Socialist Alternative

Who we are

Socialist Alternative is a national organization in political solidarity with revolutionary socialists around the world fighting in our workplaces, communities, and schools against the exploitation and injustices working people face every day under the global capitalist system. 

We don’t just talk—we organize and fight to change the world. We build protests and walkouts. We help organize unions and strikes. We fight for the program contained in our newspaper Socialist Alternative, written by our own members, who are workers and students. Every week, we have branch meetings in cities across the country where we analyze events from a Marxist perspective and discuss our work. 

We led struggles that won a series of victories for working people in Seattle, where Socialist Alternative held a seat on the City Council from 2013-2023. This included the country’s first $15/hr minimum wage, landmark renters’ rights and a tax on Amazon to fund affordable social housing. Now, our members are helping to lead fights of Amazon workers and USPS letter carriers to win a $30/hr starting wage.

We believe the Republicans and Democrats are both parties of big business. We are campaigning to build a new, independent anti-war party of workers and young people to fight for the interests of the millions, not the millionaires.

Trumpism, poverty, discrimination and oppression, war, and environmental destruction are symptoms—capitalism is the disease. We need an international struggle against this failed system. We’re fighting for a socialist society, which means a democratically-planned economy based on the common interests of working and young people and the planet. Join Socialist Alternative today!

Join SA

Joining means basic agreement with our ideas and a commitment to putting them into action. Apply to join and a member in your area will reach out to you shortly!

Become a supporter

Your monthly contribution will help us strengthen struggles around labor rights, the fight against racism, sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia, and build the socialist movement in the U.S. and around the world!

What we stand for

 Fight Trump & The Far Right

  • The Democrats can’t and won’t stop Trump’s agenda. Fight Trump and his billionaire government’s far-right, authoritarian agenda with mass protests, walkouts, occupations, strikes, and a new working-class party.
  • No scapegoating – it’s the capitalist system that creates crises and suffering, not immigrants, transgender people, or any marginalized group. Build working-class solidarity and struggle to fight back against the capitalist class’s divide and rule.

Work To Live, Not Live To Work

  • Raise the federal minimum wage to $25/hr, adjusted annually for cost of living increases, as a step toward a living wage for all.
  • 32 hour work week with no loss in pay or benefits (minimum $52,000/year). Share out the work with the unemployed and create new union jobs.
  • A minimum guaranteed income of $4,000/month for the unemployed, disabled, and elderly, as well as for stay-at-home parents of children up to Pre-K or those unable to work.
  • A guaranteed decent pension for all. No cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid – tax the rich to expand these crucial safety net programs.
  • Combat the cost-of-living crisis – establish price controls on everyday goods.

Tax The Rich To Invest In Our Basic Needs

  • Free, universal healthcare, paid sick leave, and cancellation of all medical debt.
  • Take the pharmaceutical companies and for-profit hospitals into democratic public ownership to develop state-of-the-art treatments and provide high-quality care at no cost to patients.
  • Fully fund and drastically expand addiction and mental health services. 
  • A massive expansion of high-quality, permanently affordable, publicly-owned housing where renters are legally protected from discrimination. Pass strong universal rent control and stop the criminalization of homelessness.
  • Fully fund public education and end school privatization. Stop all right-wing attacks on education; for a national curriculum written in collaboration with teachers’ unions, parents and students, based on the scientific method and an uncensored version of history.
  • Cancel all student debt. Make all public college tuition-free.
  • Eliminate gun violence – massive investment in jobs programs, after-school programs, and recreation centers as a starting point, combined with basic gun control policies.

