When disaster hits, don't wait for the boss — organize with your co-workers!

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By Antonio Rhodes 

In their critiques of Donald Trump, many liberals focus greatly on the embarrassingness—for them—of his demeanor. They will be speaking at once of how his speech is not articulate and kind enough, not presidential. At another moment, they will be lambasting his fatness or his orangeness or how he choreographs his small hands when he orates. But whatever their immediate example, a large part of why they cannot stand him often seems to be that they perceive his office as President of the United States of America as a desecration. 

Socialists must oppose this critique of image—obviously not because they like Trump but for the two below reasons: 

1. The liberal view of Trump as a desecration presupposes an incorrect belief in the sanctity of the once and always wicked US Government.
2. The liberal satirization of Trump’s appearance and behavior does nothing to enhance the worldviews of those misguided members of the working class perhaps currently affiliated with the MAGA Movement, but possibly open to socialist revolution in the future. 

To begin with the first. The imperialist-capitalist US Government is not something which should be preserved through wise leadership—it is something to be vanquished from below. This divine institution in the eyes of liberals has its origins in the repetitive holocausts of all those peoples from the Atlantic to the Pacific and in the enslavement of an entire race. This is a divine institution which commits atrocities all across the world—now in the Philippines, now in Korea, now in Vietnam, now in Afghanistan, now in Iraq, now in Palestine—in pursuit of a policy of hounding the world left and all other forces of liberation, and of taking more land and labor for the imperialist bourgeoisie of which it is representative. As for its home front, as a state for a propertied few, it is a divine institution which allows for the immiseration of the unpropertied masses of its citizens, in the spheres of food security, housing, healthcare, and education—despite its possession of the most abundant economy in the whole world. It was never dignified. Whether a Marcus Aurelius or a Caligula is its face and highest administrator is not a question in which those who fight for the popular class and all other oppressed have a personalized stake. To stick with the Roman analogy, they will always be on the side of a Spartacus. 

Now for the second. When one says that Trump’s looks and so on are a desecration before, say, some underpaid cashier at a Dollar Tree in an underdeveloped, remote county who voted for him, they only confirm that person’s understanding that a connivingly large element of society is hellbent on defaming a glorious fighter for the people. In opting for caricaturish ad hominem, they fail to act on that person’s real and legitimate, if misplaced, anti-establishment sentiments. 

For his part, Trump has been shrewd in using populist rhetoric to win his bids for the White House. He has spoken of “draining the swamp,” and during his first bid, he even called the Iraq War what it was—i.e., an unnecessary invasion based on a lie for a casus belli. In confronting working class Trumpists, socialists must not resort to ad hominem, for they have all the ammunition required to convert these people. They can speak of how Trump has chainsawed healthcare aid, food stamps, and whatever other tiny good which the working class had previously won from the capitalist state in his Big Ugly Bill; of how he is not some anti-imperialist but another neoconservative who continued the War in Afghanistan, meddled in Syria, permitted the Saudi Invasion of Yemen, enabled Israel, choked Venezuela and Cuba, antagonized China; of how he comes from and works for the same privileged, propertied ilk as all the Democrats and old-school Republicans against whom he often pretends to be fighting. 

Trump is only another gator of the swamp—perhaps more flamboyant, perhaps prouder but nevertheless only another gator. Socialists must always clarify that the swamp existed long before him; that it is what produced him; and that if our approach degenerates into the liberal lines of attack described, it will exist after him. We are better than a chorus of liberal caricatures.

The post On Donald Trump: Avoid the Liberal Image-Based Desecration Narrative  first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

By: Yash Khaleque

Theme song: Kino — Peremen

DSA National Conventions are a truly unique social phenomenon. Terminally online sickos swarm the streets of Chicago like an invasive species, sporting their red lanyards and esoteric emblems, chanting “Death, Death to the IDF” outside a fashion store turned nightclub. The Convention is a gathering of over a thousand influential organizers and thought leaders within our organization set towards the task of charting the course for the next two years. The energy of the room is excited and exuberant, ready to tackle whatever fresh hell the world has in store for us. It makes you feel like there are no obstacles the party cannot overcome, and that change is right around the corner.

Convention is a place where ideological caucuses, which are usually not impactful in day to day work, find themselves as the forefront institutions deciding the future of American socialism. They organize campaigns to lobby undecideds in their favor. Tables end up littered with the myriad literature that gets handed out. Tensions certainly rise over aggressive politicking, procedural nonsense, and decisive votes, but we often come out of the experience with greater respect and solidarity for our comrades across factional lines.

Perhaps it’s easier for victors of a political struggle to feel jovial about it. I write this as a member of the Marxist Unity Group (MUG), which accomplished nearly all of its strategic aims this year.

• The Light and Air publication continues to be unrivalled in print newsletters analyzing the previous day’s proceedings and upcoming votes. Not even the Trotskyists from Reform & Revolution (R&R) could match our paper game!
• We won 3 out of 3 National Political Committee seats we contested, and we assisted our R&R allies in scoring a seat as well.
• Won key policy votes, including the last second buzzer beater R07: “Principles of Party Building.”

The topic of Palestine featured heavily in this year’s convention, two years into the genocide in Gaza, and the proceedings were absolutely phenomenal. “A weapon is a weapon” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib at the plenary session, a clear attack against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s vote for Iron Dome funding.

It’s been said you can differentiate between different types of communists by when they think the Russian Revolution failed. Similarly, one may identify tendencies based on when they soured on AOC. For me, it was when she voted for President Biden’s strikebreaking measures against railway workers after the 2023 derailment and environmental disaster in the prophetically named East Palestine, Ohio. This is not merely a fringe opinion — a resolution to censure AOC was agendized even before the Iron Dome incident.

While we ran out of time before this could be debated, the question of electoral discipline and renegades will be continuously prescient in our burgeoning party-like structure, especially as we assume executive office in NYC and Minneapolis in the coming months. It shows that victory alone is not enough, and that we need to understand what to do with it or else face disaster.

MUG advocates for a couple of principles on electoralism: A Strategy of Patience where we seek a majority in the legislature, or at least dominance in the streets, prior to taking executive office. We also back a Tribunes of the People model wherein electeds work to build the socialist movement as a whole rather than merely their influence in government. This means unconditionally supporting the people against injustice without making backroom deals for expedience or “pragmatism.”

The other bombshell on the topic was the passage of R22: “For a Fighting Anti-Zionist DSA,” which has been the cause of some charged discourse online. I’ll leave it to other articles to explain the mythbusting around this resolution in greater detail, but I will reiterate that it does not sanction mass purges of DSA, require un-endorsement of Zohran Mamdani, nor imply that nay voters are all Zionists. What struck me about this piece is that the failure of the 2023 version of the resolution at Convention caused the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) to issue an embargo against cooperation with DSA. Over the next two years, 50+ chapters representing about 40% of national membership worked to pass local versions of this to restore relations. With the culmination of this resolution as national policy, inshallah we can return to work with PYM and the rest of the movement.

What saddened me about moving to Detroit was that the metro’s status as the center of Arab American and Muslim life is not reflected in its DSA chapter. Back in Dallas, the YDSA and Students for Justice in Palestine ran thick as thieves, and the Anti-War Working Group did their all for international solidarity. In nearly a year of being in this chapter, not once have we done education on Palestine or made solidarity work a chapter priority. In the DSA 2.0 we’re inaugurating, I’m now confident we’ll find our way back to the righteous path.

And what is this new DSA? It is the internal and external recognition of DSA as its own thing and not merely a faction of liberals. Passing “Principles of Party Building” does not automatically conjure political independence and partyist structure into being. But rather it is a useful barometer for how the majority seeks to move and a benchmark for local and national bodies to meet. It must be stressed that political independence is more than whether the ballot line reads Democratic, Independent, or Socialist. It’s about whether we can formulate and execute action without reliance on state and capitalist institutions. As it stands, Detroit DSA is still dependent on the progressive blob/NGO complex for direction. We need to develop the desire to instigate against the ruling order on our own terms and learn to ditch the training wheels of the liberal coalition. This I believe is a growing conversation within the chapter that will become increasingly relevant as we head towards a national turning point in 2028.

It would not be wholly accurate to boast about a #MUGSWEEP without addressing a couple near misses that overperformed expectations in such a way that defeat actually stung. The first is R34-A01: “A Fighting Socialist Program for DSA,” an update and expansion to Workers Deserve More. The vision and objectives of the proposed program are too long to elucidate here and we recommend interested readers to refer to the Resolutions Compendium. A strong belief of mine is that the national program ought to be decided by the Convention. With the failure of this amendment, it will default to a Program Committee chosen by the NPC whose members are selected from national body leadership, general membership, and the NPC itself. What this means is that our program will be written bureaucratically and through horse trading in personnel selection. This centers politicking over actual politics. We would hope that Convention delegates would be the ones voting among a number of draft programs, but alas only MUG-R&R had the initiative to try to advance one.

A second failed item of note was CR10-A01: “A Partyist Labor Strategy.” It’s based on the idea that only an independent socialist party can provide the basis for an independent labor movement and effectively connect actions between the economic and political spheres. It’s the sense that we need a visible socialist nucleus in the unions to point out the failure and betrayal of the reformers (e.g. the Teamsters’ turn to the Republicans). A need for a partyist approach to labor was shown in the dissolution of the UAWD, a source of controversy in our chapter. As I am neither UAW nor an auto worker, I am ultimately dispositional on who’s right and wrong. But what I did find disconcerting is that DSA members were central figures on both sides of the split. An argument has been expressed that we should be free to act as we please outside of DSA. The problem with this line of thinking is that it shows outsiders the impression that DSA is an incoherent [dis]organization incapable of leadership.

More broadly, this touches on the topic of democratic centralism, a core advocacy of the authors’ vision of internal democracy. It’s best described as “diversity of thought, unity of action,” a middle ground between the “Tyranny of Structurelessness” that arises from laissez-faire governance and bureaucratic centralism, a leadership-centric “rule of experts.” It entails respect for the majoritarian decision while maintaining freedom to criticize it and organize for change. For example, many in New York spoke against endorsing Zohran for mayor, yet took action in key organizing roles anyway. Let’s work to build a culture of democratic discipline here as well.

