The forever war by socialists and other progressives continues against the ruling corporate wing of the Democratic Party. 

The latest battles were fought at the more-or-less annual state party convention in San Francisco in February, which focused on 1) endorsements in legislative and statewide races; and 2) the party platform for the next two years. 

The endorsements rarely involve close contests in more than one or two races, but this year, as an elected delegate from Sacramento County I received a huge number of mailers and calls over the preceding weeks from candidates for open statewide offices – governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, insurance commissioner and superintendent of public education.  (Incumbents sailed through for attorney general, controller, secretary of state.)

62 candidates for governor

The race for governor comprises 62 candidates, mostly unknowns, from many parties or no party. Ten are generally considered serious by mainstream media – and recent polls indicate that most likely to advance to November’s general election are the two Republicans among them, with about 15 percent each, not much but well ahead of several Democrats at around 10 percent. With June 2 fast approaching, none of the eight top Democrats is blinking, despite pressure from party leadership on those polling poorly to drop out. Ironically, even if a few did it might not make much difference unless voters consolidate in backing one of the Dems. There’s no sign of it yet. 

A lot of folks are also taking a curious look at Tom Steyer, the self-funded billionaire who is ostensibly renouncing his past and repurposing his riches for a couple of decades, while embracing progressive positions on multiple issues. Another enticing aspect of his candidacy is that unlike all the other Democrats, he seems notably unbeholden to the party heavies. His answers to my questions about Palestine at the convention and at a recent Sacramento town hall were sympathetic but not well-informed. (When I offered to meet with him together with a Palestinian comrade he publicly accepted and staff rushed to take my contact information. We’ll see.)

The irony of a Republican governor with a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature could make for pundit heaven. It might highlight a stark contrast between relative progressives who manage to pass some decent bills and centrists who use the “impropriety” of refusing to override gubernatorial vetoes to maintain the status quo.

Meanwhile, the most well-known non-duopoly candidate, Green Party’s Butch Ware, is going to court to fight for his ballot spot after being disqualified over a technicality.

The possibility cast a pall over the convention; panic had not yet set in, and maybe it will still somehow be avoided. 

Several candidates did better among delegates than in voter polls, but no one came close to the 60 percent needed for official party endorsement. The same held for all the other contested statewide posts, all with multiple candidates. It’s unusual to behold such division in the party, perhaps in part reflecting increasingly large ideological differences, but also the smell of opportunity with Republican prospects seemingly tanking – though surveys show the Democratic Party less popular than almost ever.

Amid the chaos, progressive entities at the convention were not in a position (or not allowed) to make endorsements in these contests, but several candidates made positive impressions: California DSA-endorsed Oliver Ma for lieutenant governor (not on the party ballot due to late entry but very present), Jane Kim for insurance commissioner (came in a close second), and Nichelle Hengerson for superintendent of public instruction (topped a field crowded with several more well-known, termed-out legislators).

Most state legislative and congressional race endorsements were settled or ruled out before the convention at “pre-endorsement” conferences where local delegates and some others could vote for candidates in their districts. But in several cases, the results enabled further voting in San Francisco. And one – the seventh district (disclosure: where I mounted a last-minute campaign in 2024 against incumbent Doris Matsui due to her refusal to meet opponents of the Gaza genocide or call for a ceasefire back when that meant something) – had some real drama. 

DSA-backed congressional candidate denied endorsement

DSA-endorsed Mai Vang, a Sacramento city councilor, won enough support in the local process to force a further caucus at the convention – itself an extremely rare occurrence. Countering were 1) re-appointment of a number of loyalists as “delegates” in the district by party chiefs and Matsui’s fellow Congress members, a legal but despised maneuver; and 2) the sudden appearance of Nancy Pelosi and two other congressional colleagues at the caucus, meant to comprise delegates from the district. Votes are recorded and made public. It’s widely assumed that some were made under presumed fear of consequences had they voted for Vang.

The result: Vang fell one vote short of what would have enabled her to collect delegate signatures to force a full vote of the entire convention on the last day. In my 12 years as a delegate, I’ve seen that happen exactly once – and it was successful.

It was not to be, but as the Sacramento DSA chapter and many others mobilize, we know the vote that will count is still to come – on June 2. A top-two finish will take it to November. The race includes no other progressives. Beating an incumbent is tough under the best of circumstances, but two relatively unknown Republicans could conceivably split the MAGA vote and enable Mai to advance.

Contention on Palestine 

More drama occurred over the party platform. In a comparatively open process, the committee responsible heard testimony and received written proposals from many delegates on a plethora of issues. But it also declared its intent to shorten the 40+ page prior document and make it more of a statement of principles with fewer specific policy planks. 

A December draft did that, but to a minor degree, and progressives were not surprised that many of the deleted sections were among those they had successfully achieved in the recent past. A backlash ensued on a number of environmental issues, Native American matters and anti-corruption principles. There was a short-lived campaign of unknown origin, rife with speculation, to vote the whole platform down. But it petered out, and advocates succeeded in having much of what they wanted restored.

Most contentious, unsurprisingly, were sections on Palestine and Israel, in which I was actively involved. Hundreds of delegates and other Democrats signed a set of amendments we proposed accurately describing and calling for party opposition to genocide in Gaza, escalating settler/military violence on the West Bank – and for a freezing of arms transfers to Israel. Some improved language – see the final platform – came out of negotiation between leaders of Democrats for Justice in Palestine (see the previous California Red report on its founding) and the head of Democrats for Israel (recently renamed “Jewish Democrats,” offensive to those of us whom it describes but absolutely doesn’t represent). 

In an underhanded move, an outside Israel lobby official was allowed to plead with the committee to abandon the initial compromise, and a somewhat worse one eventually emerged – but still better than the previous platform and the committee’s original proposal, which would have deleted a nod, in generic terms, to various elements of international law, including people’s right to leave and return to their country, and condemned genocide – again generically, without mentioning Gaza. But it does describe the horrors that have occurred there. 

Especially grating to supporters of Palestine is the retention of language supporting a “secure, democratic Jewish state” and upholding the “two-state solution” mantra. The next chance to seek change will come in 2028. Meanwhile, it’s both exasperating and reassuring that elected Democrats are not even required to read the platform, let alone follow it in their legislative or executive pursuits.

When the era of capitalism comes to an end, and it will, it will not be because we socialists engaged in utopian methods of organizing based on blind guesswork. Instead capitalism will be overthrown because we engaged with the theory of scientific socialism and converted our theory into practice. The struggle against capitalism has a long history. The benefit of this is our ability to learn from socialists of the past. It’s from these observations and analysis that I argue the path forward does not lie inside the Democratic Party. It lies in the creation of a workers’ party dedicated to the interests of the working class.

