Voting Guide

For the National Political Committee Election of the 2021 DSA National Convention

Provided by the Elections and Credentials Subcommittee

Updated on 8/6/2021

In the digital version of this document, you can click the candidates’ names in this list or use the outline on the left side of your browser to be taken to their respective page.

Voting Guide 1

Table of Contents 2

The National Political Committee 5

Sample Candidate Questionnaire 7

Kara Hall 8

Sofia Guimarães Cutler 15

Jose Alejandro La Luz 20

Kristian Hernandez 63

The National Political Committee

DSA’s primary political leadership is the National Political Committee (NPC), a sixteen-person body which functions as the board of directors of DSA and is elected every two years by the delegates to DSA’s National Convention. Every DSA chapter is entitled to send a certain number of delegates to the National Convention, based upon the chapter’s size. There are also “at-large” delegates to represent areas where there are no active chapters.

The DSA Constitution:

requires that eight slots of the NPC be reserved for women, and that at least five of the NPC slots be reserved for people of color.
gives the NPC the power to charter DSA locals and commissions, as well as DSA’s Youth Section.

The NPC:

guides and leads the implementation of DSA’s major political and organizational goals, which are broadly defined every two years by the delegates to the National Convention
gives instructions to the national staff about how to carry forward DSA’s day-to-day work.
creates task forces and committees to guide particular areas of DSA’s political work.
conducts long weekend meetings four times each year.
elects five of its members to serve on the Steering Committee (SC). The SC can be emailed at sc(at)dsausa.org. SC members’ names are marked with an asterisk in the list below.

Sample Candidate Questionnaire

Chapter:

Pronouns:

Please describe your experience in DSA so far; how long you’ve been a member, what kind of organizing and campaigns you’ve worked on, any leadership positions you’ve held, and any highlights or challenges you’ve encountered.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

Why are you running for NPC?

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

In the short term, if elected to NPC, you will serve two years in national leadership from August 2021 to summer 2023. What is your diagnosis of the broader political scenario DSA will face during your term? What will be the most urgent challenges, and what will be the greatest opportunities for socialists?

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

There is a general sense that in order to have a viable socialist movement we need our movement to be rooted in the multi-racial working class. How can we assure that DSA develops more connections and deeper roots within working class communities of color? What specific things do you propose?

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

If elected to NPC, you’ll be responsible for leading and carrying out committee work (such as on the electoral committee, international committee, Democratic Left committee, etc.) What particular strengths would you bring to the NPC and what committees might you focus on?

Kara Hall

Chapter: Las Vegas DSA

Pronouns: She/Her

I joined DSA in June of 2019, became secretary of Las Vegas DSA shortly thereafter, and have currently been co-chair since February 2020 where I have primarily focused on building community coalitions and recruitment in the chapter. The Las Vegas chapter grew by over 156% in 2020 while I was in leadership. I was part of the leadership team who put massive effort into preparing for and locking in the tremendous Bernie 2020 caucus win in Nevada. Catapulting off that electoral success, I helped lead LVDSA to coordinate a slate of leftists to take every seat in the Nevada State Democratic Party officer elections. In addition, I’ve worked on labor and mutual aid projects/campaigns. In addition to my chapter work, I am also an active leader in National DSA. I helped to lead the DSA100k Drive as a core member of the Growth and Development Committee’s recruitment subcommittee, where I lead national Q&A calls and help facilitate national New Member calls. I am also currently on steering committee of the Socialist Feminist national working group.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

Before joining DSA, I did extensive community organizing work over the course of the past 15-20 years, particularly around feminist issues, including reproductive rights and gender and sexual violence. I am a former Special Education teacher, where I was an active member of my local teacher’s union. I’ve gone on to work in political consulting, helping to elect leftist/socialist candidates to Congress. I am also currently starting a disability caucus with our local NV Democratic Party.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

www.dsarenewal.org

Why are you running for NPC?

I am running for NPC because I believe the leaders in DSA need to be committed to providing DSA chapters and members with the tools necessary for recruitment, retention, and leadership development while always centering specific local conditions and organizing struggles. I want to help continue to move DSA into being a mass movement, for ALL workers. I especially want to begin to fix structures in the organization in order to keep up with the tremendous growth we’ve seen in the past several years. My focus has always been on recruitment, retention, and building the structures necessary to sustain a movement. I truly believe in and love the big-tent nature of DSA and welcome spaces for complementary organizing opinions and strategies. I think that chapters and national bodies should reflect the diversity of thought of our members in a comradely, productive, and democratic way. I want to help make sure everyone’s voices are heard and people’s issues are acknowledged.. In order for DSA to be an organization representative of all workers, I know that we must emphasize the greater need for making our organization accessible, meaning: we make DSA a place where parents and families can be engaged; where we translate our materials into other languages; and, as someone who has experienced organizing challenges with a physical, mental, and intellectual disability, we must also prioritize that organizing spaces become accessible to workers and organizers with a wide range of disabilities as well.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

A redundant term, democratic socialism aims to provide social ownership of the means of production. It seeks to combat capitalism where one’s labor makes more for the boss than for oneself, where the stark difference between what someone produces and what they get back is simply exploitation. I think of democratic socialism as the movement we’re trying to build today, made up of almost 100k members of an organization collectively and democratically working together to try and build a better world.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

I believe in a mass movement theory of power. DSA needs to build into a mass organization that’s big enough to contest power at every level, organized enough to mobilize people into arenas of struggle, and grounded in enough that we’re able to choose our battles tactically, be they electoral, in the labor or tenant fields, or around a specific national campaign. We don’t have time to waste; the planet is dying, capital is stepping into the crisis, and its controlled opposition is blowing the plot. We have a world to win: it is both a moral and existential necessity.

We are at a crisis point right now: COVID continues while many of our most vulnerable frontline and working class communities struggle to recover, climate crises are looming over the Western US and the Gulf Coast, Republicans are pushing hateful and anti-democratic legislation through every state house in the country, and the working class is poorer and more demoralized than it has been in generations. The election of Biden brought with it the Brunch-ification of the center-Dem electorate and if we do not get people organized quickly, we’re going to lose a generational battle, one which we simply can’t afford.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

The purpose of a socialist organization in the contemporary United States is to recruit millions of working class people into an organized force that is able to contest power on multiple fronts, ultimately leading the shift of power away from capital and toward the multi-racial, multi-generational working class. Capitalism relies on exploitation of the many to benefit the few, and with a mass movement, we can demand what we know is possible: a better world.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

DSA has been incredibly successful in sheer growth over the past two years. Our numbers are up in nearly every chapter across the country, and the shift to virtual conditions allowed for increased accessibility for many members, as well as increased cross-chapter communications. However, this growth was not intentional and continues to over-represent a younger, whiter, maler, straighter, more formally educated, and more urban demographic than the working class as a whole. Additionally, DSA has failed to build structures in ways that allow for easy cross-chapter collaborations and formal cross-chapter dialogue, has not found successful ways to plug chapters and individuals into national work without them self-selecting into the process, and has not prioritized leadership development, which leads to significant burnout at both the chapter and national level. Further, DSA continues to rely largely on one-size-fits-all strategies and campaigns instead of supporting chapters and regional structures as they adapt and respond to local organizing conditions, which vary widely across locals.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

Labor, housing, and environmental organizing are always key, but what’s crucial is that DSA be both flexible enough and organized enough to identify and respond to rapidly-changing conditions at every level: from the apartment block or job site all the way to the United Nations. We must continue to prioritize intentional recruitment of the multiracial, multigenerational working class. We need to look at how we deal with conflict resolution within the organization to make sure DSA is a safe, comradely, and generative space for political work. We must continue to prioritize member retention and engagement as well, with resources and extensive training opportunities. We must prioritize Southern and rural chapters, who work on the front lines of some of the most intense and crucial struggles, in order to give them the tools necessary to grow and build power in these essential regions. Lastly, we must begin to prioritize YDSA. Colleges are both a fertile recruiting ground and an under-supported site of struggle for the working class. Student body organizations are literally encouraged at most schools, and YDSA chapters should be well-supported by National so they can rapidly train organizers (given their natural turnover) and offer a pipeline into local DSA work upon graduation. Additionally, we need a dedicated campaign to specifically organize community colleges and trade schools, where student bodies are more broadly representative of the working class, organizing workers with the education and resources necessary to lead us into the next phase of the struggle.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

The most important thing we can do is help chapters organize within their own specific organizing conditions, which might often mean the ability to assess them accurately. We must also keep in mind that elections are often the only meaningful political interaction many working class people in his country engage in and electoral campaigns are therefore fertile ground to build class solidarity. An electoral campaign in Metro DC looks vastly different then one in Southwest Louisiana and we must be able to support chapters who run campaigns in both without having a one-size-fits-all answer or strategy. We need to be able to support candidates that can win and not waste members' time or resources on dead-end campaigns. Legislation is the primary way by which organized workers and communities win their demands and it’s important that as an organization we are engaging in work that makes a real difference for our communities right here right now. Electoral organizing serves as one of the largest vehicles to turn otherwise politically-inactive workers toward an organization like DSA. As we have seen from campaigns like Bernie and AOC, electoral organizing brings in mass numbers of people toward socialist politics. Until we grow a large enough base or a militant labor movement where we could have our own worker’s party, we must fight for reforms around immediate material demands here and now with the methods and approaches to electoral strategies which have created the most successful socialist electoral program in nearly 100 years.

In the most basic terms, we need to just ask people. It’s really that simple. As one of the coordinators of the DSA100K campaign, I had the privilege to speak directly to some of the comrades who placed at or near the top on the leaderboard, and one comrade in particular had a great answer when we asked her how she was so successful not only at recruiting, but at specifically recruiting the multiracial working class: “You just ask people. How else would you do it?” I agree with this assessment wholeheartedly: when choosing campaigns, we not only cannot ignore the racial justice element of any struggle, but we must center it. By centering racial justice, we build our case, and from there, we just ask people. How else would you do it? We need to meet people where they are at, prioritize coalition work that's led by Black and Brown communities and continue to focus on issues that affect these communities the most from abolition to housing and more. “Racial justice” cannot be its own separate committee or working group; it absolutely MUST be centered in all the other work we do as racism exists everywhere. We must be anti-racist and anti-imperialist. And we must prioritize language justice in order to be able to actually make DSA accessible to every member of the working class.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

Organized labor is absolutely essential to our mission as socialists. People need tools to organize their workplaces wherever they are, rank and file union members need to be supported and empowered with resources to help them gain power within their unions, and we need to continue building the excellent coalition relationships that the PRO Act and other large labor campaigns have laid the groundwork for. Our engagement with labor doesn’t need to be limited to this kind of work, though. Electoral campaigns, mutual aid organizing, solidarity actions, and more—like legislative campaigns—all present meaningful opportunities for local chapters to build relationships and the necessary trust with organized labor that DSA needs in order to continue growing towards a truly mass movement and a socialist future beyond capitalism.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

In order for DSA to continue to grow and build power, it’s extremely important to continue to work in coalition with other organizations and groups on both a local and national level. In the Las Vegas chapter, we spent the last 2 years showing up in solidarity for other groups in the community. We didn’t ask anything of them; we listened, we participated, we engaged and in doing that we built relationships that helped us to grow our chapter and build power in our community. When we had campaigns and priorities of our own, we had organizations ready to support and partner with us because we had spent the time building those relationships. Similarly, DSA showing up en masse as volunteers for the PRO Act campaign gained us significant respect from and opportunities alongside a number of powerful unions, even some who have been historically difficult to build inroads with. Remember, there are no shortcuts in organizing and building relationships is key to growing our organization into the multiracial mass movement of the entire working class.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

DSA National only exists because of the tireless work of local organizers throughout the country. The vast majority of the work we do takes place—rightfully—within local chapters, and thus chapters need to have every bit of organizational support that National can give them, particularly surrounding National priority campaigns. NPC’s job is to empower local organizers by providing a positive political vision for a mass movement organization, and in turn, needs to trust that local organizers know how best to meet goals and win power within their local conditions. At the same time, the NPC needs to work with staff and regional leadership to build pathways to national work for members in chapters both large and small, and work to foster and facilitate cross-chapter communication, train-the-trainer programs, and resource and skill-sharing.

It's crucial that National supports chapters if we expect our organization to grow and I’d like to continue to work on the GDC doing recruitment but also working on different ways to train and mentor chapters. As someone with a disability, I understand the importance of accessibility and would like to work with the new Disability WG to make National events accessible to all and train chapters to make sure their local work is accessible too. I’d like to support YDSA and continue working with the Socialist Feminist WG to ensure it’s able to grow and thrive.

Sofia Guimarães Cutler

Chapter: North New Jersey DSA

Pronouns: She/Her

I've been an active member of DSA for nearly four years. My first year in the North NJ DSA chapter, I was primarily focused on our campaign against our local government's contract with ICE. I served as the immigrant justice working group co-point for a year, helping to lead that working group and building coalitions with local immigrant justice groups.

That first year and a half was pretty rocky. The entire leadership of the chapter quit, leaving me and a couple other people with the task of rebuilding the chapter. Although it was difficult, it did give me first-hand perspective on how to build a chapter from the ground up. With other comrades we built a political education committee (which I chaired) and a new member orientation and onboarding program, and we helped establish the first chapter convention, to vote on priority campaigns.

For the last year, I have also served as chair of the electoral working group and am leading our campaign to elect Joel Brooks to city council in Jersey City. I worked closely with leaders on the National Electoral Committee as well as the Brooklyn Electoral Working Group to learn from them and help to pivot our chapter away from our previous paper endorsement model to an activist endorsement model, in which the chapter bottom-lines the entire campaign--from comms to field and finance--for a home-grown candidate. It’s been incredible to see the amount of internal infrastructure, skills and leadership this in-house campaign has built and I would love to help other chapters see how we can expand that model.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

Before joining DSA, I was mostly an activist who attended protests and shared left-wing articles on social media. It was only by joining DSA that I really became an organizer.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

N/A

Why are you running for NPC?

I am running for NPC to build a stronger and more democratic DSA nationally. My main commitment is to build DSA into a more party-like apparatus by helping more chapters build independent electoral infrastructure and to help support the National Electoral Committee. As a Marxist, I believe labor is the source of working class power, so I also hope to see how we can further connect our electoral work to the labor movement and support members taking rank-and-file jobs or building connections with unions and other labor formations. Also, I hope to bring my perspective building a smaller chapter from the ground up to the NPC.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic socialism means healthcare, housing, education and other essential services are provided to everyone by the state. But it goes a step further: it means that no one will be able to exploit workers on the job and hoard all the wealth. Ending capitalists’ power to exploit is crucial for protecting democracy and the social gains we make. To achieve this means a democratic road to socialism that works from below through a rank-and-file-led union movement and through taking state power through elections and legislation.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

-Five years: Build up our national electoral infrastructure so that chapters around the country have independent infrastructure to elect open socialists; elect a few cadre DSA members to Congress; and see thousands of DSA members in rank-and-file union jobs in strategic industries, with strikes and militant union caucuses across the country.

-Ten years: A renewed labor movement in important unions, higher union density, and organizing toward a labor party.

-This would require putting more resources into our national electoral committee and DSLC to support more DSA members in getting rank-and-file jobs

DSA will have to navigate the post-Bernie moment. Bernie cohered the broader left into DSA. His platform gave us a vision of what we want to fight for. The urgent challenge is to continue to provide that leadership and organization without Bernie. The greatest opportunity for socialists is to engage in elections that popularize our values and raise the political consciousness of the working class and to build workers’ power in strategic sectors that have the power to increase our leverage over the capitalist class.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

The purpose and role of a socialist organization is to aid in the process of class formation: turning the working class into an organized and politically aware force. To do so, it must fight for a mass labor party free from the capitalist influence that undermines the Democratic Party. And it must reconnect the left with the labor movement when the two have been so disconnected for decades. Finally, it must fight oppression and divisions among the working class head on by directly fighting the legacies of slavery and imperialism.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

We have much to be proud of. We are the biggest and most visible socialist organization in generations. As such, we have pushed the Overton window to the left thanks to our major campaigns, particularly our electoral work. A lot of this has been driven by our remarkable canvassing operations and ability to turn out mass numbers of people to knock on doors and have one-on-one’s with working people about the issues that matter to them.

Despite these strengths, we are still predominantly white, drawn from middle-class and college-educated parts of the working class who are not concentrated in strategic industries. Our local chapters are pretty disconnected from the national organization and often need more support and resources.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

We should model our policies and demands after Bernie Sanders’ platform. I am most excited about the Green New Deal and the terrific work our comrades have done nationally to connect that with the labor movement through support of the Pro Act. DSA should continue to prioritize demands and policies such as abolishing ICE and Medicare for All that work alongside the labor movement, especially by mobilizing and activating rank-and-file union members.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

Chapters in NYC and Chicago have led the way in building independent electoral machines. But this is uneven nationally. In the short term, we need to focus on getting all chapters away from paper endorsements and toward building in-house electoral infrastructure that outlasts campaign cycles. We need strong candidate recruitment that elects people who are committed to building working class organization rather than just legislating. The priority job of an elected official is to organize the working class.

In the short-term we can improve translation of our media and materials as well as training for chapter leaders on how to support comrades of color. Longer term solutions include rooting ourselves in workplaces and recruiting people there and finding ways to recruit through our electoral work, which so far has mostly brought in people similar to the existing DSA demographic.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

The aim of DSA should be to merge labor and the left together, when they have been separated from each other for decades in this country. Labor is our ultimate leverage to win socialism, so a left without a labor movement is ultimately toothless.

In order to rebuild this connection, we need socialists getting jobs in strategic sectors—especially teaching, nursing and logistics. We need to support these comrades with resources and staff to help them achieve these jobs, maintain them and organize their coworkers. We also need to be relating to unorganized workers through initiatives such as EWOC.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

We should principally try to engage with groups that are member- led and funded. There are times when we can and should work with non-profits and NGO’s, but we should understand their limitations and make sure that their funding is not coming from sources that do not share our politics.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

At the moment, the locals are very alienated from the national organization. Most local members in my chapter, including myself for some time, have zero contact with the national organization and have little idea how the organization works. Nobody is to blame for this because membership ballooned after the Bernie movement and the national organization has still not caught up to our size. To better tie the locals to the national we need a DSA that has the resources, organizational capacity, and democratic structures locally and nationwide to drive forward our political work. The national should be in constant communication with chapters to support them and plug them into mass campaigns. We also need matching funds so that chapters can get offices and staff.

As someone who has chaired my chapter's political education committee and is completing a PhD in American political labor history, I would bring knowledge that would be useful for DSA’s political education. I’ve also spent a great deal of my life in Brazil, where most of my family lives, which has given me a knowledge of Latin American politics. I grew up hearing first-hand about the horrors of American imperialism from my family—many of whom were tortured under the American-imposed dictatorship. This gives me a global perspective in my approach to socialism. Ultimately, the most important thing I can bring is my experience building up electoral work in a smaller chapter, and I eagerly anticipate the chance to work with the National Electoral Committee to help other chapters engage in this work.

Jose Alejandro La Luz

Chapter: New York City DSA

Pronouns: He/Him/El

I had been a member of DSOC and the Chair of the Hispanic/Latino Commission before it merged with NAM to form DSA in 1982. I remained that commission’s chair and was also an Honorary Vice Chair of DSA until all symbolic posts were finally abolished. My activism diminished when I became a lead organizer in several large scale union organizing campaigns including a ten-year assignment in my homeland of Puerto Rico. Nevertheless, I did numerous political education events for YDSA and DSA chapters over the years. More recently, after serving as a national surrogate for Bernie Sanders and organizing multiple actions for the M4A campaign in Florida and Texas I was asked to join DSA’s M4A Steering Committee. I have led a study group for AFROSOC with comrade Bill Fletcher, organized DSA forums in support of Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez’s bill supporting Self-Determination and Decolonization for Puerto Rico, and attended virtual meetings of the Bronx/Upper Manhattan branch where I was elected a convention delegate. I’m a proud member of the Socialist Majority caucus.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

I was the organizing secretary of the US branch of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party-ML and a member of its national central committee before joining DSOC and DSA in the 1970s. I was an anti-war activist, a student organizer, and SDS member in the late sixties. I have organized workers in the US, in Puerto Rico, and in the Free Trade zones in Central America and the Caribbean. Finally, I have done a lot of electoral organizing among Latino voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, and the Southwest in Presidential election cycles and most recently as a national surrogate for Bernie Sanders in Nevada and Texas.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

No. In all my years as a union organizer, I was never assigned by my bosses to organize police. During my career in labor I worked at AFSCME which is an international union that represents many types of workers including some carceral workers, but I never worked directly with them. Ideologically, I view police as part of the repressive apparatus of the state and as such I oppose granting the right to organize and bargain collectively to the police. I don’t think the police should have a place in organized labor.

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/102568

Why are you running for NPC?

Some younger comrades who asked me to run argued that my experience as a lifetime organizer in several social and political movements can help in the process of building a stronger DSA: I agreed!

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Capitalism as an economic system is not only oppressive to workers as a class but it’s also profoundly undemocratic. In order to transform it, the wealth that is created collectively and appropriated by the few as well as income and political power must be redistributed from the top to the bottom of the social order. Democracy and democratic rights such as free elections, freedom of speech, assembly and the right to organize unions, among others, are fundamental to building working class power.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

We must become a multi-racial and intergenerational organization rooted in the working class. In this juncture, we must craft a uniform and multilayered political education project for the entire organization. This will allow us to shape a more unified and coherent political perspective as a multi-tendency organization. To achieve these goals will require us to be more intentional and deliberate in our planning processes.

We will continue to see the effects of the rise of right wing populism in public life and political discourse. This American version of fascism fueled by white supremacy and nationalism, organized religion and irrationality spells disaster for all workers but most specifically for working class communities of color. As socialists we must fight hard against the illusions and racial polarization that this right-wing populist movement (that was on the rise before Trump) has cultivated among certain segments of the working class that are mostly white, including union members.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

To fight consistently for a greater redistribution of wealth, income, and political power from the ruling class to those in the bottom of the social order, to expose the contradictions between racial capitalism and democratic rule in every political juncture, to fight against systemic racism rooted in white supremacy and to build working class political power independent of the two-party system.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

From what I’ve witnessed recently we have harvested the success of Bernie Sanders’ two presidential runs by growing our ranks--now the challenge ahead is how to achieve qualitative growth to become a more coherent and effective mass socialist movement. It’s hard to envision a path to sustained growth without another openly socialist leader like Sanders, not just a so-called progressive.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

In my view, there will be at least two fundamental priorities. One is to adopt a plan to begin the organizational transformation of DSA into a multi-racial organization rooted in the working class which will require policies to be debated and approved by the Convention. The other is the National Electoral Strategy. DSA has achieved great success in helping to elect self-described socialists and left progressives running as the left wing of the Democrats and in my view that should continue.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

My assessment is based on what I have witnessed first-hand in my role as a national surrogate for Bernie in Nevada. The DSA leadership there played a pivotal role in shaping the political strategy because our members were very engaged as volunteers and the campaign hired key political operatives among the chapter’s leadership. I gather something similar has happened here in NYC with the election of DSA-endorsed candidates for Congress and the NY State Assembly. Based on the success of that strategy, it probably makes sense for it to continue in the short-term.

