The Resolution language may be found here: Metro DC DSA Chapter Program Amendments (August GBM) - Google Docs
IN FAVOR-Sam G.
Hello comrades, I encourage you to vote IN FAVOR of this Resolution to Amend the Chapter Program!
This resolution makes three major structural fixes towards our Chapter Program and its utility for our organization. First and most substantially, it creates a âDemandsâ section of chapter goals that we can clearly organize around, even across chapter formations. Second, the working group & formation descriptions are removed from the Program proper into a separate âProgram Appendixâ that serves as a record of the development process, but allows the actual Program document to function for organizing. And finally, the Program is brought into both spaces for new member engagement and our PDC questionnaire, so we can develop clearer alignment with those who seek to join our ascendant organization.
In opposition to this resolution, some members have inaccurately stated that the questionnaire would restrict our endorsements or cause potential endorsees to commit to irrelevant planks. For the former, this resolution changes nothing about our chapter bylaws on endorsement eligibility, meaning that itâs always up to MDC-DSAâs membership to decide on whether a candidate is a good fit. As for the latter, the question clearly asks the candidate if they will fight for our demands âwhere applicableâ.
Additionally, another member stated that removing the longer sections would constitute âgatekeepingâ of its knowledge & information from our members. As someone whose work is embedded in the document, nothing could be further from the truth! It would be simpler to reaffirm DSA"s national Workers Deserve More, but we want to ensure that the hard work of the Commission was preserved in a separate format as a record of the process. Most of the content that would be moved into the Appendix is descriptive rather than political, so when we consolidate this document, we will be giving our membership a stronger foundation for thinking through the high-political questions together.
Finally, if you have any disagreements with the particular demands in the document, I especially encourage you to vote IN FAVOR of this resolution! There were opportunities for members to put forth amendments to any components that they had, but despite I and other cosponsorsâ encouragement, unfortunately none were put forth in time prior to this resolution being heard. Since the Program remains amendable by majority vote at GBM, it will be much easier for us to refine our demands once we pass this resolution!
I hope my arguments above convinced you, but Iâll provide some context as to my history and involvement with the Program process. In 2024, I cosponsored the resolution establishing our chapter Program Development Commission, to which I was appointed in 2025. I made a point of ensuring that the initial resolution saw a Commission reflective of the chapterâs diversity in location, work, and ideology. Once our work began, I helped develop and administer a chapter-wide survey, in addition to researching & analyzing our local conditions, while other members conducted outreach listening sessions, over a period of nearly nine months. Due to capacity constraints and the majority of our feedback being received towards the end of the development process, the document became longer and more descriptive of chapter formationsâ work, but there was less capacity for us on the Commission to consolidate it into a true strategic document. Shortly before we introduced it at the 2025 Chapter Convention, I began developing a âprogram rubricâ to analyze the various demands already implicit in the document and connect them to Workers Deserve More, but we were unable to refine this as a body. Since then, I and the various other cosponsors have been developing this to salvage the hard work of the Commission into a usable format reflective of the chapter.
We want to make this a living document; you can bring this document to life by voting YES!
AGAINST-Bakari W.
Hi, Iâm Bakari, and Iâm writing urging you to vote no on these changes to our program and endorsement questionnaire.
If you havenât already, I encourage you to take some time while youâre going over these to read the Groundwork Caucus statement against this resolution. It echoes my feelings but I want to highlight and expand on some things in it.
First, we can already make a short punchy list of bullet point demands and put it front and center above the longer analysis. We donât need this resolution to do that. Each of the sections that this resolution would remove already has bullet points at the end outlining that sectionâs 2-year goals. We can take those and put them in a summary, or on literature, or use them for any other comms purpose.
MDC DSAâs local program was made with a collaborative process that generated very insightful analysis about how all our different areas of organizing across every branch work together toward one cohesive theory-of-change for the region. This theory of change is thee thing that makes DSA distinct and powerful, and it shouldnât be relegated to just an appendix to be available âupon request.â Be honest, how often do you think the average person chooses to spend time out of their day requesting and reading something labeled as an appendix?
Also important is that some of the new bullet points and section titles in this proposed program are different from both the chapter program we approved unanimously and the National DSA program. The new language is an easy target for disinformation by a copaganda apparatus thatâs spent billions of dollars over decades to warp public opinion. This apparatus is why a depressingly large number of Black people in DC, including family and friends I grew up with and people whose door I knocked, have mixed or somewhat positive feelings about being militarily occupied by National Guard troops under a fascist regime. And some of them stay ambivalent even when I talk to them about how NG targeted Black kids in Union Station and knocked them off of Lime bikes during curfew enforcement. When people see a section titled âAbolish All Carceral Systems In Their Entiretyâ through the lens of a media environment bent on shutting people off from considering our ideas, many will interpret that as meaning âabolish the carceral system in its entiretyâ tomorrow, without having built up any of the systems of care and community needed to make the carceral state obsolete. This closes peopleâs minds and ends conversations before weâve had a chance to start them. If the goal is to have short punchy bullet points that are easily communicated to masses of people who arenât already socialists, this language doesnât achieve that goal.
I also want to emphasize points 3 and 4 in the Groundwork statement. I administered our electoral endorsement process for 3 years on the Political Engagement Committee and saw how campaigns function when I was part of Janeeseâs staff during the primary, and the proposed additions to our questionnaire wonât do what theyâre trying to do.
So I urge you to vote no on this resolution.
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IN FAVOR-Marxist Unity Group Caucus
METRO DC MARXIST UNITY GROUP STATEMENT: R2 - Chapter Program Amendments: Demands Section & Restructuring The members of Marxist Unity Group in Metro DC DSA RECOMMEND VOTING YES on Resolution R2 to restructure our Chapter Program via the addition of a Demands Section, the movement of chapter working groups and formations sections to a supplementary appendix, the sharing and discussing of the chapter program at New Member Orientations & General Body Meetings, and adding two questions about the program to the Political Engagement Committeeâs (PEC) Electoral Endorsement Questionnaire.
The Programâs Birth
In December 2024, chapter members gathered for our annual Chapter Convention, our largest local assembly, to deliberate and decide major internal questions. There were fierce debates on several resolutions, with two bylaw amendments failing to pass the 60% majority necessary for bylaw acceptance [1]. One amendment and resolution passed with 99% of the vote and little debate: CR5 to generate a Chapter Program.
The concept of a chapter program had been popularized by an insightful review in the Washington Socialist of two chapter membersâ critical experiences with the chapter and union organizing efforts [2][3]. The author Maxwell Rott identified a connection between organizational âunderdevelopmentâ and âsubordinationâ: MDC-DSAâs structures were siloed and ill-defined, which Rott identified as stemming from the extreme influence progressive NGO orgs had over the chapter, due to the unique political economy of the DC region [4]. Overall, this meant that âMDC DSAâs structures and priorities are defined from the outsideâ [4]. Rott argued that to make MDC-DSA self-sovereign, the chapter must define its own strategy with political goals which are specific and binding [4]. In essence, a self-articulated program to govern and define our behavior.
