Here’s how DSA members and other progressives can organize to compete in upcoming intra-party contests.

Oligarchs and the donor class still have a firm grip on the Democratic Party apparatus and politics. But the cracks are increasingly obvious:

Zohran Mamdani; Analilia Mejia; the crumbling of AIPAC/DMFI sway; burial of the DNC’s 2024 autopsy report for fear of what it might reveal; polling numbers that show a party less popular than even Donald Trump; widening gaps between the progressive and corporate wings. 

And now, still small but growing numbers of DSA cadre and allied candidates are competing and winning local, state and federal elections around the country, defeating some guardians of the status quo.

When will the ice break in California?

The day may be coming soon. We’ll know a lot more after June 2 primaries and November 2, when progressives who make “top two” test the thesis that the road to victory is the opposite of chasing Republicans to the right in pursuit of mythical centrist “swing” voters. 

Next, we’ll have an opportunity to contest for control of the state Democratic Party.

Compared to many other states, the composition of the California party’s Central Committee, which elects its officers and endorses candidates, approves the party platform and passes resolutions, enables significant small D democracy, if we organize. 

About a third of the approximately 3,500 members are elected in caucus-like processes—4 in each of the 80 state Assembly districts. Voting has gone more and more by mail and online since the pandemic, with plenty of opportunity for mischief but also real opportunities for progressives —again, if we organize. 

Path to success

The path to success in the 2026-27 ADEMs (Assembly District Election Meetings) is to create solid, diverse slates of candidates in each district, with strict solidarity—each member working hard to get out the vote for all—facilitated by an effective system to register voters in a special process. (It’s not enough to simply be a registered Democrat, though that is required.)

Another third of delegates to the state Central Committee will be selected by county central committees, which in most of the state will be elected on the 2028 primary ballots (exact methods vary some from county to county, confusingly). In most locations, a similar process of creating progressive slates and campaigning for them will be in order.

Recruiting candidates to construct ADEM slates needs to begin now. They must file by late this year, with voter registration following, and balloting in early 2027 (exact dates to be announced). Many DSA members have run in recent rounds, which come every two years, though participation has been passive to negligible in many chapters. Chapter electoral committees may want to change that, determining the best strategy—and it can vary a lot depending on the demographics, politics (e.g. union strength, local Democratic leadership) of the district.

Help for Organizing

Gearing up to help organize locally is a PAC in formation, the People’s Democracy Network (PDN), operating fully outside the Democratic Party but dedicated primarily to building power for the left inside the party. We hope to accelerate the ability to work with local progressives to build ADEM slates this year, but the main organizing needs to be done by people with local relationships and skills in each district. Careful navigation is often needed to forge coalitions where necessary and to counter fake “progressive” rivals. Last time, we saw an unusual infusion of money for competitors in some districts by PACs apparently fronting for Israel lobby groups.

PDN will soon be recruiting members to support its particular narrow mission – building progressive power in the California Democratic Party, from the outside. Exact criteria are in the process of being determined, but to be clear, it’s not exclusive: members of DSA or other groups are welcome. To read PDN’s mission statement and 2024 policy platform (needs updating, including the name), go here.

For a more detailed description of the ADEM process and advice on constructing local slates, please see here.

And to let us know of your interest in helping organize in your district, please submit this form.

Ballots have already begun arriving in the hands of San Francisco voters, and as we muddle through long lists of voter guides, candidates and propositions, we will ask ourselves many questions. 

But will we be asking the right ones?

It is a privilege, and wholly inadequate, to deliberate over which unsatisfactory choices we will make this election cycle, without material worry as to whether our ballots will be collected and counted, or whether our polling stations will be opened; meanwhile the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Louisiana v. Callais has allowed southern states to redraw Black-majority congressional districts out of existence entirely, gutting the Voting Rights Act and disenfranchising millions of Black people in a single stroke of a pen. In Louisiana alone, a state where there has never been a black person elected to a statewide executive office, over 40,000 ballots that were already cast will now be defunct according to these new maps. 

