Socialist Summit

Hayley and John from DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC) discuss the planning, programming, vibes, and takeaways from DSA’s first—but definitely not last—Socialist Summit in Chicago, held at the end of July.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

But in our case, we're a bit different in the sense of like we came from a merger, right? We came from people coming together and finding alignment to work with each other, even if they had disagreements. And I think that spirit kind of also carries with the underlying thing of like, if I had to say that there is one thing up that is you could say a cultural element of DSA was I would describe it, is that is that the core is us trying to work together to find alignment and figure out these things as we move towards a better world.

SPEAKER_04 0:40

Hi comrades, and welcome to CLASS, the podcast of Democratic Socialists of America's National Political Education Committee, or NPEC. My name is Michaela, the current chair of NPEC and member of North New Jersey DSA. In this episode, we'll be talking to NPC members, John and Haley, about DSA's recent Socialist Organizing Summit in Chicago. Before we dive in, a reminder that CLAS is available on all major podcast platforms. Please consider becoming a DSA member by following the link in the podcast description. You can also send us a message about the episode and sign up for Red Letter and Peck's Monthly Newsletter using the provided links. DSA's organizing culture to the outside viewer may seem mystifying. How is it possible that all of these average people are able to get together in their limited spare time and pull off campaigns and successes greater than the sum of our parts? Well, a lot of it has to do with how we learn from each other. DSA, as a multi-tenancy socialist organization, member-led and run democratically on every level, compels us to gather en masse to gain knowledge and direction. We aren't told what to do. We decide what we'll do and how we'll do it together. This is the difference between mobilizing and organizing, as the late Jane McAleevy liked to allude to. From an educator's point of view, it looks a lot like the difference between the banking model of knowledge and the building of a dynamic collective of learners and thinkers. And for organizing against the capitalist class, it's imperative that we take the value of our dynamic collective power seriously. The right and the center tries its best to downplay that power when not outright calling it threatening, which is a contradiction that they seem perfectly willing to ignore. But how we sustain ourselves is through the constant respectful interchange of our experiences and lessons and through principled debate over our priorities. It really does set us apart, it's what keeps us together, and it drives our enemies absolutely up a wall. During the first weekend in August, we had the opportunity to do that in a joyful mass setting at the first Socialist Summit, where over 500 DSA members from all over the country came together in Chicago. I was there and I'll share my experience, but we also have John and Haley from our national political committee who planned the summit here to talk about how it happened, the highlights, and what we should take away. John is a member of New Orleans DSA and is a member of the NPC and our National Treasurer, and is a member of Red Star Caucus. Haley is from Portland DSA, is also on the NPC and is a member of the Bread and Roses Caucus. Welcome, Haley and John.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Hello, good to be here.

SPEAKER_04 3:12

Hi, thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for being here. So we always ask the same question to our first timers, which is how and why did you become a socialist? And how and why did you join DSA? Haley, you can go first.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

Cool. Yeah. So something that a lot of other, I think, DSA members relate to is um Bernie's campaign being one of the first things that kind of introduced me to democratic socialism. Um, but more specifically, I actually, after that, uh after his 2016 run, I started getting more involved in campaigns generally across um Colorado, where I was living at the time. And I actually ended up getting hired for my first campaign job with someone who is a Democratic socialist and was running for U.S. Senate against Hick and Looper at the time. And so her name was Lorena Garcia, and I really started, I think, realizing that I was a socialist throughout that campaign through learning from her and the ideas that she was sharing in that campaign. Um I kind of have a unique experience, I think, with what my first introduction into DSA specifically was, um, because I actually, my first DSA meeting was an endorsement interview for Lorena with Denver DSA, but from the side of the campaign. So my first DSA meeting, I guess I was not a DSA member, actually. Um, I was there with the campaign.

SPEAKER_04 4:41

You were trying to organize DSA members. They weren't trying to organize you.

SPEAKER_03 4:45

Yeah, I guess so. Um and yeah, but then you know, throughout her campaign, she did end up getting endorsed by all four chapters in Colorado, um, the chapters at the time. And so I was starting to learn a little bit more about DSA, and then her campaign um ended pretty abruptly during the COVID outbreak. So in the beginning of 2020, um, the campaign ended because COVID hit, and we were in our final week of collecting signatures to get on the ballot for her, and um basically ended up like a thousand signatures short because we didn't have that final week to collect when folks went indoors and did not want us knocking on their doors, that's for sure. Um and so yeah, that um was kind of a crazy experience. We actually just a fun tidbit, because this definitely radicalized me a little bit. Um, sh we actually, the local court in Colorado, like whatever, one of the lower courts, did put her back on the ballot. And then um the Supreme Court of Colorado actually appealed that and removed her from the ballot. And coincidentally, um, John Higginlooper was the person who appointed a good majority of the judges on the Colorado Supreme Court when he was there, and he was the opponent in that race. So yeah, um, take that how you would like. Um but anyway, so from there when her campaign ended for real after that court battle, um, was really like in the middle of COVID shutdown. Um, and I dove kind of headfirst into an ice encampment that some Denver DSA folks were running outside of an um ice facility that's right outside of Denver in Aurora, Colorado. Um, we were out there actually, I think it was 79 days, um, and I spent a good amount of time there, quite a few nights there. And really like the solidarity and community that I gained and learned through that experience um kind of gave me like a really material idea of what our world could be like if it was if we weren't living under this capitalist hellhole. Um and so yeah, I was pretty fully committed to socialism by the end of that. And um I think I ended up joining actually at the end of uh Lorena's campaign in like late 2019, but that was kind of my journey through 2019, 2020. And then I uh ended up being uh elected to the electoral working group chair position in Denver DSA in towards the end of 2020, and the rest is history. Rest is socialist history.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:18

