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breaklaw posted:How come I never see you guys talking about candidates or leaders or party organizers? Shouldn't there be some names and faces representing the DSA to the public by this point? well theres a convention next week where the national leadership is going to change so that's probably part of it
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Jul 26, 2017 23:08
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I find it pretty hard to believe someone hasn't heard of DSA President for Eternity, Dear Leader Comrade Nick Mullen.
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Jul 26, 2017 23:10
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What's to discuss really? Bob Avakian already told us who we support (Bob Avakian).
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Jul 26, 2017 23:23
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breaklaw posted:How come I never see you guys talking about candidates or leaders or party organizers? Shouldn't there be some names and faces representing the DSA to the public by this point? Only one slate has really announced candidates.
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Jul 26, 2017 23:51
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meanwhile, over with the posadists: 
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Jul 27, 2017 00:15
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also: https://twitter.com/queerdsa/status/890301710702456833
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Jul 27, 2017 00:24
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Gene Hackman Fan posted:meanwhile, over with the posadists: the posadists are the glue holding the dsa together https://twitter.com/jacofinmag/status/890308299215826945
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Jul 27, 2017 00:47
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Agean90 posted:the posadists are the glue holding the dsa together goddamnit why can't I stop laughing at Jacofin
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Jul 27, 2017 04:23
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https://mobile.twitter.com/PubicDefender/status/889868343892692993
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Jul 27, 2017 04:30
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breaklaw posted:How come I never see you guys talking about candidates or leaders or party organizers? Shouldn't there be some names and faces representing the DSA to the public by this point? So right now the only local potential DSA-backed/friendly candidates I could name right now are incumbent politicians, as the chapter apparatus for reviewing candidates and figuring out who to back is only just starting up.
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Jul 27, 2017 05:40
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https://dsaspringplatform.org/2017/07/25/dues-kickbacks-we-need-solidarity-not-local-fragmentation/ Dues Kickbacks: We Need Solidarity, not Local Fragmentation July 25, 2017 By Jeremy Gong Sean’s proposed monthly dues amendment and his proposal about how exactly the next NPC should implement this has received a lot of positive and negative feedback. Recently, Sean also proposed a resolution, to be voted on separately from the amendment, to incorporate some of the feedback while clarifying some confusion around the proposal itself. One key response to Sean’s amendment, which has now taken the form of a separate amendment calling for a 50% kickback of national dues money to chapters, has gotten a lot of attention as well. In response to comrades who argue for this 50/50 dues split, I wanted to explain why I support a lower kickback percentage such as Sean’s suggested 80/20 split. While I will not try here to address some other questions why dues are important in the first place, I hope that by answering this question–why should we give most of the dues money to DSA National while the chapters do most of the organizing work?–I can also shed some light on my general support for Sean’s amendment and resolution. (Note: In this post, I use “chapter” instead of “local” so as not to confuse with the generic adjective “local”, as in “local autonomy”.) In particular a lot of these questions revolve around the oft-invoked but rarely explained concept of “local autonomy.” Here I offer one angle on the question of dues, which is connected to questions about the relationship between national and chapters, that I believe is essential to grasp while we figure out how to build this large organization into a powerful, coherent political force on the Left. I’m definitely not opposed to all forms of autonomous local action. I do, however, think it’s important for DSA to find the right balance between national and regional coordination on the one hand, and local autonomy on the other. And when it comes to dues, I believe solidarity is more important than local fragmentation. East Bay DSA (EBDSA) has been able to launch an awesome single payer canvassing campaign in California, with no staff and some thousands of dollars raised from members to pay for space and materials over six months. Our chapter also has almost 700 members, a core of more than a few experienced labor and community organizers and political operatives, and a lot of fantastically committed and brilliant underemployed/unemployed young people. California Nurses Union/National Nurses United is leading a statewide legislative fight for a viable single payer bill, and this has allowed EBDSA to piggyback on their campaign and absorb an amazing amount of enthusiasm that we could never have generated without the statewide legislative process or mainstream visibility. In light of this, our success in building a strong chapter, training hundreds of canvassers and scores of single payer organizers and socialist cadres makes sense. Other large, well organized, urban chapters, with stables of experienced organizers and socialists, have and will continue to pull off impressive organizing and political feats. A lot of the calls for a 50% or higher kickback to chapters is coming from chapters with over 500 members. However, there will soon be close to 200 chapters in 50 states. How many of them have at their core experienced and