This is not an unfortunate isolated event, but rather the latest decisive move in a decades-long struggle to claw back the democratic gains won through generations of Black struggle, labor movements, anti-colonial resistance, and mass civil disobedience. Reforms were not secured because the ruling class suddenly developed a conscience, they were bloody concessions won because millions of people developed their collective consciousness, organized, rebelled, and created a political crisis so great that it threatened the legitimacy and stability of the entire capitalist system. From Birmingham to Selma, the expansion of democratic rights in the United States came through sustained pressure from below, from the oppressed masses and workers.

What does it mean for us to participate in this system of government which so easily stratifies access to basic functions of democracy, one that even after over a century and a half of effort and reforms, so easily and gleefully reverts its shape to previous racial viciousness?

The United States of America is the most advanced settler-colonial project in the world. Chattel slavery funded colonialism and was the fuel that kickstarted capital accumulation as we know it, until it was legally replaced with prison labor, with Black people still the primary targets of the USA’s forced labor industry, their communities and bodies policed and incarcerated at much higher than average rates. The United States is a prison house of not only people but whole nations as well. Indigenous peoples have endured centuries of genocide, not as an unintended byproduct of white nation building, but as the primary vehicle of it. Even today Indigenous lands are stolen and exploited, from Standing Rock to Pe’Sla water and land defenders have shown us how plainly our modern day government, courts and military coordinates with private companies to desecrate Indigenous lands and brutalize their bodies for profits. The last two decades of the creation and expansion of ICE have only been a continuation of the colonial violence which established these borders in the first place. Our government shamelessly runs concentration camps for children and trades human bodies to foreign prisons because it has no need for shame as it fulfills its intended purpose.

Our planet faces a catastrophic ecological crisis imposed on us all by capitalism. Due to our state’s most recent imperialist violence we face shortages of fuel, food and other necessities in the immediate future. Our politicians from Congress all the way down to the municipal city level are either captured by capital interests or rendered toothless before those who are. Austerity measures are being inflicted on our most vulnerable populations while the price of commodities rises endlessly, a cliff is rapidly approaching and we must prepare. 

So what then, is to be done?

We cannot merely say that “democracy is dead” and give up, this would be a fundamental misunderstanding of the contradiction; democracy is not dead, democracy has not yet been born. Instead we must collectively create democracy, bottom up, from our own power as workers and whole communities; voting is only one small part of a democratic society. History has taught us plainly that the ruling class will never concede without being forced to and that liberation is never given, it must be seized. As socialists we must recognize the electoral terrain for the limitations it reveals with its own contradictions; a system of governance that was derived from white men who owned people as livestock and who murdered and robbed whole civilizations for the pursuit of property is not the basis for a functional democracy. While we engage in elections strategically, we would be foolish to turn a blind eye to the results of centuries of struggle, the effort wasted trying to mold and reshape it into what it is not, that has failed to produce lasting material changes.

The only proven counter to capitalism which has descended into fascism is socialism; a state that only exists to manage capitalist property relations and labor extraction must be replaced with one that manages the productive relationship amongst fellow workers to provide for the needs of all. We must recognize the disenfranchisement of any of us as the disenfranchisement of all of us and fight back in every available avenue. We must identify the primary contradiction and determine our course of actions accordingly, not merely continue to play fairly within the parameters laid out by those who benefit from our oppression. It is our duty to build collective power and then to wield it in service of building socialism. To stand in solidarity with communities both near and far, we must speak out at every injustice, especially the ones that are not an injustice to us.

An injury to one is an injury to all. 

By Dave C.- A Portland DSA Member

Socialists are the underdogs. We are constantly fighting on hostile terrain and in uphill battles. It’s easy to get lost in the play-by-play of each election, but our goal isn’t to win just a single match; it’s to take home the trophy. (That means one day wholly defeating capitalism and creating a society for the benefit of all people, not just the billionaires.) To do that, it’s the job of our socialists in office (SIOs) and our movement to construct and take advantage of moments where we can beat back the capitalist forces and their faux-gressive candidates.

Portland DSA and our SIOs helped create the conditions for Dr. Tammy Carpenter’s successful takedown of her Chamber of Commerce-backed opponent. Let’s look at some of the key pieces and events that helped shape this match-up and how we assembled the forces that could win a tough election.

