For A Fighting & Winning NYC-DSA
On October 19th, 2024, 150 NYC-DSA members from across the city will debate and strategize about our priority campaigns, tasks at hand for our organization, and perspectives heading into what looks to be a sinisterly volatile city and global political landscape. Eric Adams’ refusal to step down following a federal indictment, with more expected to arrive, is creating chaos in city hall, while agencies struggle with his years of austerity, excluding the NYPD, which saw a 3,775% increase in overtime pay this past year. This has left the most vulnerable without crucial support and a city that continues losing working people due to the high cost of living and the ongoing housing crises. Moreover, 69% of New Yorkers believe that Adams should resign, as more of his capos in head of agencies resign in disgrace. And with less than a month before Election Day, the Democratic establishment is trying to triangulate its way to victory in the face of a confident far-right. The GOP is capitalizing on the Democratic Party’s struggle to connect with blue-collar workers and Arab Americans, and is benefitting from sharply conservative terms-of-debate, with progressive class politics set aside in favor of corporate appeasement.
This makes clear the stakes of our political moment heading into our bienneal highest decision-making body.
The 2024 NYC-DSA convention is a true opportunity for our chapter to recommit to and build on the policies that have made it a success. The crisis of the Adams administration is opening a door for a socialist to credibly run for NYC’s highest office and to challenge the narrative of austerity politics. The decision to potentially endorse Queens Assembly member, and DSA member, Zohran Mamdani, is among the most important votes our chapter will be taking since its post-Bernie rise. The decision around that potential endorsement weighs heavy on convention but so are other resolutions that we see as integral in shaping the future of NYC-DSA as an effective winning and fighting organization for working-class New Yorkers.
A Mass Action Electoral Strategy
NYC-DSA’s electoral program has led to the most socialists elected to a state legislature in over a century. The historic insurgent victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blossomed into a small but growing electoral base for socialist politics from Sunset Park up to Astoria, and making its way inward to Clinton Hill & Bed Stuy to Sunnyside & Ridgewood with the recent victory of Latina union organizer, and NYC-DSA member, Claire Valdez in AD-37. Our electoral strategy has allowed us to shape the political and economic landscape in where we organize, and to win material gains for working people as well as raise the bar for what working people know they deserve. We challenge power at its core by running socialist candidates for city and state offices.
Still many challenges face our project. The Jonathan Soto race for State Assembly in District 82, which includes parts of Parkchester, Middletown & Co-op City, showed that we have not been able to break out of our core renter class & younger demographic base. Eon Huntely’s race for State Assembly District 56 in the heart of Bed-Stuy was lost by only 516 votes. The lesson here is the institutional entrenchment of Hakeem Jeffries is significant and it will take a robust voter registration drive along with a stronger coalition to successfully defeat it. Jamal Bowman’s race shows the challenges of bureaucratic redistricting & the coffers of AIPAC, which spent upward to 14.3 million dollars to defeat him.
These challenges, along with increasing polarization around how to approach electoral politics in the pro-Palestine movement, and the post-Bernie impasse, have led some DSA members to question the viability of our electoral strategy. Arguments have been made to focus on fewer races, run exclusively cadre candidates, and end our successful practice of running in Democratic primaries in favor of third-party & independent ballot lines. The problem with these approaches is that they ignore the socialist electoral base that we’ve developed since 2017 and fail to consider the actual balance of class forces. The merits of running cadre candidates are clear, but the approach is very telling. Cadre candidates don’t grow on trees. They develop over time in an organization rooted in fighting for the working class and in mutual struggle with our community. A more fruitful approach to this discussion would entail discussing membership retention, development & engagement, fostering a culture of vibrant member democracy and rooting ourselves in campaigns that can concretely advance our goals. NYC-DSA should double down on the strategy that got us an actual existing electoral base for democratic socialist politics.
We should reject the notion that now is the time to retreat into experimental third-party tactics that ignore the base we’ve fostered. What sets DSA apart from other organizations on the far left is developing a left electoral strategy that works in the two-party, winner-take-all system, where political parties are only ballot access lines. NYC-DSA should continue driving a wedge between the Democratic Party and its working-class base and build working-class power by running winning campaigns that deliver the goods for working people.
Organizing for Palestinian Solidarity: A Socialist Strategy
The defining movement of the last year has been Palestine solidarity. From the initial mass mobilizations following Israel’s genocidal war, to the Uncommitted Movement, to assemblyman Mamdani’s Not On Our Dime act in New York, to the student encampments across the country in the spring, Palestine has become a key litmus test for the Left. However, the question remains whether an unpopular war and increasing radicalization due to ongoing genocide can be translated into a sustained mass anti-war movement, given the current disarticulated working class and the war's detachment from daily life.