I believe this is critical and urgent. It will require a very intentional and deliberate organizational change process within DSA, with the NPC providing the leadership and guidance. The convention may have to adopt the necessary measures to make it a top priority and allocate adequate resources to achieve its stated goals. We need to engage in dialogue with individuals and organizations that are presently organizing working class communities of color. It will also be important to learn from the historic experiences of other organizations on the left that devoted considerable energies and resources to organize people of color.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

I believe we need to have a close and collaborative relationship with those unions whose leaders share many of our values and vision which are in the minority. Whenever possible comrades should run for office in their locals in intermediary bodies of their unions in order to shape and influence policies and programs. We have to continue to fight for the right to organize and for unions to become more inclusive and more responsible and accountable not to their members exclusively but to the interest of the class. The fight against the rise of inequality and to build working class political power is the domain of the entire working class.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

Always with a clear perspective of what we can accomplish given our strength in the coalition and how far we can move the coalition to adopt more audacious positions in line with our vision.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

In my view, the political leadership of DSA consists of the members of the NPC together with the leadership of the local chapters. NPC members should play an important role in achieving a higher level of coordination with chapters and their leadership.

I’m prepared to serve in whatever committee that becomes important to achieve our political and organizational goals. I am interested in helping with our political education committee, the DSLC, and the International Committee and think my background and organizing work would be fitting for any of these.

Austin González

Chapter: Richmond DSA

Pronouns: he/him/él

I have been a member of DSA since early fall 2016. I joined DSA before the election of Donald Trump. When I joined DSA there were no full chapters in the entire state of Virginia. In early 2017 a few comrades and I came together to form what would become the first full DSA chapter in Virginia, Richmond VA DSA. I was honored to serve as the chapter's inaugural chair for two years. As chair, I helped foster growth for DSA across the state and was proud to see the formation of chapters in Charlottesville and the Tidewater that would collaborate closely with Richmond. This collaboration would manifest itself most notably during our DSA caravan that counterprotested the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville alongside Metro DC DSA members. This experience had a profound impact on me as we were all on the very same block of the car attack. I have developed a deep belief in Antifascist work from that experience. In early 2019 Virginia chapters came together and I was happy to help plan and host all of these chapters in Richmond for the first ever Virginia state convention. This experience was my finally goodbye as chapter cochair. After this, I ran for NPC on a campaign premised on a few major planks 1. Antifascism, 2. Anti-imperialism, and 3. Small chapter support. Being of Puerto Rican descent I thought it should be a priority to amplify anti-imperialist struggles and increase our solidarity with international socialists. I helped coauthor 2019 Convention Reso 50 on Decolonization. This resolution would pass at 2019 convention and I would also be elected to the NPC. My time on the NPC has focused on building upon the planks of my campaign and I am proud to have played a part in the formalization of the Antifascist Working Group, the restructuring of the International Committee (IC), and the formation of the Mutual Aid Working Group. My work on the IC recently culminated in my leading of our first ever DSA election observer delegation to Peru's presidential elections on June 6. We used this as an opportunity to get our DSA electeds in contact with like minded elected officials in South America and were blown away by the amount of love and solidarity we were shown by the Peruvian and South American left. Seeing just about every level of this organization from many different perspectives, I have experienced every challenge you could possibly imagine and proudly tell people that I am a two-time community college dropout and will not stop fighting until we have a healthy, strong, mass socialist movement in the United States.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

In 2008 I began political activism with Organizing for America, Obama's canvassing arm of his campaign. I was very young and did not know much about what real organizing was. It was not until I joined DSA that I learned what it meant to actually organize people. My experiences in DSA led to me beginning work with SEIU in Virginia where I learned even more about the abysmal state of labor organizing in Virginia, and, more broadly, in the South.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2017/08/13/i-went-to-counterprotest-neo-nazis-in-charlottesville-i-witnessed-carnage/

Why are you running for NPC?

I am running for NPC because I am not finished yet. The work I have helped start on the International Committee, the Mutual Aid Working Group, and the Antifascism Working Group is still just growing and beginning to blossom. If I am re-elected to the NPC I am confident I will be able to leave these projects in as healthy a place as possible by 2023. Leadership continuity is crucial for our organization at this moment of extraordinary growth.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

To me democratic socialism means democracy and equality in all aspects of human life and community. Within the United States we experience deep degrees of alienation and have a serious lack in community because of it. For these reasons, democratic socialism is not just a political phrase to me, it is also an action that must be taken in order to create that sense of community that we all lack so very much in our country. For me, all of these words we use are synonymous with the simple ask of being able to live a good life (buen vivir).

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

In five years I think it is an imperative for us to have full fledged statewide organizations in as many states as possible. These statewide orgs would then be able to facilitate growth in more rural or underdeveloped areas where comrades exist but are very isolated from one another. So that by ten years we would not be as much of an urban or large city dominated movement, but can realistically cover areas of the country that are left behind. Our organization needs to engage in a very intentional process of structural growth and member retention to make this happen.

I think right now many socialists are still grappling with the end of the Bernie campaign and what that means in relation to how we should be orienting ourselves to both the Democratic Party and electoral politics in general. The Joe Biden administration is clearly not a friendly one toward the left and we should be approaching this very clear eyed and embracing our principles as we strive to be a mass movement that can properly engage with electoral politics on our own terms, rather than as an instrument to be utilized by political opportunists. The continued inaction toward the environment will only exacerbate climate disaster and it is the third world which will continue to bear the brunt of this. An emphasis on Buen Vivir and degrowth is critical in fighting environmental destruction produced by the first world. The United States Department of Defense is the world's number one polluter and socialists will need to be vigilant in confronting the war machine. We should also expect to see a resurgent far-right as they aim to regain power from Democratic leadership that do not seem very interested in delivering actual gains to working people. This far-right will continue to target immigrants and communities of color. As a movement of the multiracial working class we must stay vigilant in fighting for all working people amidst this.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

The United States is a country that has a deep lack of any sense of community. The role of a mass socialist organization is not simply one limited to electoral politics or mutual aid or any particular area of struggle. These struggles are all linked together as I believe the role we play is to redevelop the sense of community that we do not have. It is our organization that can play a pivotal role in uniting working people together as a class that can fight together for gains for working people across the United States.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

DSA has a very unique ability to be present in many different facets of struggle in ways that other organizations or movements are unable to. It is our membership on the ground in our locals that have engaged in various different campaigns in their communities. This, to me, is our greatest strength as an organization, our holistic message of democratic socialism which allows us to be as effective as we are in electoral campaigns, mutual aid programs, protest mobilization and international solidarity among many other avenues. We have also begun to see how powerful we can be when we bring all of these things together in an effective national campaign that leans on our locals. Being in Virginia I saw firsthand the effectiveness of the PRO Act campaign in mobilizing membership across the state to work together. When it comes to weaknesses, I think many areas on the national level have a tendency to get siloed off from one another. This is an issue that can be fixed through an intentional process of structural consolidation that does not turn off different facets of struggle, but, rather, unites them together to work in tandem across the board. This is something our organization needs to improve on to be as truly effective as it can be.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

Over the next two years DSA needs to make it a priority to struggle against the Biden administration. Biden has already turned his back on immigrants, communities of color, and the working class as a whole. Biden continues to implement devastating sanctions on various different countries and has maintained Trump's foreign policy in some devastatingly bad aspects. If we are to be taken seriously as the largest socialist organization in the United States we cannot simply allow the Democratic Party to ruin the lives of working people, we must stay vigiliant in promoting candidates that are socialists and are going to fight for the multiracial working class. We have made tremendous strides in our internationalist work and we need to make it a priority to build upon that with an effective anti-sanctions campaign as well as an effective campaign to legalize all immigrants living in the United States. We also need to stay vigilant in fighting for our environment. I am a strong adherent to degrowth and Buen Vivir as it has manifested itself in South America and think DSA would be wise to make these philosophies a priority in fighting capitalism.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

I think there is a reason that DSA's National Electoral Strategy is what this organization is most known for. Our National Electoral Committee has worked extraordinarily hard to build an effective apparatus that is not something to simply be utilized by opportunists. I think we need to build on these developments and make conscious efforts to have socialists entering electeds' offices as staffers as much as possible. It is these roles that are critical in maintaining electeds that can be held accountable to the organization. Elections can also be used a very useful tool in inspiring marginalized communities to get involved and try to change their world. I think dependency on corporatists within the Democratic Party is always something we should be mindful of, and that this can best be addressed through local campaigns that are embedded within their communities, regardless of whether or not a candidate runs as a Democrat or an independent. Fundamentally, different strategies are going to work better in different places. We should not be afraid to adapt to local conditions as they arise or pigeonhole ourselves to one ballot line strategy or another.

I consider myself an adherent of Plurinationalism. Plurinationalism is a doctrine that was developed in the indigenous communities of the Bolivian socialist movement. There are many different ethnic groups that exist in Bolivia. They are all united under one banner of Plurinationalism, unity in diversity, so to speak. I think this is a doctrine that MUST be adopted within the socialist movement in the United States. Fundamentally we live in a country with wide racial disparities. We must acknowledge this head on and be intentional about giving a platform to our comrades of color to address the struggles they face in our society. Any ignorance of racism is merely a failure to adapt to our local conditions here in the United States. We live in a white supremacist society and we need to be honest and intentional about addressing that. This means getting involved in immigrant communities across the country with a legalization for all campaign, this means being serious about abolition and giving our abolition WG the resources it needs to effectively campaign for marginalized communities, this also means showing solidarity to black and brown socialist movements across the world, rather than simply promoting and uplifting the ones that exist in Europe or North America.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

DSA has been very mindful of engagement with the labor movement since I have been a member. It was after our adoption of the rank and file strategy that I made a conscious effort to engage with unions in Virginia and became an SEIU organizer. During the PRO Act campaign we have made tremendous strides in working alongside labor unions in the United States. All of this is still not nearly enough. If we are ever to have a strong socialist movement in the United States it will need to be alongside a strong fighting labor movement. I lean heavily on the experiences of socialists in Latin America and in every single instance, a successful socialist movement is partnered with a strong labor movement. At the same time we must be making efforts to organize the unorganized, especially in places like the South where union density and workers' rights are at their worst. My state, Virginia, is often ranked the worst state for workers'. I have seen firsthand my entire life the devastating effects of a weak labor movement. Getting more militants involved in unions as well as getting more militant unions organized will be critical to any success socialists can expect to have in the United States.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

Coalition building is key to any successful working class movement. DSA plays a critical role in coalitions, in that our message is the most holistic message of all. We need to be vigiliant in leading coalitions with a working class message that focuses on struggle for all marginalized communities in the United States. We cannot allow ourselves to merely be manipulated for our branding by opportunistic liberal NGOs. We need to be embedding ourselves in the community alongside community based organizations if we ever truly expect to be accepted by communities of color as well as communities of the working class as a whole. We need to be part of a wider social movement that can properly hold elected officials accountable and begin to deliver gains for the people that we all so desperately need.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

Local chapters are the lifeblood of our organization. Locals are going to know the best ways to adapt to their local conditions. What works in New York is not always going to work in Virginia and so on and so forth. The national organization needs to play a role that facilitates local growth but does not replace the work that locals are engaging in. This is not to say that the national organization should not be organization national campaigns, rather, national campaigns should lean heavily on the organizers on the ground who will know how best to actually engage with their local communities. I use the PRO Act campaign as an example. The campaign in Virginia has been led by our organizers in our Virginia chapters. It is us who are most well suited to actually pressure our local elected officials. As an NPC member I made it a priority to use my position as a national leader to bring all the chapter leaders from the state of Virginia together to make this a reality. This, to me, is how national campaigns can be run most effectively without replacing the work of our local organizers.

During the time I have already spent on the NPC I have worked extensively with the International Committee, the Mutual Aid Working Group, and the Antifascist Working Group. These three places are my biggest strengths and the places where I plan to continue to do work for our organization. There is much room for growth within these three groups and if re-elected to the NPC I am confident that I can help steward them to a very healthy place by 2023 that is worthy of the largest socialist organization in the United States.

Jen McKinney

Chapter: Eugene DSA

Pronouns: She/Her

I joined DSA in 2017 and helped found our chapter in Eugene, Oregon. In 2019 I was elected to the NPC and during my term I have served as DSA’s Secretary/Treasurer and now serve as chair. I am also the co-chair of the Budget & Finance committee, and I serve on the steering committee for the Growth & Development committee as the co-chair of the retention subcommittee. I serve as the NPC liaison for the Mutual Aid Working Group, the Disability Working Group, the National Tech Committee, the BDS/Palestine Solidarity Working Group, and the DSA Muslims Caucus. I am also on the convention planning steering committee, serving as the co-chair of the programming subcommittee. When the COVID crisis began, I served on the steering committee for the ad-hoc COVID committee. I have participated in the 100k drive and the PRO Act campaign, and played a role in rolling out the NPC’s November Strategy document.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

The first political organizing I ever did was with the local county democrats in the leadup to the 1996 Iowa caucuses.

While I was attending my local community college, I organized a group to fight against budget cuts, and also represented the college in the Oregon Student Association.

I grew up the daughter of a union man and a helper, focusing on disaster response and preparedness. I know what it’s like to live and help in disasters and repel disaster capitalism, to take care of each other instead of being exploited in our time of need.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

I have a website: jenpc.org

Why are you running for NPC?

I am running because I have a vision for a collaborative and transparent organization. I also believe that continuity in leadership is key for a stronger DSA. I feel like I have done so much and I’m just getting started!

I believe that we cannot rely solely on our own experiences and knowledge to guide ourselves and our organization. I want to ensure that we as an organization together are actively listening and attending to the needs of members who are marginalized, oppressed, and suffering. I want to ensure that as an ecosocialist organization, we are attentive to the needs of our planet and those who will surely suffer and are suffering due to climate change.

I believe that members must have a space to communicate and connect with other members, whether digitally or physically. I strongly advocate for leaders within our organization to constantly interact with all of our rank-and-file members, and to interact earnestly, openly, and honestly.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic socialism means to me that cooperation and trust are an imperative.

Listen, I have a high school education with some community college thrown in. I’m trying my best, but I won’t always know who the right thinker is, and I’m not sure there’s a perfect answer to any of this. What I do know is that because we are socialists and don’t bind ourselves into the means-tested boxes of capitalism, we have to communicate openly, honestly, and earnestly in order to provide to each according to need, and we have to trust each other to give according to ability.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

In 5 years we should increase our number of chapters by 50% - and on our way to a chapter in every county of the US within 20 years! Our foundational work happens in chapters, whether that’s taking on local campaigns or participating in national campaigns such as the PRO Act.

To get us there, we need to be “everyday socialists” - we should be talking to people from all walks of life, every day, about our values and what we believe. To do that, we need a firm foundation of political education to give us a way to articulate those values.

We are in a crunch - the continued pandemic, a housing crisis, racial justice, and climate change (and its related climate disasters) will continue to be at the forefront of politics, and ought to be at the forefront of our collective minds. The neoliberals in control at the federal level will not save us, we can only amass the working class to rise up and struggle together.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

One of DSA’s greatest strengths is enabling working class people without prior exposure to socialism to express the ways in which exploitative systems hold them back. And, the wide variety in our tendencies allows us to learn together and create syntheses of socialist thought.

Our role is also to be ready to assist when our communities are in need. We’re going to increasingly face disasters in our communities, and if we don’t prepare for what will most assuredly come, we won’t be ready when capitalism swoops in to exploit those most in need when they are most vulnerable.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

I’ll start with our weaknesses. Currently we struggle without an intermediary body between chapters and the national level. It is good to see some chapters come together to organize at the state level, and I’d like to see that continue.

Another weakness I identify is a lack of leadership development at the national level. We have so many wonderful, passionate and strong member leaders in DSA and I believe it is imperative that we develop leadership throughout the national level - in working groups, committees...everywhere in between. If elected, I hope to make this one of my top priorities for the next two years.

As for our strengths, the biggest being that we have 240+ chapters each responding to issues in their local communities. Chapters having the autonomy to decide how best to build power where they live is a key strength. What’s better, we can organize nationally, locally - we have many chapters across the country doing similar work who learn from each other and apply lessons learned. We can organize to the conditions where we are, under one national banner.

I believe that another of our greatest strengths is being a multitendency organization. I’ve learned in my time on the NPC that a multitendency DSA is a very good thing, especially within a leadership body. We don’t always agree, but we work through the struggle, together. We have open and honest discussions that are always grounded in the understanding that we are all comrades and put the organization first.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

I could say something about, say, housing policy or climate policy or defund or or or or...but at the end of the day, we must listen to members and chapters to answer this question. Our actions will be determined by our values, our capacity, and the conditions on the ground. I could go on and on about what I think we ought to do in Eugene, but I don’t have the first clue what we should do in Grand Rapids. As a national organization, however, we can use our full power to prop up work that chapters are doing across the country, and to connect that work with the socialist values we have as an organization.

I believe that any demands we make ought to be done with the consideration of all members, but especially those who will be affected the most by those demands. It is not our place as individuals to declare for the organization what demands we ought to make, it is ours together. We must have robust and frequent discussion, and welcome disagreement, because it is through that collective conflict that we begin to understand how to articulate our collective demands.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

Only chapters can understand best how to engage with electoral campaigns in their community. In the short term, this means assessing power structures and local geography where we live to determine where best to engage electorally, whether that's a state Senate run, a city council race, or a school board election, or ballot measures or more, or whether that’s eschewing elections altogether. I can’t pretend to know how best to engage with elections, because they’re not a monolith: there is no one answer, it depends on local conditions. But, I know that I want to support members and chapters who do know how best to engage with elections where they’re at.

I think that we begin by having open and honest conversations between chapters and members about what it means when we say we want to be “rooted in the multi-racial working class” - and what that would look like in a practical sense. We need to examine the racial makeup of our chapters and compare them to our communities - do they differ? If so, why? It’s not enough to mobilize members - it’s not enough to just show up. We have to do the deep, introspective self-organizing work.

Specifically, I would like to see the Multi-Racial Organizing resolution pass and work to begin implementing it early in the next NPC’s term. I think this work builds on Kevin R’s resolution which passed at the February 2021 NPC meeting, “Prioritize BIPOC Recruitment, Engagement, and Development”. I have had the privilege to work with Kevin and others to implement this resolution through a multi-pronged approach. Two that I have worked on include: working with Justin C to develop discussions around prioritizing the engagement and recruitment of BIPOC members through committee and working group budgets; and working with Kristian H to develop the BIPOC Resolution Direct Engagement Plan, which engages chapter leaders in these open and honest conversations around race and multi-racial organizing.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

DSA chapters should serve a vital role in their communities as support systems for workers and unions, particularly those workers who are most vulnerable and outside the purview of the labor movement currently. What that looks like on the ground may take different forms: perhaps being a support system for workers salting a workplace; or connecting workers to unions that can help them organize their workplace; or providing strike support and solidarity when workers take action. We’ll need a wide variety of tactics, that much is certain.

Because we are a nationwide organization, we can also utilize our collective networks to help workers connect with other workers across the country. We can broadcast when bosses don’t meet workers’ demands, very loudly. Projects such as EWOC and ROP are proof of what we can do when we work nationally while also thinking locally.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

As socialists, we don’t merely seek to put a friendlier face on capitalism, we seek to destroy it entirely. It is and will be a very difficult project. In order to succeed, I believe it’s imperative to work in coalition with other groups in our communities who share our values.

In order for a social movement to survive, I believe there are two components necessary: bonding social capital and bridging social capital. We find the first among ourselves: bonding social capital forms among people with shared values in an organization. The second, among groups: bridging social capital forms among groups with shared values in a movement. In order to withstand what’s coming for us as we fight for our collective liberation, we must have both in order to form a strong cohesive web that’s harder to break.

What this means for our organization is knowing what our shared values are among members; and assessing whether other local groups share those values, too. To make those determinations, it’s best to rely our chapters who will know how to best navigate their local terrain.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

I’ve repeated throughout that we ought to defer to chapters, because only they can know what’s best for their local terrain. So, it’s incumbent on local chapters to learn, in detail, their local geography, so decisions are made from a place of knowledge; it’s also incumbent on the national organization to provide the collective wisdom and resources so local chapters can effectively take actions based on their decisions.

I believe we’re strongest when chapters and members are free to engage in the work they find most meaningful and impactful, while maintaining a robust central communication and resource hub at the national level. NPC members should serve to facilitate, not to demand or manage. Members are not cogs to be placed in volunteering machines; we all have agency here. NPC members ought to: connect members and chapters with others doing similar work; combine our individual efforts and experiences into group knowledge; have a constant and open dialogue with all members; serve as a bird’s-eye view of the organization to free chapters up to concentrate on their work on the ground; and enable chapters to receive the kinds of resources from the national organization which allow them to organize to their maximum potential.

If elected I would like to continue focusing on my work in the GDC, particularly on the retention subcommittee. We are building up the At Large Mobilizer program and I’d be excited to remain a part of it! I’d also like to continue work on the budget & finance committee, and if elected, the steering committee.

I bring a deep understanding of how DSA functions - continuity in leadership is important, especially on the NPC. I’d also like to think that I can work with anyone - I work well with people of all political tendencies, and that shows through my work.

Laura Gabby

Chapter: New York City DSA

Pronouns: She/Her

I’ve been a member since December 2016. I first got involved in NYC-DSA’s Labor Branch. I served as chapter secretary for a year soon after the first Bernie-boom, 2017-18. For the next two years, I was on the Labor Branch Organizing Committee and helped plan meetings, events and panels, organized Labor Notes-style trainings, chaired debates, organized and brought coworkers to solidarity actions and strike support, helped plan Labor for DSA candidate canvasses, and began work implementing a rank and file strategy resolution. For the past year, I’ve served on the DSLC and organized educational events, including the Socialists on the Job series, supported our educators’ network and helped on campaigns including the PRO Act.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

I’ve organized as a rank and file carpenter for the past 9 ½ years. I was an organizer for the Committee of Interns and Residents for a year, and a community/public health organizer for a few years before that.

I’ve learned how to win the respect of coworkers on the job in a difficult work environment. I’ve learned how to organize with coworkers to win things on the job. And I’ve learned something about the struggle it’s going to require to fight capitalist developers.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

N/A

Why are you running for NPC?

I’m running for the NPC to bring labor into a more central place in DSA. There are more and more on-ramps for members to get involved in the labor movement, through labor and strike solidarity, through getting union jobs, and through new organizing with EWOC. Yet we have farther to go. Development remains uneven. We have bright and shining examples of labor solidarity - we need to spread those to every chapter. And we have more to do to bring DSA members into our rank and file organizing, which requires a higher commitment but is high-impact over the long-term. It’s the slow and steady work that’s necessary to build the power we need to move to socialism.

My main goals on the NPC and what I’d be guided by would be building up DSA’s labor work nationally, creating a stronger connection between the NPC and the DSLC, and working to get the DSLC and labor in DSA well-resourced.

I will support a vision of electoral politics that’s grounded in building ongoing organization for class struggle and I plan to connect our issue campaigns to labor.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Demoratic socialism will end the exploitation and oppression that define capitalism and guarantee everyone the right to live freely and creatively. In a socialist society, a democratically managed economy will give us the power to confront climate change and build a sustainable future. And for the first time, real democracy — in which people, not money, rule — will define politics and extend to our workplaces and communities.

At the core of democratic socialist politics is a belief that building a more egalitarian and just society will require breaking the power of the capitalist class and truly democratizing politics and the economy.

It means ending capitalism and the exploitation and oppression that comes with it, and winning a just society, with political and economic democracy. “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

5 years: Many comrades in strategic industries, organizing and building power with coworkers. Broadly representative of the working class, by race, ethnicity, and industry. Socialist caucuses on city councils, in legislatures and in Congress, with significant legislative wins, especially for labor and GND.

10+ years: Enacting large parts of our current program will make DSA a

key component of a renewed labor movement unlike anything we’ve seen, leading in some major unions and leading among coworkers on the shop floor. We will be on our way to a major and ascending socialist labor party in the US.

