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2023 has been a great year for political education, with no shortage of opportunities for the socialist-curious to find their place in the movement and for socialist organizers to advance working class power. Now with 2023 coming to an end, we in DSA’s National Political Education Committee wanted to take a moment to reflect on our organizing efforts over the last year.

Events and Speakers

This year, we hosted six panels viewed by over 3500 people, covering party building, the far right, imperialism, policing, Reconstruction, and Palestine. To hear from speakers like Luisa Martinez (@LuisaKnuckles), Gerald Horne, Sumaya Awad (@sumayaawad), and more. Check out our Events Catalogue.

We also launched our Speakers Bureau, an ever-expanding resource connecting DSA chapters with experienced organizers and subject experts to support political education at the local level across the country.

Speakers Bureau

Chapter Support

In 2023, we organized 13 trainings over seven topics, from organizing socialist night schools to child watch, from public speaking to Palestine, reaching over 750 people with hands-on experience and resources.

We also supported dozens of DSA chapters through our mentorship program, connecting experienced organizers with those looking to start up or improve their local political education efforts.

As one of the most successful areas of NPEC’s organizing, we look forward to continuing to develop and expand our role in making DSA chapters powerhouses of political education.

Curriculum

Earlier this year, we launched our new curriculum site for DSA chapters to use in their Socialist Night School events, featuring three introductory modules (What is Capitalism?, What is Socialism?, and Why the Working Class?) and a new deeper dive module (The US Labor Movement and the Socialist Role).

We also held our first-ever Foundational Political Education series, a three-part event based on our introductory modules, featuring guest speakers Sanjiv Gupta, Meagan Day, and Eric Blanc.

Communications

Our monthly Red Letter email continues to keep subscribers apprised of upcoming NPEC events, and helps direct them to educational materials on our website. In 2023, our email list grew by over one hundred to 4,912 subscribers. We have also added a public facing Google Calendar for events that people can follow.

When it comes to social media, we have remained most active on X, formerly Twitter, with 2,122 followers, reflecting a steady growth over the year. On Facebook we keep up a modest presence of 314 followers, regularly advertising committee events. And most notably, we began an account on the increasingly popular Bluesky platform, which we treat much like X with event updates.

Class Podcast

Our committee podcast launched in late 2022 and has since seen explosive growth, with a 400% increase in listenership, 21 episodes released, and 10,000+ listens in the last year alone, putting it in the top 10% of podcasts.

This year’s episodes supplemented our curriculum modules like Why the Working Class?, explained DSA’s internal democracy at its 2023 Convention, and explored topics like labor organizing with guest speakers from @EWOC and In These Times’ @MilesKLassin.

Convention Season

NPEC and the NPC worked together to bring DSA to Haymarket Books’ Socialism 2023 Conference in Chicago, featuring seven panels on labor organizing, bodily autonomy, housing, ecosocialism, and more. You can see a full list of our panels here, and audio recordings from the conference here.

Looking Forward to 2024

All of the organizing we’ve undertaken this year is part of the continued growth and development of the socialist movement, but there’s much more work to be done. We hope to make 2024 an even bigger year for political education, building up class consciousness and a body of organizers with the ample knowledge and incisive critiques necessary for realizing the socialist horizon.

In the words of Marx, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” And together, we’ll do just that. So don’t wait, and join DSA today.

by Travis Wayne

I’ve co-chaired the North Carolina Triangle chapter of DSA for the past year. This report attempts to follow the example of our national leaders on the 2023-2025 National Political Committee issuing transparent write-ups on their political perspectives and rundowns of national meetings. This report is also a collective self-criticism and a historical record about this particular moment of DSA as experienced in one of the largest chapters in the South.

I interviewed a couple dozen core members before writing this up and coded members’ perspectives into thematic categories. Out of that process came four masses – mass meetings, mass organization, mass work, and mass movement-building. These are the four metrics that seem to be most useful for assessing our chapter right now.

Mass Meetings

In 2023, we more than doubled participation in chapter decision-making.

Average general meeting attendance went up by ~122%. Attendance was static at  about 30 attendees for two consecutive general meetings at the end of 2022; one year later, this month’s general meeting was attended by 48 members. That means general meetings have experienced a 60% increase in participation. As to why, some comrades mentioned that more business is getting done and more useful information is getting conveyed at meetings. That might be part of the reason, but data shows the dramatic increase in participation coincided with when we started organizing mass meetings in addition to general meetings. We consistently turn out ~85 members to mass meetings, almost triple (183%) the previous average attendance. The total (122%) increase is calculated based on an average of general and mass meeting attendance. 

Mass meetings come from two influences: compromise with a local convention and political education on organizing methods from movement ancestors. There was no consensus or timeline that worked for a local convention, so instead we opted for a mass meeting where we aimed to assemble a much broader number of active members directly into democratic decision-making. Our political education working group discussed mass meetings organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) a few months before we began organizing mass meetings. One member leader in the political education working group slammed a fist on the table and exclaimed that we “don’t know how to organize a mass meeting.” So, we figured it out. One core member connected our mass meeting organizing with the communist lineage: William Z. Foster’s classic Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry - recently studied by Red Star – covers mass meetings extensively. 

Comrade Foster wrote that mass meetings are so fundamental to organization that the culmination of organizing itself should be the mass meeting since “one good mass meeting is better than two dozen indifferent ones.” In mass meetings, far more people participate directly in democratic decision-making as a broad collective, meaning more mass participation that gives more people more chances to become protagonists of their own lives as active and core members of the chapter. 

Mass meetings require legwork. Mass meetings have to be “thoroughly prepared, and all the batteries of publicity, organizers, etc. should be coordinated.” That means aggressive internal organizing. We focus heavily on turnout. We doubled the amount of Spoke campaigns recruiting attendees, up to four phonebanks, mobilizers individually inviting their mobilizees to attend mass meetings, core organizing through individual outreach to all core members of the chapter, and invitations sent to all coalition partners. We branded mass meetings as exactly what they are and aspire to be: seasonal summits of the socialist movement in the Triangle. During the mass meeting, we utilize music to set vibes and to remind the chapter of our chapter playlist that we all created together, a shared project aimed at building a collective culture of solidarity and camaraderie.

Mass meetings are hybrid, to allow for as many means to participate as possible, so democratic decision-making has to be equally accessible to all members. That requires a few roles that we tweaked over the course of the year. We include breaks for accessibility to disabled comrades –  turns out people are willing to sit through long meetings of chapter business when treated well. We also dispatch four roles for the in-person components of each mass meeting, including tech support, a tabler, and soft mobilizers to individually greet new attendees and bring them into the pipeline for mobilization into the local chapter.