Third Party Viability

I don’t suspect many will disagree with the eventual necessity for a workers’ party, instead disagreeing with the current viability of one. There is currently no viable workers’ party, or third party of any sort, in the United States. However, it would be fallacious to then say third parties can never be viable in the US. Two examples of third parties breaking through the established two party system come to us from Latin American, Uruguay and Venezuela. Regardless of opinion on the actions taken by these third parties, their success serves as a positive indicator in support of future third party viability in our own country. 

The third party prospect is only further enhanced by the fact that more than half of all Americans are dissatisfied with both Democrats and Republicans. America’s own history shows us examples of third parties coming into power when a large enough gulf exists between goals of politicians and desires of voters. Some will argue American third parties are a thing of the past, that the period of possibility has ended. This line of thinking falls prey to the same fallacy committed by Francis Fukuyama when he said we are at the end of history. Today only seems like a finality because we have not seen what comes next. DSA’s slogan “a better world is possible” isn’t something we say because it feels good; it’s something we say because it is true, and it can only be achieved if we demand it.

Moving Democrats Left

The strategy of electing better Democrats, putting socialists in office, is often cited as the route by which socialists will be able to drag Democrats left. Recent victories of DSA-endorsed figures like Mayor Zohran Mamdani have renewed enthusiasm for this approach, but how has the Democratic Party changed for the better following the election of such candidates? Regarding Mamdani, the entire Democratic establishment organized itself to shut Mamdani out, most notably House and Senate minority leaders Hakim Jefferies and Chuck Schumer. This is reminiscent of how the Democrats organized internally to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the 2016 presidential nomination, or how they held a closed-door secret ballot to elect then 74 year old Gerry Connoly to the House Oversight Committee instead of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most popular Democrats in recent history. Maybe those candidates just weren’t socialist enough, maybe a strong socialist slate could make the changes we need. 

Luckily for us, this also happened recently. The Las Vegas DSA chapter won on a progressive slate in 2021. They received no communication from the Nevada State Democratic Party, no support, nothing except a vote from the state representatives to condemn the “horrors of socialism”.. We understand that individual action alone cannot overcome systemic injustices. Similarly, we should not expect individual personalities within the Democratic Party to be capable of completely changing the party’s direction.

The 2024 US presidential election is the most glaring example of the Democrats’ unwillingness to shift left. In the face of a second Trump term, which was correctly identified as a fascist movement and touted by the Democrats as the greatest threat American “democracy” has ever seen, how far did they move to the left to garner our support for this critical election? Not a single step. Instead of hosting a free and open primary, Democratic Party officials unilaterally selected Kamala Harris, the spineless, genocide-enabling, right wing establishment plant who threw trans people under the bus, only ever grew more unpopular the longer she remained in the public eye, and said the only way she would differ from Biden is by putting more Republicans in her cabinet. The Democrats have shown us time and time again that they would rather hand Republicans victory on a silver platter than move an inch to the left. It’s time we stop pretending we can build an effective socialist platform within the party.

Some point to the Tea Party’s success in moving the Republican Party further right as evidence of our potential ability to move the Democratic Party left through mass popular support, but a class analysis shows this is not as analogous as it may seem. The Republicans and Democrats are both bourgeois parties dedicated to the service of the ruling class. The Tea Party movement was also a bourgeois movement attempting to move the Republicans further right; the Republican Party was already racist, already chauvinist, already dedicated to increasing working class exploitation to benefit the capitalist class; the Tea Party simply wanted them to be more explicit and more extreme in these regards. The Democratic Party is also racist, also chauvinist, also dedicated to increasing working class exploitation to benefit the capitalist class. Any attempt to move them left is in direct opposition to their goals and to the class interests of those they serve. This is an exercise in opportunism, the false belief that working with capitalist interests will produce results favorable to the working class. History has demonstrated that any cooperation with the ruling class necessitates the working class must subjugate itself, as cooperation requires the continuation of class relations.

Minimizing harm, voting for the lesser evil

This is the primary argument for supporting the Democratic Party among leftists. However, evidence has shown this is not effective as a strategy. The general argument is that Democrats, however bad they may be, will be less harmful in office than Republicans. If people who would have voted Democrat instead vote third party, this takes votes from the Democrats and makes it more likely Republicans will win elections. Therefore, voting Democrat is the preferable option because it minimizes harm from politicians.

For my response, it’s important to reiterate that the Republicans and Democrats are both bourgeois parties, they both exist to serve the interests of the ruling class. The role elections play in our society can be analogized to instances of imperialism and US intervention. From the Revolutionary Communist Party’s publication, The Communist, we have this observation of imperialist action:

However, the horrors of imperialism are not due to bad people or bad policies. They flow from the class divisions endemic to capitalism, the market economy, and the nation-state. They cannot be understood in the abstract or done away with in isolation. Moreover, an analysis not rooted in class leads inevitably to class collaboration and illusions in the trap of lesser evilism.

As socialists who stand against imperialism, conversations regarding the recent indefensible aggression from the American capitalist class toward Venezuela and Iran has brought renewed discussions. We understand that no act of imperialism can be analyzed in isolation because they do not exist in isolation; they exist within a broader system of global exploitation wherein any success achieved by imperialist powers serves to bolster future interventions. Similarly, elections are not isolated events that happen every however-many years. Elections exist within the broader context of the political struggle. It is misguided to look only at the short term regarding harms stemming from elections.

The Democratic Party capitalizes on people’s tendency toward short term harm mitigation. We see this in the rhetoric they employ. Every new election is the most important election of our lifetime, the selling point for almost every Democrat is they’re not Republican. In some ways these arguments are true; every election we face is against a Republican Party farther right and more openly fascistic than the one before. What’s left out of Democratic messaging is that the Democrats are also farther right and more fascistic than before. Democrats who are called radicals today, people like Mamdani, AOC, Bernie, not too long ago would have been called mainstream progressives. Free buses, universal healthcare, higher taxes on the wealthy:  these were mainstream Democratic positions a few short decades ago. In many cases these policies that existed in the past have been repealed to the detriment of the people. The reason these ideas are considered radical now is because the Republican Party has been dragging our country further and further right, year after year, and the Democrats have been complicit. The trend of Republicans and Democrats moving further right every year will only continue in the years to come. We know the Democrats won’t change; they’ve made that very clear. Continuing the trend of minimizing harm in the short term will change nothing. The goal of socialists should not be to elect Democrats, it should not be to elect better Democrats; that’s the job of the Democratic Party. Our goal must be to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism, and that goal will not be achieved by voting for politicians in a bourgeois party.

Effect on Socialist Organizing

A foundational concept of socialism is that of dialectical materialism: no two forces can act on each other and come out unchanged. When analyzing the effects socialist organizing within the Democratic Party has on the party, we would be doing ourselves a disservice to not also analyze the effects the party has on socialist organizers and candidates.

