by Gumbo V.

I had the honor of attending the 2024 Socialism Conference over Labor Day weekend. Socialism Conference has been hosted by Haymarket Books since the collapse of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in 2019, before which the conference effectively served as an activist conference for members of the ISO. Since being taken up by Haymarket, however, the conference has taken on a more pluralistic, cross-tendency character that is rare among the western left. DSA members took on myriad roles at the conference this year, from speaking on panels such as Tenant Organizing and Social Housing for All and Bodily Autonomy and Trans Rights: Undoing Fascism at Its Roots, to hosting an entire pre-conference session focused on DSA the morning before the conference began in earnest. Alongside national DSA leaders and rank-and-file members were such big names in the US left as Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Vincent Bevins, Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Noura Erakat, Ashley Dawson, Linda Sarsour, Ilan Pappé, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Nick Estes, Daniel Denvir, Sarah Jaffe, and so many more—a veritable who’s-who of the western left and many of our international counterparts.

My conference experience conveyed three theoretical throughlines that set the tone of most discussions and perhaps demonstrate the dominant focus of the western Left’s theorizing: abolition, imperialism, and Palestine. From abolitionist geographers Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, to renowned anti-Zionists Ilan Pappé and Noura Erakat, the dozen and a half livestreamed keynotes of the conference hit on these three themes more than anything else, and they were woven throughout many of the smaller, unstreamed sessions as well. At first, I found the centrality of abolition a bit surprising given the overwhelming focus in the past 11+ months specifically on Palestine and the genocide being perpetrated in Gaza, with a secondary focus on the 2024 US election cycle and the interplay between the two. However, as Gilmore’s first session, Capital and Abolition, elaborated, abolition and the carceral nature of the state is so bound up in the many evils which we fight, that even when we are talking about other topics, we are often also talking about abolition.

My surprise also comes in the context of the four years since the Summer 2020 Uprisings for Black Lives—the Left has thus far failed to grapple effectively with the aftermath of that tumultuous year, nor its implications for our collective future. A recent article in n+1 Magazine reflecting on the 2024 DNC in Chicago, just one week before Socialism Conference, ended with a rumination on the Left’s tendency to focus on moments of rupture, on planning for an impending rupture or looking backwards to argue over the historicity of this or that given event’s status as The Rupture. The question is not, however, which event was or was not the “real” rupture, but to accept that a rupture has already happened and to organize accordingly. As Nolan Perla-Ward stated in the article, “What could be more of a moment of rupture than 2020, and then October 7?” The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, followed almost immediately by massive global uprising against police violence and white supremacy, was the moment that the American Empire’s die was cast, and if socialism is our demand then we had best learn to keep up. What better method of learning to keep up could there be than continued focus on learning from our comrades in struggle at future Socialism Conferences?

DSA at the Conference

Let us turn first to the experience as a DSA member at the conference. This was not the first year that DSA has participated heavily in the Socialism Conference; at Socialism 2022, DSA essentially held a parallel conference that was dynamic and far-reaching in terms of attendance. Comrades hosted panels on the Emergency Workers Organizing Committee (EWOC), analyses of rank-and-file strategy and socialist organizing under a declining liberal democracy, and questions of multiracial organizing and party-building. In 2023, members of the 2021-23 National Political Committee (NPC) hosted panels on the future of DSA, organizing across differences, and rank-and-file organizing in large unions like the Teamsters and the Railroad Workers United reform caucus. I did not attend those conferences, so I cannot speak to the depth of DSA’s involvement throughout them, but in conversation with other comrades at Socialism 2024, DSA appeared to be less of an organization at the center of the conference. The question remains open whether this is a symptom of DSA’s declining membership, its sidelining in the struggle for Palestinian liberation due to complicated relationships with electoral politics, or a general flattening of the formerly dynamic character of the organization in the boom years of 2016-2020.

Nevertheless, DSA maintained a strong presence at Socialism 2024 and hosted a morning of pre-conference events specifically for DSA members. The panels, Building DSA Through Strategic Campaigns and DSA Reflections & Planning Beyond 2024, and corresponding breakout sessions, had cross-factional participation from across DSA. They were led by current and former NPC members from caucuses such as Red Star, Groundwork, Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC), Marxist Unity Group (MUG), and Bread and Roses (B&R), as well as uncaucused regular members. DSA Co-Chair Ashik S opened the DSA session with a speech thanking Haymarket Books for providing a space for DSA-specific discussions, noting that DSA members generally do not get the chance to gather in-person outside of National Conventions and the Socialism Conference, and that the sessions that morning might be a precursor to the renewed DSA National Activist Conference that was passed at the 2023 Convention. He went on to reiterate that DSA cannot simply organize people who are already ideologically aligned with the Left, but that we must organize people of all kinds and bring them to the Left. Comrades then went on to have a fruitful discussion about strategic campaigns that their chapters have run, such as the UAW Strike Ready, We Power DC (public power), Raise the Wage (rent control), and Uncommitted Washington campaigns. The reflections on these campaigns were modest, and grappled with questions of campaign structures, member recruitment, and how to prioritize limited chapter resources for one campaign over another.

The second panel focused on the recent history of DSA as a mass political organization, what challenges we have faced, and what tools have helped us overcome them. The tone of this panel was more triumphant, but still sat with the soberness of reflection. Comrades discussed the massive amount of administrative work that goes into keeping a chapter running and how having part-time staffers has helped alleviate administrative burdens from political leadership in larger chapters like NYC and Chicago. They also advised against hashing out internal political disagreements on Twitter and other platforms that Asad Haider calls “the media apparatus of the enemy.” Interestingly, many comrades pointed to Slack as a disorganizing/demobilizing communications platform and discussed moving to Discord, WhatsApp, and email newsletters for most communications. Co-Chair Megan R closed out the DSA session reiterating what comrade Ashik said previously: that we are at a critical juncture in the United States and in the Left especially, that it is empowering to gather together for these important, high-level discussions, and that we must find ways to work together across or through political differences because we are comrades, and thus united in a shared struggle.