Mass meetings are an experiment. So far, they’re relatively successful. We can tweak as needed. One change that one comrade has proposed is integrating branch updates so that the entirety of membership can have some understanding of the material conditions and strategic assessments of the collective in parts of the Triangle in which they don’t live, since our chapter’s region sprawls across many municipalities. That would increase the power of our mass meetings because more people could participate equally in decisions made about specific areas. More people knowing more things makes for better decisions. Both I and other comrades also personally believe we should integrate more space for generative debate into future mass meetings, since mass meetings have the potential to grow alongside our movement as the summits where we – the multiracial working class in the Triangle – make our decisions.

Mass Work 

Mass work means organizing our own places in our own everyday lives – fighting rent with our neighbors, waging battles for better wages with our coworkers, struggling for community goods with our people. Mass work means practicing politics at the base. Mass work means building our own organizations of oppressed people conscious of our oppression, organizations that can activate us as subjects of our own lives. Mass work is not optional. It’s the bread and butter, the “direct organizational spadework that makes explosive classwide collective action possible.” We need mass work to sustain and nurture political revolution.

We’re contributing to three mass work projects as a chapter: the Triangle Tenant Union (TTU), a local Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC), and neighborhood base-building for reproductive justice. The TTU is the most significant; the union is currently focusing efforts on tenant-led organizing drives at several buildings and neighborhoods in the Triangle. The union was started by DSA organizers and many core members of the union are also DSA members. While functionally autonomous, the Triangle Model (more on this later) allowed the TTU to become a section while sorting out member dues, which made the Triangle Model a logistically helpful infrastructure for the union in a time of need. 

The labor working group has also set up a local EWOC as of – literally – this month. Local EWOCs connect rank-and-file leaders from different shops to larger movement constellations and provide infrastructure for winning small shop organizing drives. Results remain to be seen, but most members feel hopeful. Strike solidarity built relationships with other rank-and-file members that we brought into the organization. Members democratically decided to donate funds raised to reform caucuses and to the Durham sanitation workers, who went on a wildcat strike that won $6.5 million in bonuses for city workers, and to which our chapter was the largest supporter during their community fundraiser. The Membership Survey gave us data we can use to organize labor circles. A steady trickle of core members have taken rank-and-file jobs in the logistics industry and work all hours of the day and night across the Triangle.

Community bases are our most experimental form of mass work.  Part of our New Strategy in the Fight for Bodily Autonomy, the socialist feminist working group has organized increasingly large monthly pickets of anti-abortion centers paired with deep canvasses of surrounding neighborhoods to build a mass base for larger campaigns for reproductive care in North Carolina. Base-building campaigns against anti-abortion centers has the potential to unify disparate parts of the working class, since unconnected segments of our class share a material interest in reproductive care. The community base is united in struggle against a base-level antagonist – the anti-abortion center – while fighting for a broader goal of building a mass base for complete and liberatory bodily autonomy.

Most of the growth of the community base so far has been students. The strategy drew in more participants from outside DSA intent on shutting down the so-called “crisis pregnancy center.” These included individual members from other student groups, coordinated by YDSA, leading to picket turnout. Other consistent attendees have been repeat visitors from the community, engaged in multiple organizing conversations with our cadres. Comrades generally feel that momentum is building – but slowly.

Overall, our chapter is engaged in a significant amount of mass work – but maybe we can do more. For one, we don’t have a consistent pipeline through which to convert core members into mass work organizers, nor is there any expectation of members to do mass work. We could engage in other forms of mass work, like organizing a transit riders’ union as part of our ecosocialist campaign for mass transit. We could turn new members into mass work organizers by further building on core development. 

Mass Organization

Core Membership

Core membership has increased to 53 members – a change that’s felt moderate, steady, but unevenly distributed across the chapter. I’m defining a core member as someone who takes on action items at meetings and participates actively in internal chapter life, since that makes them an irreplaceable component of the chapter collective. We wouldn’t have been able to calculate the number of core members with any kind of systematic metric until this year, when we created a chapter formation index to track overall participation in the chapter. 

We emphasized core development most this year. Core development means cultivating core members into better organizers. Core development is the foundation of making DSA an organization of organizers. Core members were the focus of four organizing bootcamps on hard asks, deep canvassing, narrative power, and leadership development. The Triangle Model increased the number of members taking on leadership roles doing social or political work for the chapter between meetings, the practice for the theory from the organizing bootcamp. Finally, we held 4 member leader forums to try to bring member leaders into discussion with one another – sharing projects, ideas, and organizing skills. Building more member leaders out of core organizers and creating shared forums was all to encourage more core member involvement needed for a healthy mass organization with lots of participation.

Most members approve of core development, but it’s less clear what members think we should do next. Some members want more core development, but others pointed out that working group capacity remains about the same as it was before. That’s because growth has been uneven. Some working groups have absorbed several new members, associations and sections have activated more, but other formations have experienced only mild growth in people taking on action items. Should we prioritize core development or core recruitment? If we both, how do we build and then share capacity so as to not overburden any of our comrades? 

Active Membership

Even though core membership has not increased evenly across the chapter, active membership has doubled.  Based on meeting, social, and working group attendance numbers, the total number of active members at the end of 2022 was about 50. Like I said before, our core membership hovers around 50 members now. That means our core membership at the end of 2023 is about the same size as our active membership was at the end of 2022. 

But while last year’s number is an educated estimate, our membership committee successfully completed a massive Membership Survey project involving textbanking, phonebanking, emails, and core coordination to map our chapter through 10 minute surveys of members this year. The point of the survey was to provide valuable data for intentional recruitment, tenant and labor organizing, and other strategic goals. But it serves a dual purpose of recording our approximate active membership for the year, because if you’re gonna volunteer personal information and ideas for ten minutes in a survey for DSA members, you are probably an active member or close to one. Based on the Membership Survey, the chapter had 112 active members at the time of our Fall Mass Meeting. That was before October 7, after which we experienced another small bump, so the number of active members in the chapter is probably higher now. We should be able to calculate recent membership gains and make a more precise comparison once we complete the next Membership Survey.

There are a few probable reasons for the increase in active membership. Beyond the mass movement for Palestinian liberation, other factors include the intentional steps taken by our chapter to expand our external organizing. This year was the first year we organized our efforts into a priority campaign defined by three main avenues of direct engagement with the working class: bodily autonomy base-building, a municipal issue campaign for a greenway, and an electoral campaign to elect a cadre member to city council. A few members also joined by following avenues through tenant and labor-oriented mass work.

The Membership Survey showed that our chapter is composed of tech workers, campus workers, retail workers, teachers, healthcare workers, farmers, warehouse workers, nonprofit workers, lawyers, journalists, librarians, electricians, and students across the Triangle. 10% of the chapter are caregivers for children or parents; 35% identify as LGBTQIA+ but almost half don’t identify as straight; 52% of the chapter are cisgender men and 48% identify with other genders. 27% of active members belong to a labor union, which is far higher than the statewide unionization rate of 3%. In other words, our members are disproportionately unionized but still need to get more unionized. But about 70% of active members are white, showing we have a long way to go before we are representative of our multiracial working class base, as well as underscoring the continued need to support comrades of color’s self-organization, prioritize cultural competency and language justice in organizing projects, and fight white supremacy culture in the organization. 

