How to Organize Memphis Midsouth DSA Style
You see a pressing need that you want to organize to address with your comrades. You step up to get it done. Fantastic!
Our organization is tailor-made for this kind of volunteer initiative. We come together for our shared work and shared resources. We stay for the solidarity.
This is a great starting point. But, how do you go about doing the work? There is without a doubt a ton of space for original approaches and a diversity of organizing principles. But, we have some experience in our chapter of successful ways to organize, and some unsuccessful ones. We have learned the hard way that if a project is not followed through on, or if it falls apart, it can be demoralizing and hurt our organizing as a whole.
Our work is sometimes humble. But, it matters. It matters in a profound sense. We are actively organizing for power, affecting working people’s lives, and affecting one another. Memphis Midsouth DSA is contributing to the political scene in west Tennessee in a way no other organization is. So, we have an obligation to do this work as well as we can.
This is written from a perspective that says that we are an organization of organizers who organize others. Many of us have never done anything like this before, and this document is meant to help you keep in mind some basics to accomplish your organizing goals.
Below you will find some general to-dos that apply to nearly any kind of organizing. This won’t tell members what to do strategically, or in the big picture. But, it does recommend some things you should probably think through along the way to make what you do is successful. This will be useful for members in general, but co-stewards of committees should read carefully and discuss what follows.
Big Questions & Getting Started
Often our organizing gets done in Organizing Committees and Ad Hoc Committees. Check out our chapter bylaws to see what those are and how to create them. Other tasks are so short-term that we just carry them out informally, and we will need to do organizing in other forms in the future.
But, before you start the process to form an Organizing Committee or Ad Hoc Committee, you should think through and answer a few questions about what you imagine it doing…
How does this committee fit into long-term socialist goals?
We should have an answer for this question for everything we do. Our goals generally are to:
- To increase working people’s power over the economy, politics, and their lives; and
- To build institutions and capacities that prepare us to win in future conflict.
As we discuss below, organizers should spend time learning from, actively supporting, and building positive relationships with existing local liberal, left, and radical organizations that do similar work. At the same time, you should be reading books, listening to podcasts, watching videos, and talking to experienced comrades to clarify what exactly a socialist movement can do that is different from the typical work of the Democratic Party, academic researchers, or the non-profit industrial complex. We are not doing the same things as well-intentioned liberals, nor do we have the same vision. We should be able to explain to one another exactly how it is an organizing project we hope to take up is a worthwhile form of socialist organizing.
What related work is already going on nearby or in general? Can we connect to, learn from, or support that work?
Our chapter is relatively new in the political landscape. Often when we have great ideas about what to organize around, there are already some folks doing something like that. They could be in another group nearby, internationally, or in another DSA chapter. Before we decide that we would do better at a similar project, we should check out and learn from any work that is already being done.
At minimum, we can use what we learn about what is already being done to inform what we do. We can either study others’ methods to improve our own approach, or we can see what might be missing in existing work. Perhaps it might be the best choice given our situation to organize to support existing work without coopting it? Or, perhaps the existing work does something good, but are there important pieces missing that we could contribute?
How can our chapter advance this work using a committee?
Before forming a committee, you should think through whether our chapter is capable of doing the work, and if using a committee is the best way to do it. As a part of that process, you should identify some other member(s) excited to organize around the same thing as you who have the time and energy to do the work with you. However, you might decide we don’t have the capacity to do a project because our members are stretched too thin. Or, it might be that our members lack the skills to do it the right way. If that is what you figure out, that’s okay! There are still lots of things that can be done to prepare to do some important piece of organizing, and there is always more to do for our existing work.
How will this committee organize others?
It is easy to just do something yourself. It is much more difficult to organize others. And yet, a central way we can get stronger is by organizing increasing numbers of working people and their allies. One goal you should keep in mind is that through our organizing you should help cultivate those we organize with into becoming organizers themselves. That way, our strength will ideally grow with each organizing project we undertake.
So, as you start gearing up to start a committee, you should think through how you will try to set up the work to enable us to not just accomplish it, but organize others in the process.
What investigation should you do? How can you learn before and while you act?
Nearly every kind of organizing should be informed by some kind of research. We almost never know enough based on casual observation when we first meet on a subject. Learning and knowledge generation are perennial and necessary political activities that support meaningfully developing strategy and tactics. None of us know spontaneously what the best way to act is.
We are socialists, so we have good politics and we usually care about the right things. Our members are thoughtful, so we often make careful decisions together. And we are democratic, so we all have a say in our meetings and what the majority says is what we do. But, that doesn’t mean that we have all relevant information to make good and successful plans.
There are several areas of knowledge you should aim to speak to when forming a committee, or have a plan to develop that knowledge through the committee’s work:
- Socialist theory: are there tried practices in our movement we can learn from?
- People’s perspective: What do the people affected by a relevant issue think about the problem we want to organize around? What do they think will address it? Will they work with us to accomplish those goals? The people aren’t always right, but knowing where they are at will help us decide what to do.
- Expert knowledge: Are there experts like veteran organizers or academics who have expertise related to what we want to organize around? Can we draw on that knowledge or include them in some way? What is the legal and/or political-economic landscape we will be interacting with as we organize in this area? How should that influence our plans?
- Organizing situation: Who else is doing work in the area relevant for the committee you want to work on? Can we learn from and support them? Are any of these groups doing work we think is harmful, wrong, or are they hostile to us?
Developing these different areas of knowledge is a part of how we build informed and strategic movements that actually win.
Research isn’t only about sitting in a room with a spreadsheet—it’s about preparing to take on the forces that exploit us. The best organizers aren’t just passionate—they’re informed and prepared. When we build campaigns without talking to the people most affected, we fail. But when we strategically listen, learn, and plan, we are much more likely to win.
Capitalists rely on working people being disconnected, uninformed, and isolated. Socialist organizers do the opposite—we connect, learn, and build power together. A successful working-class movement starts with people coming together, listening to and learning from each other, and figuring out how to fight back.
In other words, investigation, research, or study isn’t just about collecting facts—it’s about learning how to win. When we do these right, they form a weapon to fight for power.
That said, having all of the relevant knowledge that should inform our organizing is not always possible. Especially if you’re new to organizing, you often have very little of the knowledge you need to make organizing successful when you first get started.
That’s okay! We all start from somewhere.
A helpful first step is to consult those with more experience to seek their mentorship. Others’ experiences are always a vital resource. For co-stewards, this consultation is required. You should aim to learn from and coordinate with other co-stewards and veteran organizers early and often. If you are a co-steward, you have accepted responsibility to facilitate a consequential institution for our shared chapter. It would be irresponsible if you did not seek the guidance of those who have played a similar role before. Stewards often learn the hard way what works and what doesn’t while running chapter organs, and they have knowledge of how to navigate the chapters’ social structure. Even if they organize in a significantly different area than you, they can help you figure out a great deal.
In part through discussing with comrade-mentors, you can also start to figure out how to step-by-step gain access to the various kinds of knowledge you eventually need to obtain. Your comrades can help you identify the things you do not know, and ways you can begin addressing them. Sometimes, you can address knowledge gaps through organizing others into your committee’s work who know more about specific topics than you. Collectivity is a strength! Beyond mentorship, regular consultation among our co-stewards should be a norm for healthy sharing of experiences and reflection in our chapter.
Preparing for a Meeting
Okay. You have a problem you want to organize around, and some ideas of how to do it. You have buy-in from your comrades. You have thought through the questions outlined above, and you’re ready to proceed. Now, how do you get ready for a committee meeting?
First, a good place to start is to think through what you want to get out of the meeting. You should be able to answer the questions: What specific decisions need to be made at the meeting? What do you want people to do afterward? The content and plan of the meeting should be guided by what you want it to accomplish. You may decide to reflect or study to prepare to discuss one or more of the subjects you want to cover. Alternatively, you might want to ask someone else to be prepared to guide discussion of a topic or more on the agenda. In general, members should do what preparation they need to contribute to informed and practical decisions about the questions before the committee.