The Program Development Commission, established by resolution CR5, would have the difficult task of constructing a program document representative of our large tent.
A Dead Program Over
the course of nine months, a group of members, including many co-sponsors of this resolution, worked on conducting outreach to chapter formations, research on our conditions, surveys, and listening sessions for MDC-DSA members. The Program Development Commission faced many challenges in the course of its work. First, there was limited member engagement until the drafts were nearly finished, as few members of the chapter attended the listening sessions. Secondly, the commissionâs outreach to different working groups to collect their statements slowly received responses of a mixed character, mostly descriptions of current work. These were disparate threads of the entire chapter, difficult to pull into a consolidated document. Third, members of the commission were divided in their vision for the programâs purpose, divisions still visible in the narrative section of the document. Finally, members faced the great challenges that all organizers within an all-volunteer organization face, burnout and capacity limits. The appointment of the Commission was intended to be representative of different tendencies, working groups, and branches within the chapter, but it was difficult to fill all the requisite slots, and the long duration of the Commissionâs work led to many members dropping off. The Trump administrationâs occupation of DC in 2025 created instability that exaggerated all these problems.
That a final chapter program was brought together at all was an accomplishment. However it was sprawling, lacked clear demands or goals, and was not completed until the 2025 Chapter Convention, months after the documentâs intended due date. As the Convention approached, the chapter program was revealed and met with little fanfare. To many chapter members, the document was not a statement of the shared politics and strategy of the chapter, but was instead a statement of what our various working groups and branches were doing *at the moment*. Many members judged it on whether certain areas of work were included or left out rather than on the basis of its political content. In discussions with commission members, their primary source of solace was the fact that the program could be amended by simple majority vote. The message given to chapter members could be described as âitâs there in one place, and we can modify it dramatically afterwards to make more senseâ. So at Convention, the program was adopted by unanimous consent, with no debate or opposition.
Since its adoption, the chapter program has largely remained a dead letter. Until this latest resolution, we have seen zero proposed updates to the document and it has not been circulated anywhere. When it has been shared at leadership retreats, the general consensus was that it was too long to be of any real use. It is unclear to many members where the document can even be viewed. It is not being used for âtransparencyâ, and active members who did not receive the 2025 Convention Bulletin are currently unable to review the document. Formations in the chapter do not currently engage with the chapter program, and thus it is not used to organize or inform any chapter work. Given the ever-changing character of formation tactics and actions, the sections outlining working group practice could only be treated as a historical snapshot. Multiple new working groups have emerged since the program was accepted. They receive no mention in the document and there have been no amendments to add their corresponding sections. Even if one were easily able to access it, they would be unable to understand the present state of chapter activity.
It is clear at this point that some in the chapter prefer the current dead statement to a living one. These members can continue to escape democratic elaboration of our objectives, and not have to raise them to partners they wish to align with. As we push to revivify the dead, we must thus ask what is the point of a program and what should be in it.
Mass Parties and Programs
Political programs are not new to socialist organizations. The first great workersâ parties were built around programmatic objectives; the Chartist movement in England organized around a short programmatic statement of parliamentary demands and received millions of signatures on their statement [5]. Their programmatic demands fit on a single page and hinted at radical republicanism against an empire that had spent decades fighting democratic republicanism across Europe [6]. The Chartists were able to coordinate a mass movement of artisans and industrialized workers, which had a deep impact on the young Marx and Engels. They turned away from their youthful technocratic visions and conspiratorial cells moved towards mass, open party movement [7].
In the 1860s and 70s, followers and rivals of Marx and Engels founded mass workersâ parties across continental Europe. In Germany, Ferdinand Lassalle birthed a top-down, authoritarian body, the General German Workersâ Association (ADAV), which was principally organized around the demand for universal suffrage [8]. His rivals in the Social Democratic Workersâ Party of Germany (SDAP), supported by Marx and Engels, declared a program in 1869 expressing demands, including the âestablishment of a peopleâs militia in place of standing armiesâ [9]. Both factions unified in 1875 and proceeded to draft a compromise program acceptable to both [10]. The new party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), would go on to become a party of millions, influencing other similarly mass social-democratic parties across the late 19th and early 20th centuries [11].
Programs were developed through heavy debate and were used to define the objectives necessary for the whole movement to realize its ambitions [12]. To join the SPD, as well as many other social-democratic parties of the time, involved signing off on acceptance of the program [11]. Every program mentioned here fits into one or two pages and expresses clear political demands which, if realized, would fundamentally change which class controlled society.
A party program is not the equivalent of an electoral platform. The U.S. Democratic/Republican party candidate electoral platforms are largely lists of slogans generated by propagandists, forgotten after an election is finished. These platforms are meant purely for marketing purposes, not for structuring and organizing the behavior of a mass movement. A party program, however, is meant to be at the center of a mass body. It is not a marketing document, but a statement of the democratically-determined positions of the whole movement, one to guide the whole apparatus and its various formations.
The democratic character of the party program is precisely what enables âprogrammatic unityâ. It is what we in MUG consider the strongest basis for unity in a mass socialist party. The alphabet soup of competing socialist sects are largely based around ideological unity, meaning that they expect all members to adhere to a specific form of socialist ideology. This commonly creates an inhospitable environment where the slightest disagreement can cause splits, purges, and prevents these organizations from doing anything useful. At the opposite end of the spectrum is tactical unity around a specific tactic or type of work. While such groups can be outward-facing (e.g. a tenantsâ association, labor union, mutual aid work, or even electoral organizing), this orientation can lead to serious disorganization when the group comes into conflict with larger political issues that imply different strategic approaches. What happens when tenantsâ militancy is subordinated by nonprofits for legislative and administrative battles that ultimately fail, or when workers in a workplace fight for preferential treatment against others, or the candidates one elects does the opposite of what they campaigned on? Without a clear strategic vision, organizations can be highly unstable, finding themselves in the trap of tailing other individuals or organizations with greater power.
Programmatic unity means everyone doesnât need to think the exact same way or do the exact same type of work. It means we democratically decide our objectives, which we can change at any time, and unify on how we can best achieve them together. For unity of strategy, not unity of thought!
What Types of Demands Belong in a Program
As the mass parties emerged and declared their programs, strategic debates influenced the character of their programmatic demands. The most famous of these debates involved fights within the German SPD and French Socialist parties. One of the first controversies, in the Marxist camp, was over the extent of the compromises with the Lassalleans which would be required in order to birth the SPD [12]. In France, differing interpretations of the demands in the French Workers program, drafted by Marx and his future son-in-law Paul Lafargue, were over the viability of achieving those demands under the existing order [13].