committed organizers, hundreds of eager members, rational and well thought out bylaws and democratic structures overseeing leadership and finances, and a major progressive union driving exciting and viable legislation in their state? Very few! Maybe 10 or 20, at most. What’s more, if chapters end up getting a significant amount of monthly dues (more than 20%), I think it will be squandered. This is not because chapters aren’t to be trusted. But most chapters are small, don’t have bank accounts or strong democratic and bureaucratic structures to oversee those sums of money and hiring staff. More importantly, the amount of money that national would be kicking out to chapters would, in each case, be relatively small and not all that helpful. With dues split 50/50 between national and all chapters, EBDSA could get tens of thousands of dollars a year, and with that hire staff and rent space. But the scores of chapters with 100 or less members would be receiving only tiny fractions–even with a 50/50 split, less than a couple thousand dollars per year, which could at best pay for one-off space rentals and sign materials, but not hire staff or secure an office. Without having access to accurate and up to date numbers, I’m guessing there might be at least 100 chapters with less than 100 members. If all or most (80%) of that money went to national, national could hire a dozen or more regional organizers to support all these small chapters in all sorts of useful ways. In fact, in my opinion, no national campaign priority for single payer, mobilizers, political education, or anything else can be carried out to great effect anywhere except the few large chapters without sending out regional organizers to small, rural, or inexperienced chapters to train them in skills like canvassing, political education, internal organizing, or conflict resolution. And regional organizers can do what no one-off training session can: stick with the chapters over the months and years that it takes to learn to organize, and help them to develop all the capacities needed to fight for socialism at the local level and beyond. On the other hand, if this money was mostly kicked back to the chapters in the form of a 50/50 split or higher, we would be dividing up an otherwise useful sum of money (potentially up to $1 million) into hundreds of tiny fragments. In other words, from the perspective of a small chapter, the difference between a 20% kickback and a 50% kickback is merely more or less supportive funds for materials and space; but only with a 20% kickback or less can the national hire regional organizers to put real staff on the ground supporting small chapters. This is why, if we are to kickback money to chapters, I advocate for a 20% kickback, enough to support chapters in reserving spaces, printing materials, and buying swag. In fact, 20% will allow chapters decent financial sustainability, but won’t drain the National of resources needed to create durable structures of institutional support that help chapters coordinate. And 20% won’t exacerbate inequalities between large and small chapters like 50% would. In the spirit of solidarity big, well organized chapters like NYC and EBDSA might consider their role in part to be subsidizing the development of other chapters. I’d much rather national gave resources and staff to organize the small chapters throughout the unorganized and mostly conservative parts of California with numerous fledgling DSA chapters – for starters, this would go a long way to actually winning single payer in this state, as these are the districts we need to be applying the most pressure on, not the East Bay where Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond representatives have come out in support of the bill. Regional organizers could likewise fan out across conservative states with smaller or less developed DSA chapters and cadres, especially in the South. Finally, the much invoked concept of local autonomy overlooks a huge barrier to development: if each chapter has to reinvent the wheel (often unsuccessfully) for its own campaign plan, organizer skills trainings, or internal structure, that’s an enormous amount of energy wasted on something that could be supported by well thought out resources, materials, trainings, and strategy from national. With our single payer canvassing program, our Socialist Summer School, and our new internal structure and bylaws, I can speak from personal experience that making this stuff up from scratch is very challenging and time-intensive, and we were lucky enough to have the personnel to pull all of that off. That being said, there’s sometimes a relative pedagogical benefit to making new organizers learn how to do all this on their own. But this potential benefit has to be weighed against the risk of burning activists out as they try to figure everything out on their own or without meaningful guidance, and/or alienating newer members who are tired of taking part in failed projects. I completely share the hesitance of empowering a potentially undemocratic and stifling national staff-driven bureaucracy. However, relying so heavily on the concept of local autonomy is, in my opinion, a way of avoiding addressing the real problems every organization encounters while growing quickly and trying to become more effective and cohesive. When it comes to the challenges of building a vibrant, inclusive, and effective democratic organization, we cannot go over, under or around these problems. Of course national leaders and national resources need to be democratically controlled by the members, transparent and accountable. But we need to be very thoughtful and creative about how we actually achieve this, instead of just giving up on the national organization all together. The Spring Platform was written with these goals in mind, and we hope you will support our proposals at the Convention and beyond. If we are going to be a truly mass organization, active in 50 states, and ultimately with real political power, we need to turn the 150 mostly small, isolated, and/or developing chapters into powerful and well organized centers of working class militancy. That can only happen if the national organization has the resources to send skilled socialist organizers to small chapters from Alaska to Alabama.
