December 2023 State Council Meeting Report

Below is a brief summary of our December 2023 delegation meeting.

DSA to Cuba Delegation Report

Our keynote speaker was Lizzie of San Francisco DSA, who talked to us about our International Committee’s first delegation to Cuba between October 22 - 26, 2023. Members traveled in coordination with an organization called “Not Just Tourists,” which provides travelers with supplies to be distributed across the island. The delegation body was made up of a wide range of DSA members cohered around opposition to the United States embargo against Cuba. 

Members learned about the widespread effects of the embargo on Cuba and how it impacts every level of society. Due to limitations on what is able to be sold and provided there, this creates an overall sense of burden and loss. We were given specific examples of how forced lack of supply causes Cubans to reuse medical equipment like pacemakers - and people there have no access to things like the Apple App Store. The USA doesn’t allow you to sell to Cuba if you want to sell your product in the USA.  

Co-chair Report

One of our co-chairs, Hazel W, provided us with very useful context around work that had been done in the previous few months and the state of our organization. She reflected on our successful California Red newsletter, our endorsement and support of No on APEC work in the Bay Area, and our support of the “No Money for Massacres” campaign—making thousands of calls supporting the cause of Palestinian liberation. 

As we have been struggling to find folks with ample capacity, we’ve recently made some changes to our internal structures to account for this reality. Hopefully, making changes to the amount of standing meetings we carry, and putting intentional effort into our newly adopted Growth and Development Committee will help us grow into the org we know we can be (and the one that can be a large part of ushering socialism into California).

We need members to join us in this effort! We understand the struggle of finding capacity with all that’s happening around us; but even a little of your time goes a long way. You can sign up for the Growth and Development committee here.

Treasurer’s Report

Our previous treasurer provided us with a breakdown of expenses necessary to operate California DSA with tools like email clients and our voting tool. Currently, California DSA’s fiscal sponsor is DSA Los Angeles, which is going through a transitional process into incorporation now, so fundraising will be on hold for the time being. 

We received reports about our various committees, including:

Labor Committee

Communications Committee

Ecosocialists

Electoral Committee

Chapter reports

North Central Valley, San Francisco, and Ventura county gave our council updates about work in their local chapters. 

North Central Valley is engaged with their local labor federation, sending members through organizer trainings, and Palestinian solidarity work. Their chapter is also now separately incorporated.

San Francisco DSA has been running a campaign for Dean Preston, who is facing intense opposition from the capitalist class in the city and trying to remove him from his Board of Supervisors seat. Their chapter has also been continuing work in Palestinian solidarity and mutual aid, organizing things like donation drops. They’ve also been hosting their own DSA 101 courses, organizer trainings, and book clubs.

Ventura County is working on filling seats within the chapter, and expanding to public tabling events to engage community members in the organization. They currently host mostly membership meetings and have endorsed a city council candidate. Members have also been involved with strike support, and attended No Money for Massacres phone banks. They also now have their very first delegate for California DSA.

Legislative Platform Presentation

Members of CA DSA spent much time and energy to put together a legislative program that was originally intended to be used for an Assembly slate we had planned to run for 2024. Based on a poll of our delegates, the main planks of that platform include:

• Decarbonizing and building green infrastructure

• Protecting and encouraging union organizing

• Fund public education and oppose privatization

• Expand statewide rent control

• Build public, social housing

• Pass statewide public, single-payer healthcare

In the absence of running an Assembly campaign, this program will be used as a basis for our voter guide (coming soon) and future candidates for the state Legislature. 

Votes

The delegation adopted two amendments to our Legislative Endorsement Framework from previous council meetings and we ratified the State Committee’s suggested changes to our Housing and Electoral committees, as well as the creation of our Growth and Development committee.

Submitted by Paul Zappia, CA-DSA Secretary

Connor Wright

NEWTON – More than 2,000 members of the Newton Teachers Association (NTA) launched a strike on Friday morning.

The strike is the latest in a wave of illegal – and successful – teachers’ strikes in Massachusetts, the largest in the state since Quincy teachers walked out in 2007.

Teachers are demanding higher pay, especially for low-paid support staff, and an end to the chronic underfunding of Newton Public Schools (NPS). The Newton School Committee has hired a union-busting law firm and condemned the strike.

https://x.com/DSAWorkingMass/status/1748431100479778969?s=20

High Spirits on the Picket Line

As the 9am strike deadline approached, hundreds of teachers converged on Newton Center with union shirts and signs. Passing cars blared their horns in solidarity while teachers chanted: “What do we want? FAIR CONTRACT! When do we want it? NOW!”

Despite the freezing temperatures, the sidewalks were loud and cheerful as students, parents, and other community supporters bolstered the teachers’ picket lines.

“Newton teachers are fantastic,” said one parent as she helped hand out coffee and donuts. “The fact that they don’t get respect pisses me off.”

She described how for years, local politicians have touted the district’s “competitiveness,” pointing to building improvements and new school construction. But teacher pay has failed to keep up with spiraling living costs, turnover is high, and conditions for teachers and students have gotten steadily worse.

“It’s not about buildings, it’s about the teachers who work there,” she argued. “They’re the ones who take care of the kids. If they’re not treated right the whole system falls apart.”

Teachers agreed, noting that the district has been underfunded for years. Teachers endure hour-plus commutes, unable to afford Newton’s rising housing costs. Understaffing is rampant since teachers can find higher pay in most other suburban districts. And lower-paid support staff are forced to work second and third jobs to make ends meet.

Multiple NTA members told Working Mass how excited they were to fight back after years of neglect from the district.

“We haven’t felt this disrespected in a long time,” said one Newton South High School teacher. “We’re out here because we mean business.”

Strike Politics

One of the most popular picket line chants was about the city’s Democratic mayor, Ruthanne Fuller: “Hey hey, ho ho, Mayor Fuller has got to go!”

Although the Newton community seems fully in support of striking educators, the Newton political establishment is firmly against the teachers’ demands.

Fuller, a former business consultant, has condemned the strike. The Newton School Committee – which includes a corporate consultant, a hedge fund manager, and the former CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess – has stonewalled the NTA in negotiations, ignoring teachers’ demands over more than a year of negotiations.

According to a longtime NTA activist, as the union has gotten bolder and more organized in recent years, the district has become openly hostile in negotiations and shut down even moderate proposals from the union.

“It’s part of their strategy,” he told Working Mass. “They want to use the strike to break the union.”

Unions, community groups, and local socialists are all supporting the teachers. Boston DSA members, including NTA and other union activists, came out to bolster the picket lines.

Rallying for Better Schools

The first day of the strike culminated in a mass rally at Newton City Hall, where thousands of teachers and supporters gathered to flex their power.

Newton teachers, Boston Teachers Union (BTU) president Jessica Tang, and supporters from the Somerville Educators Union (SEU) and the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) all spoke.

