I mean what the fuck else are you doing if you’re not in any other org?
kidding
mostly
But honestly, if you are not organizing, campaigning, volunteering during time that you are free (and emotionally capable, never overwork yourself and burn out comrade) joining DSA will give you easy access to doing these things. I can hear you all in the comments now “DSA is lib!” and you know what? Yeah. It is. But what does that make you? The armchair quarterbacking I see on here about what DSA should/could do but isn’t honestly breaks my heart. You can do those things. There are commie caucuses that are incredibly influential in DSA policy and punch well above their weight compared to how many comrades are in them. The farther left people are, the more they tend to be active in organizing. There really are so few excuses to not at least be a paper member so you can throw your weight behind something you do deem worthy of your time when it comes up.
No DSA in your area? That’s fantastic. You can start one that will now be 100% the left agenda you want it to be.
Don’t like the DSA strategy? You can actually have some influence on that. DSA is huge in your area but too lib? Join a Commie caucus. No commie caucus? There are national ones. Want to work on the local level? Start a commie caucus. These other ones didn’t just appear out of thin air and I have my doubts that you’re the only leftist in your city. Oh and good thing there is conveniently an entire organization already in place to make it much easier to find your fellow leftists who seek the same change you do.
I know it isn’t easy. No organizing is. I’ve seen “would Lenin be in the DSA?” thrown around a few times on here and you should absolutely know that it doesn’t matter whether he would be or not. You aren’t Lenin. Luckily for you though, he did leave an encyclopedic amount of information on what you can do to emulate what happened in Russia elsewhere. In that literature lies a very key point that the revolution was NOT simply a worker’s revolution from the anti-tsarist starting gun. It was guided by the Lenin’s energized group to take this bourgeois revolution and mold it into a worker’s revolution. The work must be done to cultivate a base ready for revolutionary politics and action, and I’m telling you that you’re far more likely to find comrades amongst the DSA rank and file than you are with your random person in the American working class at this time.
You 100% have the ability to mold the DSA you currently see as incapable into something that might be capable of revolutionary action/politics through collective action on the left, but what do you have to lose by trying? Even if you become another paper member, you are still throwing fuel onto the fire and showing DSA that it has the ability to be a standalone left entity separate from democrats and it cost you absolutely nothing.
The only way to ensure that DSA gets better and becomes a true force for the proletariat is to influence them. Yeah, they'll probably NOT go anywhere, but like OP said unless you got something else better going on, why not try,
Double plus, the only way you can hope to become a competant organizer activist however you describe what you're trying to do, is through experience. Experience doing things right of course, but also experience doing things wrong is invaluable. It teaches you the signs of things going astray, shows you how that happens and what to do.
So basically: unless you're an experienced organizer, any experience is good experience, so why not try it at the DSA
Exactly what convinced me to join DSA. It isn’t what I want it to be so I’m doing my best to change that while also organizing
Yes but I know plenty of better organizers than me who joined with absolutely no experience
:geordi-no: Organizing only online
:geordi-yes: Organizing in person
(if possible for you)
Organizing online saps the life out of you sometimes but irl praxis really breathes it back into you. Its a virtuous cycle that can rub off on your comrades around you, motivating and inspiring each other and making it feel worth it. Plus you get to help people which is always good
Thinking about finally joining. I agree that I don't think DSA will be a massive national revolution but I'm really searching for some sense of leftist community in my local area and I think it might be a good start at least.
I'm glad you posted. I was already thinking about it earlier today and this gave me that extra nudge.
Good!! I've met people from tons of different tendencies, from radlibs to ultra lefties. You can't really go wrong, it really is the big tent of our contemporary left.
I am going to comment "good post" at the risk of crucifixion. And obviously if there's a PSL or other left org in your area you prefer then go do that
Thank you comrade. That’s the whole idea. I don’t care how you organize I just care that you do
Wish it could be easier to get people to understand that any organization is better than none so please do SOMETHING. I don’t care if it’s through DSA or what, unless it is a party it’s just a vehicle to make organizing easier
Good post. In my area, the dsa is helping run eviction defenses, including helping organize a blockade of the eviction court. We have also organized against ice. The PSL, and other explicitly communist orgs are all well and good, but I don't see them doing work in the ground, so I organize with the DSA.
Exactly. It’s all about making it work where you are on the ground.
The PSL, both in my locality and other places I've seen, are mostly a bunch of wreckers who shelter abusers. They do have lots of good protest signs and media output though, fwiw.
I agree but I've seen PSL do a ton of stuff in my community, other groups as well.
I have mixed feelings about DSA. I should say I'm also a member. Local chapters do a lot of good work, and you can get hooked into a lot of activism very easily, but I'm skeptical about the prospects of pushing it at a national level into something revolutionary.
Me too! Yet I see this as the method to improve the conditions for whatever leftist endeavor is its successor
I'll add, while the DSA is lib, that doesn't necessarily mean each specific member is. There are some good comrades in my local DSA, joining has been a great experience.
