I’m an active member of East Bay DSA (EBDSA) who frequently participates in the chapter’s canvassing program and socialist school. Like any young organization undergoing rapid growth, there have been some missteps and the typical growing pains. That said, the chapter has made enormous progress in the last year. The members have created a robust neighborhood canvassing operation that’s a model for other DSA chapters around the country. Our recent chapter-wide Medicare-4-All canvassing event drew well over 100 hundred members. The canvassing operation is likely to expand in the coming months as we begin to support the two Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) candidates who were endorsed by the chapter last year, Gayle McLaughlin and Jovanka Beckles. At the general member meeting this weekend, we’ll also vote to support the repeal of Costa-Hawkins. This statewide law greatly restricts rent control in cities across California. Finally, the socialist school kicked off earlier this month with a bang, over 60 members were present at the first two classes. All in all, I strongly believe the chapter is moving in the right direction.
At the general meeting this weekend we’ll also be voting to revise the chapter’s bylaws; the current version passed last year were only provisional. I don’t want to get into the gory details of the process as they are summarized in detail elsewhere. In brief, a working group consisting of the democratically-elected members of the Local Council and appointed organizers was formed in the Fall. The group drafted a streamlined document that provides the chapter a basic democratic structure and the flexibility to adapt as the chapter grows and external conditions change. These bylaws are lean and open-ended so that many different political programs and organizational structures could be built on them by future versions of EBDSA, without the need for another time-consuming bylaws revision process. For these reasons, I support the revised bylaws.
Unfortunately, the process by which members could offer amendments to the revised bylaws has been plagued by controversy. As is all too common these days, the controversy was rooted on social media and took the form of an unseemly, unprincipled smear campaign directed against the EBDSA’s leadership. Before proceeding, it’s important to recognize the members who submitted amendments that addressed a glaring omission or offered a constructive addition to the bylaws. I’m glad that we will have a chance to debate some of these amendments at Sunday’s meeting. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the amendment process has been derailed by an oppositional group working under the name Leadership For All. This group submitted an entire alternate set of bylaws and has consistently agitated to tilt the amendment process in their favor. This has come at the expense of other members who submitted reasonable amendments in good faith.
Early this week the EBDSA leadership made the difficult decision to limit the number of member amendments that would be considered at the upcoming general meeting. With the volume and complexity of amendments the meeting could have spanned multiple days. Very few members would have the time, energy, or interest to take part in such an endeavor. Nor would this be an effective exercise of democracy, only the most invested members would likely participate. At the end of the process it’s possible that the chapter would end up with an unworkable document that would have to be voted down. The chapter would be back at square one.
As a response to the actions of the Local Council to protect the democratic process, there’s been a recent outcry for a straight “up or down” vote on the Leadership For All amendments as an alternative set of bylaws. Leadership For All and their proxies are presenting this as a reasonable request and the exercise of due process. However, closer consideration reveals that a simple up or down vote on a long complicated document that would radically restructure the chapter is anything but reasonable. It’s exactly why the membership will be not be asked to give a straight up or down vote on the official revised bylaws either. For such an important decision it would be totally unfair to ask the membership to read, process, and debate these competing visions in less than a week; let alone propose their own amendments. The official revised bylaws were released a full month prior to the general meeting. This gave the membership sufficient time to read, process, and discuss the revised bylaws with other members.
Given the persistence of the Leadership For All group and level of manufactured outrage on social media, it’s critical that the political motivations of these members be given greater scrutiny. Who is part of their group? Have they been democratically elected? Are they accountable to the membership? Why do they believe they are entitled to advance a radically different political vision for the chapter through procedural means? Would the spirit of democracy be served by presenting their bylaws to the membership? Once all the facts are considered the answers to these questions become crystal clear.