MTA president Max Page kicked off the rally by praising Newton teachers’ dedication. “Today you are an inspiration to all of us: to your students, your families, and to unionists all across the state and all across the country.”

Leo, a Newton high school student, condemned Mayor Fuller’s letter to students and families, which claimed the strike “would harm our children.”

“Mayor Fuller, I don’t know where you get the audacity to claim that our teachers are hurting us. When’s the last time you set foot inside a Newton classroom?”

“What’s really hurting the schools, what’s really hurting the students, is having classes of 37 students. What really hurts us is when teachers have to balance childcare and coming to work. What really hurts us is when we can’t get access to a social worker when we need it most.”

In a passionate speech, Ashley Raven, a preschool teacher in the Newton Early Childhood Program (NECP), described the special burden on underpaid Unit C staff. She dared Fuller and the School Committee to work as support staff in Newton schools for just one week.

“At the end of that week, you tell us if you felt fairly compensated. You tell us if you felt respected for the work you did.”

The rally ended with a chant that had been heard all throughout the day: “Enough is enough! Enough is enough!”

Preparing for the Long Haul

The longest recent teachers’ strike, in Woburn, lasted five days. Based on the stubbornness of Fuller and the School Committee, informed sources told Working Mass the NTA is digging in for a multi-week strike if necessary.

Members seem ready to hold the line. “We didn’t pick this fight,” said an elementary school teacher as the day wrapped up. “But if they want one, we’ll give it to them.”

Strike actions are planned for this weekend. All community supporters are encouraged to come out to the Newton Education Center (100 Walnut St) from 10am-1pm and City Hall (1000 Commonwealth Ave) from 1-4pm, on both Saturday and Sunday.

By Connor Wright

NEWTON, MA – More than 2,000 members of the Newton Teachers Association (NTA) walked out on strike on Friday morning in the latest of a wave of illegal – and successful – teachers’ strikes in Massachusetts.

Teachers are demanding higher pay, especially for low-paid support staff, and an end to the chronic underfunding of Newton Public Schools (NPS). The Newton School Committee, meanwhile, has hired a union-busting law firm and condemned the strike.

High Spirits on the Picket Line

As the 9am strike deadline approached, hundreds of teachers converged on Newton Center with union shirts and signs. Passing cars blared their horns in solidarity while teachers chanted: “What do we want? FAIR CONTRACT! When do we want it? NOW!”

Despite the freezing temperatures, the sidewalks were loud and cheerful as students, parents, and other community supporters bolstered the teachers’ picket lines.

“Newton teachers are fantastic,” said one parent as she helped hand out coffee and donuts. “The fact that they don’t get respect pisses me off.”

She described how for years, local politicians have touted the district’s “competitiveness,” pointing to building improvements and new school construction. But teacher pay has failed to keep up with spiraling living costs, turnover is high, and conditions for teachers and students have gotten steadily worse.

“It’s not about buildings, it’s about the teachers who work there,” she argued. “They’re the ones who take care of the kids. If they’re not treated right, the whole system falls apart.”

Teachers agreed, noting that the district has been underfunded for years. Teachers endure hour-plus commutes, unable to afford Newton’s rising housing costs. Understaffing is rampant since teachers can find higher pay in most other suburban districts. And lower-paid support staff are forced to work second and third jobs to make ends meet.

Multiple NTA members told Working Mass how excited they were to fight back after years of neglect from the district.

“We haven’t felt this disrespected in a long time,” said one Newton South High School teacher. “We’re out here because we mean business.”

Strike Politics

One of the most popular picket line chants was about the city’s Democratic mayor, Ruthanne Fuller: “Hey hey, ho ho, Mayor Fuller has got to go!”

Although the Newton community seems fully in support of striking educators, the Newton political establishment is firmly against the teachers’ demands.

Fuller, a former business consultant, has condemned the strike. The Newton School Committee – which includes a corporate consultant, a hedge fund manager, and the former CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess – has stonewalled the NTA in negotiations, ignoring teachers’ demands over more than a year of negotiations.

According to a longtime NTA activist, as the union has gotten bolder and more organized in recent years, the district has become openly hostile in negotiations and shut down even moderate proposals from the union.

“It’s part of their strategy,” he told Working Mass. “They want to use the strike to break the union.”

Unions, community groups, and local socialists are all supporting the teachers. Boston DSA members, including NTA and other union activists, came out to bolster the picket lines.

Rallying for Better Schools

The first day of the strike culminated in a mass rally at Newton City Hall, where thousands of teachers and supporters gathered to flex their power.

Newton teachers, Boston Teachers Union (BTU) president Jessica Tang, and supporters from the Somerville Educators Union (SEU) and the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) all spoke.

MTA president Max Page kicked off the rally by praising Newton teachers’ dedication. “Today you are an inspiration to all of us: to your students, your families, and to unionists all across the state and all across the country.”

Leo, a Newton high school student, condemned Mayor Fuller’s letter to students and families, which claimed the strike “would harm our children.”

“Mayor Fuller, I don’t know where you get the audacity to claim that our teachers are hurting us. When’s the last time you set foot inside a Newton classroom?”

“What’s really hurting the schools, what’s really hurting the students, is having classes of 37 students. What really hurts us is when teachers have to balance childcare and coming to work. What really hurts us is when we can’t get access to a social worker when we need it most.”

In a passionate speech, Ashley Raven, a preschool teacher in the Newton Early Childhood Program (NECP), described the special burden on underpaid Unit C staff. She dared Fuller and the School Committee to work as support staff in Newton schools for just one week.

“At the end of that week, you tell us if you felt fairly compensated. You tell us if you felt respected for the work you did.”

The rally ended with a chant that had been heard all throughout the day: “Enough is enough! Enough is enough!”

Preparing for the Long Haul

The longest recent teachers’ strike, in Woburn, lasted five days. Based on the stubbornness of Fuller and the School Committee, informed sources told Working Mass the NTA is digging in for a multi-week strike if necessary.

Members seem ready to hold the line. “We didn’t pick this fight,” said an elementary school teacher as the day wrapped up. “But if they want one, we’ll give it to them.”

Strike actions are planned for this weekend. On both Saturday and Sunday, community supporters are encouraged to come out to the Newton Education Center (100 Walnut St) from 10am to 1pm and City Hall (1000 Commonwealth Ave) from 1 to 4pm.

Connor Wright is a current Boston Teachers Union member and a member of the Boston DSA Labor Working Group.

Henry De Groot, a Working Mass editor and Newton North 2014 graduate, also contributed to this piece.

Featured image credit: Newton educators and supporters rally outside Newton City Hall on January 19, 2024. Photo by Henry De Groot/Working Mass

The following remarks were made by ROC DSA members at Rochester City Council on January 18, 2024.