These debates were formalized in the orthodoxy of the SPDâs âErfurt Programâ. There were two major categories of demands:
- Minimum Demands: These represent the âbasicâ reforms needed to clear the obstacles that prevent our class, all those who labor, from ruling society. For example, universal mass suffrage and the arming of the people into mass-controlled militias
- Maximum Demands: These represent the long-term ambitions in constructing socialism we aim for once the working class is in control For example, the end of class society and socialization of production. Inherent in this concept is a two-stage theory of change that Marx himself held from the drafting of the Communist Manifesto forward [14]. Power relations must necessarily be changed in order for the movement of subordinated classes to enact its will.
A third category of demands emerged from splits between the left and right wings of German Social Democracy during WW1. The left wing, following the leadership of the Russian Social Democratic Bolshevik faction, constituted itself as a Communist party (KPD). After a period of extreme factionalism under the âTheory of the Offensiveâ, the party would re-invent the concept of the âUnited Frontâ by participating in resistance to the 1920 Kapp Coup attempt [15]. Comintern officials debated the strategic positions taken by the KPD at the Third World Congress in 1921, formalizing them as Transitional Demands [15]. These are demands, agreeable across working class organizations, that are intended to shift the relations of force in society between classes. If Kautskyists tend to emphasize the minimum-maximum formulation for programmatic demands, Trotskyists tend to emphasize the transitional formulation.
Neither Workers Deserve More nor our chapter program are clearly oriented in either of these formats; both blend a mixture of transitional and minimum demands, while Workers Deserve More has somewhat of a âmaximumâ section.
The Structural Fixes
With this resolution, MUG is aiming at a set of structural changes which will make the hard work contained within the chapter program usable. To achieve this objective, we chose to prioritize these structural changes over shaping the program language to fit our own factionâs theoretical principles. Where possible, we chose to maintain the incoherences and divisions that already exist in the program document which was adopted democratically at Chapter Convention. This is because the chapter program is a living document. In order to clarify and deal with these tensions, we hope to see additional future resolutions at the October General Body Meeting (GBM), Decemberâs annual Chapter Convention, and on into the future, drafted and brought forward by a broad cross-section of chapter members.
The structural fixes we are proposing fall into four categories:
1. Explicitly subordinating our chapter program to the national program Over the course of the past year, DSAâs national body has released an updated program, âWorkers Deserve Moreâ [16]. This program was the result of a committee chartered by the DSAâs National Convention in 2025 by Resolution R34 âWorkers Deserve More, Foreverâ [17]. We in MUG aim to champion DSAâs national strategy over chapter localism. This means subordinating the local program to the national program, and not overreaching the national program in ambition.
2. Defining a âDemandsâ section, similar to what exists in the national program When contemplating what to put into the âdemandsâ section of our program update resolution, we chose not to replace all of what existed with MUGâs desired set of objectives. We instead reviewed the working group sections for implicit demands present in the text. Additionally, where relevant, we applied demands related to the DMV drawn from the text of the national program. Our intention was to preserve the actual objectives implicitly set in the document and adopted democratically by the chapter at Chapter Convention. In future GBMs and at our upcoming Chapter Convention, we hope to see the contents of the now clearly presented demands section updated to align more closely to the present, active thinking of the chapter. In our factionâs thinking, we would prefer to see demands conceptually organized into âminimumâ and âmaximumâ objectives. Additionally, we would seek greater clarity on public safety objectives, additions for bodily autonomy, and labor strategy. We understand that it is our factionâs long-term task to persuade you of our vision for the political contents of the program. It is our hope that through participation in our chapterâs democratic processes, the whole chapter can work together to articulate our shared politics, strategic vision, and horizons.
3. Moving the Working Group and other formation âwhat we are doingâ texts to a program appendix We shifted the existing long-form descriptions of working groups and other formations to a program appendix in order to keep those texts as a historical record of the chapter programâs development. This involved removing these descriptions from the main body of the document. This structural change was made for two reasons. First, this radically reduces the size and complexity of the program document, bringing it closer in form and function to the actual historical programs which were used by mass parties. Second, we want to elevate strategic debates over immediate tactical details in the chapter program. The document should be used by all existing formations of the chapter to orient their work, tactical decision making, and long-term planning. The description of any specific, short-term âcharacter of workâ can quickly become obsolete, as tactics and organizational needs shift from moment to moment. These short-term items do not belong in a political program. The program should not be used to freeze organizational forms and tactics in place, but should instead provide the political and strategic orientation towards which shifting tactics can be directed.
4. Have the chapter program document be shown at both GBMs and new member orientations, and adding two questions to the PEC questionnaire We should now actually be able to use the program to explain our political aims to new and prospective members. At GBMs, the chapter program should be used to inform the membership of our chapterâs political and strategic orientation. Membership should be able to easily engage with the demands. This engagement with the chapter program should not only go in one direction. As we have mentioned multiple times throughout this statement, we hope to see chapter members raise resolutions to further modify this document, clarifying the incoherent and raising up the demands which animate our regionâs working class into the programmatic demands of the Metro DC DSA. With our changes to the PEC endorsement questionnaire, we intend to have candidates and politicians seeking our endorsement to also relate to the shared politics and strategy of our chapter. Currently, our endorsement questionnaire is a long document, primarily driven by questions from all five (soon to be three) of our chapterâs priority campaigns, as determined by our annual Chapter Convention. The change made here is the addition of two new questions to that questionnaire. First, we ask the candidate seeking endorsement about their basic willingness to uphold the program and fight for its realization, where applicable. Second, we ask the candidate seeking endorsement about their willingness to promote the program and its demands in their campaign materials. These are not veto questions, as the endorsement of potential endorsees remains up to the chapter membership to be accepted or rejected by a democratic vote based on their responses to the entire questionnaire.
A Living Program
As we resuscitate the program , we hope to see the development of unity around the demands. We believe this unity can develop in part through democratic debate at our chapterâs largest assemblies. With the simplified list of demands clearly centered in the document, internal struggle can move out of a myopic focus on procedural questions and hidden bureaucratic fights, opaque to the majority of the chapter. Instead, membership can ask what political goals and horizons the chapter wants to pursue based on a widely read, actively debated, democratically voted, living program. In the aftermath of the vote to accept the program at the 2025 Chapter Convention, Sam Dee, the copy-editor of the program, wrote an insightful piece on what to do with the document [18]. The piece argues for three different steps:
1. âThe chapter program needs to be regularly circulated among members and even used as part of new member educationâ
2. âIts clauses and goals need to be large enough that they do not map neatly onto existing chapter formations; they should instead be developed so that they coordinate actions across MDC DSA.â
3. âFurther revisions should hone the programâs listed goals and initial abstract to as fine a point as possibleâ With this resolution, we aim at improving our chapter and its work by taking each of these three steps. We hope chapter members will participate with us in developing and voting on further revisions to the program in order to continue advancing the third step, for a program as short, clear, and precise as the 1967 Ten-Point Program of the Black Panther Party [19].
