Enjoy your National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 18-person body (including two YDSA members who share a vote) that functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, join a call hosted by the International Migrant Rights Working Group, hear from Amazon organizers who went on strike, get involved with the Mutual Aid Working Group, and more. 

And to make sure you get our newsletters in your inbox, sign up here! Each one features action alerts, upcoming events, political education, and more.

• From Our Co-Chairs — Organizing Amidst the Chaos
• Immigration 101: No Human is Illegal hosted by the International Migrant Rights Working Group 
• DSA Amazon Priority Campaign
• Pitch an article to Socialist Forum
• Check out Democratic Left’s new website!
• Nationwide Abolish Rent Reading Group
• Announcing our new SC and calling for members to join MAWG!
• Organizing Fair for At-Large Members on 3/2
• Convention Planning Committee

From Our Co-Chairs — Organizing Amidst the Chaos

“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.” – W.E.B. Du Bois

Dear Comrade,

There’s never been an easy time to be a socialist in the USA, but organizing amidst the chaos of this second Trump administration – where Elon Musk, the richest man alive, attempts to dismantle our public services one by one; where Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-science nepo baby, is attempting to roll back crucial public health initiatives (and life-saving SSRIs); where the Democratic Party, the only opposition that holds formal power, is throwing their hands in the air and saying that nothing can be done – is uniquely exhausting. But that’s the point, right? Overwhelm is intended to lead us to inaction and despair. But because we have a strong socialist analysis and a theory of change that is continuing to prove correct, we do have hope; we do have stamina; we do know that a better world is possible, and we do know that an organized working class is what will get us all there.

Just this week, we’re seeing DSA chapters throw down with the Federal Unionists Network to turn out hundreds and thousands of people for events to Save Our Services and fight for federal workers, as they become one of the hottest new targets for Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)” cronies.

We keep showing how we are so much more than the sum of our parts, and even as the fire hydrant of bad news continues to spew uncontrollably, this analysis and the actions we take to combat it are leading to significant DSA membership growth (over 10%, with no signs of slowing, especially as chapters across the country take on intentional recruitment campaigns to meet this moment). But our work is not just about the numbers — it’s about building power for the working class, and we are seeing signs of that power everywhere.

We’re drawing hope and inspiration from the dozens upon dozens of chapters who are finding ways to show up and build connections with the broader working class in their areas, from strike support on hundreds of picket lines to know-your-rights trainings for targeted migrant workers from border to border; from abortion aftercare kit building events to protests led by DSA chapters from New York City to Chicago to Los Angeles to defend trans youth’s access to healthcare and demand that hospitals and university systems refuse to comply in advance with Trump’s anti-trans orders. 

And DSA chapters continue to rack up major wins — just a few among them recently:

• East Bay DSA were leaders in the successful movement to push Alameda County to divest over $30 million from Caterpillar, one of the primary targets of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions Movement (BDS)
• Seattle DSA helped achieve a major working class victory with the passage of Prop 1A, which will tax wealthy businesses to pay for a massive investment in social housing, estimated at around $50 million per year
• Philly DSA threw down and saw victory as a major partner in the Save Chinatown coalition, working alongside and building crucial connections with a variety of community organizations to halt the building of a new stadium that would have razed a historic working-class majority-AAPI downtown neighborhood for the sake of billionaires
• Pittsburgh DSA organized with the Not On Our Dime campaign to get over 21,000 signatures to get on the ballot this May, well above the necessary threshold, for a referendum that would prevent the city of Pittsburgh from investing or doing business with any government actively committing genocide, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing, in solidarity with Palestine.

If you are part of any of this work already, please know that your comrades across the country and throughout the world are drawing inspiration from you and your local comrades. If you’re not already jumping in on a local project or campaign, there’s no time like the present. Find your chapter, join a meeting, and get to work – we need you! If you don’t have a chapter in your area, join us for an At-Large Organizing Fair on March 2 to find out ways to either start a local chapter or plug into national DSA work!

We also know that not everyone has time, energy, or emotional capacity to dig into organizing work, but may have other resources to share. If that sounds like you, please consider becoming a Solidarity Dues payer, or even simply upping your current dues amount by a couple bucks per month. We know that we will never beat the capitalist class with money alone –it’s our organizing and people power that will get that job done. That said, we won’t beat them without money, either, and your monthly dues help fund the work of your own chapter and pay for nationally-shared resources, from tech tools to staff support, that make these big wins possible.

As always, we remain fiercely proud to be in this fight alongside each and every one of you.

In Solidarity, 

Megan Romer and Ashik Siddique
DSA National Co-Chairs

Immigration 101: No Human is Illegal hosted by the International Migrant Rights Working Group on 2/25

As we prepare against the ongoing attacks on migrants, it is important that we have a shared understanding of what reforms currently exist, what they actually do, and how we got to where we are today. Whether you’re new to DSA or new to the fight for immigrant rights, join DSA’s International Migrant Rights Working Group on Tuesday, February 25th at 7 pm CT/8 pm ET as we dig into the ever-changing issues involving immigration and go over the basics of what you need to know, where to start, and what you can do for the long-fight ahead.