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Jul 27, 2017 05:52
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there's a lot of stupid amendments out there but the worst one is the one that wants to change all language of "local" to "chapter" because they're afraid that union-heavy language will scare off younger people
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Jul 27, 2017 06:00
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I propose changing Democratic to Nationalist for better outreach
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Jul 27, 2017 06:07
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i'm not interested in regional organizers until i get specific information on how they plan on recruiting them coastal chapters recruiting people and sending them into the midwest and south is... uhh... not gonna go over well
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Jul 27, 2017 06:17
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i somehow doubt socialists in the south are going to object to working with a californian to the same degree as the general population or at least i hope so
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Jul 27, 2017 06:23
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Raskolnikov38 posted:i somehow doubt socialists in the south are going to object to working with a californian to the same degree as the general population there's a lot of resentment (at least in my chapter, anyways) already bubbling up about NYC, SF, and Chicago trying to centralize power in their favor if the process involves grooming regional talent then sure, but organizers coming out of the bigger chapters to "help" is going to look like missionary work
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Jul 27, 2017 06:30
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Raskolnikov38 posted:i somehow doubt socialists in the south are going to object to working with a californian to the same degree as the general population Also, Business Gorillas posted:there's a lot of stupid amendments out there but the worst one is the one that wants to change all language of "local" to "chapter" because they're afraid that union-heavy language will scare off younger people
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Jul 27, 2017 06:31
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SomeMathGuy posted:Some of the biggest concerns coming out of non-coastal members are about a real and/or perceived organizational overemphasis on... well, the coasts - it's a common complaint amongst active members in my local, for example. If it ended up being a bunch of Californians and New Yorkers it'd cause a ruckus even with the self-identified socialists, which would be a shame because I think areas the Democrats are writing off are precisely where we want to push the hardest so we're going to need ways to reach non-voters in those areas in a way that speaks to them. I don't really know how you actively address that, I'm not sure anybody does quite yet. But one of the best ways would be to try and make sure the people you're sending to a given region are at least somewhat acquainted with it. ex: the amendment regarding requiring 20% of chapters or 8% of members for the NPCs to debate on something is pretty fuckin convenient when NYC has 11% of the members by itself quote:is that why that's on the table? loving hell. quote:As a result of the drop in union membership nationally (outside DSA), “local” has become, in my opinion, in-group language that can have the effect of making newcomers feel they are outsiders rather than that we are in solidarity with workers.
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Jul 27, 2017 06:40
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Business Gorillas posted:i think a lot of it is bellyaching but some of it is real Is that still the case? They only have like 5 or 6% of the delegates from what I saw and I think that'd track pretty well to proportion of members, though obviously NYC DSA is massive compared to every single other local.
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Jul 27, 2017 07:03
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SomeMathGuy posted:Some of the biggest concerns coming out of non-coastal members are about a real and/or perceived organizational overemphasis on... well, the coasts - it's a common complaint amongst active members in my local, for example. If it ended up being a bunch of Californians and New Yorkers it'd cause a ruckus even with the self-identified socialists, which would be a shame because I think areas the Democrats are writing off are precisely where we want to push the hardest so we're going to need ways to reach non-voters in those areas in a way that speaks to them. I don't really know how you actively address that, I'm not sure anybody does quite yet. But one of the best ways would be to try and make sure the people you're sending to a given region are at least somewhat acquainted with it. I would hope there's enough people from outside of the major locals to push back against this. It almost seems like the spirit of democrat thinking infecting the minds of people in the major chapters that think they should "run things" or whatever. This makes me hope Praxis and some of the other candidates win enough seats to counter poo poo like this in the future.