Sources
1. Democracy in Action at Metro DC DSAâs 2024 Local Convention, Gary Z. 2025. Democracy in action at Metro DC DSAâs 2024 Local Convention
2. The Professional Problem: The Case for Broadening MDC-DSAâs Base, Sam G, 2024. The Professional Problem: The Case for Broadening MDC-DSAâs Base
3. How a Hot Shop Burns: The UMD Graduate Labor Card Campaign, Sam Dee, 2024. How a Hot Shop Burns: The UMD Graduate Labor Union Card Campaign
4. Organizational Underdevelopment, or: A Response to the Two Sams, Maxwell Rott, 2025. ttps://washingtonsocialist.mdcdsa.org/ws-articles/25-01-a-response-to-sams 5. https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/electionsvoting/chartists/overvi ew/chartistmovement/
6. The Peoples Charter, 1839. The People's Charter
7. Citizen Marx, Bruno Leipold, 2024.
8. Ferdinand Lassalle: A 25-year Memorial by Karl Kautsky, Tom Anderson, 2020. Ferdinand Lassalle: A 25-year Memorial by Karl Kautsky .
9. Eisenach Program, Eisenachers, 1869. Forging an Empire: Bismarckian Germany (1866â1890) | German History in Documents and Images ocratic-workers-party-eisenach-program-august-8-1869
10. The Gotha Program, Wilhelm Liebknecht, 1875. The Gotha Program 1875 11. Lenin Rediscovered, Lars Lih, 2008.
12. Critique of the Gotha Program, Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, 1875. Critique of the Gotha Programme
13. The Programme of the Parti Ouvrier, Karl Marx & Jules Guesde & Paul Lafargue, 1880. Programme of the French Workersâ Party
14. The Revolutionary Minimum-Maximum Program, Donald Parkinson, 2021. The Revolutionary Minimum-Maximum Program
15. Leninâs Comintern Rediscovered, John Riddel, 2025. 16. Workers Deserve More, Program Committee, 2026. https://program.dsausa.org/
17. Workers Deserve More Forever, Bread&Roses, 2025. https://discussion.dsausa.org/t/r34-workers-deserve-more-forever-for-a-coherent-and-continuous-progr am-befitting-dsa-s-political-growth/43098
18. Socialist Self-Determination or how can we Act?, Sam Dee, 2026. Socialist Self-Determination, or How Can We Act? 19. Ten Point Program, Black Panther Party, 1967. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/ten-point-program/
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AGAINST-Sheely E.
I am strongly opposed to this resolution and encourage all of my comrades to vote NO. Aside from the lack of chapter-wide democratic process to produce this program â which is in stark contrast to the deliberative processes weâve undergone previously to develop a chapter program â this draft doesnât address some of the most pressing issues that our chapter has been organizing around for years. Some sections are simply incomplete and/or misguided. I encourage my comrades to vote NO and seek other opportunities to generate sound and democratic political strategy.
2 Likes
AGAINST-Carl R.
Comrades, I urge you to vote AGAINST this resolution for two reasons.
Firstly: it does not come to the chapter through the same process as the program. The latter was a collaborative, cross tendency, cross geography, cross organizational item with large amounts of chapter input, deliberation, and debate involved in its creation. This resolution is not. Our program, such as it is, is not even a year old; are we now going to debate changes to it at every general body meeting? I really think this is just too soon.
Secondly: it massively simplifies our questionnaire. Asking candidates if they support our program and will support its specific demands will immediately be used as a red line for elected officials. Our questionnaire is incredibly long, allowing for nuanced answers and respect for the specificity of individual races. While this wonât technically change through this resolution, I believe it will functionally: we are asking âwill you do your campaign in line with our politics?â
Additionally, if we are changing the program at every General body meeting moving forward, candidates should not say they support the program: it will likely change between when they agree to it and Election Day, so they donât know what theyâre signing on to! This is setting ourselves up to be a liability for our candidates so that we can have a program that less of us helped shape and, accordingly, less of us believe in.
Perhaps most importantly, the current questionnaire process trusts that our membership - that is, you, the comrade reading this statement - is smart enough to go through those answers and determine if people are in line with our program or not. If we do want to switch to asking âwill you run on our program?â we should just debate that outright instead of burying it in an edit to the program. As a former chair of the chapter, a former chair of the political engagement committee, and one of our lead canvassers since 2019, I think we should not make that switch.
Comrades, I trust you to vote NO on this resolution
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AGAINST-Hayden G.
Comrades,
I voted for the chapter program in 2024 and argued for it with other comrades, because a program gives us a shared vocabulary for our own deliberation and something to point to when we are asked what we stand for. That it can be contested is part of what makes it worth having. This resolution doesnât contest the program so much as sideline it, substituting a new set of demands for the one we built through a long commission process with real cross-tendency input. The new document will not automatically inherent the legitimacy of our current program, which was earned through all that deliberation of our comrades, followed by the thousands of hours of organizing work that led to the election of Comrades Lewis-George, and Raj.
The second problem is what weâre asked to do with the result. It turns the program into a loyalty test for our SIOs. Weâre using our political capitol to move the rhetorical goal post rather than on doing the work of moving policy toward those goals.
When we fight, we win, and when we have won something, it has come from relationships in which both sides put real resources behind a specific fight, not from demanding the recitation of a slogan. The frustration behind this resolution is earned. SIOs do drift once theyâre in office. I just think this mechanism gets us further from the outcomes we both want. Please join me in voting no.
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AGAINST-Shannon M.
I strongly encourage everyone to vote AGAINST this resolution. While I think DSA could always benefit from a succinct summary of our demands, this does not accomplish that. With mostly everything in the Program Appendix, itâs not easily accessible to DSA members, let alone prospective members or the general public.
Secondly, to ask candidates to commit themselves to all of these demands would limit ourselves and our political capacity. Some of the demands included would make it difficult for political candidates to run successful campaigns should they seek our endorsement. DSA is a political organization. To ignore political realities and include language that would make it difficult for even cadre candidates is not beneficial to the chapter or movement at large.
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AGAINST-Emma D.
I appreciate all the comrades who brought this forward. Theyâre absolutely right that our chapter program needs a set of goals that we orient our work around and that our candidates should advance. However, I would not support this proposal in its current state.
The sponsors of this resolution said that they tried to glean these goals from our existing chapter program. I really appreciate that the authors here have tried to stick to what can be taken from a program that went through a rigorous and democratic drafting process and received unanimous approval at convention, rather than drafting something entirely new without that substantive process. The authors here are clearly trying to respect the input of the body in the chapter program in what theyâve put forward.
That said, the chapter program we approved is itself incoherent, so trying to base a set of demands on that chapter program has created an entirely incoherent list that I would not feel comfortable approving and communicating to the general public or asking candidates to advance.