I joined MUG right after the 2023 Convention. In high-level terms, MUG is a caucus that purports orthodox Marxism, democratic republicanism, and a practical approach to revolutionary ethos. What I found compelling about them was their grind in producing convention bulletin articles and the renowned 500-page MUG Reader, the mandatory study book for prospective members. It showed to me that this is a group that’s truly dedicated to learning from the successes and failures from the past, and that they seek to raise up quality membership rather than merely whip votes. The potency of our crew has been made evident in the ideas we’ve pushed into becoming DSA consensus: pursuit of programmatic unity (as opposed to ideological unity), the need for a democratic republic, and now partyism. Plus, our logo is super cool. And that’s what matters most, right?

DSA has come a long way since I joined it in October 2018. Gone are the days of looking towards Bernie Sanders’ next campaign as our savior. Gone are the stagnant doldrums of the Biden era. We asked for change, and we got it!

Bonus track: Utro v Tebe — Karl Marx

This article represents the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of The Detroit Socialist or Metro Detroit DSA as a whole.

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We Asked For Change And We Got It was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By: Micah J.

Reflecting on the 2025 DSA National Convention, I feel profound joy, excitement, angst, and trepidation. The theme of this convention was “Party Building,” and the debates and resolutions were primarily focused on preparing ourselves and our organization — our Party, if I may be so bold to say at this point — for the next decade. When reflecting on this convention, I am likewise reflecting on the past decade of the DSA (the birth and maturing of what many call the “new” DSA) and on my own life. Writing this in August 2025, I am 27 years old, turning 28 this coming January. I reached adulthood concurrently with the DSA renaissance; my political awakening was the 2016 election, in which I voted for the first time, casting my vote for Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Primary, and then refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton in the General Election.

I am seized with the joy, hope, and confidence in a better world, in a way typical of revolutionary socialists. I am likewise quick to sink into melancholy, despair, and bitterness at the state of the world, also in a way typical of revolutionary socialists. Therefore, as I reflect on this convention, I am simultaneously filled with pride in our organization, certainty in the righteousness of our cause, and assuredness in our inevitable victory, as well as with fear of our coming struggles, of the enemies we must overcome, and the possibility that — though the working class will someday triumph — we, as in the DSA, may lose. This is a possibility that all of us must honestly reckon with, and was the fate of nearly every liberatory organization (socialist, communist, progressive, or what have you) in history. This is not to say that we should approach our struggle fatalistically, with our eyes on our own destruction, as if it were a foregone inevitability, or even a purifying self-sacrifice (a la Jesus, Johnny Silverhand, or Macbeth — pick your favorite reference). It is however something that is occupying my thoughts. The ramifications of this past convention, particularly with the resolutions that were passed, mean an inevitable heightening of contradictions, both within our organization, as well as with how our organization relates to our society as a whole. We are far stronger after this convention than we were before it, and that is the point I will try to make in this piece. But as we become stronger, so do the challenges and enemies that we will have to face.

Before I plunge forward, I must make clear my own affiliations, as I was not a neutral party at this convention. I am a member of the Marxist Unity Group (MUG), and am a fervent partisan for Orthodox Marxism. I recognize and understand the central role of the mass socialist party in the revolutionary struggle. I dream of a socialist democratic republic, first in North America and then throughout the entire world, in which the working class will have taken its rightful seat as the ruling class. And I believe that the working class, by winning the battle for democracy and becoming the ruling class, will lead humanity towards a stateless, classless, moneyless society, in which the means of production are held in common and used for the benefit of all, towards a society in which human history will truly begin: communism.

The Anti-Zionist Resolution: Reification and Honesty

The first and most clear evidence of our organization’s maturation is the passing of Resolution 22, “For a Fighting Anti-Zionist DSA.” It is difficult to put into words the joy I felt seeing the adoption of this resolution. At long last, the Democratic Socialists of America has shed the last vestiges of labor Zionism that had so plagued it through much of the late 20th century. This is both its own qualitative, self-conscious step forward, as well as a natural, necessary advancement that was, frankly, a long time coming. I do not mean to imply that anti-Zionism is not already the hegemonic position within DSA, nor do I doubt the commitment of comrades who voted against this resolution towards Palestinian liberation (1). Rather, I liken this resolution to a person soberly reflecting on their past, realizing how far they have come, and that they are not the same person that they were only a handful of years previously. Having realized this, they then create a new path forward for themselves.

As I already stated, the underlying principles of this resolution are hardly controversial. Rare is the DSA member who in 2025 would say that they support Israel’s right to defend itself, or who are under the delusion of equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, or who does not believe that the cause of Palestinian liberation is currently the nexus of the global anti-imperial struggle. Such views, though they may have been more common five years ago, or ten years ago, or certainly 20 years ago, are now rejected automatically by the newest member walking into their first meeting. What was missing was taking these principles and turning them towards programmatic ends. What does it mean for DSA to be an anti-Zionist organization? Is it enough for its members to merely chant “Free Free Palestine!”? This resolution seeks to answer that question, ensuring that DSA is firmly anti-Zionist, not just in inclination or rhetoric, but in actual practice.

Much of the content of this resolution is dedicated towards laying out groups that we must ally with, and campaigns we must join in, and the principles for future alliances, campaigns, and coalitions. These are all, to a group, chosen for their committed anti-imperialist actions and stances. The fact that these principles have been set forth, and that these groups (such as Stop Fueling Genocide, the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Palestine Solidarity Working Group’s No Appetite for Apartheid campaign, etc.) have been chosen by us to ally with, are natural consequences of the principles that all of us in DSA (and certainly all of us in Metro Detroit) hold proudly.

In light of our shared principles, we have through this resolution finally set down on paper something that we all understand and already believe: that there is absolutely no room for Zionism within DSA. Just as we will have no truck with those who say that trans liberation is a distraction from workers’ rights (as if trans rights are not workers’ rights), we will likewise not tolerate Zionism, either in behavior or in rhetoric. This resolution therefore stipulates that any member who can be shown to “have consistently and publicly opposed BDS and the Palestinian cause,” shown to be “currently affiliated with the Israeli government or any Zionist lobby,” or shown to “have knowingly provided material aid to Israel” is “thereby committing an expellable offense.” I am proud to be a member of an organization that takes such a firm, righteous stance — a stance that is a natural application of the principles of the vast majority of the national membership, and of every person within the Metro Detroit chapter.

(1) Almost every single person who thinks this way has already quit the organization, especially since the beginning of the Israeli offensive two years ago, when DSA held strong to its professed anti-Zionist stance.

Building the Party, and the Terms of our Struggle

One could say, quite honestly and accurately, that every resolution, every amendment, and every debate slot contained within it implications for what this coming “decade of party building” would be. The full scope of all of this will be elaborated in the countless reports and reflections that are even now being written. I want to home in on one particular resolution, which was, in fact, the last resolution that was debated and voted on in the entire convention — just barely squeaking in after a great deal of procedural obstruction throughout the weekend had caused massive delays in the agenda. This was the succinctly named “Principles of Party Building.” The purpose of this resolution was to go beyond implications and inferences for what the formal structure-building principles of our party may be, and states in clear, no-uncertain terms what it means for us, for DSA, to be a party in a qualified sense.

The resolution acknowledges that DSA does de facto already operate as a party, from a certain point of view. We already have a culture of political independence, we already run candidates under a DSA platform (though the explicit party line displayed on ballots still eludes us), and we are already talked about by the bourgeois press as being our own thing, distinct from all other political formations, the Democratic Party in particular. This last point especially is something that deserves its own careful appreciation. We are long past the days in which DSA and Democratic Socialists are considered a “progressive wing” of the Democratic Party, or even a fringe of the Democratic Party. Observers watching from the outside, even as the convention was ongoing, spoke of us as the center of a new type of movement. Now, to be sure, a curious liberal watching from the sidelines will have neither the understanding nor the vocabulary to describe our movement, but they can still see and feel that something is different about us.

Thus enters the “Principles of Party Building” resolution, and we have before our eyes the language that liberals lack, which we may use to describe ourselves, our Party, and our movement. In Point 1, we have the motivation for a revolutionary party program, the purpose of which would be to orient our party towards the goal of the democratic socialist republic, in which the working class holds political hegemony, acting, for the first time in American history, as the ruling class. Points 2–4 state the principles for our internal structure. We are to be a maximally democratic organization, in which decisions are made from the bottom up at general meetings, chapter conventions, and national conventions. Members shall be free to associate and group together in factions with distinct political lines, and thereby contribute constructively to the direction of our party. A diversity of views will be protected, as long as the promoters of that line are acting honestly and openly, without contradicting fundamental socialist principles, and with the understanding that after an honest debate and a vote is taken, all participants in that debate and vote will accept the results as legitimate and valid, and will be eager to carry out the decisions of the body. We most directly see this in Point 2, where we read, “Members must be able to critique the party’s program and organize to change it, as long as they are willing to accept fighting for it as the democratically-determined expression of DSA’s goals.” This is the essence of democratic centralism.

Points 5–8 state the premise and means for our operation within the current bourgeois state. We acknowledge the unfortunate reality that when running a candidate for office, we by sheer necessity will in nearly every instance be forced to run the candidate on the Democratic ballot. This is purely a tactical question, and must not be mistaken for any idea of reforming or realigning the Democratic Party. We thus are doubly compelled to build our own robust internal infrastructure and hold steadfast to our principles in order to avoid getting swallowed up in the whirlpool of the Democratic kraken. Our tactic is “party surrogate,” but always with the commitment to our own internal democracy, and with the long-term view of total opposition to the Democratic Party, the capitalist state, and all other bourgeois institutions. Properly stated, then, our formula must be “party surrogate in form, clean break in content.”

And finally, Points 9 and 10 state that though our current front of struggle is within the confines of the United States, our true fight is global, international. We are tasked to, even now, today, begin making connections and finding points of unity with comrades across the globe. We in the United States must make double — triple — sure of this, as we shoulder the burden of working within the core of the global imperialist machine. Just as the American state projects its influence throughout the globe, we must in turn form relationships and alliances with genuine socialist projects throughout the world. At convention, we heard from comrades from other nations, and in particular we received video messages from Cuba and from Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. I wept listening to the message of solidarity from our comrades to the south, in the only socialist republic in the western hemisphere, that is so cruelly kept under the boot of American imperialism. Our efforts in building solidarity with comrades in other nations must necessarily lead to the formation of a new International, through which we may struggle on every front in the global fight against capitalism. I dream of the foundation of this new International, and hope that this International will be the one that finally unites the human race.