Yeah. Thanks for that, Haley. What about you, John? What's your what's your origin story? Your villain story, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Yeah, for capitalists. Uh I joined I joined DSA in 2020. Um my path, I think my path started I would probably say there's a couple different jump-off points, but the first one I would say would probably be um when I sat down in the uh African American Cultural Center at Louisiana State University in 2010. Um I had just started school college, I was 18, and I was leaving rural New High rural Louisiana down in New Iberia, uh, also known as uh Sugartown sometimes. Uh this is where most of my family, my dad's side of the family is from and lived at. And so going there from a house where like I was living with my aunt at the time who hadn't gone to college, like it was kind of random. Um, the people there got me plugged into doing student organizing, looked out for me, brought me up, and just took care of me. And I continued doing that, turned that into community organizing until um one of my friends got murdered by the Iberia Paris Sheriff's Department in 2014. Um, and that was kind of like a moment when I was like, you know, Trayvon Martin had already also already died too. And so that was a moment in which I was kind of like, you know, like this is a thing that keeps happening. And, you know, like we're doing the things, we're feeding people, we're helping folks, we're doing all these great things, but I think we need to get political. And so from there, that was when I decided to um try to throw in with like whatever the local political scene was in Baton Rouge at the time. And so I got on with uh the campaign to elect our first uh black woman mayor in Baton Rouge, Sharon Weston Broom. Uh great, great, great, great lady, great lady. Um and so I hopped on with that campaign, worked with that campaign, helped her get elected, and then from there, a couple years and then from there, a couple years later, I continued the process going through things, had some interesting conversations in the damn pipeline, went to the CBC, campaign school, all types of stuff, you know. And then I was in, it was when I was in, it was a couple years later when I was doing something in city government. Um I was co-chair of the commission on racial equity and inclusion, and this was after Alton Sterling had been shot in 2016. And the thing is, is that uh from there, so we were researching some alternatives to like, you know, pol to uh we're researching some alternatives for public safety, specifically for that, right? And we're doing the research on crisis response teams, systems of care. We have a tier two system of care facility in Baton Rouge, Louisiana now. And from talking with folks and researching there, it was like, oh, well, like poverty is the issue, right? Like if you're talking about crime, if you're talking about anything at all, poverty is the issue. It is the highest correlate correlation between DV, between interpersonal violence, all of that, right? And so, and then going through the process of researching and seeing that um there's an equation out there where someone proved that for every like dollar of welfare a child gets, the society saves or gets back two to three dollars. So you literally get back money from keeping people out of poverty. Right. So, you know, like, and then that was like the first that was where the gears really started turning. And so I start carrying that around and talking to folks about it, and people just didn't care. And this is one of the most impoverished cities in the country, one of the hungriest cities in the country, and also one of the cities with the most amount of massive food deserts. And we just had a breaking point, you know. Like, I just because like I'm not I'm not with this. I'm gonna keep looking up. I go on Wikipedia, I just randomly decide to actually look at the poverty Wikipedia page. That page links to capitalism. I read about capitalism for the first time, that links to socialism. There's a straight chain between those three pages.

SPEAKER_04 11:13

Yay, Wikipedia.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yeah, and so from there I was like, okay, like I want to be a socialist. This is exactly what I was looking for because they're trying to address these issues. I research all the socialist organizations, look all of them up, you know, I mean all of them, because there were none active in Baton Root Real. We didn't have a DSA chapter at the time. And so, like, there was an OC that was starting up, but then they have they had failed before I joined. And so I go through the process and I'm like, all right, yeah, I'm gonna join DSA because this is the only one that has the ability that has democracy cooked into its constitution and bylaws, and I found all of them. I looked into PSL, I looked into Frizzo, I looked at everybody. DSA was the only one that had the democratic member input cooked into its bylaws, which means that it is the only organization where members could actively influence it and actually engage in democratic struggle and debate to actually try to move and improve the position of the organization. The only one.

SPEAKER_04 12:29

They hadn't read the Wikipedia page yet.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

Yeah, yeah, I'm like, where y'all at? I'm like, there's nobody out here. And then randomly, one of my student workers was in YDSA, and I was chatting it up with her, and she was like, Yeah, actually, I'm in YDSA. And she was like, and I was like, for real? She was like, Yeah, I can add you to the local Slack. It's been dead for like a year, but I can add you. I was like, all right, I'm coming through. And I get in there, nothing's popping off. And so I every Tuesday when I got off of work, I posted an axe that somebody wanted to have a meeting. I started this in June. I did this until November. Every Tuesday. I had enough time to do this when I got off of work. And it didn't happen until I said, hey, there's an abortion rights protest going on, because Louisiana was one of the first of all. Our Republicans and our Democrats colluded to do that. It was co- it was actually signed by and signed and co-written by a Democratic, by a Democrat in Louisiana.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

And so, yeah, and so I'm like, hey, I'm going to this abortion rights protest. Anyone want to come? One person comes with me. We take a picture, we post it in there, we have a meeting within a month. Rest is history.

SPEAKER_04 13:38

Oh my God. Wow. It really was a villain origin story. That's crazy. Oh my God. Wow, that's amazing. I mean, one thing that I just heard you say, which is a great uh segue into our next part, is that you were, even though you were kind of isolated, it's like you could see the difference between DSA and all these other groups because maybe even like latently or something, you realize like mass organization is the way we we win, you know. And I think that this is something that really does actually baffle the beltway and like the sort of mainstream political people. They're just like, how does it work? We don't understand it. It seems like every month there's a what is democratic socialism? What is the DSA? Like some kind of headline that acts like we're just from another planet, really. Um, but it really is, it's not simple. It's a complex machine, but the reason why is because it's a mass organization. Um, we're now what, 130,000 members, you know, and we're popping off, you know, we grew 10% last month. I think we also maybe gained like a couple thousand last week, and there wasn't even like a an election going. So right now, and of course, we don't want to pat ourselves on the back too hard. We'll knock ourselves straight into the computer monitor, but it's pretty amazing, you know, and like last month, or or sorry, last last two weeks ago, or I guess it was a week and a half ago at this point, we all saw each other in Chicago at the Socialist Summit, which is um what what is the Socialist Summit? Maybe we can talk a little bit about the background. Um, I know it, uh, or at least I was there when the convention resolution was passed in 2023 to reactivate the activist conference. But maybe y'all can talk about like how the NPC this year decided to, or I guess it was early last year or late last year, um, decided to get this going again. John, do you want to start this time and then uh Haley, pick up?