Organizational Culture

Our chapter is multi-tendency. Comrades that belong to formal caucuses currently belong to one of four formations: Communist Caucus, Red Star, Marxist Unity Group, and the Socialist Majority Caucus. Libertarian socialist thought is an unorganized yet influential current, too. Members of the first three caucuses organized into the Triangle Reds, of which a majority of officers are members, which currently acts as a large and informal coalition for chapter communist politics. Our 2023 Convention delegate election was highly competitive, but officer elections remain only somewhat competitive. A lot of members said they still think of officer roles as too much to take on at their current capacity. That’s a problem: a participatory mass organization needs “more people doing less.” 

Conflict resolution has improved but the internal understanding of our harassment and grievance officers (HGOs) still needs improvement. Last year, influenced by Mariame Kaba, we adopted an abolitionist and restorative justice approach to the way in which we handle conflict as a chapter. Multiple members talked about how conflict has improved considerably since then. Fewer people have left the chapter burned and hurt, but as one comrade noted, we’re still struggling with conversations grounded in respect for one another. One member straight up said they just feel stupid in DSA, and that that hasn’t changed. But many comrades still see HGOs as HR, probably because the membership that bought into and voted for our restorative approach was half the size in 2022 as now, and many members don’t know they can work with HGOs to mediate interpersonal and political conflict of all kinds and scales. We’ve made some, but not enough progress in moving towards a healthier organizational culture characterized by respect for one another.

We’ve politically matured, but still need more spaces for political discussion. Debates are more and more openly political, instead of hiding behind exclusionary insiderism or interpersonal beefs. We arranged for big member summits about the 2023 Convention where members could ask delegates questions, started up a wiki that we still need to flesh out, and made transparent report backs from delegates a headline of the Fall Mass Meeting. Multiple comrades remarked on how they felt we, as a chapter, had become a collective large and cohesive enough to learn political lessons together. But actual formal debate space for mass participation in debates about political strategy and direction hasn’t manifested. Moving forward, we could integrate debates as a mass meeting staple.

We endorsed a pandemic policy involving strict and proactive masking and the creation of a health and safety committee (HSC) early in the year to protect our collective’s communal health. The HSC’s whole point is to provide a base of resources for us as DSA to protect ourselves during the ongoing public health crisis of COVID-19. The government certainly won’t. Capitalism is built with greed and mountains of corpses. After one mass meeting, one new attendee – a healthcare worker – was so excited at HSC’s work that they got mobilized and are now a steadfast member of the HSC. 

Many members still view HSC as policing how to run in-person meetings and events. The cultural shift in understanding health as something we all want to collectively protect is unfinished. It’s a shift from individualism to collectivism. The fact that we haven’t been able to make as much progress on cultural change as we’d like is deeply frustrating to comrades in HSC, committed cadres that feel that members viewing HSC as policing is disrespectful to their contributions to the collective. 

Since so much of HSC’s work has to do with in-person meetings, hybrid balance matters. Right now, only mass meetings are officially hybrid. Other working group meetings are hybrid on an ad hoc basis. 90% of chapter business is conducted remotely but focuses on planning and then mobilizing out to in-person canvasses, events, socials, rallies, or council meetings. On one hand, one comrade called for far more in-person meetings and events. There is no clear roadmap on how to logistically coordinate that without overburdening the HSC. At the other end of the spectrum are members who have questioned the need for an office – which we voted to pursue, thanks to matching funds from the Growth and Development Committee of the national DSA – when we have functioned perfectly fine up till now and decision-making can be done remotely. There’s no consensus among members as to the correct hybrid balance.

The Triangle Model

Internal Life 

During the May Mass Meeting, members voted for the Triangle Model as part of an overall bylaws reform. Now, our chapter has committees and working groups, but also sections (organized around identities) and associations (organized around interests). The Triangle Model was supported by our membership committee, where it was first developed, and endorsed by cadre members from multiple caucuses and political tendencies. Section and association self-organization is extremely flexible, with bylaws and internal governance left entirely up to members. Members can invite non-members into section and association events, making these formations especially flexible grounds for creating social bonds with members of the working class beyond our organization. 

After a rapid proliferation of self-organization in the summer, a few sections and associations went dormant as their members jumped into organizing on chapter electoral projects and then Palestine solidarity. That’s okay. Cadres pivoting as the turbulent river of the movement requires is a good thing. But it also means we still have a ways to go in building out more durable working class formations to weather political winds. 

The Triangle Model has led to an explosion of activity across the chapter. We have five active sections and six active associations at the end of 2023. Caregivers in the chapter self-organized as a section and now meet regularly to discuss both school board campaigns and making the chapter more accessible for caregivers. Afrosocialists and socialists of color  welcome socialists from beyond DSA to both their events and to be voting members of the section. The caregivers section activated more members who could only make meetings later at night than the rest of the chapter, after their children’s bedtimes, which accommodates caregivers as respected cadres and activated more members. The youth section has united four campus chapters in a shared forum under the chapter umbrella. Disabled comrades meet for monthly socials. The Triangle Tenant Union is also technically a section, as mentioned before, bringing in more members through mass work.

The hiking association organizes occasional chapter hikes on the weekends, protest support works out logistics for our continued mobilization for Palestine rallies that punctuate the broader movement, and comrades in the self-defense association work on physical movement (as opposed to fitness) plans in pairs while meeting up for and connecting each other to self-defense training friendly to queer people and people of color. The tabletop association meets up for — you guessed it – tabletop socials, and the gaming association has traded hands a few times to maintain regular gaming nights. We have a chapter Minecraft server now, thanks to the association’s leader. Finally, our chapter has organized two teams to participate in the working class collaborative competition known as the Hunt. Cadres are embedded on teams with working class people from outside the organization to complete 100 team-bonding activities in 72 hours, which builds social bonds between us as socialists and other working class people.

Building a Party

Building a party is not just building the independent infrastructure for electoral work we agreed upon at the 2023 Convention. Building a party as a mass organization also means building a working class social fabric, just as it did for the mass socialist parties of the past. That is especially the case now. Our society has completely robbed us of shared community. We’re not used to democracy, solidarity, or collectivity. The Triangle Model is the way our local chapter has expanded from building a party as an independent electoral apparatus to building a party as a nascent working class social fabric where party-affiliated formations (sections and associations) organize both DSA and non-DSA members by intentionally focusing on our social lives as political arena.

Such experimentation is urgent. In North Carolina, mass organization is even lower than in most of the United States. Our state’s unionization rate is 3%. The workers’ movement is weak, unions rare. Tenants only began organizing as tenants in 2020, but the initial infrastructure fell apart and we’re only now rebuilding. The white supremacist power structure leftover from Jim Crow remains intact, paralyzing nearly all democratic impulses from the masses in the amber of Southern repression. Ballot measures and municipal efforts like rent control remain banned by a state government that gerrymandered the bourgeois electoral map. They’ve criminalized multiple types of protest and both conservatives and fascists seem primed to advance a far-right agenda to seize the rights of our queer and trans comrades, which a potential future presidential victory by Trump will only embolden. 

