Democratic Socialists of AmericaWinning In Hard Times – Building A Brighter Future In The New Year
DSA members are serious about building working class power. That’s why, at this year’s National Convention, DSA members voted to create full-time, paid positions for two political leadership positions – National Co-Chairs! Meet Ashik and Megan, your new National Co-Chairs, and hear how DSA committees, chapters, and campaigns had wins in hard times during 2023, and how we’ll be organizing for a brighter future in 2024.
Ashik Siddique, National Co-Chair
Seven years ago, DSA gave me a political home in what felt like a dark time for the left, plus a sense of collective agency, fellowship, and active hope for a better world that I did not previously know was possible. Now, years later, I am deeply humbled to have earned the confidence of our members to represent our organization as co-chair.
DSA chapters nationwide are winning historic tenant protections, minimum wage hikes, and the biggest Green New Deal program ever. We’ve put hundreds of open socialists in office, and kicked hundreds of neoliberal shills out in the process. We’ve played key roles in a new wave of labor organizing nationwide. We’re forging ties across the Global South, and now, against a US-funded genocide in Palestine, we’re a vital force in rebuilding the strongest anti-war movement in decades.
Under extreme pressure, we keep demonstrating DSA’s unique theory of power. Last week, I participated in a 5-day hunger strike at the White House to demand a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an action that tied together so many threads of our organizing. The hunger strike was led by DSA state legislators using a social movement protest tactic against the highest office in the country, one that’s out-of-touch with its voting base. We were joined in rallies by labor unions including United Auto Workers, whose leadership was recently reformed by rank-and-file workers including many DSA members — all to show internationalist solidarity with people under siege.
Against ruling class efforts to divide the working class and keep sacrificing whole populations, we must keep leveling up into a national organization whose party infrastructure fuels all our work from the foundations — a fully funded DSA that actively recruits new members 24/7, whose coordinated information and organizing machine can go toe-to-toe with the billionaires trying to stop us.
The far right, economic inequality, and global temperatures are rising fast. But we will rise faster — to become the mass movement that history and our future deserve to transform our society. Socialists must lead, and I am so excited to keep building our collective leadership together to win the future we all need.
Megan Romer, National Co-Chair
It’s an incredible honor to have a vote of confidence from comrades across the country. These new co-chair positions represent a new era of DSA, with full-time political leadership allowing us to massively expand our capacity and our reach — and it couldn’t come at a more important time. The ongoing genocide in Gaza is waking more and more people up to capitalism’s most authentic form — violent settler-colonialism — and as the largest socialist organization in the US in generations, it’s our responsibility to help organize them into the fight for the brighter, more hopeful alternative of democratic socialism.
The good news, though, is that we have incredible momentum built up from DSA wins across the country, from the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA) in New York to rent control in Maine and Tacoma, a 69% win rate on election night, and local Strike Ready work in dozens upon dozens of chapters.
We are still in the process of charting our year ahead, but I think there’s broad agreement that we need to keep building our bench of electeds in municipal, state house, and school board races, and I already see enthusiasm surging for defending our Congressional electeds as they come under fire from AIPAC. The labor and tenant movement unions continue to surge, with DSA comrades leading the way in countless locals, and I anticipate that work booming in the coming year. I don’t know what all of our campaigns will look like yet, but I’m hoping to meet up with lots of comrades from across the country to knock on doors in Detroit or St. Louis… or, for that matter, Arizona, where DSA is leading a campaign to end right-to-work laws, or in whichever area they decide to build a new Cop City that we gotta stop.
Each win we get, at any level and in any terrain of struggle, is another chip in the facade of capitalist control. And if we can keep harnessing this work and using it to better organize ourselves and recruit new people to our movement, we will be victorious. We’ve got our work cut out for us, but I’m honored to work toward this future alongside Comrade Ashik, the rest of the amazing National Political Committee, DSA’s wonderful staff, and of course our thousands of comrades across the country. A better world is possible — let’s fight for it!
