Special Convention Issue, August 9th
Featuring Aliyah VP, Annie W, Brad H, Cale E, Lavender C, Mike V, and Sam M
See the newspaper here
Issues of Light and Air on the convention table. Photo by Chas M.
Vote MUG (And Sarah M)!
Aliyah VP & Cale E
Comrades,
As we gather for convention, the country faces outright class warfare, racist deportations and the further vilification of trans people. We have the opportunity to elect four outstanding organizers, leaders, and principled socialists to our highest elected body who can ensure our organization will meet the moment and fight the horrors of capitalism run amok. We must assure that our leaders for the next two years will put democracy and mass proletarian politics to the fore, in DSA and on the NPC; therefore, we ask that you rank Amy W., Sid C.W., Cliff C. and Sarah M. #1-4 on your ballot.
Sid C.W. has done outstanding electoral work in NYC DSA: working on a state legislative campaign and tenant union work in Bed Stuy in 2024 (which would go on to pay dividends one year later, then spending the spring and summer of 2025 organizing volunteers to knock on thousands of doors for the triumphant New York Mayoral primary campaign of Comrade Zohran Mamdani. Sid believes that the socialist movement is driven not by singularly-exceptional candidates, but by a principled program determined through deliberative democracy. The programmatic points that united the working class in support of the Zohran campaign - expanding tenant protections, Palestinian solidarity, and reversing the power of the NYPD - must be treated as such; not as mere talking points, or soon-to-be-disavowed utopic ideals. To that end, we must hold the Mamdani administration accountable to our demands, and to do that we need a leader who knows what it takes to run an organization. Serving on the Central Brooklyn Organizing Committee, comrade Sid’s administrative work has prepared him for the task. A Sid term on NPC will ensure that the electeds we spend our precious time and resources on actually pursue our socialist agenda, as he wields the gavel on the side of democracy to strengthen our organization.
Cliff C. is a tireless champion of democracy in DSA. A veteran of five DSA chapters, Comrade Cliff has seen the merits of true member democracy in chapters and the turmoil that fills the space of its absence. As a steering committee member of Orlando DSA, multiracial organizing has been the bread and butter of his work targeting strategic communities for break light clinics, abortion rights canvassing, and DSA 101s. On Thursday, during Marxist Unity Group’s breakout panel, Cliff mentioned something that few other NPC candidates have mentioned, but that we must recenter: the necessity of childcare. Furthermore, according to his NPC questionnaire, there are three premiere threats looming over DSA: Trump, the Zionist hegemony he represents, and our own disunity in the face of that question which threatens a split. The organization's unity through democratic deliberation and decision making is the key to fighting the first two and the resolution of the third. We face a tremendous uphill battle, and Cliff is dedicated to building a democratic mass socialist party strong enough to summit any peak.
Amy W. has spent the last two years working tirelessly on the NPC. Coming into her term, she faced a culminating budget crisis and grabbed it by the horns - digging in at the moment it came to a head and leading our organization and staff through to safety. She often describes DSA as “200 chapters in a trench coat”. But she doesn’t mean that she wants a paternalistic relationship between DSA National and the chapters that comprise it; rather, she means DSA as a national organization needs the capacity to act like one. Cross-chapter organization and national coordination will be necessary for our movement to combat Trump and the rising tide of fascism in the U.S. As the democrats waffle and fuck around with trans lives, Amy believes - as a trans woman - that DSA must stand firm on our commitment to trans rights. Building a multicultural and multi-racial mass party with a foundation in democratic values will be instrumental in this fight. Amy W. has proven and will continue to exhibit her ability to forward that aim on the NPC.
