My friend clocked me so hard at the bar I fell off my stool - she said “I’m the person who invites people to basement shows you’re the person who invites people to sex parties on 9/11”
it's very odd to me that a widespread belief seems to be taking hold amongst the 'og marxists' in DSA that casting a vote is a moral expression of one's goals rather than a tactical expression of acknowledgement of material reality, especially as regards the climate crisis.
It’s really odd to me that a widespread belief appears to be that supporting the Democrats moves our society incrementally closer to socialism. There is no evidence for this argument.
Embarrassing to see a co chair of DSA hand waving at the most historic delegate related organizing since 1964 and the Fannie Lou Hamer MFDP speech. Touch grass and do some real fuckin power building for a change
It's really sad that people don't think AOC has a thought in her brain and is just being fully strung along by puppeteers.... like maybe actually its fine for her to do a lil shitposting @ the presidential candidate who doesn't know how many members of Congress there are lmao
i'm under no illusion that casting a vote for harris in the fall is not going to bring socialism closer - but i'm also not under the illusion that trump and harris are equally bad, or that billions in oil money are going to one candidate for a reason.
This is accelerationism from a national political committee member of DSA, should be named as such, and should be squarely denounced as an inappropriate position to take for someone elected to carry forward the health and well-being of the largest socialist org in the US.
@kyclasswarrior
it seems more like fear that not doing it will make it harder to go towards our goals, which… I don’t think it would harm us nearly as much as doing this out of fear every four years
i don’t get why it’s weird for DSA factions to put their politics explicitly out into the world when there are other factions with staff, higher dues requirements, sectarian discipline requirements of npc members, and entire parallel orgs replicating work of key DSA bodies
The US socialist movement does not have the right to sit out whether or not the president who recognized Jerusalem as Israeli capital and empowered worst blocs of the Israeli apartheid will be re-elected. Moralizing about it through smokescreen of NLRB q is worse than useless.
@_MattMilholland
Anyone who votes for a genocidal imperialist is. Or mislead, ignorant, etc. Regardless of what label you want to slap on them, you have to be willing to tell them they are wrong, or they never will stop being wrong.
Glad to see that cooler and more strategic heads prevailed at the NPC meeting today. If you'd like to plug in to anti-Trump popular front efforts being led by GW and SMC please sign this letter and get in motion for down ballot + ongoing campaign work!
@ahSHEEK
@francesloretta
@caratobe
The proposal failed, with GW, SMC, and BnR voting against - now on to discussion about convention planning, membership data, comms committee restructuring. Will share key highlights as we go!
this is incorrect and a perfect encapsulation of why we need to be talking much more about how DSA became what it became and all of the work that goes in to organizing "organic bumps".
@escargotpro_
It had a really low threshold for entry and it happened to call itself Democratic Socialist at a time when Bernie also called himself Democratic Socialist. This still seems like a happy accident and not any kind of organizing success on old DSA's part.
Deliberately throwing newly radicalizing activists and organizers into unstrategic escalations to point out the repressive capability of the state is in fact demobilizing to our movement. Any organization claiming that that will build power in the long run is wrong.
lmao
@breadrosesDSA
decided to bloc vote against NVFG, as was correct, and then immediately split the baby on the question of whether or not all statements should be debated in the cesspool of the forum where partisan moderators enforce a political double standard, very cool
Instead of moralizing about “voting” or “volunteering” for genocide, people should be making plans for how to use the relative power and autonomy of toeholds in the state to consolidate the 40% of the organized working class to push for an arms embargo. Seems simple!
New in DemLeft: Abdulla F. and Griffin M. say that enacting an arms embargo on Israel is gaining popular support in the United States. It should be our central demand and organizing goal.
I’m back on Xitter to offer some reflections based on the rules of crisis organizing that I articulated in a
@groundworkdsa
piece as part of the
#DropOutJoe
self-organized work and the self-organized campaign to build a strong narrative polarization around
@NoGenocideJosh
.
I love encouraging my non gay male friends to go to gay bars with p*rn on the TVs and sex in the backrooms - we should normalize “deviant” behavior in a time when it’s increasingly criminalized
my only contribution to this discourse is that i am currently working at a gay bar with p*rn on the TVs and a group of str8 girls just cheered when one guy penetrated the other
One of the best things that came out of organizing work that
@DemSocialists
led in 2020 was the creation of
@organizeworkers
alongside
@ueunion
. It's doing so much good work still, and it's so good to see a socialist elected like
@AOC
using today to build long term infrastructure
This Labor Day,
@AOC
&
@TeamAOC
are raising for EWOC who help organize work places across the country.