Too often do I see self-identified leftists bending over backwards to defend candidates whose actions are very deserving of criticism. Two examples come to mind. Bernie Sanders has shown imperialist tendencies in his support for the bombing of Yugoslavia, Kosovo, and Libya under Clinton and Obama while condemning US withdrawal from Syria. AOC voted in favor of providing Iron Dome funding to Israel, freeing up their pocketbooks to continue the genocide in Palestine. These actions don’t undo the good they’ve done, but to say the good they’ve done ought to shield them from criticism would be ridiculous. We do not support socialist politicians for clout, we must not engage in politician worship as others do. Critical support for politicians must be just that, critical of the politician. To defend politicians or candidates when they act contrary to the socialist project is necessary to prevent ourselves from being co-opted and absorbed into the “kinder version” of the neoliberal movement. We learn through practice; if we practice defending concessions to capital then the only thing we learn will be how to concede to capital, leaving us unable to meet the revolutionary moment when it arises.

Conclusion

The Democratic Party is a dead end for the socialist project. We cannot expect to realign a bourgeois party to proletarian interests; we cannot allow the Democrat’s strategy of focusing on the short term to blind us to the long term results; and above all we cannot allow ourselves to believe this—the Democratic Party—is the best we can hope for. The process of building a working class party will be difficult; it will take time; but we can’t afford to continue in the status quo much longer. In working to build a workers’ party today we are making things easier for ourselves tomorrow. It’s regrettable that we have to start from almost nothing, but that’s no reason to avoid starting now. The best time to plant a tree was 40 years ago, but the second best time is today. 

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, and the same is true for all future societies. Our future will not be written by any ruling class or their parties. Our future will be formed by the will of the masses—by the proletarian class who possesses revolutionary potential—and we are not powerless in this formation because we are them.

by Kevin N

Sometime in my early twenties — way, way back in the early 2010s — for reasons I’m still not entirely sure about, I suddenly stopped being a nihilist apolitical punk who couldn’t be bothered with activism because he had more important things to drink. I was first radicalized around the issue of campaign finance reform, and got involved with a national organization called Wolf-PAC. I spent a few years lobbying Ohio’s state representatives regarding campaign finance laws — they were invariably bemused each time I walked into their offices with long hair and a patchy leather jacket. In spite of my ratty appearance, I did manage to personally convince a Republican State Representative to change his stance on campaign finance laws after a series of meetings at the Mentor Public Library, although he still wouldn’t sponsor our Wolf-PAC resolution for fear of political backlash. I learned a lot about political advocacy through that experience, but that’s another story.

At some point, I got an email from a group dedicated to campaign finance reform that called itself Democracy Spring. They were organizing a protest in DC, with the intention of having as many people as possible perform an act of civil disobedience by willingly getting arrested for protesting without a permit on the steps of the Capitol Building.

I was absolutely thrilled at the idea. I had romanticized 1960s images of crowds of protestors in my head, and they had convinced me that this was the sort of direct action that would affect real change (that was, indeed, the depth of my analysis). So I threw everything I had into the organization. After months of working with the Democracy Spring organizers in DC, I was able to organize a small contingent of Clevelanders to travel to DC by train and participate in the protest. All in all, there were some 1,300 people who were arrested on the first day of the protests, the largest number of arrests at the Capitol since the Vietnam Protests. More would be arrested in the week that followed.

I spent a week in DC protesting, and it was one of the most exciting weeks of my life. I marched, chanted, and commiserated with like-minded activists. I have a picture somewhere of me getting my hands zip-tied behind my back, but I have no idea where. Rosario Dawson and Cenk Uygur got arrested with us. One of my favorite political commentators at the time, Lawrence Lessig, spoke at the rally. Bernie Sanders gave us a shout out on social media. Cory Booker and John Lewis came out to speak with us and encouraged us to continue. Elizabeth Warren admonished the rest of the Senators for ignoring us during a speech she made on the Senate floor. I even made my first semi-viral Twitter post. It truly felt like the beginning of something important — I left DC feeling downright euphoric.

But that was it. Nothing changed.

Aside from CNN showing a single 30 second clip of the protest, no mainstream news media covered us. Someone at Vice wrote a piece on us, but nobody ever really took them seriously anyway. After it ended, nobody in the government ever referenced the protest again. I’m quite certain most of you reading this have never heard of the protest in the first place. It was like we had plowed the ocean.

After I got home, I was undeniably elated by the experience, but in the back of my mind I was still somewhat conflicted. It seemed like we hadn’t actually accomplished anything, despite all that effort.

Luckily, I learned from the organizers that there would be a coordinated follow-up effort: the country would be divided into smaller regions, and local organizers would recruit supporters (there was no formal membership process) by staging smaller protests at local political events. Then after two years of building support, we would return to the Capitol and stage a repeat of the original protest, but larger.

This was promising! Again, I threw everything into the effort. I drove to Columbus once a month to meet with Ohio’s organizers, and got another small contingent of Clevelanders to go to protests in an effort to build support for our nonpartisan campaign finance reform movement. 

Then Trump got elected.

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The Spring Dries Up

Suddenly, all of the emails from Democracy Spring stopped talking about campaign finance reform and were just focused on “resisting” Trump. Okay, that’s fine. But how? Are we still meeting in Columbus to coordinate efforts? No, those regional meetings around the country stopped pretty abruptly. Are we trying to organize another big protest in DC? No, the communications were just filled with vague calls to “Resist!” and unoriginal, unremarkable statements about the gravity and urgency of the political threat posed by Trump. Lacking any formal structures, the organizational movement in Ohio and around the country dissipated faster than it came together.

But emails from Democracy Spring’s leadership (the only remaining form of communication they sent out) kept coming. I wasn’t clear on what they were doing now, but I continued to read them since they had been such a big part of my life for nearly half a decade. On Trump’s inauguration day, I went to DC to protest — although, admittedly, I ended up disgusted and depressed by the whole spectacle and spent the day in the Holocaust Museum instead.

I touched base with some of the Democracy Spring organizers who were in DC as well. They said they had something big planned for the inauguration, and I was confused as to why there hadn’t been a more concerted effort to recruit people. Regardless, I hadn’t planned to get arrested again, so I declined to participate.

Later that day, I got this email:

The email went on to detail the efforts of “six brave democracy defenders” — a far cry from the 1,700 who joined them just two years prior — and they claimed it as a massive victory. In the weeks and months that followed, similar emails with subject lines like “Trump Disrupted!” and “Two Democracy Spring Leaders Arrested at Sit-In!” followed, each containing photos of the same handful of participants engaged in various innocuous acts of “resistance” — and typically accompanied by a request for donations. The emails eventually stopped.