Finally, as a national communications co-chair, Sarah M. (Reform and Revolution) has led the way toward member input regarding representative communications on the election of 2024, Palestine, and the current anti-ICE movement - a tall political task. As a trans woman, Sarah knows that the marginalized are the first to bear the brunt of capitalism’s reactionary viciousness. That is why it is essential to build an organizational home for the marginalized and a multicultural force to push back against that marginalization. After 100 nights of protest in Portland, Comrade Sarah M. understands that well. She’s visited dozens of chapters and knows that the Trump bump has put chapters at capacity to onboard and activate new members. On the NPC, Sarah M. is committed - like Amy W. - to use her NPC seat and National to help chapters with coordination and development.
Today we decide who not only who will lead the largest socialist organization in the country, but also how that organization will stand up to the fascism creeping into our everyday lives, as well as how best to grow our democratic, multi-tendency, multi-racial, multi-cultural, proudly socialist organization… to defeat it once for all.
We humbly ask for you to vote MUG #1-3 and Sarah M. #4.
Thank you!
Motion Sickness
Lavender C & Sam M
Motion sickness — that’s what some of us were feeling Friday morning after the avalanche of procedural motions that rocked the convention floor. Motion to appeal the ruling of the chair. Motion to divide the question. Motion to divide the house. Motion to literally divide the house? The cumulative effect of these dizzying divisions, magnified by some very unfortunate tech troubles, was to depoliticize the convention and, almost worse, to waste delegates’ time.
First was the struggle around 1 Member 1 Vote For Federal Endorsement; then, the motion to change the agenda, several dissatisfactions with vote counts leading to motions to divide the house, all culminating in the motion to divide the question on the DemComm proposal. This motion was, of course, planned well ahead of time; Red Star caucus and others had floated the issue ever since the consent agenda came out. This caused frustration well before Chicago, and confusion yesterday on the floor, as multiple clarifications had to be made on how precisely delegates should vote if they supported or opposed the splitting of the DemComm proposal.
What was the cause of this avalanche? Depoliticization!
What do we mean by “depoliticize”? We mean deprioritizing and obscuring the real issues that are up for debate at convention, making them secondary to factional warfare. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with making motions, even complicated ones. But procedures done to waste time, obscure the point, and force through certain positions at the expense of questions that would really benefit from deliberation, only serve to center who can maneuver most efficiently against their factional opponents, who can take advantage of loopholes and technicalities rather than presenting their politics directly before the body, debating, and trying to convince the democratically-elected delegates! Doing politics is, seemingly, not always what some want to do.
And the frustration and confusion with this depoliticizing, procedurally-centered approach came out clear in the votes! CB01-DIVIDE-1, the position of the chair to not allow the DemComm proposal to be broken up, was sustained with a strong margin of 77.7% to 22.2%! The agenda change failed with 43.8% yes to 56.2% no! Of course, the problem is not motions themselves. Last convention the agenda change vote, which MUG supported, was a moment of major political development. But, the issue comes when the focus is on procedural shenanigans over putting forward politics and convincing the delegation.
Depoliticization pokes its ugly head up in more places than floor motions to divide the question and overturn the decision of the chair. During debate for CB02, 1 Member 1 Vote for National Leadership Elections, a comrade from Socialist Majority Caucus spoke in favor of the resolution and declared that those who vote against the resolution are no better than John Adams and the rest of the elites who penned the slaveholder’s constitution, who denied the right to vote to enslaved people and wage workers, which Adams, of course, declared “talk and vote as they are directed by some man of property, who has attached their minds to his interest.” And we’re supposed to believe that having a vision of member democracy in DSA that is different from theirs is no different than what Adams thought!
Escalatory rhetoric which straightforwardly says that those who vote a certain way are racist, elitist, and basically slaveowners, replaces persuasion with browbeating and eliminates the space we can do politics in. Deliberation requires parties engaging with each other with a desire to change and be changed, and using thought-terminating cliches and attempts to win points against factions identified as enemies blocks that possibility of internal change, and turns conversation into a pure battle of wills.
That speech added onto the opposition to 1 Member 1 Vote, which we have opposed on open, honest, principled political disagreement. Once all was said and done, the body rejected CB02, with 39.8% yes to 60.2% no. The mood in the room was shifted completely by overt attempts to depoliticize the proceedings.