If you’re able to, chip in to support
@organizeworkers
continue their crucial work.
I agree that communists belong in
@DemSocialists
I am one (technically a revolutionary ecosocialist). I just happen to believe that communists should prove their theories through correct praxis and I think
@GroundworkDSA
is the caucus best exemplifying that in DSA right now.
I wonder if the debate on this resolution will also include tokenizing arguments about how there are 0 Arabs left in dsa and completely erasing the work of thousands of members across the country to make DSA a leader in the Palestine Solidarity movement.
Emerge is proud to support this resolution for an Anti-Zionist NYC-DSA at the upcoming chapter convention, and we encourage all NYC members in good standing to join as co-sponsors.
🇵🇸 Sign on to support:
lol red star created the situation where they fucked the relationship so bad that AOC didn’t think it was worth applying for national endorsement, absolute garbage way to try and take credit for important analysis being done by Kareem.
Glad to see comrades are coming around to the reality of AOC's politics. Red Star published our analysis of AOC back in May, concluding that she was no longer politically aligned with DSA and that it was time for the organization to move on.
Being a communist isnt about “organizing” useless little activist organizations. Its about *organizing* ethical-moral reform—one which is ideologically willing of overthrowing *all* prior social relations and adopted by hundreds of millions. ‘Robert’s Rules’ won’t get you there.
Time for the “most advanced Marxist cadre in the socialist movement” to do some serious soul-searching if this is what
their rank-and-file strategy devoid of political and programmatic consciousness-raising has done. And time to supercharge
@TmstrsStopTrump
I’m about to hit 13 years of organizing on the left (got politicized by Occupy in 2011). This is why I feel both despair & hope basically every day - and being in an org like
@DemSocialists
helps me figure out how to move through that and stay focused on making that needle go 📈
Since 1936, Gallup has measured how Americans feel about labor unions.
In 2024, 70% of Americans approve of labor unions, which has been generally trending higher since hitting a low point in 2009.
thinking about all the time i got to spend with my
@GroundworkDSA
and other comrades over the last few weeks between the March on the DNC, Socialism Conference, and the Barnard + Hinke wedding
This is what I like to hear from elected national leadership of DSA, I wish that the whole national leadership had been on this page in February when the majority voted down a plan for squad defense that could have made the difference in a race won by less than 6% by Bell.
DSA wasn’t instrumental in any squad member winning a seat to begin with but this year we ran field that took 10s of millions to beat. These losses sting bad but the muscle we’ve built (and that
@stlouisdsa
and
@nycDSA
flexed) will just get stronger if we opt to keep building it
@comradesanchez
that's one of the major reasons that I will encourage people to tactically vote where needed against trump, the other i think is that the administrative state was so unwound during trump 1 and not restored by Biden that if he comes in again that things will be so much worse
Hm, seems like being pre-emptively blocked by the caucus handle of the co-chair of DSA is an example of in-group-ism and not being willing to engage in political debate.
I was telling someone recently that
@DanielDenvir
is one of the most good hearted people on the left and I think it shines through in his brilliant interviews on
@thedigradio
and in this piece. Thawra is one of the best pieces of political education I’ve ever heard!
So proud to see
@DanielDenvir
and
@thedigradio
profiled in
@guardian
. As Dan’s partner of 20 years and “senior advisor” to the podcast, I’m surely biased but I think
@SFeldblum
did a stellar job capturing the political education at the heart of Dan’s work
In fact, for example, it’s extremely weird + against CBA of DSA union + against DSA constitution for a caucus to have voted in (by a one vote majority of leadership) to accept a unit staff member, but ppl didn’t call that for the attack on democratic organizational culture it was
Chappell is normalizing queerness, and unapologetic real rebel queerness that we haven't seen in a while, on a scale that gives me actual hope that we will not see a genocide of trans people in the US. That's power too.
i know this is the year of everyone being cuckoo over chappell roan but i have to say if i had seen a lady in armor singing about repressed homosexuality onstage at the vmas when i was a teenager i might have been able to come out of the closet before i was 32
well,
@younglumumba
locked down. those of you that can still see their tweets should take screenshots, and ppl should really take some time to consider what the state of discourse is that someone is saying 'the dsa liberals will get us all killed' over a silly twerking poll.