This will take scaling up our labor and electoral work dramatically with our eyes on a long-term strategy.

I believe DSA will face both serious attacks for our successes and attempts to bring us in tighter with the Democratic Party. We’ll organize under conditions of a lackluster Biden presidency that doesn’t deliver, with many people possibly choosing to vote for ‘safe’ candidates in order to avoid another Trump. Our current crises under capitalism will continue to build (labor, housing, ecological, policing, etc.). We must weather the attacks and continue to chart an independent course. The opportunities lie where we can win and illuminate another way beyond our familiar activist circles, from the shop floor to legislative and electoral wins.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

To fight the capitalist class, to be in solidarity wherever segments of the working class are fighting capitalists, to build power as, for and alongside the working class, to organize and build confidence among the working class to act on our own behalf, and to constantly be developing new organic leaders.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

Strengths: A renewed socialist movement with lots of energy. Real wins. Grounded. Places a high value on a big tent that can tolerate disagreement and bring together multiple visions. Lots of interest in electoral and labor work. Very youthful but with key mentorship from long-time comrades with experience.

Weaknesses: Sometimes our capacity is spread too thin among too many good ideas and things that should ideally be done. Rapid growth is a great strength but left us scaling up after the fact. We need a higher level of infrastructure to support the work we’re doing.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

The PRO Act/other strong labor legislation, public sector right to strike, a GND. Demands from organized sections of the working class in motion (for example, if educators’ unions are making a demand). Labor legislation has the potential to make winning our issue campaigns more realistic and also puts us in coalition with labor leadership (while we also must often agitate within our unions). We must be where the working class is in motion, to connect narrow worksite or industry-specific demands to the broader socialist vision and movement and to bolster the organizing any way we can. And we urgently must win a GND if we are to have a socialist society.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

Our candidates should identify as democratic socialists openly and put our politics boldly front and center. We should be developing a candidate pipeline and working towards running our own DSA candidates, as opposed to going with someone who comes to us asking for an endorsement. We should recruit working class DSA candidates who have bases in the labor and housing movements especially. And our campaigns should be class-struggle in character - from the issues to who we seek to organize with and win elections alongside. When they are on the Democratic ballot line, our campaigns should operate independently of the party apparatus and we can also run independently and nonpartisan where that makes sense. We should build up our independent electoral power, convince voters to identify with democratic socialism, and eventually create the strength to build an independent working class party.

We need to be as intentional and specific as possible at the start of campaigns about what working class communities we want to organize with, create a plan to do that, follow it, and evaluate where it didn’t work afterwards. And we need to be organizing in the workplaces and unions where the multiracial working class is. We need to learn from where we or other organizations that have grown this way have had success.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

DSA should encourage all members to get involved in the labor movement where they can, especially organizing on the shop floor alongside coworkers. We should encourage members to get jobs in strategic industries. This is a bigger commitment that should be well thought out and pursued intentionally with comrades. It isn’t for everyone, but we should build the infrastructure and support for those who want to pursue it.

Where DSA members are committed to staying in their current job, they should seek to organize it with support from EWOC.

DSA should build up robust labor and strike solidarity throughout our chapters. Wherever there are striking workers, there should be DSA members there supporting.

Last, we should seek coalition with left and militant sections of the labor movement around issue, electoral and legislative campaigns.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

We should be in coalition when we can, but be thoughtfully debating and developing our own independent politics and strategies. We should seek to enter into coalitions knowing as much as possible about where we stand, and how our membership wants to act in coalition.

We should work with other membership-based organizations that have proven records of fighting for the working class. We should be prepared to say no or step back from coalitions that don’t share our vision and goals, and be especially thoughtful about where other organizations get their funding.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

The national organization and local chapters should be well connected. National campaigns should directly support chapters and provide infrastructure for chapters to build on a national campaign.

To do that, we need a strong and well-resourced national organization and matching funds to allow more chapters to rent office space or hire staff.

NPC members should directly build relationships with local chapters. National shouldn’t be some unknown or mysterious thing. Members of the NPC should be familiar to chapters, in regular communication, actively supporting the work of local chapters and engaging chapters on national campaigns.

I bring experience organizing and leading work. I have experience on the DSLC. I’d like to focus on supporting the DSLC and coordinating work between the DSLC and NPC.

Kevin Richardson

Chapter: NC Triangle DSA

Pronouns: he/him

I started organizing after the Ferguson uprisings and joined DSA in early 2017. As a member of North Carolina Triangle DSA, I served a variety of leadership roles: political education chair, branch steering committee member, chapter co-chair. In summer of 2020, I was appointed to the National Political Committee, where I have served on committees like Communications, Growth and Development, Personnel, and the Abolition Working Group. I was born and raised in North Carolina. I currently live in Durham, North Carolina, where I teach philosophy for a living.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

N/A

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

Last year, I produced and co-hosted a podcast that highlights the work of DSA members across the country. You can find it at: www.organizestrikerepeat.com.

I am also running on a slate with four other organizers. For details about our convention slate and platform, visit: www.socialistmajority.com.

Why are you running for NPC?

I believe I can contribute to improving the organization in a few crucial areas. To start, I believe DSA should be unapologetically abolitionist. To end racial capitalism, we have to be committed to abolishing police and prisons; we also have to construct alternative visions of safety, justice, and conflict resolution. We also have to build an organization that is truly reflective of the multiracial working class. This means having a clear analysis of racial capitalism, being intentional about recruiting people of color, and running campaigns that center working class Black and Brown people. Lastly, DSA must continue to refine its organizational structure so that the NPC, staff, national working groups, and chapters can coordinate in a democratic and efficient manner. Changing our organizational structure requires cycles of experimentation and formalization. As an incumbent NPC member, I have worked on all of the issues that I have described. I have worked on abolition in the Abolition Working Group, multiracial organizing in the Growth and Development Committee, and I have worked with fellow NPC members on various organizational reforms that will help the national organization function more smoothly. And as a returning NPC member, I would be able to seamlessly continue some of the work that began in the previous term.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic socialism means the public control and ownership of this planet and its resources. It means an unconditional commitment to everyone having their basic needs met. It means universal healthcare, free college and K-12 education, free universal childcare, the right to organize our workplaces, clean air and water for everyone, freedom from war and poverty, and the right to live without fear of being policed or imprisoned.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

In five years, every DSA chapter should be able to run and win one or two political campaigns in their area, with some degree of coordination between national and local campaigns. In ten years, we should be difference-makers in most state elections, with increasing power to decide federal races. In twenty years, we should be able to organize enough people to be a decisive factor in federal elections, establishing ourselves as a competitive national working class party. To get to this point, we have to invest in membership development and running campaigns that win material benefits for the working class.

In the next two years, I believe the biggest challenges for DSA and the broader socialist left will concern how to respond to the increasingly mainstream far right movement in this country. Despite the fact that Democrats control Congress (for now), Republicans control most state legislatures, and their elected officials actively collaborate with far right groups. DSA should center its campaigns around fighting the far right, defending and expanding democracy, and strengthening labor protections. By doing this, we combat right-wing politics in a way that uplifts democratic socialism, not reactive liberalism.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

I believe that a socialist organization should be composed of working people, and that it should build power primarily by winning material benefits for working people. While it is crucial for us to combat capitalist ideology by providing socialist political education, it is much easier to do this when we can point to concrete things that we have done for people. And not only must we win material benefits for working people, we must do this for the masses of working people, not self-selecting groups of activists.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

The biggest strength of DSA, the thing that sets us apart from other organizations, is that we have local chapters that are member-funded and member-governed. While the pandemic has set back much of our organizing, I believe that our chapters will significantly increase their organizing capacity within the next two years. Another strength of DSA is the fact that our national organization has been more cohesive and collaborative than prior years. We are better able to work through our political differences, enabling us to spend more time achieving wins as opposed to organizing against one another. Of course, our organization also has its weaknesses. One of our biggest weaknesses concerns conflict resolution and grievance issues. Without the ability to productively handle conflict and resolve grievances, the organization and its chapters will constantly be in crisis. To overcome these challenges, we need to build out a national grievance committee, and we need to significantly invest in ensuring that chapters have the training and resources to productively deal with conflicts and grievances. Another weakness of DSA concerns the way we orient toward race and racial justice. Internally, we are not reflective of the multiracial working class. And politically, our campaigns rarely center the specific needs of Black and Brown people. As a co-author of Resolution #31: Making DSA a Multiracial and Anti-Racist Organization, I support a solution that is practical, informed by analysis of racial capitalism, and rooted in multiracial solidarity.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

Defund the police. Abolish prisons. End voter suppression. Why? Because all of these demands are crucial to the realization of democratic socialism, all of these demands are critical in this historical moment, and the means of achieving these demands are all good ways to build our organizing capacity. As a member of the National Abolition Working Group, I have worked with other members on ways to support local DSA chapters develop abolitionist campaigns. In many cases, these campaigns take the form of defund/invest campaigns. These campaigns will be difficult to win, but they are winnable even for relatively small chapters, they disproportionately benefit people of color, they create opportunities to build coalition relationships, and they teach our members important organizing skills. Moreover, the George Floyd uprisings have shown that abolitionist demands are popular demands. For these reasons, it will be strategically important for DSA to be more directly involved in abolitionist fights. Similarly, we should also better orient toward the fight for voter’s rights. I live in North Carolina, a state notorious for its racist gerrymandering and voter suppression. Ending voter suppression is an issue that garners wide support and it is an issue that democratic socialists should be leaders on. The right to vote will also be key to winning big demands like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal. And our goal as democratic socialists is not merely to protect the meager democracy that exists, but also to expand the scope of democratic decision-making.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

I agree with the National Electoral Strategy that DSA should focus on running candidates at the state level. It is tremendously difficult to win congressional races, and it is even more difficult to maintain discipline over congressional candidates. While it is much easier to influence municipal elections, municipalities have limited powers, especially if the state government has laws that preempt progressive reforms. In the short term, the state house is the ideal place for most DSA chapters to contest for state power. For example, North Carolina is a right-to-work state where Republicans dominate the state legislature. If we could get democratic socialists into our state legislature, we would improve the lives of millions of working people, and we would instantly garner the support of people who otherwise would be skeptical of socialism. State candidates would also be easier to hold accountable, as we would not have to compete with the money and attention that federal races attract. Lastly, running state candidates allow us to build our capacity for both federal electoral organizing and state-wide non-electoral organizing. To be clear: winning state races will not be easy, but they are possible in the short term, and they put us in a position to scale our electoral organizing in a way that preserves our core values as socialists.

There are two components of building a multiracial working class movement: internal and external. Internally, we have to continue the work of prioritizing the recruitment, retention, and development of people of color within DSA. In my tenure on the NPC, I authored a resolution that addressed this topic; the resolution was passed by the NPC in February, and I have been overseeing this work since then. To expand this work, however, we need to pass Resolution #31: Making DSA a Multiracial and Anti-Racist Organization, which is a resolution that I co-authored with other members of the Socialist Majority Caucus. This resolution calls for a committee that helps facilitate the internal work necessary to retain and engage people of color within our organization. Externally, we need to orient around issues that impact, and are strongly felt by, people of color. So we should support new work on abolition, reparations, voting rights, and immigration rights. It is also important to recognize that every campaign is an opportunity to organize the multiracial working class, so sometimes we simply need to put a race-conscious lens on existing campaigns.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

My home state of North Carolina has the second lowest union membership rate in the country (at 3%). North Carolina is a right-to-work state that has also consistently been ranked as one of the worst states in the country for workers rights. We desperately need to organize the South, where labor is the weakest. A core focus of DSA's labor work should be in supporting workers in unionizing their workplaces, fighting against bosses, and winning common good demands. To do this, we should start by investing in chapters. Some chapters have already established labor networks that help DSA members organize their workplaces. I believe the national organization should make a substantial investment into developing these networks. We should ensure that the national Democratic Socialist Labor Commission (DSLC) orients its work around supporting chapters, and we should also hire full-time labor organizers who can help support our chapters as they seek to organize their workplaces. If we make chapters the foundation of our labor strategy, we can then build the other important pieces---like political education, legislative action, and strategic partnerships---on top of it.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

There are different kinds of coalition work. There are times when it will be necessary to be part of a coalition of leftist organizations as a way to mobilize against some shared threat. These coalitions tend to be large, ideologically diffuse, and temporary. These temporary coalitions will be important in critical moments, where the goal is to neutralize far right threats. However, we should mainly aspire to cultivate long-term relationships with trusted organizations. And we should prioritize coalition relationships with organizations that are member-governed and those that are composed and led by people of color. Coalition work, of any kind, will often be challenging due to ideological and organizational differences, but I believe we cannot, and need not, do all of this work by ourselves.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

There are several points of connection between nationals and locals. First, we should create an intermediary representative body, such as the one described by Resolution #6: Establishing a National Organizing Committee, to facilitate the connection between the national organization and locals. Second, we should restructure our national committees to ensure that the work of national committees must be rooted in chapter (and not just individual member) buy-in. Third, we need a system where NPC members are required to have direct contact with chapters and chapter leadership, as part of their official NPC duties; in the same way that our field organizers are expected to be liaisons to chapters in their geographical region, NPC members should be expected to be liaisons to chapters (at least in some capacity).

I would like to continue my work on the Abolition Working Group. If Resolution #31, #2, or #4 were to pass, I would work on the Multiracial Organizing, Reparations, and/or Voting Rights Committee(s). I have previously worked on Communications, Growth and Development, and Personnel, and I would be happy to continue working on any of those committees again.

Gilman Bagga

Chapter: Louisville DSA

Pronouns: he/him

I joined DSA in mid-2018, before the nationwide Occupy ICE protests. I was elected co-chair of the Louisville chapter in December of that year, in the aftermath of a white supremacist attack on our local. My tenure was spent reconsolidating the chapter and building infrastructure to grow and take on campaigns. We established a socialist night school; created a formal electoral endorsement process and began to run candidates; supported strikers at the Four Roses Distillery and sent supplies to the Harlan ‘No Pay, We Stay’ protests; and engaged in a successful anti-austerity library budget campaign in coordination with AFSCME Local 3425.

I have also served as a delegate to the 2019 DSA National Convention as a member of the Bread & Roses slate; organized as the Louisville 100K Captain where our chapter scored 9th nationally in recruitment; and currently serve on the chapter Steering Committee as treasurer. "

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

I organized in college with our local Students for Bernie group, in which we launched consistent door-knocking and tabling events on our campus and coordinated trips from Vermont to New Hampshire to canvass before the primary.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

N/A

Why are you running for NPC?

I believe we can build DSA into a true socialist tribune of and for the multiracial working class. This organization has grown and politically matured immensely since I first joined in 2018, and we can continue to develop our national capacity and take on greater electoral and labor work. DSA has become the de facto voice of socialism in the United States, so it's necessary for us to realize our responsibility to grow DSA into an organization that can organize labor and influence politics on a national scale.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic socialism foremost means building solidarity: it is a political position which believes that only a mass, multiracial working class movement can up-end all forms of discrimination and create a society where the means of production are held in common. On the way there it means winning material reforms that benefit working class people and build working class power. It means a total end to exploitation, overcoming imperialism and neocolonialism in our struggle for mutual liberation. Democratic socialism is our only hope to combat the global threat of climate change.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

To accomplish anything, we need to build power. We need to grow DSA while working internationally with socialists in the collective struggle against exploitation, rising fascism, and climate change.

In five years, all chapters need to have resources to run strong local campaigns and be plugged into national campaigns. We need to coordinate networks of socialist workers and create a pipeline for young socialists to get strategic jobs and organize rank-and-file workers at a national level. We need socialist caucuses of elected officials in federal and state offices.

In ten years, DSA needs to have won sweeping eco-socialist reforms.

In the face of rapid growth, we need to build a powerful national organization that can help guide new members and chapters. We need national campaigns for labor and electoral organizing for members to plug into. We need a strong growth and development committee to actively recruit more members of color and ensure that all local chapters have baseline resources. Finally, there’s a strong possibility in 2022 that Republicans will take back one of the Houses in Congress, so we have limited time if we want to win the PRO Act and Voter Rights Protections.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

A socialist organization needs to be the political home of the multiracial working class. We must express positions explicitly in favor of the working class against other political parties that are beholden to the capitalist class. We must likewise take an active role in forming a multiracial working class by taking on electoral and labor campaigns that help working class people begin to express their own power and work in solidarity with each other across cultural differences.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

With DSA’s dramatic growth over the last two years, we have been able to express an explicitly socialist vision on a national scale. We’ve begun to be able to run strong national campaigns, like the Bernie 2020 primary work, the 100K Drive, and DSA for the PRO Act.

We still have work to do. DSA’s organic growth means locals are unevenly developed across the US. Since our membership growth has been largely from self-selecting people, DSA has not yet come to represent the full diversity of the working class. Finally, DSA hasn’t developed a full strategy for how we are going to organize a weakened labor movement.

We still need to develop DSA at a national level to ensure locals are sufficiently supported and we can take on the work needed to build a socialist organization. We need to flesh out and forward a unified labor strategy so DSA is invested in a long-term strategy to rebuild militant union power. We need to develop resources so all chapters have the ability to run effective socialist electoral campaigns. Finally, we need to purposefully grow the organization in a way that ensures the organization reflects the full diversity of the multi-racial working class.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

"The policies we prioritize at this year’s convention need to act together to form a strong plan for building a powerful DSA. We must be strategic over the next two years in the tasks we take on and the way we build our organization.

We can build power on a national scale through our campaigns by focusing on building labor and electoral power. These two domains are great for structuring campaigns because they offer clear paths to winning material gains for the working class.

By running class-struggle elections, we can contest incumbent Democratic seats, grow our capacity to win races, and express a socialist vision to the public. By engaging in rank-and-file labor organizing, we can rebuild our unions to be militant and democratic organizations ready to go on strike and organize the unorganized.

We can strengthen DSA by intentionally recruiting more members of working class communities of color, and by forging a strong national that can offer resources and aid to up-and-coming locals.

I support these proposals as part of this vision:

R2: Formation of a National Committee for Reparations to Black People

R4: Mass Campaign for Voting Rights

R5: Building Worker Power to Win Democratic Socialism

R8: Towards a Mass Party in the United States (Electoral Priority)

R27: Beyond 100K: Building a Mass Socialist Organization

R29: Stipends for NPC Steering Committee Members

R30: Strengthening DSA From the Bottom Up Through National Matching Funds

R32: Strengthening YDSA

B1: Strike Regional Requirements for National Conventions

B4: Electing DSA’s National Director

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

Socialists approach electoral politics differently than liberals because we think differently about power. Liberals solely aim to win elections because they believe power lies in having a seat at the table to push reforms.

This is part of socialists’ strategy: we want to win material reforms that improve conditions for the multiracial working class. But we understand political power also lies outside the electoral realm, so we use elections to advance a position of class struggle and build our own power.

Take the national 2020 DSA for Bernie campaign: Bernie didn’t win the primary, but we built our capacity, both locally and nationally, to run candidates. We grew the organization and developed strong connections in multiracial working-class neighborhoods.

At the 2019 convention, DSA committed to this strategy—the dirty break. We use Democratic Party primaries to challenge Democratic incumbents and run candidates who make class struggle explicit. We will also eventually split from the Democratic party.

We should recommit to the strategy of the dirty break because we need a workers party in the long term to fight for working class demands. The neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party is incompatible with us; planning on staying with the Democratic Party would risk accommodating the needs of the working class to push forward legislation.

This break cannot take place immediately: we would marginalize ourselves if we refused to run on the Democratic ballot. But in the interim, we need to run class struggle campaigns that build the independent electoral power of DSA.

DSA currently overrepresents downwardly mobile, college educated millennial white workers. We’ve made strides over the last five years since DSA’s rebirth, but to reflect the diversity of the multiracial working class, we need to change how we build the org.

In the past, recruitment has primarily been passive, with interested individuals joining after national events; to develop deep ties in communities of color, we need to have a national growth and development strategy that centers on recruiting more working class BIPOC members.

The workplace is one of the most integrated public spaces in the U.S., so it is crucial for our national labor strategy to identify and recruit BIPOC coworkers that are organic leaders on the shop floor. We also need to grow young BIPOC students as great organizers, which we can accomplish by expanding YDSA, developing a national mentoring program, and forming chapters on HBCUs.

Finally, we need to engage in specific campaigns for racial justice. We need to fight for structural reparations for Black communities. We need to fight for migrant justice by abolishing ICE and advancing a moratorium on deportations. Finally, we need to develop international relationships with other socialist organizations to organize against U.S. imperialism.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

Labor is a key terrain of struggle for socialists. Our ability to withhold labor and go on strike is one of the strongest tools socialists and the working class have. If we want to win victories like Medicare for All or A Green New Deal, we’ll need a strong labor movement organized through militant unions.

In the past forty years, unions have been seriously weakened. We need to rebuild our unions from the ground up. The power of unions comes from its members, so we need to organize so that rank-and-file members are active and militant in their unions.

DSA can directly support the grassroots efforts of rank-and-file workers like Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) in their fight to democratize the UAW. We can launch a national project to connect our comrades in industry networks. Finally, we can expand YDSA and its program to help students get jobs in strategic industries.

Strong unions are what will allow us to effectively organize the unorganized on a mass scale, so rank-and-file efforts to reform and strengthen unions are necessary if we want to tackle the tasks of mass union drives. Passing legislation like the PRO Act is also paramount in organizing the unorganized. We must likewise fight to establish labor protections for migrant workers.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

Where possible, DSA should engage in coalition with other progressive groups to build power in our campaigns. But when working with these groups we need to pay attention to how rooted they are in the working class. While any progressive NGO could be a useful partner in pushing a piece of legislation, we want to build strong and lasting relationships with organizations that are democratically controlled and made up of those they claim to represent. We also need to pay attention to where and how these organizations are funded, to suss out tactical allies from groups with whom we can form real, long-lasting solidarity.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

DSA has experienced rapid growth over the last five years, going from under 6,000 members to over 90,000. But this rapid, organic explosion in membership has left the organization less than fully equipped to deal with its new membership and has left chapters across the nation unevenly developed.

To be effective on the national scale, we need a powerful national organization and consistently well-resourced locals across the nation—the quality of the chapter a member finds themselves in should not be left to chance. We need reforms that both strengthen the national infrastructure and help smaller chapters grow.

Funding YDSA, the Growth and Development Committee, and allocating stipends to the six NPC members of the national Steering Committee are all steps that would strengthen the national body. Creating strong national campaigns around electoral, labor, and social issues gives smaller chapters guidance and concrete tasks to help them start off; likewise, matching funds to help smaller chapters rent office space and larger chapters staff would greatly expand both chapter participation and capacity.

NPC members act both as executors of the decisions our big-tent socialist organization makes at convention and as officers elected for their political vision. NPC members must always balance these two roles, identifying differences to draw out pertinent comradely debate all the while working across differences to ensure the well-being of the organization.

Given my past experience in developing chapter infrastructure, recruitment, and student organizing, I would focus on assisting the Growth and Development Committee and coordinate between the NPC and YDSA to assist YDSA work.