Factionalism in DSA: Finding Common Cause Through Struggle

Participation in the conference proper broke down some of those high concepts of shared struggle and comradely gathering. I noticed—and must admit to my participation in—a breaking out of DSA members into smaller groups along well-trodden factional lines as the weekend began. This was not an organized dispersal, but rather something we can understand as an organic development of the rare in-person gathering of comrades who are more accustomed to interacting online any other day of the year. Socialism Conference is unlike the National DSA Convention in that members who attended are more likely to be in the most activated layer of their chapters and seemed to predominantly belong to one caucus or another as a result of their high activation. Comrades who belong to a caucus, or who are in the orbit of a particular caucus, tend to interact more with members of their caucus in other chapters than with general members in other chapters. Taken together, these dynamics point to an understandable choice for members to socialize with comrades they are more familiar with from online interaction.

Nonetheless, the factional dynamic led to a situation where some members seemed to be attending parallel, but distinct, conferences throughout the weekend. Members of some factions, such as Groundwork and SMC, generally appeared to attend panels about the rise of the far right and legislative organizing, whereas members of factions like Red Star, MUG, and Reform & Revolution (R&R) appeared to attend panels about mass work organizing, theory, and internationalism. The above example is by no means definitive, nor should it be taken as a matter of fact—it is merely my limited observation. However, it does point to a broader issue among the DSA cadres in attendance: we did not successfully come away from the conference with a common conception of how to collectively build socialism in the 21st Century United States. It was not a conundrum specific to DSA either; the same can be said of the conference as a whole, and the other large socialist organizations in organized attendance, like the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the Maoist Communist Union, and the Tempest Collective.

Towards a shared, emancipatory political horizon for DSA

Let us consider the ramifications of factionalism within DSA in terms of how it was displayed at Socialism 2024 Conference. Sectarian conflict has long been part and parcel of the national politics of DSA and, similarly, it has been a familiar dynamic across the Left for generations. However, the minor factionalism at the conference is not representative of a deeper rift within DSA so much as it is indicative of a movement that has faced significant growing pains in the roughly eight-year period of rapid growth and Left resurgence. The factional disagreements throughout DSA do speak to real political differences between comrades, but they are also emblematic of an organization that was essentially re-founded around a massive, unifying project (the 2016 and 2020 Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns) and has since struggled to define itself in as all-encompassing of terms.

As our organization has exploded in growth, made real and serious strides in national and local politics, and found a new footing amongst a resurgent Left and a resurgent Labor Movement, we have had to face new questions: how do socialists govern in an extreme minority position? How do we relate to the utter disorganization of the working class en masse? How do we articulate a politics beyond the neoliberalism that has been dominant for longer than many of us have been alive? These are not simple questions, and in the face of large-scale defeats like the primary losses of Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush and, especially since 7 October 2023, our collective inability to stop a genocide funded by our own tax dollars, it is once again understandable for comrades to turn inwards and lash out at one another in a fit of misdirected grief and frustration.

What is to be done, then? This is not a novel position to take, but what DSA needs now more than ever is a shared political horizon. The Workers Deserve More national program is a healthy start, but a shared political horizon cannot simply exist in the realm of slogans and programs. Referring back to Haider’s “On Depoliticization” quoted above, “The contemporary Left is mired in circular and disempowering disputes whose material implications are ambiguous… What is obscured by the affective intensity of these disputes is that in the absence of a guiding political orientation, they represent little more than forms of adjustment within the existing world, and therefore an investment in what is.” That is to say, without proper organization of a breadth and a depth hitherto unseen on the US Left in almost a century, coupled with near total loss of the transference of radical politics from one generation to the next thanks to the successes of COINTELPRO in the late 20th Century, we continue to argue amongst ourselves about how to interpret the current state of the world, rather than articulating how to change it. To do so requires organization, and it requires committing to each other as comrades, and not as fairweather allies in a temporary struggle.

We will depart from this lengthy discussion on DSA with the most impressive case of an organized DSA presence at the conference, the so-called “Comrade Scribes.” As the conference got under way, most of the DSA members in attendance were invited to a large Signal chat and comrade Peter L of Northern Indiana shared a collaborative notes document with the group which contained the title of every session for the weekend and a space for notes. Comrades independently signed up to take notes on the sessions they planned to attend with the purpose of consolidating as much of the information as possible for comrades to review and reflect upon later. I am proud to have contributed to these notes on several sessions. The collaborative notes are now available for anyone in DSA to review, and though it seems a small act, it was a vast effort and a labor of love for each other that demonstrated the benefits of collectivity.

All Politics is Rehearsal

We shall now turn towards the content of the conference itself, beginning from the center of the weekend and working towards the periphery. I choose to begin in the center, with Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s panel, Lenin and the Politics of Rehearsal, because such a course mirrors my own path to understanding the key lessons of the conference. In her speech, which can now be found on Haymarket’s Youtube channel, Gilmore used both Lenin and the revolutionary playwright Bertolt Brecht as jumping-off points to discuss how all politics, and especially revolutionary politics on the Left, is a practice of rehearsal. For context, Brecht is perhaps most famous for his conception of “Epic Theatre,” a practice of playwriting that sought not to stir the audience to identify emotionally with the characters or action onstage, but rather bring the audience to a place of rational self-reflection. He wanted his audiences to be moved towards a critical view of the events onstage such that they would recognize injustice and exploitation and leave the theatre prepared to take action and change the world, rather than simply be satiated by an emotional, cathartic climax. To achieve this, he employed techniques that would remind his audiences that what they were viewing was only a representation of reality, and not reality itself.