If we’re serious about winning power in North Carolina, we need to build the party in more ways than our current strategic arsenal allows. We prioritize developing community and culture as a strategic approach for building deeply-organized tenant unions in the Communist Caucus. The Triangle Model is the same but for our local chapter. Essentially, it expands the turf of where we do politics. We can both create and embed ourselves within not only our workplaces and neighborhoods, but also the other arenas in which collectives form. We can intentionally be socialists in our identity communities, in our friend groups, in our churches, in our sports teams, in our Dungeons and Dragons nights, in parent groups, in our classrooms. That way, DSA cadres can become even more connected with the minutiae of social forces that bubble up in the pot of American life at every moment. 

All of us are scattered across different geographies and dynamics and personal circumstances. We are rooted in different parts of the working class already. That defines DSA’s nature as a mass organization. Beyond pursuit of the rank-and-file strategy that allows us to root ourselves in organized labor in particular, we can become agitators on multiple layers of unorganized social forces in which self-organization may occur. Finding flexible ways as members to politicize our presence in our communities, to participate and create collectives under DSA’s structure, is a potential huge advantage of DSA’s composition that remains untapped. The Triangle Model is one attempt to activate the dormant parts of our multifaceted political identities so that we’re more in tune as political beings with social forces. That way, we can build out a working class social fabric that makes us more of a party that can “facilitate the coming together [of social forces] into a broader unity” over time: the party as articulator.

Trends So Far

Members didn’t vote unanimously to adopt what became the Triangle Model, but after 8 months since we did, nearly all members think of the move as an unconditionally good step. For many, it creates opportunities to bring more people into the socialist movement. That was the main reason many comrades supported adopting the Triangle Model. Those hopes panned out: within one week, we had 17 supporters requesting mobilization into the chapter – a 300% increase over the week before. Beyond new active members, most sustained growth has come from active members becoming core members in the chapter. The Triangle Model also formalized the structure for some formations that members had already organically catalyzed but lacked support for, like caregivers, as well as helped with core development by empowering more core members to become member leaders. 

So far, the biggest trends can be loosely grouped into three:

One Hundred Flowers Bloomed and Fifty Survived the Winter 

Members self-organized into sections and associations rapidly. That energy petered out for some formations that have since become inactive. However, of the original plethora of associations and sections that self-organized, half found stable footing and leadership. They have been joined by new associations as members explore what the Triangle Model actually means for the work, creating protest support as an official association and temporarily sheltering the tenant union as an official section (“tenant” is an identity) to clear up logistical hurdles during a union emergency. 

Overall, members are fine with the fact that not every organizing effort under the Triangle Model led to long-term activity. It’s to be expected, one comrade said. But the continued exploration of the Triangle Model’s benefits will require continued commitment from membership in building out sections and associations. Part of that calls for member participation from core members, in particular. Right now, some comrades deprioritize sections and associations spaces in order to participate only in working groups. But the socialist movement is a marathon. Cadres working only on political work without engagement in the broader working class social fabric we need to create leaves members vulnerable to burnout and prevents us from building the layer of trust and camaraderie across membership needed to sustain organization.

We need community. We need care. 

The Youth Movement, from a Trickle to a Flood

At the end of 2022, we had one informal connection through one comrade to NC State YDSA. The connection was not formalized and led to a limited number of benefits. We didn’t have any other social ties to any other YDSAs in the region. 

At the end of 2023, we now have a youth section in which a large number of YDSA members from four established YDSA chapters and one high school YDSA organizing committee participate as a shared forum between campus and non-campus young workers. There are three established YDSA chapters on two public university campuses (NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill) and one community college campus (Wake Tech), plus one university outside of our region that has no anchor DSA chapter (Eastern Carolina). A recently-mobilized member is also in the process of organizing the Triangle’s first high school YDSA (Durham School of the Arts), supported by the youth section infrastructure that connects them with comrades at other YDSA chapters. All of these connections can be made within a shared communications channel housed under the chapter server, so that we can communicate with YDSA leaders and members more easily, too. Two YDSA leaders were elected as delegates to the 2023 Convention by the rest of our chapter.

YDSA has made significant advances this year. The flood of youth chapters is causing significant interest on their campuses. YDSA organizers filled a whole public university auditorium with interested college students at the beginning of Fall 2023. YDSA members have added significant capacity to the chapter priority campaign, taking on action items and trainings from the socialist feminist working group to target anti-abortion clinics, and have helped establish DSA as a leader in student movements for reproductive justice on campuses in the Triangle. When the campus chapter of Planned Parenthood’s local leaders resigned in protest towards national Planned Parenthood’s gag order on Palestine, they pointed followers to YDSA and our chapter’s priority campaign for bodily autonomy.

The Internal Social Life of the Chapter Has Massively Expanded

At the beginning of the year, we organized quarterly socials. Now, it’s more likely to have several socials a month across the chapter organized by various sections and associations on top of the quarterly chapter-wide socials. 

The Triangle Model changed the social game. In essence, we have created a nascent working class society. You can move to the Triangle, join DSA, and suddenly have multiple activities available to do pretty much any day. Members can hike with the hiking association on Saturday morning, then go to the mass meeting in the afternoon, before attending the branch social at the park as the sun sets. They can wake up the next day to plan a march before meeting up with their friend from the tenant union for lunch, before joining other afrosocialists at the bar in downtown Durham. Then – of course – they can attend a working group meeting during weekday nights in between pickets at anti-abortion centers and canvasses for DSA-endorsed candidates. That social fabric can provide space for friendships, relationships, inside jokes, and shared dreams, on top of our existing chapter playlist and appreciation notes that undergird our organizational culture. 

Mass Movement-Building

The New Strategy

Most comrades feel we’ve become a more serious political organization since the beginning of the year. A major reason is the programmatic axis on which much of our chapter’s work is oriented: the New Strategy. The New Strategy underlies our priority campaign that connects the struggles for democracy and civil rights and bodily autonomy to the same fight against the anti-democratic North Carolina state government. Building the New Strategy took many meetings between multiple working groups – socialist feminists, queer and trans solidarity, and electoral, to name a few. The chapter endorsed the campaign only after most details had been ironed out across all the different political tendencies and member formations, resulting in a consensus resolution from a sizable part of core membership instead of a competition between competing political visions. The New Strategy has significant buy-in and incorporates the work of many disparate working groups. In other words, our priority campaign has stabilized the chapter in a shared and multi-tendency political analysis and direction at our conjuncture.

Class Independence and Leading Coalitions

During the 2023 Convention, national membership solidified our commitment to building an independent party – which we have been hard at work doing. A party is not a ballot line. A party is also not an electoral third party. A party is an organization where “workers have control over their own political apparatus, strategy, brand, and politicians.” Under the umbrella of our New Strategy, our chapter won electoral victories in a municipal greenway campaign and a competitive city council race. Both solidified an independent political identity and apparatus building an increasingly large capacity to organize strategic campaigns that advance our priority campaign for bodily autonomy. 