Palestine Solidarity

Shortly after October 7th 2023, DSA member Rep. Farrah Chaichi became one of the first public officials in Oregon to condemn the genocide of Palestinians.  Rumors started to circulate that she would face a Zionist-friendly challenger.

In January, Portland DSA worked with Intel employees to speak out against the genocide and the ways Intel was supporting it. This resulted in a massive divestment of Intel from Israel later in the year which the BDS Movement organization called “the largest BDS victory ever.” Importantly it started to prove that support for Palestine wasn’t simply a cause for the lefty super-activists in Portland but rather something a lot of people in the suburbs also cared about. 

Rep. Chaichi’s opponent, a military drone salesman, suffered a brutal defeat in the May primary. Rep. Chaichi and all of the pro-Palestine incumbents won that spring, which was a crucial piece to proving that pro-Palestine people belong in Washington County leadership. Creating and defending this space for Pro-Palestine politics laid the groundwork for later actions.

Strike Solidarity

Massive strikes rolled through the Portland metro area. Portland DSA helped to shape the political nature of these strikes both through public solidarity and communications about the meaning and stake of the strikes that expanded public consciousness. 2023 saw a massive teachers’ strike in the fall. This nearly month-long strike galvanized public support and worked to shift the narrative from blaming public sector workers to focusing on the state providing more funding. Corporate actors tried desperately to quash this energy, but did not achieve their ends.

In January of 2025, workers across the state of Oregon went on strike against Providence. This strike was unparalleled in size and scale to anything Oregon had ever seen, and made waves nation-wide. Patients over Profits and Safe Staffing were key phrases that DSA helped to promote and foster. Our work to bolster class consciousness from strikes helped build an environment primed for pro-worker messaging and for the public to believe that wins were possible, a necessary foreground to both our 2024 electoral wins and creating the ground we would operate on in 2026. 

Socialists in Office

There is a deep credibility crisis for elected leaders. A deep cynicism is felt widely and deeply that any elected official will actually pursue change. Our DSA City Councilors have worked to buck this cynicism and socialists (and the broad community) have reaped the rewards. 

These socialists:

• Stood up for workers in union disputes not just with the city or already powerful unions but for forming ones as well like Starbucks Workers United, and New Seasons Labor Union;
• Pulled money away from an over-bloated police budget to public parks;
• Uncovered unspent funds for housing and made a plan to use them to fund Rent-Assistance, a first of its kind Social Housing Fund, and Eviction Defense;
• Banned AI Price Fixing;
• Launched a BDS Pledge and local divestment investigation; and
• Stood strong against billionaire giveaways for a sports stadium.

Even when their efforts didn’t yield a result, the public advocacy has been noticed. What people have learned in the Portland area is that when socialists say something they mean it, that socialists show up for the cause of working people across the city. This is a key part of the socialist difference. We are winning over people away from cynicism. For an electoral project to take hold, people must believe that a better world is possible and be willing to believe those who take up our banner to fight for it. Our Socialists in Office can help create fertile ground for others.

Preparing for 2026

In the run-up to our endorsements for 2026, Portland DSA became much more serious and engaged in expanding and protecting our public profile and identity. This meant extensive efforts went into cohering and promoting a socialist bloc at city hall, and seriously upgrading the focus of our public communications.

We also understood that chapter buy-in had to be built. Deep organic connections are required to have leaders and systems ready for a strong DSA-centric campaign. Farrah Chaichi’s campaign helped raise our profile in Washington County. The organizing of Justin and Karin S around school issues in the Beaverton School District along with the revival of the washington county branch (now referred to as Tualatin Valley branch) were important to cultivating our presence in the area.

Our chapter had developed a sense for both opportunity and danger after the May 2025 school board elections both struck hard. Tammy Carpenter, a DSA member and school board director on the Beaverton School Board had organized a pro-labor slate in the recent elections. Only one of the pro-labor candidates won. Zionists outraged by Tammy’s advocacy and emboldened by the election results worked to cook up an investigation into Tammy’s pro-palestine and anti-genocide social media presence. You can read more about this here.

The upshot Portland DSA united around Palestine and Tammy with a large rally helping to create chapter buy-in around Tammy’s campaign and build her presence and legitimacy further in the community.  This moment, though not final or definitive, was a serious point of preparation for Tammy’s endorsement later in the year. Also relevant Tammy’s ongoing and purposeful connection to the chapter throughout her time on the school board.