She goes on to elaborate that Brecht and his comrades understood something that Lenin also understood, which is that as revolutionary socialists we must present an idea to society in such a way that those who are not already party to the idea (i.e. not revolutionaries) come to understand through the course of the presentation that the presentation itself, and thus the idea presented, depends on all of us collectively to bring it to fruition. Put more simply, all politics is a rehearsal of the world to come, and rehearsal itself is an ongoing process of interpretation and reinterpretation, not simply planning for a singular act by one party or organization. This begs the question: what kind of worlds are we rehearsing?

I returned to the subject of rehearsal again and again over the course of the weekend, applying the framework retroactively to all the previous sessions I attended or reflected on with comrades. One shining example of rehearsal in action came via the Religion at the Encampments panel hosted by comrades Maryam and Jonah from University of Chicago. They discussed the radical deployment of religion and ritual at the encampments that swept across universities worldwide during the Student Intifada in April and May of this year. The space that ritual held at the encampments could easily be viewed through a liberal lens as an indication of the multicultural nature of the camps, and thus their strength as a movement based solely on their use of representation or identity politics. Maryam argued, however, that while it could’ve been a tactical decision NOT to hold religious services at the camps, the decision to hold them openly was to decide that religion itself must be a terrain of struggle. Further, they proposed that religious institutions and ideology are key sites of social reproduction—places where people bring not only their bodies and their demands, but their spirit and the strength that it lends to the movement—and thus can be important displays of class struggle more broadly. Jonah built on this discussion with theses on the use of religion in the camps:

1. The religiosity of Jews in the camps was a construction of a new Judaism in real time;
2. The novel engagement with Jewish theology is the articulation of a Jewish identity politics specific to our current post-neoliberalism era; and
3. A significant factor in the power and authenticity of this Jewish spirituality was its non-clerical character.

As a Jewish communist myself, I found this discussion especially engaging. The Zionist entity of Israel has long attempted to conflate Judaism as faith with Zionism as ideology, and in so doing, has created a class of clerical and secular Jews that are beholden more to Zionism than Judaism. However, there is vast potential for liberation in theology, and one need only look to the liberatory analyses of religious scholars across generations to find it. The radical deployment of Judaism as faith in the movement was thus integral to the militancy of the movement, and constituted a rehearsal of a new, liberatory, and anti-Zionist “Judaism of the barricades.”

In all politics, but especially in a moment of unrecognized rupture, rehearsal is crucial to building the world we hope to see. We are socialists and communists. We understand that labor is the source of all value, and labor is entitled to all that it creates. Not only does that mean that organizing on the basis of our waged labor is fundamental to abolishing capitalism, but that there is labor to be done and value to be created outside of the capitalist system, in doing things that bring us our humanity back. 

Such was the crux of the Logoff and Meetup: Building Third Spaces to Change the World session, which featured speakers from Pilsen Community Books, P.O. Box Collective, and East Side Freedom Library. Third spaces, first theorized by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in 1991, “host the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home [first space] and work [second space].” As capitalism is founded on the alienation of workers from the products of their labor, it must also alienate workers everywhere from each other, which has led to an epidemic of loneliness wherein more than 50% of adults in the US report experiencing loneliness in a given year. While loneliness is not an expressly material condition on its face, it has dire material consequences, carrying a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. It also carries greater risks for the kinds of societal alienation that contribute to criminalized behaviors and thus to increased incarceration. It is in this context that we must consider the importance of third spaces for Left organizing. The “Logoff and Meetup” panel conveyed practical steps for creating and operating third spaces, but also sowed seeds for understanding the centrality of abolition to every other discussion held at the conference. The carceral state would love nothing more than to leave loneliness untreated and jail more and more people to justify massive capital expenditures on the prison industry. We must rehearse and create alternatives.

The Capital and Abolition panel with Ruth Wilson-Gilmore and Lydia Pelot-Hobbs discussed in detail the sheer amount of capital spent on prisons, especially in the US Gulf South. They pointed to the windfall of oil money as a driving force behind Louisiana’s massive capital investment in state prisons like Angola State Penitentiary, contributing to an increase in incarceration of around 4,000 in 1970 to 40,000 by 2010. The state was able to directly fund the construction and renovation of prisons in the late 20th Century rather than relying on finance capital largely because of the OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s driving up demand for domestic oil production. Flush with cash, Louisiana invested in carceral systems rather than public goods because of what the speakers described as the “anti-state state.” This comes from a framework of understanding the state not as a single, immutable entity but as a collection of institutions and organizations that are in contradiction to one another, riven with problems and often in direct competition for shares of the total state budget. These various state organizations are all funded by the same stolen social wage, that is the labor value of all workers, taken through state taxes and other forms of coercion, and used for public goods that are only possible through such massive collectivization of labor and value. 

The “anti-state state,” then, is a particular kind of state that tends towards fascism and is based on a politics that considers the state’s provision of public goods as the core problem to be addressed, and funnels money into militarism and policing to prevent the use of state funds for anything but violence. The speakers contrast this with the “pro-state state,” which is a kind of state that is theoretically run by and for workers on the grounds that their social wages must be put to use for common, public goods that allow for the flourishing of all life: public transportation, clean air and water, free education, healthcare, and so on. Such goods cannot really be achieved through mutual aid or voluntarism alone, which serve as valuable rehearsals of what a real workers state might achieve, and which is why the state is such a key terrain of struggle even in abolitionist and anti-imperialist organizing.

