Welcome (15 min) 12:00 PM
Keynote Speaker: Jackie Fielder, District 9 Supervisor and DSA SF Member (15 min) 12:15 PM
State of the Chapter by Steering (15 min) 12:30 PM
Bylaw Changes and Amendments (30 min) 12:45 PM

Lunch Break (30 min) 1:15 PM
Budget and Treasurer’s Report (20 min) 1:45 PM
Explanation on Priorities from Chairs (5 min) 2:05 PM
Priority Resolutions (60 min) 2:10 PM

Break (10 min) 3:10 PM
Resolutions Discussion & Voting: Consent Agenda (10 min)3:20 PM

Resolutions Discussion & Voting (60 min) 3:30 PM

Wrap Up & Announcements (30 min) 4:30 PM

Feedback on Convention?
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🌹 DSA SF Chapter Convention - Day 2 🌹

Convention Packet

June 15th - 12-5 PM
Zoom link

Chairs: Aditya B, Stephen A / Jenbo, Jason K

Slides / Notes

Welcome Back & Energy Check, Grounding Exercise (15 min) 12:00 PM
Resolutions Discussion & Voting (30 min) 12:15 PM

Bylaws First Reads (20 min) 12:45 PM

Lunch Break & Art Builds (30 min) 1:05 PM
Priority Announcement and Leadership Nominations (5 min) 1:35 PM
Election Explanations (5 min) 1:40 PM
Board Charters and Elections (30 min) 1:45 PM

Electoral Board Charter & Election (10 min)
Education Board Charter & Election (10 min)
Labor Board Charter & Election (10 min)

Working Group Elections (50 min) 2:15 PM

Tenant Organizing Working Group Charter & Election (10 min)
Palestine Solidarity & Anti-Imperialism Working Group Charter & Election (10 min)
Ecosocialism Working Group Charter & Election (10 min)
Immigrant Justice Working Group Charter & Election (10 min)
Homelessness Working Group Charter (10 min)

Break (10 min) 3:05 PM
Steering Committee Candidate Statements & Election (40 min) 3:15 PM

Aditya B
Annie R
Ellyn D
Jenbo
Julian M
Matty P

Grievance Officer Candidate Statements & Election (20 min) 3:45 PM

Chloe J
Jenna L
Robinson N

Plenary Speaker: Luisa Martinez, DSA National Political Committee (15 min) 4:15 PM
Closing (15 min) 4:30 PM
Wrap Up & Announcements (15 min) 4:45 PM

Feedback on Convention?
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State of the Chapter 2025

Prepared for Convention by the Steering Committee

Cochairs: Victoria B and Savannah K

Secretary: Aditya B

Treasurer: Artem I

At-Large: Jennifer B

Introduction

The Democratic Socialists of America is a democratic, member-run organization seeking to build a better world. We are a big tent organization. We welcome anyone who seeks to build working class power in San Francisco. We organize the people of San Francisco to fight capitalism, break down structures that maintain it, and build collective power to bring real socialist change.

Our State of the Chapter report overviews our organizing efforts in various areas over the past year and offers recommendations for what our next course of action should be as we look towards the future. Since our chapter’s refounding in 2017, we have accomplished real wins in the class war in San Francisco, and we’re not alone: we are one of the hundreds of chapters in a national organization with seventy thousand members throughout the entire country, with a rise in new membership over the past year, right after Trump came back into office.

So, how do we continue to take up our task on this massive scale to build collective power, and what should we do as we look towards the future to bring real socialist change?

This organizing term has developed alongside some explosive political moments in the US – Trump’s re-election, student encampment protests for Palestine being brutally cleared by police, the escalation of deportations and violation of Sanctuary City status – all backdropped by a clearly inept liberal opposition that has retreated to the courts and is slowly, but surely, losing ground there. The political outlook of the United States is worsening, and DSA must make itself a leader of the opposition in the face of these expanding challenges. We are not yet ready, but after years of observing Democratic Party negligence, it’s clear we’re far from the least prepared. DSA is effective insofar that it maintains its broad basis and is able to channel that broad membership into coordinated action, and the task before us at this convention is to answer questions around what work we’re willing to coordinate for the next year.

Our panels, discussions, and business over the course of convention will all be oriented around different aspects of our current political moment. We should use this time, when we are all gathered together, to take steps towards developing a common understanding of what we seek to accomplish, both in the short and long term, as well as actions we can take practically to pursue those goals.