By the time we were ready to endorse, we already knew Tammy would be a bold voice for justice, for socialism and a credit to everyone who worked with her.

Tammy recruited DSA members to her Kitchen Cabinet and hired a DSA member as campaign manager. Tammy had both organic connections and a strong group of advisors to help her formulate her campaign, her platform and her connection to DSA. She was the first ever to seek and get a Cadre Endorsement from Portland DSA. Unlike any other campaign we were simply the whole shebang for a significant period.

This race was always going to be difficult. The establishment had a real favorite in city councilor Ashley Hartmeier-Prigg, a Chamber of Commerce darling, and one of the best faux-gressives out there. Ashley secured endorsements of nearly every democratic incumbent early and her kick-off party was a veritable directory of insiders and lobbyists. We knew we needed an incredible field game and a strong focus on differentiating ourselves from the squishy language of progressives. We needed a socialist champion. Dr. Tammy Carpenter stepped into the ring.

Playing Our Hand

DSA and Tammy together built such a strong field program with incredibly clear and bold messaging. We quickly garnered attention from potential endorsers as the most legitimate campaign with a connection to voters. Endorsers understood the campaign had DSA at the core. We kept strong messaging and democratic socialist ID throughout the campaign.  We knocked over 10,000 doors in the early part of our campaign eclipsing any other field effort in the state and racked up 35,000 over the course of the campaign. It was a struggle to get our coalition partners and even our media consultants to understand the importance of using the words democratic socialism. It’s clear that we would have benefited from a socialist media team, and that our constant and impressive field presence was crucial to showing that Democratic Socialism wasn’t a fringe word but a key part of running this winning campaign.

As the campaign progressed it became clear that a major local issue was shaping public sentiment: Data Centers. Socialists in office and candidates across the state were weighing in against and this naturally fit our basic mantra: Tax The Rich.

As reports of layoffs and funding deficits have rocked the public as well as many people’s personal lives, the idea of tax giveaways to Amazon and other large tech companies for data center building grew a substantial grass roots resistance. The only working champions of such ideas were the building trades whose members hoped to get work from the construction of those facilities. Dr. Tammy Carpenter helped to champion a local moratorium petition on data centers, and kept socialist messaging about who should pay for public goods at the center. KGW interviewed candidates opposing data centers and then mysteriously canceled airing it, this just served to make people even more interested in hearing what Dr. Tammy Carpenter had to say. (Read more about data centrism here)

As the race started to reach the end, our opponents made blunder after blunder, supporting deeply unpopular policies. Tammy’s opponent even sent out texts describing DSA as “too extreme” and fear mongering that we were going to take away peoples’ homes. The icing on the cake of this moment is that socialism was supposed to be the bogey man that our opponents wielded against working class candidates. It now appears to have had the opposite effect. The chamber of commerce used some sneaky polling that actually gave DSA credit for multiple other candidates running insurgent races. Whatever happens next it’s clear there is no excuse for hiding socialism in the closet, it’s actually a benefit to credibility and popularity to be a real out and loud socialist!

Preparing for our next Match

We are sitting in an incredible position in the Portland Metro area. Many of our incumbents are likely to win in their next personal match-ups, but when we are building a movement, it is insufficient to rest on the laurels of a few elected socialists. We must shape the ground for the next match-up where scrappy socialists can take on political machines by preparing people to fight for not just bread, but roses too. 

By Ian Mark

Like many of my comrades, I have a vision of a DSA with millions of working class members that can meaningfully influence politics on the scale of the next presidential election, a potential general strike and more. Only through growing DSA to this scale can we hope to build an organization capable of dismantling capitalism and winning socialism. Our goal is nothing short of building DSA into a genuine mass political party and a historic political force that can transform this country and the world…all in our lifetime.

At present, our chapter has nearly 1,400 members. That’s almost double the number of members we had in 2024. Recent DSA wins like Zohran Mamdani’s election underline that we are living in a time of historic opportunity for socialist politics, but our work is just beginning.