Until the Final Conflict

And now the responsibility is ours, Motor City comrades, to take this convention, with its decisions and consequences, and march on. I will not lie to you all and withhold the fact that part of my jubilance in writing this article about this convention is because I was on the winning side of nearly all of the most consequential decisions. It is not because of any special insight or personal brilliance that I and my comrades in MUG achieved nearly all of our goals for this convention. It is rather because principled, unapologetic, proud Orthodox Marxism is the correct line. It was correct in 1871, correct in 1917, and it is correct today in 2025. Our organization, our Party, is maturing, and is therefore finding it necessary to ground itself in the proud tradition of historical Marxism. There is no shortcut on the road to power, no weird trick through which we can avoid the historical necessity of an independent mass socialist party. It is this line that I am convinced of, and because of it, I have absolute faith in DSA, and in the international working class.

This article represents the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of The Detroit Socialist or Metro Detroit DSA as a whole.

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Fear and Resolve: My Faith is in DSA was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Seattle Democratic Socialists of America demands the immediate release of Zahid Chaudhry, a 52-year-old decorated and disabled veteran, who was detained today by ICE during a citizenship interview in Tukwila, WA. SDSA had the privilege of getting to know Zahid and his wife, Melissa, during her campaign against U.S. Representative Adam Smith in 2024. Neither Zahid nor Melissa have been informed of the legal basis for Zahid’s detention.

We must continue to stand against the unlawful detention of our community members. Seattle DSA will always stand in solidarity with all those who have fallen victim to our ever-expanding police state. While Zahid was someone our members knew personally, we know this ongoing battle is being waged with the expectation that those with privilege will not defend strangers who are not like them. In our fight against fascist violence, our mission is to deny the Trump administration that possibility. We believe that remaining unified behind those from different backgrounds and experiences is a crucial aspect of solidarity, and we take any attack on those in our communities as an attack on all of us.

Seattle DSA strongly condemns the use of immigration detention as an ongoing tool of political repression. We encourage our members, and the community of Seattle and King County, to get involved in resisting the continued kidnapping, targeting, and detention of immigrants, regardless of criminal background. When violence facing our communities comes from our own government, it is our collective responsibility to protect each other, care for one another, and keep ourselves safe.

Our Immigrant Justice Working Group will be holding a Migrant Accompaniment Training on Sunday, August 24th, and our Palestine Solidarity Working Group will be co-hosting a picnic with Seattle Families for Palestine at Columbia Park that same day. Finally, on Sunday in Tacoma at 2pm SDSA will be joining a coalition of organizations for an Emergency Protest at the NW Detention Facility. Please be sure to check our event calendar for more details. 

ICE OUT OF KING COUNTY!

By: Travis Wayne

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass.

Build the branch to build the party.

“The party” has as many definitions as there are blades of grass. Each tendency and caucus tends to imbue “the party” with its own nuances, its own emphases. Substantial disagreements on the party form plague every single socialist movement, in every era, but the “party” itself doesn’t tend to particularly care about definitions – in fits and starts, in battle, the party splutters into existence as a self-organized vehicle the working class discovers on its own all over again. Its definition and its program are fluid products of the struggle in flux. In many but not all cities and towns across the United States, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has emerged as the mass organization that acts increasingly most like the party. Our numbers swell with each victory we win and each defeat the working class suffers.

The party forms in our collective hands, but our hands are diverse. Allende’s children sit alongside Harnecker’s on steering committees and ecosocialists share unions with anarchists. We’ve gotten about half of what Seth Ackerman’s Blueprint for a New Party advocated for in building the party surrogate – a party-like structure with no ballot line. But caucuses have different visions for the party of the future. To some, the party surrogate is the indefinite road of DSA’s success. Others prefer a clean break and independent ballot line. Others hold up the vision of the mass party, brought down from Kautsky and the RSDLP and Partido Ortodoxo, in which socialist organization is built within. For example, in 2021, now-NPC member Cliff Connolly of the Marxist Unity Group wrote that the party must “win political hegemony in whatever independent organs of proletarian power that we help build, using every available means,” by building “the local chapters of the mass party work together on a common, democratically agreed-upon plan.” In 2024, meanwhile, Bread and Roses’ Elizabeth Brown described a vision of a socialist labor party as one where we act as the political center for a wider affiliation network of “class organizations” built through a dirty break from Democratic control once there is a base for the break. Reform and Revolution counters this strategy by calling for “A Socialist Party in Years, Not Decades.”

The 2025 DSA Convention, the highest-body of the largest socialist organization, chose instead to only endorse R07: Principles for Party-Building: “The fundamental purpose of a socialist party is to be a mass association of the working class formed for collective political action.” DSA is the party surrogate, for now, but what matters more than the ballot line is “our ability to take independent political action” with “local party organizations run by membership.”

In Boston today, I argue that these agreed-upon principles can be best honored through branch-building. Branch-building means organizing local party appendages closest to sites of struggle and connected to working class self-activity. That can include the industrial section, the labor or tenant union caucus, the neighborhood. Building branches closest to sites of struggle is how we ensure branches actually function as “local party organizations,” organically connected to the political arenas of everyday life where oppression is experienced and protagonism grown, while developing the layer of new members themselves to make those branches “run by membership.” Since many of Boston’s new members are entering into organization at the local layer, we can organize the party best by meeting them where they enter – the local. At the point of entry, new members can best be nurtured into core members by becoming protagonists: members, decision-makers, organizers in an organization of organizers.

Some have called the strategy of building the branch “decentralization.” Rather than detracting from building Boston DSA, branch-building lets us organize deeper into the lives and terrains of the working class. Branches connect people to the working class’s self-activity most closely because branches can prioritize lived experiences of oppression experienced in the workplace, the home, the community more effectively than chapter apparatuses tasked with dozens of other priorities for meetings, while also building the confidence of new members into leadership. Members can wield power, strategize, and campaign as a collective, learning collective lessons within one unit of the party itself. Branches can be incubators of member leadership for the party and also serve as healing grounds for party leaders to recuperate from burnout. The branch is a sign of vitality, not weakness. Instead of purposeless decentralization, as some allege, branch-building strengthens the sinew of the party itself.

Without these bridges to working class self-activity, there is no party at all.

From Neighborhood Groups to Branches 

Call it a local, call it a branch – the party needs bridging organizations. 

The local party appendage closest to sites of struggle acts as the conscious bridge between the party and the self-activity of the working class – the struggles below. Sometimes, the chapter can do this, especially if it serves a small area or when the political center of the chapter and the chapter itself are synonymous, as in small chapters or in locals with fifty or fewer active members. In those cases, chapters may be “branches.”

In Boston DSA, branches can only be organized as organic projects of the membership surges and self-organization of the membership. Since new members have started organizing neighborhoods, conscious efforts to build the party from those formations is branch-building. Since November 2024, new members have infused new energy into eleven “neighborhood groups” (the bureaucratic classification that separates them from working groups) across the Greater Boston area, with active formations of members in Cambridge, Somerville, Allston-Brighton, Arlington, East Boston, Jamaica Plain, Malden, Medford, Merrimack Valley, South Shore, and North Shore. Each has different projects, different profiles, different silos. Since new members began participating in Boston DSA in neighborhoods, core and active members also began in greater numbers. Some caucuses, like Bread and Roses, have made organizing the neighborhood groups a key priority enough to run as a slate on their development during local convention. A chapter co-chair candidate has also campaigned on developing the same layer – illustrating cross-caucus, multitendency recognition.

“Branches” don’t need to exist on paper to exist in practice; we can organize by people, not by resolution. Neighborhood groups are informal and vary in level of activity, according to the bylaws, which means some neighborhood groups are branches and some aren’t. Neighborhood groups are not automatically branches of the party because neighborhood groups do not automatically connect members to working class self-activity. 

A neighborhood group is a bureaucratic category that isn’t a working group; in Boston, a branch is a conscious political project to organize a functioning appendage of the party connected and intervening as an “independent political force” in sites of struggle. A neighborhood group can be passive; a branch must be active. Most obviously, a branch is more than a neighborhood group because it encompasses more neighborhoods – consciously building the party deeper and more local to everyday working and oppressed people’s lives.

In arguing for building the branch to build the party, I will use Somerville as a case study. I moved to Boston in August 2024, became active in Somerville DSA in November 2024, and have co-chaired since February 2025. 

Somerville represents one path to branch-building, but not the only one. 

The Branch as Local Party Organization

Like the party, the branch must be multitendency and shared by the movement.

Last winter, Somerville DSA had an active membership of fifteen members. Now, we have over seventy active members participating in party activity as recorded by listwork. At the beginning, administrative items were traded between core members saddled with significant chapter-level duties that ensured local work always took a backseat. An election led to a slide towards fascism. Then, new members began to show up – until active membership was largely newly-activated, including me and other members, who began to organize the branch.

First, we organized intentionally multitendency. While other working groups may have become caucus fiefdoms and subject to a winner-takes-all political culture that undermined solidarity, we sought to build Somerville to maximize the participation of as many members as possible across all tendencies. First, membership passed a resolution for formal neighborhood leadership to place administrative burden into the hands of elected leadership instead of branch membership. This immediately built ownership among a new core team over the key important cogs of the branch functions, including regular flyering, listwork, intentional agenda-setting, and a maximalist approach to turnout. Established also was the expectation that branch leaders were responsible for these items or to find someone to do these items – building up another layer of member leadership, beyond what may pass as an organizing committee – as a baseline and foundation of our leadership. Administrative clarity creates space for greater participation of members, which leads to both a more robust internal democracy, as well as more member leadership energizing that democracy. Party-building was understood from the beginning as the essential core responsibilities of member leaders.

In Somerville, we elected two co-chairs, one secretary, one moderator (tasked with liaising with the Harassment and Grievance Officers, as well as maintaining accessibility for all members), and one internal organizer (tasked with turnout and onboarding). This structure would then be adapted a few months later by the other largest branch in Boston DSA: Cambridge. Members of the Communist Caucus, Bread and Roses Caucus, and independent new members have all shared leadership in Somerville since our self-organization, working together to set agendas and improve meetings, developing new strategies to maximize turnout over monthly potlucks. We conducted one-on-ones with other new members to become priority campaign stewards, a framework adapted from Las Vegas DSA, where specific member leaders are responsible for bottomlining the branch’s priority campaigns. New members have become priority campaign stewards and also become active in other parts of the Boston DSA chapter by first developing into member leaders as priority campaign stewards. These include members from across the ideological spectrum, from the aforementioned caucuses to Boston DSA’s internal “Conifer” alliance to independent cultural organizers. Active membership shaping the branch, meanwhile, includes organizers from the Libertarian Socialist Caucus and Red Line. Already, the branch has served a role as the local party apparatus capable of building up new organizers across the ideological spectrum to build both the broader party and class organizations in sites of struggle.