Lmao you have no idea what you’re talking about, what your fellow npc members are doing on the ground, what the organization you’re ostensibly leading is even doing to build and lead a mass movement, remind me why we’re paying this person in member dues
I certainly hope people's visions for a better world are bolder than the Harris administration dropping a bill on another humanitarian pier or whatever.
Not only was that not true about the calls on Biden to drop out, but if we had listened to those naysayers we never would have been able to consolidate momentum we did across broad spectrum that rolled into
#NoGenocideJosh
- it literally started in a
#DropOutJoe
comms chat!
probably bc b&r npc members treated staff like shit a lot and bc b&r leaders would talk behind closed doors and sometimes openly about breaking the staff union but what do i know I'm just an ex b&r member ex npc member who remembers how many staff members left B&R to join staff
The silliest thing I learned while on the NPC was how much staff—Director-level and below—hated B&R and its members. So passé. Thought we got over that in 2019 when the org turned against Build.
taking my second shot of HRT tmrw after I changed my name in february after a decade of genderqueer and 6 years of being a 'cis' gay bi queer man and then 18 years of being a closeted f*ggot that didn't know what to do with myself in a calvinist homestead.. the journey never ends
Comrade co-chair
@ahSHEEK
is staying with me this week and he told me he was out till like 2 am supporting from NAB office and making sure dsa ppl in chi know where and how to plug in that is leadership and its only been
@GroundworkDSA
and
@DSASocMaj
npc members on the ground.
This is true, not every single gw member at our 35 person social on Monday wanted to take a shot of malort with the French communists who came through and talked politics with us which I find to be slanderous to the great city of Chicago and a sign of growing deviationism
It’s a significant problem for the org that so many former elected national leaders are dead set on not seeing former staff that they targeted through political vendettas as fellow members, some of whom have much more experience in the trenches as socialist cadre than them.
It's a significant problem for the org that so many former managers seem unable to recognize half the org's leadership as leaders, & have such deep resentment for democratically elected leaders w differences of opinion getting paid what they got paid.
This is word salad meant for twitter consumption and riling up a vanishing internal organizational base. Egotistical and selfish. If you want to analyze and make sure a movement doesn’t claim easy victories you need metrics and you have to participate and Ahmed has done neither.
1/ The religion of the reasonable progressives, who pit themselves as foils to the radicals, watched their worldview collapse today. We must measure what shifted our momentum in recent movements. Our movement can't be religions and tribes, it must be strategies and tactics.
At least the dsa forum moderators are now mask off about the parochial, fiefdom-based, and partisan nature of their “community-building” rather than actually attempting to build an internal communication hub for a multi tendency mass organization.
@blimp_juice
??? I believe that all of these things are true. I think we have a rare and excellent opportunity to drive in a stake as a genuine alternative to a party with a coronated leader that is showing us in real time that she doesn't care about Palestine. Capitulation burns that shot.
many have said this (because there are many idiotic adventurists that like to do race science on their comrades in DSA and call it principled politics) - just like there are many people who have called Kareem and other Arab members of DSA tokens!
Tell u what if the revolutionary communists of America can out organize AOC’s email blast and get more monthly donors to
@organizeworkers
signed up then I’ll stop calling her a socialist until the next round of internet decisions re her political identity, sound good?
this is splitting hairs comrade, and I don't think I'm deliberately misrepresenting you based on an academic or moral definition of accelerationism. I mean it in a very material sense about analysis of the unwinding of the administrative state and basic structures of 'liberal
I am, also, skeptical of the doomsday predictions of what happens if Trump wins, or that Harris winning would make for better organizing terrain. I think experience bears that out. That goes into this analysis. It is not that I think the predicted horrors would be good for us.
then like 3 people totally killed the convo yammering about “msr12 and repairing harm” and the majority of people had no idea what they were talking about. This is twitter discourse blocking real organizing and it has no place in our organization.
well i spent some of the last dollars to my name on a 70mm screening of Vertigo at
@musicboxtheatre
as my first time back post-renovation there, i can officially say that cinema is more important to me than basic sustenance lmao
@blimp_juice
@femalehysteria
That's fair but I'd note that this particular reading is almost entirely spinning out of one group chat, who are stacking layers and layers of whispers and ulterior motives into it. I am not seeing the same response from people who aren't reading tea leaves in their Discords.
I actually feel more hopeful and powerful than I have in years and that’s because I organized a 120 person groupchat that successfully polarized the narrative about Josh Shapiro and helped prevent a pretty shitty candidate from becoming vp
@Zalethon
They're mad bc they feel hopeless and helpless and it feels good to yell at someone when you feel hopeless and helpless. I get it! I don't mind, I can take it. I hope tomorrow we regroup and get back to testing the fence like the TRex from Jurassic Park. A weak spot exists.