Second, make sure that you have meeting logistics figured out. This includes booking or deciding on a meeting space. Even if your meetings are recurringly at the same location, it is better to over-communicate with the space’s stewards ahead of time to make sure that they know to expect us. Also, in picking a meeting place, you should think about what kind of space will be able to hold your attendees, the noise level, and other functional logistical questions (is it a restaurant? Do you have plan for how to split the bill? Etc.).
Additionally, make sure that any different roles members need to play at the meeting are spoken for. Usually organizing committee meetings need: a note taker, stack keeper, someone to sign all attendees in, and a facilitator. The job of the facilitator is discussed further below in the section, “At the Meeting.” However, someone else besides the facilitator should take notes on major points of discussion and decisions made, keeping those safe and sharing them according to policies established by the chapter. It is up to the committee whether one, two, or three persons take on responsibilities to facilitate, keep time, and take stack.
It is also often a good call to occasionally rotate these and other committee responsibilities so that it is not always the same person(s) playing one or all of these roles. This helps to prevent the most involved (or the most likely to volunteer) from getting burned out. It can also help new members gain skills and develop stronger ties with their comrades.
Third, you need to get people to the meeting. So, who do you need to get there? In most cases, it is a good step to advertise it to other members. There are several steps that you can take depending on the situation.
- You can get in touch with our Communications Coordinator or Secretary to send out a mass email or mass text to our network to promote the upcoming meeting. You should give them at least a week of advance notice before you want the messages sent out. But, it is probably best to start this process at least two weeks before your planned meeting, and even earlier can sometimes be helpful depending on how much building for the meeting is required. When you contact these officers, you should also ask if they think posting your meeting on our event calendar is a good idea.
- Send a couple of messages over our group chats. Often members will be responsive over one medium, but not another. So, for each of our normal ways of communicating, it is helpful to send out a line to other members.
- Personally contact each individual who expressed an interest in the work of the committee, made a commitment to do work for it, or made a commitment to go to the meeting. We should all show up every time we can when we are a part of a committee, as this helps to reinforce momentum. But, we are all busy, and a nudge from you can help to remind others of what they have to do.
- Prepare an agenda. There are lots of examples we can draw from, and you can ask a co-steward of another organizing committee to provide you some. In general, an agenda should outline the broad topics of discussion, and say how much time you expect to be spent on each topic.
At the Meeting
This is your time to shine!
In many ways, organizing committee meetings are central to the life of our shared chapter. If you are a co-steward, you have some particular responsibilities at meetings to structure them to ensure strong outcomes and make sure that folks leave energized, ready to do their work. These meetings should also be democratic. If you are not a co-steward, you don’t have to structure the meeting. But, it is still your responsibility to help make sure that the meeting is successful. You should support your co-steward(s) to make the meeting effective, inclusive, and energizing.
Structure
A meeting should usually follow the agenda you made for it. If it gets off track, it can be helpful to check in to see if folks are okay with the deviation, or ask them politely to refocus and address the topic before the meeting. It is also important to not regularly go over the time allotted for a meeting. People are busy. They may hesitate to come to a next meeting if they don’t know if it will take up a lot more time than it is scheduled to.
Someone should facilitate the meeting, making sure that folks take turns speaking and new or otherwise quiet voices are heard. The same person who facilitates might also take a queue of those who want to speak, or they may ask someone else to do it. Usually the facilitator is a co-steward, but they don’t have to be. It can be useful for those who are considering taking on an officer role in the future to take on leadership responsibilities like facilitation to get some practice before they have to do it regularly.
A facilitator or anyone at a meeting can often helpfully advance the meeting by listening carefully and reframing points of discussion to clarify disagreement, agreement, and points where decisions need to be made. If decisions cannot be made quickly, or important disagreements resolved, discussion can be tabled for a future meeting or another medium.
Effective, inclusive, energizing
Meetings should be spaces for effective discussion and decision-making. Each meeting should have some specific decisions it makes that advance its committee’s work. Ideally each person, including each new person, leaves with an action item that they agree to accomplish before the committee’s next meeting.
This is a part of what makes our meetings inclusive. People show up because they want to be involved in our work, and often don’t know what they think should be done prior to their arrival. Therefore, committee meetings that aim to include new members should have some meaningful regular practice(s) that contribute to the committee’s goals that it revisits each meeting that new people can plug into.
Feeling a sense of momentum and a larger vision guiding a committee can be energizing. In addition to plug-and-play, recurring activities that new members can participate in, you should make sure that the committee’s discussion is often centered on the ongoing and long-term work related to its strategic goals. These occasionally are more difficult for new members to jump into, but having a sense that they are a part of something that is going somewhere can be a part of what leaves them inspired to get more involved.
These strategic goals are often the reasons why the committee exists in the first place. So, the committee may be sacrificing strategic objectives for short-term busy work if those objectives are not regularly discussed at meetings. It is both good for the morale of committee members to advance a committee’s strategic goals, and good for advancing our socialist aspirations.
Also, we recommend that you do not consume alcohol until after any meeting is over where chapter business is discussed. For many, a drink at a meeting is not a problem. But, for some it is, and we should set an example for our comrades that help us all to approach our shared work with enthusiastic, comradely gravity. Save drinks together for after our work is done if alcohol is your jam. We can socialize and get to know one another with some additional confidence that we regularly give our work the attention it deserves.
Finally, members and co-stewards in particular should assert and reassert why we are doing work together, and what it requires of us. By placing our work in this larger narrative, we gain and maintain perspective on why we do the work and keep showing up.
Democratic socialism
Our meetings are democratic. But what does that mean? Here, we mean that decisions are made by members through majority votes. A majority is half the members who don’t abstain at a meeting plus one vote. If there are 15 people voting on a decision, and 7 vote no on a decision, then 8 have to vote yes for the decision to be adopted.
We also want to deliberate. Our comrades are worthy of our respect. That respect requires that we make efforts to persuade one another to our views, rather than just steam roll over their objections. We are all in this movement and in the same organization for good reasons, and we should try to aim for agreement when we can get there. When we cannot agree, often we should compromise.
Meaningful deliberation can also help your committee feel democratic. Even if decisions are made through a majoritarian procedure, without discussion where counter-arguments, or different views, can be articulated, your votes can feel—or actually be—formalistic. So, if you’re planning the agenda for committee meetings, you should consider occasionally building in extra time to check in, and let unspoken concerns be articulated by members and other attendees. Once in a while build into a meeting 10 minutes to discuss a chosen question or three, like: What’s working? What’s missing? How are people feeling? What did you expect when joining this committee? What are you surprised by? What aligns with expectations?
In general, carefully making space for attendees to speak to the whole meeting or through small groups is important. People often remember what they said and how they felt, rather than what others say to them. Having them feel like a part of the meeting through playing a part in it will help them to feel invested in it.
We also need to be okay losing a vote. An important part of building powerful organizations is that we end up being in them with tons of people. As our numbers grow, which they have to, we will be surrounded by more and more people who disagree on how to accomplish our goals. We have to be comfortable losing even important votes. Often, even when our position gets voted down, we should still carry out the decisions of our committees together. We can work over time to convince those who disagree, but we won’t get anywhere if we insist the organization always does what any one of us wants.
If you are a co-steward, a skill to develop is to identify when there are disagreements in a committee that rise to the level of needing a vote. A facilitator can ask for proponents of important decisions to formulate their proposal as a motion so that it is clear what it is that members are voting on. Next, you should ask if there is a ‘second’ for this motion. If someone offers a second, you can call for a vote where members can vote yes, no, or abstain. You can always decide to table important decisions for later if consultation, study, or more deliberation is necessary to have the best result. A member participating in a meeting can also put forward a motion of their own accord that also must be seconded to before it is voted on. Regardless if the motion was put forward with the facilitator’s help or not, it is the facilitator’s responsibility to help ensure that debates over motions take place fairly, and that our norms of comradely discussion are adhered to. Socialists should have thick skin to disagree productively and patiently when appropriate, instead of avoiding differences of opinion or tough conversations.