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Yeah. Um so you know, like we have the National Activist Conference, which we're supposed to be uh having in the off-years from convention. And the key thing was this past convention passed a whole bunch of in-person events. Like I think we passed like what four or five, right? We passed like four or five in-person events. And so that was when it was like, okay, when it came around to like budgeting time and coming up with stuff, I stopped and was like, hey, why don't we just do all of these as the National Activist Conference? We can just have different programming tracks, talk with Haley, talk with other folks across the NPC from the national bodies, and there was some alignment coming up between all of us of like, yeah, this could make sense. And so then we kind of go through the process, start crafting up a resolution to get everything together, and after getting a buy-in, cooking it into the budget for the next year, and then getting everything together to say, let's go forward with this. And so that's kind of where like the technical aspect came from. And I think Haley will follow up with when we started planning, but I think it was it was to for for the event and for the size, it was actually a pretty tight planning timeline, you know. But I know Haley's gonna hop in with like some more details on it and also some more detail on the rationale because I know she does a really good job of covering that too.

SPEAKER_03 16:53

Thanks. Yeah, um, I think I was actually kind of shocked at how much planning went into this event. I kind I think I kind of assumed it was gonna be slightly easier than a convention because we didn't have all of the actual deliberation happening and credentialing and all of that. Um, but it was still, you know, a huge undertaking. Yeah, like John said, we actually started planning this, I want to say like November of last year, 2025. So um, you know, eight, nine months, whatever that is. And so um, some of the like specifics that the different tracks that we were planning for. So three, three of the different convention resolutions that I pulled up to remind myself of um that passed at the 2025 convention that were calling for these in-person events, or actually four of them. One of them um was focused on building out our socialists in office network and starting to build more facilitation for our socialists in office across the entire country to get together and um learn more from each other, as well as DSA members who are running socialists and office committees in their own chapters. Um so that ended up turning into a track at the conference. Um, we have also been working towards preparing for um some sort of mass action in on May Day in 2028, um, which kind of stems from the call from Sean Fain, the UAW president, calling for a general strike in on May Day in 2028. So we ended up having Labor put together a track that um talked a lot about like the specifics or the baseline stuff you can do to start preparing for some sort of mass action. Um, and then we also had a track working on um Palestine solidarity work and anti-war in general. Um, and that was something that also was called for at last 2025 convention. And then we ended up adding um an abolished ICE track because of all that has come up with ICE in this last year, especially in Trump's new term. Um and so that track uh also was focused on um a few different things. They kind of hit all sides of it, electoral and other like on-the-ground organizing, mutual aid, et cetera, that we can do to fight back against ICE. And last but not least, we added an organizing fundamentals track, which was um a little bit more of like a 101 type thing where we had um some basic trainings, which ended up actually, I think, not being very basic and were just some really incredible trainings, um, things that I wish I could have attended every single one. Um but for example, one of the sessions in there that I uh worked on was training folks on how to um really build participatory democracy into all of our culture and DSA. So at the chapter level, national level, et cetera, um, which I definitely want to talk more about later. But yeah, so that's kind of like what it turned into. And um we had a ton of different people organizing the different tracks and getting everything put together. And I do think it was a success and came together well.

SPEAKER_04 19:57

Um well, I was there and I would agree. I'm I wasn't able to go to a lot of the the actual sessions because I was chilling Workers Deserve More or program, like you know, sitting out in the hallway talking to people, handing them stacks of literature. But I was able to go to um part of what you one that you did, Haley, with Greta from Louisville DSA on uh participatory democracy, and it was amazing. Um, and then I was able to also sit in on one that my co-chair on the um program committee did with one of our staffers, Conflict Without Fear. I was able to look at those. Those two were in the organizing fundamentals ones. And I I can also just say from my experience talking to members, it was all kinds of members. It was people who have been in DSA for years. We had a ton of like seasoned comrades there. Um, you know, then we also had people who'd only been in DSA for a couple of months. I actually met uh one on the I met uh two people actually to and from Chicago, one person on the train coming out and one person on the plane coming back in. She was sitting next to to me on the plane and we were delayed 12 hours. So we got to know each other quite well. But she'd only been in DSA for a couple of months. And when I talked to her, you know, even though we were both like irritated and cranky because we couldn't, we couldn't fly home, she was like, that was amazing. I I feel so renewed. I feel so I feel so great. And she'd only been in D. I think she'd said she was only in it for like a couple of months. So, Rania, if you're listening, great to meet you. Um, it was awesome to meet a lot of a lot of new people, obviously. There were people from all over the country I'd never met, but also a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time or I hadn't seen since convention the year before. And the uniqueness of this was also that we didn't have deliberation in the sense that we're not making decisions. But I want to talk to you guys about the importance of this space for our democracy, because you know, as you as you mentioned. Mentioned, John, and as I mentioned in our intro, it's like DSA is like infused with democracy, right? And it's so important to us. We're sickos for democracy, you know, um, inside, outside, around, under, through democracy. But in this space, we're not deliberating anything, we're not deciding anything, yet democracy reigns. So maybe you can talk a little bit about how you connect this kind of thing, this activist uh summit to our sort of democratic culture and the importance of a non-deliberative space in that in that way. Haley, maybe you could start this time.