Organizing Over the Past Year: Priority Reflections

Community Building Priority

The Community Building Priority (CBP) was adopted at the 2024 convention as a strategic focus for the 2024–2025 term. Its primary objectives were to enhance the chapter's visibility, foster relationships within the community, and integrate these practices into the chapter's ongoing work. The 2024 Steering Committee set initial goals and designated comrade Cindy to oversee the initiative. Each chapter body developed a work plan and submitted a 6-month progress report, with discussions held during leadership meetings.

This evaluation synthesizes insights from those reports and discussions.

The CBP laid important groundwork and led to strong individual efforts, particularly in education and electoral campaigns. However, the expectations were not concretely defined, making it challenging to measure progress or for chapter bodies to hold themselves accountable. The initiative anticipated intensive outreach without addressing support, training, or resource needs, and lacked mechanisms to assess success.

Extreme Dean Priority & Socialist Power Grab / Electoral

At the June 2024 convention, the chapter voted to recharter the Electoral Board, which sought to extend the work of the Extreme Dean priority, while also implementing the November 2024: Socialist Power Grab priority. While re-electing Dean Preston remained the chapter’s top priority, the board also prioritized electing Jackie Fielder for District 9 Supervisor, endorsing the ComMUNIty Transit Act, and supporting the Affordable Rent-Controlled Housing (ARCH) Campaign to help pass Propositions 33 and 5 on the November ballot. Other work included outlining a new electoral candidate endorsement process, training chapter members on San Francisco politics, advancing chapter members through an electoral leadership pipeline, and investigating a potential Citizen’s Initiative ballot measure for the cycle.

The priority had some huge goals that didn’t end up actualizing: an extremely limited number of chapter members advanced through any kind of electoral leadership pipeline, and very little campaign responsibility was put in DSA SF’s hands. Both candidates reached alignment with DSA SF in their endorsement process, but the chapter did not end up writing a Citizen’s Initiative and instead supported a variety of external electoral campaigns this cycle: State Propositions 5 and 33, and the Local Prop L for transit funding alongside the Defend Dean priority.

Jackie’s victory marked a significant success for our chapter. DSA SF played a meaningful and effective role in this win, contributing especially in field organizing and providing a substantial portion of the volunteer base that powered voter outreach throughout the campaign. We also successfully placed an experienced chapter organizer on Jackie’s campaign staff, reinforcing our commitment to building long-term socialist leadership in San Francisco.

Overall, we were able to meaningfully contribute to our campaigns, but there were a variety of setbacks to our stated goals and it feels as if we need to enter a rebuilding period on campaign capacity. The 2025 Electoral Priority Campaign Reportback speaks well to a variety of lessons to learn from this cycle:

Read the full DSA SF 2025 Electoral Priority Campaign Report here.

Chapter members gather to canvas for Dean and Jackie in 2024

Chapter Bodies

Steering divides up the task of working with chapter bodies according to the Plan of Work established at the beginning of the term.

Across all chapter bodies: membership has been up, budgeting has been closer to actuals, and general interest has been high. It’s clear that people in San Francisco are interested in political organizing now more than ever as the political outlook in the nation becomes more grim, and that they’re interested and excited for the prospects of local organizing. Last year we were more focused on facilitating relationships with external organizations, but our task feels as if it has shifted to figuring out how to best make use of our ever-growing membership.

Our questions in this environment have been: how do we handle this influx of new membership, how do we train and prepare them? This, as well as the related question of how to replace ourselves, training new levels of leadership while maintaining lessons learned in the organization, are the persistent and broad questions of Socialist organizing and that has not changed this term. We’ve adopted new focuses, some groups have changed strategies, but these two difficulties are the most common topic at Leadership meetings. There is no replacement for one-on-one organizing, for making the conscious and paired effort of trainer and trainee to learn more about organizing, to learn how to hard-ask individually, to unlearn polite shibboleths around volunteering. DSA is composed of the social links we are able to cultivate and maintain, and it only grows stronger as we transmit these skills to successive organizers.

New Chapter Bodies & Organizing

This organizing year was the first full term of our Palestine Solidarity & Anti-Imperialism working group, and was the first term for the Immigrant Justice working group. Both of these bodies have shown significant growth and increased political relevance. The Steering Committee also restarted its Budget and Finance subcommittee, getting chapter members involved in assisting the Treasurer and managing the chapter’s financial matters.

Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialism

Right after the Al-Aqsa Flood, the Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Imperialism Working Group formed coalitions with Palestinian diaspora and allied organizations to collaborate on their No Appetite for Apartheid campaign by canvassing stores to de-shelve Israeli goods and increased the number of sign-ons to the apartheid-free pledge, which gets them to commit to not supporting businesses that contribute to the genocide. The Working Group is expanding an anti-imperialist analysis for the chapter while doing relationship-building with others engaged in Palestine solidarity work, doing political education events, and researching and laying groundwork for a city-level divestment campaign.

Immigrant Justice

Formed soon after the re-election of Donald Trump and the clear threat to SF’s Sanctuary City status and immigrants in our community was evident, the IJWG has set out to focus on practical community defense, notably through distribution of the “red cards” in collaboration with other migrant defense groups. While it is DSA SF’s youngest Chapter body, it has been generating connections and experience to grow our defense of the most vulnerable in our community.

Budget and Finance

The Budget and Finance Subcommittee was re-chartered by the Steering Committee this term, onboarding 3 chapter members to assist the Treasurer with financial matters. So far, the committee has been able to take important bookkeeping work managing the chapter’s monthly reconciliation off the Treasurer’s sole responsibility. This has also made it easier to onboard new Treasurers, since there is a regular body of members trained on the chapter’s books to help new Treasurers in their role. B&F has also helped the Treasurer plan the chapter’s convention fundraising.

A comrade poses with an Apartheid Free poster hanging in a shop in the Mission

Existing Bodies and Projects

The Steering Committee divides up a portfolio of each committee and liaises with them throughout the year, assisting each body in any Political or Legislative questions they may have and working to ensure their alignment with larger DSA chapter goals and programs. These high-level reports are the Steering liaison perspective and link to each Chapter body's report back, if available. These, along with Charters, will be added to the document as Chapter bodies submit them.

Education Board: The Education Board has been running the chapter’s What is DSA and Intro to Socialism events regularly, onboarding new members and educating our members on the basics of socialism. In addition to this regular member onboarding work, the Education Board has sponsored education events like the Capital reading group, which has also gotten engagement from existing and new members.

Read the report back from the Education Board soon!

Electoral Board: The Electoral Board has grappled with the questions left by the 2024 cycle and found itself in a new footing, supporting SIO work for Jackie Fielder and working to build long-term Electoral structures within the chapter for continuity of political and practical expertise in the field. To that end, the Electoral Board is submitting an amended Electoral Strategy resolution for consideration at convention, and tweaking its charter to include a greater SIO focus.

Read the report back from the Electoral Board here.

Labor Board: Contrary to the last term’s prioritization of doing strike support, the Labor Board has primarily focused on political education and providing a socialist approach for workers to organize their workplace. The Labor Board succeeded in having political discussions about their role in the labor movement and organizing events. However, the Board has struggled with capacity and burnout.

Read the report back from the Labor Board here.

Ecosocialism Working Group: EcoSoc waged a concrete and local campaign with Prop L, proving that San Franciscans will back public transit even facing $1 million of ad spending from Uber and Lyft. However, the working group faced a number of challenges, chiefly navigating coalition work with groups misaligned from DSA, and the difficulty of exerting leverage on the budget, city or state.

Read the report back from the Ecosocialist Working Group here.

Homelessness Working Group: The Homelessness Working Group remains the gold standard for working groups, according to their liaison. They keep records, are always in compliance, respect a diversity of actions, and their seasoned members are always around to guide new members and leadership. It’s no wonder that this group is a consistent political home for members in DSA. Over the past year, HWG group trained 39 new members, supported Dean’s campaign, and organized events drawing over 200 people. They restarted their survival gear distribution, launched a monthly food service program, and led on key policy fights, including overturning a vehicle ban and amending the disgusting “recovery first” ordinance.

Read the report back from the Homelessness Working Group here.

Tenant Organizing Working Group: TOWG was able to set the groundwork for greater DSA x TANC (Tenants and Neighborhood Councils) collaboration, potentially offering a venue for practical campaign-like work in electoral offseasons that can help both organizations and the working class of the city. They have also led their core through an investigation of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, a notably-radical and uniquely successful TU in organizing conditions not-far from our own.

Read the report back from TOWG here.

Chapter Coordination Committee: CCC has made good progress in standardizing and socializing the process to run the chapter meetings, as well as continuing to capably administrate many chapter functions such as member onboarding, managing the support email, running the chapter meeting, administering tech tools, design work, newsletter writing, chapter records upkeep, and website updates. The biggest challenge has been getting more members involved in non-meeting tasks, principally onboarding.

Read the report back from the Chapter Coordination Committee here.