Following Up
Some say that 80% of organizing is following up. Check in with those who agreed to tasks (which should often be everyone), and see how their work is going. Or, ask what they thought about the meeting, or if they want to chat to talk through the work.
At this stage, we are all volunteers who may face a personal cost for doing this work. And the thicker are our relationships, the more developed our trust and mutual support, the more reasons we will have to stick around and keep doing the work. It is our sense of duty to each other and the people that will help attendees stick around and sacrifice for others.
For anyone who agrees to take on an action item, your main responsibilities between meetings are to do what you said and to be communicative. Aim for 90% or more completion of action items in the time you commit to. We cannot always do things in the way we expect, and we often juggle a lot. So, it’s important to check-in with your comrades and let them know how the work is going. This is always the case, but it is especially true if you’re running into any kind of serious obstacle. When we almost always do what we say we will, we help to build momentum and a culture of respect for our common project. However, if work often does not get done—or is late—it can really take the wind out of our organizing sails. It can result in a slow collapse of our organizing.
So, we recommend co-stewards or others helping with leading work check-in between each meeting. Four kinds of persons are a high priority. First, those who attended the last meeting, and those who missed the last meeting. It can also be important to have actual conversations with new people and those facing tricky obstacles of whatever kind to help them stay connected to the committee.
As committees grow, this can become difficult for co-stewards to handle alone. This can be an opportunity to involve in leadership tasks to members who are consistent, trustworthy, and strong communicators. You can ask them to step forward, strengthening your committee by training more folks in follow-up skills, and building the capacity of our chapter in turn.
This relates to a different point: We should be aware that not everything we do is going to work perfectly. That’s okay, and normal. Sometimes things won’t work out, or things will come up. Over time, members should be developing skills to adjust to things going awry. This goes hand-in-hand with being able to spot organizing obstacles, communicating clearly when we have issues with our comrades, and addressing obstacles and issues so as to overcome them
A Reinforcing Process
This brings you back to preparing for the next meeting. Follow-up should contribute to preparation for the next gathering so that a part of what you can discuss is how all or nearly everyone accomplished their tasks. Committees and their particular meetings should have clear short and long-term goals, so that it can determine whether or not it has been successful in its aims (for example: PROC might plan an assembly of renters as a structure test. So you can measure your success, you might specify a specific number of tenants in attendance you need to get to turn out to the assembly, a certain quality of deliberation, or a specific outcome of a vote at said assembly). At most meetings you should sum up your efforts: what works, what doesn’t, and what new things we can try. By doing so in a repeating cycle we can regularly build on previous experience to develop new socialists’ skills and knowledge through practice.
That practice isn’t all we should learn from, as should be clear from the discussion above. But, it is nonetheless an important reservoir, that if we do this right, should be enriched by you and your comrades over time.
Go, organize others. Help them learn tools to change the world!
The post How to Organize Memphis Midsouth DSA Style first appeared on Memphis-Midsouth DSA.
County BOS Divests From LAHSA + Metro Refuses to Comply With Measure HLA Guidelines
Thorn West: Issue No. 229
State Politics
- The California State Senate has restricted press access to legislators, while in both chambers of the legislature, a large number of bills under consideration are designed to shield information from the public.
- Former Los Angeles area Congressman, Xavier Becerra, who also served as President Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary, has joined the pool of high-profile Democratic candidates vying to be Governor Newsom’s successor in 2026.
City Politics
- Following a Los Angeles Times California Pubilc Records Request, the Mayor’s office asserted that it was not obligated to release texts sent by Mayor Karen Bass during the immediate response to the wildfires. Now, the Times is suing the city.
- Mayor Bass and a contingent of councilmembers traveled to Sacramento to request help from the state in making up what is projected to be a billion dollar budget shortfall. The city council is also proposing the creation of a citizen’s budget advisory group.
- The city council voted to expand the Fair Work Week ordinance to include fast food workers. The ordinance entitles workers to receive their work schedules 14 days in advance, in addition to other protections, and originally only applied to retail workers.
NOlympics
- An angry tirade delivered by Councilmember Tim McCosker during a council session has drawn attention to the “backroom deals” that have diverted many of the 2028 Olympics venues out of the city.
Transportation
- Earlier in the month, lawyers for Metro, the transit authority that oversees public transit across LA County, argued that Metro projects within city limits do not have to comply with Measure HLA, a citywide safe streets ballot measure. This week, Metro unveiled a redesign of Vermont Avenue that adds dedicated bus lanes, but does not include bike lanes, which would not be HLA-compliant.
- Metro is currently considering several proposals for a public transit alternative to the 405 freeway. Transit activists are advocating for underground heavy rail. This week, community meetings about the project were abruptly cancelled. A subsequent update from Metro asserts that they will be rescheduled.
Housing Rights
- The LA County Board of Supervisors has voted 4–0 to strip over $300 million from the budget of the Los Angeles Homelessness Authority (LAHSA), which administers homelessness services for both the city and county. The county will instead administer the funds through a new County-only agency. Mayor Bass and several councilmembers, including recently elected DSA-LA councilwoman Ysabel Jurado, opposed the move. LA Public Press spoke with several unhoused people about their experiences and frustrations with LAHSA. Today, the CEO of LAHSA resigned, citing the county’s decision as the motivating factor.
Environmental Justice
- CalFire has released a new draft of the fire hazard zone map for Southern California. The new map unsurprisingly expands the area in Los Angeles County zoned as hazardous.
- Dwell interviews Dr. Lucy Jones—who for years advised the city about earthquake preparedness—about climate change resiliency in Los Angeles, including what steps can be taken locally, without the support of the federal government.
The post County BOS Divests From LAHSA + Metro Refuses to Comply With Measure HLA Guidelines appeared first on The Thorn West.
April Labor Branch Newsletter: The Resistance to Trump is beginning – Protest Saturday & other events
Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America claim victory with endorsed candidate Brower in Common Council race win
The Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are declaring a win for Milwaukee’s working class after member Alex Brower won the race for the open District 3 seat on the Common Council Tuesday.
Milwaukee DSA supported Brower’s candidacy from the start. We look forward to supporting Brower’s work at City Hall. Although we recognize that his election alone will not bring about all the changes needed for a just Milwaukee, we will continue working with Councilmember-Elect Brower and the thousands of people who volunteered with the campaign and voted for him to build a mass movement capable of doing so.
“We are beyond excited to welcome Alex Brower into the great Sewer Socialist tradition that we hold in Milwaukee,” said Pamela Westphal, DSA leader. “With high voter turnout in Milwaukee County, this should signal to the Democratic Party that the working class is hungry for bold leadership and transformative change in local government.”
Brower’s win is the latest sign that people in Milwaukee and beyond are tired of the status quo and ready for true democracy, robust public services and democratic socialism.
Milwaukee DSA is Milwaukee’s largest socialist organization fighting for a democratic economy, a just society, and a sustainable environment. Join today at dsausa.org/join.
This Month — Fight Fascism, Build to May Day
Our National Labor Commission is fighting fascism and building worker power! Throughout April, we’re building up to International Workers’ Day. This week, join us at two events to kick this off:
- Mass call with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) on Thursday 4/3 at 5pm ET/4pm CT/3pm MT/2pm PT
- Saturday, 4/5 Hands Off! in-person actions against fascism across the country
International Workers’ Day is also known as May Day. On May 1, 1886, during a period of extreme wealth inequality, social oppression, and political corruption, hundreds of thousands of workers across the US withheld their labor and took to the streets in a general strike against industrial barons, demanding an eight-hour work day.