This constant focus on building up member leadership is in line with the framework of Antonio Gramsci when the founder of the Italian Communist Party called for “a continual insertion of elements thrown up from the rank and file into the solid framework of the leadership apparatus which ensures continuity and the regular accumulation of experience.” Beyond the branch’s multitendency nature, branch-building can be party-building also through articulation. In the words of Salar Mohandesi, “the primary task of the party is not actually to create social forces, but rather to facilitate their coming together into a broader unity.” The working class self-organizes in a turbulent below, an underbelly of capitalism that eats at our will and seeks to disorganize us in racial and gendered and intersectional ways, so its formations are as “fluid, unstable, personal” as Mario Tronti described the class struggle itself. Rent goes up and markets crash. Some unions win recognition from the state and some don’t; some people organize in workplaces, some in buildings, some in community spaces. Union reform caucuses rise and fold. News stories change and people pivot. The democratic socialist party press has received some investment and Working Mass continues to grow its subscriber base, but the majority of members do not have a reliable finger on the pulse of the fractured and disorganized conjuncture: what Maria Poblet describes as “a combination of circumstances or events usually producing a crisis, long or short-term, relating most to the short- and medium-term interventions.”

Branches of the party are uniquely capable of strategizing across all terrains within one set turf, all of the circumstances or events that may produce a crisis in the local area where the branch organizes, but only through the conscious political organization of the branch. 

In Somerville DSA, we first sought to strategize by power-mapping. We did that for two meetings. Now, we incorporate “updates from the working class” into the top of every branch meeting agenda. This is intentional. Last month, updates included reports from the strike of sanitation workers rocking the North Shore, concessions workers’ striking at Fenway Park for the first time in 113 years, contract fights by the local teachers union, and information from the eviction defense in Nubian Square by the Greater Boston Tenants Union. Members heard reports and asked questions. This month, we did the same. This month, in August 2025, members discussed the Hamilton Tenants Association rally against their landlord, Somerville 4 Palestine’s ballot initiative to divest the city, and a report from a conversation with a representative of Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (PSOL), a mass socialist and democratic party in Brazil. This structure of updates provides a space for members to literally engage with updates from across working class self-activity in the area, including Marx’s famous dress rehearsals for revolution in strike updates, coming collectively to understand what’s happening and through that process to report to one another on these struggles – to study them, on each other’s behalf, for one another. We aim to ask members to give reports with a particular focus on strategically asking members who have not stepped up as leaders before, to facilitate that end. Through these asks, we build up more ownership over the branch – the party.

But reports are not enough. The point of talking about what’s happening is to intervene in what’s happening. We analyze updates from the working class in Somerville to participate in struggles in Somerville. And since the branch can prioritize time for discussions not only of working class self-activity but also its own collective projects, its own interventions, the branch can bridge the party to the working class and vice versa. In other words, Boston DSA branches can become vehicles themselves, but also vehicles for members to become organizers, which bridges new members directly to working class self-activity. The branch facilitates both ways.

The branch, as a unit of the party, seeks to constantly engage with the turbulent self-activity of the working class because it’s a necessary if insufficient ingredient to actually articulate local struggles into a broader unity – the historic role and power of the party. “Some of these social forces may be working independently towards alliances, but their coming together is not inevitable, and in most cases efforts to coalesce will end in failure,” Salar Mohandesi continues: “But through the party, then, acts as a kind of binding element, trying to find a way to bring together diverse social forces, and to help them stay together, despite the many tendencies pulling them apart.” As a binding element, it can ultimately become undone. Just because a party branch exists does not mean it continues to be a party branch.

But effective branch-building doesn’t stop at conjunctural analysis or direct connection in struggle as a means to develop members as organizers. We also need branch-building as a means of creating the local vehicle for “independent political action,” just as agreed upon in the Principles for Party-Building passed by the 2025 DSA Convention.

The Branch as Laboratory

Independent political action is developed in the laboratories of the working class. 

The working class, in building its party, must try things to gain confidence. Our own collective capacity for risk is a direct result of trying things together. We cannot take on projects capable of changing material conditions, of intervening as an independent political force as the party must, without first learning what works and what doesn’t together – and earning trust through praxis. That does not happen automatically and it does not automatically pass down with lineage. Instead, trust must be relearned, relationship by relationship, year by year. And we can do this doubly effectively by creating the base layer parallel to the center, because the branch doesn’t just exist in neutral parallel to the center – it reinforces it.

In Somerville DSA, we adopted a one-for-one proposal as a unanimous membership of nearly fifty of the then-sixty three active members of the branch. Somerville would adopt one external priority campaign, one internal priority campaign. Campaigns would need to be renewed every six months by proposal and vote of membership. Choosing priorities forces membership to grow and, by making collective decisions, becomes a collective conscious of its own power. This collective-making process not only built consensus across conflict lines in Somerville; it also created ownership. Even when proposals failed, openly encouraging and building new members to make proposals increased their confidence in the short-term and participation in the branch in the long-term even in the first round following the passage of the resolution. Ownership over the branch increased. The democratic process of choosing a priority, of debating between proposals, let members feel and then claim ownership.

Membership proposed multiple proposals for both the external and internal priorities of the branch. Participation was at its highest during the meeting of the debate. Ultimately, members chose to prioritize electing a cadre democratic socialist and branch member Willie Burnley, Jr. as mayor of Somerville, while our internal priority campaign became a combination of two proposals that blended together organizing training, socials, and political education. Another proposed external priority campaign would have charted us to fundraise to forgive the medical debt of local residents. The debate between these proposed priority campaigns underscores the breadth of possibility available to a branch becoming a vehicle for independent political action in the external priority campaign. Other priority campaigns could include strike support, building a community-wide strike committee, an ICE watch operation, an eviction defense operation in partnership with a local tenants’ union, a local No Appetite for Apartheid initiative to build a base of apartheid-free stores, or a local ballot initiative for socialist policy. Through the one-for-one structure, the process of rigorous and open debate to choose only one priority per sphere produced two collective projects shared across tendencies in the Somerville branch. 

Even more importantly, though, the one-for-one structure of renewal every six months ensured that the branch became a laboratory for working class experimentation. Proposals are created by members working together, which after meetings involving conjunctural analysis of the moment each month, inherently involve the process of collective strategizing on behalf of the branch even to make a proposal. Developing winnable collective campaigns within the capacity of a group is an inherently good skill to develop as a member of Boston DSA. Key also is the six month term. The campaign must be time-limited, not only to make it winnable, but to ensure that the collective can remain coherently organized. It’s easier to contribute to a project even when your favorite one fails when you can try again in the fall. 

The product of collective choice is member leadership. The process of choosing priority campaigns can be cultivated by branch leaders, but engaging members as fully as possible in the process of the choice itself can turn new members further into organizers. When members feel like they themselves can shape the future of the branch’s activities, they are more likely to continue to contribute to the party. By organizing new members at the layer closest to sites of struggle and orienting the party branch around those sites of struggle, we can most effectively build those members into organizers in the workplace, the home, the community – participants in the struggle itself. Already, in Somerville, this is clear – not only do Somerville members regularly attend tenant union eviction defenses and participate in strike support, they also sign up for tenant organizing trainings, workplace organizer cohorts, and practices for systematic one-on-one structured organizing conversations.

This member leadership element of organizing the branch into a local vehicle for “independent political action” is key. The branch is our membership, no more or less. We are as powerful as our members, collectively. As a result, learning how to leverage the maximum power of our collective is key to becoming an independent political force. The process itself is transformative. While the primary product is member leadership, one byproduct of building the branch as the party is the seismic force of a tightly-organized party cell in the wider community. At its most formidable, the branch is a “mountain,” party cells that “[loom] large and formidable over their region… [where the] development of the party as a governing institution required that these “mountaintops” would subordinate themselves to the work of the party as a whole.” By avoiding mountaintopism, the branch builds the party and avoids decentralization by nurturing organizers into the collective force we are capable of together.

The creation of powerful “mountains” is the byproduct of branch-building, but the power of that force in the bourgeois political system cannot be understated. In Somerville, one comrade who participates in branch-building wondered whether an end result of our strategy would be a socialist version of Boston’s old Irish ward system. Martin Lomasney, once-boss of the West End, used to run the ward with iron power: “his organization was broken down so that he had a competent leader in every precinct. That leader had a dozen lieutenants… It was the job of each to see to it that every voter on his street went to the polls on election day and, what was more important, voted for the Lomasney candidates.”

It’s true that a byproduct of branch-building may be the lattices of an electoral machine that closely resembles the Lomasney presence – especially since our first external priority campaign, in Somerville, has been an electoral campaign. We have canvassers at doors or calling voters most days of the week, overseen by three priority campaign stewards, connected both to the Electoral Working Group and the campaign. But by connecting to the turbulent and oceanic power of the working class from and beyond the more limited political horizons possible through diasporic community organizing, the branch connects to even greater sources of power. Electoral campaigns end but the branch remains. And instead of top-down patronage systems dominated by patriarchal white men, the branches can be organic and dynamic outgrowths of empowered memberships developing new organizers from members returning to their workplaces and their buildings and their communities to fight. 

The potential power of branch-building far surpasses the political power of the old machines that ruled Boston for more than half a century.

The Branch as Party 

There are plenty of contours of the party question to debate. But every conception of the party is strengthened by a layer of party organization that bridges the central party to working class self-activity, training new organizers who can become not only effective members of the party, but effective protagonists of their own struggles. The branch can serve as the local party organization and the laboratory of the working class, a site of political experimentation closest to where exploitation is both experienced and can be politicized in collective action. And while in Boston, the branch is a conscious political project that can be organized from the neighborhood groups, the “branch” is not unique to Boston. Anywhere there is a unit of a few dozen members who can connect to the working class can form a bridge between the party and the turbulence below through following a branch-building strategy. 

There are other aspects of branch-building as party-building that there isn’t time to explore here. One is how the branch is uniquely suited to house cultural organizing. Socials happen at the local level; this is why socials are a key part of Somerville DSA’s first internal priority campaign. More generally, in the process of organizing the party, NYC-DSA and Triangle DSA and DSA chapters in New Jersey, along with countless other chapters, all discovered the need for cultural organizing. There are running clubs and dating clubs in New York City; in the Triangle, members form hiking associations and crafting formations; in Boston DSA, members meet to play basketball under the team name “United We Dunk” regularly.