SPEAKER_03 22:39

Yeah, totally. Um, my favorite thing ever to talk about is democracy. So excited to talk about that.

SPEAKER_04 22:45

Yeah, we're sick of us for democracy.

SPEAKER_03 22:49

Yeah, so actually the participatory democracy workshop that I did with Greta um talked about this quite a bit as well. Uh, really just like the importance of having non-deliberative spaces um as well as deliberatives, deliberative spaces to build a really healthy culture of democracy. And so, yeah, I mean, the big, the big reason behind it is it helps non-deliberative spaces are helping to build our culture, our skill sharing, um, our ability to organize. And um, I think I guess the most important part as I see it is like sharing the information across across the country, right? We're all coming together and we're learning from other chapters that maybe have already gone through something and are able to share, you know, reflections and takeaways that they have learned and support other chapters to not have to um go through every single mistake that every other chapter has already made. We're able to share, share these skills with each other and share lessons learned. And um one of the an example of that is one of the sessions that I helped moderate was a panel where we had electeds from a few different places across the country, and they really were sharing how it's been as a socialist in office, working with their chapter. And I think something that was really interesting to me is we really saw such a variety of ways that our chapters have engaged with their socialists in office. Um, but there was always the through line of these different democratic practices that we have in place in how we work with our electeds. Um yeah, and then I mean, also besides like the collective knowledge sharing, I think a ton, a really important thing for socialists is our own political development and really learning more about um the world, the the society that we live in, the history um that came before us. And so that is uh another piece of these conferences that is really, really um important and specifically important to building a culture of democracy longer term in our organization. Um, John, I don't know if you had more to add on to that.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Perfect segue. I was gonna say, um excuse my cat. The uh I was gonna say, yeah, I had been thinking about like something like this for for for years, probably like since I joined DSA, especially after I learned about the National Activist Conference as it existed, because the key thing for me was like, you know, like we get together every two years across as a as a as like the entire like as like the representatives of all DSA members and chapters, and we mostly just debate. Maybe there's a party at night or something else like that, but it's mostly debating, it's mostly people sticking with you know your your group, your chapter, or your tribe. Maybe you make some cross-chapter connections, or maybe you have some people you know from a different national body or other work that you're doing who you connect with, like my good friend Colin. But like outside of that, there's not really much opportunity besides like online on the internet or on X now to try to interact with other members. And the thing and the thing for me is like also another thing that happened a year going back to when I mentioned how my path to like becoming a socialist, like I joined a Black Mutual Society or Black Fraternity in when I was 19, right? So a year after I sat down in African American Cultural Center. Those are also some of the people who met me and taught me about organizing. And the thing is, like, Sigma is a national, is a national uh organization that has chapters in every state, that has uh statewide organizations and regional organizations. We have a convention just like DSA, we do delegates, we have mar large internal debates, we go through the process of that. Like we have highly contested elections from at every level, right? You know, like there's a lot of like really strong and positive democratic life and culture, but the organization is also 114 years old that started specifically with a mission on going after and trying to like develop and uh educate and inform formally enslaved people, right? So like there's a whole like thing behind the mission of that. And the core of it was like from coming from that democratic practice, one of the things that helped us maintain the ability to like actually go actually like continue to be able to organize, continue to be able to do what we're going to do both in a community and a in a in a broad in abroad, excuse my cat again, is that we go we actually go through the process of maintaining social bonds, and that's a hefty, hefty part of it. But also our democratic culture and how we train people in it, and also how we develop people in it and bring people in it and sustain it is also very, very mature, right? Like we go through the process of refining, examining, and being like, well, hey, we want to make sure that the process through which we go about these debates, these motions, these resolutions that we're bringing forward is extremely like fair and democratic. But like it thrives through the process of us actually being able to like communicate, share ideas, build connections, and do that across, you know, across chapters, across regions, across states, across the lines, you know. And so that was one of the things that like I really, really wanted to look forward to because if we're only meeting each other in a moment of struggle or in a moment of political struggle, it becomes a little bit harder to go through the process of like, how can I trust what you're saying, right? Because like if we're engaging with this from a status of like thinking about this from good faith or other things of that nature, the core of the idea of engaging in good faith is that we can pursue deeper questions, right? Because ultimately, like if we want to advance our politics, if we want to develop our line, if we want to develop the ways that we're going about this, we need to approach the deeper questions. It can't just be your evil tanky wrecker because you wear the acronym RS or you put a star or you put a star with googly eyes on your lanyard, right? It can't be it can't be something like that. It has to actually be engaging with the actual arguments and discussions and ideas that people have. So then that way we can actually scrutinize and work out the differences, right? Because Haley sees something very different than what I see where I'm at. You see something very different than what I see, and you see something very different than what Haley sees too, right? And so then that way we can actually approach this, build the connections that we need to, and actually have those deeper conversations without the pressure of trying to win a position.