Nearly 140 years later, unelected billionaire oligarchs like Elon Musk are seizing control of our government. The bosses are using state power against the working class to suppress opposition, consolidate power, and destroy our ability to fight for a better life.
But working people aren’t going anywhere. DSA Labor is building power for the short and long term, not only to stop authoritarianism but to transform our society into one in which workers are in the driver’s seat. We need you to join us in building towards May Day 2025, May Day 2028, and beyond.
Here’s how you can join us to fight oligarchy and build up to this year’s International Workers’ Day.
Thursday, 4/3, 5pm ET/4pm CT/3pm MT/2pm PT: CTU National Call for May Day 2025
Join the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and friends for a national mass call to learn how to build May Day 2025 to be as big and powerful as possible.
Saturday, 4/5: “Hands Off” National Day of Action
Join a growing nationwide coalition of labor and community partners to say: Hands off our democracy, our rights, our livelihoods, and our neighbors!
Tuesday, 4/8: “Kill the Cuts” National Day of Action
Stand in solidarity with workers in education, research, and healthcare to demand NO cuts to education and life-saving research.
Sunday, 4/13, 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT: Building Sanctuary Unions Training Session
DSA’s National Labor Commission has partnered with DSA’s International Migrant Rights Working Group to host member training sessions. Learn how to organize within your union for an American labor movement where immigrant workers can find protection and build power.
Tuesday, 4/29: Fight Oligarchy, Build to May Day Mass Call
Join us as we gear up for May Day 2025! We will hear from labor organizers, immigrants rights activists, and chapter leaders about why workers everywhere need to stand up and fight back against the attacks on our unions, rights, and essential services, and how you can join in the fight today and in the weeks and months ahead.
Thursday, 5/1: May Day 2025
Save the date to join hundreds of thousands in the streets for International Workers’ Day.
And our next quarterly “Workers Organizing Workers” Training starts on Monday 4/7 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT! This three-part training series is great for anyone interested in getting a job and organizing in a strategic industry. The training covers the basics of finding these positions, talking to coworkers, and being part of a movement to bring workplace democracy to some of America’s largest employers.
If you’d like to get more involved with the National Labor Commission, the body of DSA members active in the labor movement, apply here! We have opportunities for members interested in strike support, Palestinian solidarity, educator organizing, and more!
The post This Month — Fight Fascism, Build to May Day appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Call your Reps and Tell Them to Let Trans Kids Play Sports
On March 12th, eight state Democrats in Michigan voted for an anti-trans resolution that would hurt trans kids in schools.
HR40 is a non-enforceable resolution that strongly encourages the Michigan High School Athletic Association to discriminate against trans women by following Trump’s executive order to ban trans-women in women’s sports.
Despite it being non-enforceable, this resolution would lead to increased harassment and discrimination towards trans children who just want to play sports with their classmates.
The eight state Democrats who voted for this resolution are Rep. Alabas Farhat, Rep. Peter Herzberg, Rep. Tullio Liberati, Rep. Denise Mentzer, Rep. Reggie Miller, Rep. Will Snyder, Rep. Angela Witwer, and Rep. Mai Xiong.
Call your state Representative and let them know how you feel about their vote! You can find your state Representative here!
If your state Representative voted yes for this resolution, call them to express how disappointed you are and tell them they need to stand for trans rights or you will be voting against them in the next election.
If your state Representative voted no for this resolution, call and thank them for siding with trans people. Encourage them to continue their support and to speak up for the rights of trans people. We need as many people in positions of power to be on our side.
Keep in mind, your state representative does not represent anywhere close to as many people as your US Congress representative. Your call could very well sway them to support trans people going forward, even if they are Republican. In Montana, 29 Republicans changed their mind on an anti-trans bill after Reps. Zooey Zephyr and SJ Howell gave impassioned speeches. This goes to show that it is possible to sway state Republicans.
The whole situation was handled so maliciously. Speaker Pro Tempore Rachelle Smit (R-43), a far-right Republican who believes the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, kept cutting off the speeches of Democrats so that her Republican colleagues could speak. The vote was then rushed through the House without letting Democrats finish their speeches. Erin in the Morning provides a copy of the whole situation here.
We must all stand for the rights of trans people!
The post Call your Reps and Tell Them to Let Trans Kids Play Sports appeared first on Grand Rapids Democratic Socialists of America.
How to Ask Someone to Join DSA
Why Recruit?
DSA members have by this point seen that present political events mean a lot of people are finding their way to our organization on their own. Indeed, since the beginning of September 2024, DSA Cincy has grown by nearly 100 members-representing ~33% growth from September 2024 to the end of March 2025. While we have developed an onboarding system, most of this actual recruitment has been fairly passive, from people who learned about our organization or who finally joined due to external events. So why should we do active recruitment?
- We want to not just be influenced by history, but to influence it. If we rely primarily on external events to determine our rise, fall and success, and don’t take seriously developing our own power to win and change the world, we won’t amount to the political force we would like to be in the US.
- The more relationships we develop in DSA, the more power we have. Every person who joins DSA isn’t just one more member or volunteer-they’re a person with a wealth of social relationships and history with people, and the more of these social networks we bring into DSA, the stronger our organization can be in our larger society.
- It develops our own organizing skills. Being able to have an organizing conversation and make direct asks are core skills for any organizer. This applies at all levels of campaigns and efforts, be it asking someone to sign a petition, or to join an organizing committee at your workplace. And every organizing conversation we have is a learning opportunity for ourselves to do better with the next one. Take the chance, make the ask, and learn from each one for next time!
- Direct recruitment asks work! One of the largest membership bumps in DSA history was the 100k recruitment drive in 2020, where chapters across the country recruited thousands of new members to DSA. Direct asks to the people in our lives who should be involved work, we just need to make the ask!
Recruitment Steps
So you’ve been persuaded-it’s worth asking people to join DSA! How do you get started doing this? There are many different approaches, but one that’s pursued by many different campaigns is shared below:
- Make an initial list of at least five people to recruit. Notably, this list does not have to be restricted to people who have described themselves to you as socialists. Instead, think of the people in your life who have been sympathetic to socialist demands in your life. The family member who told you they voted for Bernie in 2020, the coworker who opposes the genocide of Palestinians-anyone who you’ve had a positive conversation about politics with in this vein is worth talking to!
- Open a positive conversation on your shared values and vision for the world. Many leftists open up conversations about politics with the unorganized by starting with the problems. Unfortunately, opening with this framing often leaves people feeling hopeless to resolve those problems and unwilling to commit to action. Instead, open with shared socialist political values that you both have in common.
- Spend most of your time listening. A good organizing conversation does not look like you delivering a speech to the other person-it looks like you listening and genuinely engaging with their thoughts and concerns about the world.
- Channel towards a positive solution-DSA. After your conversation has touched on the things you both care about and what the other person is thinking about, talk about DSA and our efforts to build a mass organization that is able to fight for the things we care about. Share why DSA matters to you.
- Directly make the ask. In any recruitment conversation, it is of the utmost importance you directly ask the other person if they will join DSA. You aren’t imposing, anyone has the power to say yes or no as they wish, but many people don’t realize joining is an option, or are waiting for implicit permission to be invited in. Give it to them!
- If they say yes, walk through signing up with them. Sometimes people say yes, the conversation moves on, and by the end both have forgotten to take the step of actually filling out the join form. Make sure to show them the join page (link provided here), and walk through the form with them step by step!
- Know your follow up. Whether you get a yes or no, it’s good to make sure they know about other actions and events coming up you think they’d be interested in. And if they’re unsure, a good event could be enough to change their minds. Make sure you know your follow up ask, whatever it is!