The Democracy Spring organization (if you can call it that), once able to mobilize thousands of people across the country, had dissolved into a vanity project for its leadership clique. All it took was a single political crisis (Trump’s election, in this case), and the structureless network of dedicated activists from across the country fell apart into a harmless, toothless display of performative “Resist!”-ance.

I was devastated. I felt like I had totally wasted those years of my efforts with Democracy Spring. I dropped out of activism altogether and probably (definitely) started drinking too much. I got into activist journalism instead, and made a few locally-focused documentaries about homelessness that won some awards at some film festivals around Ohio. But I stopped engaging in direct political activism, for the most part, aside from attending one-off protests or local community-building events.

I’d occasionally talk with the organizers of these events, and when I asked them what their long-term strategy was, they would invariably offer vague, starry-eyed platitudes about “building the movement” and “Resist!”-ing without offering anything concrete. It was always too reminiscent of the empty rhetoric I heard from Democracy Spring’s leadership for me to buy into their passion again.

Luckily, I had also been a convert of Bernie Sanders in 2014, and canvassed for him in 2015. Exclusively thanks to him, I spent the following years reading and unlearning all of the misconceptions that I didn’t know I had held about the word “socialism” (on my own, since I still mostly liked to hang out with nihilist apolitical punks who all thought I was annoying for being “political” and reading). It took a long time! Anti-socialist propaganda dies hard. I’m still unlearning stuff. At some point in 2023, I saw a post made by an old college friend (shout-out Julie) about a DSA event and decided that I’d better attend if I were going to be calling myself a socialist. It was my socialist “put up or shut up” moment, if you will.

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Democracy In Action

In Cleveland’s DSA chapter, I found tons of committed members working together in an organization that was structured in its composition, serious and thoughtful about its rhetoric, deliberate about its strategy and tactics, intentional about political education, and focused on efforts that did not just consist of protests and petty acts of civil disobedience. But most importantly, it was democratic, directly accountable to its membership, and committed to building its members into leaders — instead of having them orbit around an insular group of self-proclaimed leaders who lead through force of personality alone.

The chapter’s model of organizing, as opposed to just mobilizing and advocacy, was nothing short of inspiring. According to what a given situation demanded, the organization’s goals were both long-term and short-term, widescoped and narrow, national and local, and with a calculated strategy to achieve all of them — with the right kind of deliberate and thorough organizing, of course. Most importantly, the chapter had a priority structure that allowed its membership to pivot and focus their limited capacity on issues as needed, so the organization wouldn’t crumble if the national political situation demanded a change of course.

In short, DSA was everything that Democracy Spring wasn’t.

I want to clarify that I don’t expect or even want you to be disillusioned by protesting. It was a real bummer of a process to go through, and I’m happy for folks who don’t feel the same way I do. I’m also not trying to use my personal experience as a demand for deference — although if you’re someone who is shallow enough to grant political weight to this sort of activist credentialism, feel free to defer to me if you want to — nor am I trying to say “I know better than you, so you should think like I do.” My intentions are solely to give an example that illustrates the clear limitations of protest-based activism. The trend I laid out in my personal story about one protest movement is observable in varying degrees across all protest movements.

Protesting is an acceptable way to “fight back” precisely because the ruling class thinks protesting is ineffective. And without a deep commitment to organizing, it is. The word “demonstration” is suggestive of the performative nature of protests — which there is a time and place for! But protests are by no means the most important tool in our toolkit. Without clear follow-up, without a commitment to building ourselves and each other into leaders, without a plan to build working-class power — in other words, without organizing — protests achieve little beyond making the attendees feel good about themselves. And to amplify the social standing of the self-proclaimed “leaders” in liberal activist circles, of course.

(By the way, the French word for “protest” is “manifestation,” which is more befitting of their culture of resistance; the average French protest would be called a “riot” if it took place in this country. But that’s a separate discussion.)

Again and again, when I see a political crisis emerge in this country, I watch the liberal activist groups in this city circle their wagons and start mobilizing for protests. I see the same people attending every time. And when the crisis passes, the mobilizing stops. There’s good work being done by these liberal activists, for sure. But every time a new issue emerges as the crisis du jour, the same pattern plays out: new coalitions with catchy names (but composed of the same people), emergency protests, vague calls to “Get organized! Join an org!”, and then — once public perceptions of “crisis” and “urgency” have faded — nothing. That sort of Sisyphean ambulance chasing is not organizing for change — it’s just performative “Resist!”-ance.

I often hear that we have a bad reputation among liberal activists in this city. Quite frankly, I don’t care. I’m not really all that impressed with those groups. That’s why I’m in DSA instead. Our DSA chapter is one of the largest, most coordinated, and most capable independent political organizations in the city, so let’s act like it. Liberal activist groups should be more worried about what we think of them. There’s nothing to be gained from deferring to liberal activists and giving undeserved weight to their criticisms of our chapter. We should absolutely work with them where our interests align, but at the end of the day, they need us more than we need them. After all, they wouldn’t be so desperate for us to endorse, support, and attend their events if that weren’t the case. Let them work for our approval instead.

I’m in DSA because I think it’s the organization best poised to stage a serious, coordinated, and multifronted resistance against capitalism and fascist reaction — not because it just happens to be “one progressive org out of many” that I happened to join. But if we treat this organization like it’s just one of many generally progressive orgs, it definitely will be.

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Organizing, Not Just Mobilizing

I have nothing against attending protests. I attend and will continue to attend protests. People should attend protests; they’re cathartic, empowering, and publicly visible. But we have to recognize the strategic limits to endorsing and attending protests just for the sake of endorsing and attending protests. And if we do endorse a protest, we need to be deliberate about turnout.

The March 28th No Kings protest is coming up and there are questions over whether we should endorse it or not. Quite frankly, it doesn’t matter. Unless we’re doing something tangible at it like collecting signatures for our Gender Freedom Policy Petition, simply showing up, as good as that might feel, will accomplish as little as any other protest.

If we endorse a protest and only about 10 people show up, that misrepresents the actual power in this chapter and perceptibly brings our nearly 700 member org to the level of the myriad small, disorganized activist groups in the city. So, there is a potential cost associated with the optics of being present at these protests as well as the potential benefits to which folks are appealing; but those benefits only manifest if our turnout is strong.

Protesting alone isn’t going to stop Trump, Zionism, or ICE — it won’t stop any form of fascist reaction, for that matter. What will stop these things is organizing people into DSA and building it into a formidable political force that can leverage its power from below. As long as we’re not making a concerted effort at doing the latter, the former holds.