SPEAKER_04 28:59

Yeah, a lot's there because I really do think, I mean, part of the purpose of this uh podcast a lot of the time is to model synthesis, right? Which is um you get there through debate, but you also get there through respectful discussion. It doesn't always have to have like the stakes of like a resolution. I I think that having something written down will help to like focus things, obviously. And we we do have a lot. I mean, one of the things about DSA and its growth is that we have a lot going on. You just also outlined like all the things we committed to at convention and through a work of genius. I actually didn't realize that was the background. We were able to knock out what four or five priorities just with one summit, which is like kind of incredible. Nice work. I didn't realize that that was actually kind of the master plan. Um, I was there, like I mentioned, to talk about workers deserve more, and we had a big final session. Um, not everyone was able to make it because they had to catch flights, but we had hundreds of people in the room. And one of the things we did, um, kind of the thing that ended up taking up the most time and was really fruitful, is we did breakouts. Um, we had, you know, people around the table talking about their favorite parts of the program, how they plan to use it. And then we had report backs. It's kind of like the typical DSA setup, right? Where you have the breakouts with the report backs. But having it in that mass setting also, I think, really brought home this both the diversity of our organization, all the different ways that people can approach the same question, but also all the ways that we can enrich ourselves just by listening and just by like being in the room with each other. I think that we have the sort of miracle of modern technology. So now we're able to have meetings whenever we're across the country from each other. It's not always in person. But what would you say about the importance of that in-person interaction? Because I think that immediacy is one big part of it where you can actually see a person and understand where they're coming from, even just by their body language. And you're kind of faced with that bodily presence, you know, and have to have to um be a comrade, like in in real life, you know. And then there's also, I think you mentioned it, John, but there's also the the sort of noise of social media a lot of the time that kind of I think gets in the way of these kinds of interactions. So speak to that. Like Haley, maybe you can speak to this um in-person aspect and what you feel you can take away from from having um both set it up, but also being in that setting for three days.

SPEAKER_03 31:38

Yeah, I think it's maybe a little cliche, but like organizing is really based in relationships and trust. And um it's really hard to build that when you're just over Zoom. So um something that I do personally advocate for in like chapters and um different spots that I've like played a leadership role in DSA is to, you know, can have as much in-person events or um yeah, whatever it is as you possibly can, because it really is transformative in a lot of ways. Um, for example, something actually when I was on staff with DSA, um, and I believe we're getting back into doing these more often, is having like regional organizing um retreats for chapters in similar regional areas to get together and basically do what the summit did, but on a smaller scale. And the the feedback and like the everything that comes out of those has always been so fruitful and so positive and really transforms the the relationships that chapters have with each other and the connections that they're able to make and grow from and learn from. And so um I think this is that's what happens at this summit, just at a broader scale, where we have people from all over the country and the relationship building is so important. I actually talked about this in the little speeches that John and I gave at the Saturday night little party event that we had, um, where things can look really messy sometimes, especially on DSA Twitter or the forums. And um when we all get together and are actually organizing in person, most of that is just you know completely thrown to the wayside. And we are like, we do remember um the importance of solidarity and how much like we are actually aligned on things and the work that we are all have, we have a shared goal that we are trying to get to. And it's fun for us sometimes, I think, to to debate and maybe get a little messy online. But when it comes down to it, we're um, you know, serious about this project, serious about build getting socialism in this country. And we do need to have that trust and relationship building in order to do that.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Yeah. And I'll follow and say, um, and I'll follow and say, in uh, and one of the things that even came up recently with the uh request that we got from uh a comrade who was a member of the New American movement is that it was noted explicitly, right, that like DSA was founded from a merger of two socialist organizations rather than a split, right? And so, you know, like when you think about this and you look at the history of like the American left, you can kind of see this constant like form of, I guess you could say, like, disunity of like purges, splits being the norm, and then things continually regressing or not being able to stay active or grow or develop from there. And so, but in our case, we're a bit different in the sense of like we came from a merger, right? We came from people coming together and finding alignment to work with each other, even if they had disagreements. And I think that spirit kind of also carries with the underlying thing of like if I had to say that there is one thing that is you could say a cultural element of DSA, was I would describe it, is that is that the core is us trying to work together to find alignment and figure out these things as we move towards a better world. And so when it comes to being able to do this in person, right? Like, if you look, even if you go back to like when we had our first explosion in membership, like this was during the pandemic, right? And so like we went from about if you do it by our current membership standards where we use MIGs, we had about 20,000-ish MIGs in January 2020.

SPEAKER_04 35:15

MIGs for those who are not uh deep in DSA baseball as members in good standing, which just means you're up on your dues.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Thank you. And and then by what by about like mid-late 2021, we had close to like 75,000, 80,000 members? You see, like that's an explosion. An explosion of people who were also coming in during the pandemic when we couldn't really get together in person. And so then, you know, like when we go through it, it's like there's all this conflict in the organization because people are coming in like the way that you would normally act if you're on Reddit, if you're on Twitter, if you're on, you know, any you're you're picking your favorite online algorithm app where people post and then people start dunking on each other, just being real. And it's like, but it's like when you're going through the process of like just doing something together, like you are actually able to build trust. And it changes the way that you interact. It's like I'm not gonna call you a sock dim. I'm not gonna call you a sock dim while we're helping some people on a picket line or something else like that, right? I'm not gonna call my buddy who uh I'm not gonna call my buddy who helped me with um who's helping me figure out how we're gonna um helping me make these signs for a protest or rat live, right? Like this is this is somebody that I'm literally working with on something with in solidarity. And so like the ability to just connect and like have and like be and like have good emotional time with each other, right? Because the way that a lot of these algorithms and this social media works is that it's largely characterized, besides Instagram, is largely characterized around like rage bait, around negative emotional polarization against other people. So then it goes into a space in which like you're used to like this type of like conflict when you engage with folks, but it's also always gonna be very shallow, right? Because you're having an emotional or ego-driven engagement and not an engagement around a deeper question or a deeper question around what y'all are trying to do. And so I think that like that is like like that is one of the most like beautiful and important parts of this. Like I feel like what we'll see that comes from this, we'll probably see like the effects of like what comes from the connections people made at the summit, like over the coming years, truly. Because I know people are still talking to each other about it and still connecting and exchange numbers and everything else like that, you know, which is I'm just excited. I'm excited to see where it goes. Like, I think is is it's gonna be something that like we'll we'll measure it in like over time and see how like things go with it. I know we're gonna have I know it's gonna be much larger next time too, because there's gonna be too much interest.

