Hello, comrades. My name is Robert Hunter, and I am your chapter-endorsed DSA candidate for the Alabama State House.
I want to take a few minutes to talk about what it means to move our movement forward through electoral organizing, particularly here in the South.
Those of us organizing in Alabama understand that our state government is intentionally structured to concentrate power while eliminating local democratic control. Through the state's constitutional power of stripping any autonomy from the cities without their legal authority, communities are too often prevented from making decisions that directly affect their own lives. Outside of organized labor and grassroots community organizations, few institutions currently possess the militant or organizational power necessary to challenge that system. I want to challenge that system by opening up another front so we can fight for public power for the state, labor protections for our communities, and other socialist aligned legislation.
Like many socialists, I believe that direct action and sustained community organizing are the engines of lasting social change. Electoral politics alone will never liberate working people. But elections are one front in a broader struggle, and if we leave that front uncontested, we surrender another avenue through which the ruling class exercises power.
That is why I chose to run.
Representatives influence appointments to local civil service boards, oversight bodies, and commissions that shape how public institutions function. Those appointments can determine who investigates police misconduct, who oversees public resources, and whether our communities have advocates inside institutions that have too often failed working people.
Just as importantly, elected office provides a platform to challenge the political consensus that tells ordinary people that democracy begins and ends on Election Day. For too long, establishment politicians have spoken without meaningful opposition to the systems that produce inequality, exploitation, and disinvestment. Every campaign rooted in working-class politics creates another opportunity to organize, educate, and demonstrate that another future is possible.
This is not to suggest that electoral work is the only path forward. It is simply the path I was able to take. I believe that whenever we have the capacity to act in service of our communities, we have a responsibility to do so. Once it became clear that I could run for office—and that no one else was stepping forward to carry a socialist vision into the Northeast sector of the legislature—I felt an obligation to bring our struggle directly to Montgomery.
But our movement has never depended on elections alone.
Our coalition continues to organize through mutual aid, political education, direct action, and DSA programs like our Brake Light Clinic (our next one will be in Gadsden August 1st), where we reduce unnecessary police interactions while providing tangible support to our neighbors. These projects build solidarity, strengthen community trust, and demonstrate that ordinary people can care for one another even when institutions fail to do so.
Our strength comes from combining every tool available to us. Electoral organizing, workplace organizing, mutual aid, direct action, and political education are not competing strategies—they reinforce one another. Together they challenge the cynical belief that nothing can change and that working people must simply accept the world as it is.
We reject that idea.
Another Alabama is possible. And we will build it together—not through any single campaign or candidate, but through an organized working class committed to solidarity, democracy, and collective liberation. To do so I need your help on the electoral front. The campaign has already raised more than $10,000 in small dollar donations, we have confirmed over 100 votes, we've already knocked over 1,000 doors, and phone banked 7,000 community members.
To win transparently we need to raise $40,000, knock 26,000 doors, and phone bank 20,000 community members.
I know that we can do that.
As to be of service is to protect your community and entrenching those protections is to show solidarity for community members now and for those who come after us.
Service and solidarity,
Robert Hunter