On a positive note of what can be possible at protests: at the last anti-ICE protest I attended, I connected a group of student activists at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) with the state Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) coordinator, and they’re currently organizing a new YDSA chapter on Case’s campus. This, in my opinion, is the sort of thing we should be aiming to do at protests.

Without organizing — and I mean organizing — mobilizing attendees for protests has an inherently limited impact. I think many comrades think “organizing” simply consists of getting people to show up at events, direct actions, canvasses, and training sessions; but that’s only mobilizing, not organizing. Without a deep commitment to developing one another into leaders both inside and outside the organization, we are not organizing.

Internal organizing is just as crucial a part of “the work” as our outward-focused efforts in the community. Without either, we stagnate.

To be clear, nothing should stop us from attending, endorsing, or supporting protests when they’re aligned with our values, but we need to be deliberate and calculated about what we’re doing when we go. Otherwise we’re just chasing the tail of the liberal activist movement — and I don’t know about you, but I joined DSA because I found that movement lacking.

We can attend these protests, demonstrate resistance to ICE and fascism, participate in direct actions/responses, and be serious about organizing people into DSA at these events — all at the same time. As one of our comrades likes to say, “We can walk and chew gum at the same time.” Another likes to say “We just have to do it.”  Again, I fully agree — we just have to be deliberate and strategic about it. The urgency of the situation demands nothing less than a principled and coordinated organizational effort, not just blind faith that “Resist!”-ing at protests is enough to change anything on its own.

Solidarity, comrades.

The post Why Protesting Isn’t Enough: The Limits of Protest Activism appeared first on Democratic Socialists of America.

Recently, Central Indiana DSA (CINDSA) has received inquiries about our relationship with the Socialist Party of Indiana. Central Indiana DSA is a big-tent organization with members who hold a broad […]

At our March 2026 chapter meeting, SV DSA member Stacey delivered a statement of our chapter’s position on the allegations against Cesar Chavez. The recording is available on Instagram.

The Labor Working Group’s Statement in response to the Cesar Chavez investigation results:

1. SV DSA stands in solidarity with the women who were abused by Mr. Chavez.
2. SV DSA recognizes and applauds these women’s strength and courage to come forward as well as their resilience living with this for 60+ years.
3. SV DSA stands in solidarity with the United Farm Workers movement and state that this news absolutely does not define the movement in the past or present. SV DSA acknowledges the damage and grief this news will cause within the Latino community.
4. SV DSA condemns sexual assault, harassment, and abuse in all forms.
5. SV DSA stands with women, children, and other vulnerable groups who need protection from abuse of power.

This news will affect each person differently, for some it is the loss of a heroic figure regardless of the accuracy of that description.

This movement historically provided an opportunity for migrant workers and their families to fight for rights and against exploitation.

A movement should not be defined by its leader, too much power for one person without much oversight.

This gives us an opportunity to become more aware of how power imbalances can lead to horrible abuses.

It is important for us to keep this in mind when we are working in our communities and with our partners to promote safety, respect, and dignity for all people.

The post SV DSA Statement on Cesar Chavez Investigation Results appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.

The Las Vegas Democratic Socialists of America (LVDSA) recently responded to a community crisis at Hebron apartments in Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. Local organizers were outraged to learn that Hebron’s vulnerable residents had been abruptly served eviction notices despite having made timely rent payments. Hebron, a once beautiful neighborhood dedicated to the mission of helping those of low income find affordable housing, formerly adorned with local art and flourishing community garden, has turned into a tragedy as many Las Vegas tenants are looking to their friends and community members asking a vital question: “What is going to happen to us?”

Hebron, “a 124-unit complex”, was originally owned by the nonprofit Caridad to support those who are disabled, unhoused, and unable to work. The complex originally received funding via Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project Initiative in 2015, prior to the CEO’s unexpected passing, since facing serious financial concerns that led to the nonprofit disbanding its efforts. Hebron apartments are currently managed by Advanced Management Group (AMG) under the supervision of YSBM Investments, and, in our community’s opinion, their management of Hebron has been “inhumane and cruel” toward this vulnerable population. During LVDSA’s involvement, tenants have shared their stories, showing that property management is clearly attempting to push them out of their homes by any means necessary. They have posted illegal eviction notices without following proper due process, locked tenants out of kitchens and laundry services, and removed the nonprofit and community services at the property that were attempting to help tenants facing financial insecurity. Members of our Mutual Aid campaign have been on the property, attempting to provide groceries and community resources, only to be regularly asked to leave by security despite the community’s desperation for food, water, and essential toiletries. Some tenants remarked that the food our Mutual Aid program has provided was their, “only regular access to food.” Most tenants are disabled, without income or transportation, and without the support of the former nonprofit. Many tenants shared with LVDSA that the whole process was “humiliating” and “without dignity”, remarking that their home at Hebron was “the only one (they) knew” and that they had been subjected to “unsafe and unsanitary conditions,” including “going weeks at a time without toilet paper.”

Advanced Management Group recently made a statement to local news in an attempt to maintain positive PR stating that their “priority is stability and support” and that they are “…actively working with local assistance programs, including Help of Southern Nevada…(as they) also continue to provide on-site resources, including a fully stocked pantry that tenants may access as needed,” claiming that “residents who are able to meet standard rental requirements will have the opportunity to remain at the property.”

However, LVDSA has personally been following up with those affected in the past few weeks, and a lot of these claims from management appear highly exaggerated. Help of Southern Nevada, for instance, can only accept clients who are actively living on the street and cannot intervene in individual cases of eviction due to their personal capacity. AMG is also raising the rental requirements to remain at the property. Base rent that was closer to $500 a month per room at Hebron is being swiftly raised to over $800 despite most tenants qualifying for SNAP, placing their economic position to ~130% under the poverty line. Another resident shared with us that the food pantry mentioned “was never restocked” and that the “resources” they were given were simply instructions to The Las Vegas Courtyard, while an essential area of shade for the unhoused, is the socio-economic equivalent of a multiple million dollar company saying to a disabled vet, “We’re so sorry about your situation, but we are buying your home and if you cannot afford it please do go sleep outside and best of luck.” 

We are deeply concerned about what happens to the tenants of Hebron if nothing changes. Many tenants shared with us that they are severely disabled, and many are waiting over a year for their Social Security benefit applications to be reviewed. In the meantime, they have no income and are unable to work; many are in need of mobility aids, essential medical devices like oxygen tanks, and expensive medications. Without regular housing, they will likely be completely unable to survive on the street. Most tenants are unable to afford bus passes or walk long distances to reach a shelter at night. Summer is around the corner, and brutal heat waves are already hitting the valley. Extreme desert weather is especially hard on those living on the streets.