I’m old enough to remember being the only nonbinary person to finish out my term through 2021 and then running for election for Chicago DSA’s leadership in 2022 where I had a smear campaign run against me, a trans leader of dsa, for being transphobic.
Half decade of the same bad faith people attacking women and NB people on the NPC to further their politics. It makes recruiting comrades to run impossible. Shameful behavior.
Reminder that Doggett was the first to call for Biden to step down (in part bc
@alexbirnel
, a former DSA NPC member, told him to). The pressure is working
We must end the delivery of offensive weapons to Israel until Netanyahu recognizes that neither Israelis nor Palestinians will be truly secure without a path to a two-state solution.
I miss the old b&r that produced most of the staff that were laid off due to the machinations of most of the new b&r’s npc members from 2021 onward (Gilman of course is excluded from that given that he has more principles in his pinky finger than the rest of them put together)
.
@DSAecosocialism
cadre built a powerful force in
@DemSocialists
and on the broader left for a very serious, democratically decided 5 year strategy that would build a mass base for climate-labor power, implement reforms in local and state budgets, and gear up for more federal
Our 15-person Steering Committee has two open seats, and we want YOU to apply! SC members direct DSA’s national Green New Deal work, mentor developing and active Building for Power campaigns, host trainings and mass calls, and run our comms. Apply today!
We built set of priorities and set to work polarizing as much as possible around Shapiro, uncovered very damning evidence that helped set baseline narrative around Shapiro while also not straying from principles re: whether we were targeting Shapiro specifically for bad reasons.
oops bestie that's that dark money influencing and providing paychecks to key leaders in the DSA IC following an account calling for social conservatism uh oh
I may not know much but I know that the dsa co chair doomer posting on main while the Uncommitted movement does the most inspiring DNC delegate organizing since 1964 is something that should be loudly and publicly criticized by cadre across all factions
I may not know much, but I do know the most important thing we can be doing right now is cynically settling scores by interpreting tweets with the worst possible faith. This will surely be the thing that finally topples the autocratic regime of
@meganromer
and liberates DSA.
This is happening during a Democratic presidency.
Even if Harris is elected, the Supreme Court will continue to dismantle our rights until a mass movement is strong enough to stop them. Working class power will win reproductive freedom.
A taxonomy from the power hungry f*ggot caucus s/o to
@stylianos_k
@breadpipeline
@unionGustavo
@ahSHEEK
Topping - working class
Bottoming - bourgeois
Vers - trade union consciousness
Pillow princess - demsoc
Service topping - communist
Power bottoming - ecosocialist
why a dsa caucus with 0 presence in the national level infrastructure of the uncommitted movement would try to use internal polarization + maneuvering to establish this is beyond me, but i hope it isn't something that people take seriously.
@avgfella
Tbf it’s not about their voting, it’s an effort to establish political leadership over the base of the Uncommitted movement. It’s just not likely to be an effective one, also runs into optical issues for a variety of reasons pertaining to people’s perception of electoral matters.
Lmao the administrative state was completely unwound during Trump 1 and lifetime theocrats were installed who took away womens’ rights to their bodies *after* Trump was gone, this is ahistorical at best and deliberately flattening at worst
The left objectively did better under Trump. People are scared to say that b/c they think it has accelerationist implications. That doesn’t need to be the case, but it does tell us that a dramatic change of strategy is needed
And don’t say “labor” after O’Brien spoke at RNC
There were many nay-sayers throughout the process, but one of the most unfortunate ones I heard was that there was no point in engaging because it was out of our hands and would just be decided by donors or Nancy Pelosi (god bless her for jumping in though).
@Quirknky
I’m so tired of DSA pet vs DSA right, what I’m actually kind of interested in at this point is who today is more DSOC and who is more NAM lol
The
@uncommittedmvmt
just polarized more of the liberal establishment with one small sit in than 10 months of protests did. Obviously not an either/or, but a both/and and that’s the point.
Easy, we finish the strategy that was started and formulated by
@DSAecosocialism
in 2020 around building mass organization with a labor-climate program (PRO ACT Campaign + GND4PS), win reforms and build capacity through state and local budget fights (B4P), then build a coal-
The most dismaying indication of the widening gap between AOC and the democratic socialist movement might be the way she chose to handle the issue of Gaza in her DNC speech, writes
@kareemisposting
.