Joshua Rusinov

Chapter: North New Jersey DSA

Pronouns: He/Him

I have been a member of the DSA since October 2020. In that time I have engaged at the chapter level in Electoral work as a Field Co-Coordinator, Eco-socialism work which included canvassing and speaking out at public zoning board hearings, Housing Justice work in building tenant power and attempting to form a tenant organization at the Ivy Hill Apartments in Newark; Labor Work (where I assisted in developing a chapter union organizing training program, as well as serving as head of programming/march leader for our chapter’s May Day event in 2021), and Media Comms work (where I lead the development of our chapter’s new logo [2021]). I was also elected to serve as the Chapter’s Secretary at the 2021 convention and have since been appointed as the Chapter Co-Chair. At the national level I worked as a member of the N.E.C. during the 2020 election cycle and have since begun working with the Internal Organizing group for the Anti-War Committee (under the broader International Committee). All these moments have had highlights and challenges. The primary challenge for me through all this work has been determining how best to delegate tasks to facilitate growth in my fellow chapter members, as opposed to simply taking on the responsibility myself. While each of these projects had high points, there is nothing that has given me more joy than watching a member become inspired by their chapter work to take on more responsibility and more active, leadership roles within the DSA!

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

All organizing work I have done outside of the DSA has been done without a supporting organization. I am a card-carrying member of the North New Jersey IWW but have not yet had the privilege of organizing with the group. On my own I had previously engaged in voter outreach on behalf of the Green party. In addition, I created a podcast called “Organize This!” with the hopes of establishing a space to host conversations with activist organizers. We discuss their work in the community and assist the audience in getting involved. The format is modeled after the “community square” of the Occupy Wallstreet Movement. These experiences continue to teach me that real power comes from community, and the strength of the movement goes beyond that of any individual.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

https://www.joshuarusinovdesigns.com/organize-this

Why are you running for NPC?

The DSA is in a unique position today to build a movement that can achieve real change for the working class people of this country and the world. I have always had both: an immense sense of compassion for all those who experience suffering, and an unquestionable sense of duty to never stand idle while there is injustice occurring. I believe we can all change the world, and I have a responsibility to do everything within my power to ensure that our movement is effective and dedicated to the true liberation of the global proletariat.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic Socialism is how the ideas of a socialist society can become ingrained into the general population. This is what allows us to build the base for a people’s movement. By achieving material victories and enacting systematic changes that alleviate the pressure of daily life on normal people we can begin to demonstrate what life could be without capitalism. A movement like ours needs hope; and Democratic Socialism can provide non-socialists that hope. Based on this hope, we can develop the popular support and structures necessary to ensure the transition to a Marxist society.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

The DSA could become a serious contender within the labor dynamic and political landscape within the next 5 years. Within 10-20 years I foresee the movement as having developed an inseparable relationship with labor and being heavily ingrained in the state’s decision-making processes. By priming socialists to take office at all levels of government and by making a conscious, concentrated effort to support working class power (in the home, the workplace, etc.) the DSA would become an asset to labor. Developing this relationship and expanding the organization’s political education outreach will build the roots of a mass socialist movement.

The DSA has become significantly more well-known as an organization. This popularity comes with recognition and influence, but it also comes with a more active and antagonistic ruling class. Furthering the goals of the movement relies on the organization’s conviction and vision. Building an inspiring and revolutionary movement will bring out the hope in others while also distinguishing the organization from the corrupt structures of this capitalist system. The DSA must advocate for radical change, and it must be able to do so while radicalizing and agitating supporters, instead of alienating them. Striking that balance will be the challenge.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

A socialist organization in the U.S. today must uncompromisingly fight for revolutionary, transformative change within the United States. Equally, it must seriously champion an internationalist perspective and the dismantling of the United States military empire. A socialist organization within the U.S. is most capable of having a preventative and decisive role in shaping the U.S.’ participation (or lack-there-of ideally) in colonialism and imperialist conflicts around the globe. While the DSA continues to work tirelessly to represent and advance the goals of the working class it must also fight for the lives of the innocent globally

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

The DSA’s ability to develop impactful organizers and to construct strategies that effectively counter the corporate political machine work heavily to build the capacity of the organization. The ties the DSA has been able to build with progressive social movements is also a large strength of the org. The DSA has a couple of key weaknesses as well. Its relationship with the labor movement is not where it needs to be to truly affect structural workplace change. In addition, the DSA’s ability to build ideological growth in its organizing, especially within working class communities requires more investment.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

M4A, Defunding the Police, A quality wage, the right to adequate housing, a clean environment, breaking down barriers to education, and an active anti-imperialist agenda are key for DSA. Admittedly, that is pretty much most of the movement because the DSA’s goals must be based in the preservation and protection of human life from both poverty and death. That requires building better material conditions for all people. These are difficult tasks and may not structurally bring about socialism on their own but only by fighting for these things can the DSA hope to be representative of the working class.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

The DSA should be developing its unifying voice through the national electoral realm. A movement like ours requires a fierce, loud, uncompromising voice. The DSA should be doing everything it can to develop a unique, hopeful, socialist voice at the national level. Only by challenging elections with candidates who are declared socialists, organizers, anti-imperialists, and champions of the working class can the DSA hope to inspire the masses to engage beyond the ballot box. The DSA must also work to set itself apart from the existing corrupt structures that dominate American politics.

The DSA must invest in language justice infrastructure. This includes developing the organization’s ability to translate not only the literature that the DSA produces; but also creating opportunities by which the DSA can expand access to resources for non-English speakers. The housing market in this country is also structurally discriminatory towards communities of color. By engaging people in their homes and assisting them in the fight for a quality standard of living, the DSA can help correct one of the most egregious instances of racist economic injustice while also developing relationships with local communities all over the country.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

The DSA’s role in a successful working-class movement lies in emboldening the labor movement by communicating with workers directly through outreach and political education. This is the primary way in which we can build our capacity to support and empower the working class in their struggle. The DSA must actively inspire and agitate labor struggles, then provide support and infrastructure to effectively take on employers. By building an infrastructure that allows the DSA to have an impactful effect on any labor fight the organization can develop its position and become inseparable from the advancement of worker’s rights.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

The DSA should work towards forming positive relationships with progressive organizations/coalitions-though this relationship should maintain the idea of building a truly socialist movement. The DSA should actively invest in bringing political education and socialist principles into these relationships. The DSA must use these coalitions to not only achieve direct material victories for the working class, but to also organize these allies by building up the investments that these groups (and their members) have in achieving systematic change to the power dynamic of this country. Purposeful and impactful organizing is especially important when building up a base with groups like these.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

The work being completed by chapters truly builds the foundation of DSA members and activists. The local work taken on and championed by the chapters is what fosters community relationships and support. The National body of DSA is responsible for developing and maintaining the “vision” of our movement. National should work to not only be more open to chapters in terms of support but should also be more directly open when discussing the political ideals and strategy of the organization with it’s chapters. Helping our chapters be more connected to the vision of the movement should be national’s primary responsibility.

Kristian Hernandez

Chapter: North Texas DSA

Pronouns: she/her/ella

I joined DSA in early September of 2016. I served two terms as co-chair of the North Texas chapter from November 2016-November 2018. During this time, I also formed the Racial Justice Working Group. As co-chair, I helped our monthly meeting attendance go from 15 to 75 people and supported our membership growth to nearly 500 members. I led DSA’s portion of the Working Texans’ paid sick campaign, which started off as a ballot initiative in 2018 and ultimately was passed by a city ordinance in 2019. I also serve as the volunteer coordinator for that coalition. I also oversaw our involvement to support efforts at Standing Rock and the Oklahoma Teachers Strike. After my terms ended, I focused on membership exclusively and developed our training program. Additionally, I was the campaign coordinator for our local DSA for Bernie efforts. Nationally, I’ve helped with the AfroSOC convenings in 2017 & 2019. My national work has been spent as a member of the NPC’s Steering Committee, and most recently being elected as the Secretary/Treasurer. I’m on the Steering Committee of the Growth and Development Committee under the Training and Surveys team and worked closely on the 100K Recruitment Drive, the Chapter Survey, and the Membership Survey. I’m on the Budget & Finance Committee and help write the NPC newsletters. I’m also a liaison for the Abolition Working Group and the National Electoral Committee. I’m currently Convention Co-Chair for the 2021 National Convention.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

I've been a leader in the North Texas Dream Team, a grassroots immigrant rights organization, since 2015, carrying out our volunteer efforts for our DACA workshops but have also been active in our efforts around deportation defense, asylum work, and targeting policies like 287g and SB4. We’ve helped over 10,000 applicants with their DACA all over North Texas. In 2019, I helped co-found Our City, Our Future, a local org, whose work centers around demystifying the city budget, particularly as it relates to policing. We held calls to walk residents through council agendas, hosted how-to workshops for public comments, and developed a budget proposal that was central to the defund fight last year. I currently serve on our local police oversight board. All of these efforts have instilled in me the importance of collective leadership and the power of people coming together with a shared vision.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

N/A

Why are you running for NPC?

I’m running for NPC because I’m committed to improving the capacity, effectiveness, and strength of our organization. I want to continue my work in helping chapters feel supported in both resources and training, as well as in the spaces that DSA-culture creates. I want to build on the rapport I've built with other NPC members to model how to work across political differences and deepen my relationships with chapter leaders in order to aid in the development of strategic campaign plans to grow their active base, recruit outside self-selecting networks, and get some wins for the working class.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic socialism means working class people having a direct say and ownership in their everyday lives. It means democracy being the fundamental framework of the economy, of workplaces, of our political systems, and of our relationships to each other.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

We should be an institution familiar to the broader working class, and work long-term toward governance in key states and sectors, giving us leverage to win expanding demands. To get there, we need to take our work seriously. We need a powerful, accessible and trustworthy organization because we cannot win solely by offering the “correct” analysis. The relationships we build will become the framework for the democratic structures in our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our everyday lives. They will not be built for us. We need concrete efforts to collaborate with groups, organized and unorganized, in relevant and strategic fights.

We should remember every moment of crisis is an opportunity, and every chance we have to save ourselves and each other is a chance worth taking. The right will continue to attack voting rights and we should not underestimate their suppression tactics, especially with their disproportionate impact on Black and brown communities. I co-authored the “Mass Campaign for Voting Rights” to ensure DSA is rooted in this paramount, anti-racist struggle. Our challenges will be rooted in ensuring DSA sees this and other key fights as our fights and will take action accordingly.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

Our socialist organization must work diligently to expand the power of the socialist movement and the overall agency of the working class. We must become a political home that trains organizers that are constantly interfacing with the tormented many, exposing them to our socialist analysis and working together to develop strategic campaigns. We ultimately must move millions into struggle and remind our class of its own power.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

Our strength is being a large, membership-funded organization on the left with significant wins that have built trust in our chapters and in the organization. This, however, will not be enough. The demographics of DSA must be addressed concretely. Our chapters will need training and skill-sharing to be collaborative and effective in their campaigns. We must orient our spaces to be conducive to struggle, to productive conflict, and to honest reflection. We must continue growing the infrastructure that supports resource and lesson-sharing and communication where everyone is privy to the way our organization works. We need more organizers-- leaders building leaders-- and a culture that supports collective leadership where everyone can contribute without timidity. Leadership should be cultivated as members who strengthen and advance our collective work. Growing beyond 100K, not only in size but in capacity, will challenge us, change us, and shift how we approach our work. We must unflinchingly champion this self-critique in order to broaden and keep our base.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

As socialists, we should champion abolition as the path forward. For the sake of collective liberation, for the creation of a sustainable and radical democracy: we must abolish the prison-industrial complex in every manner that it shows up in our lives and contest our own disposability at every turn. We must challenge policing here and abroad and foreground those connections with intention. Voting rights, too, will need to be a priority over the next two years. We’ve seen the power of our wins and we must do all we can to protect them, especially the very visible electoral wins that have given our organization a platform to engage with our politics. We must also move beyond the existing work dominated by liberals to expand our electoral base to include formerly and currently incarcerated people and undocumented people.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

The National Electoral Strategy lays out a comprehensive roadmap for how we carry out our electoral work. It is clear about the wins (and losses) and the takeaways from those campaigns are being integrated into the ongoing work of ensuring each of our chapters can not only run candidates, but run OUR candidates and win. Socialists should absolutely be engaging with elections. They are a visible platform for our demands. These campaigns are also a relatively low barrier of entry for the working class. We should be working closely with our DSA in Office cohorts to better understand the scope and limitations of each type of elected position and build it into our strategy of wider demands.

Our organization as a whole must work hard and purposefully to assess and adapt our campaigns so that they are always undertaken with goals and clear steps for how the work will bring our members closer with working class communities of color. This can no longer be an afterthought. Not for the sake of being a less white organization, but because we cannot win without being truly of and for the entire working class. Nationally, we must work on giving chapters concrete guidance for how to move people from working alongside us to working within DSA for our shared demands.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

Unions are still the best weapon our class has. We must also expand the fight beyond individual bosses so that the labor movement broadly can contend with the entire capitalist class. So we should develop a plan for ensuring the politics of our unions are our politics: explicitly anti-racist and socialist feminist.That also means supporting efforts to eradicate police unions and clarifying why cops aren’t workers. I also would like to see DSA engage with undocumented workers, especially domestic workers, street vendors, and farm workers.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

We should engage in coalition work with curiosity and humility. More people are members of Costco than they are of DSA and coalition work provides us an opportunity to meet people where they are. It allows us to expand our networks outside of people we already know and learn lessons from smaller organizations who’ve established deep ties to their communities more successfully than we have. We should see the task of working in coalitions as challenging but strengthening. The juxtaposition can help us clarify our politics even to ourselves, expose our vision to a wider audience, and ultimately, build long-term, trusting relationships with people already in motion.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

Over the last two years, I was part of the effort to ensure that there was a more direct and continuous relationship between chapter leaders and the NPC. These 1:1s were invaluable to keeping an ear to the ground and knowing how to make holistic decisions that keep our capacity, not our urgency, at the forefront. The NPC should model the collective leadership that is needed in our chapters because being able to work across differences is not only crucial but fundamental. Our politics should be practiced, not held, and I’m concerned some chapters focus on internal fights because they feel powerless outside of DSA. As political leaders, we must hold fast to the importance of the work we are doing and that this work will never be easy but will always be necessary. The insight of chapter leaders should inform our organizational strategy and keep us from being too static and too reactive.

I’m extremely organized and skilled at following through on tasks. I’m not afraid of making hard decisions and I welcome the challenge of finding opportunities amid a crisis. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to have 1:1s with chapters and members and deepening my understanding of the organization. If re-elected, I would love to continue my work on the GDC and the Abolition Working Group.

Maikiko James

Chapter: Los Angeles DSA

Pronouns: She/her/hers

I serve on the current NPC, the Growth and Development Committee (GDC) with a focus on trainings, the Abolition Working Group, and the Personnel Committee. Locally, I’m currently coordinating the DSA-LA Black Liberation Task Force, and formerly served on DSA-LA Steering and Membership Committees. I started organizing with DSA in late 2016, and became a member in early 2017. I’m also a member of the AfroSocialist and Socialists of Color Caucus and Socialist Majority, a political caucus.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

In my formative years, I was active in anti-gentrification organizing and campaigns in San Francisco, and transnational feminist anti-militarism and anti-imperialism work; I also worked for organizations centering immigration justice, survivor protection, and youth leadership. I currently work in advocacy for equitable gender representation in entertainment and media. In 2021, I was nominated by Dr. Barbara Ransby to join the inaugural cohort of Margaret Burroughs Community Fellows in the Portal Project. All of these experiences inform my lens and drive to help realize a representative socialist future for all.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

Resolution 31, Making DSA a Multiracial and Anti-Racist Organization

“What it Means for DSA to Embrace Black Leadership,” August 2020

Why are you running for NPC?

We are the largest, fastest growing socialist organization in this country by far, but we’re not that large. We have incredible organizers and leaders of color who have been spearheading some of our most critical work, but we have not yet translated that into an organized base in working class communities of color. We continue to struggle with racial inequity and erasure within our own practices and structures. If I’m re-elected, I will be committing myself to intentional representative growth of DSA, grappling with what being a mass organization that can take power really means, and making tangible movement toward reflecting and understanding the working class as a whole. The resolution I co-authored, “Making DSA a Multiracial and Anti-Racist organization,” lays out multiple steps for increasing and supporting our members of color, including through campaign strategies, organizer training, chapter resources and accountability processes; I hope everyone will join in committing to that work.

I’m genuinely proud to have been a part of the current NPC and of what we’ve accomplished in building DSA, particularly through the past year and a half. Every NPC member is a fellow organizer I admire and truly appreciate working with. I’m also proud of the work I’ve done developing a national training library, ushering in the first leadership body of the national Abolition Working Group, growing staff intentionally through the Personnel Committee, and advocating for organizers of color and their leadership. We have so much more to do immediately in front of us. We must recognize the urgency of 2022, stand up to the entrenchment of neoliberalism, and protect a planet on the brink. At the same time, we have to collectively envision and articulate what we mean by a socialist tomorrow, a just, breathable, liberated, feminist, queer, indigenous, Black radical, multigenerational, multiabled, ecosocialist tomorrow - I’m convinced we will make it happen, and I’d be honored to do so with the 2021-23 NPC.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic socialism’ is a constellation of systems that recognizes the agency of all people to have power in our lives, redistributing power currently held by few in the capitalist class. In work and government, also in society and at home, people wouldn’t live in fear or struggle to have our needs met, and we would have a say in how these needs are identified and what meeting them means. In the shorter term, building toward ‘democratic socialism’ is building the power of the working class to organize and identify concrete paths to democratic transformation in our communities, workplaces, and government.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

In five years, I envision DSA building its trajectory of showing people everywhere that the working class can and must win for our future. We throw down hard on the battle for our planet, and continue to gain seats in local, state, and federal halls of power. As an organization, we show up forcefully for communities of color and stand in solidarity with the Left around the world. In ten to twenty years, this work positions us powerfully as a movement and organization in the US political arena, and we must organize all of our members diligently to achieve this.

As we witness racist, white nationalism continue to foment on the right, and the establishment Democrats predictably buckle to their own desire for maintaining power (thereby losing it), the Left must stay vocal and present in our defense of working class power and people’s needs. We are the only ones presenting solutions that will allow us to survive future pandemics and climate catastrophe, we are the only ones demanding living wages and safety for all. We must organize visibly and meaningfully wherever we are, and strategically select our fights, so the many who join can feel and see the change.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

Socialism is the only viable path forward for our planet and its inhabitants. Evident before but never more clear than over the past year and a half, we can’t and won’t survive the extractive and destructive requirements of capitalism much longer. As a socialist organization, our role is to help make this accessible and understandable, and then collectively chart the path upon which all can embark. There will be different roles and tasks for different people and groups, but it is our role to engage masses, and provide tangible strategies and actions toward liberation.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

DSA has a breadth of will, and now we must develop depth of skill. Having grown so rapidly means an influx of members who are new to organizational politics. We are also having to navigate how to deepen our abilities while mainly sequestered at home or laboring under treacherous conditions as essential workers. Our commitment to naming the preventable nature of these conditions is a strength: it’s what draws many to the organization. Now, we must also help our thousands of members continue to grow as organizers, not just namers, and help our chapters create campaigns and projects that win transformations for all. None of this was easy in the pandemic, but I’m hopeful that the groundwork we’ve laid in 2020 will make a transition to in-person organizing that much more powerful. Through our COVID response organizing, critical work done by the Growth and Development Committee, a hugely animating campaign to pass the PROAct and more, we have set structures that will help us continue to increase the organizing abilities of our members.

We must also focus on ensuring our organization is aligned with and fighting for the liberation of working class communities of color, there can be no transformation of this country without that alignment. I believe it is an organizational weakness that we have not intentionally assessed why our demographics continue to skew white, but we have begun this work in a meaningful way, and it is a strength of our leadership and membership that many are committed to making this happen.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

The development of a robust national platform affirms the numerous issues to which DSA members dedicate their energy, and also focuses us within a framework to help us strategically develop campaigns. Over the next two years, we’ll find many of these issues intersecting with one another and we must honor the dynamic nature of the urgencies before us. In particular, we must put concerted effort toward campaigns that advance the Green New Deal, prioritizing legislation that provides economic stability and work while simultaneously stemming the rapid environmental destruction of corporate interests. We will find strong potential for alignment with Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities if we target the particular ills of environmental racism and racial capitalism that keep health risks and unemployment high in low income communities of color. We should also foreground these issues in our growing range of abolitionist projects. As socialists, we must understand abolition as not only the eradication of capitalist policing and the Prison Industrial Complex, but also the broad and nuanced visions for communities to define and provide care, safety, and resources for ourselves. DSA should play an active role in these campaigns and abolitionist coalitions. Thirdly, we must continue to expand our commitment to an increasingly invigorated and radical labor movement. Upholding the potential of worker power in the US not only heightens the visibility of transformative reforms for the intersectional working class, but also practically shows how people can and will have agency in our own lives when we integrate socialist ideals.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

Some of DSA’s most critical organizing is happening through the leadership of the National Electoral Committee and chapter-led electoral campaigns. While I believe electoral politics is only one means toward our ultimate socialist goals, it is an undeniable one, it’s where the majority of people first come to recognize politics as a part of their lives and therefore a critical gateway to deepening engagement with socialist agenda. Our capacity to run organizers who can win increases as the organization puts energy behind them and we continue to learn lessons with each campaign. Important coalition partners see much of our leverage coming from our ability to mobilize our members and their commitment. They also see us articulating our vision through class struggle elections, and presenting options that emancipate us from corporate lobbies. As voter disenfranchisement rises in its prioritization for the white supremacist GOP, DSA must provide clear support for protecting the voting rights of Black people and the working class, and expand enfranchisement where and when we can, through our own campaigns and in coalition. Ballot measures also present a significant opportunity for us to grow our abilities, as opportunities like raising minimum wage, rent control, universal childcare, ending cash bail and more materially improve people’s lives, and campaigning for and winning them provide immediate evidence of how socialists fight for the working class.

If I have the opportunity to serve a second term on the NPC, this is the area where I plan to spend the majority of my energy. Socialism for our current world can only arise from the needs of all people, and we must vigilantly confront the violent, systemic racism this country has continually and actively upheld. This is not in addition to class struggle, this is class struggle. The resolution I co-authored, “#31 Making DSA a Multiracial and Anti-Racist Organization,” includes strategies around organizational data collection, developing leaders and organizers of color, providing chapters with resources to do representational assessment, campaigns reflective of community demographics, and holding ourselves accountable when we can’t or won’t engage with this work. Importantly, the resolution also places the responsibility of its implementation upon our national leadership, the NPC, because it must be the work of the organization as a whole, not a subgroup or body of members who prioritize it - it must be done by all of us. And while I don’t believe there to be deep resistance to these types of proposals, we must commit to actively engaging in praxis that identifies socialism as intersectional. We also need to equip our members with resources to have intentional dialogues on race, challenging as they are, or we risk the stagnation of self-selection that misses the majority of working class people. Additionally, I support proposals to advance our work in abolition, reparations, and international solidarity, as DSA must actively engage in these liberatory struggles.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

Expanding the power of workers and the labor movement remains a clear terrain of struggle for socialists, and this is an exciting and promising time for it. The pandemic revealed the natural brutality of capitalism against working people, and also showed how workers can and will stand up to it. The US’ capacity to provide critical resources makes clear the obsolescence of exploitative jobs - but so much more needs to be done to continue to provide people what we need. DSA’s PRO Act campaign helps us understand that the will to grow the labor movement exists among all kinds of people and can be built upon - and we should train and develop new organizers who are initially brought into DSA through this work for the long term. We must also help our chapters develop the skills to assess labor landscapes where they are, and form strategies that address specific conditions. As with all of our issues, there won’t be a one-size-fits-all model for all chapters, but Resolution #5, “Building Worker Power to Win Democratic Socialism,” is a blueprint with meaningful options. I also believe we must strengthen DSA’s infrastructure to support this work, and look forward to new staff hires who would provide consistent attention to our labor efforts.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

The US Left simultaneously has incredible momentum and opportunity to grow given how the Right has responded to the last year and a half - denying people their basic needs and doubling down on racism and dismantling democracy, and it faces the challenges of a slow pandemic recovery and a Democratic administration which continues to capitulate to the Right. Given this climate, I believe it’s imperative that DSA work in coalition with other partners on the Left, especially where we see the strengthened leadership of radical organizers of color. While we may not functionally operate, nor want to, like other non-governmental organizations because we uphold democratic mandates of our membership and are not beholden to funders, I think we will find alignments that don’t require us to compromise that value and moreover build our visibility with organizers from new bases. Additionally, while there will be many campaigns that make sense for DSA to lead, some of our most important opportunities for chapters, particularly newer ones, will start out as supporting roles for initiatives led by groups that have been organizing longer and have deeper roots in communities. I’m encouraged by the interest I’ve seen in our national training, Building Coalitions, and would aim to continue to develop the skills to navigate coalitions and their complexities across our membership.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

The national organization has a crucial responsibility to provide political guidance, education, and resources for local chapters, and it must do so while respecting chapters’ abilities to determine best strategies for their respective contexts. I think the development of the national platform will help to define this relationship, giving chapters a scope of issues on which to focus project efforts, while also cohering our national agenda and acknowledging our capacity. I do think it critical that chapters meet certain criteria to be considered within the parameters of “being DSA” such as upholding socialist values, democratic practice, good governance, and general alignment with national priority areas, and National must be able to provide chapters the information and skill building on how to do this. I’ve been incredibly impressed by our growing Organizing staff and their abilities to support chapters as they fluctuate in size and activity, and I’ve taken my role in the Personnel Committee to help the Organizing team increase its own capacity seriously. Additionally, I think NPC members have and should continue to build as many relationships with local chapters as possible, across regions and size, so they can have a clear understanding of the range of issues chapters face. From there, NPC should be working within national working groups and with staff to be developing resources, such as trainings, guides, and mentoring to ensure that chapters can get the tailored support they need to move their work forward.

