapters, and several new progressive alliances have formed in response to the message that Gayle shares everywhere she goes. We know that our successes in taking Richmond back from Chevron, in fighting Wall Street, in passing rent control, in passing a $15 minimum wage, and in reducing crime can all be repeated in community after community. We simply need people power and corporate-free campaigns!
Tomorrow it is 2018. We are in the middle of a large signature gathering effort, and will be rolling out new initiatives regularly. We will need your help at every step. Through the busyness of this campaign, Gayle for California will not lose sight of our mission: to provide organizing support to hundreds of communities throughout the state, and to share the RPA model. When we fight, we win.
Please join us with a contribution of $1 or more by tonight’s midnight deadline.
Thank you,
Juan Reardon
Campaign Manager
Host a House Party with Gayle!
The goal of a house party should be raising money as well as introducing new people to a candidate. House party's are a vital part to fueling our campaign and spreading Gayle's message across the state, and they are a great experience. I recently hosted one for Gayle at my home in San Francisco and I want to share my experience with you so you can step up and host one yourself!
At our San Francisco event (seen above), we met new friends and enjoyed live music from a guest who’d written several corporate-free protest songs. We ate and drank together before Gayle shared her vision for the race and the changes she will bring to Sacramento.
Gayle’s organizing campaign for lieutenant governor is very efficient - 3-4 house parties will pay for a month of Gayle’s travels across the state. The campaign has set a goal of 20 people and $1,000 raised for these events - set that target, and Gayle will come to you! At mine, I asked for $27 per person, with no one refused for lack of funds.
Organizing a house party is real work, but it doesn’t have to be daunting. And we can help you by co-hosting these events on Gayle’s Facebook page, and, if you like, emailing IDd supporters in your area to help boost turnout. You also don’t have to worry about a big spread - snacks and light refreshments are good, and you can expect guests to contribute in that way, too. You might even consider a Gayle for California fundraising potluck!
I hope that many of you will want to organize events with Gayle. To get on Gayle’s calendar, contact campaign manager Juan Reardon at [email protected].
And, if you can’t organize an event at this time, I hope you’re keeping Bernie’s grassroots donor movement alive! Please consider a $27 recurring donation or a one-time gift of $99 today. Your support will help Gayle reach millions of California voters over the coming months.
In solidarity,
Adriel Hampton
Organize California
As we prepare to greet 2018, I can’t stop thinking about how much we can accomplish in the next year. We are on the cusp of radical change that will transform California politics.
The nature of change is that it’s hard to see it happening - and then, suddenly, everything is very different. My campaign is about a vision for sweeping change that puts the well being of people and community at the heart of our state politics. People First!
We’ll change from corporate-funded politics to a culture where corporate donations are a black mark.
We’ll change from a Statehouse that rewards dead-end wealth accumulation to one that rewards green energy and innovations.
We’ll change from a reign of greed to a culture that rewards collaboration and enterprises that benefit our people and our environment.
Many organizations and candidates are working together for this change, here in California and throughout our nation. In my Lt. Governor campaign, we see more than 130 people gathering signatures across the state. We’ve won more Our Revolution chapter endorsements than any campaign in the country, and we’re just getting started.
My campaign is an organizing campaign. Our goal is to support progressives organizing in hundreds of communities and neighborhoods here in California. Candidates cannot do it alone. Organizations cannot do it alone. We need a broad alliance of progressives who say “No!” to corporate campaign donations and corporate greed.
In coming weeks and months, we will continue to roll out tools to get involved in the campaign. I welcome your ideas and feedback, and thank you for engaging in this fight for change!
A California Economy for the People
As we look to 2018, we face a Republican Party that has unmasked the wholesale greed that fuels its existence. There is no starker symbol of this greed than Trump’s declaration, after the GOP Tax Scam vote, to wealthy partygoers at his coastal resort this Christmas: “You all just got a lot richer!”
Rest is required for us to resume the fight. I hope that your holidays have been full of the community and support we need to take back our state and our country from the bought politicians who are slowly killing us.