Our current economic system not only refuses to hold this kind of systemic genocide of the unhoused and low income accountable, but enables it. This is another situation where, if you are rich enough, lucky enough, and privileged enough, you get to survive, and if you’re not, the elites will take advantage of the opportunity to pinch every last dollar from you until you face death on the street. While this ideology is bleak, I urge you, to paraphrase Timothy Synder’s manual on resisting tyranny-do not look away. Do not look away at the signs of hate in the world that you cannot bear to watch, instead face them, do not allow them to be normal and resist, resist, resist.

The beauty in tragedy like this is the potential for the community to come together and make change. We can do something by getting involved, and we invite you to do the same. Our chapter recently proposed a petition that granted temporary rental assistance to those struggling at Hebron, and we are not finished. Our Mutual Aid campaign is working tirelessly to organize meals, distribute water and hygiene supplies, raise funds to support the tenants, and offer a listening ear to those in need. We will continue to write and share about this issue. Please show the tenants of Hebron that we have not forgotten about them. Below is a list of ways to get involved, make a difference, and send the message: We win together, we cry together but at least we know we’re together. 

Please get involved today by visiting: https://lvdsa.org/working-group/mutual-aid/ 

 

April 5th, 2026 Update: LVDSA received word from our Mutual Aid Campaign that we were able to coordinate rental assistance and replacement housing for almost every resident left in Hebron Apartments in addition to groceries and hygiene kits. While the community itself  may be closing, we are incredibly proud of the response by our community, our organizers and every person who was able to respond to this crisis. Let this be an inspiration that a better world is possible when we respond to the call to action!

 

River T.F is a local mental health social worker and activist within the community

 

Sources

Biswas, Akash. 2025. “SNAP Eligibility Criteria 2026: Income Limits & How to Qualify.” Snap Calculator. November 15, 2025. https://snapbenefitcalculator.com/snap-eligibility/.

Carrillo, Jhovani. 2026. “Tenants in Limbo after Nonprofit Operating Las Vegas Low-Income Apartment Complex Is Evicted.” Channel 13 Las Vegas News KTNV. February 26, 2026. https://www.ktnv.com/news/tenants-in-limbo-after-nonprofit-operating-las-vegas-low-income-apartment-complex-is-evicted.

City of Las Vegas. 2026. “Homeless Services.” Www.lasvegasnevada.gov. March 28, 2026. https://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/Residents/Resident-Services/Homeless-Services.

HSNV. 2026. “‘See If You Qualify.’” Help of Southern Nevada. March 24, 2026. https://www.helpsonv.org/.

King, James. 2026. “Hebron Residents Fear Eviction, Uncertainty as Fallout from Management Change Continues.” KSNV. March 3, 2026. https://news3lv.com/news/local/hebron-residents-fear-eviction-uncertainty-as-fallout-from-management-change-continues.

Ohio State. 2026. “Caseworkers: Overworked and on the Decline | EPIC.” U.osu.edu. March 24, 2026. https://u.osu.edu/epic/2020/12/07/caseworkers-overworked-and-on-the-decline/.

Shelley, Berkely. 2026. “Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (ACFR) Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2026 Budget.” Lasvegasnevada.gov. LVNV. https://files.lasvegasnevada.gov/finance/2026_Fiscal_Year/CLV-FY2026_Final_Budget.pdf.

Snyder, Timothy. 2021. ON TYRANNY GRAPHIC EDITION : Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. S.L.: Ten Speed.

Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority. 2026. “Open Section 8 Waiting Lists in Las Vegas, Nevada.” Affordablehousingonline.com. 2026. https://affordablehousingonline.com/open-section-8-waiting-lists/Nevada/Las-Vegas.

T.F, River. 2026. “Discussions with Residents.” In person interviews, March 20, 2026.

Torres-Cortez, Ricardo. 2026. “Officials Rush to Rescue Las Vegas Tenants from Sudden Rent Hikes, Evictions.” Las Vegas Review-Journal. March 21, 2026. https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/las-vegas-and-clark-county-officials-rush-to-rescue-hebron-tenants-from-sudden-rent-hikes-evictions-3727689/.

Urban Institute. 2017. “Public Welfare Expenditures.” Urban Institute. October 20, 2017. https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/public-welfare-expenditures.

Labor activists are front and center in today’s fight against ICE and for the dignity and rights of immigrants and workers of color. 

The post Hate injustice? Join the labor movement.  appeared first on EWOC.

Atlanta DSA Interest Meeting Held in Lawrenceville

In July of 2024, the metro-Atlanta county of Gwinnett officially became the second county in the state of Georgia to cross the mark of one million residents, behind only Fulton County, home to Atlanta itself. This growing population indicates that Gwinnett needs an Atlanta DSA branch of its own to promote socialism and to act as a vehicle for the voice of Gwinnett’s working class in metro Atlanta’s political sphere. Thus, on the afternoon of Sunday, March 7^th, 2026, Atlanta DSA organizers, with the help of Georgia Gwinnett College’s YDSA (GGC-YDSA), held a Gwinnett branch interest meeting, which was attended by well over 60 people at GGC. A petition to formalize a Gwinnett branch has been underway since.

The meeting began with attendees sharing what drew their interest in the DSA and a few common sentiments rang throughout the 60+ gathered. Some of those sentiments included healthcare costs, taking political action for Palestinian liberation, wanting to act against growing right-wing power, and making life affordable in Gwinnett. Another common sentiment was that of a previous desire to be involved with Atlanta DSA, but distance to the city made that desire difficult to actualize.

Following introductions, the meeting changed gears to explaining the DSA structure to attendees. Much of the emphasis was put on the DSA’s nonprofit, volunteer-run system and how it functions bottom-up rather than top-down, as is the status quo for political organizations in this country. The meeting leaders also highlighted the DSA’s electoral strategies, with focusing on grassroots level matters, as exemplified by the recent successes of Kelsea Bond and Gabriel Sanchez in the state of Georgia. Following that, information about Atlanta DSA’s different committees (labor, political education, electoral, etc.) and identity-based sections (Afrosocialists and socialists of color, feminist socialists) was shared with the attendees.

As the meeting came to its conclusion, the group discussed how DSA works with other working-class organizations in the Atlanta area to advocate for the improvement of working class life, emphasizing DSA’s collaborative structure, especially during this period of right-wing fascism attacking the working class and the country’s minorities. Finally, at the meeting’s end, the petition to start a Gwinnett branch of the Atlanta DSA was introduced.