One of the strengths of the DSA is that it’s a big tent organization with different political tendencies. However because of this fact, the DSA must guard against an inherent tendency towards factionalism. Factionalism can be understood as the formation of groups with separate political platforms, striving to a certain degree to segregate themselves and create their own group discipline. The line between a tendency and a faction can often be fuzzy; the group’s conduct and intentions are often the deciding factor. In short, is the possible faction’s behavior principled and comradely, or not? Faction or not, the Leadership For All group represents an unelected, informal power structure within the East Bay DSA that is accountable to no one but themselves.
The Leadership For All website also includes a detailed political platform. Here they argue for a program of “radical democracy” and a more horizontal leadership structure consistent with the politics of the Occupy movement. Whether one agrees with them or not, the platform is a principled political statement. It’s the type of platform that a slate might consider running on at the upcoming convention in April. It’s also worth noting the political contrasts of the Leadership For All group and many of the current Local Council members. The Leadership 4 All platform specifically disavows a commitment to socialism in favor of a nebulous “radical democracy” with nary a mention of class struggle. The majority of the Local Council members have a materialist analysis of society that centers on the class antagonisms of capitalism and a democratic socialist program focused on collective working class struggle.
It’s also instructive to point out that Leadership For All’s political program is almost entirely inward facing. This emphasis on internal procedures is also consistent with many of the amendments they submitted. If we adopted their vision, the chapter’s primary task would be to build a perfect world in miniature, the ideas of which are beamed straight from the leaderships’ craniums to a Google document spelling out the perfect blueprint in the form of the chapter’s bylaws. This week in socialist school the group learned that this type of “socialism” is considered idealist and Utopian. Furthermore, it is definitely a form of “socialism from above”; here socialism must be handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another, by an elite which is not subject to their control. Democratic socialists must reject this authoritarian approach and instead strive for a “socialism from below”; the self-emancipation of the working class based on their shared material interests under capitalism.
Based on what’s transpired over the past fews weeks, the chapter should strongly reject the “radical democracy” being peddled by this group. It’s a world of metrics and report cards. The chapter will know it’s on the path to socialism — sorry, “radical democracy” — when it achieves a perfect member satisfaction survey! Woot! Does this strike anyone else as thoroughly dystopian? It’s clear the vast majority of the chapter’s membership would rather be out canvassing or attending socialist school than dealing with bylaws issues. More importantly, people have joined DSA because they are disgusted with the injustices they see every day and want to change the world, not fight with other members about the voting processes.
If the Leadership For All group wants to fundamentally change the direction of this chapter let them get up in front of the membership at the convention in April and argue their case. If a majority of the membership supports the vision that Leadership for All puts forward over competing visions, then this slate should be elected with a mandate to carry their vision. This is how democracy works. In a political organization we should not use a mundane bylaws revision process as a proxy for an attempt to take political power. We must stand firm and not be intimidated or bullied by the faceless, spineless online trolls. Please join me in fighting for a future called democratic socialism, it’s one that’s free of exploitation and oppression, and full of human flourishing and fulfillment. Maybe it’s just me but I’d rather pass on a future spent on a “radically democratic” commune in Humboldt county.
Edit: The author of a response to this piece has mischaracterized some of the more pointed language used above. 1) There is a reference above regarding faceless spineless online trolls, this is directed at people who are not part of the chapter but feel the need to publicly shame the leadership who they’ve never met, based on actions they know nothing about. It was not directed at members of the chapter. I apologize for not making this more clear. For the uninitiated, the EBDSA leadership is regularly denounced on social media by members of other chapters and non-DSA leftists. 2) The reference to a Humboldt county commune has been taken out of context. It could be a commune in any remote location. The key point is where a program of inward facing “radical democracy” leads. It doesn’t seem to address the economic relations of capitalism. How does it move us towards socialism? It assumes the best we can do is create a utopian community in an attempt to escape capitalism. We must reject this pessimism. 3) Nowhere in the piece above is anyone called a dirty hippie, I like dirty hippies actually! 4) It will be pointed out that the author of the response used his piece as an opportunity to continue the narrative that the current leadership is bunch of “careerist NGO bureaucrats”. 5) The author of the piece has some valid points. The convention in April is where they should be debated.