This will be the first of many events in our newly-launched chapter organizing support program. This call is open to everyone, so please share widely to anybody interested in DSA! RSVP here.

DSA Amazon Priority Campaign

Last fall, the NLC membership passed the Amazon Priority Resolution, designating DSA Labor resources and capacity towards organizing Amazon’s 1.5 million workers. Organizing Amazon is Do or Die for the American Labor movement and the Left. We are launching the Amazon Priority Campaign on Sunday, February 23 at 8pm EST/5pm PST! Come hear from Amazon organizers who went on strike and are fighting for a first union contract, learn about how you can support local campaigns, and find out how you can get a job to organize. Amazon workers are leading the labor battle of our generation, will DSA step up to the challenge and fight with us?

Pitch an article to Socialist Forum

The next issue of Socialist Forum will be asking members how the U.S. Left should respond to a world on fire, metaphorically and quite literally. The recent years have been brutal, but there is great potential for the left to expand and grow its power if we are willing to analyze the political situation as is and learn from one another. We also welcome pitches on any other topic of potential interest and use to DSA members. First drafts will be due on Monday, March 24th. if your pitch is accepted. Please send pitches (~250 words) that include the following to socialistforum@dsausa.org by Friday, February 28th to be considered: 1) a general description of the topic, 2) your argument, unique perspective, or intervention, and 3) why you think our audience would be interested or should engage with this issue. See full call for pitch description here.

Check out Democratic Left’s new website!

Our national publication Democratic Left has launched a new and beautiful website! Please check it out and read some great articles by fellow members. 

Nationwide Abolish Rent Reading Group

Join DSA members and tenant organizers around the country for a nationwide reading of the new book Abolish Rent, written by two co-founders of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis.

With unsparing analysis and striking stories of resistance, this deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement centers poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process. Rent drives millions into debt and despair and onto the streets, but tenants can harness our power and make the world our home. Together, we’ll learn from the book, share our experiences as tenants and organizers, and discuss how to create a future where rent doesn’t exist.

We will meet biweekly for 4 sessions (3/12, 3/26, 4/9 and 4/23) at 5pm PST/8pm EST. Please sign up here to receive the zoom link to join.

Announcing Our New Steering Committee and Calling for Members to Join MAWG!

The Mutual Aid Working Group (MAWG) just elected a brand new Steering Committee for 2025! We are working to support chapters and members in doing more mutual aid work, getting involved in their communities, and fighting fascism and capitalism with cooperation! Now more than ever we need to support each other as natural disasters and higher cost of living are destroying people’s lives. So, we hope new members get involved in our work and join MAWG! And we look forward to seeing you at our first all members meeting that will be announced soon! 

Organizing Fair for At-Large Members on 3/2

At-large members (members who do not have a local DSA chapter) are invited to join the NPC, a variety of national committees, and our organizing staff for a virtual At-Large Organizing Fair on Sunday, 3/2 at 2pm Eastern/11am Pacific. You’ll hear about ways that you can get plugged into all kinds of national work, learn about the process for starting a chapter locally, get filled in on the process for running as an at-large DSA National Convention delegate, and connect with other members across the country. Join us! 

Convention Planning Committee

Planning is in full swing for the 2025 DSA National Convention, to be held August 8-10 in Chicago. Keep an eye on our Convention Website and your email for ongoing updates on everything you need to know, including information about when and how to submit proposals, apply for scholarships, run your chapter delegate elections, and more!

 

The post Organizing Amidst the Chaos  — Your National Political Committee newsletter appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

On Wednesday, January 29th, 2025, Connecticut DSA’s Labor Working Group gathered at New Britain’s “Assembly Room” for their first Labor Happy Hour of the year. The Assembly Room looks more upscale at the outset with a chic white façade and a 20s style bar, but the prices are much more modest. Fitting for the working-class muckraker who wants to be ethical while still enjoying life’s comforts.

Thorn West: Issue No. 226

City Politics

• As many criticize the city’s lack of wildfire preparedness in advance of the Santa Ana winds, Mayor Karen Bass has today fired LAFD chief Kristin Crowley. The LA Times covers the firing in the context of a “sense of disarray that has enveloped City Hall.”

• Children’s Hospital Los Angeles stopped offering several forms of gender-affirming care, in response to a Trump administration executive order threatening the funding of any medical institution that provided this care to transgendered youths. The hospital has now partially reversed that decision, following weekly protests.

Housing Rights

• The LA City Council postponed voting on a motion that would offer eviction protections to Angelenos economically impacted by the wildfires. It will revisit the issue in March. A similar measure did pass at the County Board of Supervisors. That motion applies countywide, but only protects those who specifically lost work. Tenants in Maui, devastated by wildfires in 2023, suffered a variety of cascading displacements, despite the passage of stronger tenant protections than LA is considering.