Fight All Oppression

  • Fight racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and all forms of oppression with working-class solidarity and struggle. Build a mass, multiracial, multi-gender movement against systemic oppression and capitalism.
  • Equal rights for all, including equal pay for equal work. End all harassment, discrimination, and violence against women, LGBTQ people, Black people, immigrants, disabled people, and all marginalized groups.
  • End the institutional racism of the criminal justice system, the racist “war on drugs,” and mass incarceration. Invest in rehabilitation, job training, and living-wage jobs, not prisons. End low-paid prison labor, which is modern-day slavery. Abolish the death penalty.
  • Arrest and convict killer cops. Immediately fire all police officers with a history of brutality and racist behavior. Demilitarize the police. Put all police departments under the control of democratically-elected civilian boards with the power to hire, fire, subpoena, and set budget priorities.
  • No more voter registration – automatic voting rights for all.
  • Defend the right to choose whether and when to have children. Free contraception as part of a broad program for reproductive health including comprehensive, LGBTQ-inclusive sex education.
  • Free, safe, legal, and accessible abortion. Stop all right-wing attempts to criminalize abortion. 
  • Paid parental leave for 18 months and free, high-quality childcare and preschool for all.
  • Full legal rights for all queer people, including the right to self-identify and express one’s gender freely. Free, gender-affirming universal healthcare.

Defend Immigrants’ Rights

  • No immigrant detentions or deportations. Immediate, unconditional legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrants, regardless of their job status.
  • No to capitalist divide-and-rule. Unions must lead the way in uniting immigrants and US-born workers, organizing all workers and forming deportation defense committees in every workplace.
  • Build a movement against the destructive policies of US imperialism around the world that drive working class people to flee their home countries. 

End All Imperialist War

  • Fight the rich, not their wars – build a massive, international anti-war movement.
  • End the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. The right to self-determination of all nationalities, with guaranteed rights for ethnic, religious, and national minorities. End the occupation and siege of all Palestinian territories.
  • Abolish NATO and all imperialist alliances. Stop the military build-up between the two blocs led by US and Chinese imperialism, and oppose the ramping up of nationalism around the world.
  • Drastically cut the bloated U.S. military budget and redirect that money toward free universal healthcare, public education, and high-quality affordable housing for all. 
  • Capitalism breeds imperialism, plunging the world into devastating wars. Only international socialism can bring about lasting peace.

Rebuild Fighting Unions

  • We need unions that fight the bosses and their parties with tactics like strikes, mass demonstrations, and open defiance of anti-union laws. Fighting unions should be democratically controlled by their memberships.
  • Not another dime of union money to either party of big business – Democrat or Republican. Spend the millions now spent on corporate political campaigns to launch massive drives to organize non-union workers across the US, and run independent, pro-working class candidates.
  • Union leaders must accept the average wage of the workers they represent.
  • Reject both capitalist “free trade” policies and “America first” protectionism. US workers have more in common with workers around the globe than we do with the bosses at home.
  • End anti-union “right to work” and “open-shop” legislation. Implement simple majority card check for all unionization drives.
  • Unions need to fight all manifestations of racism, xenophobia, sexism, queerphobia, and all forms of discrimination and oppression. The unions should organize mass non-compliance, strikes, and walkouts against right-wing attacks.

End Climate Catastrophe

  • Ban new oil and gas drilling and take the top 100 polluting companies into democratic public ownership. Implement a democratically planned, just transition to 100% renewable energy as part of an international plan.
  • A massive, unionized green jobs program. Give all workers in polluting industries the option of a union job rapidly building and operating green infrastructure with no loss in pay, benefits, or seniority.
  • Fully-funded emergency systems to protect and evacuate people from the more frequent and severe storms, floods, and fires caused by climate change. High-quality housing and assistance for those displaced or otherwise affected.

Build A New Mass Workers’ Party

  • No votes or donations to any Democrats or Republicans – the labor movement and social movements must build a new, anti-war, working-class party. 
  • Unite this new workers’ party around a common program, developed through democratic debate and discussion in every workplace, school, and community. It should take no corporate donations, no money from billionaires, and have a socialist program.
  • All elected officials to make no more than the average wage of their constituents.

Revolutionary Socialism & Internationalism

  • Capitalism produces poverty, oppression, environmental destruction, pandemics, and war. We need an international working-class revolution against this failed system.
  • Take the top 500 corporations and banks that dominate the US economy into democratic public ownership. Run them under the democratic management of elected representatives of workers and the broader public.
  • A democratic and socialist plan for the economy based on the common interests of working people and youth everywhere – for a socialist United States and a socialist world.