by San Antonio DSA

San Antonio, TX — The Democratic Party, by backing a genocide in Palestine and failing to inspire working-class people with a transformative agenda, has handed a winnable election to Donald Trump for the second time, empowering a growing racist, authoritarian, right-wing movement. Moving beyond the limitations of the two-party system and advancing the interests of working-class people will require sustained organizing that extends far beyond a single election.

We—the working class—now face a monumental challenge.  In the 2025 Trump administration, we can expect truly disastrous attacks on democracy and free expression, labor unions and worker protections, refugees and immigration, public education, LGBTQ+ protections and dignity, economic justice, Palestinian liberation, mass incarceration, housing, healthcare and bodily autonomy, and the environment—to name a few.

Now, more than ever, is the time to lock in & get organized.

In the San Antonio DSA, we:

• Help workers win new unions through our San Antonio Workplace Organizing Committee @satxorganizeworkers

• Strengthen existing unions through the analysis & organizing of SA-DSA union members

• Develop our communities into forces that can win campaigns to provide for our needs, through our Houseless Mutual Aid work in @sacollectivecare and our support for other grassroots community organizing

• Help elect democratic socialists—we endorse and win elections on the San Antonio City Council and the School Board

Our task is to grow this work into a mass movement big enough to win the world we deserve. 

In the San Antonio DSA, we don’t just want to say the right words.  Rather, we are dedicated to building each other up into effective organizers, and committing ourselves to long-haul organizing projects.  

That is what it takes for the working class to win.  There has never been another way. 

Join us! DSAUSA.org/join

The results of the election are frightening and difficult to process.

DSA knows that Donald Trump and the Republican Party will be a terror on the working class while they remain in power. This terror will disproportionately impact already vulnerable communities, including people who are Black, indigenous, Hispanic, queer, immigrants, and more, as it did during the prior Trump term. The return of “Muslim bans”, gutting of carbon initiatives, an even more unabashedly reactionary Supreme Court, an unrepentantly hostile NLRB, an emboldened rightist paramilitary movement both in and out of the state  — all these and more are in the offing. The Israeli settler state is celebrating, brazenly announcing its intention to permanently depopulate Northern Gaza of its already starved and shell-shocked residents. Project 2025, or some other iteration of right-wing state consolidation, may yet find its day in the sun, having shed some of the aura of liability.

Meanwhile, the current leadership of the Democratic Party has failed to produce a convincing alternative to the rise of fascism and plays into the right-wing agenda in critical and unacceptable ways. While the various causes that led to Kamala Harris’ defeat will be teased out in the weeks to come, we already know that the policy that “nothing will fundamentally change” of Biden and Harris has alienated the multiracial US working class, who do not see the Democratic Party as sufficiently fighting for their needs.

We know the US political system, irrespective of its official labels, ultimately serves capitalism, settler colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, and cis-heteropatriarchy. These imperatives lock it into a death spiral that threatens the whole of human existence. The rate of spiral may ebb and flow under the hand of different nominal masters, but the direction remains the same — as long as these forms of domination exist unchallenged.

Many of us are disheartened. We are making space to mourn collectively, while recognizing our individual forms of heartbreak. We own the failures of the US Left to credibly point a way out of our deepening polycrisis, outside of its usual circles. We also know that, per Black abolitionist organizer and academic Mariame Kaba, “hope is a discipline.” Even when the future is uncertain or dangerous, we have the responsibility to believe that we will win. We will win a world where democracy flourishes, people’s basic needs are met, and working class people have the power.

We will only win when we are organized. And we will be organized only when working people striving for a better world can genuinely find a voice in Left political life.

Regardless of the election results, our task is to organize — to become a bigger and more skilled socialist movement, to contest for power, and win big for the working class.

The DSA 2024 Workers Deserve More platform is part of the path in which we can do that. Find out more here: https://2024.dsausa.org/

If you have never organized before, or if you have had to step away, we invite you to join Silicon Valley DSA or peer organizations fighting to make Silicon Valley a place where all working people can thrive.