But realizing branch-building unlocks new terrains for political experimentation, a laboratory for members to try things together, also means embracing the branch as a site of political imagination. Building branches, if undertaken across the city of Greater Boston, has a destination. Imagine: every part of Boston, each with a branch of the party. From Somerville to Roxbury, from Jamaica Plain to Cambridge, from Allston-Brighton to the South Shore – each home to a machine of localized “independent political action” driven by members, which means internal democracies with robust and participatory worlds, training workers and tenants into organizers of the party and of mass organizations: the labor unions, the tenant unions, the assemblies and the neighborhood councils. That is a vision of socialist and mass struggle merged into one. The branches, tightly-organized, each may have their own flavor, their own identity, informed by the social forces they articulate. Some may work on electoral interventions, others on fighting gentrification. Over time, the branches may begin fundraising projects for party offices. Party offices could grow across the city, one for every district, one for every neighborhood. That is a vision of a party not dissimilar from the workers’ parties around the world, with corner offices embedded deep inside the neighborhoods of the urban landscape.

These are examples of different horizons. Each belongs to membership to explore – or not. The branch is a conscious project of party-building, which means it can only exist through members breathing life into its vision. But that’s no different from other parts of the party. DSA is nothing but its members, which is no different from the branch. And when we think of “Principles of Party-building,” we need to take seriously how we can best pursue that goal as a mass organization at the most hyper-local levels of disorganization.

It may not be the only road, nor the only one necessary to accomplish the goal of party-building, but it is certainly an important one: build the branch to build the party.

Travis Wayne is the deputy managing editor of Working Mass and co-chair of the Somerville branch of Boston DSA.

The post OPINION: 2025 DSA Convention – Build the Branch, Build the Party appeared first on Working Mass.

By: Chris Brady

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass.

Around 1500 DSA members gathered in Chicago for the bi-annual national convention, joined by representatives of left-wing organizations and parties from around the domestic and international socialist movements. As keynote speaker Representative Rashida Tlaib described: “there is a revolutionary energy in the air… the working masses, y’all, they’re hungry for revolutionary change.”

The challenge of DSA is twofold: organize and politicize the American working class. Valiant efforts from worker-organizers and activated rank-and-file union members has met the current moment, yet institutional labor still remains sluggish in the face of blatant class warfare offensives from the Trump administration. DSA continues to organize against these conditions as we build greater and greater numbers. There are literally hundreds of experienced organizers in the membership and bring with them successful DSA-led campaigns; such as rank-and-file reform caucuses in the Teamsters and UAWD, nationwide Strike Ready campaigns, the Emergency Workers Organizing Committee, and the Federal Unionists Network. The unique precarity of the current moment, however, mandates political clarity on residual labor questions and strategies. 

Namely, DSA deliberated on resolutions ranging from electoralism, organized labor for Palestine, the May Day 2028 General Strike, and the partyist labor strategy. The 2025 DSA Convention was monumental, the largest socialist political organization in the country debating labor strategy openly and transparently, and it is important for engaged socialists in leading implementation of the resolutions.

Approved Motions

R20: Workers will Lead the Way: Join with Unions to Run Labor Candidates 

R20 aims to build on past successes of the left in recent elections, strategizing to deepen organizational connections with organized labor and leverage those connections to beat the far right. The right wing’s attacks on labor unions echoes Reagan’s PATCO strike-busting and Governor Scott Walker’s assault on Wisconsin labor unions, and that DSA needs to deepen the contradictions of this reality and the faux-populists right wingers falsely proclaiming themselves as working people champions by assertively uplifting the labor movement in elections. 

With an aim of mass politics, this resolution commits DSA to running a slate of ten candidates in 2026. It also delegates messaging and campaign tasks to national DSA and local DSA chapters. DSA is now charted to do significant outreach to the anchoring labor unions of the left and develop strategic plans together in an attempt at a left-labor unified political program. In addition, DSA does not mandate that the candidates run on the Democrat ballot line or our own. This resolution offers concrete and achievable steps for DSA to pursue electorally, but critics argue that this is a re-run of the already existing labor strategy cemented by previous DSA Conventions.

R33: Unite Labor & the Left to Run a Socialist for President and Build the Party

R33 shares some similarity with R20 in aiming to officially get DSA and labor in the same rooms and on the same page. However, R33 is significant because it explicitly articulates a vision for the left-labor alliance exemplified by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ocasio Cortez’s recent ‘Fighting Oligarchy Tour’, injecting some juice into an otherwise largely decrepit anti-Trump “resistance” that has so far been unable to move beyond mass mobilizations. It is perhaps best characterized as a left-labor-progressive front as opposed to left-labor-Democratic one. The resolution calls for a committee of relevant groups of unions, squad members, and other left wing political parties to build a coalition for a 2028 presidential run independent of the Democratic Party.

This is a resolution about political realignment. It allows for a reshaping of the Democratic Party like the Tea Party reshaped the GOP by formalizing the progressive DSA alliance as an immovable political force. It also lays the groundwork for launching a new party, depending on future conditions, while continuing the maintenance of the left coalition. Critics point out that the resolution ignores the damage that high-profile democratic socialists like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have done to their credibility with the organized left due to their objective failure to mount meaningful opposition to the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza. They also argue that the entire coalition itself is predicated on leftists and bureaucratic capital-friendly organizations putting aside potentially significant differences to fight Trump, a socialist-led popular front, which is not necessarily guaranteed.

R30: Fighting Back in the Class War: Preparing for May Day 2028 

UAW President Shawn Fain – whose presidency is in part due to organizing from DSA UAW rank-and-file members – has targeted May 1st 2028 for a nationwide general strike. This mandate from the face of American labor provides a timeline for organizing work that DSA is ready and able to contribute to and presents an opportunity for a fundamental shift in class relations. DSA must utilize the next three years to build class-consciousness, rank-and-file power, and propagandize. The resolution emphasizes the logistical and organizational demands necessary to make May Day successful, and where it makes the most sense for DSA to plug in. Specifically, DSA will create a May Day 2028 committee to coordinate rank-and-file strategy, salting efforts, reform caucuses, and rank-and-file coordination with union leadership when strategically necessary.

R30 is an ambitious project that provides real structure for the next three years of DSA organizing work. The opportunity for DSA to grow itself and the labor movement with it is huge, but critics will note the amount of work required to be effective in this role is equally daunting. 

Included with the resolution was an amendment – R30-A01: Tenants & Workers Together in 2028.

The amendment incorporates an additional tenant union dimension and strengthens existing labor sections. It argues that the engine of May Day 2028’s success is the rank-and-file and DSA needs to use specific strategies to organize them. DSA must build chapter infrastructures to meet this moment and utilize structure tests to identify progress and organizational needs. Rank-and-file recruitment strategies and May Day-themed trainings will connect national issues to the organizing work on the ground. Furthermore, tenant organizing emphasizes class consciousness outside of the workplace, where just 10% of American workers are unionized. This resolution charts a path where some efforts are dedicated to compounding any labor-led general strike with rank-and-file efforts within the tenants’ movement, with a particular programmatic focus on Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) properties under which tenants may wield the most strategic power during a general strike. The incorporation of tenant organizing improves the ceiling for May Day by simply involving more people and broadens the dynamics of “the working class” involved in strike efforts.

R42: Labor for an Arms Embargo

DSA’s National Labor Commission has endorsed a Labor for an Arms Embargo campaign,. Since AIPAC-funded candidates purchased primary victories over Representatives Bowman and Cori Bush, both associated with DSA, while the rest of the American political establishment has effectively have facilitated a bipartisan holocaust in Gaza, there has long been a need to escalate resistance strategy to target key nodes of the apartheid relationship between the United States and Israel. The labor campaign has coordinated rank-and-file membership to internally organize for unions to divest and disrupt for Palestine. Strategy includes targeting local ports and dockworker unions and local governments to disrupt the flow of capital that enables Israel’s savagery. Importantly, this resolution mandates that federal election endorsements should hinge on the candidate’s willingness to vote against military aid to Israel (both offensive and defensive). For local endorsements, the resolution outlines requiring the candidate to support the “War Crime Free Cities” initiative. 

This resolution cuts through some of the largest internal DSA debates about candidate endorsement and anti-Zionist organizing strategy. It establishes clear parameters of engagement with candidates and will likely prevent wishy-washy both sidesism that plagued unprincipled former endorsed candidates. Most importantly, it provides concrete steps for DSA to engage with the most important task of human beings on planet Earth right now: stopping the extermination of Palestinians.

R34: Workers Deserve More, Forever

Most of DSA advocates for some conceptualization of a consistent and cohesive platform. This resolution explicitly outlines what that platform will be and how DSA will standardize. From now till Convention changes it, the platform will remain Workers Deserve More (WDM) and play all the classic hits – Medicare For All, union power, popular vote for President, and other boilerplate DSA political goals. Also, the resolution creates a committee to iron out political details and maintain the official party program as DSA’s priorities change after each convention. While the program includes the continuation of a broad consensus held since 2023, critics argued against moving further program development to a smaller committee.

Chapters and working groups can purchase copies of the 2025-2026 Workers Deserve More program from national DSA.

Rejected Motions

R42-A01: For a Strike Ready Labor For Arms Embargo

This amendment to R42 Labor For Arms Embargo emphasized the need for workers to build a strike capacity for urgent anti-Zionist political organizing. The resolution stipulates that workers will be politically educated on anti-imperialism and the necessity to incorporate it into their organizing. International working class connections will be facilitated to contribute to workers strikes to halt the flow of capital to Israel. Additionally, the amendment removed reference to DSA electeds and the endorsements process. 

CR10-A: A Partyist Labor Strategy 

This amendment would have modified CR10’s “Building a Worker Led Labor Movement,” a proposal for the National Labor Committee’s priorities, including salting, May Day 2028, building a coalition with the labor movement, etc. as outlined above in different words. In a remarkably verbose resolution as typical for the authors, this amendment would have injected an understanding of building worker power to include agitating for socialist political directions in the unions themselves.

The amendment calls for DSA to reject the false binary of choosing sectarian or economism labor strategy into arguing for pro-socialism synthesis. It delineates that DSA must reject false populists in the Republican and Democratic parties, as well as the tribalism from many bureaucratic labor leaders. DSA’s organizing will come downstream from its politics. Additionally, given that May Day 2028 as a logistical hurdle and organizing goal requires a revolution of class consciousness, the amendment adds detail for how DSA will organize to that end. Namely, the National Labor Commission will support DSA union members and salting efforts with coordinating committees based on industry and emphasizing political education for all membership, particularly for those outside of DSA.