Ceasefire resolutions have been passed in cities across the U.S. including Cudahy, California; Long Beach, California; Oakland, California; Richmond, California; San Francisco, California; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Wilmington, Delaware; Atlanta, Georgia; Iowa City, Iowa; Portland, Maine; Ann Arbor, Michigan; Dearborn, Michigan; Dearborn Heights, Michigan; Detroit, Michigan; Hamtramck, Michigan; Ypsilanti, Michigan; Hastings, Minnesota; Albany, New York; Carrboro, North Carolina; Akron, Ohio; Talent, Oregon; Providence, Rhode Island; Bellingham, Washington; Olympia, Washington; Seattle, Washington; and Madison, Wisconsin. Others will certainly follow.

ROC DSA and its allies are encouraging City Council to add Rochester, New York to this growing list.

These Numbers Are Higher Now.

by Brent

Councilmembers, I am speaking to you today on the 104th day of just the latest phase of Israel’s brutal assault on the Palestinian people, which has been ongoing since the Nakba in 1948.

In just over 100 days, over 24,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been murdered by US supplied Hellfire missiles, 2,000-pound bombs, tanks, lack of medical care, and starvation. That’s more than one in one hundred Gazans. Imagine if more than 2,000 Rochester residents experienced this same fate. That is roughly the equivalent. Of these 24,000 dead, over 10,000 are children and as many as 7,000 people are still trapped under the rubble.

These numbers are higher now—I wrote this on Monday! Make no mistake, this is no war, this is a genocide. And it’s one that didn’t start on October 7th. But it’s one that we can stop NOW.

I’m calling on you to join over a dozen cities, including Detroit, Atlanta, San Francisco, and right here in New York, Albany—in passing a resolution calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. You have the power to signal to President Biden, to Governor Hochul, and to Netanyahu himself, that Rochester doesn’t support this genocide. That the state of New York doesn’t support this genocide. That the American people don’t support this genocide.

CEASEFIRE NOW!
FREE PALESTINE!

* * *

Which Side Are You On?

by Gregory Lebens-Higgins

In the past 104 days, Israel has murdered more than 24,000 Palestinians at a rate of nearly 250 per day. Thousands more remain under the rubble or missing.

These numbers represent people. Individuals with hopes and dreams. Whole families wiped out. Generations scarred. Endless heartache.

Israeli leaders have not hidden their intentions. South Africa’s petition to the International Court of Justice cited numerous examples of Israeli officials calling for Gaza to be wiped out. And just today, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed his opposition to the establishment of any future Palestinian state.

This atrocity is occurring with the tacit approval of the United States Government, which continues to supply weapons of genocide to Israel with no conditions regarding human rights or international law—a position upheld by 72 Senators this past Tuesday.

At the same time Washington is expanding the violence; bombing Yemen—among the poorest countries in the Middle East—without Congressional approval.

THIS MADNESS MUST END.

You may ask, “What am I to do? I’m not responsible for international affairs.”

To which I say: ALL elected leaders have a responsibility to use their platform to help us divert from this course of destruction.

We must acknowledge what is going on. We must demonstrate to Palestinian neighbors in our community that their lives matter. We must show the world that we do not condone the merciless actions of our leaders. And we must send a message to those leaders that they do not have our support.

Over the past 104 days we have heard calls for a ceasefire grow. In Rochester, each rally is larger than the last. As time goes on, and the full scope of horror unleashed on Palestinians becomes increasingly apparent, it is more and more obvious that we must do the right thing by pushing for an immediate end to the violence.

Which side are you on?

The post Speak to Council: Pass a Ceasefire Resolution! first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

—Tristan Bavol-Marques: former co-chair, treasurer

Written debriefs are useful in organizing both as a medium to organize one's thoughts in the present as well as something that can be revisited in the future to see how an organization has grown. I hope to set down here what I believe to have been the successes and limitations of my time on Steering Committee and provide whatever useful insight I can to the chapter.

Successes

Building a Unified Chapter

My foremost goal when I ran for co-chair two years ago was to centralize NC Triangle DSA into a coherent chapter that coordinates its efforts as one body. Some newer members may not know this, but until relatively recently, we did very little as a chapter—instead, we acted as three very loosely coordinated branches (Chapelboro, Durham, Raleigh), had four separate Discord servers, four steering committees, and smaller working groups separately housed in each branch that didn't really coordinate between branches even if they were doing the same kind of work. It was this baroque and unwieldy structure that I sought to transform into a coherent political body that could channel our energy in a unified direction. This reform was slow and delicate work because of inertia as well as concerns about branches retaining autonomy, but I was able to build chapter-wide buy-in first by building/supporting building chapter-wide structures such as our Comms Committee and the first working groups that decided to become chapter-level groups, for example, when the Chapelboro Electoral Working Group became our Chapter Electoral Working Group. I believe patience and demonstrating the utility of these reforms initially in a piece-meal, voluntary manner was crucial for the success of these centralizing reforms more broadly. I do not believe I would have been successful in achieving these reforms if I tried to do them all at once from the get-go. But although the desire was there to be a more unified chapter, it took someone actively organizing that constituency and pushing along that process for it to actually happen. I am proud that my dream which seemed quasi-utopian at the time of a unified, centralized chapter has been realized, and I think a lot of our recent successes have been made possible by the increased capacity and ability to coordinate organizing that being a coherent and unified chapter has brought us.

Chapter Shirts: A Test Case

The chapter's “White Whale” according to the outgoing leadership when I was starting as co-chair, was chapter shirts. They had been desired and talked about for a long time without any real progress. I made it my goal to secure chapter shirts quickly as a sign of the vigor of the new chapter leadership to members. I spearheaded the effort and sought to get it done within a month of being co-chair, which our Steering Committee succeeded in doing. In hindsight, it turned out not everyone was happy with how the design was chosen, but I believe the result was a net positive for the chapter. Oftentimes, getting things done quickly (or at all) and doing so with the overt consensus of members are priorities that come into conflict with one another; I have tended to favor the former for the less politically-charged aspects of running the chapter. And we got shirts! 

NOTE: I know other members are working on getting another batch of shirts made and that that process seems to have stalled out. I am happy to help provide insight on moving that along if desired. 

Our Chapter's BDS Resolution

The first major challenge faced by Steering Committee while I was co-chair was brought on by the proposing of the first draft of what would become our chapter's BDS resolution. At the time, I was a relatively new member, and I got my first real taste of some of the internal factionalism and also personal drama that existed within the chapter. This resolution was controversial (in my opinion) because of some of the specific mechanisms it employed, the manner in which it was presented to the chapter, and the overarching context of the Jamaal Bowman affair—as opposed to there being any constituency in the chapter opposed to the real substance of the resolution. I want to thank the group that proposed the resolution for taking the initiative to write what would become such an important document for our chapter. I spent a LOT of time working with the people in favor and opposed to the first draft of the BDS resolution, saw that regardless of ideological tendency differences, there wasn't that much daylight between language that would be amenable to both groups, and was able to get both groups to support a revised draft that passed with nearly unanimous consent and has become a model for Palestinian solidarity to other chapters across the country.