The GOP’s votes last week pushed into law the largest tax overhaul in the last three decades. The 1% and corporations are the greatest beneficiaries. To say this will cause inequality to skyrocket is a understatement; this is one of the largest redistributions of wealth in our history. Even after raising taxes on the majority of Americans, eliminating Obamacare’s individual mandate (which will lead to 13 million Americans losing their healthcare in the next decade), and eliminating graduate students’ ability to write off their tuition, there will still be an estimated budget deficit of as much as $2.2 trillion dollars! And we’ve no doubt that the Republicans will respond by swooping back in to cut what little benefits we have left, effectively taking every last crumb from us to give the elites the entire loaf.
We cannot rely on politics as usual to save us. Corporations give broadly to both major parties, and here in California, despite a supermajority of Democrats in the the legislature, pharma, oil, and finance lobbyists still run the show. Our governor, a staunch Democrat lauded for cap and trade legislation, was recently booed at the Bonn, Germany climate summit for inaction on actually stopping fracking and offshore drilling. California is NOT taking the steps required to curb corporate greed!
My corporate-free, nonpartisan candidacy for Lt. Governor is about taking the fight TO the corporations, not just resisting them. I am working to organize hundreds of communities throughout the state for progressive change - already, we have have won the formal endorsements of 30 Our Revolution chapters throughout the state, along with many other organizational chapters from the Green Party to the DSA, and the Peace and Freedom Party and Movement for a People’s Party. Many eyes are now open - the GOP’s extreme attacks on the people of this country, the crass nature of our current president, all of these injustices are creating a new political awareness. We must seize this moment for real, people-focused change!
How can we do this? First, everyone running for federal office must pledge to “repeal and replace” this terrible tax bill. Second, here in California, there are clear policy goals we can organize for that will return wealth and power to the people of our state:
Corporate Prop. 13 reform. About a third of California corporations benefit from unfair tax breaks under a law that was advertised as protecting seniors. It’s time to end this corporate tax system that lets Chevron take advantage of benefits meant for struggling homeowners! Local governments and our public schools will see $9 billion in returned revenues with this reform.
Oil extraction tax. Oil companies spend tens of millions buying politicians, but here in California they skirt the kind of taxes that benefit Alaska and Texas. How is this possible! First we ban fracking, then we tax extraction, progressively higher each year, using those revenues to fund the shift to renewable energy.
Tax the rich. I will organize for a progressive tax increase that goes up 1% for each million in taxable income, up to 12% above current rates. This “Fair Share tax” will raise billions for education and infrastructure in California.
It is clear that if we actually want an economy that works for the people, we have to get corporate cash out of our elections. Any politician who takes thousands or millions from corporate PACs cannot be a true people’s representative.
My entire political career has been corporate free and that is how we built Richmond Progressive Alliance which now holds a supermajority on Richmond’s City Council. If we want living wages for workers, healthcare as a right, and corporations to pay their fair share, it’s time to make a stand - corporate-free, or no money from me!
You are the fuel for my campaign, and our momentum is growing. The conditions are set for the political revolution in 2018.
Please click here to make a contribution of any size to my people-first campaign!
Thank you for your energy and support!
Wishing you a joyful December 25th!
We are approaching December 25 and many throughout the world are preparing to celebrate Christmas. People will be reflecting on the story of Mary and Joseph searching for a room in Bethlehem to give birth to a baby who would become Jesus, the carpenter and teacher of Nazareth. That homeless family gave birth to their child in a stable, just as many in California and our nation have come to spend night after night outside in the elements with no home in which to lay their heads.
This is a crisis demanding a response from us immediately. According to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, over the past two years California's homeless population has shot up 14 percent to over 134,000, which is the most by far of any other state and represents 31 percent of all the individual homeless people in the U.S. This is a disgrace for the 6th largest economy in the world!
We in the Richmond Progressive Alliance, with many of our allies, protested from day one the criminalization of the homeless imposed by the corporate-controlled Richmond City Council that preceded my being elected to office. We finally succeeded in abolishing all the local laws prohibiting persons lacking a home from sleeping in public places.
But decriminalization is not a solution for homelessness, it is just a starting point. Preventing people from becoming homeless is another essential strategy and that is why we in Richmond passed the first new Fair Rent Control and Just Cause for Eviction law in California in 30 years. We also created a Homelessness Task Force to respond to the needs of homeless individuals and families for homes, jobs, health care including mental health care, and social programs. We need more; we need regional and statewide solutions.