The amendment also emphasizes cross-union organizing training and outlines how DSA can support Labor For Arms Embargo through this paradigm. Finally, the amendment emphasizes the need for democracy in unions’ leadership and decision-making. Critics argue the amendment is not practical and understates the power of the process of struggle itself in turning workers into socialist militants. The amendment failed with just 47% of the vote. This alludes to growing appetite for partyist politics in DSA.

Referred to the National Political Committee

R04:  For a Socialist Party in Years, Not Decades

Unfortunately for Michael Harrington, DSA is no longer much of the left edge of the Democratic Party. R04 exemplifies how much DSA and the national political condition has changed; there is popular appetite for DSA to build toward becoming its own independent political party. The resolution tasks DSA with building infrastructure to launch a political party by the end of the Trump presidency, or at least to get the wheels turning to do so. DSA’s NPC is to identify targeted left-wing institutions and reform caucuses and network to build a coalition for party building. National DSA will work with locals to identify and build potential candidates and campaign infrastructure, with electoral training materials. Finally, DSA will run a slate of at least 10 candidates in 2026 elections as an independent party, and the candidates must declare themselves as democratic socialists, form socialist caucuses if elected, and uphold DSA policies and programs. 

There was not enough time at convention to vote on this resolution, which is shameful because it raises important points that DSA would benefit to seriously discuss: how to become a truly independent political force and the pursuit of that goal.

Chris Brady is a member of Boston DSA and contributing writer to Working Mass.

The post OPINION: 2025 DSA Convention – Socialists Set Sights On May Day 2028 and Left-Labor Power appeared first on Working Mass.

By: Mike Saridakis

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass.

Winners and losers is such a small and mean way to think about politics, especially in a deliberative and democratic body. Nevertheless, I’ve found it helpful for me in framing what I experienced during the 2025 DSA Convention in Chicago, especially on what worked and what fell flat.

From left to right: Springs of Revolution, Sara, Red Star, Libertarian Socialist Caucus, Marxist Unity Group, Reform & Revolution, Bread & Roses, Carnation, Groundwork, Socialist Majority Caucus. Courtesy of @adornos_soul and @reesericdotci on twitter.

Winners:

MUG, R&R, Springs of Revolution, Rashida Tlaib

Marxist Unity Group (MUG)

The Marxist Unity Group locked in. Their communications were on point, their delegates were highly visible and continually advocating, and their candidates for National Political Committee ran great campaigns, starting early and having prescient, respectful commentary online on the day’s controversies and discourses. They’re nerds, and they used their skillset to its greatest effect.

On the issue of partyism, the farthest right position spoken at convention was basically “we’re not ready yet.” This is a far departure from nearly anything people were saying even in just July this year. R07 passed with flying colors. Resolved: we are leaving the Democrats in the dust. 

R34-A01, A Fighting Socialist Program, MUG’s signature proposal and collaboration with Reform and Revolution, failed. Despite being voted down, the proposal’s sponsors were impressed with how well it fared, garnering 45% of the vote. Notably the hesitation from the delegates was not the content of the proposal per se but its implementation mechanism (with plenty of open partisanship greasing the wheels). In contrast R25: DSA and the Democratic Road to Socialism did not make it to the convention floor, and is unlikely to pass given both the NPC’s makeup and how it fared in the delegate survey: 445 support, 425 oppose, 104 unsure. That is to say, poorly.

There is an increasing awareness of what is to be done. Indeed, looking at the new NPC we see a majority of revolutionary (at least on paper) caucuses: SoR, RS, MUG, RR, BnR (I don’t have time to argue this one, they talk about it on their website), LSC, and Carnation (again, see website). Furthermore, the definition of “center” has shifted to the left with the introduction of Carnation and the shrinking of the reformist right, who themselves are confronting what a break means. Moreover, DSA proudly and enthusiastically recommitted to its support and solidarity with the people of Cuba and the revolutionary, socialist path they have chosen. Cuban deputy foreign affairs minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío Domínguez received a standing ovation during his recorded remarks. This is all to say MUG is finding itself really, truly becoming the beating heart at the center of Marxism within DSA.

Given the passage of R07: Principles for Party Building and the arguments against the Fighting Program largely being about its processes and procedures, rather than on the content or politics of it I think MUG has a real shot at passing their program in 2029. And, I think they could guarantee this by putting their politics into practice, making stronger connections in labor and tenant organizing, putting their electoral theory into practice, and using their strong NPC position to build relationships across tendencies. As the first line of their Tasks and Perspectives reads, “Our task is to merge socialism and the workers’ movement.” Time to get to it.

Springs of Revolution: Return of the Anti-Zionist Slate

Springs of Revolution’s phoenician rise (that’s ‘of, or related to a phoenix,’ not a person from Carthage) to a strong position on the NPC is a testament to their correct understanding of Israel’s genocide and serious internal organizing efforts. I don’t think there’s a group at this convention more vindicated than the anti-Zionist/Springs of Revolution slate. In 2023, they were prepared for the escalation in Israel’s genocide on Palestine where the rest of the org buckled under procedural motions, leaving it flat-footed to deal with what was to come and forcing it to tail liberal causes like the Uncommitted movement, rather than seizing the opportunity to be the center of a socialist and truly anti-imperialist Palestine solidarity movement. They were serious. They did the work. They came prepared. They worked across tendencies. They were loud and organized. I probably ended up with twice as many SoR pamphlets and cards as any other caucus. These are good organizers and we should be thankful they stuck around. Our organization should learn from this and become even more intolerant to bad faith dilatory abuses of the rules of order. Every caucus benefits when we put politics, not partisanship, first.

Anarkiddies and Tankies working together? That’s life in the DS of A, baby!

Speaking of Anarchists, it was exciting to see the Libertarian Socialist Caucus take a seat on the NPC. I think this speaks to how strong the anti-imperialist wave was at this convention and how honest and serious its coalition was about anti-Zionism, even willing to work across historically irreconcilable differences. I wish I had more to say, but my organizing experience has not given me much contact with LSC comrades, nor did I personally see much of them at the convention. 

I have similarly not had the pleasure to meet or work with many Communist Caucus-aligned comrades, nor did their agendas or mine ever seriously cross paths. Therefore, in light of my ignorance I shall not speak on them! I hope that in time I will get the chance to change this.

Reform and Revolution (RnR)

As much as R&R itself locked in, I think the real winner here is Sarah Milner. Following 2023’s rout and the intense criticism they received for their statements on the Palestinian Resistance, R&R did some soul searching and emerged a new and welcome voice on the left/center-left, in spite of facing this same issue during debate on the Palestinian proposals. Positioning themselves as the ones best able to bring left and right together, R&R got started early, running a nationwide campaign for Sarah, who travelled to chapters big and small across the country, observing and reporting on the state of DSA chapters and slowly building a caucus platform, and her own social media platform. Her synthesizing posture and eye for the positive lessons of DSA’s many tendencies cut through the often tense discourse online. And, who doesn’t love a letter carrier?

This paid off. Despite many of their key proposals ranking low or being voted down, R&R’s work with MUG on their signature platform showed that they do not have a toxic brand, and many of their proposals showed wide support, losing on votes largely due to timing, minutiae, and caucus politicking. I leave this paragraph on their ultimate assessment open-ended, with several of R&R’s major policy initiatives being referred to the NPC (though they’re looking pretty good).

R&R’s crowning achievement was Sarah Milner sailing to a smashing victory in the NPC elections. As yet another example of hers and R&R’s political instincts, Sarah recognized her mandate, and asked on social media, “I am still thinking about convention. I would like to ask for comrade’s perceptive and advice. I got the 2nd most first place votes and it looks like I will hold a very important place on the NPC. What do you think my mandate is? Why do you feel people voted for me?” 

Responses included: 

• “You are principled, thoughtful, and willing to engage with the best possible version of other tendencies’ thoughts, even when other comrades don’t express themselves well. So, uh, do more of that.”
• “You stretch to seize the moment in a way that reminds me of the first trump bump organizing. You’re principled but practical. I think your mandate is to help prevent deadlock while continuing to push the whole npc forward to be ambitious.”
• “I think that your Twitter presence has convinced many of us that you are genuinely committed to find a way through the ideological impasse that exists between the two wings of the organization. I’m glad to see that reflected in your likely position as the swing vote.”
• “I was encouraged by your earnest commitment to goals and principles and willingness to listen and adapt. i was going to rank you 4th before my caucus bound me to do so. But then you took the time to come to the small chapter meetup. That meant a lot.”
• “i ranked u bc i heard enough to think you’re quite contemplative of what this moment means for our org at all levels and actually meeting you after i submitted my ballot confirmed that. it also means a lot to me to see other working class people, other trans women in leadership.”

We would be remiss furthermore to ignore the clear support for R&R from YDSA, where they secured three seats on the NCC and a co-chair position, meaning R&R also holds two seats on the NPC. For a small caucus, they punched way above their weight, largely by heeding the lessons SMC failed to learn. (more about that later)

Rashida Tlaib

She’s got the juice.

Losers:

Red Star, Groundwork, SMC, and into the dustbin of history with Zionism

Red Star (RS)

Much like how AOC’s Iron Dome vote was bad, but her defense was worse, Red Star doubled down and argued in a way that came off as dishonest to other Democratic Socialists in group chats and across social media after they announced that they would divide the overwhelmingly popular DemCom consensus proposal against the wishes of the DemCom committee. Their motion was defeated soundly, and the proposal passed with one of the highest margins of the convention. Despite this, Megan Romer sailed to a clean first place victory in the co-chair race, and John “Budget Jesus” Lewis doubled the first round vote share of second place Sarah Milner. Nevertheless, given the overwhelming plurality of specifically John’s vote and Megan’s prominent status as incumbent co-chair, it is entirely likely that their success was not due to their caucus affiliation and organization, but their reputations as individuals. Considering how their less-prominent members fared much worse, it is possible their DemComm procedural move may have worked to prevent John and Megan from carrying the rest of their slate to office.

I can speak to this personally. Red Star’s conduct disappointed me, but John earned my respect for him personally through his work. Indeed, RS only has 3/25 NPC seats now, including Megan. This is a huge loss from a historically strong left caucus. Furthermore, their support of the MUG/R&R program failed to take it across the finish line, in one of the few places where independent delegates broke from the left. That is to say, Red Star now will likely be a junior partner in whatever coalition(s) it finds itself in, both on the NPC and in chapter work. I think their relationship to the SoR slate will be a key part of any takeaways from this convention for Red Star.

