Viewpoint: National DSA Convention Says: Invest Big in Our Future
by Anthony D
The following article represents the opinion of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of the Detroit Socialist Editorial and Writers’ Collective or Detroit DSA as a whole.
This was my first in-person DSA Convention. I was a delegate to the 2021 Convention that was held online but there’s no way to match the relationship building and knowledge gained from being in the same room as nearly 1,000 other DSA members from around the country. The organization as a whole has matured and feels more prepared to take itself seriously by making big investments in our organizing priorities compared to 2021 Convention. Below are what I believe to be some of the most important votes that took place.
We passed a resolution that allocates $200k to Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA). A similar resolution failed by a wide margin at 2021 convention and YDSA has been without serious funding since. This investment is long overdue — YDSA membership has increased 150% in the past year, meaning they are growing as the rest of DSA shrinks.
YDSA members are going so hard on unionizing student workers and graduate students and are winning wage campaigns for student workers. The seriousness of their convention debate is multiple layers beyond where DSA’s Convention is at. They’re also some of the best public speakers in the organization, which means they are already set to be “permanent persuaders” for socialism in their future lives and workplaces. There’s not a better possible investment to make than in the future organizers of the labor and socialist movements in this country, especially as they enter their careers and can choose strategic sectors to organize in like teaching, healthcare, and logistics or bring an organizing mindset to any other workplace.
We rejected an amendment to the National Labor Commission’s (NLC) consensus resolution that would have struck language about DSA building, supporting, and collaborating with Labor Notes. I voted against this amendment because Detroit DSA recently launched a workplace organizing training program through Rashida Tlaib’s office aimed at her constituents that was facilitated by DSA members trained on the Labor Notes curriculum. This was only possible because of the relationship our chapter has with Labor Notes and we were able to have facilitators ready to immediately step in and run the training.
Some delegates may have worried that DSA having an explicit relationship with Labor Notes could risk relationships with union leadership, but Rashida’s training was held at the local teachers union hall where the president — who was part of the reform caucus that just took over union leadership — helped to invite her coworkers to the training and spoke about how they have used Labor Notes materials in the past to guide their reform efforts within the union.
We passed a resolution called “1% for the 99%” that encourages members to give 1% of their salary to DSA in dues. The National DSA Twitter account has been retweeting an avalanche of members immediately signing up to increase their dues because they’re excited about how we’ve allocated spending at Convention. Members can update their dues payment here if they wish to do so.
This is a good step to help alleviate the budget deficit that has appeared as many members’ dues have lapsed, and to meet the cost of ambitious work we took on at the convention. Much like the ~$23k that we raised during our Detroit For All electoral campaign in 2021, the money we need can be found when folks believe in the cause and believe their contribution can make a difference.
We passed resolutions that will pay the co-chairs of the National Political Committee (NPC) and NLC to be full-time DSA organizers so they can quit their jobs and focus on building our organization. In the past, these roles have been filled by members that have taken on close to 40 hours of organizing work each week on top of their full-time jobs. Now, these co-chairs will be freed up to act as both organizers and spokespeople and fill a public leadership vacuum that has existed for as long as I’ve been in DSA. During our bump in membership from the Bernie campaign, Bernie was acting as an unofficial leader of DSA. Unfortunately, that moment has passed and our public leadership void has defaulted to our elected officials. Maria Svart, DSA’s National Director since 2011, hasn’t made public appearances on behalf of the organization since 2019 for reasons that are unclear.
Having public figures for our organization will also help to alleviate our budget deficit as they recruit new members that will both pay dues and take on more organizing work that could include setting up an expanded fundraising operation. There remain significant fundraising opportunities — for example, both our chapter and national organization lack fully stocked online merchandise stores that could help us passively raise money. DSA members love merch!
I’m excited for the potential of DSA leaders to rise to the same name-recognition level as Sara Nelson, Shawn Fain, and AOC. The future of the socialist movement looks bright.
[The Detroit Socialist encourages any member who attended the DSA Convention to send their own report. Write to the newspaper Slack channel.]
The Detroit Socialist is produced and run by members of Detroit DSA’s Newspaper Collective. Interested in becoming a member of Detroit DSA? Go to metrodetroitdsa.com/join to become a member. Send a copy of the dues receipt to: membership@metrodetroitdsa.com in order to get plugged in to our activities!