Over the last two years, I have played active roles in strengthening DSA’s infrastructure, training and organizing education resources, and intentionality toward becoming a more representative organization. If reelected, I plan to continue my work in these areas, with a sharper focus on multiracial organizing. I look forward to ushering forward the work delineated in Resolution #31, as well as supporting the growth of the AfroSocialist and Socialists of Color Caucus. I also intend to maintain my level of time commitment and dedication to the NPC, on which I’ve been genuinely honored to serve this past term.

Matt Miller

Chapter: Boston DSA

Pronouns: He/Him/His

I’ve been a member since late 2016. I served on Boston DSA’s Steering Committee 2017-2018 and am currently serving as the Boston Electoral WG co-chair. I managed the campaign of two successful DSA city council challengers, JT Scott in 2017 and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler in 2019. I have primarily been active in our chapter’s electoral working group, and I also helped author a chapter priority to build out a Transformative Justice committee to provide trainings for our chapter and make recommendations for how our chapter can deal with conflict more sustainably.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

I organized with Our Revolution in Somerville MA during 2017-2018, building a progressive & labor coalition which DSA was an integral part of. We passed a real estate transfer tax, and prevented big developers from skirting state labor laws at a public housing redevelopment. I played a key role in Our Revolution Massachusetts’ successful campaign to pass the most progressive party platform to date at the 2017 MA Democratic Party State Convention. I co-founded a progressive watchdog group called Act on Mass to track the intricacies of the legislative process and fight for transparency in a Massachusetts legislature dominated (80%+) by Democrats that fails to pass meaningful working class reforms year after year.

These experiences sharpened my conviction that explicitly socialist organizing through DSA is our most vital task. I no longer believe socialists should engage in intra-party fights to “reform the Democratic party” as my efforts were neither useful in shaping the terrain of electoral struggle nor are these conflicts good places to reach working class people (vs. party activists).

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

www.Matt4NPC.org

Why are you running for NPC?

Bernie’s campaigns proved there are millions open to socialism, but the working class is still too disconnected and disorganized to win at the national level. Socialist ideas are popular, but we need stronger institutions of working class power including a bigger, stronger DSA. I’m stepping up to do my share of the unglamorous administrative work that falls to the NPC, should my comrades see fit to elect me.

I think DSA is broadly on the right track, and I am impressed with the work of the current NPC to disagree about strategic questions without divisiveness. We’ve had a lot of painful factionalism in my local. The experience of learning from my own mistakes and how we put the organization back together has made me a better organizer. I will continue that work of us all struggling, learning, and building trust together.

The shift from organizing under Trump to organizing under Biden will be a challenge. My focus on electoral & legislative work in MA has taught me many hard lessons about what it will take for us to win. We need a party for the working class, independent of the Democrats, but we have to get there navigating electoral realities. I want DSA to continue our successful electoral strategy and continue to refine it to ensure we are moving towards a real break while also prioritizing important base building work in tenant & labor organizing without which our electoral work will fail.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Socialism is democracy. It’s when the working class brings actual democratic control to our workplaces and all the other institutions of society. Some comrades question whether we need the qualifier “democratic,” but I think we do, given the century and more of propaganda that seeks to make socialism something scary.

Socialism is not just social democracy. There is a capitalist class that has different interests from us, and will stop at nothing to defeat us. Until we break their concentrated power over us, working class reforms will never be safe from rollback attempts by capital.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

We should seek to grow DSA to 250k members in 5 years, and also set a goal for 50k active members (Active membership of 20% vs. today’s roughly 10%)

We need to prioritize both growth and sustainability. We have a strong model for growth in campaigns like the PRO Act, local work, and the work of the Growth and Development Committee.

Sustainability requires both a commitment to building stronger mechanisms for resolving internal conflict (including resolution #28), as well as National investing the time/resources into making it as easy for chapters to use our tools as possible.

The period will be dominated by midterm elections and the looming presidential race. The Democratic Party will not be offering working class voters anything meaningful other than a respite from fascism, having squandered an opportunity to pass legislation like M4A, GND, and Voting Rights protections. Some will call for DSA to put aside our own campaigns and help prevent the Democrats from losing Congress.

We have an opportunity to grow if we differentiate ourselves more clearly from the Democratic Party, build independent working class institutions and ensure that our electoral work remains strategic and focused.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

The primary task for a socialist organization is to raise class consciousness, aid in class formation, and to do that through organizing projects that build institutions of working class power. That means labor organizing (both rank-and-file & organizing the unorganized) and tenant organizing (the working class increasingly has leverage over the finance/real estate industry)

In parallel, a socialist organization must engage in building a party for the working class. That does not mean an electoral-only party, but should entail support for labor and tenant organizing, political education, mutual aid, as well as electoral work and pressure campaigns.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

Our strengths are a low barrier to entry and commitment to being multi-tendency, which has allowed us to grow more than any other socialist organization during this period. There’s a real possibility for people new to socialism who are motivated to experiment with novel types of organizing and prove old assumptions wrong. DSA is an amazing space for political education and development. I myself and many others have joined the organization and developed a politics far to the left of where I was when I joined.

Our weaknesses stem from these same strengths. As we continue to grow rapidly, it will be, of necessity, from people who hold less developed politics than the average DSA member. We need strong democratic structures to fold these new members into the existing body of work in our chapters, we need strong conflict resolution processes, and we need patience with each other as we help newly radicalized members of the working class struggle through many of the same questions we might like to think are already “solved.”

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

DSA must prioritize demands that allow the working class to feel their own collective power. With a Democratic Party in power that does not care what we think, we must prioritize campaigns that target the boss or landlord, because they will have a greater chance of success than a pressure campaign on uncaring Democratic legislators in Washington or state capitals.

The point of production is still where the working class has the most leverage, and so labor organizing must be central, with the rank and file strategy of rebuilding the “militant minority” in unions as a priority. However, that is not enough and we must also organize the unorganized and fight for unionism that is linked to social movements, not apart from them.

Renters also increasingly have leverage in a hyper-financialized real estate industry, and so socialists must help tenants recognize their collective power through militant tenants unions, independent from non-profit, foundation, and government funding.

Electoral campaigns should also be prioritized (after labor and tenant struggle) because most people are depoliticized and view elections as synonymous with power. And we need 1 or 2 big national campaigns like the PRO Act campaign (and interrelated demand for a GND) that are easy for new chapters and new members to plug into, and help us demonstrate the toothlessness of the Democratic Party, an important condition for our future growth.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

We need to build a party for the working class that is independent from the Democratic Party. The focus our Electoral Strategy places on DSA mastering all aspects of running campaigns independent of the Democratic Party apparatus is key. I’m involved deeply in that work as Boston’s electoral co-chair. We have done amazing work as DSA but we need to expand our capabilities vastly.

I support the tasks defined in Resolution #8 offered by the NEC and agree that it makes sense for us to continue the practice of electing socialists on the Democratic ballot line while building up our capacity.

It’s also important for us to build an identity as socialists separate from Democrats, liberals and progressives. This is a crucial part of raising class consciousness and helping the working class to recognize and form itself. I support resolutions #10 & #38 and experimenting with other methods of distinguishing ourselves from Democratic Party candidates even if we are using that ballot line temporarily.

We should prioritize running cadre candidates and endorsing selectively to ensure we are the major force in those campaigns when they succeed.

We should not seek to win positions in the Democratic Party apparatus or engage in intra-Democratic-Party organizing. That work is typically a distraction from elections and enmeshes us further in the web of Democratic Party donors, operatives, and affiliated organizations that we urgently need to break from in order to win socialism.

We need to prioritize investing serious campaign time into working class communities of color near us. That means ensuring we are engaged in campaigns not just in the areas where our existing members live but also that we are prioritizing other areas and explaining to comrades in the chapter why we are intentionally doing that.

In our electoral campaigns we should seek to prioritize the election of BIPOC socialists, especially Black socialists. Bernie’s lack of traction among African American voters in all parts of the country points to a gap that we need to work diligently to bridge and it’s going to take time. This year my chapter has endorsed a Black socialist in a district covering Dorchester and Mattapan. Boston is an extremely segregated city and this campaign provides us a good clear reason to be knocking doors and talking to people in those communities.

We also need to ensure our public facing demands and the campaigns we choose to prioritize include demands that would draw all members of the multi-racial working class into coalition with us. Abolition and campaigning for reparations from the federal government are vital.

We need to recruit more people of color into the organization, but to do that, we must ensure we are creating a deeply welcoming space. This society is baked in white supremacy and we will only retain comrades of color if we are willing to deal with the ways that we might unintentionally alienate them.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

The existing labor movement is still the greatest force for working class power in this world, and DSA must vocally and publicly support workers in struggle. That means strike support, and working in coalition with labor unions where possible (electoral campaigns, campaigns like the PRO Act, and any other direct labor support possible).

It’s no secret however that the leadership of some labor unions often plays a role dampening worker militancy, and some union leaders eschew strikes in favor of cutting deals. DSA must prioritize the rank and file strategy to ensure we rebuild unions into fighting organizations for the working class. But those campaigns must be waged within the union. Public call outs of union leaders pushing their organizations away from militancy by outside socialists don’t build reform caucus power, and tend to reinforce right-wing talking points that undermine labor.

RFS alone isn’t enough. DSA must also help organize the unorganized (through programs like EWOC or directly as workers in unorganized shops), and through coalition with unions and as members of labor DSA members have an important role to play over the long haul of building a real sense of social movement unionism, a labor movement that doesn’t just fight for its own members but for the working class as a whole.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

Carefully.

Coalitions can make our campaigns more successful and put us in contact with people sympathetic to socialism. We should be fair dealers in the broader progressive ecosystem, working together with other groups where it makes sense.

However, we must resist demands for DSA to join “coalitions” where we aren’t treated as equals, where we are asked to hide our socialism, or to water down our demands. NGOs and non-profits are structurally bound into the capitalist system through their dependency on governmental and large donor funding. We need to accept that sometimes DSA will be working in close coalition with those groups on certain issues (e.g. a progressive taxation ballot question) but will need to stand apart from them on other issues where our interests aren’t aligned.

For the last 20 years there haven’t been many opportunities for socialists to stand on our own two feet outside the larger progressive coalition. But we can now, and there are certain campaigns especially within tenant organizing and in electoral politics where DSA needs to take a different path to do the work. This is a balancing act where we need to avoid both sectarianism and cooptation. It will not be easy.

Progressive politics will fail because it doesn’t take into account the need to overthrow capitalism. We can be principled and kind with progressive allies, and doing so will help us win them over to our principled politics as they see the ways the capitalism system squelches reform.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

The bulk of our work happens in local chapters and I think that’s for the best. Socialists need to engage with our local conditions and democratically determine how to best advance socialism through our local work.

National has certain roles that make sense for it: foremost coordination of federal-level work and internationalism. But I think by far the most important role for National is to help chapters succeed. Chapters need easy-to-use tools to manage our member lists, do electoral work, and forums to communicate with other members and share learnings across the country. I think that work is crucial and we can always be getting better at that.

Starting and maintaining a local chapter is hard. Many seasoned activists are feeling burned out after this pandemic. National support for chapters whether in the form of trainings, longer term mentorship, or campaigns like the PRO Act that are easy for new/struggling chapters to plug members into is crucial to our long term success.

I think NPC members have important role to be constantly talking with chapter, finding out where they are struggling, whether in organizing questions, getting access to tools, or anything else. Call it internal socialist “constituent services” if you will.

I have experience in non-profit administration and so might fit in well on fundraising or administrative committees. My experience in electoral organizing would point toward involvement in the electoral committee. My local work around Transformative Justice might also point to a focus on the new national grievance committee called for in Resolution #28 which I hope passes overwhelmingly at convention.

Desiree Joy Frias

Chapter: New York City DSA

Pronouns: She/Her

I've been a member since 2017, organizing predominantly with the Bronx Upper Manhattan branch and working on various issue based or electoral campaigns throughout my time here. Most recently I've been kitchen lead for the Hunts Point Strike, filling community fridges with my comrades and served several terms on the organizing committee of the Bronx Upper Manhattan branch. My main challenge in organizing has been my own chronic illnesses and balancing work, life and activism.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

I've been organizing in political spaces since childhood when my mom, a young lord, worked for the Dinkins administration as head of their Latino Affairs division. Thankfully I moved away from more establishment spaces like LULAC and the Democratic Party. I was arrested at Foley Square during Occupy Wall Street at age 18 and I helped coordinate resources during Occupy Sandy (and cooked so much food!). That activism translated to my career when I received a Masters in Public Health and a Juris Doctorate in Disability Rights Law and litigated on behalf of students with disabilities taken advantage of by their public school systems.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

No.

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

This is what I'm proudest of lately: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/nyregion/covid-19-mutual-aid-nyc.html.

Why are you running for NPC?

I'm running for NPC to do anything I can to help DSA win. Capitalism is killing me and my family - from stress, from poverty, from lack of access to healthcare, in a million ways. I want liberation, for my grandmother, for my baby, for all of us. I must see socialism in our lifetime.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic Socialism is replacing our capitalist economy with a socially owned one, while retaining our political framework of democracy (minus the gerrymandering and voter suppression, please).

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

Its hard to speak for big tent DSA as I am not connected to national organizing priorities yet. Continuing to push for expanding membership is important, while at the same time we have to organize the mass of people we have. Centralization of communication would be helpful, especially to something we own like the DSA forum. I believe within 3 presidential election cycles we could have a socialist candidate running, which is important to base building on a national scale. We should also invest more directly in our local branches that do the daily lifting of member engagement.

We are going to have to field of a potential Trump run for congress, senate or the presidency (if he's not in federal prison), as well as the running of his family. The most urgent challenge right now is translating the class consciousness that has been built through our shared experience of CV-19 into mobilization and action so that we don't go "back to normal". The greatest opportunities for socialists are at the lowest levels of governance - races are cheap, some of them are uncontested, and many have immense power, especially Judges and Magistrates.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

To bring socialism in our lifetime - not just electorally, but in our workplaces and our communities as well. To love each other - radically, completely. To learn alongside each other - not just to "educate" our neighbors. To dismantle oppressive systems - like our defund NYPD, reclaim pride, tax the rich and public power issue based campaigns here in NYC. To love each other - radically, completely.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

One of the weaknesses of DSA is communication. We do not give members a single cohesive platform to share their ideas and best practices. Many branches reinvent the wheel for basic tasks - bylaws, communications, etc - because there isn't that open communication between groups.

I'm open to pushback on this, but sometimes we join electoral races we mathematically cannot win. While exposure is important, we need to be conscientious of the money we are spending and try to maximize the impact - especially when many of our comrades are sacrificing by giving. I rather have five candidates in the lower house than one at federal level for the same amount of money, especially since i feel smaller races lead to more local voter engagement.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

Our next big win is Medicare for All. I haven't looked recently into where this is at the national level, but I feel that after the collective nightmare of CV-19 there is a high level of societal consciousness at how broken our healthcare system and insurance systems are. Private health insurance is so unpopular and I think many people are ready to talk about M4A who may not have been open to it before.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

While electoral politics is important (and i've mentioned it a few times so far), I think it is important to also work on issue based campaigns, like the Defund NYPD and Tax the Rich campaigns. After our candidates win we must put them to work bringing the social changes that we are fighting for and that they spoke about on the campaign trail. Campaigns can be extremely expensive and because we have limited resources as an organization we need to be picky about where we choose to endorse and engage.

Many of the best organizing conversations I've had with my neighbors has been through the mutual aid work our branch has done in response to CV-19, including community fridge work and the hunts point strike. Communities of color have been decimated by capitalism and helping them meet their basic material needs is a great door to having conversations about socialism.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

DSA members should unionize their workplaces, take rank and file jobs when making career changes and we should continue to support unions in their fights like at the hunts point teamsters 202 strike and at Bessemer. DSA has many hands that can help feed, picket and support workers.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

DSA should be cautious in its engagement with other organizations to ensure that we aren't directing resources to those that aren't fighting for socialism.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

The national organization should build and support local chapters without stifling their voices and work. Similarly, local chapters and members should have say in national decisions, not just through convention but in a shared forum like the DSA forum.

If elected I would bring ten years of community organizing experience, knowledge of law and policy and my great airtable skills.

Sabrina Chan

Chapter: Chicago DSA

Pronouns: She/they

I have been a dues-paying member since December 2017, first becoming involved with CDSA through our efforts to get Carlos Ramirez-Rosa on the ballot during his short bid for Congress, as well as with the chapter’s Our City, Our Schools campaign to elect socialists to Local School Councils. Since joining CDSA, I have co-chaired the committee responsible for coordinating support for our five socialist city council campaigns, and I have served on our Electoral Working Group’s Steering Committee, where I put together an on-going research project of Chicago’s electoral landscape to help our chapter proactively prepare for future races. I have served on the National Electoral Committee since April 2018. During my tenure, I have chaired the full committee, chaired the endorsements subcommittee all three years, helped write our updated National Electoral Strategy, and launched our fundraising program for nationally endorsed candidates

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

During college, I was an organizer with the fossil fuel divestment campaign on my campus through UChicago Climate Action Network. I found the divestment campaign frustrating (a difficult battle against my school’s administration for a small symbolic victory in the fight against climate change), but found new hope when Bernie launched his first campaign for president during my final year of school. While still enrolled in school full time, I phonebanked at every opportunity I had, canvassed every weekend for two months on the southeast side of Chicago, spent weekends canvassing in Iowa and Wisconsin, and even flew out to the Bronx for a full week leading up to the New York State Primary. If it were not for Bernie’s 2016 campaign, I do not think I would have the hope that I do today for building a strong socialist movement in the US.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

Follow me on Twitter @kremlinthot: https://twitter.com/kremlinthot

National Electoral Strategy: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VpSL2DnwVtk93aYoiFlhtpHW8mXpHELL/view

Donate to our nationally endorsed candidates: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/socialist-slate?refcode=sabrina-npc

Why are you running for NPC?

I am running for NPC because I believe electoral organizing is a central pillar of DSA’s strategy for winning socialism, and I think I could play a key role in supporting that work from the NPC. For better or for worse, elections are one of the primary ways through which working people experience politics. They are an opportunity to organize millions of people who are not yet socialists, articulate our politics to a mass audience, build our base in communities of color, draw the lines of class struggle, and win reforms that materially improve the lives of working-class people and democratize our economy. If we are to take electoral politics seriously as a terrain of struggle in the fight against the capitalist class, then we must adequately resource our electoral organizing efforts. Currently, DSA has a single part-time electoral organizer on staff, which is not enough to satisfy the demand of the many chapters who wish to be involved in electoral campaigns and need assistance. I am committed to enacting Resolution 8: Toward a Mass Party in the United States, and ensuring that all chapters can roll out a meaningful electoral strategy suited to their local organizing conditions.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

In 5 years, chapters should develop their electoral work so they have the capacity to recruit candidates in targeted races, build lasting infrastructure, and apply our electoral strategy locally.

In 20 years, we should have popularized democratic socialist ideas and grown a constituency of tens of millions. Our power should be expressed by majority blocs on city councils and state legislatures that deliver major reforms. DSA should be more representative of the working class with strong bases in communities of color. More unions should be aligned with a democratic socialist vision and united with DSA around a strategy for reviving organized labor.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

In 5 years, chapters should develop their electoral work so they have the capacity to recruit candidates in targeted races, build lasting infrastructure, and apply our electoral strategy locally.

A growing white nationalist reactionary right wing in the Republicans poses an existential threat to an organized left, while the dominant centrist and neoliberal leadership of the Democrats opposes many basic working-class reforms. If we fail to push our immediate priorities forward, we may face an even more severe backlash against the Biden administration that will empower the right and set back the growing left.

We must cut through with a clear vision: a program of reforms that materially benefits the working-class majority of this country and a mass movement that builds the power to enact our vision.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

Even though we are nearly 100k members strong, DSA is still a relatively small organization. Our role is to engage with, and recruit, the millions of working-class people--the vast majority of people--in this country, whether in their workplaces, through elections, or issue-based campaigns, and bring them into the socialist movement as active participants and political actors, so that we may become a mass movement of the working class.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

One of our biggest strengths is our ability to mobilize members around campaigns and concrete goals, as demonstrated by the massive participation in our national campaign to pass the PRO Act and at the local level for electoral campaigns such as DSA for the Many and DSA for the City in NYC and ongoing efforts to elect a socialist slate to the Somerville City Council.

One weakness we have is that our membership is not reflective of the diversity of the working class and we have not yet developed an organizing approach to resolve that.

A related problem is that we do not do a good job with active and intentional recruitment through our campaigns, and instead we are too reliant on passive recruitment through social media or recruitment through social circles.

Finally, we are struggling with leadership development in most chapters which leads to burnout for those in leadership positions and leaves chapters without new leaders to replace them. We need to do a better job of developing new leaders and building a lasting infrastructure for sharing institutional knowledge to support them.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

Green New Deal.

PRO Act.

Defunding police departments to invest in other social services.

Expanding tenant protections and rent control.

Protecting and expanding democratic rights.

The Green New Deal addresses the urgent crisis of climate change. The PRO act is essential to organizing the 90% of the working class that is unorganized. Defunding the police can end police violence and fight austerity at the local level. Housing is a human right and these reforms are steps on the way toward decommodifying housing. Expanding democracy has been an important demand for the left and allows us to organize our base in communities that are most impacted by voter suppression.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

I agree with our National Electoral Strategy (NES): I wrote the damn bill! (along with the many other dedicated electoral organizers who are members of the NEC). I believe the NES represents the consensus position on electoral organizing across the many different tendencies in DSA. In the short-term, chapters should build electoral apparatuses that last beyond a single election cycle and that house the skills to run elections from start to finish, such as candidate recruitment, running a field operation, fundraising, and training members to manage campaigns and work in legislative offices. At this stage, well-run federal electoral campaigns are inaccessible to or difficult for most chapters, even NYC-DSA. Local races and ballot measures are a good way to build a base and a bench of candidates, but power at this level of government is fairly limited. Chapters should begin orienting their electoral organizing toward running socialists for state legislatures, both to contest state power and build capacity to eventually tackle higher office.

