Member Statements on Chapter Program Edits-9/2026

Member Statements
21

AGAINST-Guido V.

I was unsure of how I was going to vote on this but ultimately, after hearing the arguments and reading the resolution, I’ve come down on the side against it. I hear my comrades on the need for a concise, easy to read list of demands/principles. However, I don’t believe that list should exist at the expense of our program. Should this resolution pass, a bulk of important information within the program would be hidden behind a wall. And while we can say that all anyone as to do is request it, I highly doubt most members or electeds will actually ask for it.

If we wish to influence our electeds more effectively, I believe that instead of listing demands that are explicit in our end goals (police abolition, 32 hr work week, Abolishing the senate), demands should be tied to immediate, achievable goals that they could reasonably pursue while in office. The demands listed in the resolution ARE end points that I wish for use to achieve, but no single elected is going to achieve them with the stroke of a pen. What we CAN do is take steps to get there. I would be much more supportive of the resolution if the demands listed were tied to goals that the priority campaigns were actively pursuing. For example if we have a priority campaign around Stomp out Slumlords, we should demand that our electeds Restore & expand TOPA in DC. This would tie our electeds directly to work we’re pursuing in other areas of the chapter.

I appreciate the time, work, and effort that my comrades have put into this resolution and the thoughtfulness they’ve shown towards the chapter’s well being. I apologize that I was not available to write an amendment to this resolution but I hope we can continue to develop our program and examine our relationship with electeds. For now, I will have to vote and no.

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22

AGAINST-Kirk G.

I’m urging all members to vote against this resolution and instead work with all active members to refine our program if necessary.

I want MDC DSA to organize toward abolition by working with communities impacted by incarceration and policing to develop and enact policies that decriminalize poverty — ending cash bail, expanding diversion programs, bolstering the social safety net. Let’s end the Cellebrite contract. Let’s get rid of Flock. These are popular positions we can build on.

I don’t understand how simply declaring “Abolish MPD” improves the life of anyone in DC affected by policing and incarceration — or builds socialism, for that matter. A slogan is not a program.

The chapter should be less worried about communicating theory to the masses and more concerned with building power and delivering change.

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23

IN FAVOR-Julian A.

“The fundamental purpose of a socialist party is to be a mass association of the working class formed for collective political action. The party will be united around a democratically created program that outlines goals that, enacted together, will allow the working class to rule and end capitalism.” -Principles for Party-Building, approved by the 2025 DSA National Convention

I am writing to ask you to vote YES on the Chapter Program Amendments to give us clearer demands. I do so as someone who does not agree wholeheartedly with how every single demand is phrased in the proposed text, as I have discussed in chapter spaces such as the #internal-forum slack channel. But by clearly distilling our programmatic demands and asking our candidates to affirm our program, we further our ability to put forward a democratically determined collective political vision, and to more clearly alter that vision in the future.

Some of those arguing against this resolution have invoked that the Chapter Program passed unanimously at our last local convention, and that presenting these amendments is in some way disrespectful to those involved in the drafting of the Program. In fact, the authors and supporters of this amendment are a significant proportion of the Program Development Commission, who were tasked with drafting the Program in the first place. If the set of demands presented in the Program amendment is imperfect, that is because the authors of the amendment were too loyal to the original material of the Chapter Program, seeking to distill what was a disjointed and incomplete set of short and long term demands from different chapter formations into a cohesive political vision. They did the best that they could with such a task.

Others arguing against it have raised concerns about asking candidates to align with our program. One subset of these arguments have said that our questionnaire is already horribly long, and that adding on the program as a question will further increase the burden on our candidates. I think precisely the opposite is true: by distilling our most important political demands clearly in a program, we can simplify the questionnaire dramatically by using the program itself as an outline for the “Metro DC DSA Priorities” section of the questionnaire. Ultimately, the fundamental factors to consider for a candidate are (1) how viable their campaign is, (2) if they align with us politically, and (3) if they are willing to participate in our cogovernance structures. A clear set of demands makes (2) much simpler.

Another argument heard from the stacks-against at the General Body Meeting was that asking our endorsed candidates to affirm our program would harm their electability. To be clear, the chapter has already (in the 2025 Local Convention Resolution Building Metro DC DSA as a United and Politically Independent Socialist Party) set the expectation for cadre candidates to “Accept and promote DSA’s national program, as well as political positions collectively decided upon by the general body of Metro DC DSA, and align their own campaign platforms with its contents to the best of their ability,” as well as prioritizing running cadre campaigns. Asking our endorsed candidates in general then to align with our political program is just raising that standard all-around. Others have raised specific objections to this or that programmatic point, with the language around Abolishing MPD being a particular sticking point. To these members: I agree that better phrasings of the programmatic language are possible, and I wish you had brought an amendment to this resolution to that effect. Given the current state of things, I believe the best way forward is to pass this resolution to restructure our chapter program, and then passing further amendments to further refine the language in the program.

