“Buffy Wicks Dot Money” is a website The East Bay Democratic Socialists of America announced in a press release sent to Zennie62Media in the early morning hours of September 17th. Here’s the announcement of the new site that you can visit here: http://buffywicks.money
Democratic Socialists Promote Campaign Finance Transparency
OAKLAND – The East Bay chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has released http://buffywicks.money, a new website detailing the sources of historic sums of money flowing into the California Assembly District 15 race in support of candidate Buffy Wicks, a political consultant who ran Hillary Clinton’s 2016 California primary campaign against Bernie Sanders.
Using publicly-available information and biting wit, the site illustrates how hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from wealthy donors with well-known conservative agendas and independent expenditures from PACs finance the Wicks campaign.
East Bay DSA is a democratic, all-volunteer organization engaged in labor solidarity work and campaigns for single-payer healthcare and universal rent control. The chapter supports Jovanka Beckles, and helped Beckles beat out 10 other candidates in June’s top-two primary for the Assembly District 15 seat. Since 2016, DSA has grown from 6,000 members to 50,000 nationwide.
DSA’s grassroots organizers are fresh off the victory of democratic socialist Julia Salazar in New York, where they faced some of the same interests. For instance, the founder of Success Academy—a charter school network funded by John and Regina Scully, who gave $8,800 to Wicks and $250,000 through PACs—donated $18,000 to Salazar’s opponent, Martin Dilan, through StudentsFirstNY.
“Corporate PACs and wealthy donors are corrupting our democracy, and Buffy Wicks Dot Money puts a face on that,” said East Bay DSA vice-chair Frances Reade. “Wicks’s donors are used to wielding their financial influence to achieve policy outcomes. They are smart investors who expect a return on their investments.”
Beckles’s platform includes many policy provisions opposed by Wicks’s donors, including universal rent control, a charter school moratorium, and single-payer healthcare. In contrast, Wicks opposes Proposition 10, an upcoming ballot measure to legalize comprehensive rent control, won’t sign on to a charter school moratorium, and won’t support single-payer Medicare for All, positions in line with the financial interests of her donors. East Bay DSA encourages activists interested in creating sites exposing the funding streams of other candidates to contact them at [email protected].