This is not to disrespect the leaders of the chapter program commission. The commission navigated a complicated and unwieldy process to create a document that was a huge step forward for our chapter. I also participated in the commission, and I can attest that the incoherence of the document is not a result of ineffectiveness; itâs the result of the fact that our chapter has long operated as a hub of independently operating working groups and formations, not a party structure that represents a collective body moving in the same direction. The program commission did not have the authority to impose a different structure on the chapter; it could only create a document that reflected the chapterâs reality.
Since the list of demands proposed here were based in the chapter program, the demands are disjointed and missing crucial goals. For example, the reproductive justice section is missing anything about abortion or contraception, and thereâs significant debate around the language of âabolish MPD.â Additionally, thereâs no parallel structure between the demands, so some are well thought-out while others are extremely underdeveloped. The goals range from immediate to extremely long term goals without clear indication of which is which, and the scope and development of the goals for each jurisdiction (MD, VA, DC) vary widely. In contrast, we can look at DSA-LAâs program as an example of what a comprehensive local complement to WDM might look like.
Because of the incoherence I described above, I donât think this is a list of demands we should present to the general public, and I especially donât think we should ask candidates to run on this platform. Using this program as an organizing document and asking our candidates to advance and promote it is a really serious ask, and we need to meet it with a similar level of seriousness and thoughtfulness on our part. If we expect people to uphold it, we need to be really clear about what weâre asking them to do. Otherwise, weâre either asking candidates to uphold it and make themselves more likely to fail or weâre marginalizing ourselves by expecting adherence to incoherent demands.
Instead of putting the cart before the horse and getting stuck debating language changes in our program, Iâd like to take a step back and focus our debate on how we can create a chapter that would lend itself to the kind of platform/program we want â a body that sets its priorities and goals collectively, and, where itâs necessary to work separately, works in parallel and in complement rather than entirely independently. I think we made a big step forward by passing the recent bylaws reforms that updated our priority campaign scheme, and Iâm excited for how that might change the chapter. Iâd love to discuss what we can do to continue moving our chapter in that direction and what a program update process might look like in order to reflect and advance coherence in our chapter.
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IN FAVOR-Rakshith R.
I recommend, in both my personal and factional capacity, voting FOR resolution R2. The previous program commission generated a program for us, over a long duration of time, that unfortunately was not a statement of programmatic unity, but instead a list of things the different working groups are doing. In the meantime, we have a new program from the national that is concise and presents simple and clear demands, of a mixed character. This includes:
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immediate reforms
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minimum demands necessary for our class to rule
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maximum demands that are ideal long term objectives for our class to hold onto
This resolution takes the previous local program and drafts a simple 1 to 2 page set of demands, supplementary to the national program, that we can aim for locally. In drafting these demands, my caucus did not hew to our own specific vision. We instead sought to hew to the current set of âdemandsâ implicit in the working group statements in the previous document. While I have mixed feelings regarding the mixture of the âthree typesâ of demands present, this restructuring now provides a concise statement for our mass membership. It would be something we could put into new members hands, to explain our objectives, into potential candidates hands, to quickly understand membershipâs priorities, and can be used to guide and direct the effort of the many formations of the chapter.
It should be emphasized that conciseness is a virtue for a program as compared to the 42 page document of the LA DSA chapter. When Marx was asked to generate a draft for the French Workers Party, he gave them 10 concise lines for the narrative statement, before going into a list of12 demands, one sentence each. Karl Kautsky, in the famous SPD Erfurt Program, listed 13 demands in one to two sentences each that would define the minimum requirements for Workerâs rule in Germany. Both documents can be read in minutes and give a clear definition of their Partyâs intentions.
Finally, I want to emphasize the difference between the program of a Party, which states the short to long term objectives of the whole movement vs an electoral platform, which would state the immediate intentions of the candidates in a given election. The latter is often a propagandistic statement, to be forgotten once the election is done. The former is an actual statement of current *democratically agreed* positions of the Party, meant for party members themselves to uphold and to change.
To that final note, I hope to see this program further amended and debated at future GBMâs and at City Convention, and hope to see resolutions related to public safety, labor, bodily autonomy, and more!
IN FAVOR-Amanda L.
This seems pretty straightforward to me. Both national DSA and our chapter spent a considerable amount of time putting a program together. The resolution ensures our chapter does something with the program instead of letting yet another values document languish in a dark storage room with cobwebs. Getting this out to new and potential members, and elected officials, would be awesome.
AGAINST-Julia P.
- The proposal is incoherent and underdeveloped
Several of the demands presented, while not necessarily objectionable on merit, require further development before they can function as guiding principles for political action. While it can be advantageous to state our general long-term goals in open-ended terms to allow for the necessary adjustment of strategy to changing circumstances, there is a subtle but essential difference between an open-ended, flexible goal and a vague, incoherent one. Many of the demands listed in this document are very loosely defined, and some even directly contradict others.
For example, the proposal simultaneously calls for the wholesale abolition of âcarceral systemsâ (a term it does not clearly define) and for the arrest and prosecution of the international war criminals perpetrating genocide in Gaza. These demands are mutually exclusive - if all carceral systems are abolished, who is responsible for executing these arrests and prosecuting these cases? How would the terms âarrestâ and âprosecuteâ be defined or applied outside of a carceral framework?
The proposal does not articulate how carrying out both of these demands would be logically possible, and its authors have failed to provide a satisfactory explanation when directly asked, instead referring to their caucusâs preference for a âminimum-maximum programâ in which âthe minimum represents what needs to be accomplished for the working class to rule and the maximum represents our goals once in power.â This clarification would only be helpful if the proposal were structured so that the âminimumâ and âmaximumâ goals presented are legible as such. As written, the proposal does not clearly distinguish between âminimumâ and âmaximumâ goals, and it is not clear that there is consensus among the authors as to which demands are âminimumâ or âmaximumâ respectively. Further clarification and organization of this document are necessary in order for it to have any practical applicability
- The proposal would hinder our electoral development by requiring candidates to rubber-stamp unpopular policies
The downstream consequences of failure to distinguish between âminimumâ and âmaximumâ demands could be dire for our electoral program, a hindrance we do not need just as we are beginning to pick up steam. The framing of âOur Demandsâ implies that all the goals presented are considered equally immediate and necessary. This is certainly how it would be read by candidates seeking endorsement and by liberal opposition figures seeking to discredit democratic socialism. This is concerning given the fact that some of the demands outlined in this document are abjectly unpopular with voters. If this proposal is implemented as currently written, it would place DSA-endorsed candidates in a very awkward position and might deter some from seeking endorsement in the first place.
