Cardinal Going Their Own Way

Cardinal is dissolved.

When we began, we had a vision for cross-caucus collaboration. We wanted to model good leadership and partnership within the organization, and also put forth a shared political vision through resolutions and an NPC slate. But from early in the formation, there was a breakdown in communication caused by internal-caucus business within CPN, the details of which the other members of the coalition were unaware. This led to confusion about who was on the slate and how Cardinal was to function, leading to dysfunction.

In good faith as coalition partners, we let CPN have time to work things out. After nearly a month of no information from CPN, during which other activity in the coalition was put on pause, it became too difficult to continue waiting. We told CPN that we’d like to part ways amicably but support our common political vision going into convention. To date, they have not responded. The final nail in the coffin for the coalition came when we discovered that passwords to the Cardinal email address and twitter account were changed without notice. We reached out to the CPN members whose phone number and email address were listed for account recovery, but were either told they did not have that information or we received no response.

Ultimately, it seemed silly to hold this body of just Emerge, Red Star, Jenbo, Jen and Austin instead of dissolving a ramshackle infrastructure for the sake of protecting and advancing the political work we put in while working together. We also didn’t want that political work to be overshadowed by an association between the Cardinal name and the CPN conflict which brought it to a halt.

Emerge, Red Star, and the incumbent candidates will continue to push for our politics, our resolutions on Internationalism, Abolition, sorely needed Grievance reforms, and our contributions to the Labor, Housing, and the Growth & Development resolutions. We will continue on with a vision for a DSA that is a strong, effective working class party fighting for socialism in our time. And we remain proud of the work Austin, Jen, Jenbo, and Justin have done on the NPC, and will work to see them reelected. See you all at convention.

Onward,

Emerge, Red Star SF, Austin, Jenbo, Jen, Justin