Socialist Majority 2021 Convention Report: A Mandate for Multiracial Organizing

By the Socialist Majority Steering Committee

The Socialist Majority Steering Committee recaps a productive 2021 DSA National Convention. Overall, we find that convention delegates overwhelmingly supported most of SMC's top priorities, including continuing to grow DSA with a focus on multiracial organizing and mass transformative campaigns on voting rights, abolition, and the Green New Deal. We were pleased to see that delegates resoundingly rejected sectarian turns for DSA and passed unity resolutions on labor and electoral politics with broad based support. Despite an unfavorable voting method, delegates showed strong support for SMC's NPC candidates. Finally, the convention failed to pass much needed structural reforms for our growing organization for the second time in a row, pointing to the need for more attention and progress on this vital issue going forward.

Overwhelming Support for SMC Priorities

Socialist Majority Caucus members and delegates entered the 2021 DSA National Convention with the goal of advancing the politics, program and priorities necessary to transform DSA into a mass organization deeply rooted in the multiracial working class of the US.

The convention proved overwhelmingly supportive of that direction for DSA. Almost 1200 assembled delegates representing most of DSA’s 207 chapters passed resolutions that created a mandate for multiracial organizing and mass work over the next two years. SMC’s key priorities were Resolution #31: Making DSA a Multiracial and Anti-Racist Organization and Resolution #27: Beyond 100K. These resolutions commit DSA and its chapters to a program of mass multiracial organizing while rejecting the pitfalls of race essentialism and class reductionism, and were passed on the convention consent agenda thanks to their overwhelming support.

Delegates supported programmatic commitments centered on Black liberation and confronting the white supremacist US political system that were endorsed by SMC, including Resolution #2: Formation of a National Committee for Reparations to Black People, Resolution #3: Empowering DSA’s Mass Abolition Work and Resolution #35: Spanish Translation & Bilingual Organizing. Delegates also passed Resolution #14 Committing to International Socialist Solidarity, which was recommended by the SMC steering committee and commits DSA to deepening ties to mass parties in Latin America. DSA lacked a global affiliation since 2017 and commitment to joining the Sao Paulo Forum is a welcome departure from this isolation.

Commitment to Transformative Reforms

The convention also found overwhelming consensus for continuing DSA’s approach of championing transformative reforms that will improve immediate conditions for working class people and shift the balance of class forces in favor of workers.

DSA Delegates endorsed key struggles recommended by SMC including Resolution #4: Mass Campaign for Voting Rights and Resolution and Resolution #12: 2021 Ecosocialist Green New Deal Priority, alongside commitments organizing around the issues of tenants, immigrants and refugees, and for key demands including Childcare for All, Medicare for All and the PRO Act. The near universal backing of these programs highlights how DSA members continue to prioritize mass work that advances working-class interests today.

In a major step forward, DSA also adopted a convention platform that lays out a more comprehensive vision for immediate reforms as well as our more expansive vision for social transformation. SMC members played a key role in drafting the platform, which provides DSA members and the public our stances in ten political areas around: political and economic democracy; racial, gender, and sexual justice; the carceral state, labor, ecosocialism; healthcare, housing, and internationalism. The convention adopted the platform but also rejected efforts to make it binding on members, signaling a continuing commitment to DSA’s big tent politics.

Rejecting a Sectarian Turn

Two of the most important resolutions passed at the convention were consensus priority resolutions on labor organizing and electoral work. Both Resolution #5: Building Worker Power to Win Democratic Socialism: A Labor Strategy for DSA in 2021-2025 and Resolution #8: Toward a Mass Party in the United States were endorsed by national committees with substantial support across different caucuses and unaffiliated members. SMC members were crucial to pushing for this non-factional approach to developing the resolutions, and to drafting their contents. Delegates resoundingly rejected amendments to both that would have represented a major sectarian turn for the organization.