In Carrboro, we targeted a wedge issue to build a left-led political coalition in which DSA holds the dominant position. A local greenway proposal was staunchly delayed since 2008 by an entrenched NIMBY group of the local bourgeoisie. Local politics was at an impasse. We started knocking doors for months for a municipal petition and overwhelmed the city council with local resident testimony, turning residents out while uniting more YIMBY-aligned groups under democratic socialist leadership. We won the campaign, got recognition, and now have a winning coalition to participate in new stages of the campaign for bodily autonomy, as well as to support electoral slates for tribunes of the people to agitate against the state government’s tyranny in favor of bodily autonomy.

Meanwhile, in Durham, we endorsed the electoral campaign of Nate Baker – a DSA member, whose campaign was managed by a DSA cadre and chapter HGO. Baker was endorsed by an overwhelming majority of the chapter after answering our extensive questionnaire and going through our multi-stage process, including answering yes in commitment to BDS, which we have required of endorsees since 2022. The electoral field was crowded, including with at least one other self-described socialist, but Baker secured first place in both the primary and general election. There were three major reasons for his victory over opponents: our far-larger canvassing operation, turning out dozens of DSA members to knock doors; the endorsement of UE150 city sanitation workers, who Baker walked out of planning meetings in support of during their wildcat strike; and an equal and winning coalition with a century-old PAC building power for the Black working class that now, seeing how powerful we are together, is eager to explore uniting for future races as well.

These successes, as well as aggressive internal organizing, contributed to the electoral working group tripling in membership. Now, having organized winning coalitions in which we hold political leadership across two municipalities and secured one city council seat, we have the power to follow through by mobilizing those same coalitions for priority campaign goals – like a name change fund for trans folks in Durham. Our trans and queer solidarity working group has built connections with LGBTQ+ Center in Durham through the name change fund campaign and now the LGBTQ+ Center is openly advertising their affiliation with DSA’s petition. Members are currently working on lining up name change fund strategic pressure with the city council’s budgetary calendar, even as the queer and trans solidarity working group is forced to continue to conduct rapid response in defense of our communities.

Membership also moved to formalize a broader endorsement process – one that includes the process of “adoption” for elected officials, which was particularly contentious, prompted by a sitting Raleigh city council member who joined DSA, got mobilized into our internal chapter, and has taken a bold and unapologetic stance in favor of a ceasefire in Palestine. “Adopting” politicians requires candidates go through the same endorsement process as everyone else. The change also formalized our chapter’s socialists in office (SiO) committee composed of elected officials, electoral working group leadership, and chapter leadership. Central to our SiO is a simple interface group chat with everyone involved to make sure elected officials can easily and quickly communicate with DSA as an institution. 

Targeting Anti-Abortion Centers 

Our bodily autonomy campaign is continuing to build slow momentum. Generally, many comrades most closely involved to anti-abortion picketing feel hopeful. But a couple of other members said the pickets felt somewhat directionless. Building trust in the community to then build up base organization is “slow, respectful work,” but not all members seem totally persuaded by the tactic’s utility.

The anti-abortion center pickets have made progress in three ways so far: expanded capacity, expanded operations, and further political leadership over the movement for reproductive justice. We endorsed the anti-abortion center pickets as a tactic during the May Mass Meeting. We’ve been picketing ever since. But as NC State YDSA became more tightly connected to our chapter and its priority campaign during the summer of 2023, socialist feminist working group leaders trained YDSA organizers to then take over organizing components of anti-abortion center pickets. That reliance and trust in our youth section has built further capacity for the priority campaign. The socialist feminist working group also expanded operations to include training on deep canvassing, informational materials and other means to engage neighbors. 

Finally, the anti-abortion center pickets have consolidated our position in the political leadership of the movement for bodily autonomy. The original kernel of our socialist feminist working group were the organizers of the post-Roe protests in Raleigh, so the center of local organizing for reproductive justice was incorporated into DSA. But since we began picketing, other groups invested in bodily autonomy but strategically directionless have followed our lead in mobilizing members to our pickets. Planned Parenthood didn’t allow their student leaders at NC State to make statements regarding Palestine, so those leaders resigned and pointed followers to DSA because we both had a strong Palestine stance and led the campaign to confront anti-abortion centers.

Structural Challenges

The priority campaign has stabilized and led to significant wins for the chapter already. But through the course of the priority campaign so far, some challenges have already emerged for many members. For one, using consensus to create a resolution in which many but not all working groups were incorporated limited the potential for a sharp debate between different political visions. The process of consensus-building created significant buy-in from some parts of the chapter – those involved in the priority campaign. Others have struggled to find direction.

Another issue that’s come up is the lack of bottomliners for the priority campaign. We didn’t dissolve working groups and committees into the priority campaign structure when we changed our bylaws, which meant working groups continue to build trust and maintain coordinating bodies for issues under their umbrella. But the lack of priority campaign stewards to bottomline the effort means most member leaders involved in the priority campaign continue to primarily operate in their own working groups, as the first priority. That has created a siloed fiefdom dynamic. Some of the most committed core members involved in the priority campaign indicated they don’t know what other working groups were doing and feel hurt when other working groups don’t reciprocate organizational energy. Three different members independently strongly opined that we needed bottomliners focused specifically on the campaign holistically, rather than any of its attached working groups, to strengthen the priority campaign. Priority campaign stewards would allow our chapter to hold individuals accountable for the central coordination of the priority campaign goals we democratically agreed upon.

Palestine Solidarity 

October 7 changed the year for NC Triangle DSA, too.

For one, huge numbers of members immediately pivoted to Palestine solidarity led by the internacional working group – a merger of our international solidarity and Spanish-language infrastructure working groups at the beginning of the year. That merge expanded the capacity and strength of the group, by all accounts, uniting language justice with anti-imperialist programming. That includes our chapter’s hosting of Mexican journalist José Luis Granados Ceja during the Mexico Solidarity Tour, in which we discussed how MORENA's policies have improved the lives of the Mexican working class. That followed our previous hosting of the 2022 delegation of Venezuelan feminists. Maybe we accidentally started a tradition of hosting international socialists in North Carolina as a cardinal stop on tours of the United States. 

But since October 7, much of the internacional working group’s work has been focused on Palestine solidarity. We’ve co-sponsored and mobilized for a dozen rallies, as well as one school occupation, handing out water bottles to keep protesters hydrated and make ourselves a constant presence. People mobilized from across the chapter to participate. Some formalized protest support as an association to work out logistics, self-criticism, and improvements. Meanwhile, the working group mobilized dozens of members to one city council hearing on ceasefire resolutions after another – turning municipalities into centers of pressure on Congresswoman Valerie Foushee, an AIPAC-funded federal official, exactly as we envision they should in the New Strategy. Our elected officials have held the line on Palestine with total discipline: Nate Baker’s first action as a Durham City Council member was to call for a ceasefire and we secured the first ceasefire resolution passed in North Carolina with the help of DSA cadre and Carrboro town councilor Danny Nowell. Meanwhile, our presence in Palestine spaces has borne some success – one in-person meeting that we held at a cafe owned by a Palestinian organizer, in the heat of the movement, was attended by 30 people. 