2025 MPD Performance Oversight Testimony
Your National Political Committee newsletter — Fascism is Capitalism in Decay
Enjoy your March National Political Committee (NPC) newsletter! Our NPC is an elected 18-person body (including two YDSA members who share a vote) which functions as the board of directors of DSA. This month, get involved with the Mutual Aid Working Group, join AfroSoC, apply for the Growth & Development Committee Steering Committee, 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 — Fascism is Capitalism in Decay
- Growth & Development Committee Steering Committee Application: Open Through 4/1
- State of DSA Reports — Listening Session #2
- MAWG All Members Meeting for Spring 2025
- AfroSoC is BACK with a New Executive Committee!
- Extension of National Political Education Committee Application Window
- Apply for the National Budget & Finance Committee
- Fundraising Committee Office Hours
From Our Co-Chairs — Fascism is Capitalism in Decay
“Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.” – Karl Marx, The Grundrisse, 1857
Jumping headlong into dialectical and historical materialism might not be the usual theme of our newsletters, but in this era of cartoon supervillians like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, we think it’s worth remembering that, while these Uncle Pennybags caricatures are the most prominent faces launching “shock doctrine” attacks on our already tattered social safety net, they are simply extra-vulgar representatives of the forces of capital that have always been exploiting and oppressing the working class.
In many ways, it’s useful to point to Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire and the richest man in the world, hooting and hollering his way through the dissolution of our children’s schools and our parents’ social security. He makes the contradictions of capitalism clearer and more terrifying than they have been in our lifetimes. While Musk initially seemed to offer a liberal, technocratic, very online veneer to the ascendant new green tech sector of capital, socialists called bullshit years ago on this union-busting capitalist. The mask has now come off. Musk is a scion of global apartheid, as he makes explicit his sympathies with fascism that justify the large-scale labor exploitation and imperialist resource extraction that underlie his super-profits.
As socialists, we are disgusted to see so little pushback to Trump’s amped-up second-term agenda from their neoliberal capitalist political “opposition” in the Democratic Party, nor from the donor-controlled institutes of higher education that are rolling over one by one to hand over students like Mahmoud Khalil to ICE thugs, nor from the hospitals that are pre-emptively refusing gender-affirming care for our community members who are in genuine need. We must remember that, for all the grotesque buffoonery that Musk and Trump (and their rogue’s gallery) put on display, when it comes down to it, they’re representing their class interests, and the ruling class at large seems to be just fine with it.
Fascism is capitalism in decay, and November’s election peeled off a bandage that covered a bone-deep rot. But as socialists, we know the cure. The working class is the agent of change. We outnumber the capitalists (and the goons who do their dirty work in institutions of power) by orders of magnitude, but we can only fight back if we’re organized in huge numbers across capitalism’s forced divisions, and that’s what we’re doing. While Democratic Party elites suggest it’s time to stand down, we know we must fight for full-throated demands by ordinary people for everything we need not just to survive, but thrive.
DSA chapters across the country are working alongside the Federal Unionists’ Network to organize federal workers to push back against the dismantling of their various agencies. We’re showing up in city council meetings to demand that sanctuary laws be passed to protect queer and trans members of our community. We’re standing with teachers and postal workers across the country to fight for education and the right to access information, and to protect and expand good union jobs. We’re fighting back against hospitals as they refuse to offer gender-affirming treatment and we’re demanding that universities across the country offer safe learning environments where students don’t have to fear being snatched by ICE.
Our solidarity doesn’t stop at our borders, either; we continue to fight for Palestinian liberation and safety, against escalating military action in Yemen, against expansion of US military bases across the Pacific, against unjust embargoes that punish the working people of countries around the world, and alongside our comrades everywhere as they organize antifascist strategies for mass politics against a globally-ascendant right wing.
We are proud to be among the convening organizations of the National March on Washington on April 5 to stop the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza — join us in DC if you can! The moment could not be more critical, and it is our responsibility to fight back against the Trump administration’s attempts at repression and come out in massive numbers.
We are stronger when we are organized, and that means putting ourselves into motion to fight for common socialist goals. It means organizing our time, our talents, and our resources. It means honing ourselves into socialist organizers who are ready with strong analysis and the organizing tools to put that analysis into real on-the-ground wins. It means building an enormous, strong, and flexible political instrument that’s ready to take on the capitalist class on every terrain: at the ballot box, the workplace, our homes, our broader communities, and the streets.
If you’re not plugged into your DSA chapter yet, we encourage you to get involved today, whether it’s offering your time and skills to local work or a national committee (lots of fresh opportunities for the latter are below!), running for delegate for DSA’s biennial convention this summer, or even simply increasing your dues payment by a few dollars per month to help keep our organization stable and funded.
We will see you in the fight!
Growth & Development Committee Steering Committee Application: Open Through 4/1
The Growth & Development Committee is seeking new applicants for its Steering Committee! Nine member leaders will be appointed by the National Political Committee to direct GDC’s work guiding membership growth, retention, chapter support, training and more. Applications will be open until 11:59pm PDT April 1st. Apply here.
State of DSA Reports — Listening Session #2
The Growth and Development Committee is launching a series of Listening Sessions as part of its State of DSA Reports project to bring organizers together to share experiences, reflect on our victories, and identify ways to tackle the challenges we all face.
Our second session is Thursday April 3rd at 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT/6:30pm MT/5:30 PT, and will focus on activation and politicization. Once a member is engaged, what does continual development look like in your chapter? We’ll be talking through political education, leadership development, and democratic processes — come tell us what you think!
MAWG All Members Meeting for Spring 2025
DSA’s Mutual Aid Working Group (MAWG) has returned! We are here to help members and chapters organize mutual aid projects and offer our guidance with incorporating into the organizing work already happening across DSA. We believe in mutual aid as a positive force within DSA’s organizing work and hope to see it play a larger role in our impact as an organization. Our first all-member meeting of the year is coming up on Thursday April 3rd at 8:30pm ET/7:30pm CT/6:30pm MT/5:30pm PT! New and returning members are welcome as we discuss the future of mutual aid in DSA and hear from members on how MAWG can be of help!
AfroSoC is BACK with a New Executive Committee!
On February 28th, with 46 votes cast, the AfroSoC Caucus elected a new Executive Committee for 2025! Congratulations to Ciné J., Mary B., AJ W., Abel A., Syjil A., Jane M., Christopher W., Michael G., and Nxongotelo M. on their leadership!
Are you a BIPOC DSA member looking to engage with AfroSoC? Get involved by filling out our interest form to join our Slack, enlisting your local AfroSoC chapter, or signing up for a Working Group or Committee to help rebuild our national activities. Plus, don’t miss our Quarterly General Body Meeting on Thursday 4/10 at 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT — Zoom link coming soon!
Extension of National Political Education Committee Application Window
The National Political Education Committee is seeking members with experience as educators both inside and outside of DSA to help us expand our national political education programs and provide chapters with up-to-date resources for their own local programs. We have extended the previous application deadline to April 6th, and encourage you to apply and pass the application along to your chapter’s poli-ed and/or communications team, as well as comrade-educators in your circles. Please see the application form for further details. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to the Political Education Committee at politicaleducation@dsacommittees.org.
Apply for the National Budget & Finance Committee
DSA’s National Budget & Finance Committee is seeking applicants to fill a limited number of seats on the committee. Applications are due by April 7, 2025.
Budget & Finance is the national committee that works with the national Treasurer and staff to oversee our financial strategy, guide the NPC and Convention in allocating resources, and ensure transparency in our budgeting processes. It is a small working committee made up of members who have special interest or expertise in financial matters, budgeting, and related topics. The committee is currently starting work on the 2025 budget and planning for our next national convention.
Meetings are weekly, currently on Tuesdays at 5:30 ET. Due to the importance and specific required expertise for this work, potential committee members will be screened for credentials, background, and experience. If you’re a numbers nerd, current or ex-chapter treasurer, or have other finance/budgeting experience through DSA or externally, we encourage you to apply!