Here, the major lessons for me were that working together across ideological tendencies is not only possible, but a necessary precondition for us successfully organizing the Left and not just splitting off into ineffective splinter groups. I believe it is imperative that DSA unite the left and the working class into a party that can articulate, organize, and fight for its demands. This requires being able to compromise with our comrades, and I believe this was a successful example of debate and compromise leading to a very effective document. Another lesson was the importance of structural clarity as an organization. The initial post introducing the resolution declared it would be voted on at the next general meeting even though that wasn't how the resolution process in our bylaws worked. This led to difficulties because it was easy (especially in the charged atmosphere of the time) to conflate the need to follow the bylaws as it relates to resolutions with attempting to squash the resolution. This led to us as a Steering Committee seeking to increase knowledge of how resolutions and the bylaws work, which I hope has been helpful. Nonetheless, as an avid supporter of Palestinian solidarity, especially in this time of genocide by the zionist entity in Gaza, I am supremely proud that our chapter was able to pass a robust BDS resolution with near unanimous support.

Growth of the Internacional and Electoral Working Groups

Since I've been on Steering Committee, the lightning rod of the chapter has certainly been our electoral work, which makes sense in light of some particularly poor endorsements/candidate relationships at both the national level and by other DSA chapters. By the time I got involved in the leadership of our Electoral Working Group, the group had experienced three major failures (failure to follow up meaningfully on the Danny Nowell win due to Electoral WG leadership at the time not having the capacity to run the group effectively; failure to gain chapter consensus with a voter guide put out by the Electoral WG—and self-crit approved by Steering Committee; and unmitigated failure in our Joshua Bradley endorsement) and was floundering. 

I and my co-chair Gabe F were able to rebuild the working group into the powerhouse it is today through direct asks and actively onboarding the new members we did gain. We would make sure to reach out to people who expressed interest in the working group via dm, and we would take time at the end of our meetings to talk with first-time working group attendees to explain what we were working on and answer any questions they might have. That latter point is huge since there is such a high barrier to entry in terms of terminology, campaigns, strategy, and structure that it is a miracle anybody stays with a working group barring some kind of onboarding. These two tools in our organizing bucket—direct asks and onboarding—were how we were able to defeat some of the strongest political machines in Carrboro/Chapel Hill and Durham. Another key aspect of our success was taking the time to put together effective campaigns, which I will elaborate on in the relevant section under insights.

The Internacional Working Group is another working group I am proud to have helped grow. Originally two separate groups: International Solidarity Working Group and Spanish-Language Infrastructure and Outreach Committee, these two groups both struggled with capacity issues and were moribund. Combining the two into one group has spurred new life and vigor into the newly unified group. Now the group has grown past this, but the initial difference between getting 3 people in a meeting versus getting 6 feels huge and is a big boost to morale. Nobody wants to stick around in a group that feels moribund, and this consolidation played a big part in improving the vitality of that work.

Speaking of that work, some of the most fun I've had in DSA is connecting International Committee (the National DSA body) work to our chapter, such as with my trip to Venezuela, the Venezuelan Feminist Tour's stop here (they still say our stop was their favorite and best organized—huge point of pride for the chapter in my opinion!), the Venezuela-DSA event Housing: An International Struggle our chapter organized, the Demystifying Korea event, and our stop on the Mexico Solidarity Project tour. A lot of this work has been made possible because I am also on the International Committee and have been able to connect the right people, so it'll be important for other members from our chapter to join the International Committee (which you can do here!) as I take some time off to parent. And I am very proud of our strident support for Palestine and Palestinians during this ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Getting our Dues Share

Dues Share is a percentage of dues our chapter’s members pay to National DSA that are supposed to be given to our chapter. However, our chapter had not received our dues share until April 2023 because it had not been successfully set up yet. I made it my goal to set up our dues share no matter how hard it would be. It actually turned out to be pretty easy to get set up; it really just required emailing people in National DSA and confirming our bank account. It may be that people at the national-level were less easy to work with in the past, but in all honesty, this should have been done years ago and we have missed out on a lot of money because it wasn't. Regardless, I got this done within about a month of taking office as treasurer, and as a result, we have about doubled our income. This is my chief accomplishment as treasurer, but I hope people have also found me a prompt and efficient treasurer to work with on other things.

Limitations

Growth of other Working Groups

Unfortunately, I have not been able to be involved with every working group to the same degree as I have for Internacional and Electoral. I've tried to share some of the strategies that have worked in those groups at chapter trainings, but there's a difference between me saying what has been effective in other groups versus me actively spending the capacity to put those practices in place within a working group. Direct asks and working group onboarding, plus doing meeting announcements several days ahead of time, plus choosing effective campaigns are my recommendations to other groups. Another possibility to consider is consolidation if there is a  group similar enough, which played a huge role in Internacional WG becoming a robust and healthy group.

Building the Spanish-Language Capacity of our Chapter

This dovetails a bit with the previous discussion about consolidating International Solidarity Working Group and Spanish-Language Infrastructure and Outreach Committee (SLIO). I started SLIO with lofty goals of increasing our bilingual capacity, and we did not achieve those goals. We do have greater bilingual capacity now than our mostly just relying on Sebastian FG in the past, but the initial goals set out in that committee were not achieved. I attribute this to my own lack of capacity for the project and the difficulty in mobilizing an already small number of competent members to achieve a pretty big goal. This work is not dead, but it is a smaller part of the larger goal of Internacional Working Group, and I hope as we grow and have more Spanish speakers, we can revisit some of these goals again.

Delegating

A huge deficiency of mine that I have sought to improve upon is ability to delegate. I think I have improved at delegating, but I still find it scary and historically, not delegating work has led to me getting over capacity. The difficulty with me and delegating likely stems from the fear that the person being delegated to won't end up doing the thing in question, which is sometimes the outcome. But, I think I have learned the key is to delegate but check up ahead of time on the progress of the task in question. That and feeling greater and greater trust for my comrades has helped me with this deficiency, but I’m still not great at it.

Mission: Red Triangle

Credit goes to Robert W for the name of this project. I initiated what would be named Mission: Red Triangle because at the time, there was a sense of aimlessness in the chapter, and I sought to bring us all together as a chapter to chart a path forward. I believe the reflection period of Mission: Red Triangle was incredibly useful since we hadn’t really taken time to look at our previous campaigns and what about them was successful and what limitations they had. In that spirit, I am writing this document, and I believe a greater sense of the need for debrief and retrospection has been cultivated in the chapter from Mission: Red Triangle. That being said, I think more could and can still be done to support the priority campaign we decided upon as the culmination of that project, and I believe the priority campaign could use more support from the chapter as a whole. This lack of support is something I could have done more about and for that and some of the other organizational hurdles the Mission: Red Triangle process faced, I definitely take some part of the blame.