I have heard from some Red Star comrades that they’re disappointed with the results of the NPC, but they’re otherwise not dissatisfied with their performance at this convention. They do grant that my critique is fair. Appreciation to them for their feedback.

Groundwork (GW)

Despite different politics, and despite GW pulling off a huge win against Alex P of BnR, the caucus suffered a major reputational loss for their procedural motions and rhetoric, both of which delegates panned as dishonest and cynical. GW suffered some crushing blows to their signature One Member One Vote (1m1v) proposals. In both cases, near supermajorities shot down the proposals early on Friday, setting the tone for the rest of the convention. An experienced delegate at my table remarked that the caucus’ green hats combined with their vocal and visual support for speakers and resolutions served to reverse polarize many against the caucus’ increasingly toxic brand, especially following a particularly shocking speech by a GW-aligned SMC member likening 1m1v opposition to Jim Crow. Despite a comfortable margin of victory, co-chair Ashik and the largest single faction entering the NPC will not be entering his second term on stable ground, because…

Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC)

The Socialist Majority Caucus faced near total collapse, appearing totally unprepared for convention. In the leadup to the convention, SMC claimed singular (or, at least primary) credit for the truly paradigm-shifting Zohran campaign, despite the move in the rest of the organization to celebrate cross-tendency collaboration and unity. This is not to diminish the impressive and valuable organizational role of SMC, which they had every right to celebrate –indeed I had several amazing SMC comrades whose strategic and organizational advice I happily took– but, they failed to read the room and approach their comrades accordingly, culminating in a request from GW delegates that SMC stop speaking on behalf of their proposals. Their rhetoric suggested an increasing myopia on the DSA project, where they presumed everyone else held their same priors, often employing catastrophizing language to argue votes for “serious” and “pragmatic” responses on routine measures. Sorry, dear comrades, budget requirements for staffing are not the only thing standing between us and full fascism. It was clear the convention hall —including their close ally Groundwork— did not appreciate this. SMC is going to need to take a serious look inwards and ask themselves why they chose this approach and why their conduct and rhetoric fell on deaf ears. 

My recommendation is to turn to your rank and file for new thought leadership.

This myopia I think is best evidenced by the regional distribution of their vote share: nearly entirely on the coasts, and among those, mostly New York City. SMC’s Zohran message failed to take root in places where the Democratic Party is weak, unpopular, or doesn’t exist, like Indiana and Florida, places where the political and social conditions do not reflect those in NYC. As a foil, Springs of Revolution pulled off a strong performance in nearly every state.

God bless you, North Dakota’s SMC voter. Credit: @maevehove

This posture has already cost them dearly. SMC elected only four of their seven(!) NPC candidates, a shocking omen for the largest caucus in DSA. The expanded NPC, their baby, ironically seems to have hurt them in this election, further diluting their delegation significantly. Despite being the second largest delegate at convention, SMC seems to have failed in building a coalition across tendencies, as their candidates were not the ones receiving votes in the later rounds.

What’s more, with the classic GW-SMC alliance no longer able to swing their weight around on the NPC, Groundwork, in the much stronger position, may have to reevaluate who its friends are and look to the growing center-left, whose proposals fared much better on the convention floor (and certainly reputationally). A clear sign of the beginnings of this shift is GW’s friendliness to Abdullah of Carnation, who scored endorsements across the center-left and the GW-BnR joint proposal R33: Unite Labor & the Left to Run a Socialist For President and Build the Party, which cruised to victory, itself another sign of the rising partyist tide even on the DSA right.

Furthermore, GW/SMC’s labor strategy and Anti-Zionist resolutions were defeated soundly. The organization has moved decisively away from their approach to labor and internationalism.

And, of course, Zionism. 

There is a contingent online who saw the names of the proposals with their votes shares and concluded DSA still has a large (though minority) Zionist contingent. This is not true. On top of the fact it’s basically a meme how dishonest resolution titles are, the contour of the debate showed unwavering support for Palestinian liberation (though chauvinism did rear its head). It is worth noting that the contentious expulsion clause in R-22, often serving as proof of DSA’s tolerance for Zionists, is little more than a clarification. Indeed, comrades in my chapter had been preparing an expulsion hearing against a member based on his history of Zionism. Ultimately the prosecution decided to charge him for his harassment and public defamation of Black, female, queer, and anti-Zionist comrades due to the simple preponderance of evidence. He was removed by unanimous vote. That is to say, there simply are not Zionists left in DSA. Whatever cranks remain are isolated and impotent. It is simply not worth the effort to find those last few holdouts.

Despite the beliefs of outside observers, who seem to measure commitment not by the convention’s roaring refrain of “free Palestine” but the title page of a complex document, we never debated Zionism. The debates and votes only truly show that there is ongoing discussion as to how we are anti-Zionist. Alleging that 40% of delegates who voted against R22’s expulsion clause are Zionists again refuses to engage with their actual arguments or DSA’s state. Zionism already is a sufficient disagreement for expulsion. As a last matter, I think a better indicator of DSA’s positioning on the matter was R22-A01 Align with the BDS Movement, where the body chose to pass the much harder-line positioning.

While the AOC censure just barely avoided making it to the floor, the collateral damage of many dilatory motions, Rashida Tlaib’s keynote speech took huge swipes not only at  AOC’s now infamous Iron Dome vote and statement, but even DSA’s godfather, Bernie Sanders, to standing ovations. 

Between the resolution to run an independent presidential candidate (that is, not a Democrat; that is, not AOC), banners reading “Rashida 2028” and R07’s passage, it’s clear DSA has broken up with our once golden child. If anything, the way it went is probably for the best. While on one hand, the Convention adding legitimacy to the censure motion would go far to show pro-AOC hardliners in the New York City chapter that there exists a broad consensus within the organization, it really would not be necessary. Rubbing it in would be unproductive in the face of DSA’s mounting internal positioning against her personal ambitions. Making “her” leave “us” also positions us as the center and forces her to be the breaking party. A censure like this potentially signals weakness, and DSA is decidedly not weak in this regard. (Though certainly we have a long way to go).

This ends up speaking to DSA’s “style” when it comes to purges and issues of ideology: the purge tool is rendered largely unnecessary, because DSAers vote with their feet. Someone in significant ideological difference and hostile in demeanor quickly finds themself isolated and unable to organize, while those who serve and work with the majority (or minority!), even if they have ideological differences, will often find their positions advanced through increased capacity and synthesis into the majority ideological position. DSA has built an intriguing internal mechanism that largely prevents its liquidation by self-serving entities and individuals while also advancing the interests of its majority.

The point is Michael Harrington’s DSA is dead. Anyone who cannot see this has failed to investigate properly.

Bread and Roses (BnR)

I really don’t know what you call what happened to BnR. I think they definitely are licking some wounds. They lost their co-chair race pretty badly. The word in the caucus is that this is due to a lack of cross-caucus support. Despite the unexpected breaking of the Communist Caucus with Red Star to endorse Alex, the last-minute MUG endorsement of Megan Romer (likely in exchange for support of R34-A01 A Fighting Program) was the death-blow to Alex’s co-chair bid One delegate reflected, “It’s difficult to run a center candidate in a three-way race against a left and a right candidate.” It seems independent endorsements only go so far; Red Star’s reputational loss on Day 1 was not enough to cost them a chair thanks to Megan’s strong personal brand and respect among members, particularly on the left. 

Nevertheless, the rank-and-file strategy continued to be the Holy Spirit breathing into the delegates and all of the proposals on the floor, and BnR served as a crucial swing vote for nearly every resolution. New NPC member Sarah Milner joked after R&R lost an amendment vote to BnR, “my dad spent his whole life at DSA conventions divided by a B&R swing vote. My grandpappy before him. for as long as anyone can remember us milners have been losing every time b&r opposed and winning whenever they support. i’ll be damned if my kid ain’t gonna do the same.” 

All that said, BnR’s signature Workers Deserve More platform of “non-reformist reforms” passed unamended, becoming Workers Deserve More, Forever, to remain such till another Convention changes the program. MUG and R&R’s Fighting Program amendment, billed as the “next step” for our organization developmentally, failed. One must imagine Zohran’s “bread and butter” campaign fresh in the minds of delegates as they voted. Though, to state again, neither MUG nor R&R were at all disappointed by the final vote share.

BnR also suffered from the growing crowd in the center space. Carnation and Mountain (and by some estimates, MUG) have all arrived on the scene in force, likely draining centrist energy from BnR. 

Ultimately, this is the tragic heroics of Bread and Roses. Their spirit is found in basically every resolution that came forward, win or lose. They have been instrumental in DSA’s attempts to re-merge the socialist and worker movements. Their guiding principles hung like a spectre over every debate and every proposal, from Antizionism to Zohran. It’s hard not to feel a little bad for them once you see this. They’re everywhere and in everything, with very little credit.

It is clear that the consensus is that BnR has its hand on the pulse of where our organization currently stands, but, in a position like King Lothair, Charlemagne’s middle grandson, whose kingdom sat between two ambitious brothers, it’s hard not to be worried about their future. Until then, BnR serves as kingmaker. Their three elections to NPC will be key to any initiative, despite the contraction of their vote share.

As a final aside, I cannot recommend enough my comrade Robert H’s ode to meetings. I think it cuts to the heart of what makes BnR BnR.

Conclusion

I think it’s best to consider the national convention largely descriptive rather than proscriptive. We delegates did not engage in deliberation to dictate the course of DSA over the next two years. Instead we reflected on the previous two and worked together to parse and clarify the lessons of that time and praxis, evaluating both our chapter decisions and previous convention resolutions. Our final decisions were not to tell chapters what to do, but to say, “okay, it’s time to move on and move forward. Let’s let history be history.”

I think this is why the dishonest rhetoric and procedural chicanery were so poorly-received. We were, frankly, sick of discourse. We wanted resolution. We wanted to give the past its due to unburden ourselves to go home and plot the future of Socialism in our communities. We did not commit to anti-Zionism and Palestinian liberation at the convention. Rather, we recognized that we had already committed to anti-Zionism and Palestinian liberation. This is why the failure of R01: DSA for One Palestinian State was meaningless. We were not deciding that DSA is an anti-Zionist organization. It already is. We were deciding what do we do about this reality, and found the proposal’s recommendations –not its title, not a tweet, the words of the proposal itself– wanting. We did not decide to build a new party and abandon the Democrats. We have already been building a new party, and we simply acknowledged that the Democrats have largely already abandoned us. Indeed, I believe we made history, in the sense of the original Greek word ἱστορία ((h)istoría): we investigated and came to a conclusion, and now having learned its lessons, we may use it to plot our path forward.

