There will be many headlines coming out of Tuesday’s primaries in California—and, hopefully, the biggest one will be how voters in San Francisco and Los Angeles rejected the attempts by American plutocrats to buy elections and turn the politics of both cities dramatically to the right.

In San Francisco, millions-upon-millions of dollars have been spent to fund the campaign to recall progressive champion, District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Have no illusions, this recall campaign is funded by the forces that oppose any changes occurring to our racist criminal justice system and the prison/industrial complex. If you wondered what the reactionary counter-offensive would be to the largest wave of demonstrations in U.S. history that swept the country in the wake of George Floyd’s brutal murder in the summer of 2020—this is it.

We, at PDA, call upon everyone to do whatever they can to help defend Chesa Boudin, and defeat the effort to recall him.

350 miles to the south, billionaire developer Ric Caruso has spent a mind-boggling 34 million dollars (almost entirely his own money) in an effort to buy the LA Mayor’s race. I live in LA and it is impossible to get away from these ads—which are as slick as slick can be—painting the lifetime Republican as a tough-on-crime Democrat.

As we’ve seen with unparalleled super-PAC spending against progressive candidates all across the country, America’s plutocrats are hell-bent on destroying our democracy with their dollars.

We can’t let them do it—and we won’t! PDA has always, and will always, defend democracy and demand that money be eliminated from U.S. politics.

Paradoxically, our campaign for this will cost money—and the best way to support us is to become a PDA sustainer. Every dollar you donate will go towards building a progressive movement fully committed to removing the influence of money on U.S. politics (PDA supports full public funding for elections!).

On Tuesday, we must defeat Caruso and lift Chesa along with the six PDA-endorsed congressional candidates (Angelica Duenas, Kylie Taitano, Derek Marshall, Ruth Luevanos, Mike Ortega, and Shervin Aazami).

Today, Tuesday, and everyday, we will fight against the plutocratic control of our politics and for strengthening our democracy and removing the influence of money from the electoral arena!