SPEAKER_04 37:51

Yeah, so a couple things there. One thing I wanted to note is that just the part about the people coming in, like I would, I would say I I wouldn't call it causal. It's just like people have conflict in part because they're um, well, we don't shy away from conflict in DSA. Like we all are coming in as, you know, maybe from different backgrounds, different levels, different experiences, and the things that we want to work on. A lot of people come in with like one thing in mind, right? It's like, I want to do it, I want to do this thing that maybe you we we have a great comms team. So like maybe they saw something online and they're just like, that's the thing I want to do. And then they come in and maybe it's not as immediate as they think it might be. But the other part is like how people now are sort of encouraged to act in like politically online, as like you said rage bait, I would also say as um, you know, just immediate contrarian argument, right? And I think that one thing I noticed in the deliberative spaces that we had at the summit is that you had a lot of people line like learning the same thing, and then they're encouraged to talk about it with each other, right? And like not even encouraged, like that's the whole purpose of the room, not just to imbibe information, take notes, and then leave, right? But actually like talk about it with each other. And some people, you know, for some people this comes easily, and for others, it might be more difficult to come out of their shell. But I did see just a lot of joy, honestly, like um among people who met each other there or who were kind of like, you know, traveling around. And there was just a constant buzz of discussion and um chat that wasn't discourse, right? It wasn't I'm winning this argument, you know. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm no stranger to argument. Like I've been in DSA for a good long time at this point. But I do think that the ways that we meet each other in these spaces with enthusiasm and with a willingness to learn is like so often missing from the fact that we're a national organization. You know, it's like kind of a miracle that DSA exists as it does today. Um, because it's not usual that people are able to stay together through through conflict and through difference. You know, it's like we're actually highly, highly encouraged through every single part of our current society to find people exactly like us and cling to them because that's our ticket to to relevance or ticket to recognition. And it was really lovely, I thought, to see just all of these people blossoming, like kind of in real time under this, like, you know, encouragement to do something else, to actually listen to people who aren't on, you know, your exact page, right? Um, but like we're all the way that you organize the tracks, I think helped a lot because it would, they were general enough to where it was like, if you're interested in this topic, come here. Um, and then you can kind of, but you could also like kind of go around to other spots. You weren't like locked in, but you could like kind of tour around. But I I just noticed that people were just like, oh no, I'm gonna be late for my thing. And it was like very, I don't know, I thought it was really cute and like I really liked it.

SPEAKER_03 41:19

Just to add one quick piece on that, yeah, I think that's like that's the part of democracy and like the practices that we engage in that um happen at these sort of conferences where we're not doing like the formal deliberation. We are starting, you know, these discussions of strategy and tactics and stuff and figuring out what we're gonna what we're doing going forward. And that a lot of what happened at the summit is probably going to inform. I mean, not even probably, I could, I could probably bet money, that um stuff that is coming out of this conference is going to inform the types of resolutions that get put forward at next year's convention. And that is like like this is the big, the almost like the bottom part of where the democracy starts and then um you know builds and builds and builds. And that's actually what our entire topic of participatory democracy was in the workshop that we talked about, which is, you know, the existence of influential enfranchisement throughout all steps of the process throughout the entire organization. So even at um really like the bottom layer of like even just crafting or having our members be involved in crafting like the terms and boundaries of debate and decision making, um, all the way through to then actually voting on resolutions and then also reflecting and debriefing how the campaigns that came out of those resolutions were. And so the whole thing is full circle and like the learning aspects and the strategizing, all of that is part of it and an extremely important part of it, even if there's not a formal debate and vote happening at these type types of events.

SPEAKER_00 42:54

Yeah, and I'll follow that too and note that because I think about it, because like just like a good thing that Haley brought up there is like it's like this, it's like what are the ideas that come together that come from like these the discourse and the discussions that she's talking about, you know. Like, like I am like I am so so so into that. Like, because if you have people together like who are thinking like, oh like we salted this many Starbucks, we did XYZ, this is how we went about it, and someone's like, So we tried it this way, and this is what happened. And they're like, Oh, I didn't I didn't even think about that, you know, like that's is like you can't like those are the things that come together, and then it's like but when you think about it really, like, and going back to something that we've been talking about, like because this event was bringing together these different like areas of the organization between labor, electoral, between um anti war internationalism, and um and uh like Palestine, it's like you can kind of see how like that really like the process of coherent that is the same process by which like those ideas will then flow f will then flow out too. So it's just really, really, really I'm just excited, y'all. I'm just really excited because it's the vibes are still so good and you know, like it's I think I just hope it's something that like helps people like feel like when they look at like when they talk about this, when they talk about DSA, when they talk about the organization, when they talk about their comrades, that like they remember the experiences that they had with each other too.

SPEAKER_04 44:24

Yeah, I feel like that's certain to happen. And what you just said, Haley, is I think really important. It's like everything we do in DSA, um it goes somewhere usually. You know, it's like because we're doing it together, everybody has an influence on each other. I mean, we're Marxists. We believe that social relations are real and that they're but you know, that we're trying, we're trying to make them mediated um via people, you know, like, or I should say maybe unmediated by commodities, by by, you know, kind of being treated as a commodity and being compelled to like, you know, mediate all of our social relations through commodities in this like commercial way, right? But rather, what would it be like to actually live in a world where we are like unmediated with each other? Not mean, right? Like, not like unfiltered, not like, you know, undecorous or whatever, but actually unmediated. And the facilitation, I, you know, for the the couple of things I was able to see, um, you know, my compliments to to Haley, I didn't uh get to see anything that John was in, but like I do think that um these are the also the kinds of examples that we want to set for our membership, right? Because what we believe too is that, you know, when unleashed, like the power of human creativity and intellect is what's going to rule, right? Like that that that's actually the thing that we want. We want that unmediated um and like guide, you know, having having like examples, like good examples of people to like lead us and to and to help us learn and to then also be able to step back and learn from others, I think is like one of the greatest things about being in DSA, actually. Because like you never actually know when you're gonna hit lightning in a lot of ways, but it's everywhere around you because we have so many people who are so committed and also so creative. Um, so maybe um you can talk a little bit about some highlights from some of the um, you've already talked a little bit about the participatory democracy thing that you did, but I'd love to hear some more about some of the other sessions that you all were in, like maybe the presidential, because this is of course something that's also like completely in the news. Like we've hit the big time with like will she, won't she, or whatever, and like all the other stuff about elections. So maybe speaking a little about that and then anything else you wanted to highlight from the tracks.