Maker Mondays: Hosted by the Design Team in CCC, Maker Mondays have been a consistently well-attended, low-barrier and high-energy event in our chapter. In addition to making space for chapter bodies to create flyers, buttons, and signs for their campaigns, it has also renewed the propaganda machine of our chapter.

Tenderloin Healing Circle: One organizing project this year that, in line with the Community Building priority, tried to get DSA out into the public and provide a space for processing and discussing the hardships of life in one of the most besieged sections of the city. The TL healing circle was, after its initial run established by resolution, rechartered to continue exploring the difference we can make serving as this kind of facilitator for collective processing of harm. It has brought exceptional organizers into the chapter, and is helping to establish a DSA SF Tenderloin presence that was sorely missed during campaign season.

Hundreds attend the Socialist Job Fair put on by the Labor Board

Togetherness as a Revolutionary Praxis

Last year, our political framing for convention was, “What does it take to build Socialism?” As our working groups were thinking about how to integrate and build practical connections with the rest of the left-wing of the city and how to turn our demands into action, this document called for making those instances of coordination meaningful through an emphasis on collective action. Only through togetherness can isolated victories be chained together into a revolution greater than its component parts.

How is togetherness composed? One lesson that became clear this year is that DSA is not an infinite wellspring of a volunteer base that can be tapped and tapped for simultaneous campaigns, as our 2024 electoral cycle clarified. Unity is not automatic. Another is that togetherness can be built: HWG, PSAI, and IJWG were able to continue or build new campaigns around their issues all throughout this term through the onboarding of new members into their strategies and the committed work of several DSA members coordinating trainings, education, and a pipeline for member growth into their project while connecting it to a meaningful political project. It is crucial to emphasize that these are two halves of the same realization: only as far as we can coordinate ourselves, can we hope to coordinate others. Togetherness requires a conscious effort, an intervention to create a social space with reasonable escalating tasks, a political throughline, and the social support around those tasks from all of the membership. Collective action may occasionally be in reaction to some event, but it will never be accidental.

This kind of unity should be the baseline for all of our work, and not just the exceptional state of a few chapter bodies. Coming off our cycle of study in the “what” of building Socialism, it seems pertinent to emphasize the how – DSA SF needs to give itself some vector to combine all of our various strategies from disparate pieces to a unified struggle. The political realities, which our chapter bodies work to soothe or improve, come from one combined and hegemonic political reality. Why are our solutions scoped and executed for a singular political concern? There is a lack of a structural expression of unity, a way to combine the work of all of our various strategies into tackling one issue all together, and then carrying that momentum to the next.

Big issues like Four Pillars, the types of work Socialists in Office draw in, and large-scale political conflicts like the genocide in Palestine and the attacks on migrants in the United States are all multi-modal and offer us the opportunity to experiment with a new type of unity in the chapter, one wherein each chapter body executes on a game plan related to their specific slice of work, but connected to the larger goal each of these projects represent.

Suppose we can experiment with and successfully build a method for integrating our own various parts into a fighting machine. In that case, it has the potential to be the basis for the larger integration of all oppressions and grievances into a working-class party to fight on a larger scale. This is not an isolated problem in only a chapter context – it is the task of socialist party building in itself, reflected in miniature in our own operations. Finding the mechanism to build unity and togetherness is still desperately in need of experimentation and a working arrangement. To discover an answer that works in our context for the linkage of disparate strategies, ideologies, practices, and concerns into one collectivized and coordinated struggle is to find a piece of the larger puzzle the rest of the US left has been playing with, and we believe this chapter has the experience, drive, and discipline to contribute to solving this puzzle as it heads into another year of the fight.

Your 2024-2025 Steering Committee,

Victoria B., Co-Chair

Savannah K., Co-Chair

Jennifer B., At-Large

Aditya B., Secretary

Artem I., Treasurer

DSA SF November 2024 Chapter Meeting

Bylaws Amendments

The following resolutions require a two-thirds vote in order to change the bylaws governing DSA SF.

Voting Business

One Priority: Building DSA SF Unity of Action

Amendment to "Building DSA SF Unity of Action"

Introduction and First Reading

Clarify Steering Power to Endorse Political Positions
Proposed Bylaw Amendment — Section 2. Grievance Officer Role and Responsibilities

Priority Resolutions

Buttons and flyers getting made at Maker Monday

Non-priority Resolutions

Consent Agenda

Note: Consent agenda items are bundled to be voted on together in a single motion with no debate. A member can request to remove an item from the consent agenda for full debate.