At our upcoming chapter meeting on November 16 at 1pm we will talk about this as a community. Please join us, and let’s cry, laugh, argue, strategize, despair, celebrate, and above all struggle together – for the better world that can and must be.

In unity,
SVDSA Officers

The post On the 2024 US national election appeared first on Silicon Valley DSA.

The fight against Trump and the Republican Party’s renewed assault on working, marginalized, and oppressed people continues.  The right wing agenda laid out in Project 2025 and supported by Trump […]

The post Houston DSA is ready to continue the fight appeared first on Houston DSA.

Media Advisory

For Immediate Release

November 6th, 2024

Politics Beyond the Ballot Box

Local Raleigh Organizations Hold Organizing Fair

Moore Square, Raleigh, NC

November 9th, 2024 1-4PM

NC Triangle Democratic Socialists of America, in collaboration with multiple local organizations dedicated to social justice, organized labor, and community support, will be hosting a public Organizing Fair in Moore Square in Raleigh on November 9th from 1-4pm. This will be an opportunity for community members to learn about the struggles in their area and the organizations involved in this vital work. With the end of the 2024 election, more Americans than before are paying attention to politics. But, we need to recognize that voting is only one of the essential ways we express our voices and advocate for our communities. Labor protections, civil rights, and peace cannot be advanced once every four years. They must be fought for every day, week, month, and year. 

This organizing fair will be a place for passionate Triangle residents to become connected to these fights in their own backyard. The event will have tabling to create opportunities connecting community members with organizers, speeches from veteran organizers about next steps, and tables for community members to discuss the 2024 election and its consequences. Organizations participating include but are not limited to: Raleigh Mutual Aid Hub, The Southern Workers Assembly, Jewish Voices for Peace, Triangle Tenants Union, Meals for the Masses, Palestinian Youth Movement, and the NC Triangle Democratic Socialists of America.

“The strategy of showing up every few years to cast a vote clearly is insufficient. Workers are kept out of power no matter who is in charge. It does not need to be that way though- workers are really what makes everything run. Nothing is made without labor. We have power, we just have to be organized and conscious. This event is important because it is a first step towards realizing the power we can only claim if we get organized.” - Jody, IBEW member

We encourage all Triangle residents who care about this election to turn out and learn about how they can become involved in their community’s work. We cannot trust elected officials themselves to fix the growing problems our nation is experiencing. We have to do it ourselves. And there is no other place to get started like your own community.

By Adam S

DSA is an organizational chimera–– a delightful and dazzling yet fragile and baffling assemblage of different pieces all in one–– and I think we should talk about it.

Allow me to explain.

Socialists have historically been divided between those who believe socialism can be guided along, or even instituted, by governments, and those who believe socialism must be built by working class organizations made up of working class people. In the nineteenth century, these hostilities were on full display in the rifts that broke out between social democratic parties who sought a parliamentary road to socialism through a combination of legislation and trade union activities and anarchist-oriented syndicalists who thought that, "by organizing industrially," they could form "the structure of the new society within the shell of the old," to quote the Industrial Workers of the World. 

Democratic Socialists of America does not fit neatly into either of these camps. On the one hand, we are not a syndicalist organization, and much of our membership is not directly based in the trade union movement. But neither are we a political party, though we do endorse candidates and intervene in elections. Instead, we operate on many political fronts simultaneously –– we are a union incubator, a civil rights group, and an electoral machine all at once. In this way we are an organizational chimera: multiple different pieces all assembled into one collective, rapidly growing, rapidly changing body.

This also causes DSA to function as a social network for the Left. Those who recognize the need for a change in our economic system join DSA at a higher rate than than any other socialist organization in the United States, learn about and connect with similarly minded people, and, in the best cases, engage in the hard work of organizing for a better world. This has the benefit of imbuing our work with a coherent alternative to neoliberal or reactionary thinking and is an invaluable means of identifying the social origin of many ills that affect modern life under the capitalist system. It is also the primary aspect that unifies the disparate pieces that make up DSA. 

