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    For Immediate Release: March 28th, 2023
    Contact: Harrison Carpenter-Neuhaus, press@socialists.nyc

    NYC-DSA Assembles in the Capitol to Hold the Line on Budget

    NYC-DSA organizers, allies, and electeds fought to camp out in the Capitol to demand a budget that serves working-class New Yorkers, not billionaires and corporations.

    ALBANY, NY— With the New York state budget about to be finalized, NYC-DSA organizers, allies, and electeds assembled and fought to camp out in the State Capitol last night to demand a budget that puts working class New Yorkers first. 

    Despite the efforts of Albany’s pro-corporate legislators, the #TaxTheRich campaign has built statewide consensus around our platform and achieved some important promises from the Assembly and Senate to tax the rich, build public renewables, and protect tenants. But the fight is not over yet. Billionaires have poured tens of millions of dollars into lobbying to stop our movement and make sure this year’s budget serves their interests instead of our needs. Governor Hochul and her donors have made it clear that they don’t want to pass our agenda—it’s up to us to make them. 

    In the Capitol War Room, we showed that New Yorkers can’t afford diluted half-measures: we need a budget that puts public goods over private profit. While billionaires are pulling out all the stops to lobby our leaders to protect their ill-gotten wealth, New Yorkers are showing we won’t stand for a legislature that backslides on its promises or a budget that sells out our future to the highest bidders. We need a budget that protects New Yorkers from predatory landlords, price-gouging energy companies, and a racist carceral system. Lives and livelihoods are on the line. We’re making sure Governor Hochul sees their faces. 

    Because ordinary New Yorkers have been standing up and demanding a budget for the working class, we’re on the cusp of winning a New York with a livable minimum wage; where no New Yorker faces arbitrary evictions; where our transit system is fully funded by corporate taxes; where union workers build a clean energy grid that serves us, not shareholders; and where public safety means supporting vulnerable New Yorkers, not policing and bail reform rollbacks. 

    These are important steps forward, but they’re not the end of the road. We’re in this for the long haul, building working-class power across the state so we can finally realize the New York we deserve. We can make a future where every person has the high-quality education, healthcare, housing, childcare, union job, and habitable climate they need to build a life and raise a family—free of charge and guaranteed.

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    ABOUT NYC-DSA: New York City Democratic Socialists is the local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America—the largest socialist organization in the United States with over 85,000 members. NYC-DSA is run by its 5,000+ members and activists who are working together to build a democratic socialist organization in the five boroughs.