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24

IN FAVOR-Colin K.

Great step in the right direction for our ideological conviction as a Marxist organization and as an organization dedicated to concrete political goals outside of the electoral sphere. The addition of question 5 to the PEC electoral endorsement questionnaire is a critical measure, rivaled only by a move towards completely political independence, in ensuring political loyalty and dedication in our continued electoral efforts. With a further emphasis placed on it’s ability to demonstrate the considerable need for political and electoral independence by providing specific points of betrayal and disagreement by ideologically dedicated liberals attempting to co-opt or directly exploit our organizing efforts and infrastructure. I hope to see these demands expounded upon in both short and long form resources, both internally and externally.

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25

AGAINST-Zach M.

I am writing today in opposition to the proposed amendment to the chapter program, particularly in opposition to the adding of questions relating to the proposed program into the candidate questionnaire. For those who I haven’t gotten the chance to meet, my name is Zach Mattia and I grew up and still live in Loudoun County. For me, and many of the comrades that are outside of the urban core, promoting DSA has been a very different experience. Due to the lack of both electoral and non-electoral campaign ran in the suburbs, most people’s only impression of us is not the important direct action work we do, a friendly face canvassing for an issue or candidate they care deeply about, or an elected official that stands up for them in government, but is whatever policies they are shown by media or uncover in their own research.

While I personally agree with the demands being made in the chapter program, and believe we can gain popular support for them through steadfast organizing, I know that passing this revision will cause people to negatively polarize against our positions without us ever getting the chance to have a conversation. I grew up in a R+20 area in Western Loudoun, and personally experienced what it takes to shift people’s opinions over time. In order to gain support out here, people need to hear candidates that speak on issues important to them, and care deeply about their communities. DSA’s ability to get their message out through 1 on 1 conversations is what inspired me to join, and gives me hope for the future of our country in a time where it can feel like hope is in short supply. By passing this resolution, we risk needlessly radicalizing good hearted, working class people against us before we even get a chance to speak to them.

It is my opinion that pushing a lengthy list of demands, regardless of realities on the ground, will strip out the ability to be nuanced in our organizing and meet people where they are at. Becoming a socialist was a journey for me, as it was for everyone in this organization, and by turning people away who don’t fully subscribe to the chapter program, we are closing ourselves off from the type of organizing needed to build mass politics. We shouldn’t subject ourselves to the same purity testing and hardline approaches that have doomed every leftist organization for decades to irrelevance. Being able to work with people you don’t 100% agree with is one of the fundamental cornerstones that makes DSA so great, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.

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26

IN FAVOR-Sam D.

Dear comrades, I implore you to approve this resolution, which would drastically cut the length of our official chapter program, as well as approve it for public use. Our chapter program was developed through a long research progress last year and approved by our local convention, but it contains over 35 pages of analysis and recommendations and is not made publicly available. A socialist program is a tool of internal and external organization, through which a party can collectively determine its priorities to both its members and broader society. Our program, reflected by the fact that it is not in widespread use in the chapter, is not fit for use in its current form.

Members have attempted to argue against this resolution by claiming it would hide political information in a program appendix or make Socialist in Office discussions difficult. I would like to cut through this: opponents of this resolution do not want a functional program, because it will give us a tool to hold elected socialists to account and to keep political disagreement a public part of chapter life, instead of behind caucus’ closed doors. Our chapter program is inaccessible to members in its current, dead form either to learn from or to guide our actions. Our chapter program is not a textbook, but a living document that helps us breathe life into the political will of the chapter. To give it that shape, we must approve this resolution. Please vote Yes.

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27

IN FAVOR-Jeff H.

Hello comrades,

My name is Jeff Hodgkiss, and I am one of the sponsors of this resolution. I joined the chapter last year due in part to my interest in the fantastic efforts of our working groups in communities all around the DMV. I believe that this program revision will help gather our chapter members’ efforts into one democratically determined and easily accessible document with which people from all walks of life can see who we are, what we’re about, and how we lead the struggle for socialism and a better world.

This revision to the chapter program is not meant to be a static document whatsoever. Already different working groups and formations within the chapter are at work drafting additions and changes to the Demands section of this proposed revision based on what they believe our program should reflect, and we 100% welcome this as part of determining our chapter’s guiding stars through open deliberation that any member can participate in.

This democratic participation is more important than ever as endorsed DSA members step into the DC Mayor’s office and an ever-increasing number of seats in Congress. It is absolutely vital that our movement does not succeed or fail based on the results that individual politicians can obtain while in office-indeed, this revision will provide a set of crystal-clear yardlines by which DSA members and the public alike can see whether or not any individual elected socialist meets the programmatic standards that the chapter has democratically decided upon.

At the GBM this last Sunday, several chapter members raised concerns they had with the resolution. I’d like to shortly address them here:

  • One chapter member was concerned about SIOs being held to demands which do not apply in their jurisdiction (e.g. demands for Virginia retirement systems to divest from Israeli companies being placed on Maryland candidates and vice versa). This would be an issue, except that the question of whether the candidate will back our demands is specifically “where applicable”, i.e. within their respective jurisdictions.

  • The same comrade also raised concerns about candidates needing to develop “short and punchy” platforms in the fast-paced environment of primaries and elections. Yet if candidates are looking for a short list of demands that are emblematic of what our chapter members believe in, then this resolution provides exactly that!

  • Another comrade raised the issue of the Program Appendix, the sections of the program that explain each of our program areas at great length, being available “upon request”. They seemed to be under the impression that this resolution would represent something like a “paywall” between chapter members and the Program Appendix’s analysis into the chapter’s various struggles. Let me be clear that such a restriction is far from our intent! One of the most fundamental struggles of socialism is broadening the accessibility of knowledge to the whole of humanity, and in line with this principle we intend for both the Program Demands and the Program Appendix to be living, easily accessible documents which can be referenced, debated, and altered by the democratic processes of the chapter membership.

  • Lastly, concerns were raised regarding the language of specific demands regarding the struggle against the police and legal system of DC. They are welcome to bring these concerns forward, but such differences of opinion are exactly what we intended this revision to enable. In my opinion, these concerns are not a reason to throw out the resolution, but an example of the open conversations about political strategy and goals that we hope to foster within the Chapter. If this resolution passes, I sincerely hope that comrade brings forward a resolution with their suggested revisions so that we can continue this conversation and come to a democratic consensus as a chapter.

All together, it is our hope that this revision to the chapter program is only the beginning of a longer process of open discussion and democratic debate within the chapter about our future. Let’s unite as democratic socialists across the DMV and keep pushing towards that better future.

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28

AGAINST-Ishan P.

Hi all! I would encourage a no vote on this motion for several reasons. I believe that electoral work is a critical part of socialist transformation in this country not because our electeds are the end all be all, but because putting socialists into positions of power makes all of the other incredible work that DSA does significantly easier. When we win high profile campaigns not only do we bring in new members and gain a greater public platform to spread our message, but we also gain allies in established institutions who will protect socialist organizers from state abuses, expand workers rights and union protections, and create greater material security for workers that is necessary for engaging in political work. All of this is necessary to build a more revolutionary working class. Electoral work is the foundation that makes all the rest possible.

However, the measure before us today would unfortunately make it significantly more difficult for the DSA to engage in electoral organizing by putting onerous restrictions on our candidates. I believe this measure could deter many working class Americans or members from seeking out our endorsement , or would create unnecessary friction points later on when, in reality, the current political conditions require that we give our candidates some amount of strategic flexibility so they can win their races, go into office, and pass laws to expand workers’ rights and organizing power, expand tenant protections, create more material security for workers, and scale back the police state — all necessary steps for making the other aspects of DSA organizing work.

This strategic flexibility is necessary both for political reasons but also because the platform is a national platform that will, at times, need to be adapted to local conditions.

To pass this resolution is to misread the value of a politician. Electoral work is a means to an end to unlock the other aspects of socialist organizing. Therefore, our primary goal should be to elect as many socialists as possible into office to bend existing institutions to adopt reforms that makes socialist construction easier, spread our message to the masses, and to dismantle the institutions of repression deployed against us. Limiting our ability to engage in electoral organizing (as this measure would do) is unnecessarily shooting ourselves in the foot

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29

AGAINST-Thomas S.

I urge chapter members to vote no on R2, Chapter Program Amendments: Demands Section & Restructuring. I oppose this resolution because its passage would have the effect of undermining our electoral program, which has both played a significant role in fueling the chapter’s growth and has resulted in the election of socialists in office who have advanced transformative reforms that have improved the material conditions of the lives of working class people in the DMV. All three of our existing chapter program, the national Workers Demand More program, and the revised version of the program that would result from passage of this amendment include at least some prongs that are framed in maximalist terms that are inconsistent with how our most successful candidates, cadre or not, have discussed the issues. These strong candidates have not betrayed our values; instead, to take abolition as an example, they have figured out ways of redirecting the conversation about community safety to root causes and highlighted the need for non-reformist reforms that have the effect of gradually moving our society towards abolition while not using a term, in “abolition,” that is alienating to most voters in the DMV, particularly in Black working class neighborhoods. The respective program materials also all include provisions that will invariably be of tenuous relevance to the specific offices for which candidates are seeking our endorsement. Abolition of the U.S. Senate, a worthy goal that can only accomplished through a constitutional amendment, is but one example.