Calling something demobilizing during a week of action when the point is mobilization and expression of our power and months of work seems to be a clear expression of political difference and disagreement, perhaps interlocutors are actually masking their opinions on org model!
@weathertruther
Everybody has the right to criticism but y’all should know most DSA members recognize “demobilizing and disorganizing behavior” as GW-speak for “I disagree with this”. Would be better received if you spelled out the political differences earnestly.
to a list now owned by NYC DSA and the National Electoral Committee - then building on that momentum to continue honing our pressure campaigning skills in a consequential choice scenario from a rapidly scaffolding and deeply volatile Democratic campaign infrastructure.
i wish some people on this website would spend more time gassing up their comrades rather than sending vague insults intended to sectarianize and tear down each other
Sean O’Brien has been boosting Republicans all year while supporting anti-worker, anti-choice Senate candidates.
Meanwhile,
@KamalaHarris
cast the tie-breaking vote to save Teamster pensions nationwide.
Listen to your local.
They know the score.
Thank you
@CalTeamstersPAC
Feeling helpless?
#BoycottChevron
As I discuss with
@mehdirhasan
, this very strategic campaign fuses the movements for climate justice and Palestinian rights - and it's
#BDS
's biggest swing yet.
Happy
#climateweek2024
!
The accusations of anti-semitism, by the way, are patently absurd and do not deserve a response. There were other Jewish candidates on the shortlist and we did not target them, and our deliberately polarizing framing around Shapiro’s positions on Gaza were soon joined by a host
The piece that I wrote and published in early July on crisis organizing used a specific blend of personal narrative style, political analysis, and organizing modeling. This style is inspired in large part by Jane McAlevey’s writing style.
Instead of joining in this work, multiple DSA NPC leaders spent their time questioning the self-organized activity of DSA members and non-members that was simply working to carry out the program put forward by the ‘Withdraw Biden, Reject Fascism’ statement and redirecting people
the lack of organizational discipline from some of our national elected leadership right now in DSA is frankly pretty embarrassing and it's not the ones who are speaking on stage at the March on the DNC or the ones that are supporting delegate organizing.
.
@bread_and_rosie
has introduced a motion about NPC oversight over national committees, which is coming after the NPC SC passed motions to pull two highly controversial statements from the International Committee. This is something that has been floating around inside the NPC in
I worked two jobs from October 2020 to February 2021 while being on the NPC SC, helping design a 5 year GND strategy and whipping the votes to launch the strongest most coordinated national campaign DSA has ever done to date with the PRO act campaign. The critique is political.
Becoming a mom this year showed me just how far DSA needs to go to be an actual working class org. Parents, those with 2 jobs, or who don’t work a 9-5… a lot of these people have capacity to do work but we don’t always have a way to plug them in.
I think
@meganromer
and
@redstarcaucus
missed the memo on this one and people
should not forget it when it comes to decide whether we want nihilism or power as the largest socialist organization in America no matter how long it takes to make the bombs stop
@PalStudies
@DemSocialists
@craigbirckheadm
Hi, would love to be able to write a public reply to this article. I'm a 12 year BDS organizer, former National SJP coordinating committee member, former DSA national political committee member (2019-2021), and current Palestine Committee member building a Chevron BDS campaign.
this is true, i'm very happy to report that we had people from most major caucuses on the groundwork dnc debrief call on sunday and were able to engage in respectful and comradely debate in the chat and through open discussion during parts of the call. A model to follow!
A space can only be the center of the left by allowing people to debate each other on equal terms. You want your organization to not have factions? Cool. You now have informal cliques & have driven yourself into the corner, only ever able to make interventions towards the center
@stylianos_k
1. A defense and critique of the PRO act campaign from 2 people who participated in it
2. The role of deference politics, tailism, mass action, and coalition work in our anti-Zionist organizing
3. Faction formalization processes/pros+cons
4. “internal” organizing vs “external”
That momentum led to a new group of people being absorbed rapidly from the original crisis organizing experiment and from new groupchats and informally organized groups of people, again from a bloc spanning a wide spectrum of leaders on the left.
we just had 100 RSVPs on the
@dsa_intl_comm
internal launch of the
@demsocialists
national priority to target Chevron and tell them to
#StopFuelingGenocide
. You should join us! Sign here first to target Mike Wirth, get in the loop, and share with others
We can see this division in terms of who participated in and argued in favor of the self-organized activity of DSA members and non-DSA members in a series of Signal group chats and other organizing mechanisms, versus those who polemicized against the crisis organizing work.