We must make intentional recruitment and leadership development of organizers of color a priority, so that our chapters reflect the diversity of their communities. We also must ensure that campaigns we take on at both the local and national level are oriented toward multiracial organizing, and we must develop criteria to make such an assessment. I believe passing Resolution #31: Making DSA a Multiracial and Anti-Racist Organization would be an important step toward making those changes to our organizing. I also believe the convention resolutions that would form campaigns for Voting Rights (Resolution #4) and Reparations for Black people (Resolution #2) are examples of campaigns that would help DSA develop deeper roots in communities of color.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

I support the priorities outlined in Resolution #5: Building Worker Power to Win Democratic Socialism. Union membership is at a historic low, so one of our biggest priorities must be to organize the vast majority of unorganized workers into labor unions. Doing so will require that we transform our unions into robust, militant, and democratic organizations through the participation of socialists in the rank-and-file. DSA should serve as a space for socialists across industries to collaborate and strategize with the goal of developing a shared democratic socialist strategy for reviving the labor movement.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

We can put aside differences with coalition partners that may not be perfectly politically aligned with DSA as long as we are working towards a common goal, and we do not allow the coalition to compromise the democratic decisions made by our membership. We should prioritize working in coalition with groups that have a working-class base or membership rooted in communities of color. We should also prioritize working in coalition with groups that are also democratic and member-led.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

The national organization should play a supportive role with chapters rather than having a top-down relationship in which we dictate campaigns and strategy without regard for a chapter’s local context. That said, we need a strong, well-resourced, and well-staffed national organization that can support and build up strong local chapters by providing training, political guidance, and other resources. It is easier for larger chapters to receive support from the national organization through their connections to elected NPC and other national committee members. Members of the NPC have an obligation to build relationships with chapters across the country, especially smaller chapters and ones lacking national representation, to ensure more uniform access to national resources across the organization.

I have served on the National Electoral Committee since April 2018, and I intend to continue serving on the NEC if elected to the NPC. NPC representation on the NEC has been spotty over the past several years; I want to forge a stronger relationship between the two committees and ensure that the NPC is an active participant in developing and carrying out our electoral strategy. Outside of my electoral duties on the NEC, I have worked hard to streamline administrative functions of the committee, and I hope to share what I have learned with the NPC and other committees.

Jennifer Bolen

Chapter: San Francisco DSA

Pronouns: She/Her

I’ve been a member of DSA for over four years. I was the first chair of my chapter’s Socialist Feminist Working Group, until I stepped down to be on Steering Committee, where I was Treasurer. For nearly the last two years, I’ve been on the National Political Committee’s Steering Committee, the National Communications Committee, 2021 National Convention Steering Committee and National Political Education Committee. I also served on the Personnel Committee from 2019-2020.

I was involved in DSA SF’s largest campaigns, including: Prop F (universal right to civil counsel), Prop C (taxing rich companies to serve the unhoused), Anchor Union (organizing the nation’s first craft brewery), and the N-95 mask distribution during last year’s fires.

On the NPC, I think my greatest contribution has been on the Steering Committee, where I’ve helped make quick decisions in order to keep our organization thriving. It’s cheesy, but I think the greatest highlight of being on the NPC has been showing the organization that people from different caucuses/tendencies/what-have-you can work together, support each other, and help build a thriving DSA.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

Before I was on the NPC, I would spend my Fridays supporting Mothers on the March -- the families and friends of our black and brown neighbors murdered by SFPD’s killer cops. I’m proud to support radical groups like the Black & Brown Social Club and Frisco 5, who held a hunger strike until the former chief of police resigned. We must stand in solidarity with our community, especially those whose lives have been ripped apart by murderous, racist state institutions.

I work as a criminal defense paralegal. My clients are people experiencing trauma from being materially disadvantaged, and are in a lot of psychological and/or physical pain. My job is to keep them from falling into the mass incarceration system. This requires a lot of listening, empathy, and solving problems that don’t have easy answers. As a secretary, I’m organized, know the importance of transparent and constant communication, and bottom-lining complex projects. All these skills are necessary for being on NPC.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

No.

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

I don't do media.

Why are you running for NPC?

I feel the current NPC has made strong changes to the organization and I want to make sure that vision continues. Like comrade Lenin said, “I assert that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organisation of leaders maintaining continuity.”

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Socialism is reclaiming our collective power.

Under capitalism, the pigs in charge tell us to otherize and devalue people by their race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability to make ourselves feel valued and included in society. So we socialists respond with demands.

We demand for a clean, habitable planet. We demand that housing, healthcare, bodily autonomy, and education are human rights. We demand the invincible emancipation of the workers and their work. We demand that we smash the parasitical upper classes into the dirt which paves the happy road to our future freedom.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

We don’t have time for incremental change. Global climate fascism is already upon us. If we don’t cast our net wide in the next five years won’t matter. Our organization has to put ecosocialism at the forefront of our work.

Looking forward: I want a workers’ party. I want an organized working class that will directly confront the boss and landlord class. No ruling class has ever given up its power voluntarily! It’s not going to happen this time around, no matter how many reforms we vote in. The left needs to engage with our fellow proletarians in our workplaces and homes, and build class struggle solidarity with them now.

This is a difficult question because back in 2019, I thought I had an idea of the political landscape, but much of that went out the window when Covid-19 struck and the summer uprisings after the murder of George Floyd became the urgent tasks -- both of which I could have never predicted when preparing for my 2019 run. I think the challenge will always be to pivot to the demands and lift up the needs of the working class.

In 2019, I said the current popularity of “socialism,” broadly defined, presents two challenges. The first is the red-baiting we saw against Bernie Sanders in his presidential campaign; the second is the dilution of the word “socialism” as it’s co-opted by a reformist, pseudo-left, or redefined by our elected politicians. Our opportunity is to break through 70+ years of anti-socialist ultra-capitalism used to divide the working class and gain a truly unified front against the bosses and landlords.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

The workers of the world can never be emancipated until the Imperial Core is neutralized—or better yet, overturned. As people in the United States, we have been schooled since birth to be unconscious of the violence they have inflicted upon peoples both outside and within our borders, and the daily violence of capitalism that they inflict on our comrades, our bodies, and ourselves.

It is our duty as the U.S.’s largest socialist organization in generations to recognize and uplift past American socialist traditions that have been pushed aside by 40 years of neoliberal austerity politics, while transcending the failures of those movements.

We lose everything if we do not win the whole world.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

We show up! I loved seeing our flags in Bernie’s campaign videos, other organizations knew to reach out to us to respond to the Covid crisis, and I see all the tweets and Facebook posts from every march, rally, mutual aid project and electoral field event. It’s invigorating!

This means we mobilize extremely well, but I don’t know if we’re organizing on that level. For example, the PRO Act was a success in making over a million calls to senators, but we didn’t grow in membership after the DSA 100k campaign ended and pivoted to the PRO Act. To me, this means we weren’t galvanizing the working class to join a movement, but only to participate in electoral politics at a very minimal level.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

DSA should continue to grow and expand its Emergency Working Organizing Committee and Restaurant Outreach Project. I don’t know if these count as policies or demands. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I sometimes feel a little silly answering questions on DSA strategy because of the looming and immediate climate crisis, and how none of this will matter if this isn’t reckoned with. That said, the Green New Deal (or something like) it has to be a priority and entwined with all of our other organizing.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

I am proud of the work the NEC did on this (and for all the conversations they had with the NPC!). Right now, I see elections as educational tools, particularly because we tend to focus on congressional races; we should be using these races to show the failures of the capitalist parties and our socialist vision. I think we can do real damage on things like school board elections and transit boards and police commissions, and hope we build upt the campaign knowledge from working on the federal races and apply those to more local races and ballot measures.

In combination with the resolutions put forth to address diversity in DSA, we should organize more around shared struggles instead of issues or campaigns, like workplace and tenant organizing.

Apartment complexes have such a wild array of people living in them. I know because I’ve lived in a bunch. There are families, older people, young couples, and of all races, genders, sexuality, and ability. This is the diverse working class!

When we canvass an apartment complex in an electoral race, a lot of people can have trouble imagining the ambiguous billionaire class that we’re mobilizing to defeat. But when you ask someone about their housing problems, they’ll tell you about the broken elevator or busted water heater the slumlord won’t fix. It’s personal. It’s their struggle. And this time they know the face of their enemy: it’s the freeloader that comes and picks up their rent check on the first of the month.

By helping tenants connect with each other and form councils, they’ll begin to see that those complaints about the elevator or the water heater aren’t their own. When DSA helps them realize their collective power as tenants, and is there to support them every step of the way in their fight, we’ll be bonded after going through this struggle together.

The same thing happens when you organize a workplace. Look at when DSA SF organized Anchor Brewing Company, the biggest factory in SF. Those workers are diverse as hell. We put in the work, we formed bonds, and now we have factory workers who joined DSA. I'd like to see this happen more.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

Over the last few years, we’ve created strong relationships with UE (United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America) through the DLSC”s Emergency Workplace Organizing Project and IUPAT (The International Union of Painters and Allied Trades) through our PRO Act campaign. We should continue to organize people who are not in unions into unions, especially those with whom we have relationships, and pull the trades unions left toward democratic worker power.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

As leadership of the organization, we have a duty to our membership, not to coalition partners. As socialists, every move we make must be toward class independence from capitalist politicians (where most organizations align). That said, we should work with issue-based organizations that have common short-term goals while keeping our north star in sight.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

National should serve the membership. It’s pretty clear in the job description for the NPC: we’re to implement the will of the membership’s political and organizational goals, which are decided at the biennial National Convention (not make those decisions for them!). The NPC should make sure the national staff (bless them) are supported in a way that they can help chapters do the day-to-day work they need to do (and not just on national priorities). I’d like to foster better relationships with the local chapters and their regional organizers, and I want to ensure that national working groups and committees create campaigns that chapters can plug into easily.

I’d like to continue my work on the National Political Education Committee, and also devote time to the grievance process to make sure that DSA is a place where people feel safe organizing.

Justin Charles

Chapter: New York City DSA

Pronouns: He/Him

I helped start a branch, serving as co-chair of the North Brooklyn branch on its inaugural organizing committee. I’ve served two terms on our chapter steering committee as a branch representative. I’ve served as a delegate on our Citywide Leadership Committee (the highest decision-making body between conventions) since its fall 2017 inception. I was also a part of the team that helped develop the chapter’s city and state legislative platform, drawing on our working groups’ expertise and incorporating feedback from the broader membership through a series of forums.

As a co-author of our 2021 city council slate resolution, I’ve worked with our electoral working group to recruit and interview potential candidates, research council districts, and develop a candidate questionnaire in consultation with our issue-based working groups.

Prior to joining the NPC, I helped build up the digital side of our Racial Justice Working Group’s DefundNYPD campaign. Beyond that, I’ve organized and facilitated reading groups and night schools, led the web design and development team of our chapter’s Media Working Group, served as a mobilizer, and a lot more.

Since my 2020 appointment to the NPC, I’ve been involved in the Budget and Finance, Communications, and Growth and Development Committees. I’m a member of the Convention Steering Committee, co-chairing the Platform and Resolutions Subcommittee. And I’m chair of the GDC Steering Committee. I’m most interested in helping DSA level up, particularly in its ability to communicate its vision outwardly and in its ability to recruit, retain, and empower a membership more representative of the entire working class.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

I’m a member of the organizing committee for my union at my job at a non-profit. We just ran a successful campaign for voluntary recognition from management where we got nearly 90% of the bargaining unit to sign a union card. I wouldn’t say I didn’t know this already but there is so much power in the moment in an organizing conversation when the person you're talking to catches the bug of solidarity and is ready to fight for their colleagues.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

No.

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

https://dsaemerge.org/points-of-unity/

https://spectrejournal.com/the-interregnum/

Why are you running for NPC?

I’m very interested in what DSA can be post-Bernie and working with all of you to actualize that potential. In this political moment, with Covid-19 having revealed and reinforced societal contradictions, ongoing and imminent economic, democratic, and ecological crises, and after the rebellion for Black lives and against police terror, I think we have an opportunity to turn a corner and become the fighting, thinking organization the moment calls for. I want to help make it so our growing membership numbers, as impressive as they are, mean a bit more. I want to work with my comrades to build DSA into a mass socialist organization of organizers. Yes, I know not every dues-paying member will necessarily do this but we should make the tools, training, and education as easily accessible to as many members as possible so we can work toward that.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic socialism means working-class people have the power to determine the course of our lives, economically and politically. It’s how we organize our emancipation from the rule of private property. This is not just a list of policy reforms or a specific form of the state, although that certainly has a significant role to play. Nor is it a destination we’ll find ourselves at someday in the future. It’s our class bringing into being a different kind of power, and the development of our capacities for collective self-governance and true human freedom and flourishing.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

I’d like to see DSA and the socialist left as leaders, significant contributors, and supporters of all struggles for liberation from exploitation and oppression. DSA members, as working-class people embedded in workplaces, neighborhoods, communities, and class struggle organizations like unions, tenant associations, and other organizations engaged in fights for human liberation. Our members will continue running brilliant campaigns like the PRO Act and Green New Deal. But they also will understand themselves as organizers who can form and draw upon social ties politically for the purposes of building socialism. They will be organizing for socialism wherever they are.

In the coming two years, we’ll see a right-wing destroying what democracy we have, a liberal opposition unable to combat them and often complicit. We’ll continue to see capital at war with labor, police murders of Black people, more unsatisfactory to nonexistent action on the climate crisis. We’ll see more of what we see now. But I believe our biggest challenge is we’ll continue to see a general depoliticization in most people, a belief that the world is the way it is, and it can’t meaningfully change. Our most urgent task is to change their minds.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

Fights against bosses, police murders, sexual assault & harassment, climate change, pipeline construction, gender discrimination, segregated schools, redlining, evictions, student debt, austerity, racist immigration policy, & much more. All of these contain class struggle. Our role is to tie together all these seemingly disparate fights. The only way to do that is by seeking out, engaging in, and humbly embedding ourselves in all these manifestations of class struggle. Our job is to politicize the depoliticized, engage them in struggle, so they know what solidarity is, feel it, believe in it, and fight for it for every member of our class.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

In our biggest campaigns, we’ve had success in politicizing people and bringing them into struggle. I’ve been particularly impressed with our ability to tie together our Green New Deal work and labor work in the PRO Act campaign and to actually flip senators in the process through our overwhelming phonebanking presence. We also had a 73% win rate with our endorsed candidates and ballot measures in November. We’re putting more socialists in office at every level of government across the country.

A big gap still remains, though, between what most people believe to be possible politically and our belief as socialists that another world is on the horizon. We must continue to bring more people into struggle and join them in their existing fights to close that gap and bring that horizon nearer. I think to be able to do this we have to pour even more energy into the development of our chapters and members as organizers. We are doing a ton on this already and I’d like us to do even more. We need to continue developing the skills of our members to assess their local conditions and intervene in them, to recruit, to run campaigns, to organize where they work and where they live. We need an organization of organizers. I also think we need to strengthen the relationship between chapters and the national organization as well as chapter to chapter relationships and at-large member to at-large member relationships.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

We need to continue to push to divest from policing and invest in the social services that have been withering on the vine for decades. We need to protect the right to vote and expand the franchise. We need to grow the labor movement and preserve and develop the rights of all people to organize on the job. We need to continue to fight for a Green New Deal nationally and for implementation of our GND principles locally. We need Housing for All, with more fully funded public housing and housing relief. We need all of these things because they increase the power of working-class people and facilitate our organization as a class.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

We had a very successful 2020 election cycle. We had candidates win at all levels of government on class struggle platforms and passed ballot measures for working-class demands. I believe this work has helped us reach more and more people and bring them into our movement. We should continue to run candidates, particularly at state and municipal levels, and run campaigns around ballot measures where possible. Something I’d like to see going forward, and perhaps this is a bit more from a long view, is more DSA cadre members running for these offices. Members who are fully committed to our aims would serve as great tribunes for class-struggle politics in city halls, statehouses, and occasionally Congress. I also hope to see our political platform, should it pass at the convention, come into play in our endorsement processes and guide our decision-making.

The U.S. working class is incredibly diverse. It’s also extremely divided along various lines, such as race, vocation, geography, gender, disability, citizenship status, education, home ownership and many more. As a result, class struggle is very rarely something that happens altogether or all at once. Struggles and modes of organizing often castigated as ‘fringe’ can in fact be core elements of a working-class and socialist politics: abolition and self-determination, socialist feminism and freedom from borders are all central matters for class struggle. We’ve seen some of these diverse groups of people brought together in the streets rallying around some of these issues in the past few years.

Class struggle often breaks out in many directions, for many demands. Each has its own vitality and validity, but none will be realizable or lasting unless supported by a united mass base that transcends existing divisions. It follows that our movement must be rooted in the whole diversity of the working class, or its disorganization will be exploited by the state and capital. We cannot meaningfully combat capitalism without combating white supremacy and vice versa. So the struggles of working-class communities of colors cannot be looked upon by socialists as something that isn’t our problem. Chapters have to look at our local conditions and demographics and the struggles of working-class communities of color and embed themselves in those struggles however they can with grace and humility.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

DSA needs to embed itself in the labor movement in every way it can. Whether that’s in industries we’ve decided are strategic for us to be in due to their importance to the economy and society or wherever DSA members happen to work. Every DSA member who wants to be able to organize on the job should be able to get the tools, training, or knowledgeable counsel of experienced comrades in the labor movement. Knowing more about our members and what industries they work in, which we will thanks to our membership survey, could prove to be a vital point of departure to foster both new organization and the strengthening of a militant rank and file in existing unions. I very recently helped organize a successful campaign to win a union at my workplace. I was able to contribute to that effort in part because I’ve had some great labor leaders in NYC-DSA from whom I’ve learned. My hope is for DSA members in every chapter to learn how to organize their workplaces, and I think we have everything we need internally to do that.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

Strategic engagement in coalitions has been a vital part of our successes as an organization. It’s how we’ve won legislative campaigns at state and municipal levels. It’s part of how we’ve had such an impact in our PRO Act campaign alongside organized labor. Coalition work will continue to be a big part of what we do. We need to make strides in building relationships with working-class organizations led by Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian-American, and other underrepresented demographics in our organization. We need to engage deeply with the issues affecting these groups. One thing to note, though, is that we must walk the knife’s edge of engaging in these coalitions with humility while bringing our analysis to our work in it and not being shy about it.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

I’d like to see a tighter relationship between chapters and the national organization. Our organizing staff is doing incredible work to make this happen, but there aren’t enough of them. I’d like to see us grow our organizing staff so that field organizers have fewer chapters with whom they’re responsible for liaising. I’d also like to see chapters relating to each other more. To that end, I believe we need state and regional organizations for those chapters to coordinate their work and build relationships and as a means of connecting with at-large members. There is also an uneven level of development amongst chapters. Sometimes the well-developed chapters can seem like organizations of their own that perhaps need a bit less from the national organization while developing chapters need more. I’d like to see more experienced members from some of these developed chapters participating in our mentorship program to share knowledge to help chapters grow.

Leading up to the 2020 election, NPC members had calls with chapters to discuss what they were working on and how the national organization could help. I enjoyed those and continue to relish the opportunity to talk to members about their chapter work. I’d like to see an NPC that’s more engaged with members in a hands-on way like that and will continue to make myself available to members next term.

I’m currently chair of the Growth and Development Committee and intend to continue working with the GDC toward building an organization of organizers. I’d like to continue working with our Communications Committee to continue sharpening how DSA communicates its vision outwardly. I’ve done a lot of political education work in my chapter and would potentially be interested in that committee too. I also know that often the work of being on a leadership body is sharing responsibility and helping wherever needed so if there are specific gaps that need filling, I’m willing to do my part to keep things running.

Sydney Ghazarian

Chapter: Los Angeles DSA

Pronouns: She/Her

I am a former DSA-LA Climate Justice co-chair and coordinator who established the nationwide Ecosocialist Working Group (ESWG) at the 2017 DSA convention. I served on the Steering Committee of the ESWG for two terms. I deliberately made the ESWG a democratic and collaborative space that not only helped seed 60+ new chapter ecosocialist committees, but also 20+ public power campaigns--a demand that is now being championed by our DSA congress members.

In 2019, I co-authored the Green New Deal Priority Resolution that unanimously passed at convention, and then became one of five Green New Deal campaign coordinators. I’m proud of the work we’ve done, such as a 2-day strategy summit that allowed ~80 chapter representatives to play a role in democratically shaping the campaign’s strategic vision and demands.

I am also on the Steering Committee of the national DSA PRO Act campaign, which is one of the most momentous and participatory campaigns DSA has ever undertaken. I played a foundational role in developing its strategy, timeline, and infrastructure; infrastructure that did not exist prior to this campaign that has since raised expectations and belief in our ability to contest power. Through this campaign, we have engaged thousands and trained hundreds of DSA members to become campaign and chapter leaders. I also serve as a steering member and DSA representative in a national coalition to Pass the PRO Act.

I have been a proud member of DSA since early 2017.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

I’ve been involved in numerous social justice causes and activism throughout my life. Professionally, I’m a national organizer who has worked on both national campaigns and providing campaign support to local organizers across the country. I drove with comrades through a snowstorm to canvass for Bernie in Iowa.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

"Organizing DSA’s PRO Act Campaign”- The Dig/Bloc Party Podcast https://www.thedigradio.com/podcast/organizing-dsas-pro-act-campaign/

“To Win a Green New Deal, Pass the PRO Act”- Dissent

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/to-win-a-green-new-deal-pass-the-pro-act

Why are you running for NPC?

My experience in leadership has shown me what must be done to move DSA forward. In order for DSA to become a truly massive organization and vehicle for working class power, we must create conditions that strengthen chapters’ ability to implement strategic campaigns and our members’ abilities to successfully lead them. We must become an organization full of highly effective socialist leaders capable of contesting and overpowering the capitalist class. We must develop practices at every level of our organization to intentionally recruit BIPOC comrades and develop and empower them as leaders. We have been initiating such practices through the PRO Act campaign, and there is much work still to do. If elected to NPC, I will work to establish organization-wide systems that develop our members through political education, coaching, training, mass campaigns, and cross-chapter collaboration so that members can successfully wield power, regardless of where they are. I would use my experience to strengthen our national campaigns and projects our membership votes to prioritize at convention. My goal is to build DSA into the massive, powerful, multiracial, and member-led organization it must be.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic socialism is a political system that prioritizes people and the planet, not profit. To that end, democratic socialism is a democratic form of governance that includes a democratically and socially owned and controlled economy and resources.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

In five years, DSA should at least triple its membership and develop stronger, democratic infrastructure that allows our members to act strategically, cohesively, and rapidly respond to changing circumstances on a national scale. In 10 years, DSA should have a significant foothold in local, state, and federal governments; played a direct role in building an expanded, politicized, and powerful labor movement; won significant structural or 'transformative' reforms nationally; be embedded in working class communities in red and blue states; and play a significant role in organizing an international, anti-capitalist, working class movement.

To achieve this, DSA has to develop its capacity to choose and implement strategic priorities and campaigns; develop infrastructure to coordinate mass projects; intentionally recruit, onboard, train, and engage new members, etc.