The OPEC embargo referenced above was itself a direct consequence of the militarized anti-state state and US imperialism in the Arab world vis-a-vis its support of Israel in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Such imperialism has only been emboldened and re-entrenched since Palestinians took History into their own hands on 7 October 2023, which has necessitated new forms of combatting imperialism at home and abroad. At the From the River to the Sea: UAW Labor for Palestine panel, comrades working as public defenders, electricians, and grad students all organized under the United Auto Workers (UAW) discussed their approach to labor organizing that is internationalist in scope and anti-imperialist in principle. The panelists, including Michael Letwin, Marcelina Pedraza, Sherena Razek, and Shahinaz Geneid, discussed their firm belief that workers deserve good union jobs, high wages, free healthcare, and everything else which their labor creates, but that none of it should come at the cost of their moral compass or their unwavering solidarity with workers around the world. Sherena in particular discussed her visit to Ramallah in the West Bank last year and how the day she returned to the US, a general strike was called by the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions in protest of the Israeli invasion of Jenin. Such massive strikes happen often in Palestine, and draw on a rich history going back to the Great Arab Revolt of 1936, which began as a general strike against collaborating British and Zionist capital and imperial interests.

All politics is a rehearsal for the future, so we must ask ourselves: what are we rehearsing? With the same stroke that we are abolishing capitalism, what are we creating? 

Palestine is Everywhere

This brings us to imperialism and, consequently, to Palestine. Palestine hung over the entire conference weekend. The spectre of genocide and the US left’s heretofore impotence to defeat such evils was felt in every corner of the conference center and in every panel and workshop. Small details were the first I noticed: a shrine to the martyrs in Gaza, posters from Visualizing Palestine plastered across the walls, conference attendees draped in keffiyehs and clothing announcing “Not In Our Name” or other slogans and imagery of the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Even the banner for the conference itself depicted protestors flying the Palestinian flag while surrounded by smoke, above the words “Socialism 2024.” To say “Palestine is Everywhere” is not just to make a moral argument, but a material one.The topic permeated almost every session in one way or another.

How deep the connection would run came into focus during the Opening Plenary on Friday evening, titled All Eyes on Palestine: Solidarity, Liberation, Intifada and featuring historian Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Rabbi Brant Rosen, poet George Abraham, lawyer Noura Erakat, and community organizer Linda Sarsour. I wept often at the conference, but I wept the most during that plenary session. The unimaginable horror of this genocide was present in the room, especially as Rabbi Brant Rosen of Tzedek Chicago reminded us all that, “We are living in a time of genocide,” and the Palestinian poet George Abraham read their out long-verse work eulogizing Gaza and evoking the overlapping imagery of bombs and freedom. Not a single eye was dry. Beyond the sheer immorality of the Israeli apartheid regime, the material consequence of their violence was brought to bear throughout the plenary. Every bomb dropped on Gaza, every bullet and missile fired at Lebanon and the West Bank, is paid for by us, however indirectly. In purchasing those arms, the Israeli regime consequently funds our class enemies so directly that they have immense capital to repress our unions, hike our rents, and kill us in the streets when we dare to speak up.

Palestine is Everywhere because, as with the southern border, as with the Gulf South, as with Global South more broadly, Palestine is a vision of our collective future should we fail to dismantle capitalism in our lifetimes. Hyper-militarized border violence, the most extreme surveillance state on earth, restrictions on water and electricity and on life itself. This is what fascist want, and it is what capitalists and liberals will give them if it means they can nominally stay in power just a little longer for just a little more profit.

With ever more resources flowing into police departments and militaries, the state requires an outlet for the excesses of death capital. It sends that excess out to the periphery of the American Empire in the form of weaponry, funding, and physical boots on the ground. We are not innocent in this, as evidenced by the sessions “From the River to the Sea: UAW Labor for Palestine” and Blue Collar Empire: On the History of the ‘AFL-CIA’ and Possibilities for Labor Internationalism. Whether it is our tax dollars or the literal fruits of our labors, workers in the US are often materially implicated in overseas imperialism. This has been a bugbear for the Left that points to inherent contradictions even within DSA. We are stuck between the rock and the hard place of needing to hold power in the US government as it exists, while having to grapple with the extreme pressures that such a position places on us to conform to imperial pursuits. We have very clearly not resolved this contradiction.

And when we fight back against that fascist disaster nationalism? We will surely be shot where we stand. Palestine is teaching us how to resist, how to be free. Palestine is teaching us that freedom is not just a noun, but a verb. An action that we must take before it becomes a distant memory. In the words of rapper-activist Usaama Minhas, “Palestinians are already free, it’s Palestine that we are freeing.”

A Discourse on Grief

Palestine is teaching us to grieve again, too. Another of the keynote panels, From the Ashes: Grief, Care, and Time in our Movements discussed how grief, a fundamentally human experience that is incomprehensible to capitalism, can be both disruptive and revolutionary. Grief does not happen linearly. It cannot be optimized or streamlined. Grief happens on its own terms. It does not bow to the whims of a 9-5 or an assembly line. It is our right to grieve, and in our grief, we are able to make peace with the losses we have taken, with the family, friends, lovers, and comrades we must put to rest. When we allow ourselves to grieve, and to really feel that grief, we are feeling our humanity returning to us, and then we are able to return to the struggle in front of us. The struggle against all those systemic forces which force grief upon us too soon in this short life.