As Lt. Governor, I will address homelessness statewide in various ways and am eager to hear ideas and strategies from others:
- Pass Single Payer Medicare For All to end financial crises for folks who are ill
- De-criminalize homelessness
- Establish statewide rent control and just cause for eviction
- Eliminate Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act and the Ellis Act
- Establish a speculator tax [Very high taxes on empty houses]
- Use state and city properties for temporary shelters
- Invest state land for a land trust system to build affordable housing
- Create a State Public Bank and direct it to prioritize financing of low-income housing
- Introduce universal minimum income
- Improve public transportation and public education
- Increase mental health services for all who need them, particularly the homeless
- Create a statewide office of housing and homelessness to advise policy
We Californians can break ground for a new era - one based on justice, solidarity, kindness, compassion and caring for each other. As Lt. Governor, I will work with all of you to assure our state puts people first!
May each and every one of you experience the joy of this season in your own way, and remember that we are all sisters and brothers in the struggle for justice. Together we can build a better future for all!
Corporate-free People First!
Living Wages for Workers Now!
It’s no secret that for the last 40 years, working and middle class families have gotten a bad deal in our country. Despite continued inflation, increasing costs of living and massive growth in productivity, wages have stayed flat. In fact, when adjusted for inflation, US workers earning the federal minimum wage today have less buying power than minimum wage workers nearly five decades ago. In 1968 workers earned, in inflation-adjusted dollars, $10.90 an hour, over 3 dollars more than today’s federal minimum wage of $7.25 and still more than California’s minimum wage of $10.50 an hour, which is still not even close to what a living wage should be in California.
We live in a much wealthier country than we did in 1968, but instead of that growth being shared amongst workers it has been re-distributed to the 1%, driving us to the highest level of income inequality in recorded human history. Not only is this bad economics, it is beyond immoral. No person deserves to live in poverty, especially when they work 40 plus hours a week juggling 2 or 3 jobs and still failing to make ends meet. That is no failure of those individuals, but the failure of capitalist system run by vultures.
That is why in Richmond I fought hard with my Richmond Progressive Alliance counterparts to raise the local minimum wage to $15 bucks an hour by the end of 2018, tracking inflation every year thereafter. As Lt. Governor I will fight to increase the minimum wage and move toward a true living wage for all Californians. We must ensure there is system where the 99% share fully in the fruits of their labor, not just left with the crumbs from the 1%.
But I cannot do this alone, in order to bring dignity and security back to workers it is going to take a movement, as it did in Richmond. In that fight I learned that such a movement can be built quickly when we organize inclusively, focusing on policy not party affiliations and free of corporate control. That is why today I ask you to join my corporate-free campaign with a donation of $15 dollars, to show solidarity for a future where every worker gets the dignity of earning a living wage.
Thank for your support and Season’s Greetings to all! A better California is possible!
Jaffe's Email for Gayle!
Thank you for your amazing support for my campaign! The support that has continued to flood in from across the country tells me that we are ripe for change! Doug Jones won in Alabama and now Paul Ryan wants to resign - wow.
I’m running against the top House Democrat because we desperately need to reform the Democratic Party. I’m committed to fighting for progressive change from within the party, but whether it’s independent Bernie Sanders or the movement for a People’s Party, I also support and respect those working for change in their own way.
Ultimately, we need a massive people’s movement that is corporate-free and focused on the needs of the 99%. We need a living wage, affordable housing, and protections for local businesses instead of multinational corporations. There is so much work to do!
Today, Gayle is running for Lt. Governor and has won the endorsement of 28 Our Revolution chapters - more than any other candidate in the country.
I often find myself sharing a stage with Gayle and her candidacy as part of the “Progressive Surge” that is sweeping across California. In fact, her campaign is working to bring the RPA model to hundreds of communities throughout the state - and a new San Francisco Progressive Alliance has just launched. [Name/Friend], we truly are building a progressive revolution in California.
Will you join me in supporting Gayle’s organizing campaign? As a corporate-free candidate, every small donation helps.
Would you like to learn more about the RPA model? Watch this video with Gayle and other RPA members:
Thank you,
Stephen Jaffe