Put Politics First: For an Organizing Agenda at DSA Convention

DSA North Star recommends the following proposal for the consideration of all DSA members.

"We are living through the biggest political crisis in modern US history. In Chicago, we will have a short window of time to discuss the key political and strategic questions facing our organization and our movement. As it stands, the proposed DSA National Convention agenda deprioritizes a number of key outward facing proposals which delegates voted to discuss, including major resolutions that address queer liberation, youth organizing, the climate crisis, and the fight against Trump.
We believe the DSA National Convention must include debate and discussion on major organizing projects that aim to tackle these crises head on, including:

• R42: Labor for an Arms Embargo (88% support)
  
• CR09: Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy (78% support)
  
• CR03: Green New Deal Campaign (68% support)
  
• R24: To Defeat Trump, Turn Toward the Masses (59% support)
  
• CR07: Young Democratic Socialists of America: Building DSA for the Future (57% support)
  

These resolutions received supermajority support in the delegate survey and attracted multiple amendments. Unfortunately, the current agenda deprioritizes these proposals in favor of more inward-facing resolutions, many of which lacked majority support from delegates voting in the delegate survey. As it stands, the agenda proposed by DSA's national leadership is likely to have no debate whatsoever on our approach to the Trump administration. This must change.

Ultimately, the convention belongs to the delegates. To that end, we are proposing that the agenda be changed to prioritize political discussion and debate of strategies for ending the genocide in Gaza, defending trans rights and bodily autonomy, fighting for our ecosocialist future, and resisting the fascist Trump administration. At the opening of the DSA National Convention, we will present a motion to amend the agenda, and we encourage delegates to vote Yes."


Read the full proposal here.