Fundraising Committee Office Hours
Join DSA National Development Director Tiffany and members of the Fundraising Committee on Tuesday, April 8th, 7:30pm ET/6:30pm CT/5:30pm MT/4:30pm PT for Fundraising Office Hours! We’ll keep a call open for any chapter leaders to ask questions about fundraising, including how to get ready for the 2025 DSA National Convention and how to support your chapter’s local work. Sign up here.
The post Your National Political Committee newsletter — Fascism is Capitalism in Decay appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
2025 Annual Chapter Report
Note: This report was written by the 2024-25 Executive Committee and originally presented to Madison Area DSA membership ahead of the March 2025 Chapter Convention. This public-facing version has been edited or abridged in some places.
Executive Committee
- Bonnie W, co-chair (she/her)
- Adithya P, co-chair (he/they)
- Jason M, administrator (he/him)
- Nathan J, treasurer (he/him)
- Halsey H, communications coordinator (she/her)
- Alex P, membership coordinator (he/him)
Introduction
The re-election of Donald Trump and the chaos of the first 100 days of his return to office have dominated the headlines and occupied the minds of our members lately. But as our annual convention meets in this uncertain and uneasy environment, our chapter should take time to reflect on all that we have accomplished since our convention last March.
This report is not intended to be an exhaustive account of everything our chapter and members have done in the past year. Rather, we intend to highlight critical achievements, pressing challenges, and new opportunities that will help guide future decision making. Every contribution made by our members, no matter how large or small, is crucial in building the organization and world that we need and deserve: one ordered on the flourishing of human potential, and not endless exploitation and accumulation.
What We Did This Year
Madison Area DSA is a membership organization, funded entirely by dues, optionally paid by our members directly to the chapter on a monthly basis, and from national DSA on a quarterly basis. Our numbers, our time, and our money are the resources we have to fight back against a rising fascist tide. Growing and maintaining our membership, therefore, is an organizational imperative. We are pleased to report that in this moment of national crisis, our chapter has attracted many new members, and reactivated lapsed members, who are motivated and ready to work in socialist organizing.
- Just this month, Madison Area DSA reached 440 members in good standing (MIGS). This set a new all-time high for the chapter and surpassed the previous membership peak in 2021. Since the November 2024 Presidential Election, we have added over 100 new members.
- Our chapter’s average meeting attendance over the last year was about 44 people, or 38 if only members are included. From April through October attendance was mostly in the 30-40 range, while post-presidential election there has been a large increase–about 80 in November, dipping to the 50s for December and January, and then over 90 in February. The February meeting is the largest known MADSA meeting ever!
- After moving from two chapter meetings each month to one in late 2023, this year the executive committee (Exec) decided to lengthen the monthly chapter meetings from 90 minutes to 2 hours. This was in response to both an increase in business (from regular chapter-wide deliberation over the School Meals priority campaign to political education to the fall election and DSA’s response), and a sense that discussions were not being allowed enough time to build collective political analysis and understanding.
- In early March 2024, we endorsed the Wisconsin Uninstructed campaign to urge then-president Biden to stop the genocide in Gaza. In close collaboration with UW-Madison YDSA, we hosted four neighborhood canvasses and two campus tabling days, contributing to the 47,800 Uninstructed votes in the April primary election. This was a very fast moving, highly intensive campaign for organizers and volunteers.
- A number of YDSA and MADSA members attended or otherwise contributed to the UW-Madison Palestine encampment protest (aka Popular University for Gaza) that started at the end of April and lasted for almost two weeks. MADSA also endorsed and had different levels of organized involvement with several other solidarity actions over the course of the year: the War Profiteers Out of Madison rally in June (protesting a weapons manufacturing conference), the Not Another Bomb rally in August, and All Out for Lebanon in September.
- At the December chapter meeting following the election, members voted to organize within the local People’s March as well as develop a People’s Platform on which local elected officials could run. MADSA members played a large role in planning the local People’s March which occurred on January 18th, and the chapter had a well-organized contingent present.
- One goal that Exec identified this year was providing more political education opportunities to members. While there is still work to do in this area (for example re-forming a political education committee/working group or similar), there has been fairly regular inclusion of political education programming in chapter meetings, and a reading group around Marx’s Capital (Volume 1) started up in the fall. Other notable political education events for the year included hosting a talk by Professor August Nimtz in April, “Beyond Lesser Evils: Rethinking the Importance of Elections”; and the annual Socialism Conference in Chicago, which the chapter provided financial support for members to attend.
- This year, our chapter made the following electoral endorsements: DSA member Heidi Wegleitner for Dane County Board of Supervisors (uncontested, won), DSA member Francesca Hong for State Assembly (uncontested, won), DSA member Maia Pearson for state assembly (contested, did not win), and the 2024 Madison City and School November Budget Referendums (won). Out of all of these campaigns, we meaningly contributed volunteer time and energy to Maia Pearson’s campaign. Maia was running a slim campaign with only a few volunteers, and our chapter significantly expanded the communications and canvassing her campaign was able to do. Despite this, Maia did not win her race.
- We have a suite of Working Groups, Committees, and Campaigns, and this year they accomplished a lot, from helping new folks unionize their workplace to abolitionist political education to pressuring the school board for free school meals for all. For more information on what our chapter working groups and committees did this year, please see the other reports further down in this document.
Co-Chair Report and Reflections
Bonnie W, co-chair
Adithya P, co-chair
We have been proud to serve as your Madison Area DSA co-chairs for the past year. We have both served in multiple leadership roles in MADSA over the past several years (including as chapter admin and co-chair respectively in 2023-2024), and this informs our reflections shared below.
Background
Although Madison Area DSA existed since the 80s, its modern era (like most other DSA chapters) began in late 2016 following the first Bernie Sanders presidential run, and the chapter grew quickly but unevenly in leaps and bounds over the next few years. From 2020 to 2021, in the context of the COVID crisis and racial justice uprisings, the chapter almost doubled in membership from around 240 to 440.
However along with the new members and radicalizing political landscape came internal challenges. All chapter activities moved to Zoom in 2020, which, over time, negatively impacted our ability to form relationships, work together, and resolve conflict. Chapter leaders also faced difficulties in trying to bridge the sometimes siloed, federated nature of our working groups. Efforts to set chapter priorities at previous conventions had mixed results, as most proposals were passed but lacked the focus and collective buy-in to be truly prioritized by the chapter.
These factors, in addition to a period of internal conflict in 2022 and the burnout and exodus of some former leaders disillusioned with DSA, initiated a slow decline in active membership and capacity in our chapter starting in 2022. This mirrored the membership trend in DSA nationally.
When we joined the executive committee for our first term in 2023, most of the chapter’s active leadership core had disengaged from the chapter, and most exec positions were filled by first-time leaders facing the difficult task of assuming the mantle of both administrative and political leadership. Despite these difficulties, the reduced activity also presented an opportunity to address MADSA’s long-standing issues with siloed working groups, lack of political cohesion, and leadership turnover.
Over the course of 2023, we helped make changes which helped to set the chapter on an upward growth trajectory by the end of the year. We began holding hybrid chapter meetings instead of Zoom-only and reduced meeting frequency from twice to once a month. We started hosting in-person chapter socials. We focused more on membership development at the chapter level and took advantage of support and training opportunities from DSA member-volunteers and staff.
Chapter leadership also made a substantial effort to rethink the 2024 MADSA Convention. We made the Convention a one-day in-person event instead of a two-day virtual event, as it had been for the previous 3 years. We did most voting in-person at the event, instead of virtually after the event, which was a significant shift in chapter culture and helped reestablish decision-making as a collective, participatory process rather than an individual, isolated task. Lastly, in order to refocus the chapter on a unifying strategic mission, we moved away from voting through a slate of chapter “priorities” in favor of voting through one priority campaign.