However, DSA’s function as a social network means that socialists are often connected to campaigns through DSA, rather than in or by DSA. This causes problems with retaining focus on DSA’s organizational core, and in the long run this jeopardizes the substantial gains that DSA has made in membership and influence since 2016. 

Members joining an organization who end up working for other organizations do not easily retain their original, rather than inherited, responsibilities. This is just a description, not an attack on the good work that is being done: yours truly is certainly guilty of this to a certain extent. But it means that some appendages to DSA take on an importance that can be substantially different from work that builds DSA. 

This conundrum has affected the work of some working groups within DSA, including the Labor Working Group. The Labor Working Group has provided support to an array of efforts in the Triangle area and beyond, including supporting CWA workers on strike, supporting REI workers organizing to unionize and gain recognition, providing a forum for grad students at UNC and Duke to connect with fellow socialists, and providing extensive support to the Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, or CAUSE, perhaps the single most exciting and dynamic grassroots Amazon union in the entire country. 

At the same time, the Labor Working Group has struggled to retain membership to develop its core competencies, leaving its main leaders under-supported and over-worked on internal DSA matters even as their members plug in and rapidly spin off to provide consistent support to external campaigns. 

To provide one concrete example of how these contradictions harm DSA’s ability to do even its most important work, at the very same time that CAUSE began collecting cards to take their campaign to the next level, the key members of the Labor Working Group, which has had a priority resolution in force providing invaluable support to workers on that campaign for almost a year, had so little support that they were considering dissolving. Even now, its future remains uncertain, and even if the work is reshaped in new ways, the conflicts between internal growth and external organizing will likely remain. Again, the problem here is not with those who took on leadership responsibilities within the working group, but that so few did. 

So what is the path forward? How can we make this chimera into something more elegant? A few solutions have been offered. Some have suggested that the working group model is out of date and that encouraging people to meet regularly on general thematic topics like “labor,” “socialist feminism,” or “ecosocialism” rather than specific campaigns risks burning people out. There is some truth to the idea that committees should be task-oriented. Yet at the same time, that diagnosis does not address the wider problem of DSA being a “forum through” rather than a “hub of” organizing. Saying our dear chimera should have functional pieces does not itself knit it into a more unified body.

Others have suggested that members should be doing more as workers, organizing directly in their own workplaces and communities around specific ways to build power. This suggestion is especially relevant for contexts like union building or tenant organizing where the task is very specific. 

Yet not all workers are able to organize in this way, either because they do not have the capacity to organize their tenants or are not employed somewhere that gives the ability to organize. This means that the exhortation of members to organize does not always make sense. Workers join an organization because of what they can do for the organization, not just themselves. Saying our wonderful chimera’s individual pieces should, amoeba-like, have their own organizational ecosystems, is at odds with why it was ever assembled. 

What is common to both these approaches is arguably the idea that solving this problem–– making DSA a hub rather than a forum–– will require a change in the relation of DSA members to DSA itself, an alteration in the significance of what members believe they are joining for. It will require that members come to understand that they are joining DSA at least as much for themselves as for other people, and to change their conditions, as the conditions of their fellow workers. It will also require that they understand that DSA does not exist by fiat –– it is only empowered when we do the hard work of strengthening it ourselves.

This entails becoming an organization that conceives of collective solidarity as also a personal act placing each individual’s own experiences alongside those of other members in the movement for socialism, and not as external to, or supportive of, some other movement. The paradox is, seen in this way, arguably that DSA members must see ourselves as members of the socialist movement in the way we live our lives, not as abstract bringers of support to something beyond or above us, not as representatives bringing some exalted sense of “socialism” to fellow workers in our communities, but as individuals bringing the energy of solidarity into all that we do for DSA as well as through it. 