Insights

How to win campaigns

Having won a few campaigns now, I believe I can make some recommendations on how to organize winning campaigns. The first step is designing the campaign. I believe a good campaign takes a local issue, ties it to our socialist analysis, and has a clear win state. For example, with the Carrboro Greenway Campaign, the local issue was that a small group of rich homeowners was blocking a key piece of green infrastructure everyone else in town wanted. This ties to our socialist analysis because we were able to highlight the inherent class conflict at play and could radicalize people with this local instance of our overall socialist ideology as well as our ecosocialism. The campaign had a clear win state because we specifically were seeking to pressure Carrboro Town Council to vote to approve the greenway over the objections of the rich homeowners, which they did. Having a clear win state is important because it provides a specific goal for people to organize towards and lets you know whether your campaign was successful. Without a clear win state, people don’t feel like they are making progress and get burnt out.

Other recommendations would be to organize campaigns that build ties with other groups and communities in the area, which stems from the local issue recommendation. We were able to do this with both the Carrboro Greenway Campaign—building a good relationship with TriangleBlogBlog in the process as well as demonstrating our political might to the other members of council—and we were able to begin a relationship with the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People with the Nate Baker campaign, which will hopefully result in us building inroads with Durham’s Black community, assuming we are effective in maintaining that relationship in the future. 

Demonstrating momentum is another important aspect of effective campaigns. You can demonstrate momentum by publicizing metrics throughout the campaign, like the Carrboro Greenway Campaign did with our petition signature count, and through posting pictures of the turnouts of events. Nothing scared our opponents during the Nate Baker Campaign more than the picture of 25 DSA members volunteering to knock doors. I heard about the photo from other candidates and their staff constantly. Because campaigns take time and a lot of work, demonstrating momentum is key to keeping people engaged through the lifespan of the campaign.

Last but most important is using direct asks. Nothing I’ve ever done while organizing is half as useful as just DMing people and asking them to come out to a meeting or event. The dm is important versus making a general ask on discord because of the bystander effect. If you dm someone, they generally feel more like they need to at least come up with an excuse why the can’t help. Anyone who comes to a meeting or event that you didn’t reach out to is a blessing from God and you ought to treat them as such—beyond that, you need to make direct asks!

Talk to strangers

From my position on Steering Committee and being able to watch our numbers climb, one of the most useful ways of getting new people involved in our chapter—and bringing in fresh faces is critical to the ongoing success of an all volunteer org like ours—is by talking to strangers. The more we table, the more we canvass, and the more we do protest support, the more we grow. As we continue planning new actions and campaigns, I highly, highly, highly recommend we ensure whatever we are doing has an external face to it where we are actively talking to new people outside our existing social circles. This will be key to our continued growth.

Organizing in a multi-tendency chapter

Organizing across tendency can be a challenge sometimes. In my experience, the more grounded in local conditions the work you are doing, the easier it is to work across tendency because usually the differences don’t come up. Where differences do come up, I believe focusing on how to achieve shared goals and framing discussion around that is more productive than hashing out more theoretical ideological differences, which usually is not that productive a line of discussion.

Structure matters

Organizing in a democratic organization like our own requires balancing the principles of democracy with the necessities of action. How we navigate this balance is determined by our structure, and as such, structure matters. I personally favor chapter membership democratically empowering specific members or working groups or committees with a mandate and then giving them the space and trust to do their work. As seen in the retrospectives carried out during Mission: Red Triangle and through my own and I am sure many of y’all’s experience, capacity is the lifeblood of the chapter. Maintaining redundant or obsolete structures costs precious capacity and renders us less well equipped to fight capitalism and the forces of reaction. As such, I have spent a lot of time amending the bylaws and writing resolutions to improve our chapter structurally so as to hopefully improve both our ability to be both democratic and effective while also more efficiently using the capacity we have.

Ceiling is the Roof

Forgive me—it is basketball season. I can very earnestly say that I have never been more hopeful about the future of this chapter and its ability to meaningfully transform the Triangle. I am thrilled at the list of nominees for next Steering Committee and am confident that they will continue to build this chapter and organize the Triangle effectively. I intend on remaining involved in the chapter, albeit at whatever capacity parenthood allows, and I am excited to still help where I can and watch the great work my comrades can achieve together. I want to thank the rest of Steering Committee from both terms—Mika M, Peter T, Robert W, David S, Jason B, Daniel M, Travis S, Cara C, Tim H, Zoe L, and Hwa H. I want to especially thank my indefatigable fellow co-chair Iri Wen for her incredibly hard work these past two years. She has been indispensable to the chapter, and I am so glad she is finally getting a break. 

Calls on Community to Demand Dane County Invest in Care Not Cages

On Thursday, January 18, 2024 the Dane County Board of Supervisors will be voting on RES-286, which would increase the budget for the Jail Consolidation Project by $27.6 Million, bringing the total budget of the project to $197 Million. If this jail is built, it will be the most expensive public works project ever in Dane County by a long shot. But this community has the opportunity to say: no more.

District 2 Supervisor Heidi Wegleitner says, “It’s disappointing that some are so eager to pour more money into the jail project when the Crisis Triage Center appears stalled, behavioral health programs and homeless services are woefully underfunded, and two permanent supportive housing projects at Rethke Terrace and Tree Lane are being shut down.”

This jail will be a towering monument to Madison’s hypocrisy and the racial disparities that Dane County continues to uphold; but it has not been built yet, and we can stop it. As of January 14, the Dane County Jail’s population was 54% Black while Dane County is less than 6% Black. Building a new building is not going to fix that clearly broken and racist system. There is a real, tangible, human cost to incarceration—it is inherently violent and harmful. There is no possible budget big enough to build a “humane jail” because that is something that cannot exist.

The costs to run this jail will be an order of magnitude more than the capital cost to build it. If we build this jail, it will set Dane County on a trajectory of doubling down on incarceration, instead of using those funds on investments that would actually make our community safer. 

AWG is calling on the Dane County community to contact their County Board Supervisor to demand CARE, NOT CAGES and encourage them to fund alternatives to incarceration. We need everyone. Ask your friends and family to contact their supervisor and say NO NEW JAIL. CARE, NOT CAGES!

About the Abolitionist Working Group

The Abolitionist Working Group (AWG) formed out of the work to Derail the Jail and the Doyle Resolution campaigns to stop the jail expansion and decarcerate Dane County. This group is the home in Madison Area DSA for all abolition-related work. We believe that abolition is a key tenet of socialism as prisons and policing are some of the most direct and personal means of state-driven oppression in our current society.

With the battle over abortion rights raging in the United States at local, state, and national levels, we here in New York state cannot become complacent that access to abortion will always be guaranteed here. Economic, social, and logistical barriers prevent many people from accessing the care they need, and without decisive action to change that, working-class New York residents as well as people living in the surrounding area will continue to be at risk. Tonight we're joined live by Chelsea Williams-Diggs of New York Abortion Access Fund and Allie Bohm of New York Civil Liberties Union to discuss the state of abortion access in New York state and their advocacy for the statewide Reproductive Freedom and Equity Fund.