An effective opposition to the ongoing genocide and fight for Palestinian liberation requires a coherent strategy and program rooted in our democratic socialist values. Delegates will be debating the resolution “Organizing for Palestinian Solidarity: A Socialist Strategy”, which defines the chapter’s strategic approach to our Palestine work, including the inside-outside strategy and orienting towards the masses. Working with our socialist electeds will be key in advancing the Palestinian cause and giving our movement voices in the halls where power resides. A socialist strategy for Palestinian solidarity also lowers the bar of entry into our movement and takes seriously our work with broader coalitions, which will be crucial in convincing millions that arming Israel has a direct correlation to our declining living standards. It also creates a political program that emphasizes a diversity of tactics to pursue an arms embargo, divestment, and an anti-Zionist future.
Another popular resolution is For an Anti-Zionist NYC-DSA, which did not pass at the 2023 DSA convention, but was passed in amended form by the National Political Committee of DSA. The resolution, demanded by the Palestinian Youth Movement, aims to expel DSA members, and automatically disaffiliate with elected officials. We reject this resolution because it's based on a false and alarmist view that NYC-DSA is harboring Zionists. Unfortunately, this resolution fails to strengthen DSA and the anti-war movement. Instead, it relies on bureaucratic purge mechanisms and lacks strategic thinking, favoring identitarian deference politics. Drawing arbitrary red lines and ‘heroic’ radical posturing is not conducive to engaging with the very real problems of building and sustaining an anti-war movement. The resolution, like others that are more explicit, seems to target members of The Squad. We reject this inward-looking and sectarian theory of change, which requires us to 'purify' our ranks for the movement to grow. Automatically un-endorsing elected officials is undemocratic and strips our comrades of their agency. If we had instilled automatic red lines, we would have prevented ourselves from endorsing Rashida Tlaib in 2018 and Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020. Those were pivotal growth moments for DSA and the Left. The Squad, with all its imperfections, has been at the forefront of leading a leftist narrative on Palestine on the national stage, and we would be foolish to relinquish that.
While implementing an arms embargo on Israel is one of the most important tasks at hand, so is defeating Trump, who uses “Palestinian” as a slur, and along with Benjamin Netanyahu, is part of an ever-growing international far-right movement that seeks to destroy the international working-class. We understand in these final weeks of the general election that Kamala Harris isn’t a candidate of the working-class but is currently facing a far-right candidate who is looking to reshape our government into a weapon that will also attack vulnerable communities and unions, but certainly those of us on the Left. That’s why we’re committed to both DSA’s national Workers Deserve More program and supporting strategic voting for comrades in swing states and districts, and helping boost turnout by supporting socialists in down ballot races. We do not organize in the political terrain we wish we had, but in the political reality in front of us. Convincing millions of working people to align with a socialist program isn’t simply a matter of propaganda; it requires engaging in common struggle that materially improves the lives of working people. It would be wise to listen to our allies in the Uncommitted Movement, UAW, National Nurses Union, UE, ILWU, Sunrise Movement, and members of The Squad, who have spoken about tactically opposing a Trump victory. Any discussion of building a future working-class party must consider our political reality, including the threat of the far-right, the historical weakness of working-class institutions, and the actual leverage our organization has.
Our Politics Is in the Millions
The 2024 NYC-DSA Convention is an opportunity for organizers to assess our work this past year and to set us on a path to continue solidifying and expanding our efforts. In a testament to NYC-DSA’s base, mass politics-oriented members make up a majority of the delegate body. This allows us to continue building our organization with the understanding of the importance of refining our electoral work, an area that is directly responsible for the massive growth spurts of the chapter. A mass socialist strategy for our Palestine solidarity work will also set us up to effectively build a sustained anti-war movement that has the leverage and power to challenge the ruling class imperial project abroad, because it is rooted in working class solidarity and organization in the US. Our discussion on the mayoral question will hopefully be rooted in the concrete goals of expanding our electoral base and on the united front against neoliberal pro-austerity politicians. Furthermore, we should grapple with how to continue making NYC-DSA the political home for working people who want to resist a possible second Trump presidency.
The results of our city convention can also be a rehearsal for our national convention next summer. Our strengths as organizers are best displayed when we are outward-facing and ruthless about winning. Now is not the time to retreat inwards but to offer working people a collective & concrete way to fight for a better city.
The city’s DSA chapter is the nation’s strongest because of our vibrant culture & campaigns rooted in improving the lives of working-class New Yorkers. We believe we are in a position to grow by building off our electoral victories and by continuing our ongoing base-building campaigns. Now is the time to recommit to building a mass socialist organization that can continue offering an alternative to the status quo.
Alvaro Lopez is a writer and socialist organizer based in New York City. He works on contemporary politics, working-class history, and culture.
David Turner is a member of NYC-DSA and Socialist Majority.