The hybridity of DSA can also be a source of strength. By building a community of socialists engaged in struggle across many fronts, we can channel our energies collectively to transform our communities, our unions, and our political systems for the better. We can connect the struggles our members face across different arenas into a single unified movement, and we can live lives that give expression to our goals in many ways rather than pigeonholing ourselves into narrow manifestations of political engagement. 

In doing this, DSA can realize the promise it holds of being a way for workers to build collective power with one another and build a new world within the shell of the old, made–– like a chimera–– out of many pieces, the pieces of our daily lives.

Every four years, working class Utahns are faced with the same “options” for president, a conservative Democrat creeping further right, a deranged Republican set on crushing the working class and marginalized people on behalf of our oppressors, and a few minor party candidates more interested in validating their vanity than actually winning. Since the undemocratic electoral college makes it so Utah will almost certainly go to Trump, the national Democratic Party has completely abandoned Utahns who reject the fascist Republican party. Similarly, the ultra-right supermajority in the State Legislature, which is filled to the brim with landlords (including Sen. Kirk Cullimore, who evicts more people than anyone in the state of Utah) and open neo-Nazis (including Rep. Trevor Lee, who self identifies as a “Deseret Nationalist,” a Mormon-flavored brand of Nazism), has undemocratically gerrymandered state and congressional districts so they choose their voters, and working class Utahns are not actually represented in the government. Because of this, the Democratic Party in Utah has stopped even pretending to try. These choices seem impossible, and for many working class Utahns, voting doesn’t seem worth the effort.

If elected, both Donald Trump and Republican gubernatorial candidate Spencer Cox would be a disaster for the working class of Utah and attack the people of Salt Lake City for the crime of being more progressive than the corrupt state government. As described in “Project 2025,” the extreme right Republicans plan to end civil rights for minority groups, destroy the already weak social safety net and public education, eliminate bodily autonomy for women and queer people, poison the environment, dangerously deregulate businesses, and crush dissent and target immigrants and people of color through an authoritarian police state commanded by a Trump dictatorship. Trump and the State Legislature have vocally supported this plan, and Cox silently subscribes to it. Trump, Cox, and the State Legislature want to make Utah unlivable for everyone who is not a wealthy, white, cisgender/heterosexual, Mormon man.

Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party are no real alternative. They have embraced Trump’s racist border wall and Biden’s unconditional support for Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Harris would repeat destructive policies carried out under previous administrations like mass deportations and global imperialist warfare. She has alienated the progressives and young people who made her vice president in the first place to court the most reactionary forces in our country, such as war-criminal Dick Cheney, architect of the illegal Iraq war and overseer of the torture and abuse of thousands of Iraqis and political dissidents within America. She has no intention of ceasing oil drilling or fracking, and likely will not reverse the deregulation of businesses that defined the Trump years that has made even our basic needs like food more dangerous for consumers. The threat of a Trump presidency is possible because of her deliberate political choices. Should Trump win, it will be entirely the fault of Kamala Harris and the Democratic party that enabled her behavior.

Both candidates uncritically support Israel’s genocide of Gaza. Both candidates serve the ruling class at the expense of the working class. This impossible  “choice” is why millions across the country and thousands here in Utah are itching for an alternative.

Salt Lake DSA has made no recommendation to our members on who to vote for president. Many of our members are voting for candidates that support Palestinian liberation, and some are plugging their nose and voting tactically to defeat Trump. How our members choose to vote is the least important thing Salt Lake DSA members will do over the next four years.

