Maine DSA Campaigns, Committees, & Working Groups
Campaigns
Portland
Maine DSA’s Portland Local Campaign Committee runs Livable Portland to improve the lives of all working class Portlanders. Livable Portland has won rent control, minimum wage increases, and so much more!
Watch their Action Network page for more information and join their mailing list!
Midcoast
Maine DSA’s Midcoast Local Campaign Committee runs Midcoast Solidarity Campaign to improve the lives of people in Brunswick and the greater Midcoast area.
Watch their Action Network page for more information and join their mailing list!
Committees
Political Education Committee
Running regular reading groups and classes on political theory for the working class.
Watch our calendar for our next event!
Working Groups
Bodily Autonomy
Members of our chapter are working to build a united front to defend trans and reproductive rights in Maine.
Watch their Action Network page for more information and join their mailing list!
Public Health
The CDC is actively being dismantled, rural hospitals are closing, smokey skies consume our summers, and cuts to Medicaid/Medicare threaten to harm us and our neighbors deeply in the most elderly state in the country. Maine DSA is fighting back.
Watch their Action Network page for more information and join their mailing list!
Pine and Roses
Creating a statewide publication dedicated to building solidarity with working-class, feminist, anti-racist, indigenous, ecological, immigrant, LGBTQ+, housing, and education struggles from Kittery to Calais and Madawaska to Rumford.
Watch their Action Network page for more information and join their mailing list!
The Maine Mural Podcast
A show brought to you by the Maine chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. We touch on various topics including electoral and direct action in the state of Maine, interviews with prominent left Mainers, working class history, and more!
SoPo Local Politics
Members of the chapter are watching South Portland politics to see where they can collectively make a meaningful difference.
Watch their Action Network page for more information and join their mailing list!
Bangor
The Bangor Area Working Group will work to organize and engage Maine DSA members in the Bangor Area, engage them in local efforts and statewide campaigns, and chapter activities.
Watch their Action Network page for more information and join their mailing list!
Lewiston-Auburn
The Lewiston-Auburn working group aims to bring together a community of leftists to build socialist, working-class, and tenant-driven power in the region. By working in coalition with allied community organizations and local organizers on the ground, we will establish both a dedicated community of leftists and a fine-tuned campaign apparatus to fight for material and lasting change in Lewiston and beyond!
Watch their Action Network page for more information and join their mailing list!
Past Campaigns
No on A: No Rollbacks on Rent Control!
Portland landlords put a measure on the November 2023 ballot to allow landlords to gouge the rent on over 9,000 tenants previously protected by rent control.
The initiative would have meant every tenant who lives in an apartment run by a landlord with fewer than 10 units would have to pay whatever the landlord wants. A supermajority of Portlanders once again stood together and defeated the landlords’ proposal.
No on A: No Rent Gouging!
In early 2023, the Southern Maine Landlord Association began collecting signatures for a referendum that would allow landlords to raise rents for new tenants as high as they wanted. Despite not planning an electoral campaign for 2023, Maine DSA mobilized members and the broader public to oppose it.
Setting new records for a traditionally low-turnout June election, a supermajority of Portlanders stood together and defeated the landlords’ proposal.
Maine DSA for a Livable Portland
The working class demands a city we can all live and thrive in. Maine DSA crafted and supported referenda in the November 2022 election to raise the minimum wage and abolish the sub-minimum wage, strengthen tenant protections, and reduce the number of short term rentals. It also supported the full slate of charter amendments proposed by Portland’s elected charter commission.
As a result, Portland now has some of the strongest tenant protections on the east coast.
Maine Public Power
Maine DSA’s campaign to support the Our Power Maine coalition worked to replace Central Maine Power and Versant Power with a not-for-profit, consumer-owned electric utility that Mainers would own and democratically control.
Mainers voted down the proposal to create the Pine Tree Power Company in November of 2023.
People First Portland
PFP was a bold, democratic campaign to pass five referendum initiatives in the November 2020 election which put Portland residents’ needs before corporate profits by raising the minimum wage, banning facial surveillance, enacting a green new deal, protecting tenants, and restricting short term rentals.
As a result, Portland is a more equal city with stronger privacy protections, lower rental housing costs, and better labor protections.