I did not grieve on 7 October 2023, as Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip took History into their own hands. I didn’t even grieve on 27 October 2023, when Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza. Months and months of footage streamed directly to my phone of murdered children, maimed bodies, and unimaginable destruction, and I only really began to feel my grief upon hearing a new song from the working class folk singer, Nick Shoulders. Grief is nonlinear, its intricacies unfathomable, and thus it opens space for us to struggle on ever-changing terms.

Grief is incompatible with capitalism. Capital wants us back to work as soon as possible after we experience a loss, but grief does not abide by profit margins and work schedules. Grief also does not abide by the confines of organization. That may be part of why we in DSA have struggled so much internally since the start of Operation al-Aqsa Flood on 7 October. The sheer horror that we have borne witness to in the last year and change has forced us into a perpetual cycle of organizing, mobilizing, and action, with very little space and time devoted to grieving, healing, and communing. The scale is so great that we cannot but feel urgency in every waking moment and often even in our sleep, but without time to grieve and to build, we will eventually run out of fuel. We have carried such immense grief for the crimes against humanity, compounded by our own various individual grieving, and we have learned in real time that we simply do not possess the power to actually stop these horrors. How can we deal with that? What kinds of worlds are we rehearsing, wherein we have the tools to halt and prevent genocides, to grieve in the same breath as we organize, and to struggle through our pain?

Personally, my grief has given me no patience for semantics. No patience for masking politics behind procedure, or for turning on my comrades because, seeing as I am unable to harm the Israeli and American regimes, I will harm those around me instead. My grief has given me anger, and it has given me purpose. I invite you to grieve as well, that together we might find a way through.

Conclusion, or Why DSA Members Should Attend

I could not begin to summarize the entirety of the conference weekend into a single piece of writing. Whole articles could be written on individual sessions alone! In four days, I moved from being on the very furthest edge of burnout, just a few bad days away from quitting DSA outright, to feeling reinvigorated by the dynamism and vitality of the socialist movement. I met comrades from all across the country, from all corners of the movement we call home, and I learned more than I could have ever imagined, both in sessions and in between.

As the largest socialist organization in a generation, more DSA members should attend Socialism Conference every year. As mentioned above, DSA passed Member-Submitted Resolution #16: Renew the National Activist Conference at the DSA National Convention in August 2023, which called for the DSA National Political Committee and DSA staff to plan National Activist Conferences in the years between annual conventions. Given the tight budget that the new NPC has had to contend with, and the continued presence of COVID-19 and other public health crises, it would make far more sense to put that effort into the Socialism Conference, leveraging the existing structure and logistical support of Haymarket Books to inject even more committed organizing into an already phenomenal conference. Focusing on an existing conference that brings in comrades from across the Left would also contribute to DSA’s position in a broader Left coalition across the United States and cement our standing as a socialist organization with strategy, wisdom, and power.

I will be attending the Socialism Conference in 2025, scheduled for July 4th weekend in Chicago. I invite all my comrades reading to attend with me, and together we can sharpen our tools and recommit to the struggle ahead. Remember: we are in this for the long haul. We do not have time to waste on petty squabbles and interpersonal conflicts, we have a fucking world to win, and nothing to lose but our chains. Onward, comrades!

The post In Our Thousands, In Our Millions: Reflecting on Socialism 2024 Conference first appeared on Red Fault.

The core of organizing is one-on-one conversations, and canvassing is the perfect environment to apply and practice them. Each door answered is an opportunity to reset and try a new tact or improve on a rhetorical strategy that is already working.

When a canvasser speaks to voter after voter, they are asked more questions from more perspectives, and each interaction is an opportunity to learn about the issue, practice advocating for it, and learn about what resonates most.

Being able to quickly latch onto what resonates with a voter is key to effectively communicating with them. Someone's worldview won't be changed with a few minutes of conversation, but they can be nudged in the right direction when the issue is put into a framework they understand. One doesn't need to agree on everything to give that nudge. Meet them where they're at.

The best way to bring someone around to your way of thinking is to have them do it themselves. Ask incisive, leading questions about their priorities and how they believe the issue on the ballot will affect those priorities. This might convince someone already on the fence, but when they are working on a faulty premise, they probably won't come around. That's okay too. Try digging at that premise to leave them thinking about it, and with any luck, they'll have moved one step closer to a sound analysis.

In Kentucky, this year's Amendment 2 would change the state constitution to allow the allocation of public funds towards private schools, another in a frightening trend of attacks on public education across the US. Kentucky's Republican super-majority state legislature tried establishing a school voucher program in 2021, but the Kentucky Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional in December 2022. To pave the way for a lasting voucher program, they want to amend the state's constitution and remove the obstacle in the court.

In opposition to this amendment, I have knocked on more than a thousand doors in DSA Cincy's campaign. To help illustrate the canvassing experience, I want to share some of the lessons I've learned while speaking with voters on the ground. Some voters are eager to talk, and some with a yard full of Trump signs and "don't tread on me" flags might yell at you for missing their "no soliciting" sign. Some voters answer the door and immediately share that their family works in public schools, and others with a statue of Mother Mary in their front yard will tell you they plan on voting Yes.

One voter of the latter kind, a catholic planning on voting for the possibility of a voucher program, expressed her concern about affordability to me: "I'm split because my daughter sends her kids to a Catholic school and she's paying out the butt for it, but I have other family going to public schools," she said. Not every Catholic voter will be in an identical situation, but this one isn't uncommon, and it's perfect for nudging her from undecided to leaning against the amendment.