For the next two years, DSA will be organizing in the context of a neoliberal Democratic administration that upholds an ideology that is entirely unqualified to address the scale and scope of crises working people face-- from massive unemployment and police brutality to the whole-of-society mobilization required to stave off near-term climate breakdown. The ability to surmount a successful challenge to the administration is limited by the disorganized and fractured state of the U.S. working class; the progressive movement has so far failed. Opportunity lies in our ability to emerge as a powerful Left flank to the Biden administration, unifying large constituencies behind anti-racist, internationalist socialist demands that address the climate crisis while materially benefitting the working class--and explicitly benefiting communities of color abandoned or harmed by capitalist interest.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

Our role is to build an organized, democratic, socialist, multiracial and anti-racist mass movement that is embedded in communities, workplaces, and varying geographies across the country. Our role is to organize here while building partnerships with democratic, leftist organizations abroad so that we can contest U.S. imperialism while building an international, working class movement. Our role is to build a lasting vehicle for socialist politics; create a counterpole to neoliberalism and fascism; contest state power; lead class struggle; and eventually govern.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

DSA has rapidly ballooned into the largest U.S.-based socialist organization within the past 50 years. With active chapters spanning the entire nation, we have undertaken ambitious campaigns; won numerous local and state reforms; organized in our workplaces and communities; and elected our candidates to every level of government.

However, what was learned and where victory was achieved is fragmented and uneven-- a reflection of local capacity, skills, and ambitions disciplined by socialist ideals rather than a nationally unified and deliberate strategy for winning socialism. A lack of alignment on priorities, disconnection between chapters and National, and lack of deliberate strategy for utilizing our resources undermines our collective power and often leaves chapters and members behind.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

Given the existential and urgent threat of climate; abject failure of existing political systems; the opportunity posed by the whole-of-society transformation, reconstitution of global trade, and shift in international power relations that would accompany a science-based response to climate, DSA must engage with the Green New Deal as a terrain of struggle and advance demands that would empower workers, advance racial justice, transfer ownership of key resources to the public, redistribute wealth, etc. while simultaneously decarbonizing the economy.

Overall, DSA should engage in mass, strategic campaigns that can achieve materially consequential, highly visible, and explicitly politicized victories that improve the conditions of working class life, build DSA’s political power, and heighten the capacities of self-organization among the multiracial working class.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

DSA has elected our candidates in local, state, and federal government, and consequently shifted U.S. politics; advanced and/or won transformative policies; built momentum for Democratic Socialism, and raised people’s expectations for politicians in office. Chapters with well-developed electoral capacity have demonstrated the value in electing our members, with chapters and DSA members often collaborating with DSA electeds to develop and advance policies aligned with our goals. Electoral campaigns have the capacity to grow and strengthen chapters as well. Since the political power of socialism emanates from the participation of masses of people, we need numbers. Widespread and systematic contact with the working class through carefully planned large-scale field work and follow-up build DSA and expand our capacity to mobilize.

To build DSA’s political power, we must prioritize building chapters’ capacity to successfully run and win strategic electoral campaigns that advance socialist candidates and politics. Many chapters’ have learned and improved upon their past efforts, but those lessons and experiences have been uneven. Additionally, varying geographies require different strategic considerations (ex. Electing a socialist in NYC is different than running a candidate in the rural South). Moving forward, we must develop better practices for evaluating strategic electoral races and building chapters’ capacity to successfully run candidates in them; build consensus on who we endorse and our expectations; teach chapters how to run successful electoral campaigns, etc. The NEC has already begun a lot of this work, and I look forward to building and expanding upon it with them.

The historical development of racial capitalism in the U.S.; the growing popularity of a white supremacist, economic nationalist, Right-wing ideology; and the abandonment of BIPOC constituencies by the Democratic Party all point to the imperative of developing a democratic socialist movement rooted in communities of color. There are no shortcuts to achieving this, but the histories of prior socialist and communist organizations demonstrate that it is entirely within reach.

Building a more diverse, democratic organization will only happen if we do so intentionally through relational organizing and engaging in shared struggle. Chapters need to organize with communities of color in their localities around specific, material struggles those communities face. It is also imperative that we recruit Black, Indigenous, and comrades of color to DSA, onboard them, and mentor them so they can become organizational leaders. This can include things like intentionally recruiting and training BIPOC members to take on campaign leadership roles, as was done in the PRO Act campaign.

DSA also needs to expand its capacity for translating its materials, meetings, mass calls, etc. Building our capacity for multilingual organizing is a clear way we can diversify and strengthen DSA as a multiracial organization.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

As an explicitly Anti-Capitalist, Socialist organization, DSA understands that the working class is the agent of change in overthrowing capitalism because capitalism depends on workers and cannot function without us. Therefore, building a politicized, powerful, and militant labor movement is integral to building socialism and building power to effectively contest the capitalist class.

After decades of attacks on labor, union density and labor power is at a low point. Most U.S. workers are not unionized and it is common for people to not understand what unions do or their potential power as workers. To overcome these challenges and build power, DSA must prioritize labor organizing and class struggle as workers. This should include mass campaigns (such as the PRO Act campaign) that can politicize hundreds of thousands of people around labor struggles and potentially win structural reforms that will make it easier to organize our workplaces. This must also include expanding DSA's ability to support organizing drives, offer strike support, organize the unorganized, and develop our own members' capacity to organize as workers. As part of the PRO Act campaign, we provided trainings on workplace organizing and workplace organizing conversations. There is a lot to be expanded on there, and by working on strengthening the DSLC, local labor formations, and connections between workers across union locals and in specific sectors, we will develop a stronger foundation for that work as well as more targeted and strategic organizing.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

DSA has a unique and critical role to play in the national landscape of progressive and Left organizations. We are a massive, explicitly socialist organization. Unlike most progressive NGOs, DSA is member-funded, highly democratic, and our power is derived from an authentic and engaged base spanning the entire country (with members across the globe as well!). These elements prime DSA to be a principal vehicle for organizing and articulating the democratic will of the full and authentic multiracial, multiethnic working class. We have a great deal of work to do in order to actualize this in DSA, but it is work that must be done.

It may be strategic to engage in coalitions at times, but coalition-building as a blanket strategy for building power is a false premise. Given DSA’s unique role in the ‘movement landscape,’ we should prioritize investing our energy and resources into building DSA as a democratic, more diverse, working class institution capable of contesting state power, and build power with our neighbors, coworkers, fellow renters, union siblings, and working class communities of color (vs. nonprofit staffers that lack authentic bases).

Speaking from my experience organizing in coalitions, DSA is most capable of being a good coalition partner, representing our members with integrity, and building successful campaigns in partnership with other organizations when we have our own independent base of power. We cannot forsake building the latter.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

The ability of DSA to successfully wield power is hindered by the deficit between National and chapters. Prior to the Ecosocialist Working Group, national working groups constituted approximately a dozen self-selected members who occasionally wrote statements and existed in complete isolation from chapters. Even with the more collaborative and connected ESWG model, there are structural and political limitations to what it and other national working groups can do as the only intermediary between the local and national level. Our ability to pose a formidable threat to Capital; address urgent and existential threats; and eventually govern all hinge on the near-term project of developing more robust infrastructure that expands member democracy, uniformly strengthens our local bases of power, and meaningfully bridges the gap between chapters and National.

There is no manual for this work. Structure serves purpose; structure without purpose is just a more complex form of disorganization. But, as we engage in mass campaigns/projects and build strategic alignment on our goals, the impetus for structure arises and can later form the basis of more permanent formations. Gustavo, Ashik, and I have all experienced this through our work on the National Green New Deal and PRO Act campaign committees, through which we were able to develop entirely new, national infrastructure that outperformed every union and NGO engaged in the campaign. This was possible because we prioritized building alignment among chapters and members who made it possible.

Developing stronger connections between National and chapters will take more than inventing policies and liaising with working groups. The next NPC must lead as organizers who build alignment among chapters and create conditions to develop members as leaders for aspects of this work. This is something I’m excited and ready to do.

I have been developing and organizing a National DSA working group, campaigns, and projects for the past 4 years. With the support of many brilliant comrades, this work has strengthened DSA and our approach to national organizing overall. It is among my top priorities to continue strengthening this work across DSA in ways that will benefit all of our working groups, committees, and members. Given my particular strengths in developing national structures, developing campaign strategies, building connections with the local level, coaching, and previous experience working on the Green New Deal and PRO Act campaign committees, I would be best suited for supporting the Green New Deal committee and DSLC. Additionally, I would be well-suited and interested in supporting the International Committee, Electoral Committee, and Abolition Working Group.

Gustavo Gordillo

Chapter: New York City DSA

Pronouns: He/him

I’m on the steering committees of the Green New Deal Campaign and the PRO Act Campaign, both of which I think have taken on the challenge of cohering DSA into a national body that can move in one direction. I developed the PRO Act Campaign’s field strategy which resulted in 1 million phone calls, tens of thousands of conversations about labor rights in right-to-work states, and flipped two senators. I led this work together with my NPC slate-mates Ashik Siddique and Sydney Ghazarian, and another great comrade and NPC candidate, Laura Gabby.

In my chapter (NYC DSA) I started and headed a statewide campaign to pass legislation to allow New York to build a publicly owned, democratically controlled, renewable energy system. DSA members wrote the bill, created the coalition, and shaped the strategy. It was one of my most meaningful and intense experiences in DSA, I think because we were organizing to win (though we lost), and when the stakes are that high, everything and everyone involved changes.

I’m a member of our Socialists in Office committee, which is a group that meets weekly with the DSA slate in Albany to organize together and to figure out how we can govern together. This is one of the places in the country where we’re actively working out the question of how we build a proto-party, and what the project of class formation will look like with the socialists we elect to office. I’ve worked on electoral races from AOC’s to Julia Salazar’s to last year’s slate. I’m currently co-chairing candidate recruitment for the next cycle of elections in 2022, and spend a lot of time thinking about how to use our parliamentary work to grow the base we need.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

I’ve worked as an organizer at a nonprofit that is largely aligned with DSA, and learned the basic power structure of the nonprofit industrial complex and theory of change that is pervasive within it. Even nonprofit organizations that are allies of DSA face the constraints set by their funders and the limits of a fundamentally undemocratic structure.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

* I was recently on The Dig podcast with two of my slate-mates to discuss our work on the PRO Act Campaign: https://www.thedigradio.com/podcast/organizing-dsas-pro-act-campaign/

* I was on Doug Henwood’s podcast with a comrade to discuss socializing electricity, our privatized power grid, and the Texas Freeze: https://blubrry.com/jacobin/74395583/behind-the-news-cultural-devolution-of-the-right-dsas-public-power-campaign/

* Coverage of a recent civil disobedience that I helped organize: https://www.amny.com/news/climate-activists-cuffed-at-downtown-protest-over-public-renewables-act/

* The NY Daily News accused me of starting a socialist green boot camp: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-socialists-environmental-activists-utilities-green-new-deal-20191018-lmv7whu4nfcpplbjs57knrd7sm-story.html

Why are you running for NPC?

We are in a moment of unprecedented growth for the left. Socialism in the US has not been this strong in 100 years.

There’s a federal power vacuum for us to fill. Working nationally on the steering committees of the GND and PRO Act campaign, I’m astonished that there are really almost no working class-led organizations at the federal level that are designed to fight and defeat the capitalist class with the breadth of membership that DSA has. The NPC has exercised leadership by selecting political priorities. But we’re are still punching below our weight as DSA. And more broadly there’s little federal organization that is working-class led, lots of sign on letters, but there’s not a lot of powerful class struggle organizing however you define that.

I’m running for the NPC because it’s time for DSA to build serious power for the working class, and it’s time to build DSA into a powerful working class institution.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic socialism means working class control over the economy. It is not a platform of policies and demands but rather a project of class struggle, of constant agitation against the ruling class, capitalists, and the elites of the Democratic and Republican Party establishments.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

5 years:

National socialists in office committee

Running a congressional slate of DSA cadre in 2024 (or sooner)

UPS strike & Teamsters election - DSA seriously involved

Expand DSA organizing staff 5-10x

CWA closer to socialist organizing

Win multiple major reforms at the state level in NY & another state at least: climate (Build Public Renewables Act), education (free CUNY), taxes on the rich for public housing and transit

Spanish language branches common in chapters

10 years:

AFT under socialist leadership

Teamsters under semi-socialist leadership

TWU/ATU under socialist leadership

Expand DSA organizing staff ratio to 1:1000 members

1 million DSA members, representative of US working class

DSA helping the Teamsters organize Amazon

Major strikes for a Green New Deal

Win a Green New Deal

Socialism beginning to break through mainstream culture/media

20 years:

30% unionization in US

IBEW under socialist leadership (thanks to the GND we passed 10 years ago lol)

AFSCME under socialist leadership

AFL-CIO contestable by socialists

Neighborhood level socialist institutions common in the US

Socialism commonly depicted in mainstream culture/media, school curricula

Jobs guarantee implemented through socialist organizing

Jamaal Bowman president

Independent socialist political party conceivable

International socialist solidarity & coordination between workers across borders strengthening

To achieve any of this we need to organize at multiple scales and levels: legislative reforms, community organizing, workplace organizing, multiracial recruitment, ability to mobilize nationally in a coordinated way. We need stronger chapters, we need to learn mass fundraising, etc.

Dems have a slim federal majority, their response to the crises we face is weak, and they're setting us up for a potential future Trump-like figure and compounding future crises (financial, ecological, social). But we won't necessarily feel those effects in the next two years yet and need to use that time to build our organization and be less reactive.

We will need to defend our victories from the capitalist class, and face backlash from the Democratic establishment where we’ve won genuine state power. It may become more difficult to recruit and mobilize passively. The financial and social crises from COVID could potentially be delayed and we may see delayed social uprisings, similar to the timing of Occupy after the 2008-9 financial crisis.

Our greatest opportunity is to start spreading lessons between chapters much faster than we’ve done previously. We are onto something explosive in certain parts of the country, especially in our electoral work, and have to expand.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

The working class in the US is disorganized - divided by race, gender, geography, and citizenship - while the ruling class has managed to weather the pandemic consolidating even more power than before. Our role is to cohere the working class to act together and deliberately, through a mass membership organization.

To do this, DSA should fight for transformative reforms, make demands of the government, and actually win. We should also organize in labor unions, and develop a strategy to run slates in union elections, as some comrades have begun to do successfully here and there.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

Strengths:

Beginning to set clear organizing priorities, like the PRO Act

Electoral work in several chapters, especially NYC

Some chapters are organizing to win

100k drive

Growing consensus within certain committees and areas of the org

NY’s Tax the Rich and Public Power campaigns

Portland’s Pre-K ballot measure

Austin Defund

Weaknesses:

No clear national strategy or guiding plan for staff

Undeveloped national leadership

Uneven chapters

Low percentage of chapter leaders carrying out sustained strategic campaigns

Little working class POC recruitment

Weak mobilizing capacity compared to our potential

Need to establish organizing priorities, and do the work to realize them

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

We should prioritize the Green New Deal campaign as our top national legislative priority through the fall to exert as much pressure as possible on Biden’s desperately inadequate infrastructure package. The current NPC approved a plan to pivot the PRO Act campaign toward the infrastructure bill in congress, focusing on demanding a Green New Deal for Public Schools. The work will prioritize base-building among parents, students, school workers unions, and building trades unions in strategic congressional districts – organizing these groups to pressure their congress members. We’ll prioritize deep organizing in fewer districts rather than mobilizing for the maximum number of cosponsors.

Ultimately to win a Green New Deal we need a militant coalition between socialists, service workers (like teachers) and industrial workers (like the building trades). Our primary goal in pushing for a GND for public schools should be to set up those ties and relationships and begin to develop the working class base we need.

DSA works best when we pool our resources and focus on just a few projects, so I don’t think we should work on more than 3 national campaigns at a time (at most).

We should develop more campaigns and demands together with labor unions, or at least with a much better understanding of what organized labor wants, and how we can help achieve those goals. Some examples: green infrastructure, especially public infrastructure; creating jobs and raising wages for the working class in the healthcare industry; tuition-free public college; fully-funded and expanded mass transit; union-built social housing; labor rights reforms (the right to strike, organize, etc.)

These transformative reforms can be used to start to build constituencies for socialism. But we must build the organizing capacity and organizing infrastructure to be able to connect legislative victories to workers and communities.

I also plan to support DSA chapters organizing Defund campaigns tied to expanded social investments, as well as tenant organizing, especially for rent control and other demands that weaken real estate capital.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

The National Electoral Committee’s proposed priority resolution is excellent and I plan to vote for it. I think DSA nationally has not supported electoral organizing enough (even if some individual chapters have) and the NEC has not been sufficiently resourced. The vast majority of DSA chapters do not have independent in-house electoral work, but could and should. Building electoral infrastructure in-house makes irrelevant the Democratic Party establishment’s resources like consultants. We're giving up our power to far weaker groups right now.

DSA should prioritize winning elections over the next two years in order to start building a national party-like organization to elect socialist cadre, and train socialist campaign organizers. We should amplify the lessons of chapters like NYC DSA, Chicago, and others. We should look to Latin America’s mass parties (like MAS in Bolivia) for examples. Where DSA chapters have elected socialists to office, we should use the resources of these offices to organize their districts, build our base, and carry out a shared governing vision. We’ve seen these tactics start to create a powerful challenge to Democratic Party dominance.

We should generally focus on state-level and congressional elections because these scales of government have greater power over budgets, spending, and public investment – critical terrains for socialist struggle.

We need to train a nationwide network of electoral cadre and socialist leaders. The limiting factors to our campaigning capacity is often not the number of volunteers available but the number of campaign leaders available.

Electoral work has been the basis for most of our success. The threat of a credible primary challenge from the left has been our greatest source of leverage to win transformative reforms, particularly in blue states. We see the results all around NY. We can thank a powerful electoral model that builds capacity within our organization rather than locking up knowledge among consultants and NGO leaders.

We should recruit working class people of color to our organization directly.

We should adopt base-building organizing models used by ACORN, unions like UNITE-HERE, and tenant organizers. However, these organizing methods need to be adapted so they can be carried out by volunteers, rather than full-time staff. Stomp Out Slumlords in MDC DSA has begun to do this very impressively, and we should emulate their organizer trainings on a national scale.

Consistent contact is necessary to build trust and relationships with working class people of color we are organizing with, combined with 1-on-1s that can push people out of their comfort zones and move them to take collective action. One canvassing conversation alone will almost never cut it, we must focus on multiple passes, multiple conversations, and points of contact for intentional recruitment. It’s more important to talk to 500 people twice, than to talk to 1000 people once. We’ve begun to experiment with recontacting methods like this through a few legislative campaigns (tax the rich and public power) in my chapter, but are still just beginning and learning.

We need to track our member demographic data more closely. We should have a member census (that uses multiple contact methods) to get a baseline of our membership’s racial composition. The form to become a DSA member should ask for your racial identity (it can be optional), just as we ask about union membership. The PRO Act campaign’s dozens of field leads were over 50% POC, largely because we asked about racial identity in the initial campaign sign up form. My chapter’s ecosocialist working group sign up form also asks about racial identity, and this allows us to prioritize having 1-on-1s with BIPOC members, and facilitates developing leadership among socialists of color.

In my opinion coalition work is not a solution for this problem. There are valid reasons for DSA to join coalitions, but I think recruiting new members of color is not one of them. I have not seen coalition work in my chapter lead to a significant change in the composition of our membership."

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

We need a labor strategy that is more focused than what is being proposed at the convention I think. We can’t do everything. At the same time the labor movement is dying and we will never know how to turn it around without experimenting, so I empathize and don’t presume to have the answers.

I’d like to see more members try to challenge for power in their unions the way we do in the Democratic Party. In some unions it might be strategic for members to run for elected leadership as a way of gaining access to organizing resources that can then be used to grow and deepen rank and file organization. (A massive rank and file base won’t always precede winning elections in unions.)

We should not be afraid to talk about legislation, politics, and non-shop-floor or non-contract concerns. We need to politicize the labor movement.

I believe the rank and file strategy can work, but I think it requires much more administrative support, training, and organizing resources than anyone has dedicated to it so far.

Beyond these initial thoughts, I mostly defer to the labor organizers in DSA who are actually leading and carrying out this work.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

I think DSA, both at the national level and within chapters, should be more cautious and careful about entering coalitions with other progressive organizations. I’ve been in coalitions, especially as a young, inexperienced organizer, where other strategic organizations taught me a huge amount about my local power structure and how to pressure and move it.

But these types of coalitions are very rare. We should be honest about that, and develop guides with criteria that can help chapters assess which coalitions are demobilizing and draining, and which can be empowering. Moreover when we enter coalitions with progressive nonprofits, we are almost always going to be in coalition with undemocratic organizations, and we should be clear-eyed about the implications. We have a different model and theory of change from many progressive groups, and other groups (whether justified or not) often feel threatened by it.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

NPC members should have one-on-ones with chapter leaders consistently. The national organization is only ever going to be as strong as our chapters, and having organizing relationships between chapters and national, and connecting DSA leaders nationally is vital. The Green New Deal campaign tapped leaders in 60+ chapters to drive the campaign’s strategy, a process we should perhaps replicate.

Organizing campaigns are key for sustaining the links between chapters and national, and among chapters themselves. We’ve had several legislative campaigns in NY state with many DSA chapters, the VA and AZ chapters coordinated closely for the PRO Act. Running statewide electoral slates among various chapters could also be very unifying.

Creating a national database of organic leaders for NPC-wide use, and for priority-campaign use seems like a priority to me. Staff field organizers have lists like these, but NPC members should be involved too. (They may already be.)

National Electoral Committee

Multiracial Organizing Committee (if the convention votes to form it)

Green New Deal Committee

Ashik Siddique

Chapter: Metro DC DSA

Pronouns: He/Him

joined DSA after Trump’s election in January 2017, and have been involved in a range of organizing at the chapter and national levels of the organization, including:

—Serving on the Metro DC DSA chapter’s Steering Committee from 2018-2019

—Helping to build structures for the national DSA Ecosocialist Working Group before serving two terms on its steering committee, planning political education events, and overseeing the collaborative drafting of the WG’s ecosocialist Green New Deal principles.

— Serving as a member of the Green New Deal Campaign Committee since the GND campaign was voted a national priority at our 2019 convention. We synthesized a research report on the organizing landscape around climate, and did extensive chapter outreach in preparation for a two-day GND Strategy Summit with representatives from over 60 chapters in September, to ground ourselves in existing chapter capacity and ongoing efforts, assess organizing needs, and build internal alignment and mobilization around a coordinated, strategic campaign.

—Organizing DSA’s campaign to pass the PRO Act as the first phase of DSA’s GND campaign, along with comrades in the Democratic Socialist Labor Commission, with a field team that led DSA members in making over 1 million calls, with tens of thousands of conversations about labor rights in right-to-work states that flipped two senators, and built organizing capacity in chapters in key states to target senators.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

I’m originally from Brooklyn, NYC, where my family moved after immigrating from Bangladesh. I was politicized as a Muslim teenager after 9/11, when members of my family were surveilled and targeted by police, and then through Occupy Wall Street in 2011. I got involved in climate organizing around 2014 with The Climate Mobilization, where I developed digital campaigns and managed admin infrastructure for a national network of activists. That experience gave me skills that translated well to elements of organizing DSA campaigns, and also further politicized me to the left as I came to understand the limits of nonprofit-led activism in meeting the scale of the global ecological crisis, as well as how deeply climate change is intertwined with capitalism and imperialism.