While members are generally positive about how we have responded to October 7, some members worry we haven’t centrally coordinated enough phonebanking to pressure congresspeople to issue ceasefire calls as we focused on municipal arenas. Other members expressed different opinions on which coalition partners we should strategically focus on building relationships with. Others thought we could have outmaneuvered the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) to take the main lead in organizing the rallies, but others thought this was an unnecessary diversion of chapter resources.

Overall, I hope this presents a snapshot of a chapter in motion. Some efforts I have left unmentioned. Our security committee handles sensitive information. Our ecosocialist working group has spent much of the year building internal capacity, mutual understanding, and strategy to set the year off with a shared collective campaign with buy-in. In terms of projects, many are ongoing – including fundraising and a dues drive and the search for a physical office. Some members feel bad we never finished those projects; to the contrary, we can commit to doing so in the new year.

Thank you for reading this reflection. Hopefully, doing so was educational and sparks some ideas for your own chapter as we continue to build and improve our own here in North Carolina!

Travis Wayne

Co-Chair of NC Triangle DSA

Welcome to Our New Co-Chairs

First, we are excited to announce new Co-Chairs: Matt H from Birmingham and Wren P from Honolulu! Both have years of experience in climate organizing and will join Nicole M (NYC) to lead the steering committee through 2024. See our full leadership here.

Chapter Campaining & Organizing

Throughout the year our committee has distributed almost $6,000 in grants to chapters with GND/Building for Power campaigns. Since our last recap these grants helped Louisville DSA print 100 stickers for bus rider canvassing and St. Louis DSA secure public meeting space and printed lit for their GND for St Louis campaign.

Anyone can donate to the grant fund here!

In November we hosted our final Campaign Huddle for 2023, in which 18 comrades from 15 chapters attended to sharpen their campaign strategies and set goals. Sign up for a 2024 huddle, the last Wednesday of every month.

Then in December, our committee hosted its second member call-a-thon of the year as part of DSA’s “Give Your 1% for the 99%” initiative. Contributing 1% of your income for the greater collective good is common in working class organizations like unions, and we need to build the same kind of power in DSA. Hundreds of DSA members have signed up to give their 1% for the 99% to ensure we have the collective democratic power to win real change. If you haven’t made the switch to Solidarity Dues yet, sign up today!

Steer-co members Lori D and Marc K attended a Regional Organizing Retreat in Los Angeles. They presented to comrades from San Luis Obispo, Inland Empire, Orange County, San Diego and Los Angeles chapters on our mandate and how to get involved.

The Metro DC chapter had their annual local convention and voted to make their campaign to establish public power, We Power DC, one of five chapter-wide priority campaigns again in 2024. We Power DC organizers also published “The State of Public Power in 2023” in the Washington Socialist, recapping the BPRA win in New York, ballot initiative outcome in Maine, and the outlook for municipalization in the District moving forward. Read all about it here!

Finally, we are pleased to report that YDSA’s NCC passed a proposal to expand YDSA organizing to include Building for Power campaigns! Schools are hotbeds of labor and climate organizing and we are excited to collaborate with YDSA chapters.

Solidarity with Palestine

We hosted a phenomenal panel with the International Committee called Ceasefire Now for People and Planet. Panelists discussed this resurgence of a Left anti-war movement in the context of the climate crisis and explored how ecosocialist organizers can deepen internationalism and anti-militarism within domestic climate organizing. For security reasons we are not providing a recording or panel content, but we’ll have many more panels in 2024 and beyond.

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The year is over but our work continues. Our committee is here to help chapters of all sizes come up with winnable campaigns under our Building for Power framework. Interested? Check YES on our signup form:

The post GND Campaign Commission November & December Recap appeared first on Building for Power.

By Rose L, aka Rosenriot

Content Warning: This post contains discussions of queerphobia, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, racism, white supremacy, ethnic cleansing, and genocides.

Every anti-Zionist queer person has heard it by now:

“How can you support Palestine? They’d behead you for being queer over there!”

It’s a question that isn’t really a question. It’s a statement, rooted in queerphobia, islamophobia, and racism. What people who say that don’t realize is that we are killed for being queer over here.

Southern Queers know it best: The United States of America is not safe for queer people. In North Carolina alone, there’s been attacks on drag shows everywhere from bars to libraries, laws have been passed forbidding schools from talking about queer existence, and gender affirming care has been banned for minors. 

Nationwide, while queer flags and imagery are sold by major corporations for profit the creators of those flags often don’t see a cent, and are left homeless and begging for mutual aid online. Murders of trans people have increased, particularly murders of black transwomen. Books depicting queer people are banned from libraries. Even in “safe states” hate groups like Moms for Liberty are on the rise, pushing for less and less queer representation in society and media. North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson has called queer people, “filth”, “maggots”, “flies”, and “what the cows leave behind.” If anything, queerphobia has skyrocketed in response to increasing queer visibility in American society. 

Queerness is sold. But we are not safe.

Queerness is marketable. But we are not liberated.

“No Pride For Some of Us Without Liberation For All of Us” is a call for intersectionality and solidarity often attributed to transwoman and activist Marsha P. Johnson, but was actually originally written by Micah Bazant in 2015. Bazant, notably, identifies as quote “a white, trans, timtum, anti-zionist jew.”

2015. Micah Bazant’s quote displayed on a banner at North Carolina Pride in Durham, NC by queer and trans people of color.

Anti-zionism is necessary for queer liberation. When one looks at the people often responsible for queerphobia in America, they are overwhelmingly looking at Zionists. The President of Focus on the Family, a Christian Fundamentalist organization, Jim Daly, wrote an article supporting Israel on October 9th. Focus on the Family has previously called being LGBTQ+ people, ”a particularly evil lie of Satan.” On October 12th, aforementioned Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson called for a day of prayer and declared North Carolina's solidarity with the state of Israel.

But why does Mark Robinson, a man who equated queer people to “filth”, and Focus on the Family, who believe queer existence is a satanic deception, have such unwavering support for Israel, which often presents itself as a haven for queer people in the Middle East? For the last decade or so, Israel has flown in American drag queens to perform in Tel Aviv, and hosts Pride parades and festivities. Surely Mark Robinson, Focus on the Family, and people and organizations like them should condemn Israel and its promotion of such “filth” and lies.