• The California FAIR Plan, a state-administered fund that provides fire insurance to property owners in high-risk areas, has run out of money in the aftermath of the wildfires. This triggers a condition that allows the fund to collect an additional $1 billion from insurers. Half of this cost may be passed onto consumers, with the state’s approval.

Education

• This week, a Los Angeles Unified School District policy went into effect that bans student phone use during school hours.

• The Trump administration’s terrorization of immigrant communities is depressing school attendance, per CalMatters.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• A member of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Civilian Oversight Commission has resigned, amid a conflict pitting the oversight body against county attorneys, LASD, and the State Attorney General’s office.

• In San Francisco, an effort to bolster recruitment to the Police Department has failed, as a growing percentage of cadets are dropping out of the police academy.

Transportation

• A long-awaited discussion about how Los Angeles will implement Measure HLA was delayed; the City Council’s Transportation Committee has been drawn into the efforts to block an affordable housing development, and ran out of time.

• The Trump administration has signaled that it will sabotage a California high speed rail project. At Union Station, a press conference by the U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was shouted down by project advocates.

The post County Passes Some Eviction Protections in Response to Wildfires + Mayor Fires LAFD Chief appeared first on The Thorn West.

Our annual Madison Area DSA Chapter Convention is Saturday, March 15 from 10 AM to 4 PM at the Madison Labor Temple. Please RSVP as soon as possible! (Masks will be required and provided; lunch will be available to those who RSVP by March 4th.)

At Convention, we’ll take a look back at the past year, and members in good standing will make important decisions about the direction of the upcoming year.

The 2025 About the MADSA Convention Guide has everything you need to know about our Convention.

We’re asking members to submit resolutions, bylaw amendments, working group reports and charters, and executive committee and community accountability committee nominations by March 4th.

If you have questions or want to team up with other folks on resolutions, join #2025-convention in the Slack.

Solidarity from the Convention Committee! 

Now, at Stonewall we are watching our own undoing.

At our monument, a hollow has been carved into history—a deliberate emptiness where our stories used to live. Where Marsha’s name once stood proud, teaching generations that we have always existed, that we have always fought, that we have always loved and been loved. Now there is only silence.

They think we don’t notice when they chip away at our memories, stone by stone. That we won’t feel the weight of each erasure, each redaction, each carelessly crafted omission. But we feel every cut. We see our elders’ names fade like ghosts from the walls they built with their own hands. We watch as they try to orphan us from our own history.

Every time they try to erase us, we write ourselves back into existence—in permanent ink, in unshakeable community, in unwavering solidarity.

But they have forgotten something crucial: We are still here. We are still telling our stories. In basements and bookstores, in community centers and living rooms, in whispered conversations and shouted protests. Every time they try to erase us, we write ourselves back into existence—in permanent ink, in unshakeable community, in unwavering solidarity.

There is a bitter irony in attempting to sanitize a monument that exists precisely because people refused to accept such violent marginalization. Stonewall stands as testament to the power of collective rage, to a moment when the marginalized said “enough” and transformed their pain into action, to a moment that showed their oppressors they knew how weak the chains really were. It commemorates not polite requests for dignity, but the throwing of bricks, the breaking of barriers, the raw and necessary fury of people who had been pushed too far. Those who now seek to edit this history, to remove some of its participants from the record, seem to miss the fundamental lesson of what they’re trying to erase: that oppressed people will not quietly accept their own erasure, that solidarity is stronger than state power, and that the very actions they’re commemorating prove the futility of their sanitization effort. They seek to remove transgender people from the story of a riot that began, in part, because society tried to deny transgender people’s right to exist—a historical echo that would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

This is why we must act now, together. Not just transgender people, but all who understand that when they come for one community’s history, they pave the way to erase others. Every activist, every ally, every person who believes in truth and dignity must stand together.

What can we do? We document. We archive. We create underground histories and public demonstrations. We build networks of resistance that transcend individual identity. We teach our children not just about Stonewall, but about every attempt at oppression and how we fought back. We turn their acts of erasure into fuel for our collective memory and action.

Most importantly, we recognize that this is not just about preserving history—it’s about protecting our future. When they try to erase transgender people from Stonewall, they are trying to erase the possibility of transgender youth seeing themselves in history, of understanding their place in a long line of resistance and triumph.

Let this attempt at erasure be the spark that ignites our collective resistance. Let every blank space they create become a canvas for our truth.

Let this attempt at erasure be the spark that ignites our collective resistance. Let every blank space they create become a canvas for our truth. Let every silence they impose become a chorus of our voices. Together, we will not just preserve our history—we will make it impossible to erase.

The time for passive observation is over. We must act with the urgency of people watching their own existence being questioned, with the determination of communities who refuse to be written out of history, and with the solidarity of those who understand that an injury to one is an injury to all.

Who will join us in ensuring that our stories survive? Who will stand with us in turning this moment of erasure into an era of unprecedented visibility and power? Our history is not just words on a monument—it lives in our actions, in our unity, and in our unwavering commitment to truth and justice.

The future is watching. What will we show them?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​