I spoke to two members of GGC’s YDSA leadership, co-chair Josue EC and membership chair Hannah B, who both worked to host the Gwinnett interest meeting. Josue worked to arrange the meeting location, design the flier, and to promote the meeting on the GGC campus and through social media. When asked about what he hopes to see happen through a Gwinnett branch of Atlanta DSA, he expressed that he feels that the current system of elitist American politics pushes members of the working class away from engaging politically. Thus, through a Gwinnett branch of ATLDSA, he hopes to energize leftists across the county to become politically engaged and bring about positive change in the lives of Gwinnett’s working class. Hannah B, who also helped in organizing the interest meeting, spoke about how she hopes a Gwinnett branch will work to bring socialism locally to Gwinnett, not just limited to the city of Atlanta. One specific goal she she shared is for a Gwinnett branch to push for low cost/free public transportation in Gwinnett, which would include the expansion of MARTA. 

The meeting had a very positive and optimistic outlook to it, as the people of Gwinnett are hungry for real, meaningful change and are excited to engage with DSA to bring about such change. The people of Gwinnett are hopeful that in the face of right-wing fascism and elitist politics, a future Gwinnett branch of ATLDSA will advocate for immigrant rights, affordable housing, free healthcare, and local support for Gwinnett’s working class.

May the future of the DSA in Atlanta be prosperous and may the people of Gwinnett carry their hope towards a future of well-being, safety, and health.

The post Gwinnett Begins Organizing! appeared first on Red Clay Comrade.

Join DSA Ventura County’s Labor Working Group on zoom to discuss recent labor struggles in our communities, from Starbucks Workers United’s indefinite strike, to the new contract our County employees won by threatening to strike, to the movement for an arms embargo by Labor for Palestine, and the calls for a general strike by May Day 2028. Please, bring other ideas, campaigns, and your own workplace experiences. An agenda will be posted on slack soon. You will receive the zoom link shortly after completing RSVP.

Building the resilience to productively work through conflict is one of our most important tasks in building DSA into a real party – one that many leftist organizations struggle with. Without a healthy democratic culture and structure, political disagreements metastasize and become intertwined with personal grievances, a toxic cocktail that can boil over and implode chapters (including our own in 2022-23).

Selecting leadership can require navigating divides within a chapter that may not always be entirely reconcilable. Leaders have to be able to build some level of ideological or strategic unity to collectively execute a shared direction for the chapter, or risk gridlock and inertia that blunts our organizing momentum. On the other hand, operating too hegemonically risks alienating or marginalizing others within the chapter to a degree where they feel their only recourse is to leave, which, for an organization like DSA which prides itself on its big tent politics, would be robbing us of one of our greatest strengths.

There’s no formulaic approach for striking the right balance here. It requires rigorous and frequent analysis of the current conditions surrounding the organization (i.e. a muscle that needs to be regularly exercised), being structurally flexible enough to meet those changing conditions, and strong leaders capable of facilitating those tasks and meeting the moment.

In 2023, we stepped up as leaders in a disorganized, demobilized chapter lacking cohesion and stretched across siloed working groups. Our analysis then was that the primary task was to re-establish a healthy chapter culture and organizing practice. We emphasized general meetings as a social and political hub for the chapter and built consensus with leaders across the chapter for a collective campaign, with the mindset that the politics of the campaign was secondary to building a shared democratic muscle where the chapter collectively executed and debriefed this campaign together. 

We believe this approach was generally vindicated by the growth and maturation of the chapter over 2024-25. That trajectory has not changed since, and we’re now taking on projects larger than ever before. Some of the challenges we’re working through or likely to hit in the coming years are new, others are familiar territory for veteran DSA organizers – maintaining political cohesion with so many chapter projects without stifling new organizing, the presence of more politically developed and organized factions within the chapter, etc. 

Sustaining our social practice and chapter culture is still a priority (and mostly outside the scope of resolutionizing), but we now believe structural changes to our leadership election process are also needed to better facilitate this over the next few years, as Madison Area DSA becomes a chapter over 1000 members strong and we reckon with how to most effectively wield that growing power at the city and state level. From observing how larger chapters have already been wrestling with these questions, we want to tackle these changes proactively rather than reactively.

In that context, we’re bringing this proposal to the 2026 Chapter Convention to change how we elect executive committee officers from row elections for single seats to at-large elections. Here’s a brief summary of the actual changes in our proposal, followed by additional context and rationale for why we’re motivating this.

• The executive committee this year will prioritize building out committees to delegate more of their current administrative work (e.g. budgeting, general meeting coordination) where appropriate..
• Starting in 2027, the five non co-chair officer positions on the Executive Committee are elected at-large from a single pool of candidates, rather than by individual election for each position. The newly elected executive committee will vote on their officer roles after the chapter election. 
• Exec elections will be required to use Single Transferable Vote, a ranked-choice voting system that preserves proportional representation.
• The Administrator position shall be renamed to Secretary, in line with other chapters.
• Provisions where branches automatically receive an additional voting representative on Exec shall be removed.

What does the executive committee do?

In order to understand how these changes will affect the composition of Exec, we need to discuss what the executive committee actually does.

The bylaws (specifically Articles V and VI) give a brief overview of what Exec’s basic scope entails, as well as the duties of each officer. While that description is not inaccurate, it doesn’t capture the full scope of leadership responsibilities, and the influence they have on the political direction of the chapter as a whole.

Individual exec members have additional administrative and political leadership duties beyond the scope of the bylaws, including tasks like liaising with working groups, committees, and other chapters; adjudicating grievances and conflict; and developing new leaders to replace them. Political leadership here is not limited to ideological positions, but encompasses other dimensions of organizing leadership such as how they show up in the chapter’s internal political life, organize others to accomplish projects, and model skills like delegation.

While the chapter may vote to take specific actions or direct broad strategy, it is often Exec that is tasked with implementing that broad mandate (or steering other chapter bodies in doing so).

Exec has wide latitude in how to prioritize these decisions, strategizing and implementing (which can have significant political consequences in terms of what sort of infrastructure or power that builds for the chapter long-term), how much outreach is performed to membership or coalition partners, which chapter bodies are brought into planning, etc.

Exec also plays a key advisory role for the chapter, and has been a primary force for bringing proposals to the general membership. Unlike other chapter bodies though, Exec has authority to define the terms of discussion to general membership that can potentially tip the scales, deciding such things as what items (such as proposals, resolutions, or bylaw amendments) are agendized, how much time they are given, what the format of discussion looks like (alongside the decisions of the meeting chair), and some hand in the degree of announcement given to the general membership prior to the meeting. Exec also is empowered to make some political decisions on behalf of the chapter between general membership meetings. 

All of the above can in theory be overwritten by a vote of the general membership, but this is a right that often goes uninvoked. In the past few years, we can recall very few motions brought forward by Exec (as a whole body, not individual members) that have failed to get approval by the general membership. While there are other factors such as pre-selection of motions for ones that are most likely to pass when brought to the chapter, having a good understanding of the collective political vision of the chapter, and being personally developed enough to write and present a winning proposal, the powers of the chapter’s highest offices does confer potential to put an often unintended thumb on the scale. 