As democratic socialists, we understand that the multi-racial working class has been on the defensive for far too long, and it is time we as a class go on the offensive against our oppressors. We reject the false dichotomy of the Republican and Democratic factions of the ruling class. The ruling class wants us to feel hopeless and alienated from each other– and we reject that as well. We choose solidarity. We understand that only a mass movement of the working and marginalized majority can fundamentally change our lives for the better. We must organize in our workplaces, our apartment buildings, our schools, and our communities. We must organize unions and strikes to build worker power in a state that has the 5th lowest union density in the country. We must carry out campaigns to build working class power and defend our rights outside of and from the corrupt State Legislature. We must organize boycotts against Israeli goods, and work to overturn Utah’s unconstitutional ban on citizens’ right to criticize the genocidal state of Israel. We must hold protests, sit-ins, and marches. Everything we must do as a class to achieve our liberation will require powerful labor and tenant unions, student groups, parent groups, and community coalitions. It will also require running more candidates for office that understand the problems the working class faces and want to build a party of our own to solve those problems.

Salt Lake DSA is building a party that fights for real working class democracy, abolition of the carceral state and white supremacy, dignified union jobs and wages, Medicare for all, education for all, housing for all, a just transition to a climate conscious economy, an end to the U.S. war machine and exploitation of the Global South, a free Palestine – and the transformation of our economy from capitalist exploitation to collective liberation. Workers in Utah deserve more; we deserve a party of our own, and Salt Lake DSA is building the party the multi-racial working class of Utah deserve.

Regardless of what happens or who wins tonight, the sun will rise tomorrow morning; and as long as the sun continues to rise, Salt Lake DSA will continue to organize and fight for the working class and all marginalized people in Utah. Join us in fighting for our future.

The post We Choose Solidarity: Salt Lake DSA Statement on the 2024 Election first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

The core of organizing is one-on-one conversations, and canvassing is the perfect environment to apply and practice them. Each door answered is an opportunity to reset and try a new tact or improve on a rhetorical strategy that is already working.

When a canvasser speaks to voter after voter, they are asked more questions from more perspectives, and each interaction is an opportunity to learn about the issue, practice advocating for it, and learn about what resonates most.

Being able to quickly latch onto what resonates with a voter is key to effectively communicating with them. Someone’s worldview won’t be changed with a few minutes of conversation, but they can be nudged in the right direction when the issue is put into a framework they understand. One doesn’t need to agree on everything to give that nudge. Meet them where they’re at.

The best way to bring someone around to your way of thinking is to have them do it themselves. Ask incisive, leading questions about their priorities and how they believe the issue on the ballot will affect those priorities. This might convince someone already on the fence, but when they are working on a faulty premise, they probably won’t come around. That’s okay too. Try digging at that premise to leave them thinking about it, and with any luck, they’ll have moved one step closer to a sound analysis.

In Kentucky, this year’s Amendment 2 would change the state constitution to allow the allocation of public funds towards private schools, another in a frightening trend of attacks on public education across the US. Kentucky’s Republican super-majority state legislature tried establishing a school voucher program in 2021, but the Kentucky Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional in December 2022. To pave the way for a lasting voucher program, they want to amend the state’s constitution and remove the obstacle in the court.

In opposition to this amendment, I have knocked on more than a thousand doors in DSA Cincy’s campaign. To help illustrate the canvassing experience, I want to share some of the lessons I’ve learned while speaking with voters on the ground. Some voters are eager to talk, and some with a yard full of Trump signs and “don’t tread on me” flags might yell at you for missing their “no soliciting” sign. Some voters answer the door and immediately share that their family works in public schools, and others with a statue of Mother Mary in their front yard will tell you they plan on voting Yes.

One voter of the latter kind, a catholic planning on voting for the possibility of a voucher program, expressed her concern about affordability to me: “I’m split because my daughter sends her kids to a Catholic school and she’s paying out the butt for it, but I have other family going to public schools,” she said. Not every Catholic voter will be in an identical situation, but this one isn’t uncommon, and it’s perfect for nudging her from undecided to leaning against the amendment.

This woman had family in public schools, so I emphasized that. “Many people are in public schools like your family, and a lot of them have no other option. Going to a Catholic school is great, but this amendment wouldn’t just help your grandchildren go to parochial school, it would take money away from your family in public schools, and the other kids who don’t have the means to go elsewhere,” I told her, “it sucks that parochial school is expensive for your daughter, but if it ever gets to be too much, she can always fall back on public schools.” The woman responded well to this, and she thanked me for helping to clarify a concern she already had.