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Jul 27, 2017 12:21
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SomeMathGuy posted:is that why that's on the table? loving hell. it's for consistency, BG is a dumbass
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Jul 27, 2017 13:27
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fermun posted:Is that still the case? They only have like 5 or 6% of the delegates from what I saw and I think that'd track pretty well to proportion of members, though obviously NYC DSA is massive compared to every single other local. NYC DSA leadership asked the NPC if they could send half their allotted delegates, but give them double votes. Should have been like 83 delegates, but we're sending 42 delegates (one person only has one vote). It's dumb and I disagree with it and I think it stems from them being incompetent and knowing they could never possibly fundraise enough to meaningfully subsidize that many (though they absolutely *should* be able to). It, also, was not a democratically made decision, but I will grant that there were time-constraints.
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Jul 27, 2017 14:07
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an actual dog posted:it's for consistency, BG is a dumbass That quote I responded with is in the rationale of the amendment 
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Jul 27, 2017 14:18
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https://mobile.twitter.com/dsatankie/status/890366841805312001
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Jul 27, 2017 17:56
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deffo 100%. we should work to expand socialist gun clubs and start a nationwide marxmanship class.
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Jul 27, 2017 18:01
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This arms race isn't going to end until someone starts a parody LeftCom Caucus, and then only because we won't be able to get out of our armchairs.
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Jul 27, 2017 18:09
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SomeMathGuy posted:This arms race isn't going to end until someone starts a parody LeftCom Caucus, and then only because we won't be able to get out of our armchairs. i'd join that
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Jul 27, 2017 19:12
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Iridium posted:deffo 100%. we should work to expand socialist gun clubs and start a nationwide marxmanship class. lmao
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Jul 27, 2017 19:23
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didn't know "solidarity" meant the national organization hoarding all the money while implying it's because local and regional DSAs are too puny or incompetent to use it right
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Jul 27, 2017 19:26
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Main Paineframe posted:didn't know "solidarity" meant the national organization hoarding all the money while implying it's because local and regional DSAs are too puny or incompetent to use it right love 2 have my voice drowned out by the 7 NYC chapters and 6 bay area ones
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Jul 27, 2017 19:28
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so this is what y'all are up to these days huh lmao
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Jul 27, 2017 19:35
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Are NYC folks saying this kind of poo poo on email chains I've purposely avoided being added to?
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Jul 27, 2017 20:45
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From what I've been told, the DSA Activist listserv is cancer, as is Rocketchat.
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Jul 27, 2017 21:03
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Raskolnikov38 posted:i somehow doubt socialists in the south are going to object to working with a californian to the same degree as the general population speaking as a californian the less i have to deal with my peers the better
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Jul 27, 2017 21:56
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I'm in a small southern chapter and I really don't care what state an organizer comes from if they can help us. Why would I?
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Jul 28, 2017 00:33
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"Workers of the world unite...but don't trust city-slickers."
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Jul 28, 2017 00:34
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*snaps overall straps* well dem city lickers ain't comin' down to my town to tell me 'bout how my com-un-i-tee works, I tell ya wuhawt!
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Jul 28, 2017 00:35
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hi liter posted:From what I've been told, the DSA Activist listserv is cancer, as is Rocketchat. yes the rocketchat is irredeemably bad, even the ones ostensibly just for nerd poo poo. maybe even especially those
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Jul 28, 2017 00:54
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i stopped posting in the rocketchat months ago but it was a bunch of Too Online peopleBusiness Gorillas posted:there's a lot of stupid amendments out there but the worst one is the one that wants to change all language of "local" to "chapter" because they're afraid that union-heavy language will scare off younger people 
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Jul 28, 2017 01:09
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platzapS posted:I'm in a small southern chapter and I really don't care what state an organizer comes from if they can help us. Why would I? i agree with this as long as they aren't from california
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