SPEAKER_03 46:49

Yeah, I can kick off this one. So, yes, we did, you know, a workshop um on the presidential election, and that was actually something so we had media at the event, and I think this was, you know, a highly, highly coveted event uh workshop that they wanted to attend, but um, they were not invited to attend. And because, first of all, there it was, you know, really just a good time for us to be strategizing and thinking about some really big picture things that maybe are not ready to be put out in the media. And so um it was it was really great though. I heard a ton of good feedback. So basically we put together um, or the presidential uh we have a committee that is working on putting together our presidential endorsement process and helping us on the MPC figure out um how we are going to decide on if we are endorsing a candidate for president in 2028. And so um one of the ideas they had was to do a workshop at the summit with every single attendee. So this was a workshop, this was actually the only workshop that happened at this time of the summit. And so every single attendee was invited to attend, um, where we, you know, brainstormed our vision, our goals, um, and what we want to see out of potentially endorsing a president, a presidential campaign. Um so we it was similar to the workers' reserve more session that you mentioned, Michaela, where we had um folks share a little bit about the different top or like perspectives so far that exist on things like what the process might look like or what we are um hoping the process will look like in different ways, um, what we want to see out of an actual presidential campaign, what would be like our ideal type of candidate that would be running, um, how we want our chapters to engage. I think actually I wrote down, yeah, so one of the example questions that we discussed was what kinds of things would DSA and the campaign need to do in your area to win the primary in your state for a Democratic Socialist candidate? Um, and another question was something like, what would you want your chapters to get out of a presidential campaign if we endorse? So it was a really cool time, um, exactly what we've been talking about, where people were actually able to sit down and talk through our like broad vision of what we actually want to see and have have the ability to like really discuss that and potentially even debate a little, but discuss it um in a much more like free-flowing space and venue than if we were actually debating a formal proposal in some sense. So, yeah, I heard a ton of good feedback about it. Um, the room I was in had a good time. I'm curious to hear how that was for you both.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

I would say uh the one that I liked was we had an open discussion, and so what we pretty much did was we got together in a circle, and it was funny because I walked in there and somebody was already facilitating, and I was like, wait, I'm gonna just scooch in here and I'm gonna just have a seat and hang out because I don't have to facilitate here, but I'm gonna participate. And then as we were getting ready to get stuff going, as we were going after we went around the whole circle of the room of like 20-something people, the person the person who was facilitating was like, Yeah, I'm actually not the facilitator. I just started getting stuff together.

SPEAKER_04 50:08

Typical DSA meeting.

unknown 50:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:11

But it's amazing. Then everybody collectively got together and we talked, and we were like, okay. So we went through and we shared some stuff, and then we're like, okay, how about we do this? Let's see if we can break, we can do some breakout groups and we can ask a couple questions. What questions are we going to ask? Like, this was the group collectively, like walking ourselves through this. And then it was like, okay, we're gonna get together and we're gonna ask three questions of what is one thing your chapter has been successful at, what is one thing that y'all are struggled at, and what is one area of growth. And then we all just got together in those different groups and just talked through it for like the next and like there we like there wasn't a time schedule broke out. So like it was just an hour of open discussion. So like we literally went, okay, so we're gonna have 10 minutes for intros, then we're gonna do 30 minutes in breakouts, and then we're gonna have 15 minutes we go back. Like we we plan this out autonomously.

SPEAKER_03 51:07

Like an example, an example of participatory democracy where you guys were right, right.

SPEAKER_04 51:13

Yes, participatory democracy in desperation to fill time, which it can always be a good impetus, right? Like where we're just like, uh okay, we're all here. Let's um figure out what we're doing. I mean, I would say rosebud thorn, which is like, you know, what's one rose, what's one thorn, something that went wrong, and like what's an area of growth is always a good thing to start with. Um, especially I think that a lot of people who are new, you know, like who are who maybe hadn't been to a convention or or just hadn't, you know, gotten any exposure outside of their chapters. I know that um people I talk to were just kind of like dazzled, I think, by just again, like the diversity of experience, but also that realizing they weren't alone, like realizing that like the struggles that their chapter is going through is like, okay, you're you're gonna meet people for whom this is in the past, you're gonna meet people for whom they're going through it now, and you're gonna meet people for whom it was in the past, but they're going through it again, because this is just what it is to have have an organization that is that is run by people and not just like a top-down boss, you know, kind of organization. And um, you know, I wanted to ask you guys, we've we've already talked about like plans for or it's gonna be even better next time, but but if you guys could um talk a little bit about what if you were to um add something or if you were to change something a little bit, if there was anything. This is not a self-critique time necessarily, but there has to be some things that you're like, okay, for next time, we definitely have to do more of this, less of this, add this, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 52:47

Okay. Um, so there's a couple things off the top of my head. Like, one thing I would like to do, because like we were we were limited by time this time, but since we know we you know, like the next one, we got two years. And so like one of the things I would like to do is of course increase the size. I know, but increase the size, potentially see about doing uh um, potentially see about doing an open track where like we can have people submit themselves and say, hey, I have an evaluation from like we did uh um a medical debt payoff campaign, we went to these places, we did XYZ, we did this, and I want to come and like show people how to do those. You know, like because there would still be the process of submitting it to the committee, because y'all were on the committee, there would still be the process of submitting to the committee review and everything else like that. But I know but like there's some good work that I've come across people are doing, but like, you know, like I meet you for the first time or I see you on social media and I'm like, I didn't know y'all was doing that. I don't think anybody knew y'all were doing that. Why don't you come and talk about it? You know, I think that would be really, really cool to do. And then the other the other thing was just like um, but other than that, I would say that is the big thing, is probably like figuring out a way to like expand it a bit and also like considering allow some open open submissions. I know Haley's got some stuff too.

SPEAKER_03 54:04

No, I'm actually struggling. Um I'm a really slow processor, and so um I actually have not had a ton of time to really um think through my buds or thorns from the event, um, other than, yeah, I think some of the obvious that you said the the application process was so um highly sought after. We we actually did really struggle to keep the capacity down to um what we needed to for the hotel or like the venue size. So it would be absolutely amazing to do a much larger event next time and be able to have more like concurrent programming happening. Um maybe um one other like kind of small thing, but we had a couple sessions that our comms team led. Uh, and one of them was on like filming videos using cell phones or like you know, simple ways that members of any chapter could do, um, as well as a broader training on external media and how to how to support our chapters and engaging in the media more and learning how to do that. And I think, again, super small thorn, but we unfortunately like didn't get the word out enough that those sessions were happening, I think, and that anyone was of um able to attend those, and not only like the folks in the organizing fundamentals track. Um, so they were, I think, a bit under um, there was less engagement in the or less folks showing up to those than we definitely could have had, because I know that's a big area of interest, and especially with DSA being in the news so much more lately. Um, so much of our so many of our chapters really want some good training on that, and it could have been really cool to make that a bigger event at the summit.

SPEAKER_04 55:44

Yeah. I mean, I think that probably for our first pancake that we can say that this was a screaming success. And um I would just say maybe next time we can also think about having it in the winter. Not because I want to go to Chicago in the winter, um, but also because um there's just so much happening in the summer. Like I'm gonna be going back to Chicago in like two weeks for socialism. Um and there's also the Labor Notes, you know, that happens, or Labor Notes conference also happens like in the summer too in Chicago. This is just that's not that's not at all a critique. It's kind of more, I know that part of the reason that happened is because they're also we already had the hotel because of the YDSA conference or uh convention as well. But um, that's like completely logistical and completely personal for me, especially because I would love to go on a vacation in the in the the winter, maybe not you know, to the Midwest, no, no, no shade on the Midwest at all, but like um maybe somewhere else. And the Pacific Northwest. The Pacific, I well, I always I love the Pacific Northwest, my old stomping ground. Um, you know, California, Texas, who knows? The world's our oyster, honestly. Like, I think that as we grow too, and as we just get more density in different parts of the country, we can kind of open up like our the possibilities of like where and like how many of these things we want to have. I mean, everybody's so excited. And I think that this is also the culmination of the fact that we're able to pull it off and have so many people so excited to attend and like show up and and engage. It's like the development of DSA at this point at this moment is not, you know, the outside world doesn't see that because they are looking solely at like whether or not one of our elected says a word right or something like that. You know, that's that's like their their limitation of their imagination about what DSA is and what we do. But the fact is, is that we do not limit ourselves to that. And like because the creativity and the the sort of energy of our members is what keeps us going.

SPEAKER_03 57:46

Yeah, absolutely. Um, something you just said in there reminded me of the one other thing I wanted to just say briefly on democracy in our organization is that um something that people I feel like a lot of folks don't understand um when they're confused about what democrat democratic socialism is, is especially the democrat part or the democratic part um and the democracy. And that is because we don't have real democracy in this country. There's really almost nowhere else unless you're part of a pretty democratic union where folks are experiencing true democracy. So we also need to learn how to do that. Like our new members that sign up are learning that for the first time. And it's also hard to learn through like just watching other people debate. Like, we do need to have these spaces of training and um support on how to actually do democracy. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:40

Yeah, totally. Any takeaways for you, John, from like sort of grand final words?

SPEAKER_00 58:47

Uh I'm gonna build I'm gonna follow what Haley said because she she uh she she calls it a spark in my brain. Um and one of the things that crossed my mind was, right, like America, like this country was built from like people of various backgrounds, nations, ethnicities, races, all of it, right? And the way that like the people who founded it tried to go about it as they colonized and pushed people out was not giving them democracy, not giving them power, and pitting people against each other or getting rid of the people that they considered undesirable. But look at the underlying theme of what we've been talking about this whole time. Our counter for I guess you could say American socialism is that we are bringing people together, right? And we are trying to give people the agency and the power to like do something about that and do it democratically.

SPEAKER_04 59:37

Well, we give it to each other, right?

SPEAKER_00 59:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what I that's all I wanted to say because Haley unlocked it for me when I was sitting here. I was like, we saw probably saw me go, oh, and I was like, we are literally trying to give people the ability to unite and figure out and find alignment through those topics because we're we're many peoples. So that's right.

SPEAKER_04 59:56

Synthesis, baby.

SPEAKER_03 59:58

We're building.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:01

Yes. This is the mass of mass movement. So thank you so much, Haley and John, and thanks as always to our production crew, Emma, Michael, and Tim, who put all this together. Class is a podcast of DSA's National Political Education Committee, or NPEC, which works to expand the knowledge of DSA members and non-members in the service of winning the struggle for socialism and democracy. You can find out more about NPEC by searching for us online or following us on social media, but the best way to find out what our committee is up to is by signing up for Red Letter, NPEC's monthly newsletter. And if you aren't already, you can become a DSA member by following the link in the podcast description. Okay, until next time, solidarity.