Politically, the year 2024-2025 was defined by the fight for Palestine and the election of Trump, sharpening the urgency of our organizing. For our chapter, it was a year of growth, campaign work, and renewed political clarity. Through it all, we made key interventions to build our chapter’s strength and impact—now, we take this moment to reflect on what we learned and where we go from here.
General Membership Meetings
Our goal was to increase attendance at general membership meetings and make them a central space for chapter-wide decision-making, discussion, and accountability. To achieve this, we committed to holding one chapter meeting per month, with a social afterward to encourage connection. We experimented with a second monthly meeting in late October but saw little additional engagement, so we stuck to the monthly model. Structurally, we aimed to include updates, political education, and discussion of ongoing campaigns in every meeting, though this wasn’t always feasible. A key shift was increasing the number of votes held at meetings—encouraging working groups and members to bring organizing proposals forward in a ready-to-vote format. This helped move decision-making out of smaller groups and into the general membership, creating a culture where members expected to participate in chapter-wide discussions and strategy. We also improved meeting promotion and divided up meeting roles more intentionally.
These efforts helped increase attendance, with average meeting participation rising from 19.6 in 2023 to 32.2 in 2024, even before the post-election surge. General meetings have become the lifeblood of the chapter, reversing the previous dynamic where working groups were the primary spaces for organizing. While newer members sometimes hesitated to speak or vote against proposals, participation remained high, and the shift toward more in-meeting decision-making helped integrate members into the chapter’s organizing process.
Note: Meeting attendance figures may not be 100% exact for some months.
Increased Transparency
To improve transparency of the executive committee, we made the #executive-committee Slack channel public, allowing members to see our discussions and deliberation. We also created and maintained documents explaining chapter resources and processes (like the chapter Quick Start guide, tutorials on how to use our texting platform, etc), making it easier for members to access important information. Additionally, we strove to share bi-monthly executive committee reports, which were shared via Slack and email to keep the chapter informed on exec votes, membership, the treasury, etc. Unfortunately, we failed to release a report between Oct. 2024 and March 2025.
Nevertheless, these efforts received positive feedback through word of mouth and our exec survey, showing that members felt positively about increased transparency. We recommend the next executive committee improve on this by making minutes of exec meetings more readily available to general membership and provide a record of decisions made by Exec in written or verbal reports at chapter meetings.
Commitment to External Work
We took on a number of large external-facing campaigns the past year, including the Uncommitted primary campaign in early March, the launch of the School Meals Campaign in April, support for the UW-Madison Palestine encampment in early May, the Maia Pearson State Assembly primary in June and July. School meals work continued through the fall and winter, interspersed with other initiatives like coordinating local Palestine solidarity rallies, the October endorsements of local budget referendums, and the People’s March in January.
As outlined elsewhere in this report, we saw major successes in some of these efforts. There was a collective sense of urgency to meet the political moment in 2024, as well as a shared desire among active membership to re-establish our presence locally after spending most of the previous year rebuilding the chapter. Madison DSA’s profile grew with increased media coverage and local visibility, and our increased presence was an important factor in our post-election membership growth and causing more people to see our chapter as a potential political home for them.
A recurring theme across many of the campaigns was that they often came together on short notice or with extremely aggressive timelines. Many also happened concurrently or immediately after other efforts concluded, and were bottomlined by a small group of the same chapter leaders who were juggling multiple projects and other leadership responsibilities. This resulted in an organizing environment where we deprioritized the crucial steps of debriefing and reflecting on work we had done in favor of taking on new work.
Chapter leaders had less time to devote to important questions of larger chapter strategy and political leadership, and spent less time communicating with other members and leaders and maintaining alignment on shared organizing goals. Falling into a rut of doing the work and losing touch with a guiding political vision is a prime recipe for burnout. Despite these shortcomings we see a lot of room for growth in the chapter this year, especially with many newer members looking to start new chapter work. We look forward to seeing new projects take shape and get developed collectively by membership.
One shortcoming of our priority campaign selection process at last convention was encouraging members to develop fully-formed campaign proposals before bringing them to chapter convention. The School Meals Campaign won majority support from membership both for David O’s strong vision, but also for the level of development and detail in the proposal. However, this led to some pitfalls when actually running the campaign, where despite David’s support other members struggled to build confidence and a sense of ownership organizing around the issue, and too often deferring on political and strategic questions to overburdened campaign leadership.
One lesson from this is that to build stronger leadership and buy-in, more members need to be involved in the process of developing strategies and vision for external campaigns, even if that means taking more time for campaigns to take shape and launch. More members taking ownership in this process is key to the further political development of the chapter.
Depoliticization
This reflected another chapter trend in 2024 – a depoliticization of the way we assessed our work internally and externally through an explicitly socialist lens.
While general membership weighed in on questions of strategy for ongoing work, these discussions sometimes de-emphasized the political dimension – not just considering what work to take on and why, but taking time to question and examine the ideological priors undergirding those strategies. This stemmed from a lower level of political development among active chapter membership and leadership compared to several years prior, and a lack of confidence applying a socialist analysis to our organizing methods and understanding of history.
For example, the school meals campaign’s original proposal invoked the legacy of the Black Panthers’ free breakfast programs. However the campaign and chapter never set aside time to learn and discuss the historical context those programs arose from, analyze how those conditions did or didn’t map onto our own, and reflect on what other lessons to take from previous generations of socialists.
Our attempts to place more emphasis on political education were haphazard, although we see significantly more chapter interest and opportunities to reprioritize this in the coming year. Developing members’ confidence in applying a socialist analysis informed by theory and history to their work is an important step to building a larger body of leaders and organizers in the chapter. While we made significant steps in building our organizing practice last year, we hope this year the chapter combines that with more engagement with socialist theory, further sharpening our practice.
Member and Leader Development
Our goal and continual challenge as a chapter was to re-engage membership by developing more members into active participants and future leaders. To do this, we made a number of changes to practices. Our February 2024 membership drive reinstitutionalized the practice of structured listwork of our membership; listwork being the practice of tracking outreach to and development of members. Listwork had not been done in the chapter in several years. This year, the practice was maintained in some working groups and campaigns. Exec also started doing listwork periodically to better track engagement and leadership development of active chapter members.
We also focused on delegating more entry-level tasks—such as setting up for meetings and processing sign-up sheets—to newer members, helping them build familiarity with chapter operations. Exec held two Leadership Roundtable retreats in June and December with working group and committee leaders to talk about membership development and strategize about collective work.
We had major success with revamping our monthly New Member Orientations (DSA 101s) and putting more emphasis on organizing new and prospective members to attend. Over the course of the past year, we made major overhauls to the presentation and our distribution of organizing labor around the events. In the fall we began regularly textbanking new and prospective members and had two members running the orientation, improving attendance to 5-8 people a month. This increased exponentially following the election, and we overhauled the format to meet the demand. Our November NMO had over 50 attendees, and we enlisted other chapter leaders to help facilitate breakout groups. Attendance remained above 30-40 in the last two months, and we began delegating more meeting roles to other newer members on the revived Membership Committee, which has yielded positive results. We intend to continue with this format going forward and encourage other chapter bodies to consider similar practices for delegating more responsibilities for meetings and events.
This year, we saw growing pains balancing continued internal membership engagement with a renewed focus on external-facing work. Our February 2024 membership drive helped develop many active members who took on larger leadership roles following the 2024 Convention on Exec, working groups, and the school meals campaign. We struggled to backfill their contributions on the membership committee, and a significant amount of membership work between the March convention and November election was performed by our membership coordinator Alex P and other members of the executive committee.
In the coming year, we recommend chapter leaders increase focus on membership development, such as the training series we held in February covering 1:1 organizing conversations and strategic campaign planning. Another area of emphasis for the chapter this year should be focusing more attention on leadership development and supporting current chapter leaders. Due to previous leadership turnover and loss of institutional memory, many new and existing leaders in the chapter did not receive as much support as needed to ensure they were in a position to succeed and help develop other leaders behind them. New and existing working group leaders were placed in difficult positions and some were unaware of all the resources and tools available to them through the chapter and national organization. This led to leaders being tasked with too many responsibilities and stretched thin.