This woman had family in public schools, so I emphasized that. "Many people are in public schools like your family, and a lot of them have no other option. Going to a Catholic school is great, but this amendment wouldn't just help your grandchildren go to parochial school, it would take money away from your family in public schools, and the other kids who don't have the means to go elsewhere," I told her, "it sucks that parochial school is expensive for your daughter, but if it ever gets to be too much, she can always fall back on public schools." The woman responded well to this, and she thanked me for helping to clarify a concern she already had.

Not many voters are in the position to be convinced though. Another house I approached had a couple of banners with depictions of Jesus in the yard, along with a sign saying, "Vote Yes on 2.". I introduced myself to the woman at the door, and I asked her, "I saw the sign on your lawn. Can I ask: why do you want to support school vouchers?" Her response was something I hadn't heard before: "I work at the diocese, so I know the truth about it. They won't even let them talk about it! Don't you think they should be able to talk about it?"

She clearly had some strong convictions about something she didn't understand—far from not being able to "talk about" it, the legislature had passed a voucher law already—so I tried to explain the legal situation and why people opposed the amendment. Still, she insisted on her bizarre free-speech interpretation, so I wished her a good night and took off.

Not every voter is going to be responsive to what you have to say, and it's important to take the hint and move on. This story is similar to one a friend told me about a door he knocked on this campaign. The man who answered listened for a moment, then insisted that he have Amendment 1 explained to him before he would listen to anything about Amendment 2. My friend tried explaining that Amendments 1 and 2 were entirely separate issues, but the man didn't care and seemed to think something was being hidden from him.

Now, would it have been nice to remember Amendment 1 well enough to explain it off the cuff, while canvassing for another issue? Yes. But it's good to read the signs when someone is confrontational. If you could perfectly answer every question he has, you might, just might, convince this man. But your time is better spent speaking with a voter who is interested in what you have to say.

Another door I knocked had an older man who was eager to talk to me. The more someone talks, the more you learn about what might bring them around, so I listened for a few minutes. Eventually, he began sharing a story about when his son was in school and kids in his class were sharing poems they had written. "Must've been half of those kids wrote about their daddy in prison or their parents addicted to drugs," he said to me, "I nearly started crying." And I piggybacked off of this emotional example he gave.

"That's awful. And when those kids don't have anyone helping them at home, who's there for them? Who helps to make sure they don't end up in the same place?" I asked. I was hoping he'd see the same picture as me, that their public school could be a positive force in the lives of these children, and he did.

It's easy to focus on adapting your message to the individual, but it's also important to understand your foundation for the issue you're canvassing. More than a couple of voters asked me why I cared enough to be out volunteering, and there's not one right answer. Whatever rings true for you will also be the most compelling message you can give to others.

Not every voter will have a productive conversation, but that's okay! I have had someone who mostly wanted to talk about why we need corporal punishment back in schools and another who warned me to renew my passport in case I need to get out of the country. Some people will immediately agree with you after you explain the issue, and some have no interest in being swayed to your point of view. It's never your fault when someone isn't open to being convinced, but you can leave them with something to think about at the least. The real effect comes when you're able to canvass a large number of doors.

If a motivated organizer canvasses a hundred doors over a couple of hours and nudges one in ten of those households to change their vote, now he is punching above his weight. When a motivated group canvasses together, that force is amplified. Organize a campaign of canvasses over a month, and now a small group of dedicated activists can have a huge impact on the outcome of an election.

The strength of democracy doesn't end with our vote, though it's easy to stop there. It also lies in our ability to influence others. Advertisements, yard signs, and political events can all move a vote, but nothing is more effective than personal conversations. And that is an advantage that socialists have over groups that can't do anything but throw money at an issue. It's something that any organizer can do, and it's better than what money can buy.

Canvassing also helps to develop crucial skills for a successful socialist organizer. One-on-one conversations with workers, meeting people where they are, and understanding how to effectively use our words to agitate and evoke a response are key to any campaign. Everyone interested in organizing should get out and canvass at least once or twice an election, whether they do it to learn new skills, keep old ones sharp, get a feel for what voters are thinking, or swing some votes.

San Jose Against War, joined by SVDSA, held a rally on October 6, 2024 to mark a year of Palestinian resistance to genocide.

Today, a nuclear-armed state rains down terror on an oppressed population of natives, behind a multi-billion dollar shield of rockets protecting its settlers. Built on the ethnic cleansing of almost a million natives, the occupying state imposes a system of apartheid and ethnosupremacy over its claimed territories, placing its own settlers’ rights above the natives’ democratic will. Despite the natives having an internationally recognized right to resist their subjugation and pursue self-determination, other major powers refuse to recognize this – saying only the occupier has a “right to self defense.”

We could have written a similar introduction about any number of colonial and occupied groups. White Americans and Indigenous people – who were similarly genocided under the guise of “manifest destiny.” Hindutva supremacists and occupied Kashmir – where Kashmiris have been denied their internationally recognized right to a plebiscite and self-determination.

As Israel today continues its genocide on Palestine and begins to destroy Lebanon, we must be clear as socialists that we oppose not only Israel’s actions, but also the racist, colonial ideology underpinning it all. Just as DSA has previously taken stances on anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism, today we commit to organizing around dismantling Zionism in our local governments and communities.

At our end-August chapter meeting, Silicon Valley DSA unanimously passed a resolution reinforcing our chapter as an anti-Zionist organization in principle and practice.

Zionism, as defined by Theodor Herzl in the late 19th century, has always been a settler-colonial project intended to dispossess natives – to create “a wall of Europe against Asia… an outpost of [Western] civilization against [Eastern] barbarism.” Armed with the lie of “a land without a people for a people without a land,” Zionists regularly terrorized Palestinians alongside the British, and built their own segregated systems during the years of the British Mandate. During the Nakba (“catastrophe”) of 1948, Zionists prevailed in ethnically cleansing 750,000 Palestinians to form the state of Israel – against the consent of most natives.