What we need is to put politics in command, and to really engage with each other in a political manner. The decisions of the floor yesterday were major victories in really making substantive decisions that matter, that assert politics and democracy over depoliticization. Procedures are important, but they exist to facilitate deliberation, not to be a cudgel for asserting that there’s only my way or the highway. Let’s openly disagree, let’s openly debate, and let’s get over our motion sickness and get moving!
Stand for Palestine! Yes on R-22!
Brad H & Mike V
This convention, DSA has a duty to stand in absolute solidarity with the Palestinian people and ensure that the org is through and through anti-Zionist, in word and action.
R22: “For a Fighting Anti-Zionist DSA” makes important contributions towards exactly this. It makes the struggle for Palestinian liberation a priority, endorses or reaffirms support for important Palestine solidarity campaigns, develops chapters’ campaigning abilities, and puts in place essential electoral discipline stipulations. A great step forward for the org.
The proposed amendment (R22-A01: “Align with the BDS Movement”) to this resolution, however, is quite concerning. For one, as some comrades have noted, there seems to be some unexplained petty politicking with the emphasis around the inclusion or omission of particular campaigns. Most concerning, however, it deliberately strikes some of the most important provisions in the original around the aforementioned electoral discipline.
R22 contains several important stipulations that build on the provisions of “Make DSA an Anti-Zionist Organization in Principle and Praxis”, ratified by the 2023-2025 NPC. Importantly, it ensures that every DSA electoral candidate must adhere to basic anti-Zionist principles (support for BDS, no affiliation with or support for the Israeli settler colony or Zionist lobbies, oppose all Zionist legislation, and materially support Palestinian liberation). It is important to stress that these requirements “must hold true for all candidates endorsed by national DSA or a DSA chapter.” R22-A01 makes this resolution’s stipulations toothless locally by striking these requirements for solely chapter-endorsed DSA candidates. What is the rationale behind this cut? This can only be interpreted as giving DSA chapters without “Make DSA an Anti-Zionist Organization in Principle and Praxis” resolutions in place the ability to endorse Zionist candidates. In no way, shape, or form should we as an organization enable colonialist, white-supremacist, genocidal (i.e., Zionist) candidates to run under our banner or be in our party. This stands in complete contradiction to our socialist and democratic convictions; a betrayal of not only these principles, but of the Palestinian people.
This is, unfortunately, a defence of the status quo. Most recently, NYC-DSA endorsed elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez refused to vote for blocking military aid to Israel’s so-called “Iron Dome”, a mechanism which directly enables them to perpetuate terror, genocide, and ethnic cleansing across the region with impunity. This cannot go on.
We should aim to have our candidates be really ours, principled socialists adhering to a common DSA platform, disciplined cadre who vote as a bloc. We need real tribunes of the people, the most advanced fighters for socialism and democracy who tirelessly expose every instance of oppression, not social-colonialist candidates opportunistically endorsed to tail behind their existing “popularity”.
This is the time for DSA to take a serious step forward, not retreat into the darkness of its past.
Mother Jones Was An Open Socialist
Annie W
(a republication of this piece)
Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC) has put forward a resolution that, in essence, proposes that DSA liquidate the distinctly socialist identity of our electoral program by running “labor candidates” instead of open democratic socialists, despite DSA proving time and again that socialist candidates can win the support of working-class constituencies.
Without question, DSA should run union members for office. Those of us in the labor movement know that our union comrades are some of the most dedicated, politically developed members of the working class. They know better than anyone what it's like to live with a boot on your neck. And with the union bureaucracy unable to shift the policies of the Democratic and Republican Parties, no formation is better equipped than DSA to run rank-and-file candidates for office on a platform of political freedom and social transformation for working people. That platform, in two words, is democratic socialism.