Tell your legislators that you support increasing access to abortion in New York state: https://action.aclu.org/send-message/protect-abortion-access-new-york

Follow and support the New York Abortion Access Fund at nyaaf.org.

Are you interested in becoming the best organizer you can be? Do you want to expand socialism here in Milwaukee, but are unsure of where and how to start? Have you been involved but feel like the project did not go anywhere? If you answered yes to any of these questions, the Milwaukee Socialist Organizer Class is for you! 

This nine week program will focus on holistically teaching you to be an unstoppable organizer who builds socialism, changes hearts and minds, and impacts our city. You will learn direct action organizing, as defined by Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists, in which we organize actions, campaigns, and tactics to “1) win real, immediate, concrete improvement in people’s lives … 2) Give people a sense of their own power … 3) Alter the relations of power.” 

Interested individuals will apply (Click here, which is due by 11:59 p.m. on February 2, 2024), be interviewed, and enter the program if selected. DSA membership is not required to participate, but is encouraged. 

This education program will be a combination of in-person events with virtual events if necessary. Each unit will be roughly a week, with a week break in the middle of the program. Each unit will consist of classroom-style instruction in the unit topic (no more than 2 hours, which will be in-person), field work in organizing (which will be at least 3 hours and consist of having conversations, moving people to action, and building infrastructure for a strong socialist movement involving several types of campaigns), and time for personal reflection. Each participant must commit to the entire program and, unless excused, attend every unit instruction, and field work session. Missing more than two classes and field work sessions may result in removal from the program.  

This is the fifth time this program has been offered, and it is back by popular demand! The two instructors have updated and revised the course to make you even more prepared to lead in socialism.  

Time commitment per week: 

Unit instruction: 2 hours 

Organizing work: 3 hours 

Miscellaneous tasks: 1 hour 

Total time per week: 6 hours

Weekly Schedule 

Class will be conducted on Tuesday evenings from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. and held in-person at Zao MKE, located at 3219 E Kenwood Blvd, Milwaukee, 53211.  

Field work will be held at regular intervals over the week, with options to organize at several points during the week (tentative schedule, subject to change):  

Saturdays, 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.

Sundays 12:00 p.m. until 3:00 p.m. 

Mondays 5:30 until 8:30 p.m.

Program Timeline: 

February 2 at 11:59 p.m.:

Application deadline – apply here

February 6:

Start of nine week program (class held, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.), held at Zao MKE, located at 2319 E Kenwood Blvd, Milwaukee, WI 53211

February 13:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

February 20:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

February 27:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

March 5:

Week Break

March 12:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

March 19:

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

March 26: 

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

April 2: 

Class will be held from 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.

April 5: 

End of class party (tentative) 

April 16:

Completion of program

Units

Each unit helps to answer the question: what is organizing? 

Welcome: what is organizing?

• Get to know participants and instructor
• Define scope of class and intentions
• Determine goals and desired outcomes

Organizing is one-on-one Conversations

• Learn the 7 point organizing conversation
• Practice the conversation and its elements

Organizing is building the committee and the campaign

• The importance (or not) of the committee
• Power Mapping the campaign
• Strategy Chart

Organizing is holistic productivity

• Traction versus distraction
• Time management and its importance
• The Reverse Calendar
• Overcoming blocks to action

Organizing is a mindset

• Acknowledging hurdles and setbacks
• Failure is a great option
• Develop a practice to keep you going

Organizing is raising money and managing it

• Why money is OK
• How to bring energy and money to your campaign
• The basics of campaign budgeting and finance

Organizing is communications

• What does “messaging” mean?
• The power of media
• Writing workshop

Organizing is bringing it all together

• You’ve got momentum – now what?
• Recap of unit themes

Reviews

Here is what previous students have to say about the Milwaukee Socialist Organizer Class: 

“[Before the class] I had no idea about the actual work of organizing. Now I feel confident that I would be able to become a leader in a campaign setting.” 

“I loved the practical application of socialism … [and] I loved the far-reaching application of some of the class content.” 

“This is a great way to move into the world of socialism … thank you so much for offering this course.” 

“This [class] is a great first step for anyone looking to start organizing.” 

“I radically grew in my comfort around being upfront and simply being able to approach a complete stranger with a potentially controversial topic.” 

“New organizers and experienced organizers can benefit from this class.” 

“Generally speaking my confidence level just interacting with people about socialism has gone through the roof. I have been given a phenomenal overview of how to organize and I feel confident that I can find out what works best for me in the future.”  

“It was great to grow as an organizer within the confines of a welcoming community/instructor.” 

“I feel more confident organizing outside of an electoral context.”  

Meet your instructors:

Alex Brower

Alex Brower is a labor leader, socialist organizer, and the chapter co-chair of the Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America. Professionally, Alex is the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans, which organizes union retirees.  In his organizing work, Alex has saved jobs from privatization, helped workers win a union voice on the job, defeated a temp agency, organized against a proposed iron-ore mine, helped bring comprehensive sex education to Beloit Public Schools, and won workplace healthcare for many uninsured MPS Substitute Teachers. As an MPS substitute teacher and former Milwaukee Rec. Department instructor, Alex brings a host of experience teaching others. Alex has also been a candidate for Milwaukee City Comptroller and School Board, running both times as a socialist.

Autumn Pickett

Autumn Pickett is a union organizer and Communications Director for American Federation of Teachers – Wisconsin. She helped win back voting rights for 20,000 students while attending college in Indiana, protect 100’s of custodial and grounds crew jobs from privatization across Wisconsin, sink billionaire Howard Schultz’s 2016 presidential run, use organizing tactics that garnered national headlines, and mentor dozens of YDSA chapters across the country that continue to make real wins for working people. She has served on the National Coordinating Committee for YDSA, as Milwaukee DSA’s Education Officer, and currently represents Milwaukee DSA on the statewide Socialists in Office committee. Autumn is excited to bring her years of experience mentoring new socialist organizers over to the Milwaukee Organizer Class for the first time and help build a people powered movement in Cream City alongside each of you.

Any questions? 

Contact Alex Brower at 414-949-8756 or milwaukeedsa@gmail.com 

Apply now!

Apply here, or copy and paste this URL into your web browser: https://forms.gle/L7QCtowhrBhNm4xM7

I am speaking outside my typical monthly communication to members to tell you that I have tendered my resignation to the National Political Committee. I will spend the next month ensuring there is an orderly transition into their hands or their chosen next National Director. I’d like to take this opportunity to explain why I am leaving, reflect on my time as national director, and list the main opportunities and challenges I see DSA facing in the coming period. 

It has been an absolute honor to serve the tens of thousands of members who together constitute the power of DSA. Outside of unions, there are too few places where working class people can decide together the direction of our lives and fight for it rather than sit at home alone while the world burns and the authoritarians rise.

Why I’m Leaving and Why Now

I made my decision this fall and intended to announce my departure two months ago but chose not to do so at a time when my decision had the capacity to disrupt our critical Palestine solidarity work. To date, DSA has organized almost 400,000 calls to Congress and organized numerous local actions despite early attacks from centrist Democrats and the Right. History has already vindicated us and in that moment I refused to risk my decision to leave being mischaracterized to further attack DSA.

That said, there will never be a perfect time to go. DSA is undeniably rowdy, as is any democratic organization, but also incredibly important, and meeting challenges is how we collectively learn and build power. I have no doubt that we will weather the months ahead.

My DSA life started on campus, at the University of Chicago Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter in 2001. Within years I was elected YDSA national co-chair, and later to the NPC. I have a lifelong commitment to democratic socialism, but when I first started as National Director, I had hoped to stay for five years. It has now been twelve. 

Being a DSA staff member is a demanding job, with many stakeholders to answer to and relentless pressures. We have limited time in the day and we deal with the complicated legal and operational questions of a national multi-million dollar budgeted organization, particularly since we face constant external political/media/regulatory threats. I have overseen massive, transformative growth since 2011. When I started, our budget was only $350,000. It’s now over five million. Our staff started at three and it is now over 30, supporting hundreds of chapters, dozens of national committees and campaigns, and tens of thousands of members. 

With fewer responsibilities, I hope to spend more time with my partner, my parents, and our families, including my step-grandson who is already three years old. I have realized that time waits for no one.

I also greatly miss organizing. Running a rapidly growing and increasingly complex national organization has forced me to focus on administrative matters. In an average week, I spend most of my time coordinating across staff directors and departments, moving projects forward smoothly and identifying and solving problems, developing and strengthening systems and structures to manage the work, and ensuring fiscal and legal compliance across the board. I also provide the NPC context necessary for decision-making and make sure staff have clear guidance on priorities and direction, including pushing for clarification as needed from the NPC as a politically diverse body. I have learned a lot of important lessons about running an organization of DSA’s scale but spent less and less time with chapters and mentoring rising leaders, my original love. I will take some time to rest and recharge, but it’s building power with people that I will always come back to for the rest of my life.

Transition and Next Steps

I notified senior staff last fall, before I had to postpone my announcement, and we have been transition planning. We have submitted a recommendation to the NPC on how to ensure critical work continues and institutional memory is not lost in the interim while the NPC decides on longer-term next steps. But for those of you reading this from outside DSA, understand that this transition is not like a typical non-profit executive director departure. Staff anchor the organization nationally with essential organizing, compliance, administrative, communications, fundraising, financial, tech, and governance infrastructure, but our power also comes from our membership rooted all over the country, and they elect our political leaders. Unlike a dynamic where the executive director brings in and then leaves with big funders, at DSA, our NPC answers to our membership, and 86% of our income comes from membership dues.

I expect that this moment will be a challenge and even risky, but this membership base is the source of our vitality. We are continually learning new lessons and I trust the members to navigate this moment and make the right choices to strengthen DSA. 

Looking Back 

I remember when the 2009-2011 NPC hired me as National Director. DSA had about 5,000 members, less than a dozen elected officials and 25 chapters. It was in the midst of the Arab Spring uprisings, the same year as Occupy Wall Street, and just days before the Christian nationalist massacre of 69 people at a left-wing youth summer camp in Norway. The authoritarian opposition has grown stronger since then. But so too have we, with more than ten times as many members today.

I mentioned before that I originally intended to stay five years. When I started in 2011, DSA was small and marginal like all left groups at the time, and I focused on stabilizing our membership fundraising, getting Democratic Left on a regular publication schedule, developing organizing trainings for chapters, organizing national projects that could help cohere chapters such as Abortion Bowl-a-thons, and hosting intergenerational gatherings. Then DSA endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in his first presidential run and we began to grow. With millions of people supporting him, our We Need Bernie campaign was an obvious strategic decision. It allowed us to organize working-class people and contribute to Bernie’s bringing socialism back into widespread political debate in the U.S. 

There was sharp debate in DSA on whether and how to engage in the presidential election outside of for Bernie. Then Trump became president. Within minutes of Trump’s victory speech that night, literally, our member join page was on fire. People were furious with the neoliberal Democrats and terrified of Trump. Thousands of new members flooded in day after day and we struggled to manage the firehose. Those of us who were politically active at that time, whether in DSA or elsewhere, recall the panic in the air, and it was a moment that transformed DSA. 

I was nearing the five-year mark as the National Director, my self-imposed deadline to leave, but chose to stay to help DSA navigate the skyrocketing growth. We hired more staff and built infrastructure and processes for new chapters, fielded a large contingent at the Washington, D.C. Women’s March against Trump, developed mass campaigns like Medicare for All, and organized hundreds of members to attend the national People’s Summit conferences organized by National Nurses United. We also organized the first predecessor of our current Regional Organizing Retreats, a training for southern members paired with a contingent at the Canton, Mississippi UAW organizing rally with Bernie Sanders in 2017. 

We kept growing, and then AOC won her upset primary in 2018. It was our largest new member month in history.

By answering Trumpism with democratic socialism, AOC and her fellow Squad and DSA members in Congress and beyond electrified the country and laid the groundwork for Bernie’s second presidential campaign and DSA’s steadily increasing number of local and state electoral victories running democratic socialists to the chagrin of Democratic Party power brokers. We also made major organizing investments, including 14 regional organizing trainings for chapter leaders to build a shared organizing vocabulary and model, and in 2019 I asked Jane McAlevey to do a three part national online training series for members. We also launched our campaign for Bernie’s second presidential run.

I’ll always remember DSA for Bernie. Chapters learned to run field operations to knock on neighbors’ doors rather than preach to the choir. Tens of thousands of Bernie supporters found us, and DSA was invited to the People Power for Bernie coalition with base-building national organizations. We continued to grow as people flocked to us for our commitment to organizing not just towards elections but between them, and in not just the electoral arena but also in workplaces and communities. It’s hard to predict what might have happened had COVID not ground the country to a halt in 2020. 

But it did. DSA chapters went fully remote and caused a break in the leadership development (and relationship building) cycle that comes with in-person meetings, cross-chapter gatherings and in-person staff Field Organizer visits. Chapter mutual aid, labor, and tenant committees went into overdrive to provide support and solidarity as working class people lost their jobs, were forced into unsafe working conditions, or faced eviction. Black Lives Matter protests swept the country including the epicenter Minneapolis and our chapters across the country mobilized.

Despite the pandemic, we found ways to run national campaigns. DSA’s Green New Deal strategy summit planned a December 2020 day of action and 85 May Day 2021 actions to launch the Protecting the Right to Organize campaign. DSA members and new volunteers made over a million phone calls to voters in key states, while chapters organized on the ground pressure. We flipped two Senators and were a founding member of the PRO Act focused Worker Power Coalition. 

