Why We Need National DSA

I’m hearing some rumblings from DSA chapters asking ‘What do we get from the national organization?’ The implication is that members and chapters pay all this money to the national organization and get nothing back. But let’s look at the real picture.

What do chapters get? Well, first of all they get the name — that is no small thing. Being part of a national organization that has the reach of DSA means that when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in the paper as a democratic socialist, DSA members in Boise and Peoria can claim her. Being part of a national organization means that when National Director Maria Svart is on CNN, chapters in Knoxville and Santa Fe can point to her in their organizing efforts.

For some efforts being part of a national organization is essential. You can’t fight the fascism that has captured the GOP and the neoliberalism that has enthralled the Democratic Party without a national organization. The rise of the right nationally and the increase in racist attacks require more than a Twitter account to coordinate a national effort.

150 locals can’t produce and distribute Medicare for All brochures and do training to adapt campaigns to local situations without national coordination beyond online forums. There would be no way to coordinate with other national groups, like National Nurses United, without a national organization. The local groups might not even know about the teachers strikes in West Virginia, California and points in between. A national network of DSA elected officials would be a pipe dream without a national organization to coordinate it.

And there are more concrete benefits as well. Chapters get training and support in person and from afar from Field Organizers. The FOs visit chapters to do training and work with them on a variety of projects. This particularly helps smaller, newer chapters who wouldn’t have the resources to do these things on their own.

National DSA produces and mails Democratic Left and sends regular email briefings on a range of topics. The national organization organizes national and regional events — just look at the recent set of regional conferences. Regional leadership forums, webinars, national discussion series like that on Jane McAlevey’s book are all a benefit of being part of a national organization.

And don’t forget the administrative work necessary to manage these activities and organization in general. For example, the money from dues renewals and new member dues doesn’t just fall from the sky — the national organization spends tons of money on renewals — both staff time and direct costs.

Every email and phone call you get, every regional meeting and national convention costs money and staff time. And that staff time is typically feminized labor — done mostly by women staff and volunteers, invisible to most of us, but essential to maintaining a national organization.

And this is all democratically run — DSA is a big tent as we often say. We don’t want either one faction controlling it, or a free for all where the most dominant bullying voice drowns out other voices. Staff represents the whole organization. When we pool dues money and send staff to visit chapters, you don’t have to worry that a member with more money can disproportionately build their privatized faction by visiting chapters on their own dime.

So what do we get from a national organization? The name, the reach, the coordination, the conferences, the mailings, the updates, the political insights — all that and more.

Measures that result in bankrupting the national organization, ultimately will bankrupt the locals as well and we’ll be back to neoliberal ideas contending with fascists. Let’s not let that happen. Let’s build the national organization and build the locals so that we wind up with an American Left that can really make change.

— Chris Riddiough