Building Power, Not Boutique Politics: Why Columbus DSA Should Not Support the Green Party Candidate for President
Co-authors: Alek Nielsen, Dani Howell, Kristin Porter, Adam Parsons
Note if you’re unable to access the full article, the text is also available in the #general channel of the Columbus DSA Slack.
Haven’t joined DSA? Now’s a great time! Go to dsacb.us/join.
Want to add your name to this statement? Fill out this short form.
At the August 27 Columbus DSA coordinating committee meeting, the committee voted to pass on to the membership a proposal submitted by nine members of the chapter. This is in accordance with our bylaws, which require us to put any such proposal to the membership provided it does not conflict with the bylaws. This is a procedural vote that does not indicate whether the coordinating committee, as a body, is in agreement with the content.
The proposal, which requires a 2/3 vote of attendees at the next general meeting (or by absentee ballot), would commit the chapter in several ways that we’ll discuss shortly, but the general idea is that it would express support for Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for President. (You can find the full text here). We think this would be bad for the chapter, make growth harder, and potentially commit us to a politics of irrelevancy.
This is a major change to how we engage with campaigns: When we endorse a campaign, it typically means that we’re committing substantial resources to that campaign. This is an established local norm and a national policy. Resolution 31 of the 2019 DSA Convention explicitly rejects the use of endorsements as mere opportunities for political position-taking, instead instructing us to formulate a “baseline set of actions” we commit to on behalf of all the candidates we endorse. Recognizing that actually campaigning for Hawkins in Columbus would be a mistake, this proposal asks our chapter to create a new kind of paper endorsement — to “support” but not “endorse.” Setting that precedent as a byproduct of this decision, rather than through consultation with the Electoral Working Group and consideration of how it will affect our future work, strikes us as ill-advised.
We shouldn’t support “protest” votes: As socialists, we participate in politics — whether electoral or otherwise! — to build and to wield power. This is why we endorse candidates who are viable or have the potential for mass mobilization — ideally both. It’s why, at the national level, we endorsed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, and Cori Bush: all of them had clear paths to victory and were focused on mass mobilization. Elections are not a declaration of ideals: they’re a way to gain state power and impose restrictions on the ruling class. We aren’t interested in winning purely moral victories — our mission is too urgent and the price of failure too high. However, this proposal specifically calls for a “protest vote,” which is, in our opinion, no vote at all.
Hawkins isn’t a good candidate: This proposal makes an extremely weak case for Howie Hawkins as a candidate. We suspect that’s because there’s no strong case to be made. He’s a perennial candidate who has run 24 campaigns for a variety of offices but has never won a race at even the lowest level. The Green Party more broadly has demonstrated little capacity to run campaigns at the national level.
“Federal Funding” is a mirage: While this isn’t raised in the proposal, we think it’s worth discussing. One of the most common cases made for Hawkins is one the Green Party makes every presidential election: reaching 5% of the vote will qualify them for public campaign funding. The amount of funding available to minor parties through this program is, relatively speaking, a drop in the bucket. It’s far less, for example, than what Bernie Sanders raised for either of his primary campaigns. The resources the Greens dedicate to securing this funding demonstrates the marginality of their project.
We shouldn’t build the Green Party: Although the resolution claims it would not build the Green Party, the Green Party would inevitably use funds and the momentum of a higher-than-usual vote return to encourage socialists to invest energy in the Party. Support from a large DSA chapter would further encourage this. Members may even come to identify it as our future labor party, with which we can accomplish our long-term electoral goals as DSA (laid out in Resolution 31 of the 2019 Convention and in the National Electoral Strategy). We believe this would be a very serious error. Socialism is the future, but the Green Party is not. Over decades of work the Green Party has not demonstrated a capacity to build power. It has often shown extremely poor strategic judgement with its heavy (almost exclusive) focus on electoral work, neglecting the other avenues of organizing key to our socialist approach. While we offer solidarity to the many young members working to reform the Green Party, we do not believe more socialists should orient their efforts in that direction. It is not likely to become a bona-fide mass party, and it would be irresponsible to encourage this illusion among our membership in Columbus or nationally.
We shouldn’t allow the presidential race to dominate our politics: With COVID-19, its associated economic crisis, and the uprisings in support of Black lives, socialists have a clear opening to support, educate, and mobilize people around fundamental economic and social questions that get at the root of the failures of the Democratic Party and of racial capitalism at large to ensure a humane and democratic society. Calling, as this proposal does, for the NPC to organize a national discussion around Howie Hawkins, when the proposal admits that we do not want to build the Green Party, do not want to endorse the Greens in Columbus, and do not want to invest energy in actually campaigning for Hawkins, is incoherent and a misuse of resources.
We want to grow — but not like this: This resolution says that via support for Hawkins we would be able to build the chapter during the election season. How would this decision affect our growth? Who is the constituency that will join DSA only if we support a marginal and weak protest candidate? Is it large? Is it one we want? We doubt it. Our chapter was able to grow through the DSA for Bernie campaign because Bernie was a well-known candidate who had credible potential to win state power. This move would offer neither benefit. Is the potential benefit of this resolution enough to risk damaging our reputation with organized labor? With the many millions of members of the working class who — correctly or not — see the binary choice in this election as significant? We don’t think so. The path to a strong and growing DSA is not through boutique protest politics but through engagement with the actually-existing working class.
As one noted revolutionary said: “where there are not thousands, but millions, that is where serious politics begin.” We agree — and we think we need to be laser-focused on building real power, not just propagandizing or creating fodder for social media arguments. Please join us at the general meeting on September 10 and vote NO on the resolution.
To add your name, fill out this short form.
Adam Parsons
Alek Nielsen
Dani Howell
David R.
Neil Bhaerman
Kristin Porter
Doug Garrison
Andrew Porter
Ariana Ybarra
Nathan Bensing
Aly Stein
Ali M.
Rachel Wenning
Mark R. Hirschfeld
Evan T. Davies
Luke Burns
David Kramer
Adam B.
Tori Coan
MJ Eckhouse
Ethan Young
Trevor P. Martin
Terra G.
Liz A.
Darren Brockes
Stacey Hauff
Ian B.
Andrea Garcia-Vargas
Irene Mynatt
Susan L.
Corey Smith