At the end of the day I always just say: every DSA is different, with sometimes much more different goals and what they actually do locally and you got nothing to really loose just trying to go a couple times to feel it out. there is of course bad chapters that are more focused on more inconsequential things and there are ones setting up good mutual aid networks and actually working with people and actually radicalizing people past just being a radlib.
It only takes one dedicated good organizer to turn a “bad” chapter into a very successful one
ok, so here's my question, without going into possible allegations against the PSL, why the DSA over PSL? is it not better to stake your place in what is an explicitly communist org?
i guess with the DSA, that's where the masses are. it does bother me that i feel like they have no sense of militancy or party line
Because DSA is a democratic organization, it actually does largely reflect what its members vote for. It's like how libs think the democratic party works but IRL
I think it depends where you are. If there's a big PSL chapter near you then go for it. There's no PSL chapter where I am and very little leftist activity, but the local DSA does some good stuff around here.
You could also try the SRA which is less lib and has guns.
be careful about giving personal info to the national org, they don't care if you use a pseudonym for membership
My main reason for not paying attention to my local DSA recently is because they basically only do zoom meetings now, and that isn't going to change until covid is over.
Until then, my local DSA is pretty much as terminally online as Hexbear is. I'll be more then happy to go to the meetings when physical events start happening again. (Either way I pay my dues.)
Yeah, same here. Mostly zoom meetings with a few limited in person actions. We had a group at the protests and are doing lots of online fundraising and awareness campaigns. Coolest thing right now is a farm some members are working on, a member has a few acres and they're working on getting a cooperative farming thing set up.
Also they do range days occasionally in conjunction with SRA.
Wow I wish my gang did range days. Sadly big city DSA makes it less easy
DSA literally has in its charter that doing any sort of Democratic Centralism is not allowed. If a chapter is found doing this then they can be removed. I don't see how you could make a national commie organization out of the DSA then tbh. I have been to a meeting and while the chapter near me does good work I don't see how DSA can be effective nationally if the org has been founded on the idea of not enforcing instructions organization wide.
I agree with organizing locally. If the only place to do is DSA in your region go ahead do that. If it isn't then I don't think forming another DSA chapter is the best route of action. If you have some reason for why you think DSA can make national strategies and push members to do so then I would be interested in hearing that.
Edit: I forgot to mention they go so far as stating that if you are even a part of an org which practices democratic centralism then you will be kicked out. I can't help but feel it is designed to fail nationally.
My thoughts/ hopes for the DSA are either that it gains enough standalone strength to become electorally self sustaining, after which centralism will be inevitable, or that DSA is the vehicle which organizes the left and the left outgrows DSA.
I don’t know of any DSA members/groups being removed for practicing Democratic centralism though
I don’t know of any DSA members/groups being removed for practicing Democratic centralism though
I imagine this will mostly come in play when the commies are actually becoming more powerful/relevant within DSA. I am curious are any of the commie caucuses big? Do any of them try to institute democratic centralism?
The commie caucuses aren’t enormous obviously but they are very influential (mostly because communists tend to be dedicated organizers) which is why I’m begging more communists to join DSA. I do not know of any caucuses which practice democratic centralism.
The benefit of joining is that you can be influential in a commie caucus and move towards democratic centralism. That’s part of the organizing and being a member of a horizontal organization. The more of us there are, especially this early, the better
Isn't it simpler to encourage commies to join PSL instead? If people can demonstrate PSL can be successful wouldn't that be better than organizing under DSA's banner. (tbf I have 0 idea if PSL exists anywhere around me - although your argument about starting a DSA chapter then should extend to starting PSL presence in your city right?)
Also do these commie caucuses talk to each other? I am seeing that all commie caucuses are localized within a city. Do they have some reason for not being a single group? Sorry for the asinine question. I am genuinely curious.
I don’t think there’s much of a difference honestly. As long as you, the communist reading this, are the one doing the organizing that’s what matters. DSA is definitely more accessible for more people than PSL imo but there’s absolutely no reason to not organize with either.
Yes the caucuses do talk to each other and work together on certain proposals/goals. The main reason they are different caucuses is that it allows for more local organization, but they aren’t different groups. The group is DSA and that’s incredibly useful
Because Im radicalizing my workplace and organizing a union thats going to make stalin look like a lib. Seriously though things just started accelerating rapidly and I'm basically turning every new hire into a commie before theyre even finished training. Feels amazing.
Join DSA and get involved to learn how the org actually works. Most people have never had any real engagement with a democratic organization in their lives, and if your idea of DSA is similar to the shit Ryan Knight tweets out it just means you dont know anything about DSA unfortunately. Theres a lot to learn about organizing and structuring an org like this and everything related to it, and theres a lot of frustrations involved but its part of the process of building a base within an org and organizing that base to expand your platform. We need to build the left within DSA. Join a commie caucus if there is one or try to get involved with learning about them and helping form one too (theres a lot happening currently regarding this national formation). One thing that would really help is if anyone who is in DSA joins the International Committee today or tomorrow (current membership drive ends tomorrow).
Ahh I meant to tag you to drop your list of communist caucuses. I vaguely recall you posting them before
And yes please anybody in DSA reading this join the International Committee.