In opposing Zionism, SVDSA seeks to end all forms of oppression and ethnosupremacy, in line with our prior opposition to caste discrimination and white supremacy.

Since October 2023, SVDSA has mobilized to call for a ceasefire, helped pass ceasefire resolutions at the Democratic Party and local levels, initiated Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns, and educated our neighbors about Israel’s genocide. We recognize that, as U.S. taxpayers, we are directly paying for the destruction of Palestine – to the tune of $3.8 billion in annual military funding, and a further $10+ billion in arms approved just this year. Redirecting these funds alone would give $1250 per year for every American child in poverty.

Following the lead of other DSA chapters, including DSA SF and East Bay DSA, we drafted a resolution to fully commit our chapter to anti-Zionism, and place ourselves firmly on the side of the struggle for Palestinian liberation.

The adopted resolution clearly defines anti-Zionist expectations for our membership and endorsed candidates. With the passage of this resolution, Zionist positions — such as opposing BDS or the Palestinian right of return — are considered to be in substantial disagreement with Silicon Valley DSA’s principles and policies. Supporting Zionist lobby groups — such as Christians United for Israel (CUFI), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) — is also now a violation of our principles, because we recognize how these lobbies disingenuously provide political cover for Israel’s genocide. Members who commit these violations can be subject to expulsion, as is the case with violating any other DSA principles.

Along the same lines, our endorsed candidates must now publicly support BDS, disaffiliate from any Zionist lobby groups, and — when elected — politically support the Palestinian cause and oppose Zionist legislation.

Our resolution against Zionism is a product of our diverse chapter. Just as we firmly rejected any conflation between Hinduism and ethno-nationalist Hindutva in opposing caste discrimination in 2023, so too do we reject any conflation of Judaism and Zionism. We recognize and commend the long history of Jewish anti-Zionist and non-Zionist organizations – such as Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, the 20th-century socialist Jewish Labour Bund, and the modern Jewish Labor Bund – as well as the efforts of our own anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish members.

We expect our anti-Zionist resolution will make us an even stronger ally in the struggle for a free Palestine, and commend the work of several local organizations and coalitions fighting towards this end, including Palestinian Youth Movement, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, Jewish Voice for Peace, CA15forPalestine, Vigil4Gaza, Stanford Against Apartheid in Palestine, and San Jose Against War. We look forward to working more closely with our allies, who have made it clear that DSA nationally must explicitly connect the fight against Zionism with our socialist and anti-colonialist principles.

We commit to making Palestine central in our ongoing struggle against global capitalism, settler colonialism, and U.S. imperialism. Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea!

Join SVDSA!

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The post SVDSA Unanimously Passes Anti-Zionist Resolution appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.

Hello hello! Contemplating going to the annual conference in Chicago next year but not sure if it's worth your time? I went this year, so here's an overview of what it was like for me.

Overall experience / what to expect:

Six of us from the chapter went together and rented a van. The "road trip with friends" aspect was a lot of fun, and this probably turned out cheaper splitting the rental/gas/parking costs for one vehicle between six of us rather than people bringing their own vehicles. I acquired some new songs for my playlist from other people's lists. Also, I highly recommend stopping at Cheddar's on the way for mealtime. The portions of food that you get are huge relative to what you'd normally get for that price elsewhere.

At the conference proper, the logistics were pretty convenient. The conference is at the Hyatt's convention center, which is attached to the Hyatt hotel building itself, so you don't have to go outdoors to go between them, have time to stop by your room in between sessions if you need to drop something off, etc. If you book through the link on the conference website you get a substantial discount on rooms (mine was $114 a night, of which I only actually paid half because two of us shared a room to save money). The food in hotel venues was priced about as high as you'd expect, but there were mini-fridges in the rooms and a microwave in the common area with the ice machine, so it's easy to swing by Walmart on the way and do some weekend grocery shopping instead. There seemed to be a decent amount of all-gender restrooms throughout the conference center, and I never saw a line for any of the bathrooms.

Session-wise, there were a LOT of sessions occurring at the same time (up to fifteen per time slot in some cases). I recommend taking advantage of the Sched app they link to in the schedule emails beforehand, or being ready to mark up your printed program, to help narrow down your favorites and keep straight where you want to go. They run on a schedule of 1.5 hour sessions and 30 minute breaks though, so it's easy to grab a cup of coffee, charge your laptop a little, poke around the bookstore, etc. in between them. Some are also live-streamed / recorded, so if you're stuck deciding between multiple, you can also factor in which ones you can catch later versus which ones you have to catch live.

Finally, you might also consider bringing your laptop. I seemed to be in a small minority that did so, but I found it very useful for taking notes, especially when some DSA members put together a collaborative notes document so people back home or who attended other sessions could get info from the sessions other people attended. Although one hang-up was battery life - I had to work at 10-15% screen brightness to make my battery last between opportunities to charge it. Next year I'm going to bring a portable battery with me as well.

Oh, and, bring a sweater or something. It was weirdly chilly in the hotel halls and some session rooms for late summer, and I ended up wearing my jacket almost the whole weekend.