Of particular concern is the demand for the abolition of DCâs Metropolitan Police Department (I do not know and can not speculate as to why MPD is singled out while police departments in Virginia and Maryland are not mentioned.) The authors of this proposal have argued that there was a time in recent memory when police abolition âarose from the masses and became incredibly popular.â Public opinion data tells a different story. A Gallup poll conducted in 2020, a time that has repeatedly been invoked (and, I would argue, somewhat mythologized) as the zenith of support for police abolition, found that only 15% of Americans supported or strongly supported the idea. Police abolition was slightly more popular among Black Americans (22%) and Americans younger than 35 (33%), but these numbers are still well below the kind of support that would be necessary to win elections on an abolition platform. Proposals with higher levels of relative support included âcommunity based alternatives such as violence interventionâ (supported by 82% of Americans), âeliminating police unionsâ (supported by 56% of Americans), and âreducing police department funding and shifting money to social programsâ (supported by 47% of Americans), suggesting that while the general population in 2020 was generally critical of policing in its current state and ready for significant change, most did not consider abolition a viable or desirable immediate goal.
More recent data does not indicate that âpolice abolitionâ as such has gained popularity. A 2025 poll from Gallup shows that the majority of Americans âhave confidence in their local police forceâ and are âsatisfied with the relationship between police and their local community.â The majority is narrower among Black adults and adults aged 18-39, but the trend holds across demographics. However, another 2025 Gallup poll found that 67% of Americans support addressing social and economic problems over strengthening law enforcement, which is apparently consistent with the results of similar polls conducted in 2020 and 2023. Clearly, there is fertile ground in the US electoral sphere in which decarceral policies can be seeded, but the insistence that DSA-endorsed candidates say the quiet part out loud amounts to salting the earth. Demanding that candidates run on a losing platform will deprive us of the opportunity to actually enact any policy that could bring us closer to a world without policing.
This proposalâs myopic focus on the willingness of prospective endorsees to rubber-stamp a literal list of demands in order to prove their loyalty demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between campaigning and governance. Campaigning is about winning popular support, and governance is about implementing and executing policy. Candidates are notorious for saying one thing on the campaign trail only to do another in office, a problem with which members of Metro DC DSA should be familiar by now, and if our current questionnaire has not succeeded in weeding out opportunists, why would a couple of additional questions that essentially restate the existing content of the questionnaire change that?
If DSA wants our endorsed candidates to enact particular policies in office, the focus needs to be on (1) building relationships with those candidates that will empower us to have input on policymaking and (2) winning elections so that those policy proposals have the chance to see the light of day. The kind of trust we need to have in order for true âelectoral accountabilityâ to be possible comes from those relationships, not from superficial agreement on a series of abstracted sentiments.
- The proposal neglects issues that are both essential for socialist power and popular among voters
In addition to emphasizing unpopular and polarizing elements of the DSA program, the proposed amendment neglects issue areas that are demonstrably popular among the general US population. Of particular concern to me is the Reproductive Justice and Trans and Queer Liberation section, which I believe is severely lacking.
A 2025 survey conducted by Data for Progress found that Medicare for All is supported by 78% of Democrats and 58% of Americans overall. 2026 data from the Pew Research Center shows that 60% of Americans believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases, a figure which is corroborated by data from Gallup showing that 55% of Americans believe it should be legal under at least some circumstances and that 61% oppose the overturning of Roe v. Wade. 2024 polling data from Impact Research shows that contraception, including emergency contraception, is also overwhelmingly popular. Healthcare access, including access to abortion and contraception, are all important issues for democratic socialists, as is made clear in the Workers Deserve More program on which this amendment is apparently based. However, these issues are left out of the proposal entirely, and the authors have not responded to direct inquiries as to why this is the case.
It does not make political sense to make an emphatic stand for unpopular proposals while neglecting popular ones. This is not the strategy that brought us the âred waveâ we are currently seeing in US politics. Our candidates have consistently won with strong, clear messages around kitchen-table issues such as healthcare and affordability, messages that our members largely agree on despite the odd semantic quibble, and a program that seeks to represent the will of Metro DC DSA is incomplete without them.
- The proposal removes the majority of the programâs original text to an appendix that is âaccessible on requestâ but otherwise restricted
The amendment removes three quarters of the program that our chapter unanimously approved, including the in-depth strategic analysis of our chapterâs various branches and working groups, and puts them in a separate appendix document that can only be accessed upon request. While the impulse to reduce the program to a concise list of demands is understandable, particularly for the purpose of external communications and basic education, it is also important for the deeper theory motivating our demands to be accessible without members having to proactively request it. The existing program contains bulleted lists of goals for both the chapter as a whole and for various formations. If we want a short, digestible document that summarizes the basics of the program, we can easily create it using material the program itself already provides. It would be both more coherent and more reflective of chapter membersâ organic demands than the proposed amendment. If we are genuinely interested in the political and intellectual development of members, though, this summary document should function primarily as an introduction to the program and not as a substitute for it. Our theory of change revolves around the relationships between our different areas of work; they strengthen each other and must be understood in conversation with one another, and the nuances of those relationships canât be effectively communicated by a decontextualized list of demands. While there are reasonable criticisms to be made of our existing program, I do not believe any approach that relies on the gatekeeping of knowledge is an appropriate way to address those issues.
The resolutionâs blatant anti-intellectualism is particularly galling given that it is sponsored by a caucus that requires prospective members to complete a nine-week reading group and co-sponsored by members of the chapterâs Publications Working Group.
MDC DSA members are and should remain dedicated seekers of knowledge. We all came to this organization because we realized at some point that the picture painted for us by the education system and the media was incomplete and challenged ourselves to look deeper, and that intellectual journey didnât stop when we joined and started knocking doors or attending working group meetings. Our chapter has a thriving political education program and a robust culture of internal discourse, and if we want to continue cultivating curiosity and the love of knowledge in both new and old members, we should start by making our deep political analysis and fully articulated theory of change accessible. There are valuable things members and allies can learn about our organizationâs political philosophy and practice from reading the program in full, flawed as it may be, and they should have the opportunity to do so. We all understand why itâs a problem for scientific research to be hidden behind paywalls or barricaded within the walls of formal academic institutions, so it is baffling to me that we would perpetuate the same problem by hiding our political work under a bushel basket as this resolution proposes. This is no way to cultivate organic proletarian intellectuals.
- âWhy didnât you introduce an amendment to change the parts you donât agree with?â
At this point, you may be wondering why I made no attempt to address my various issues with this proposal via an amendment. My response would be that any amendment that would bring this proposal to a place where I felt comfortable voting in favor of it would be so extensive as to constitute a different resolution entirely. While I find many of the proposalâs specific demands rhetorically maladaptive and ideologically underdeveloped, my primary point of contention is not with these particulars but with the proposalâs underlying philosophy. The framing of our organizationâs programmatic goals as âdemandsâ (particularly when those âdemandsâ are abstracted from a complex theory of change) is fundamentally at odds with the political approach I believe the socialist movement should take if it seeks to be genuinely effective.
Political action is not just about making demands, presenting those demands to candidates and elected officials, and insisting they carry them out lest we withdraw our support. It is about working towards goals. Sometimes, this does involve direct agitational pressure, but other times, the key is relational trust and strong interpersonal communication. At times, we may even be obligated to work with officials we generally dislike and make compromises in order to achieve necessary gains. This is a delicate process that requires space for nuance and acceptance of the fact that, while we are rapidly gaining power, we are not yet in a position to simply insist upon what we want and expect to get it. We are organizing our way into that position as best we can, but history will not simply lurch forward to accommodate our preferred timeline because we put out a document demanding it. It is our responsibility to do the work.
This proposal reflects a quasi-religious (I would even say apocalyptic) approach to politics. It constructs DSA as a moral voice analogous to a Biblical prophet vociferously decrying the iniquity of their age and warning sinners to repent or face cosmic justice and positions members as warriors in a battle between absolute good and absolute evil. I do not find this framing helpful and could not bring myself to support this proposal even if it were rewritten to reflect my idealistic moral demands because I do not believe an overtly moralistic approach to politics is helpful. Political action IS by nature moral, and DSAâs vision is grounded in moral conviction, but morality is not about declaring oneself to be moral nor condemning those who fail to live up to a given set of moral imperatives. It is about taking material action to improve conditions in the short term and move the world towards an equitable, worker-led system in the long term. This requires engaging with the contradictions and obstacles of real life and is often hindered rather than helped by strict moral codes that imbue isolated actions and statements with an existential significance they do not necessarily possess when viewed in context.
When people look back on DSAâs activity in the 2020s, they will not remember us as an activist pressure group that took strong moral stances and made bold demands, nor will they forgive any of our failures on the basis that we had good ideas. They will remember us as an organized working-class vehicle that built mass political power and drove the narrative of history forward by expertly playing the hand we were dealt rather than folding and indignantly complaining that the deck was stacked against us anyway. Clear, achievable short and long-term goals are necessary to guide our action. Demands, however, are impotent without material power. Our moral obligation as socialists is not to make stronger demands but to be more effective, and the pathway to effectiveness does not begin with a righteous checklist or a purity screening but with an examination of material conditions and a recognition of the opportunities they offer for historic progress.
I will be voting AGAINST this resolution and strongly encourage others to do the same.
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AGAINST-Tim S.
Having a chapter program is really important, which is why I supported it at 2024 convention, and encouraged others to do so. It lets us have a unified analysis that we can point to both internally and externally: we can have a common vocabulary for situating our goals and strategy in our own deliberation, and we can point to what weâve collectively agreed to when weâre asked to explain ourselves to the public and to electeds. Contesting that program is also a reasonable and legitimate thing to do, precisely because it matters in these ways.
I strongly disagree with the changes these comrades have proposed to how our program is used, however. This resolution effectively replaces our program, which was deliberately drafted over a long period, with significant opportunities for broad, cross-tendency feedback and democratic oversight, with a new set of demands, distinct from the bullet pointed demands that our program already includes. Our program would continue to exist, but this new document would replace it as the primary line in our public communication of our values. This is a serious mistake, because it undermines the legitimacy of such statements that the original program commission process conferred, making it harder to credibly claim that the program speaks for all of us.
This resolution also makes a significant political error in how it relates our program to our electeds. It asks us to treat our program as a set of red lines for our electeds, measured in terms of public assent rather than in legislative or organizing work dedicated to actually advancing public policy towards these goals. This is an approach that has been tried by the left in general, and by DSA in particular, for many years, and it has gotten us essentially nowhere. It is one specific tendencyâs approach to electoral politics; they are allowed to hold their position, and I am allowed to say that it is wrong. Where we have actually had legislative successes as DSA (too infrequently!), it has been on the strength of give and take relationships with electeds, that both sides commit real resources to in the pursuit of specific policy goals, rather than on enforcing vague, maximalist slogans as ultimatums. It isnât fair or reasonable to hold electeds to a version of our program that doesnât really reflect consensus, and worse than that, itâs a bad way of getting the policy outcomes we want. Please join me in voting no on this resolution.
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AGAINST-Tyler S.
I am a long time electoral organizer and field lead on Aparnaâs campaign. The amendments proposed to the program are not only anti-intellectual, they would preclude us from endorsing any future candidates for office. Do not vote for this foolhardy measure.
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AGAINST-Groundwork Caucus
The Metro DC DSA Groundwork Caucus urges you to vote NO on these changes to our chapter program, for the following reasons:
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The program that our chapter collaboratively wrote and unanimously approved already has short lists of bullet points outlining our demands. Thereâs nothing preventing us from putting those points on literature or highlighting them on our website above the rest of the program as a summary.
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Eliminating all of our branches and working groupsâ strategic analysis from the program and putting it into an appendix âto be available upon requestâ is unnecessary and prevents people from learning how our different areas of work strengthen one another, which is the most important part of our political project.
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Adding one question to the endorsement questionnaire asking if candidates agree with all 41 of these new program points wonât give members useful information. We should continue to ask about issues separately so candidates go into detail and arenât incentivized to gloss over any differences in policy priorities during our endorsement process.
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Electoral campaigns are under overwhelming pressure to focus on 3-5 main talking points, and a hostile media environment already makes doing this an uphill battle. If we ask even our most politically-aligned cadre candidates in our questionnaire whether theyâll include all 41 of these program points in their communications, the only honest answers they could give are ânoâ or âmaybe a fewâ. And if they do answer honestly, it would result in candidates feeling less pressure to promote and defend our whole program, not more.
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This resolution deviates from the language currently used locally and nationally to make our programâs Abolition demands less concrete, less understandable to the public, and easily caricatured by the Copaganda machine. The language in those existing programs is explicitly abolitionist but centers the immediate tangible tasks necessary in order to achieve that goal. The new topline of âAbolish All Carceral Systems In Their Entiretyâ does not effectively explain our politics to people who arenât already leftists, and those are the people we need to turn into abolitionists in order for abolition to work. Leading with something that needs a lot of contextualization when the media constantly seeks to twist our words wonât help us. This change makes it less likely that candidates publicly promote or defend our program, and less likely that we win the power needed to build an abolitionist future.
We urge you to vote no on this resolution. Solidarityâ
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IN FAVOR-Far
While the Program is a great document which our comrades spent the better part of a year working on (which I also helped on in the latter half), it is admittedly unwieldy and inaccessible. Furthermore one of the intentions behind the Program was to consistently make edits and have it be a living document. This amendment is the first such step, and I hope to see many more edits as we grow! While political education is an important function we can serve as an organization, we will only build a mass movement by first meeting people where they are at. The unfortunate truth is that a vast majority of normal working class people do not have the time in their lives to read such long documents. This amendment makes a strong distillation of the Program into a set of demands that articulate our chapterâs goals in clear, concise, and emotionally resonant ways. I also think we need to be bold, and stand firmly by our convictions, which is why I also support the idea of having the program be a part of our questions to Electeds going for endorsement. I encourage people to please vote in FAVOR of this amendment.
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IN FAVOR-John O.