Resolution #5 recommits DSA members to unionizing unorganized workplaces as individuals and through projects like EWOC and to our strategy of building stronger, more democratic and more militant unions through rank and file organizing within existing unions. It also lays out a vision for the DSLC to coordinate DSA’s labor activity through industry-wide structures and commits the DSLC to mobilizing to pass the PRO Act to strengthen labor’s hand in the workplace. Resolution #8 continues DSA’s strategy of building a democratic, grassroots political organization capable of running campaigns across the country independent of any support from the Democratic Party establishment or corporate donors, and affirms that these elections largely need to be run on the Democratic ballot line.

Delegates considered and overwhelmingly rejected attempts to amend these priorities which were supported by Reform & Revolution, Tempest and Socialist Alternative, among others. The proposed amendment to the labor resolution identified fighting the “labor bureaucracy” as our primary task in the labor movement, rather than organizing a mass movement of workers in union and nonunion jobs. The proposed amendments to the electoral resolution sought to build on the “Bernie or Bust'' resolution from two years ago to recommit DSA to a so-called dirty break strategy - requiring DSA candidates to begin propagandizing now for a split with the Democratic party. Delegates chose to keep DSA focused on the concrete work that will allow us to engage millions of working class people in workplaces and the electoral arena, and rejected these efforts to impose practical and ideological litmus tests that would have isolated us as an organization and hindered our mass work.

Strong Support for SMC in NPC Elections

Given the support for SMC’s priorities among convention delegates, it is unsurprising that the caucus also received strong support in the NPC elections. SMC member Kristian Hernandez was reelected to the NPC, along with new NPC members Sabrina Chan and Jose La Luz.

A review of the convention ballots indicated that SMC had one of the largest blocs of support at convention. SMC NPC candidates received 219 combined first place votes, just behind Bread and Roses candidates who received 228 and ahead of the Green New Deal slate who received a combined 209. Those members of the Renewal slate who remained on the ballot received a combined 174 votes while the three incumbents supported by communist caucuses Emerge and Red Star (formerly of the Cardinal slate) received a combined 134 votes.

Delegates selected Single Transferable Vote as the method for the NPC election, a system which preserves the representation of unpopular minority positions. The system worked as designed, producing results that were clearly at odds with the wishes of the majority of delegates. For example, two candidates who were listed in the top 16 by a minority of delegates (37% in one case and 49% in the other) were elected to the NPC over SMC candidates Maikiko James and Kevin Richardson, both of whom were listed in the top 16 by over 75% of delegates. In this election the use of STV undermined POC representation on the NPC and guaranteed the election of at least one candidate unambiguously opposed by a supermajority of the assembled delegates.

The results of the NPC election demonstrate both a strong base for SMC as a caucus and widespread support for our political perspective within DSA.

DSA Still Needs Structural Reform

DSA delegates made a number of structural adjustments to DSA’s national organization including developing our infrastructure for addressing grievances, passing a pilot program for expanding funding for staffing and offices of state and local organizations, putting in place a formal affiliation agreement between chapters and national and authorizing stipends for the members of the NPC Steering Committee.

For the second convention in a row, delegates rejected a number of larger structural reforms including the formation of the National Organizing Committee supported by SMC. Due to technical errors regarding its submission, delegates were unable to pass a proposal by the NPC to expand its size from 16 to 25 members.

DSA continues to need to expand its capacity for democratic decision making at the national level, but unfortunately members will have to wait another two years to consider a more comprehensive approach.

Onward

The 2021 DSA convention was DSA’s largest and most successful convention yet. While some organizations on the left are struggling to establish their orientation under the Biden administration, DSA came out of last month’s convention with a clear consensus from the grassroots on challenging the white supremacist political system in the US and advancing transformative reforms through mass work in elections, workplaces, and social movement organizing. Socialist Majority members will spend the next two years organizing to make the convention resolutions a reality, and working with our comrades regardless of caucus to build DSA and the socialist movement.