What I liked about the conference content wise:

I enjoyed the variety of sessions to choose from. One big theme that I noticed was the connectedness of everything: issues weren't presented in a siloed way (at least for the sessions I attended), but as something that relates to at least five other things. Decarceration is central to covid justice because covid is used as an excuse to deny people resources in prison despite guards not masking. Demilitarization is crucial to climate justice because of how big a negative impact our military specifically has on the environment. Trans misogyny is a weapon/tool of colonial imperialism. Freedom for Palestine is related to our own police state because our cops train with Israel, and to reproductive justice because part of that is the freedom to raise your child(ren) in a safe environment, which Palestinian parents don't have. Affordable housing is a vital part of whether a state is a safe state for trans people, because you can't move there if you can't actually afford to live there. Etc. You can't be a "one issue person" in some ways because nothing is an isolated issue.

Social-wise, I got to know people from my chapter better, and meet people from other chapters. I got some ideas to bring back to our electoral working group, some good podcast recommendations, and decided to officially join a caucus I was practically a member of by this point anyway. I also got a signed copy of Nick Estes's Our History is the Future, and a Palestinian flag to add to my handheld flag collection.

What I would like to see next year or do differently:

Conference wise, I wish there was more music. A couple sessions had a minimal amount of singing, but we didn't even sing "Solidarity Together" as a collective to my knowledge. I would love it if there was a session devoted to singing Pete Seeger songs or the like for an hour, similar to how there were evening events for trivia and board games. (I put this on the post-conference survey, so fingers crossed.) I also think it'd be cool if there was a session about the neurodiversity movement, since that ties in with queer rights (statistical overlap between the autistic and ace & trans communities).

Personally, I think I need to be more prepared to spend money on food/drinks next year. I was a little disappointed halfway through about the extent to which I'd been able to hang out with new people because it seemed like everything was "bar this, brewery that, up to 3 am," whereas I was more interested in chatting with people over coffee at the breakfast bar before the first session of the day. Enough hang-out type events had been planned by the end of the conference though, I think this has more to do with me always wanting to do more in a day in these situations than I have the social capacity for, or not having planned to spend much money eating out. Next year I'm just going to plan more lunches-out into my financial expectations.

Conclusion

Overall, it was a very positive experience, and I would recommend it to others. I'll definitely be going again in 2025, which is happening July 3rd to 6th.

This is a transformative election for the City of Portland, which will select the first cohort of leaders for the brand new city government. Portland DSA’s two amazing candidates will come ready to fight for social and economic justice, offering a fresh vision for Portland following years of rule by candidates committed to regressive policies.

City government has a tremendous amount of power over critical issues like housing, public safety, climate resilience, and more. It’s time for a city that prioritizes the needs of its citizens over downtown developers who live in the suburbs.

Endorsement, Green Lights, Red Lights, and Renter’s Bill of Rights

Endorsed (Rank #1)

Portland DSA’s two endorsed candidates, Tiffany Koyama Lane & Mitch Green, will be listed first — with a “#1” symbol and additional details about our endorsement. We think you should rank them number one in Districts 3 and 4!

Preferred Candidate/Green Light

Portland DSA’s preferred candidates rose to the top through an internal process that included a mock election, extensive research by Portland DSA’s Socialists in Office Committee, as well as a member forum.

Renter’s Bill of Rights: A house icon indicates green light candidates who have signed the Renter’s Bill of Rights.

DSA Member: A rose icon indicates green light candidates who are also members of Portland DSA. Join us!

District 1

For District 1, Portland DSA has greenlighted six candidates and encourages you to rank all of them. None were endorsed by the chapter:

District 2

For District 2, Portland DSA has greenlighted six candidates and encourages you to rank all of them. None were endorsed by the chapter:

*Jonathan Tasini is a member of Portland DSA. We regret the error.

District 3

For District 3 Portland DSA has greenlighted six candidates and encourages you to rank all of them. It includes Tiffany Koyama Lane who Portland DSA endorsed!

Rank Tiffany Koyama Lane #1 on your ballot! Portland DSA was proud to endorse her earlier this year. We have been out non-stop knocking doors and calling voters for Tiffany. Teacher Tiffany is a leader in the Portland Association of Teachers and their successful strike last November. Tiffany comes from a background of collective action based in the labor movement. We consider her election to validate the struggles of educators that were raised in that strike. Nike put their executive in as chair of the school board, we are striking back and putting a union teacher on City Council.

District 4

For District 4 Portland DSA has greenlighted five candidates and encourages you to rank all of them. It also includes Mitch Green who Portland DSA endorsed!

Rank Mitch Green #1 on your ballot! Portland DSA was proud to endorse Mitch earlier this year. We have been out non-stop knocking doors and calling voters for him. Mitch is a mainstay of Portland DSA, picket lines, and karaoke bars. He’s been a member for six years and has served as our treasurer. Mitch is an open, proud socialist who wears his membership on his sleeve.

Mayor

For Mayor we do not have an endorsed candidate and were only able to pick 4 from the list:

Red Light / Do Not Rank

The following is our list of candidates we encourage members not to rank at all on their ballot. These are candidates who were endorsed by the Portland Police Association (police union) and United for Portland / the Portland Metro Chamber (formally known as the Portland Business Alliance). Some are vitriolically opposed to the Renters Bill of Rights. Others are critics of the teachers’ union. None of them belong on your ballot. Portland DSA is supportive of the Don’t Rank Rene movement and we want it to be clear which candidates have stood against our movement and its demands like Jesse Cornett and Jon Walker.

Many candidates for the new Portland city government are not listed in the Portland DSA’s voters guide. Voters might consider ranking these candidates to fill out the ballot if they run out of DSA-endorsed or preferred candidates to rank. Filling out your ballot helps to keep Red Light (Do Not Rank) candidates out of office.

Made it to the end? WOW. Ready to take action and secure a pro-working class majority on Portland City Council? Take the pledge here and join our movement!