I’m running for Membership Engagement Chair to lead recruitment building the chapter to 2,000 members by the end of 2027 and position us for 3,000 by the end of 2028. I’m also running to support key efforts in driving engagement in our chapter’s projects and democracy, including developing practical organizing skills like how to hold effective one on one conversations and analyze power structures.

I’ve been in DSA for nearly 10 years. I joined Huron Valley DSA in 2017 because I felt compelled to do something other than doomscroll through the mind-numbing cruelty of the first Trump administration. I was angry and scared and I wanted to fight for a better future.

In 2020, I stepped up as the Member Engagement chair for Huron Valley DSA, serving on the steering committee and leading the committee through the surreal first year of the pandemic. In that time, I’ve talked to hundreds of new members and learned a lot about what truly drives engagement.

In this article, I’m outlining my plan for my three priorities of recruitment, engagement and development for the Membership Engagement Committee (MEC). These are the same priorities included in the MEC resolution that the general chapter membership unanimously and democratically voted to approve at our annual convention this April.

Building Metro Detroit DSA to 2,000 Members in Good Standing by 2027, and 3,000 or More by 2028

As exciting as our recent growth is, we can’t take this momentum for granted. Just three years ago, our membership had rapidly shrunk to less than 700 members. Furthermore, most people across Metro Detroit still have never heard of DSA or don’t understand what socialism is. Even many self-described socialists don’t understand why it’s important to join a socialist organization.

If we’re serious about building real power in Metro Detroit, we must ensure sympathetic people across the region are aware that a large chapter exists in their community and invite them to join the movement at scale.

Like most chapters across the country, our recruitment to nearly 1.4k members has been mostly passive, meaning there’s a lot of untapped potential for new members across southeast Michigan. If our chapter had the same proportion of DSA members to population as Twin Cities DSA, we would have over 2.3k members.

If we’re already growing at this rate, imagine how fast we can grow if we apply a concerted effort in recruiting.

I recently launched a new project with several comrades called “database building” (this is often called list building, but I prefer to call it database building to avoid confusion with list work, a totally different organizing tactic).

The database building approach is based on the model provided by New York City DSA, which is by far one of the fastest growing chapters in the country (even before Zohran launched his campaign).

In short, here’s how the plan for database building works:

1. We start by collecting names and contact information for individuals across Metro Detroit sympathetic to DSA and our politics at scale. This is a high-volume play.
2. There are many ways to build a large database of sympathetic non-members, but NYC-DSA cited letter-writing tools and mass calls like the call their chapter hosted with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as highly-efficient tactics for collecting thousands of names.
3. With a growing list of thousands of sympathetic “prospective” members in Metro Detroit, we phone or text-bank this list periodically asking them to join DSA, strategically timing outreach to occur following galvanizing political moments like the ICE surge in Minneapolis for maximum effect.

With this strategy, I am confident we can reach 2,000 members by our annual convention as outlined in our consent resolution for MEC. However, I’d like to go even further so that we can exceed 3,000 in 2028.

To Increase Engagement, We Must Build a More Consistent New Member Onboarding Experience

If we are going to deliver real wins for the working class in Metro Detroit, we don’t just need more members in the chapter. We need more members who are truly engaged, and that starts with new members.

If we use general meeting and convention attendance as a crude yardstick for engagement, only 150–200 members are actively engaged in any given month out of the nearly 1,400 members in good standing.

Our chapter currently excels at engaging new members in two crucial ways: our robust five-part new member political education program and a range of popular socials including game nights, Dances Against Fascism, regional meetups, cookouts, parties at local bars and bowling alleys, and more.

Continuing these programs is vital, and I commend my comrades in MEC for their exceptional efforts here in fostering a true sense of community in the chapter and grounding new members in sound socialist thought.

Where there’s the most room for improvement is ensuring all new members receive an accessible introduction on how the organization is structured, how our democracy works, what campaigns, projects and initiatives we have running and how they can contribute.

The biggest issue I see for engagement is the same issue I saw in Huron Valley DSA: with so many working groups, committees, projects and scattered communication channels, it can be very difficult for new members to understand what’s happening in the chapter and where they fit in. It’s hard to overstate how overwhelming and confusing the new member experience can be without a veteran member to guide you, but in MEC we simply don’t have time to do that for every comrade.

