Working Groups

A working group is a group of Tampa DSA members working together on a specific topic or issue.

Our Currently Chartered Working Groups

Health Justice WG

Ecosocialist WG

Working Group Meetings

Working group meetings are held once a month. Meetings are typically held in libraries or virtually on Zoom (COVID-19 update)– check our upcoming events  or the calendar on our homepage here for dates, location, and time.

Health Justice

The Healthcare working group is dedicated to advocating for health care as a human right with a class analysis. As socialists, we advocate first for the elimination of a profit-driven private insurance industry, to be replaced by public funding of health care through greater taxation of the top income earners. This would ensure accessible and free care to all, including those most marginalized and devalued by capitalism. Approximately 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance in the United States, and medical bills account for about 50% of all personal bankruptcies (75% of which had health insurance at the onset of illness or injury.) Under capitalism, the basic human right of health care is rationed to the upper class, which translates effectively to a right to life; for persons over 50 years old, the life expectancy of the top 20% income earners is 13 years longer than the life expectancy of the bottom 20% income earners.

We also believe that we should not stop here, and that we must replace privatized health care delivery (for-profit health care providers and hospital and pharmaceutical corporations) with a nationalized health program, where health care delivery would be public, democratic, and transparent. It has been well demonstrated that for-profit channels of health care incur higher costs but produce lower scores on health care measures and have higher death rates.

This DSA working group aims to petition, canvass, host town hall meetings, put pressure on elected officials, and strengthen community coalition in order to advocate for prompt and sustainable transition to a single-payer, and subsequently nationalized, health care program.

Ecosocialist

The Ecosocialist Working Group is a platform for organizing local activism for environmental issues, stewardship, and outreach. This group believes that the complications and injustices arising from the ways which people are embedded in their society is as much a concern as the injustices arising from ways their society is embedded into the greater natural world.