Overcommitment also led to constantly planning and coordinating new actions and events, and we too frequently fell into the trap of core leaders taking on too many tasks themselves in order to meet tight deadlines. This came at the expense of opportunities to develop other members, creating a cycle where potential new leaders were less prepared to step up because they hadn’t gotten enough experience in lesser roles, because those were being done by existing leaders who were too busy to develop new leaders. One example of this was the YDSA-led People’s Org Fair the weekend after the election. Seeing the event planning well behind schedule, several members of the executive committee stepped in the week before the event and took on significant responsibilities planning panels and developing programming themselves, rather than working to identify other members who could be asked to take on these tasks.
Following our co-chair terms, we intend to help build more intentional leadership development opportunities in the chapter for both current and prospective leaders, and we hope to start breaking the cycle of leadership burnout and turnover that has plagued the chapter in previous years. We believe that with the influx of new members we have many potential new leaders who can develop and step into elected and middle leadership roles across the chapter in the coming year.
The Coming Year
As we look ahead, it’s clear that there is always more to do. In a time of rising fascism and ongoing attacks on workers’ rights, the pressure to act is constant. But our mission is not just to act—it’s to act strategically. We must sharpen our socialist analysis to understand the political conditions of our city and country, using that understanding to choose fights that will build worker power and grow our capacity. A healthy chapter and a strong socialist movement require both external organizing—strategic campaigns, coalition building, and political education—and internal work to sustain ourselves, from leadership development to communications and membership outreach. Balancing these priorities is challenging, but we make small advances every day. To grow, we must also reflect, assess our choices, and improve through collective discussion and report-backs, and we encourage every working group, committee and campaign to make these a regular part of your organizing.
At the heart of it all, people stay in the fight because of each other—because of the relationships they build, the struggles they share, and the trust they develop. Strengthening the social fabric of our chapter is just as important as our organizing. We encourage everyone to plan and attend socials, talk to one another, talk to other chapters, and also build community connections beyond DSA. These relationships, particularly connections to DSA leaders across the country, have been central to our personal growth, which we’ve brought to the chapter and we encourage others to do the same.
As co-chairs, we’ve learned so much over the last year, and we’re energized by the growing number of people stepping into leadership and bringing new ideas. We welcome the diversity of political thought, debate, and even disagreement—because through these discussions, we sharpen our analysis and build a stronger movement. We encourage everyone to stay involved, step up, and help shape the future of our chapter!
Treasury Report
Some financial information has been redacted from the public-facing version of this report.
Nathan J, treasurer
- As our chapter grows, there is a greater need to accurately budget, which in turn requires tracking transactions in a ledger. Besides getting in the habit of budgeting and maintaining a ledger, a cash handling policy was adopted and a reimbursement request form (https://madison-dsa.org/resources/) was created to improve traceability of transactions.
- Balance: our chapter is financially stable and the balance of funds grew over the past year (April 2024 – March 2025). Budget details are included below, but here is a high level overview.
- Opportunities for growth: while it is nice to have a growing chapter balance, our chapter can afford to spend more money on outreach. Of our expenses, approximately 35% is for overhead expenses (rent, software, transaction fees, etc.), approximately 50% is for internal chapter development (meetings, conferences, food, etc.), and approximately 15% is for outreach (campaigning, tabling, public events, etc.). Overhead expenses and internal chapter development are necessary but should be viewed as serving the purpose of ultimately growing the chapter through outreach and making a difference in the community.
Membership Report
Alex P, membership coordinator
Adithya P, co-chair
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Membership Numbers
- As mentioned above, Madison now has over 440 members in good standing as of 3/8/2025, our highest total ever. Members in good standing (MIGS) refer to members up to date on dues, granting them full voting and participation rights within DSA.
- This time last year, the chapter had about 325 MIGS. Counting constitutional members (members whose dues lapsed within the last year), MADSA has over 490 members today versus around 430 last March.
- Madison saw a net gain of 56 MIGS (from 312 to 368) over the 2024 calendar year, an 18% increase. Of the 50 largest DSA chapters, only 3 grew at a faster rate than Madison over the same time period. DSA membership nationally grew by 4% during this time.
- Madison saw a net gain of 108 MIGS (from 326 to 434) in the 4-month period between the election and the end of February, a 33% increase in membership. Of the 50 largest DSA chapters, only 4 grew at a faster rate than Madison over that period. DSA membership nationally grew by 21% during the same time span.
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Membership Trends
- We saw a MASSIVE bump in membership following both the presidential election and inauguration. This rising trend will likely subside sometime in the next few months, but has not as of yet.
- As one might expect, interest in the chapter most often correlated with recent chapter activity in public spaces, be it tabling, protest participation while wearing/bearing DSA identifiers, or ongoing campaign actions. This has in part allowed us to maintain our numbers even in periods where National has seen slight membership declines.
- By far most new members coming to our chapter are ones who have self-selected joining (ie they found us, we did not find them). Going forward, it should be the goal of our membership strategy to utilize campaigns to make more direct asks of people to join our organization. Every action, big or small, is an opportunity to recruit.
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Membership Committee
- Following the last convention, much of the existing membership committee participants were heavily involved in other leadership roles in the chapter. The formal organization of the committee went on hiatus during this time, but has since returned in early 2025. The committee is now meeting regularly (every other Wed.) and has been steadily growing in numbers.
- Much of the infrastructure for comprehensive membership outreach is already established, but will require more hands on deck to utilize. Further growth and development of committee members should be prioritized in the coming year.
- New Member Orientations have seen a complete re-work, moving towards a more interactive, discussion-centric model intended to allow us to learn about the myriad reasons new and returning members are seeking work in our chapter and organization.
- Active efforts have been taken to ensure that at least one chapter social event occurs every month, utilizing a more collaborative planning process that hopefully will see a greater variety of events being sponsored. Additionally, members have been empowered to reach out to others in the chapter more informally to organize smaller social gatherings to build more direct ties of solidarity.
- Following the last convention, much of the existing membership committee participants were heavily involved in other leadership roles in the chapter. The formal organization of the committee went on hiatus during this time, but has since returned in early 2025. The committee is now meeting regularly (every other Wed.) and has been steadily growing in numbers.
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Other Work
- Chapter membership tracking and listwork has been significantly revamped, mostly to integrate automated member tracking and communications through ActionNetwork. Using this, we’ve been able to keep better tabs on what actions members are engaging in, how active they are with chapter events, and automating outreach to inactive and dues-lapsed members. Going forward we hope to see a greater degree of use and integration with ActionNetwork among other working groups and committees in the chapter.
Communications Report
Halsey H, comms coordinator
The big development in the last year is that we now have a communications committee that meets on a monthly basis. We’re starting to set up some roles and recurring tasks for different platforms, and we have a solid group of people who are doing some great graphic design, for social media and print propaganda materials. We have been posting regularly on our social media, and have a team of people working on making sure we have daily engagement, but there is definitely room for more people to get involved and support that work. Comrade Emerson M. has been making weekly posts across all of our platforms with all of the events coming up each week, and this has been very helpful for making sure we have more regular content and that members and prospective members have somewhere they can always check to see what’s going on. Our email newsletter has gone out roughly twice per month, and that and our other email communications have very good engagement.
Right now we’re working on creating some templates and how-to guides to get more people plugged in to comms work, to diversify the type of content we’re able to put out, and to make it easier for people throughout the chapter to get their events promoted. We’ve had a lot of success building the capacity of our comms committee, and I’m hoping we can continue to improve our ability to reach people in person and online in the coming year, and to post more photos and videos of all the cool stuff we have going on in the chapter – especially when we have members give presentations or speeches, because that content does really well.