Shanti Singh

Shanti Singh is co-chair of San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America.

Radical roots

“I’m a Marxist. A lot of people say they are, but I actually am. I always have been,” Shanti began.

My parents are from India, so they’re anti-imperialists, but they’re not particularly political. They were born in the 1960s and grew up with Nixon and Kissinger, who played a terrible role in the war between Pakistan and India, so their take on the Soviet Union was somewhat different. They thought the Soviets would help them. India was not on the US’s side, it was non-aligned.

I grew up in Pennsylvania in the Rust Belt, which is a deindustrialized area. My father was a teacher and I went to both a good primary school and a good university. My parents generally voted for liberal Democrats, but then they voted for Bernie, probably because I worked for him. And they were against the war in Iraq.

In the beginning, I was all for Obama and actively supported his campaign, but I was soon disappointed: the drone war, attacks in Pakistan and Yemen, bailing out Wall Street — that was enough for me. I’ve worked in finance myself and I learned all about capitalism from the inside. I saw that all the regulations that had been passed didn't work in the slightest. When the Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock protests began, I realized I had to do something else. The idea of “defund the police” had me convinced. This system just can’t be reformed, I thought.

I was also active in the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club . We formed our DSA chapter in late 2016/early 2017 and we currently have around 1,300 members in San Francisco.

After the campaign, I started working for Tenants Together. We supported tenants in disputes with their landlords. We work for rent regulation and rent controls. A lot of referendums are held in California and not all of them good. Big business also uses them to assert its interests. But we try to do that as well and sometimes we’re successful. We recently lost a referendum to establish a tenants’ association for all of California by only one vote. The Democrats have a clear majority here, but they often act in the interest of the real estate industry.

DSA at Socialism Conference 2024

Plenaries featuring DSA members:

Sessions featuring DSA members:

From Tenant Organizing to Social Housing for All

Friday August 30, 2024 4:30pm – 6:00pm CDT

Rents and housing prices are skyrocketing. Governments at every level prioritize real estate developers’ profits over the livelihoods of working class people. What are strategies to address these crises, from tenant unions to electoral and legislative organizing? How can these complement each other? How can socialists address the affordability crisis and organize toward a horizon of socialized housing for all?

Featuring Shanti Singh (DSA-SF, Tenants Together), Sebastian Fernandez Giraldo (Triangle DSA, Triangle Tenants Union), Damiana Dendy (Metro DC DSA, Stomp Out Slumlords), and Renette Bradley (NYC-DSA, Housing Justice for All).

SF Right To Counsel Committee

Jen Snyder January 26, 2018 ·

SF Right To Counsel Committee extended family ❤️ We’re gonna Stop Unfair Eviction y’all 🌉🏘✊️ — with Evan Owski, Shanti Singh, Mat Mac, Marc Dantona, Renee Curran, Susan Marsh, Jason Kruta, Norman Degelman, Gabriel Markoff, Brace Belden, Steven Kight, Nora Belrose, Rhonda Smith, Brian Hanson, Dean Preston, Shannon Molotov, Trevor Patrick Martin, Jed Holtzman, Democratic Socialists of America: San Francisco and San Francisco Tenants Union at City Hall.

DSA Leadership

Steering Committee Minutes, San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America, August 8, 2018:

Present: Shanti Singh, Faiq Raza, Mia Lehrer, Elizabeth Morgan, Jennifer Bolen Absent: None.

Standing for AD 17

In 2019 Shanti Singh stood from AD 17 for the California Democratic Party Central Committee.

I’m currently the co-chair of the San Francisco Democratic Socialists of America. Throughout my twenties, I’ve worked or volunteered on progressive campaigns for the Board of Supervisors, and been a member of SF Berniecrats, the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, and of course DSA. In my time with DSA, I’ve worked on our efforts to pass a universal right to counsel to tenants facing eviction (Prop F), to stop the demolition of city-owned housing in the Fillmore, and lots of other coalition work with community groups and labor against racist policing, against environmental racism, in strike solidarity, and much more.

Through my day job at Tenants Together, I’ve had the honor to work with organizers in marginalized communities across California working for rent control and local tenant protections. Every day, I meet more and more San Franciscans who are seeing their wages drop, who are shut out of new jobs and opportunities, who are being displaced from their homes, and who are becoming homeless. I’m running to fight for tenants’ rights, equitable development, fair housing access, and deeply affordable housing for working-class Californians.

I hope that you will choose myself and the Reform Slate to uplift the voices of working-class people and people of color in AD17 and SF’s eastern neighborhoods, who have borne the brunt of eviction and displacement. I promise to fight to ensure that every one of your voices is heard..