It was an honor to join my comrades and serve my chapter in deliberation. I am more convinced than ever that the DSA project is the best hope for socialism in this country. Solidarity Forever.

Mike Saridakis is a member of Central Indiana DSA.

EDIT: A previous edition of this article featured an edit that mischaracterized the classification of a caucus. This has been corrected.

Appendix: Highlights 

• Guest spotlights
  • Many exhausted delegates skipped out on what ended up being a stirring expression of international and cross-tendency solidarity. Hopefully more delegates will attend next time. 
• Messages from Cuba and Jeremy Corbyn
  • I cried a little. It’s so inspiring that our organization stands firmly with Cuba.
• Incidental conversations and meeting all the funny people from my phone.
• Having a conversation in Latin with someone at the BnR-Commie Caucus party.
• Clicker Comrades!
• One thousand people loudly standing up to transmisogyny
• The Dunkin’ Donuts down the street
  • My God that saved my ass Saturday morning. Apologies to the comrades whom I led on a circuitous route back. 
• Trans people everywhere!! Wow!!
• Doodling a silly joke that social media adopted as the unofficial mascot of the convention 
• Convincing a comrade to vote against his caucus whip 
• The city of Chicago and her people

The post OPINION: 2025 DSA Convention – Winners, Losers, Bread and Roses appeared first on Working Mass.

By Makai Ako

Make no mistake: Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. A powerful development of the 21st century, AI has gone from a small concept to a massive, multi-billion-dollar industry that has generated massive gains for the ruling class. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, the most popular AI chatbot, is now currently valued at $300 billion. Although there are some benefits behind the continuing development of AI, there are also numerous consequences from it, far too many to be tackled in this brief article. Therefore, we will discuss the one that has faced the working class the most: its effect on employment.

Despite being a tool that could be used to do menial labour, giving workers more time to do what they desire, AI has instead been used by the ruling class to cut costs and reign in more profit. A report by Goldman Sachs says that it could potentially replace 300 million full-time jobs, with the additional potential to generate $13 trillion for the economy (read: ruling class). 

Graph detailing future trends on how many US jobs could be lost to AI and automation. Generative-AI could, in the future, result in many jobs being automated, with resulting mass layoffs.

AI is being used to replace workers in all sorts of industries. Creative industries, such as those in acting and art, are being the most impacted. SAG-AFTRA has had to deal with the AI question in many union contracts, having to argue with companies about how an actor’s likeness may be used. AI, more specifically Generative AI, has also heavily impacted the art industry. Many are feeling the pinch as companies throw out graphic designers, creative directors, and more in favour of AI. For example, Adobe has begun to roll out generative AI in its apps, though whether they are high in quality or not is up for debate. This turn towards AI has resulted in much frustration with workers. Interviewing those in the field of art, many make their discontent known:

“Seeing our own work being stolen and sold back to us as a feature is vile.”

“It feels like it takes respect away from people who do have these creative skills”

This is not to say that all view AI negatively. Indeed, it has reduced the necessary labor in some areas:

“It’s an incredible feat of human advancement, how it’s used is up to you. I use ChatGPT for help with my work.”

“It’s carried me through some non-core classes… or caught my stupid code errors, but I dislike how it causes me to approach things.”

Many other industries outside of creative ones are experiencing the major pains of such a new technology being introduced. The most infamous, Duolingo, the app allowing people to learn a language, has pushed an “AI First” model in the company, laying off workers in favour of cheap AI labour, with resulting backlash and a noticeable drop in quality for the app. Klarna has also, whenever it can, been replacing its human labour with AI labour. 

AI has also begun to seriously impact education, not just colleges, but high schools as well. Pew Research surveys show that up to 26%—nearly a quarter of students—have admitted to using AI models like ChatGPT to help with their homework. 86% of college students have admitted to using AI in their studies. This high usage of AI has created an atmosphere of uncertainty in many academic centers across the country, where teachers and professors are unsure if their students are using AI to write their essays and do their homework, with resulting false accusations discouraging many from writing honestly. 

Even American manufacturing and engineering, industries prioritized by the current administration, are predicted to see many workers replaced by AI—as many as two million according to an MIT and Boston University report. Solidworks, a CAD (Computer Aided Design) software used in the engineering industry, has itself announced new AI features. AI has even come to affect some parts of Rochester. RIT has been caught utilizing AI once or twice in their social media posts, much to the dismay of many students.

RIT Utilizing AI to generate images for their Instagram. Interestingly, RIT has its own college dedicated to art and design. Why these students could not be hired is up for debate.

The working class, in turn, now not only are forced to compete against each other, but now with AI as well. This competition forces them to accept lower wages at a time where everything from housing to basic groceries are experiencing skyrocketing prices due to tariffs and inflation. 

While this tale of AI may seem like a 21st century problem, we have experienced similar issues historically. The Luddites were a 19th century English movement who would organize raids to destroy the rapidly developing automated machinery out of fear of their skilled labour being replaced by machines. What happened following these raids was, unfortunately, predictable: the military was sent in to suppress them, and thus make way for the power loom and other machines to take over their skilled labour. This situation now repeats itself today. While rules and regulations will help curb the more sinister uses of AI (i.e. deepfakes) in the short term, it will not be enough to stop its usage in job cuts across the market. AI will continue to be used to line the pockets of the rich, all while making the already struggling working class even more desperate. 

What is the solution then? While short term solutions are up for debate, the long-term solution is clear: Socialism. The working class must develop itself and constitute itself and its goals into a party capable of waging a class struggle against the bourgeois. Only when the working class has taken the power to establish its own goals can AI be used to reduce the working class’s necessary labour. David Riazanov, while discussing the Luddites, put it best: “The workers must be informed that the fault was not with the machines, but with the conditions under which these machines were being used.” The labour movement must reach out to these disheartened workers and lead them to the movement of the liberation of the working class.

The question is AI. The answer is socialism.

The post On the question of AI – What is the correct answer? first appeared on Rochester Red Star.

By: Jane Slaughter

Besides decision-making debates, the national DSA convention also offered educational workshops, such as how to organize your workplace, starting a local Amazon campaign, and “International Songs of Struggle.” I spoke on a panel titled “Lessons from the Lean Years.”

Almost all current DSA members have joined the socialist movement since DSA began its big surge in numbers in 2016. The idea of the workshop was to talk about how socialists had operated and survived when the organized left was much smaller, and share some lessons.

The other panelists were Chris Maisano of NYC-DSA, who’d been a DSA member back when it was small, and Todd Chretien, co-chair of Maine DSA, who’d belonged to the International Socialist Organization (ISO) for decades. I belonged to the New American Movement of the early 1970s, the International Socialists (IS) starting in 1974, and then Solidarity, before joining DSA in 2018.

The two big takeaways I got from the well-attended workshop were, on the surface, contradictory, but not really.

Todd stressed that a socialist organization has to be flexible enough to adapt when reality changes. The ISO had always had non-participation in the Democratic Party as a core principle, seeing it (correctly IMO) as a “graveyard of social movements,” leading the civil rights and feminist and other movements into mainstream dead-ends.

Then Bernie Sanders — always and still an Independent — ran for President as a Democrat in 2016. Hundreds of thousands of people were energized by Bernie’s self-described democratic socialism, and tens of thousands of them joined DSA. The Democratic Party hadn’t changed its nature, but something had decidedly changed. DSA was there to take advantage of the moment.

The ISO couldn’t handle it. The organization couldn’t deal with the idea that anything positive could come out of running in the DP. I can imagine the internal debates. At a mass conference call in March 2019, members voted to dissolve.

YES, BUT

The other takeaway from the workshop is the need to stand by your principles even when the world is changing. The example I gave comes from the labor movement.

Members of the IS had founded a newsletter called Labor Notes in early 1979, intended to bring together different rank-and-file movements in unions, from wildcatting coal miners to Teamsters and auto workers battling their own leaderships. Labor Notes was always intended to be a broad, nonsectarian publication, with participation from anyone who agreed. The politics were clear, and came from a socialist understanding of unions and class struggle: an injury to one is an injury to all; unions exist to fight the bosses; and members should own their unions to make that happen.

Then, just 10 months later, the ground shifted under the labor movement. Chrysler Corp. asked the UAW for contract givebacks — and the union leaders said yes. Today these corporate demands are commonplace, but at the time, it was a shock. Union members had assumed, correctly, that their contracts would get better each year — not that they would ever go backward. Other companies quickly took up the demand for concessions, aided by the recession brewing. It was an employers’ offensive. Movements sprung up in various unions to resist the concessions that union leaders — who considered themselves far-sighted — were pressing on members.

At the same time that companies were demanding concessions, they were also proposing “labor-management cooperation”: “We’re sorry, workers, that we didn’t value your brains in the past; now we want your ideas for how to make the company run better — it’ll be win-win.” Quality of Work Life programs and quality circles were set up everywhere, with the UAW leading the way.

The mainstream media, practically all top-level union leaders, and some sections of the left all promoted the idea that workers should give concessions on pay and working conditions in exchange for “a say” in shop floor governance. “New power for workers!,” they promised. Believe me, that “say” never amounted to anything more than getting off the assembly line occasionally to sit in a circle with supervisors and decide how to do the work of six “team members” with five.

Today, management doesn’t bother to pretend that it cares about workers (unless there’s a union drive). But in the 1980s, the ideology of labor-management cooperation and the “team concept” was everywhere.

A DISSENTING VOICE

Guided by its founders’ socialist politics, Labor Notes held firm: the working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There’s no win-win — anything we gain is a loss for the bosses, and anything we give up helps the boss’s bottom line.

Labor Notes analyzed in detail the psychological tricks the new programs used to disarm union members. We held conferences and workshops and published books about fighting concessions and cooperation; thousands of workers credit these with helping them understand the onslaught and what to do about it.

Reaffirming union and socialist principles when all around us were losing their heads put Labor Notes on the map within the labor movement. The politics was, of course, combined with practical steps to take. And this same combination of socialist labor politics with how-to has continued at Labor Notes to this day.

After the workshop, throughout the weekend, people came up to me to say how much they’d gotten out of it. Firm class principles + flexibility and intelligence to meet the moment — that’s Marxism!

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Surviving the Left’s Lean Years was originally published in The Detroit Socialist on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.