However, contrary to Israel's many claims, it doesn’t actually provide that many material queer rights. Israel forbids same-sex marriage. When it comes to queer Palestinians, Israel outs them to their families and communities to sow division. And on November 6th, after queer people across the world highlighted these discrepancies in reaction to October 7th, Israel’s official X account reposted a skit by the Israeli equivalent of Saturday Night Live, set at the fictional “Columbia Untisemity'' depicting a “blue haired liberal” saying “I'm not antisemitic, I'm racist fluid”. When challenged on the subject of queer rights, Israel stooped to using the same bigoted rhetoric the American right wing has said about queer people for years. As of this article’s publication, Israel has yet to remove the repost.

The marketing of it’s pro-gay image by Israel is a tactic called “pinkwashing”, a term popularized by activist Sarah Schulman. It is a propaganda tactic for countries to convince the world that everything they do is justified because they fly the Pride flag high.

But Israel isn’t the only place that does pinkwashing. America and its liberal cities have pinkwashed for over a decade. The North Carolina capital city of Raleigh boasts one of the largest Pride parades in the South, and never fails to mention its push for inclusivity and diversity on its website. It has passed ordinances protecting its queer citizens, but in reality, North Carolina queers can’t even afford to live in Raleigh to benefit from those protections. This is in large part due to skyrocketing housing costs, which results in the most marginalized queers being pushed farther and farther away from safety: by poverty, gentrification, a hostile police force, and the increasing presence of hate groups. Pinkwashing is merely a lukewarm defense for colonizer tactics, from gentrification to genocide.

Queer people know genocide all too well. The general public knows that Jews were targeted in the Holocaust, but so often they forget the Romani, the disabled, the political revolutionaries, and yes, the queers, who were targeted as well. In fact, one of the earliest, most famous photos of Nazis burning books isn’t of them burning Torahs, or burning leftist leaflets. They burned published medical research on trans people by Magnus Hirschfeld, who founded the Institute for Sex Research in Berlin. Nazis later went on to burn the institute and its archives to the ground, and then they moved on to burning queer bodies too.

Today, Queers in the South face discrimination simply for where they live. The rest of the nation, and to an extent, the rest of the world, view Southerners as racists, bigots, and Evangelical zealots, as well as assume a general lowered capacity for intelligence amongst those in the region. The truth is however, that the American South is extremely diverse and defies all stereotypes. The South natively belongs to our Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, for whom the land should return, and which many still call home despite numerous attempts by colonizers and the Federal government to displace or erase them. The South contains approximately 59% of the country’s Black people, and 32% of the country’s LGBTQIA+ population, the highest of any region in the US. Despite this, Southerns are still perceived as straight, white, Christian cis men. Diversity is reserved for places like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City, and this perception leads to the most marginalized populations in our country receiving the least support. Southern politicians, queer and not, are often not representative of their marginalized constituents, leading to mass divides in the protections that marginalized people receive at state levels- often none- and the harsh realities they face. The people are not its politicians or its government, and this is true everywhere, including Palestine.

Israel’s pinkwashing not only erases the truth, it erases the existence of Queer Palstinians, who very much exist. This is best exemplified on Queering the Map, a community-based online collaborative platform on which users submit their personal queer experiences in relation to a place on a map. It often serves as a safe space for marginalized queers around the world to tell their stories. Since Israel ramped up its bombing of Gaza, it has become a memorial for Palestinian queer experiences:

“...Being gay in Gaza is hard but somehow it was fun. I made out with a lot of boys in my neighborhood. I thought everyone is gay to some level.”

-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza

“Realizing the feelings I had for you were more than adoration, realizing that wanting to see you everyday, to be with you and talk to you, for you to call me by my petname that you gave me. I miss you beyond words can describe.I wish if I had the courage to tell you but again I was scared, I didn’t want to cause you any trouble. Now both of us [live] outside [the] Gaza strip, but much far away from each other. I love you, despite what is always on my mind.”

-Anonymous from Rafah, Gaza

“I wish I could watch the sunset over [the] Gaza sea with you. For one night I wish this occupation was no longer and that we could be free for once on our own land.”

-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza

“Danced in the street with her [here].”

-Anonymous from Ramallah, Palestine

“I found out I was queer here. Whoever is reading this, I just want you to know that you are valid and Allah loves you the way you are. We exist and it's not wrong. Stay brave and beautiful.”

-Anonymous from Al-Mazra a Ash Sharqiya, Palestine

“Here was our first date, we sat, talked about our childhood[s], queer culture, food and bagpipes”

-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza

“Being out doesn't mean anything to me. I wish to see Haifa. I wish to see the village my parents had to leave. I wish to see my brother who got killed. I wish to be free but my freedom is beyond being out. It's being Palestinian first and foremost. God have mercy on my brother and my Palestinian siblings.”

-Anonymous from Bethlehem, Palestine.

“Played with his hair [here].”

-Anonymous from Betunia, Palestine

“I’ve always imagined you and me sitting out in the sun, hand and hand, free at last. We spoke of all the places we would go if we could. Yet you are gone now. If I had known that bombs raining down on us would take you from me, I would have gladly told the world how I adored you more than anything. I’m sorry I was a coward."⁠

-Anonymous from Jabala, Gaza

“Please know despite what the media says there are gay Palestinians. 

We are here, we are queer. Free Palestine.”

-Anonymous from Khan Younis, Gaza

Furthermore, there are prominent Queer Palestinians and Queer Arab and Muslims organizations that have called for a free Palestine. Bashar Murad, a queer Palestinian musician often referred to as “The Lady Gaga of Palestine” has spoken out in articles by Them.us, Teen Vogue, NPR, and the BBC, calling for an end to the occupation since long before October 7th. alQaws for Sexual & Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society, The Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Queer Crescent, and Hidayah have all made explicit statements connecting queerness and Palestinian liberation.

Israel, despite its claims of being queer friendly, forces queer Palestinains to choose between their identities, then bombs them regardless of their choice. Then, it claims it is justified, because Palestine doesn’t have pride parades. Nevermind the fact there are hardly any roads left to have a pride parade on. Nevermind the fact that a Palestinian genocide will leave no one left to be in a pride parade. Nevermind that pride parades are not liberation.

Queerness is sold. But Queer Palestinians are not safe.

Queerness is marketable. But Queer Palestinians are not liberated.

Still, some may argue that Palestine has not earned Queer solidarity or liberation. That it is not progressive enough, not queer enough, not worthy. The irony is, queers have been told this for years about their own identities: that they are not enough. Not gay enough, not trans enough. Not bi enough, not ace enough. The devastation these expectations have brought to the queer community is immeasurable and should not be passed off onto Palestine.

Solidarity is not transactional. Liberation cannot be achieved if there are barriers for entry. Solidarity does not come with a “you must be this woke to be liberated” brochure that only the most progressive hand out to the have-nots. Queers deserve liberation, now. Palestine deserves liberation, now. All those marginalized and oppressed deserve liberation, now, and they all require solidarity to achieve that, without expectation, without prerequisite.