We do an admirable job calling new members weekly in MEC, but due to time constraints we only ever connect with a fraction of incoming members. Besides, in a 10–15 minute call, it’s not possible to share everything a new member needs to know. Lastly, even if we could, it wouldn’t be scalable for the amount of growth we need to build real power.

At the same time, we have to carefully assess what a brand new member truly needs to know, as it’s easy to overwhelm folks by throwing too much information or too many options at them all at once.

I believe MEC must streamline and standardize the new member experience by ensuring new members are consistently and quickly familiarized with the following:

1. The general structure of our chapter, including basic information on:

- General meetings and event schedule on our website

- What committee/working groups exist and what they’re working on

- How to access primary chapter communications (Slack, Signal)

- How our democratic process works, like Robert’s Rules 101 and how to bring resolutions to convention

2. Basic political education

- Basic orientation of what DSA is and does, what socialism is, and why we are socialists

- Schedule for upcoming new member political education events, OR other political education events if above is not in near future

3. Clear tasks to making a meaningful impact in the near future

- Accessible, tangible and specific opportunities to make an impact within the organization and get more involved

One way to achieve this would be consolidating our new member events with a session combining all of the above information in a DSA 101-style event hosted monthly. This would also provide a general entry point for prospective members.

New members would receive a primer on everything they need to understand the basics of our organization and how we operate. They’d get a chance to connect with other members and walk away with information on upcoming political education sessions as well as details on accessible, clear ways to make a meaningful impact, like the No Appetite for Apartheid boycott campaign or canvassing for the Chris Gilmer-Hill campaign.

This would supplement, not replace, our existing new member political education program. It would serve as the go-to first event to direct all new members within Metro Detroit DSA.

Other options include making this information more broadly available in a concise format on our website and in new member email and text outreach. Regardless, the point stands that we must ensure everyone receives the key details on how to navigate DSA in an accessible manner.

Developing Practical Organizing and Leadership Skills to Build Chapter Capacity

Since the majority of new members enter the organization with minimal or zero prior organizing experience, it is vital that we help everyday people grow into effective socialist organizers, thinkers and leaders. This development takes time and doesn’t happen by accident, so we must start this work now with an actionable, structured plan, building on the strong political education program and campaign structure that already exists within the chapter.

I recently launched a list work pilot program for developing leaders with the Chris Gilmer-Hill campaign. In less than two months, this initiative has already identified three members ready to step up as new canvass captains, who are the members that train new canvassers at the event and launch the canvass.

This is a big leap forward from the structure we built to elect Denzel McCampbell to Detroit City Council just last year. Each of these canvass captains gain valuable experience that they can later transfer to other leadership roles in the chapter.

Beyond leadership, MEC must also expand the general organizing skills trainings offered by our chapter. I believe that holding effective organizing conversations should be the number one skill every organizer learns, which is why I co-faciliated a training on the topic this spring. I’d like to run this training again every quarter to ensure every member is familiar and comfortable applying techniques like agitation and making a hard ask. Every single member should feel confident in their ability to galvanize their friends, family members, neighbors and comrades to action with this approach.

Furthermore, I believe we should run trainings on practical skills like facilitating effective meetings and creating agendas, how to use Robert’s Rules, analyzing power structures and more to complement the annual Organizing 101 series from the political education committee. These are skills that you often don’t learn before joining DSA, but are critical to being an effective organizer.

Together, We Can Build Thousands of Skilled Socialist Organizers in Metro Detroit

I have big dreams for MEC and our chapter, but I can’t do any of this work alone. Regardless of the results of the steering committee election, I will be working hard to implement the above agenda, and I’ll need the help of my comrades.

If you’re excited about the possibility of growing our chapter into the thousands and helping ordinary people grow into effective, powerful organizers, please join us. If you have your own ideas for how MEC should operate or what we should prioritize, let me know. Though I’m a proud member of the Groundwork caucus, I’d love for MEC to be a truly multi-tendency committee that serves as a model for how we can support diverse political perspectives and organizing tactics across the chapter.

Solidarity!

To 3,000 Members and Beyond: How MEC Can Build a Stronger, More Effective Metro Detroit DSA was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.