This is why members of Marxist Unity Group (MUG), Springs of Revolution and Bread & Roses put forward an amendment to SMC’s resolution: R20-A01: Democratic Socialists and the Labor Movement Need Each Other. Our amendment redefines labor candidates as democratic socialists drawn from the rank-and-file of the labor movement. Our amendment would integrate these candidates into DSA’s broader electoral project by making them part of the National Electoral Committee’s priority slate, rather than siloing them from this successful model into a separate slate.
Confusingly, David Duhalde, a member of SMC, hinged his response to the amendment on a series of historical socialist candidates who emerged from the labor movement of the late 19th century, all of whom ran on a Socialist Party ballot line (or, in the case of Mother Jones, its precursor the Social Democratic Party). MUG are eager students of Eugene Debs, but his case and that of other Socialist Party candidates prove our point: it is possible and desirable to run labor candidates as open socialists, and unnecessary to downplay our politics in campaigns for office. Duhalde argues for more “flexibility” to choose candidates outside DSA’s active layer who are not committed to what he calls “socialist identitarianism.” However, our amendment would not preclude DSA from running a candidate who is less active in DSA, and Duhalde himself contradicts his argument against “socialist identitarianism” by pointing to candidates who ran as open socialists. Despite his examples, Duhalde’s “flexibility” doesn’t come from the history of the Socialist Party, nor from DSA’s existing electoral program, but from the moribund period from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the rise of DSA, when left electoral projects (like Ralph Nader’s 2000 Presidential campaign) largely eschewed socialism in favor of progressivism. It is an argument to return to a strategy that downplays socialism to the point of irrelevance in both the electoral sphere and the labor movement, rather than principled democratic socialism in both. Debs himself took an even sterner stance than our amendment when he said that:
Of course we want the support of trade-unionists, but only of those who believe in socialism and are ready to vote and work with us for the overthrow of capitalism.
Duhalde muddles the issue by framing it as a question of whether socialists and the labor movement are equal partners. The actual question is much more straightforward—will we endorse candidates who do not publicly identify as socialists? Or will we endorse candidates who identify as socialists, just like Eugene Debs and Mother Jones, just like Zohran Mamdani and Shaun Scott and dozens of other high-profile, successful DSA electeds across the country?
In addition to the harm it would cause our electoral program, R20 makes no distinction between the rank-and-file of the labor movement and the union bureaucracy. DSA members are not neutral in the labor movement. We are always on the side of democracy, power for union members within their unions, and class struggle on and off the shop floor. The labor movement is no stranger to careerists who use staff positions to jump into elected office, and union Political Action Committees that have poured money for decades into anemic Democratic Party candidates in exchange for nothing. Our strategy for running labor candidates needs to align with the rank-and-file movement, not the bureaucracy.
The unamended resolution also encourages chapters to “consider developing joint SIO projects with closely allied unions.” Socialists in Office Committees, or SIOs, are the means through which chapters communicate with endorsed electeds and support their cohesion as a socialist bloc against the status quo pressures to compromise. While SIOs are far from perfect, a strong SIO committee is the difference between collapsing into business-as-usual irrelevance and building an effective socialist caucus. By contrast, unions are politically divided, with members falling on all sides of the socialist, liberal, and reactionary spectrum. While we can work to bring the majority of union members over to socialist politics and to win union endorsements, “joint SIO projects” with unions are a recipe for spoiling DSA’s cohesive political strategy.
Lastly, R20 undermines one of the strongest sections of the National Electoral Commission Consensus Resolution: “Focused National Endorsements,” which stipulates that national endorsements should be given to open socialists with deep relationships to DSA. This is what allows us to create a unified slate that DSA can fight for nationally and ends the practice of paper endorsements. By siloing labor candidates into a separate slate, R20 does them a disservice, pushing them out of our unified electoral project and limiting their access to crucial organizational resources.
For the sake of uplifting openly socialist union members, rooting our electoral interventions in the rank-and-file of the labor movement, and protecting the strength and independence of our electoral program, we urge delegates to vote no on R20 unless amended by R20-A1:
