May Ballot Member Statements

Member Statements
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The Metro DC DSA May Ballot will include three resolutions for members to vote on. Below are the member statements that have been submitted on these questions (in order of submission). Ballots will be open until 11:59 pm, Thursday, May 27th. If you have any issues or questions about your ballot please email internal-elections@mdcdsa.org.

Resolution 21-05-R01: Convention Registration Fee

Resolution 21-05-R02: Nomination of Ryan Mosgrove for National Political Committee

Resolution 21-05-R04: Nomination of Ashik Siddique for National Political Committee

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Statement from Ashik S. IN FAVOR of Resolution 21-05-R04

Hey all, my name is Ashik Siddique, and I’m seeking our chapter’s nomination to DSA’s National Political Committee. Here’s my longer form statement on why I’m running.

I’ve been a member of Metro DC DSA since Trump’s election in January 2017, and served on our chapter’s Steering Committee from 2018-2019. Since the Green New Deal campaign was voted a priority at our 2019 convention, I have served on the national GND Campaign Committee, and for the past 4 months have been a core organizer of DSA’s efforts to pass the PRO Act as part of this campaign.

National DSA structures differ significantly from chapters in ways that can be confusing to our membership, and it has been challenging to develop effective national structures that match DSA’s extraordinary growth across 200+ chapters and organizing committees. Through the Green New Deal campaign, the Ecosocialist WG has built consensus around shared campaign goals with organizers from over 60 DSA chapters, coordinating efforts and pooling volunteer resources to support organizing across chapters of many sizes. Many chapters have struggled to maintain organizing activity throughout COVID, and the PRO Act campaign has given many organizers in smaller or more geographically distributed chapters tools, goals, and skills trainings to reengage their members and build new capacity that will serve them well beyond this campaign.

One of our biggest challenges amid all our crucial outward-facing work is building DSA into a more fully multiracial vehicle for working class power. When the PRO Act campaign was designated as a national priority earlier this year, the NPC also tasked us with helping to establish internal best practices for intentionally recruiting, retaining, and developing comrades who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color as organizers and leaders in DSA. We are currently evaluating what has worked to this end so far, and I look forward to sharing our campaign report before convention. There are no shortcuts to strategic recruitment, but the next NPC must facilitate concrete practices that follow through on these commitments to our whole organization and the working class in all its diversity

I have enjoyed working with members of our chapter from all tendencies, and I look forward to continuing to organize with all of you toward convention and beyond—and getting to know many of you better as we start meeting more often IRL!

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Statement from Ashik S. IN FAVOR of Resolution 21-05-R02

I’ve worked well with Ryan in organizing our chapter’s work on the Green New Deal and PRO Act campaign, and our chapter has clearly succeeded in many ways under very challenging circumstances during his time as Secretary this past year, due in large part to his support for a mobilization model that should be reviewed by many more chapters across DSA. His perspective and priorities would be valuable in shaping DSA’s next National Political Committee, and I look forward to him advancing those ideas with our chapter’s nomination.

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Statement from Ryan M. IN FAVOR of Resolution 21-05-R02

My name is Ryan Mosgrove and I’m seeking our chapter’s nomination for National Political Committee. I first became politically active during the Iraq War and first got involved in organizing after organizing for a union at the restaurant I worked at back in 2010. I joined MDC DSA in 2016, and have been an active member of the chapter ever since, even while I worked for DSA as National Youth Coordinator until 2018.

In 2017 I helped organize the chapter’s J20 presence for the inauguration of Donald Trump. As a union organizer I have been involved in the Labor Working Group, helping develop and circulate a labor census for membership in 2019 and organizing carpools to the United Auto Workers strike at the General Motors facility in White Marsh, MD. I have continued to be active in DSA’s labor work including being involved in the field team for the national PRO Act campaign.

For the past year I’ve served as Secretary for the chapter. When I ran for Secretary in 2020, in my candidate statement I wrote, “[T]he chapter has a lot of new infrastructure such as Spoke, VAN, and Action Network, and we need to turn these tools to help drive us forward as a chapter with an active base and deep roots in communities and workplaces. I want to work on consolidating our organizing infrastructure to support growth and development, refine and improve our practices for member intake, and scale up our operations to prepare for the work to come.”

Since I’ve been Secretary I’ve been able to work alongside the phenomenal comrades in the MDC chapter to help make these goals a reality. Over the past year we’ve been able to revolutionize our organizing infrastructure and dramatically scale up our capacity to support the work of the membership. And since 2020 also included a global pandemic, a national recession, mass protest for racial justice, and even an invasion by the Trump Administration, we were able to achieve this scaling up in incredibly challenging times.

Over the past year however, we’ve dramatically expanded the active membership of the Administrative Committee from roughly 10 to over 50 volunteers. We’ve built a chapter wide Member Portal giving every member access to the work of the chapter at their fingertips. And we’ve been able to build an incredible member onboarding pipeline and member retention program which I think is now one of the best of any chapter in the country.

As a candidate for the National Political Committee and as a delegate to the DSA National Convention there are a lot of great resolutions I’m excited to support at Convention. “Empowering DSA’s Mass Abolition Work” will help give the anti-carceral work chapters like MDC have been doing over the past year a strong national focus and dedicated support. “Committing to International Socialist Solidarity” will help DSA continue the phenomenal work that’s been done over the past two years to build relationships with workers parties in the global south and to establish DSA firmly as an anti-imperialist organization. “2021 Ecosocialist Green New Deal Priority” will help expand the inspiring work DSA has done around the Green New Deal and the PRO Act. And resolutions like “Beyond 100K”, “Making DSA a Multiracial and Anti-Racist Organization”, and “Building Transformative Justice” will help create a clear plan to make DSA a multiracial, mass organization that can win.

If the Convention passes these resolutions, we will need a National Political Committee committed to this vision to make it a reality and I hope to carry this work out as a member of the next NPC.

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Statement from Ryan M. IN FAVOR of Resolution 21-05-R04

I’ve worked with Ashik for many years and have known him to be an incredibly serious and dedicated comrade, both as a member of MDC DSA Steering and in his current role leading our national Green New Deal campaign. Ashik served on our chapter Steering in a very challenging time for our chapter and always demonstrated thoughtfulness and clarity in his role. I’ve had the privilege to see up close some of the work he and the rest of the comrades on the Green New Deal strategy team have done, which have helped build one of the most successful campaigns our organization has ever carried out nationally. It has engaged thousands of members in dozens of chapters across the country and made a serious, measurable impact on politics in the US. DSA would be very fortunate to have Ashik on it’s NPC and I strongly encourage comrades to vote YES on his nomination.