Not many voters are in the position to be convinced though. Another house I approached had a couple of banners with depictions of Jesus in the yard, along with a sign saying, “Vote Yes on 2.”. I introduced myself to the woman at the door, and I asked her, “I saw the sign on your lawn. Can I ask: why do you want to support school vouchers?” Her response was something I hadn’t heard before: “I work at the diocese, so I know the truth about it. They won’t even let them talk about it! Don’t you think they should be able to talk about it?”

She clearly had some strong convictions about something she didn’t understand—far from not being able to “talk about” it, the legislature had passed a voucher law already—so I tried to explain the legal situation and why people opposed the amendment. Still, she insisted on her bizarre free-speech interpretation, so I wished her a good night and took off.

Not every voter is going to be responsive to what you have to say, and it’s important to take the hint and move on. This story is similar to one a friend told me about a door he knocked on this campaign. The man who answered listened for a moment, then insisted that he have Amendment 1 explained to him before he would listen to anything about Amendment 2. My friend tried explaining that Amendments 1 and 2 were entirely separate issues, but the man didn’t care and seemed to think something was being hidden from him.

Now, would it have been nice to remember Amendment 1 well enough to explain it off the cuff, while canvassing for another issue? Yes. But it’s good to read the signs when someone is confrontational. If you could perfectly answer every question he has, you might, just might, convince this man. But your time is better spent speaking with a voter who is interested in what you have to say.

Another door I knocked had an older man who was eager to talk to me. The more someone talks, the more you learn about what might bring them around, so I listened for a few minutes. Eventually, he began sharing a story about when his son was in school and kids in his class were sharing poems they had written. “Must’ve been half of those kids wrote about their daddy in prison or their parents addicted to drugs,” he said to me, “I nearly started crying.” And I piggybacked off of this emotional example he gave.

“That’s awful. And when those kids don’t have anyone helping them at home, who’s there for them? Who helps to make sure they don’t end up in the same place?” I asked. I was hoping he’d see the same picture as me, that their public school could be a positive force in the lives of these children, and he did.

It’s easy to focus on adapting your message to the individual, but it’s also important to understand your foundation for the issue you’re canvassing. More than a couple of voters asked me why I cared enough to be out volunteering, and there’s not one right answer. Whatever rings true for you will also be the most compelling message you can give to others.

Not every voter will have a productive conversation, but that’s okay! I have had someone who mostly wanted to talk about why we need corporal punishment back in schools and another who warned me to renew my passport in case I need to get out of the country. Some people will immediately agree with you after you explain the issue, and some have no interest in being swayed to your point of view. It’s never your fault when someone isn’t open to being convinced, but you can leave them with something to think about at the least. The real effect comes when you’re able to canvass a large number of doors.

If a motivated organizer canvasses a hundred doors over a couple of hours and nudges one in ten of those households to change their vote, now he is punching above his weight. When a motivated group canvasses together, that force is amplified. Organize a campaign of canvasses over a month, and now a small group of dedicated activists can have a huge impact on the outcome of an election.

The strength of democracy doesn’t end with our vote, though it’s easy to stop there. It also lies in our ability to influence others. Advertisements, yard signs, and political events can all move a vote, but nothing is more effective than personal conversations. And that is an advantage that socialists have over groups that can’t do anything but throw money at an issue. It’s something that any organizer can do, and it’s better than what money can buy.

Canvassing also helps to develop crucial skills for a successful socialist organizer. One-on-one conversations with workers, meeting people where they are, and understanding how to effectively use our words to agitate and evoke a response are key to any campaign. Everyone interested in organizing should get out and canvass at least once or twice an election, whether they do it to learn new skills, keep old ones sharp, get a feel for what voters are thinking, or swing some votes.