Hello all,

In advance of consideration of the Growth and Development Committee Bylaws Amendment, I wanted to write to provide more context into where myself and Red Star members are coming from in submitting the resolution. We’ve tried to be relatively positive in our member communication on the forums, but we want to provide some additional motivation and context for the urgency of moving forward with this resolution now, since not all NPC members are deeply familiar with the current state of things.

I believe there are serious issues with the GDC that are preventing it from being a vibrant multi-tendency body that experienced DSA leaders can easily participate in. Some of these are due to the basic structures and policies of the committee, which this resolution seeks to address. Some are due to an issue of negative organizing culture that we should call on new leadership to improve. As we’re in a period of membership growth with pressing political tasks under the Trump administration, and as we approach a convention in which the rights and duties of membership will be discussed through the work of the Democracy Commission, it’s urgent we establish a new path for the GDC as soon as possible. GDC should be able to provide input into how that work can be sustained with participation of all DSA leaders, not just those with the patience to power through the slog of GDC in its current form.

GDC membership problems

First, the membership process is far too cumbersome and slow to be able to pull in chapter leaders at a high rate. Members are required to go through an interview before admission, even if they have significant chapter leadership experience. Of course in some cases, an interview could be used to get more signal on whether someone’s representation of their own work is legitimate when there’s doubt, but it shouldn’t be a default requirement for a committee that should be DSA’s most representative and open body, and just provides opportunities for rejection on tenuous grounds and skepticism of member autonomy.

We’ve also heard repeated feedback that after admission it’s unclear to new GDC members how to get plugged in or, most challengingly, to suggest new projects or change the direction of the work. Active projects are difficult to track, and all-GDC meetings do not provide a clear path for members to make proposals for new projects. There is no calendar of events or transparency about when Steering Committee meetings are held for members to attend. Steering Committee meeting notes and decisions are not provided to the membership.

Members are not openly invited to participate in whichever projects they choose, and instead are assigned projects based on the GDC Steering Committee’s internal assessment of capacity. Ultimately, there is a complete lack of internal democratic process within GDC for members to actively shape the work and structure of the committee, and scores of members have joined only to quickly bounce off.

We feel it’s unlikely that the GDC Steering Committee would adopt these changes on their own, as rank and file GDC members have been raising them for years and attempts to address them are continuously resisted.

For example, GDC Steering Committee has recently engaged in internal visioning work that involved member input meetings, in which members raised many of the above concerns and asked for a more transparent and participatory GDC. The rank and file members’ concerns were ignored by the steering committee. Member ideas for administrative remedies such as creating shared calendars were dismissed as quick fixes. Bigger changes like allowing rank and file GDC members to lead projects and opening up non-leadership project work to non-GDC members were dismissed as misdiagnosing the issue of GDC capacity. The real problem was assumed to be insufficient staff support and the unreliability of member leaders. In general, member concerns have been continuously met with calls for more staff by current GDC leadership, highlighting a clear divide in vision between a staff-run and member-run body.

I believe that this reflects a need to deeply evaluate the structure and composition of GDC leadership.

GDC Leadership Structure and Culture

GDC’s Steering Committee is currently made up of NPC liaisons and the leaders of projects within the Committee. Since it is GDC leadership who determines which projects are taken up, it is GDC leadership who determines GDC leadership. Members are only able to come forward and take a leadership role if they are able to shape proposals that make it through the approval of existing leaders. And since it’s not clear how rank and file members can propose new projects, only members with existing connections have access to make proposals. This creates a strange incentive system, where blocking or slowing the adoption of a proposal also blocks or slows a change in leadership. This means that objections on process or implementation grounds can be used to shape the political composition of leadership and keep the status quo, without any means of GDC member or NPC input.

The result is a distortion in leadership away from being a representative and multi-tendency body, and the elevation of a particular work style and culture that excludes many DSA members. Rank and file members who attempt to engage in open discussion and debate are viewed as aggressive and the conversations are shut down, and even using basic democratic processes like amending an agenda in an SC meeting are considered hostile.

This culture has also involved repeated blockages of projects, including the State of DSA Report for which I have tried to serve as a leader for the past year. The culture of bureaucratic concern of particular details to hide political objections and slow down work has been repeatedly deployed by members of the Steering Committee. The effect of this is to deny access to basic GDC resources like including events in GDC communications, and to demoralize organizers, without needing to directly vote to cancel the project.

Because political objections can be hidden behind these process points, there’s never a “good enough”. There’s always a hole to find in someone’s work, and strong incentive to find it in order to block work without needing to openly struggle against a project on its own grounds. State of DSA, approved by our highest decision making body, the DSA Convention, has been slowed partially because GDC leadership largely consists of people who opposed the project, instead of being representative of the will of the membership that voted to take the project on 601-228.

As I write this, I’m sure there will be objections to my characterization of events within GDC, and I worry we’ll go directly back into the miasma of arguments about communication style and work ethic between members of two caucuses. We’ll spend time litigating who said what at a meeting or whether a proposal was raised in a proper channel (where it would of course be immediately dismissed). The effect will just be to delay consideration of how to bring in the DSA leaders from every other tendency who we know have long given up on participating in GDC.

GDC should be DSA’s largest national body. It should be so easy for any chapter leader to give valuable input about the tactics they’ve found useful. To jump on a call with another chapter across the country to give a training on a topic they care about. To provide more democratic oversight for our staff organizer program and ensure staff work aligns with member organizing priorities. But none of that is happening, and NPC members who know they want it, and know what the obstacles to it are, should support passing this resolution ASAP.

It’s time for NPC to step in and make some necessary changes to GDC that I think will have a big impact on the openness and positive organizing culture that the current political moment demands. And it’s important for NPC members to go back into their corners and make sure that members who trust them are getting a call to participate and giving us feedback when the changes aren’t going far enough.