If the executive committee is tasked with the responsibility of steering the chapter and executing its will, then that committee should be broadly representative of the chapter’s collective will and political currents, which often form loose collections or tendencies. “Factions” is the most useful term for speaking to these distinct collections of members.

What is factionalism, and why are we engaging with it?

Factionalism is a bit of a dirty word, especially in the context of liberal democratic forms. However, factions are any collectivity of our membership that are bound by common goals, generally directed towards internal (within DSA) organizing ends. If you have ever spoken to other members in favor of or against a contentious motion prior to a meeting with the intent of building support or identifying opponents, then you have engaged in a sort of factionalism. 

Most internal organizing that meets some level of opposition can be described in factional terms, though such factions are usually short-term. There is a natural tendency to gravitate towards others within the chapter who share similar vision, which can take many forms: a group chat, an affinity for specific chapter projects, or perhaps something more formal like coalescing around an ideological caucus.

This is a normal, generally healthy expression of political conflict, and addressing those conflicts productively is in part how we resolve the contradictions inherent to a big-tent organization like DSA. A lack of such conflict might indicate a failure to engage in impactful political action, preserving the big-tent at the expense of building/wielding power, or that the membership has consolidated around a singular, all-encompassing political vision, collapsing the big-tent; something that our organization in its current form would be unlikely to structurally survive.

Regardless of whether such a conflict is acknowledged or not, factionalism is a reality that is already present within the chapter, has been for some time, and will continue to evolve as we grow. Rather than bury our heads in the sand, it is important that we address the potential pitfalls of factional conflicts before they can grow to proportions with dire organizational consequences (splits being the primary concern).

As our chapter grows, questions and disagreements on political strategy will have greater stakes, which increases the pressure and incentives for members to make tradeoffs that might secure short-term political victories at the expense of our long-term organizational health.

Returning to the substance of our proposed bylaw amendment, one way we can place guardrails is by making Exec more likely to proportionally represent the range of political currents within the chapter. Our current election system, while effective in previous stages of chapter development, is less well-equipped for our potential future trajectory. We believe that changing to an at-large voting system places some guardrails against factional excesses, and also allows membership to better consider candidates on the basis of their leadership rather than just for the specific position they’re contesting. In the event our chapter doesn’t develop beyond our current level, we think it unlikely to have a major impact on our elections as currently run.

One weakness of row elections is a reduced ability for membership to weigh in on the collective makeup of the body, instead having each race be a separate first-past-the-post election. This can result in a leadership body not representative of the chapter, and organized political pluralities or slim majorities able to win disproportionate voting power on our highest leadership body. An example of this is in New York City, where the two largest political factions won about ⅔ of members’ votes in last year’s convention delegate elections (using STV), but represent almost 100% of seats on the chapter’s steering committee, since candidates from those factions can win a simple majority in almost every row election. This is not inherently a bad thing on its own and not an indictment of the chapter’s other successes, but we believe it presents real contradictions and limitations for NYC’s internal democracy. 

Structural changes on their own are of course insufficient for resolving political and organizing problems. Our chapter has had the same row election system for years and vastly different political cultures over that time; some chapters with steering committees elected at-large have a healthy internal democracy, but others do not. 

As such, our other priority with this bylaw amendment is to shift the focus of elections towards that of electing the strongest leaders overall. This is increasingly important as the scope of officer roles exceeds the ability for all tasks to be completed by any single person, before considering other leadership responsibilities on Exec’s plate.

Over the last three years we’ve made major strides in our membership work, going from most tasks being handled directly by membership coordinator (or other exec members), to a standing committee led and overseen by the membership coordinator. This has also helped create a leadership development pipeline where people running for membership coordinator have been able to build more direct experience before running. To a lesser extent we’ve seen similar success with our Communications Committee. Regardless of the vote on the larger proposal, we believe it should be a priority for Exec to set up similar structures to delegate other areas of work, e.g. budget and finance, general meeting coordination, and other common administrative processes.

To make this a reality, we want to set the expectation that organizing leadership is the primary requirement for these roles, something we’ve already emphasized to candidates for Exec this year. We want the chapter to elect the members best suited to lead those roles, recruit other members and delegate work as necessary, and believe at-large elections allow us to more effectively consider that long-term.

Baseline technical skills are still needed for certain roles, but in the past few years many officers have come in without extensive prior experience and develop these skills after taking office. Our long-term growth requires elected officers understanding their role as overseeing particular areas of work rather than being solely responsible, and have resources and guidance built in to ensure that future terms of the executive committee are able to take on those roles from all levels of baseline experience. 

This, alongside the expansion of committees aiding individual offices in performing many of their expected tasks, including more technical roles like treasurer, leaves us confident that we can continue what has already been standard practice of electing officers whose primary qualifications are in more generalized organizing skills. This is in line with the trend away from the main historic selection criteria for Exec, which has been based entirely on whoever has been willing to run, resulting in a 4-year stretch of conventions (2021-2024) with uncontested elections. 

We’ve heard concerns that running in an election whose technical responsibilities are not definitively listed at the time of the election might discourage members from running, and that the post-election sorting of roles is too much of an open question. In our experience, this sorting process is already happening, but prior to elections – members considering running for Exec typically talk with others informally beforehand and we see at least 1-2 cases a year of people adjusting what positions they run for based on what others are running for.

The natural expectation written into this bylaw amendment is that most people will likely join exec with a “preferred” role they might want to pursue, with mechanisms to resolve irreconcilable conflicts between exec members over the same desired role, opportunities for exec members to rotate roles as needed (though we don’t expect this to need to be invoked often), and the option for exec members to resign and trigger a new election if they find an assigned technical role to be personally intolerable. If the capacity to fill these roles exists in the current moment, it will continue to exist under the new structure. In all, it formalizes, democratizes, and makes transparent processes that are already happening.

Conclusion

It is important that, when a DSA chapter is altering its bylaws, that such changes are not intended to be overly prescriptive. The goal should not be to fundamentally change the nature of our organizing work through the changes, but to more subtly adjust existing practices to fit the current conditions. Additionally, changes to bylaws should be utilized to give formal recognition to informal practices that have proven useful for the body at large, designating a mandate that such practices continue or simply acknowledging that said practices are unlikely to cease given current organizing needs. This philosophy is reflected in another proposal we authored to rewrite our bylaws with guardrails against that process being used as a vehicle for major political changes, and it informs our thinking behind this proposal as well.

We believe this change helps codify leadership expectations we’ve contributed to shifting the last few years. And though we don’t expect it to have a significant immediate impact, we believe it sets up long-term scaffolding whose positive effects will be increasingly felt as we continue to grow and tackle new challenges in the coming years.