Today, DSA’s membership numbers are down from our high point of over 90,000, but we are organized. Last summer and fall, for example, close to 200 endorsed elected officials at all levels of government, and over 100 chapters with Strike Ready solidarity captains lent support to the Teamsters and United Auto Workers, while chapters all over organized dynamic strike solidarity for other unions locally. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, our chapters in Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Ohio fought and won abortion ballot measure campaigns, with Florida and other states coming up this year. And most recently, we have organized relentlessly against the U.S. government’s support of genocide in Palestine. As I write we have an energized base and retain a large majority of the members who joined in the “Trump bump” period.

Claims of DSA’s demise are premature, but we have work to do.

There are trends to make me cautiously optimistic. Most importantly, beyond the impressive campaigns I mentioned above, we have signed up 1700 members to pay Solidarity Income-Based Dues of 1% or at least higher monthly membership rates. Staff Field Organizers are rolling out a toolkit on mass recruitment for chapters, and national committees are integrating recruitment into their work. With the continued rise of authoritarian forces and disgust with Wall Street Democrats, DSA is a way for working-class people to take action in collective self-defense. 

That said, we like all social movements go through a cycle and are not in a major upswing. Hundreds of  members join each month, but more members leave or let their dues lapse. In the wake of the pandemic and the election of Joe Biden, there was a worldwide slowdown in donation income and volunteer engagement at nonprofits and other civic organizations, and even public sector unionization rates went down. Many community organizers are confronting a retention crisis in base building organizations. While DSA has retained members and engagement at a far higher rate than most civic organizations, we’re still in a period of membership shrinkage and increasing financial stress. 

One duty I have always held sacred is the responsibility to share hard truths, not just what people want to hear. It has not always endeared me to everyone, but in this moment, I must remind you yet again that there are serious challenges not just on the horizon but here now. 

DSA convention delegates this past summer could not fully realize the realities of the budget or debate the real tradeoffs inherent in the resolutions considered. The organization structurally approaches these questions with a group diplomacy based process. Without a holistic, materialist assessment of our accomplishments, strengths, weaknesses, and especially resources, many individual resolutions were passed but not considered in relation to each other with an eye to explicit prioritization or effectiveness.

The national budget is our clearest example. On our present course, we will be unable to pay all our bills in a few months without a change in direction. Funding all 2023 convention decisions would add more than $2 million to the budget which we simply don’t have. As a nonprofit organization, we cannot print money like the government or take loans like a large corporation. Nor can we make unrealistic predictions about stronger fundraising or recruitment and then spend money we merely hope to raise. We are making strides in Solidarity Income-Based Dues and integrating member recruitment in everything we do at all levels, but a fundraising shortfall could create pressure to accept grants or outsized donations from single individuals, diluting a key source of our independence and power. And given our process, there will often be pressure to displace foundational functions to focus on new projects put forth by various groups. It is the donut hole problem we often discuss in our trainings with chapters – if all your time or resources go to work just outside the core, the core falls apart. With this in mind it is important to find the right balance between experimentation and stability, creativity and basic fundamentals, silos and integration. 

Right now, the NPC is working on finalizing the 2024 budget. It will require very hard choices, and longer term, a reckoning with our structure and our definition of democracy. I’ve said before that DSA is both an army and a town hall. We must act together but also question each other. We can never resolve this fundamental structural contradiction, and it is why my main advice to DSA members is to face this truth. Accept that mass work means competing ideas, so seek ways to compromise with each other. Act responsibly and expect the same of your leaders. Most importantly, learn to act holistically and based on a hard analysis of real conditions. This becomes increasingly important as we head into an election year with stakes higher than ever. 

We have everything to lose, but also everything to win. Let’s take ourselves as seriously as the moment requires.

Maria Svart
@MariaOrganizes

The post A Farewell from the National Director appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Upcoming Events

Wednesday, 1/17 (6:00 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.): What is DSA? (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Thursday, 1/18 (6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.): Labor Movie Night: Matewan (1987) (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, 1/19 (12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.): Office Hours (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Friday, 1/19 (5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.): March Election Research Party (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, 1/20 (11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.): Homelessness Working Group Retrospective (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Monday, 1/22 (6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.): SHOP Training with the Tenant Organizing WG (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Wednesday, 1/24 (6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.): HWG Reading Group: Mean Streets (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Saturday, 1/27 (1:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.): HWG Sock Distro (Meet in person at 1916 McAllister)

Sunday, 1/28 (11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.): January Office Cleaning/Organizing (In person at 1916 McAllister)

Check out https://dsasf.org/events/ for more events.

Events & Actions

Labor Movie Night: Matewan

Come join us for a Labor movie night at the DSA SF office at 1916 McAllister on January 18th from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. We will be watching Matewan (1987), a film dramatizes the events of the Battle of Matewan, a coal miners’ strike in 1920 in Matewan, a small town in the hills of West Virginia. Made in 1987, this film is arguably an even more relevant, cautionary tale today than ever before.

There will be food and drinks provided!

This event will be mask optional but highly recommended. 

Join the Tenant Organizing Working Group for SHOP Training!

Come join the DSA Tenant Organizing Working Group for the final two parts of a three-part training to develop successful socialist tenant organizers.

The Socialist Housing Organizing Program (SHOP) started yesterday with a study group to discuss how housing developed as a commodity under capitalism, and why the market will never solve the housing crisis. Part 2 is a training on tenants’ rights in San Francisco. Part 3 covers the basics  of an organizing conversation to recruit your neighbors to the tenant union.

You can attend upcoming trainings are at the following times:

• Monday, January 22nd at 6:30 p.m.
• Tuesday, February 6th at 6:30 p.m.

All trainings to take place at the DSA SF office at 1916 McAllister. Zoom is available upon request. Register today!

Mutual Aid Priority WG Has a New Meeting Schedule!

The Mutual Aid Priority Working Group has an updated schedule! The working group will be meeting every other Tuesday at 7:00 p.m.

If you are interested in diving into DSA SF mutual aid projects this year, our first meeting of 2024 will be tonight, January 16th, starting at 7:00 p.m. Currently, our working group is building out capacity for several existing projects, including smolidarity/childwatch for chapter meetings, healing circles in the Tenderloin, a How to Do Mutual Aid course, and more. Check out the #priority-mutual-aid channel on Slack to help us strategize, develop new mutual aid projects, and help our fellow San Franciscans through the power of organizing!

Behind the Scenes

The Chapter Coordination Committee (CCC) regularly rotates duties among chapter members. This allows us to train new members in key duties that help keep the chapter running like organizing chapter meetings, keeping records updated, office cleanup, updating the DSA SF website and newsletter, etc. Members can view current CCC rotations.

To help with the day-to-day tasks that keep the chapter running, fill out the CCC help form.

Questions? Feedback? Something to add?

We welcome your feedback. If you have comments or suggestions, send a message to the #newsletter channel on Slack.

For information on how to add content, check out the Newsletter Q&A thread on the forum.