Simply stated, as a socialist organization, we need to adopt a clear and concise program so that people in and out of Metro DC DSA know what we stand for and are united around - and so that anyone who wants our support knows what we expect them to fight for too. As history shows us, acceptance of an inspiring political program with specific demands on the state is how the first mass socialist parties succeeded in winning the working class of their countries by the millions. Having such a program that can be easily read and which we can put in the hands of new members, workers who have yet to join us, and politicians who seek our support will allow us to more easily educate, agitate, and organize the working class majority in the DMV for the purpose of achieving our dream of a socialist future.
DSAâs national 2026 Workers Deserve More program, as a distillation of our reasons for being, is a good model for us to follow locally. It has already served to put our ideas for a transformation of the U.S. and the world before millions of people and has given all DSA members a coherent set of political objectives to rally around and defend. Proof of the power of such a bold and direct statement of socialist purpose is the hysteria it has engendered among the ruling class and its ventriloquist dummies in the corporate media.
The unity that this revised chapter program will help to foster is meant to exist in contradistinction to a unity based on dogmatic purity or vague slogans. It must be clear to us and to those who we want to win over to our side, that we know where weâre going - and that we make decisions collectively. As for the specific demands contained within it, I donât agree with every single one of them as currently written and think a few sections would benefit from friendly amendments, but I strongly believe that passing this resolution will move us much closer to where we should be as a chapter. Once passed, we can always refine the demands in a democratic fashion as a way of charting our future course together.
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IN FAVOR-James S.
As an organizer, I know that sometimes more is less. Communicating our agenda and expectations succinctly can add power.
Case in point: when I attended the Chapter leadership retreat in July, I had a hard time surmising the core principals of the program when we broke out into groups to reflect on it. It was simply too long to process in a meaningful way.
Iâd like to thank the members of the Chapter who oversaw the drafting of this program document and suggest revising the product they produced makes it stronger.
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IN FAVOR-Andrew C.
It has been a positive step for our chapter that we have taken up and adopted a chapter program. The current program document says a lot about our chapterâs working groups and formations from the time that the program was adopted, but it falls short of the tasks of a political program as it fails to clearly articulate the shared goals and values of our chapter in a way that makes our shared politics clear to ourselves internally, and to the world outside of our chapter.
Even if you find the contents of the document insufficient after seeing our chapterâs demands framed clearly by our proposed structural update to the program, I hope you will still vote for this resolution. The structural change to the document clarifies the political elements of our existing chapter program and will make it clear where future program update resolutions should propose changes to the contents or framing of this expression of our chapterâs shared politics.
I believe the changes in practice around the chapter program that our resolution proposes are also essential. Circulating and discussing our chapter program at new member orientations and at general body meetings will help us to center our shared politics and orient our work around them. Integrating the chapter program into our electoral endorsement questionnaire provides an additional point of information for our chapter members to consider as far as how candidates feel that they relate to our chapterâs shared politics.
The program is meant to be a living document, modified through our chapterâs democratic processes. I hope you will vote for this resolution and that it will be the first of many updates to our chapter program with the goal of developing the document into a clear articulation of our chapterâs shared politics.
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AGAINST-Brandon W.
I share concerns from the authors of the program amendments that our chapterâs program contains a broad set of content from our different working groups and branches that ought to be better articulated and summarized in a clear vision of what we want to set out to accomplish.
I do not, however, believe that the amended language as written reaches its desired outcome. I believe the program amendments fall short in (1) creating a unifying vision for our chapter, (2) building demands around which our chapter can struggle, and (3) providing the opportunity for us to strategically work towards winning these goals along with our candidates.
The program amendments do not unify our chapter and would instead create a vision that only some in our chapter would agree with. For instance, the second resolved clause moves the sections from Regional Work to Tenant Organizing (25 pages of the chapter program, or 67% of the documentâs pages) to a supplementary appendix only accessed upon request. I do not believe that moving two-thirds of our program to an opt-in-only appendix unifies our chapter. Our Program Commission worked tirelessly to obtain broad buy-in, resulting in unanimous support from members. While I donât believe we need to have detailed reports on every working group included in our chapter program, at the same time, each of our working groupâs efforts should not just be broadly summarized into six âdemands.â Branches should be able to articulate their goals for their branch beyond these six broad categories of demands.
Thatâs also not to mention that the reproductive justice section omits any mention of codifying or protecting abortion abortion rights. And as a member of the Transit Working Group (speaking for myself, not the WG), the singular mention of transit is about a land value tax, which, while is a good demand, would not be a fair characterization of the sole demand of the working group. This is exactly why our program should not just be a bulleted list with an opt-in appendix; it should provide clear context to articulate the visions behind how we seek to create change.
I also do not believe these chapter program amendments build demands around which our chapter can struggle. While the authors do leave in the âOur Analysis and the Path Forwardâ section of the original program, thereâs no analysis linking that critical piece of our program to any of these demands. The bulleted list of demands lack explanation of how we will repeal Virginiaâs right-to-work laws, end the blockade on Cuba, oppose data center construction in the entire DMV, pass TOPA in Maryland, end ICE deportations, end Medicaid restrictions on gender-affirming care, or establishing DC statehood. Do we harness DSA members to elect a federal executive via a nationwide class struggle campaign in 2028 to these demands? Do we work with labor partners on May Day 2028 on some or all of these demands? The suggested program edits do not articulate theories of change behind how we will accomplish the demands, which I think would be critical context to provide for new members & potential members considering joining our chapter.
Finally, the final resolved clauseâs decision to ask our candidates to accept & fight to implement our Chapter Program in addition to promoting our Chapter Program only creates more distance between our endorsed candidates and the chapter. Because these program edits are asserting demands with no specifically linked theory of change, the document as written forces our candidates in Question 5 to agree to demands without our chapter specifying how we expect our candidates & elected officials to implement said demands. Additionally, the âwhere applicableâ clause creates a loophole & easy opportunity for our endorsed candidates to say that their capacity as an elected official does not apply to a certain demand, rendering moot the intent behind asking this question â committing our candidates to our chapterâs demands.
Our cadre candidates & non-cadre candidates alike have also been able to harness several parts of our existing program to unite working people & build momentum for our chapterâs interests. Question 6, however, just asks if candidates will promote our Chapter Program & demands in campaign materials. Would this mean linking the program on their issues page and explicitly saying these are Metro DC DSAâs demands that I agree with? Does this mean a QR code to the DSA program on literature? Not defining âpromoteâ in this question creates the same issue as Question 5 â it gives a loophole for candidates to say they âhaveâ promoted our program by just copying over some of our demands, without actually accomplishing our goal: having our candidates share out our program.
Because the chapter program amendments fall short in unifying our chapter, do not articulate a vision of how to achieve said demands, and do not achieve the stated goal in helping work with our candidates in achieving our goals, I urge fellow members to vote NO on these chapter program amendments.
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