The queer identity is not a justification for genocide or a lack of solidarity. Queer identity demands solidarity with all those oppressed, and all those who are victims of genocide. There is no amount of pride flags America can fly above its capitol buildings that will excuse the mass genocides that it is currently committing here and across the world. And there is no amount of pride flag stickers that Israel can slap on a bomb to make the Palestinian genocide humane. These countries are in bed together for a reason. There is no amount of queer money they can take, no amount of drag queens they can platform, no pride parades or limited edition pride collections at Target that can make Native American genocide, or Queer genocide, or Trans genocide, or Palestinian genocide, or Congolese genocide, or Armenian genocide, or any genocide acceptable. None of it is acceptable.

North Carolina queers must demand a Free Palestine, with our voices, our divestment, our influence, our art, and our power. We will not condemn the Palestinian people in their resistance. We will fight until there is Palestinian joy on Palestinian land, unoccupied, thriving, with olive trees as far as the eye can see, and we will see that in our lifetimes.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!

About the Author:

Rose L (they/them), also known by their drag persona ROSENRIOT, is a member of NCTDSA, activist, and queer performer living and working in Central NC. They’ve lived in the South for over half their life, and can be found handing out water and sign-making supplies at protests around the area.

By Frank Emspak

For those not familiar, the Princess and the Pea is a fable where a princess can’t sleep because of a pea under her mattress. Although it’s technically about someone finding true love because of their weird sleeping habits, it can also be interpreted as being about the fragile egos and impossible desires of the mega-rich.

My takeaway from this fable is that a little annoyance can go a long way. The tactic of using a small annoyance to build a popular campaign is part of a strategy to rebuild our unions. This tactic should contribute to building political support for the pending court cases aimed at undercutting Act 10. We can build support and membership for public sector unions who might undertakes this strategy and position unions as allies or advocates for groups, beyond the immediate focus of union organizing efforts.

In Wisconsin union density has dropped by about 50% compared with pre-Act 10. The biggest hit, of course, was the public sector. But “right to work”, attacks on Project Labor Agreements, and prevailing wage didn’t help. Nor has the loss of plants like GM in Janesville, Oscar Meyer, and Master Lock, as well as the continued migration of unionized financial services work out of the state and out of the union, as carried out by Tru-Stage.

However, this past year organized labor has moved from defense to offense, with some important organizing victories… and now with legal attacks on Act 10. In addition, a parallel judicial effort is underway to force a decision as to whether the Public Authority, the legal home for the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics, is a public entity subject to state laws or a private entity subject to the NLRB.

Both legal challenges seek to regain rights lost under Act 10. At the same time, efforts to organize on the ground continue.

Over the course of the 20th century, the legal framework tended to follow the actions on the ground. In the thirties, after the first national labor relations act was declared unconstitutional, a huge wave of organizing swept the country along with the expected repression and unrest. It was then that the courts reversed their view, and the NLRB was declared constitutional.

The Brown v Board of Education decision, ending de jure segregation, followed a similar path. By 1954, there had been almost 10 years of protests and increasing unrest, especially in the South. Legal segregation was an international embarrassment to the US, and so the US Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.

Here in Wisconsin, prohibitions against public sector unions, especially teachers unions, ended after another record number of disruptions among public school teachers at the beginning of the fall school year. It is important to note that the new laws provided a means to allow state, county, and municipal governments to recognize a union. But in exchange, the union was required to follow a system of rules to be eligible to use those means. In both Federal and State labor law, the range of remedies permitted to unions under the new collective bargaining systems restricted their ability to use direct action: that is, strikes, secondary boycotts, or a closed shop. While the laws did compel an employer to bargain if the union followed the procedures laid out in the respective laws, nothing in either state or federal legislation compelled the employer to reach an agreement with the union.

Winning the Legal Battles

It is all of our interest to build a political and organizational environment to make it easy for the courts to ratify the situation on the ground.

While the courts do act independently, they are also attentive to public opinion, and they are especially attentive to managing unrest. I think it is fair to say that the chances of a favorable court ruling would be increased if University faculty and staff, as well as nurses, could convincingly show they had overwhelming support amongst their fellow workers. 

There may well be majority support for collective bargaining amongst nurses and other public sector workers. A large percentage of the public supports unions. But it is one thing to support collective bargaining in a poll, and another to participate in achieving it. As of yet, that last step has eluded us. Or to put it another way, there is every reason for an organizing committee to act like a union and mobilize around an issue in the workplace without waiting for the possibility that the legal situation will be clarified in labor’s favor. In fact, the achievement of a new collective bargaining law, or even the return to the status quo ante, does not guarantee progress. It guarantees a system of control. It guarantees a process. It may allow an increase in the financial stability of our unions, but given the undemocratic nature of the budget process in Wisconsin, the process cannot be counted on to provide the relief public sector workers need and deserve.

However, developing a majoritarian, on the ground, workplace-centered movement will achieve what we all need: strong democratic unions with workplace organizational strength. The existence of such a movement may help convince the judges to restore laws that provide labor rights, and procedures that make sense.

How can this be achieved? Demonstrating and demanding collective bargaining rights is certainly a first step, but it is only one aspect of the fight. Mobilizing the workforce on an issue of importance to themselves is another. Mobilizing in the workforce as part of a conscious campaign to show what a collective of workers can do can be key to the achievement of any legal victory.

What might a workplace issue look like? It would need to be something that is important to the workforce. It would need to be measurable. It would need to winnable: that is, an issue that the employer could agree to, without the need to go to the legislature for money or permission. Workers could be asked to support this union-driven campaign without necessarily joining the union, but there would be no question in anyone’s mind that the campaign was a union initiative, aimed at improving or remedying an important problem.

What type of issue do we have in mind? Here’s an example which would apply to medical personnel at all levels, but also to the thousands of academic staff and technicians employed by the UW and other public agencies: the “right to know”. (Remember, this is just an example. Depending on the workplace, workers in any particular place may decide on another issue). The “right to know” means that anyone exposed to any chemicals, drugs, solvents, insecticides, pesticides, or other potentially carcinogenic substances would have the right to know that they had been exposed; when, to what, and the relevant scientific information with respect to potential health hazards. Management would be responsible for making this information available in some comprehensible format. This makes common sense. It is something that could be achieved, if the employer wished. It is needed. It is the type of campaign that demonstrates to all, even those of our fellow workers who are undecided about the union, what the union can do to improve working conditions.

A serious campaign of this nature would also demonstrate to the courts that without a union the employer did little or nothing. Hence the issue of collective bargaining is not some theoretical legal issue or abstract right, but a potential lifesaving matter for workers.

A campaign like this would show that collective action—the essence of unionism—makes sense. As such, the union organizing campaigns presently underway would have a specific, meaningful activity to show non-members why it is important to join the union: not only because they will gain rights which may pay off in the future, but because they will exercise collective rights they have here and now, and help pave the way for a better future. If, for some reason, the court cases are not definitive, a campaign such as the one described will have given the unions and workers involved the experience of a successful collective action, and thus grow their capacity to effectively mobilize on other issues.

Frank Emspak

Professor Emeritus, School for Workers, University of Wisconsin