I now work as a researcher on federal militarized spending at the progressive think tank the Institute for Policy Studies (where my coworkers & I have newly unionized with the Washington-Baltimore News Guild!), which has sharpened my sense of left political history in the United States, as well as further highlighted how much more mass organizing is needed beyond the constraints of foundation-funded nonprofits to build working class power to win the world we need.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

I was recently on The Dig podcast with two of my slate-mates, Gustavo Gordillo and Sydney Ghazarian, to discuss our work on the PRO Act Campaign, and the work it took to organize a nationally coordinated campaign with strong buy-in from across our whole organization: https://www.thedigradio.com/podcast/organizing-dsas-pro-act-campaign/

On this episode of Delete Your Account, Sydney and I discuss the PRO Act in the context of labor history:

https://deleteyouraccount.libsyn.com/episode-202-going-pro

I co-wrote this article with Sydney on how the PRO Act fits into organizing for a Green New Deal.

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/to-win-a-green-new-deal-pass-the-pro-act

Why are you running for NPC?

I am running for NPC to continue working with other NPC members, national WGs and commissions, staff, and organized chapters and at-large members to strengthen DSA’s ability to run coordinated mass campaigns that flex our power across the whole org.

If elected to NPC, my experience on the GND & PRO Act campaign, especially in collaborating with labor organizers on the Democratic Socialist Labor Commission, would provide useful insight into how we can build the whole organization through the democratically decided priorities our membership renews or newly affirms at this year’s convention.

My experience building the Ecosocialist WG into a functional body with broad chapter participation would translate well to building up other formations with clear support across many DSA chapters, like the Abolition WG. NPC is tasked with guiding the work of national staff, who are critical in supporting our volunteer organizing, and I believe our convention should provide a strong mandate for more focused political direction than we granted in 2019. I believe it is also the NPC’s role to assess what practices are working well across DSA chapters, and transmit them more effectively across the whole organization through trainings and organizing resources.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

Democratic socialism is a process of building working class power to achieve collective control of the economy and political system, so resources are managed for the flourishing of the many, not the private consumption of the few. In the 21st century, when ecological and social systems are breaking down from capitalist exploitation, this means decommodifying survival—no one’s ability to live should be limited by their ability to work or to pay.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

Within 5 years (by 2026), I would like DSA to have developed core elements of a party apparatus, with fully independent organizing infrastructure that can co-govern with elected socialists at multiple levels of government—including a congressional slate of DSA cadre, and upwards of 30-50 Reps in the House and multiple Senators who are advancing DSA’s agenda.

Within 10 years, major strikes with mass participation from labor unions with socialist leadership will have won materially consequential, highly visible, and explicitly politicized victories toward a Green New Deal. To get there, we have to keep focused on training organizers through struggles for non-reformist reforms that build bases in working class communities and institutions.

As DSA’s electoral and legislative campaigns keep racking up wins, we will face increasing backlash from the political establishment. This will take the form of outright state repression, but more often it will take the form of increasingly strident public attacks against us from Democrats and Republicans alike, while self-described progressive figures undermine our work and police the acceptable boundaries of left demands.

In the aftermath of mass uprisings for Black Lives, millions of dollars in liberal foundation funding are being funneled to organizations and political figures that may advance certain aspects of racial justice, but serve to weaponize identity politics against working class formation. The only way past is through. The challenge of deeply multiracial organizing is a great necessity, an opportunity for mass campaigns that also base-build in ways that bypass nonprofit-led advocacy models, organizing with and developing the leadership of Black, brown, Indigenous, and immigrant comrades so we can advance and actually win universalist working class policies that are responsive to racialized disparities.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

To stop planetary catastrophe in the limited time we have left, the capacity of the state is necessary. Capital relies increasingly on the state. To weaken capital, a socialist organization in the U.S. today must contest for political power in the state, which can in turn generate and spill into struggles in other areas of life, especially when in sync with workplace and tenant militancy.

To contest state power, the critical task is class formation. The working class in the U.S. is fractured along many lines, of identity, geography, economic sector, incarceration, and legal status. A socialist org must be focused on building power for transformative non-reformist reforms that bring working class people together in struggle across differences.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

Our major strengths are articulating a clear vision for working class mass politics as an alternative to the two-party political system, and putting it into practice through outward-facing mass campaigns. This has served us well through engaging in the Bernie 2020 campaign, and provided the basis for our massive growth and active recruitment in the past two years.

Chapters all over the country are testing a wide range of organizing strategies, modeling successes, and facing challenges that are instructive to the rest of the organization. National formations are assessing what works or doesn’t, and under what conditions, and coordinating campaign work and resource development that chapters would not be able to do easily on their own.

This year, DSA’s ability to pull off the PRO Act campaign gave many organizers in smaller or more geographically distributed chapters tools, goals, and skills trainings to reengage their members after a difficult time of lessened activity due to COVID, and built new capacity that will serve them well beyond this campaign.

However, national organizing can be opaque or appears inaccessible to many members. DSA structures differ significantly from chapters in ways that can be confusing to our membership, and it has been challenging to create effective national structures that match DSA’s extraordinary growth across 200+ chapters and organizing committees.

Organizer development and mobilizing capacity are still highly uneven across DSA’s membership, and it falls largely to chapters to develop effective organizers through local campaigns, and figure out how to mobilize members around actions or events. This is a barrier to building DSA into a more fully multiracial vehicle for working class power.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

Since the Green New Deal campaign became a national priority at 2019, all the work to get it off the ground has taught me that in order to be viable, nationally coordinated work designated as external organizational priorities should be rooted firmly in demands, organizing methods, and goals that have been demonstrated across DSA chapters, with organizers prepared to carry out campaign goals with strong buy-in from a critical mass of chapters.

The climate crisis will continue to be a key terrain of struggle for 21st century socialism, and DSA should continue to articulate & demonstrate a clear ecological politics for the working class through a Green New Deal, as an alternative to feckless liberal environmentalism that is no threat to capital. GND demands should include public power over energy systems, and public investments to expand and decarbonize public services like schools, mass transit, and housing.

Expanding labor organizing rights and fostering worker militancy are critical preconditions toward winning all other strategic demands in the United States. DSA should keep building on the work of over 100 chapters to pass the PRO Act and continue to champion rights to organize in the workplace.

National DSA formations on Housing Justice, Abolition, and Medicare for All, are well positioned to coordinate work across many chapters that have ongoing relevant work. At the state level, regional chapter formations might consider organizing around widely felt demands, like health justice campaigns building on the work of Medicare for All, defunding police to reinvest in real social needs, and rent control. Paired with electoral campaigns when possible, fights around government budgets could bring together multiple strategic demands, and also be an opportunity for organizing with unionized workers in key sectors.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

As the NEC strategy document lays out, “chapters should view elected officials as a vehicle for organizing campaigns, and vice versa.” Elections of DSA candidates to local government have already been critical to advancing our programmatic goals in chapters with well-developed electoral capacity, such as Chicago and NYC, where electeds are operating with ever-greater discipline as a legislative bloc in coordination with their DSA chapters. These strategies are working well, and NEC should continue assessing DSA’s wins and losses to train all electorally interested chapters in the conditions that make elections contestable and winnable for socialists.

Chapters like Maine and Portland DSA have won significant ballot measures, which can be test cases for further electoral campaigns. Widespread and systematic contact with the working class through carefully planned large-scale field work and follow-up build DSA and expand our capacity to mobilize and build power for elections.

The greatest national breakthroughs in climate politics since 2018 have been shaped by DSA-aligned Congress candidates like AOC and Rashida Tlaib, and this year expanded “Squad” members Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman have continued building the national profile of universalist Green New Deal policies like public power. In recent months, DSA electeds have pushed political boundaries for solidarity with Palestine and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Continuing to build our electoral capacity from the lowest levels of government will build a long-term bench of candidates who can contest higher office in direct organized relationship with DSA’s membership.

We must recruit Black, Indigenous, and people of color comrades directly and intentionally into DSA. This may include organizers in DSA chapters building trust with and working with nonprofit or activist organizations that already have bases in working class communities of color, but ultimately there are no shortcuts to building DSA itself into a multiracial mass organization. Our national guidance on multiracial recruitment and retention must be based on assessing and building on what is demonstrably working across chapters.

One example is that DSA’s housing and tenant organizing campaigns seem to be demonstrating considerable strength at base-building. In my chapter, Metro DC DSA, the Stomp Out Slumlords tenant organizing campaign have been adapting organizer trainings from unions like UNITE HERE to teach volunteers structured organizing methods designed to facilitate deep organizing conversations with people who may have totally different life experiences, and build trust to commit to a shared organizing structure. This is a specific training model that DSA campaigns can consider developing at a national scale.

DSA’s language accessibility can also continue to improve, in conjunction with campaign plans to organize specifically with communities that speak primarily languages other than English, as we did in the PRO Act campaign with bilingual phonebank sessions prepared in English and Spanish.

I believe that the biggest barrier to recruiting and retaining Black, Indigenous, and people of color is the lack of sufficient mobilizing structure that is well integrated into our campaign organizing. In my years of organizing with DSA, I’ve met many people of color who came to local DSA meetings and expressed interest in organizing with us, then fell away. I’ve since reconnected with a bunch of them, some who have subsequently plugged into some other aspect of our work & some who have disengaged, and the most common reason people gave for not immediately getting engaged was feeling like they did not have immediate things to plug into that seemed within their ability, and lacked guidance and encouragement on how to engage. Metro DC DSA has developed an impressive member mobilizing structure over the past year, which has been remarkably successful in keeping a critical mass of our membership engaged, including many newer members of color. These practices could be easily plugged into DSA’s Growth & Development Committee and distributed widely for more chapters to consider.

The PRO Act campaign was tasked by the current NPC with developing & testing best practices for intentionally recruiting, retaining, and developing BIPOC comrades as organizers and leaders in DSA, and we are currently evaluating what we’ve done to this end so far. One concrete thing I can already report is that over 50% of the phonebank leads we recruited to train & oversee over 1500 phone and textbankers have been BIPOC. This is a concrete example of how we can intentionally develop the skills & leadership of BIPOC comrades in DSA, and I look forward to helping develop, evaluate, and transmit many more concrete practices like this across DSA that can help us address the concerns we all share about that we can become the multiracial working class org that we all agree we must be.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

Union density is approaching historic lows, but the current level of unionization of the workforce is actually comparable to that in the US at the beginning of the 1930s—and an upswing of militant labor activity, along with massive public pressure for economic relief throughout the Great Depression, raised expectations on the government and won major concessions from the ruling class throughout the Roosevelt administration. There are no shortcuts to labor power, especially amid intensifying unemployment and worker precarity. Rebuilding, growing, and radicalizing the labor movement into a fighting force, to shape the terms of a just transition for all workers and a caring economy for all, is critical to winning a Green New Deal this decade.

While the left lacks power in the federal government, worker organization can (and has) served as a parallel, oppositional force capable of wielding power against capitalist interests and winning concessions from the state. In particular, DSA should focus on:

(1) expanding and radicalizing organized labor, by campaigning for strategic demands in coordination with DSA union members and empowering DSA union members to engage in political education in their unions

(2) building and strengthening national networks of rank and file union members in sectors like the building trades, transportation, and education

(3) implementing popular education and worker organizer trainings for DSA members and allies—union, non-union, and unemployed workers—focused on the intersection of labor and climate, and our other national priorities.

This multi-pronged approach mirrors the multi-tactic labor strategy proposed at this year’s Convention, focusing on both expanding organized labor (“organize the unorganized”) and radicalizing organized labor (“rank and file”) with the goal of empowering socialist leadership in the labor movement.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

We can’t get free with 501(c)3. DSA’s power is based on our internal democratic structure, and reliance on funding from our own members, rather than the foundation-funded nonprofit-industrial complex, which can condition the advocacy and methods of many progressive and issue-based organizations in various ways.

We should be judicious and restrained about how we engage in coalitions. When possible in strategic campaigns, we should aim to work with organizations that have membership models, clear democratic structures, and staff who are unionized and able to shape the conditions of their work—not just being led by managers or professional activists who are unaccountable to workers or members.

Sometimes it may be strategic to work with organizations that do not meet these conditions. Whatever the structure or model of particular organizations in a coalition, we should engage only when we are able to shape the direct of the coalition as respected partners, and maintain our own power with a clearly defined range of action that demonstrably contributes to achieving coalition goals.

We should also be aware that there may be considerable overlap between DSA members and many staff and volunteer leaders in other organizations, which may make them more receptive to working toward common goals. Local chapters of organizations may also vary widely from community to community, so local DSA chapters may find it favorable to work with them even if it may be less viable for DSA nationally to work directly with their national counterparts.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

I’m in favor of more coordination across chapters and the national organization, on strategic campaigns as well as in the development of political education and skills trainings that develop members as organizers.

Organizational capacity directly depends on the number of leaders or cadre in a chapter. I have found through national campaign work that larger chapters tend to have more volunteer capacity to offer than smaller ones, and in well-run national structures this can be channeled effectively in ways welcomed by organizers in smaller chapters. NPC can help shape these relationships

I’ve been especially excited to see how the PRO Act campaign has energized more statewide and regional collaboration across DSA chapters, which have developed impressive capacity through this shared work, and look forward to assessing what kinds of regional structures might better intermediate between chapters and the national organization.

Through the Green New Deal campaign, I helped build consensus around shared campaign goals with organizers from over 60 DSA chapters, coordinating efforts and pooling volunteer resources to support organizing across chapters of many sizes. My experience with this level of national coordination across DSA suits me well for NPC.

As an NPC member I would hope to continue focusing on GND and ecosocialist organizing, and am particularly interested in supporting committees for multiracial organizing, political education, and chapter/OC pipeline.

Aaron Warner

Chapter: Los Angeles DSA

Pronouns: He/Him, They/Them

I joined DSA in January of 2017, and after a significant amount of time spent searching for work where I felt the most useful, I have settled into my chapter's Mutual Aid Committee. Along the way, I have been at the forefront of organizing and facilitating communication between my small, exurban community in Los Angeles County and a centrally-focused chapter. I've become a direct action marshaling trainer and liaison for my home branch of a large and growing chapter, helping to expand our capacity and participation for effective community defense. Before that, I served as the bottom-liner for our child watch service at chapter and branch meetings, allowing members with children to more effectively participate in chapter work. My focus has historically been on trying to furnish the most effective and welcoming organizational culture and structure within my home chapter, and negotiating internal structuring and community-building work is always in a push-and-pull relationship with the prioritization of ""external"" campaigns. The internal work of ""keeping the lights on"" isn't attractive to everyone, nor should it necessarily be, but maintaining a working and healthy space requires intentional and deliberate ongoing work with at times has been neglected.

My proudest and most fulfilling moments in DSA have always been when I've been party to cross-chapter solidarity. I've been elected to serve as a National Convention Delegate three times now, and on my second term I met a comrade in Virginia who was generous enough to fund my trip to Portland, to help serve as a marshal and street medic for my comrades in that city's chapter, on a day when fascist and reactionary provocateur gangs were descending on their homes. The winter before that trip, I attended the right-wing campus astroturf operation, Turning Point USA's annual summit in West Palm Beach to do opposition research and to investigate a mounting possible danger to our student comrades in YDSA. The local DSA chapter in Palm Beach was incredibly hospitable and helpful to me, and offered a safe and welcoming open door when it was time for me to leave the summit. It's in these acts of trust and solidarity that I see the germ of what DSA could grow into as a robust, effective, interconnected nationwide network of collaborating radicals.

What activist/political/organizing experience have you had outside DSA? Share any lessons or experiences that you feel are relevant.

Before the expansion of DSA's membership, I was a budding self-educating socialist without any movement or organization to join with. My experience attempting to protest the Iraq War in my small, reactionary suburb as a teenager was profoundly instructive, as well as my work in the nonprofit sector as a young adult. I can't whittle these experiences to singular lessons learned, but they were deeply illuminating regarding the limitations and inherent contradictions in mainstream, liberal forms of political engagement.

Have you ever held a position within or on behalf of law enforcement (such as a police union organizer)?

Fuck no.

If you would like to share any links to articles you’ve written, a portfolio, or similar resources you feel will be useful for members to get to know you, do so here.

Here's an article I self-published regarding my investigative trip to TPUSA's summit

Why are you running for NPC?

I see DSA at a moment of profound potential that should be cultivated, and I want to serve my comrades by being a proponent for under-acknowledged organizational practices. Traditionally, national strategies within DSA have been focused on electoral campaigns and work in collaboration with traditional labor unions. While these terrains of struggle shouldn't be vacated, they are just one of a vast array of possible sites of struggle that should be explored and experimented with. DSA's notoriety could be seized upon to not just advance socialist outlooks in the sense of "shifting the Overton window", but in propagating and promoting forms of proletarian organization that build power outside of traditional formations. It's my contention that proletarian democracy must have substantively different forms of structuring itself and struggling against its class antagonists than the bourgeois forms we see around us today. We must also redefine "politics" for working-class people around the taking and expressing of power in all forms of life, and not just at the ballot box or in the existing halls of bourgeois administration.

What does ‘democratic socialism’ mean to you?

I believe that "democracy" is a corrective to the "authoritarian" nature of all class-stratified society; allowing the masses to indirectly sway the ruling institutions that already directly impose power over them. Therefore, a socialism that has properly advanced and abolished class distinctions would essentially make formal "democracy" redundant. I see "democratic socialism" as a process that gets us to a dramatically different world, and therefore must avoid the pitfalls that would stall or stymie it such as bureaucratization or rightward drift.

Where would you like DSA and the broader socialist left to be five years from now? How about ten or twenty years? And, broadly, what does our organization need to do to get us there?

My ideal world would be one wherein DSA, or an organization or network that has grown out of it like DSA developed from DSOC, would be like a nebula for the left; cohering the raw swirling matter of working-class struggle and giving birth to bright-burning stars of condensed action; new labor unions, tenant unions, unhoused and unemployed workers' councils, social movement formations, and new forms of proletarian organization that are all knit together to collaborate, strategize, and cohere for both specific campaigns applying to each formation, and broad campaigns for gains that would empower them all. I believe that our organization needs to become far less afraid to "walk and chew gum at the same time", and to allow smaller formations to organize more specific and targeted communities around the particularities of their struggles, and to build trust in all the myriad, heterogenous pockets of the working class. American workers are highly atomized, and to build a "Class for Itself" we have to recognize and grapple with that reality, rather than ignore its uncomfortable contradictions.

As we emerge from the worst of the CoVID-19 pandemic and "return to normal" we are going to see an expansion of the austerity state, without a countervaling force like a Sanders presidential run. I believe echoes of the post-George Floyd rebellions will arise, and within those moments we have the opportunity to build cohesion between the antiausterity and anticapitalist movements, and social justice movements developing today. We have the opportunity to drive a harder wedge between social justice movements and the Democratic party that sacrifices them at the altar of Capital, setting the stage for the eventual dissolution of the party, and the construction of a constitutionally working-class, social justice-focused independent political formation out of its betrayed voting base. Simply put, while the US has plenty of "leftists", it does not have a coherent, organized "Left". The next two years will be fraught with crisis, and might include the broader delegitimization of mainstream liberalism. We can and must seize the opportunity to build a coherent social base for socialist politics, and not be caught flat-footed.

What is the role and purpose of a socialist organization in the United States today?

To develop more and more highly-skilled socialists and to build a coherent social base for a future working-class party, one which is constitutionally and structurally different in form and activity from the existing bourgeois parties or current attempts at a vanguard.

Reflecting on the last two years, discuss what you see are the strengths and the weaknesses of DSA.

I see our strengths as contained within the diversity of thought and practice within DSA. I see our core weaknesses as encapsulated within the factionalism, power-hoarding, and failure to develop inactive or underserved members into political agents, pursued by the most engaged, but small and narrowly-focused formations at the national and chapter level.

What policies and demands should DSA prioritize championing over the next two years? Why?

Chiefly I believe we should be building around countering the inevitable post-CoVID austerity, delegitimizing the Democratic Party for their fecklessness and ceaseless rightward drift, and engaging and serving the developing police and prison abolitionist movement. These demands are timely and can open up more space by which working-class people can be motivated to organize.

What’s your assessment of DSA’s National Electoral Strategy and how do you think socialists should be engaging with elections in the short term?

I believe that electoral work needs to be sharpened and more focused from where it is now. It should be common practice for the organization to at least publish open criticism of endorsed candidates who violate our values or platform when in office, and even to publicly retract past endorsements if warranted. We should be focused on where the early 20th-century "Sewer Socialist" strategy can be employed at the local level, to engage municipal voters in the battle against real estate for power over city politics, and targeting local seats where a socialist candidate can deliver immediately visible material wins for constituents. We should also be seeking to deliberately develop our active members into candidates, rather than accepting political aspirants who simply join just to get an endorsement.

I endorse the open discussion of how racism is constitutive within the construction of capitalism, and the incorporation of this critique into all political educational materials. We need our members to be ready to engage and interface with the movements that activate communities of color, and to build non-contrived, organic trust and connections with them. White and otherwise non-minoritized members should be encouraged and challenged to see white supremacy as a structure that makes them collaborators of capitalism rather than combatants against it. We should also promote and encourage members of color to build connections between DSA and their own communities, but on their terms, with their leadership, and with trust in them to steer the process. If this requires the imposing of rules such as "No white member can veto or stop a member of color's work on a project focused on a community of color", then so be it. We also need to vastly expand and empower our grievance and harassment teams so that instances of racist behavior within the organization both overt and covert, can be addressed and so that this organization becomes one that members of color can fruitfully organize within, and that communities of color can collaborate with.

How do you think DSA should engage with the labor movement?

I am deeply proud and heartened by DSA's labor work, but I believe it can go farther. The decades of disempowerment and retrenchment have made our labor unions within the US anti-solidaristic and class-collaborationist in order to survive. In addition to building union power we must also help advocate for and to rebuild union militancy and radicalism where we can. We should support wildcat strikes as they arise, and must recognize and engage strategically when contradictions between workers and their union leadership or administration arise. We should aid in the creation of new, self-affiliating unions in shops where our members have relationships, and collaborate with worker formations outside the traditional union form such as the Congress of Essential Workers. We shouldn't be afraid to have a critical appraisal of the traditional trade union structure, even while extolling its virtue as a tool of worker power when engaging in political education. While we can look to the trade unions for guidance in our political strategy, we should also continue to recognize when the political desires of one union are contrary to the empowerment of the working class as a whole.

How should DSA engage in coalitions with other progressive and issue-based organizations?

When possible, we should be looking to form helpful and equitable coalitions with other organizations, as long as it does not require any sacrifice of our core principles or politics. We should never endorse a candidate that refuses to call themselves a socialist just because a coalition partner champions their candidacy. We should allow members to engage in direct actions with other organizations as long as they are made fully aware of the risks and can make an informed decision. Through these relationships, we should aspire to make DSA an effective and helpful presence in these other struggles, and to help knit these struggles into the greater socialist movement, and to facilitate the radicalization of progressive activists.

What should the relationship between the national organization and local chapters look like--how should they engage each other and what role should NPC members take in shaping that relationship?

National should help facilitate cross--chapter collaboration, and from listening to the needs of chapters, NPC members should investigate and report on inter-organizational struggles that can be addressed either at the chapter or national level. NPC members should recognize the needs of chapters and members in smaller or more rural chapters in poorer areas with less resources, and collaborate with those members to find solutions in collaboration with neighboring chapters. It is not a matter of empowering locals "over" the NPC or strengthening the NPC to "supervise" locals, but to facilitate nationwide collaboration and communication. NPC members should grant a national platform to concerns, needs, and priorities when they arise from various chapters.

I come from a communications background and my chief experience within DSA has been in my home chapter's Mutual Aid and Agitprop Committees. I would likely be most comfortable with the national Mutual Aid Working Group, the Antifascist Working Group, Democratic Left publishing, or other communications, media, or political education efforts.

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