It’s Time for DSA to Expand its National Leadership
It’s Time for DSA to Expand its National Leadership: In Support of Convention Constitution/Bylaws Change #6, Establishing a National Organizing Committee
By Sam L. and Renée P.
DSA’s rapid growth since 2015 has resulted in dramatic changes to the organization, including an explosion in the number of chapters to over 200, the proliferation of national committees and working groups, and the continuing expansion in the number of employed national staff. In that time, our most important national leadership body, the National Political Committee, has remained the same—sixteen NPC members elected by the delegates at DSA’s National Convention every two years, and two YDSA representatives each with one-half vote. With a DSA membership that is now fifteen times larger than 2015, it’s time for delegates to think about how we should expand our national leadership bodies to meet the needs of our membership.
Leadership bodies in DSA have multiple roles. For DSA to be a truly member-run organization, political bodies like the NPC first need to be able to govern the organization on a day-to-day basis. That’s a role the NPC at its current size is well-suited to do; indeed, smaller governance bodies can often be more effective, which is why the NPC has an even smaller steering committee to govern in between NPC meetings. But leadership bodies also serve to represent members as constituents. The NPC has sixteen members and DSA has nearly 100,000 members; that’s a ratio of about 6,000 members for each NPC member. And NPC members don’t represent particular constituents, but instead the membership as an undifferentiated whole. While in 2015, an average engaged member would have had a relatively easy time getting in direct contact with an NPC member, today that would be much more challenging. Finally, leadership bodies can also provide a space to deliberate on political questions posed by changing political landscapes and issues on which the convention did not provide guidance, in between national conventions. Indeed, given that the national convention happens only every two years and we have limited time during the convention, many key decisions in DSA end up being made by the NPC, often without significant member engagement.
Our proposal for a National Organizing Committee aims to bridge these gaps by creating an intermediate layer of national leadership who can take responsibility for the political direction of the organization along with the NPC. The NOC would comprise at least 100 members, including the NPC, with the balance of members regionally elected at each convention, and would meet at least four times a year. It would be a primarily legislative body that sets overall programmatic and political goals, while leaving the day-to-day administration of the organization to the NPC. This split in responsibilities would make NOC membership significantly less time-consuming than NPC service; representatives would be able to continue organizing in other roles and still have time to be on the NOC. Because members would be regionally elected, each member of DSA would have at least one NOC member to whom they could turn with questions about the national organization, concerns about national proposals, or requests for resources their chapter needs from national.
We modeled the NOC in part on our own experiences serving on the Citywide Leadership Committee in NYC-DSA. The CLC is made up of the steering committee officers; the representatives from each branch who serve on the steering committee; and additional representatives allocated to each branch by population, for a total of about 40 members. Our experience was that prior to its creation in 2017, there was a lot more suspicion and distrust of what the steering committee was doing and large parts of the organization felt unrepresented. Decisions would come down from “steering” that rank and file members wouldn’t understand or would experience as arbitrary. When the CLC was formed, it helped demystify citywide leadership for rank and file members, who were suddenly much more likely to know a CLC member and see them at meetings and be able to ask them questions, forward them proposals for consideration, and hear their reports back on important political discussions. The CLC also provides a space for all political tendencies to be heard; while the Cynthia Nixon endorsement was controversial in NYC-DSA, the CLC meeting gave full voice to those who opposed it to articulate their well-grounded objections. We envision the NOC, like the CLC, as a deliberative body that spends much of its time in debate and discussion. Our experience of both winning and losing internal votes within DSA is that when members have the opportunity for their positions to be articulated and considered fully, it is a great deal easier to reconcile with opponents and move forward together with a shared vision.
Does DSA have enough leaders to fill a 100 member national leadership body?
One question that’s been raised about the NOC is whether DSA has enough committed socialist organizers to fill a 100-person national leadership body, especially in light of the extreme workload many of DSA’s national leaders carry, and the difficulty some national committees have had in filling committee spots. Our view is that the relative paucity of national leaders outside of the NPC and a handful of the strongest committees is a result of inadequate national organizing structures, not the other way around. To make national leadership in DSA sustainable in the long term, we need a space for leaders across the organization to discuss key political and strategic questions and develop a holistic understanding of the organization's work. Without that, even the most effective national committees find their work largely siloed, and the NPC shoulders the sole responsibility of coordinating DSA’s many moving parts. We also imagine that the NOC would not be the kind of all-consuming job that being on the NPC or even chairing a national committee would be. In New York, CLC elections are among some of the most contested, even when officer positions with a more significant workload go uncontested. Members could serve on the NOC and also in their chapter’s leadership, further helping knit together DSA into a cohesive whole.
Why does the NOC reference state and regional organizations, but these are just starting to get off the ground?
We believe strongly that as DSA seeks to build a national party surrogate that can be a political vehicle for working class politics, we must structure it in a way that corresponds to the terrain of struggle. That means developing state organizations that can develop state-specific strategies in the US context. As we seek to expand our national leadership, it should reflect that direction for DSA.
The NOC proposal is structured so that prior to the development of more state or regional organizations, the NPC can simply create regions to elect NOC representatives. For delegates who feel it would be better to wait for more state and regional organizations to form before the powers of the NOC come into effect, it is worth considering Secondary amendment 2
Ultimately, though, regional representation is important even in advance of the creation of state and regional organizations, in the NOC’s role in providing more direct representation for DSA members. If you have NOC members that are your region’s delegation, rather than NPC members who represent the nation as a whole, you have people who you can reach to for constituent services.
What about DSA’s national committees, commissions, and working groups?
DSA currently has many national committees, commissions, and working groups, organized in varied ways. Some are highly effective, others are relatively isolated and disconnected from the overall organization, and many are somewhere in between. While we don’t believe the NOC’s relationship to other national bodies needs to be proscribed by the national constitution, ultimately we believe the NOC should have a significant role in strengthening national committees. Having a substantial number of members on national bodies who are directly elected by delegates at the DSA convention every two years and responsible for the overall political direction of the organization can help us develop much stronger national committees that are aligned with the overall strategy of the organization and integrated into a national whole.
Why not just hold the National Activist Conference referenced in the constitution?
The constitution already makes provision for a National Activist Conference to be held between conventions—a provision DSA has not taken advantage of in recent years. Socialist Majority fully supports organizing the conference—in fact, the current SMC NPC members were actively pursuing organizing the conference before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the possibility.
But ultimately, a national conference focused on training and discussion is just one part of building a stronger culture of organizing and leadership in DSA. Creating a National Organizing Committee with formal leadership powers and responsibilities achieves something different than an activist conference, creating a permanent organizational structure that can expand DSA’s capacity for democratic decision-making. Trainings are important and valuable, but they are no substitute for learning through the act of governing in itself. And the NOC will be available year round for decision-making, meaning when time-sensitive important political decisions have to be made, a more robustly engaged democratic body is there to make them.
How would this proposal be implemented?
If the NOC amendment passes, the new NPC would be charged with holding an online election for NOC members in the three months following the conventions, among the delegates to the 2021 convention. The NPC would also be charged with setting regions for those states or regions that don’t yet have state or regional organizations, and allocating representatives to each region based on the number of members. The NPC would also organize the meetings and be responsible for ensuring internal NOC processes are developed.