Based on my electoral organizing experience in Prince George’s County, I anticipate that attempting to tie our candidates to the program in this way would create non-generative conflict in three different ways depending on candidate-specific circumstances. First, we will have some candidates seeking our endorsement who, understanding that close association with the program would weaken their electoral chances, would answer both added questionnaire questions (prompting candidates to accept and fight to implement the program and to promote the program in campaign materials, respectively) with a “no,” and at least some proponents of this resolution would use those responses as a basis for advocating against endorsement. This would heighten tension in our endorsement process and could lead to some great candidates whose campaigns could have helped build DSA not getting our endorsement - candidates who are highly aligned with our values and potentially even some cadre candidates. Second, foreseeing that outcome, some great candidates may not even seek our endorsement to begin with, thus reducing our influence in comparison to that of other left-labor organizations whose endorsements hold weight in the region. Third, some candidates, not fully appreciating what is being asked by these questions, might say yes but then not be perceived to have followed through, teeing up future conflict on whether they have betrayed us or violated the terms of their endorsement. That confusion might stem from lack of clarity in the underlying program(s) or a lack of clarity about how much promotion of the program in campaign materials is enough to have discharged one’s obligation or how hard of a fight put up to implement an aspect of the program is enough of a fight. The concern that positive answers to ambiguous questions in the endorsement process will cause later conflict is not an academic one. In this most recent cycle, we saw candidates who answered yes to the “slate” question not follow that up by cross-endorsing our other candidate(s). I attribute that in large part to the possibility that candidates did not know what they were saying yes to. We are best served by not creating more pathways for something similar to happen in the future, especially where we still have ample means of ensuring values alignment.

As a more minor point, I am not even sure what it would look like for our candidates to promote our program in their campaign materials. That is so far outside of the scope of what typically happens in DSA-endorsed campaigns, never mind the campaigns of non-DSA progressives, that the question truly would not even be legible to candidates seeking our endorsement.

I am incredibly proud of the work that members of our chapter did through our electoral program this spring, but I do have some regrets. With regard to programmatic unity, however, my biggest regard is that, within the chapter, there was too much of an emphasis on programmatic unity rather than too small of an emphasis. It was painful to see how second-guessing of the well-earned endorsement of Izola Shaw for Montgomery County Council decreased enthusiasm for the candidate who came the closest to winning of any of our candidates who did not get over the line. In that case, Izola’s questionnaire responses and subsequent conduct regarding Palestine were more than good enough to demonstrate values alignment, even if they reflected a candidate who wasn’t ready to write a graduate thesis on a topic of modest (not no) relevance to the office that she was seeking. Yet a very limiting view of not just what positions a DSA candidate might take but even of how those views must be articulated was wielded in a way that harmed our momentum and almost certainly depress canvass turnout. I believe that the way that unfolded was not consistent with a big tent conception of what DSA is and should be. As a result, a closet Republican who is a committed opponent of rent control will be representing District 3 during the next County Council term.

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30

AGAINST-Joe R.

I strongly encourage everyone to vote AGAINST this resolution.

I appreciate the sincere attempt and intent to distill demands from the existing program, but this needs a lot more deliberation and work. As written, this would be detrimental for the chapter to share with the public and for democratic socialist candidates running for office. There are glaring omissions, uneven conceptual and geographic development among the demands with nothing to tie them together, near-term demands with past or present organizing occurring in the chapter to achieve them alongside incredibly long-term demands with little to no bearing on the existing program or work in the chapter, and so on. It’s valuable to have a guiding set of demands or goals so we can speak with one voice to the public and organize strategically for the long haul, but this reads as a laundry list of incoherent demands — even with the language that says “where applicable” (the boundaries of this in itself won’t be clear to candidates or the public, leaving a lot of room for interpretation and conflict), it remains too lengthy and unwieldy a set of demands to be useful for a candidate (as opposed to chapter literature) and candidates would inevitably still be asked about and tied to any demands or language in the document that opponents could seize upon. There’s a reason the creation/revision of Workers Deserve More nationally and the chapter program locally required a multi-tendency body spending a year on them.

While much of the content is inoffensive, par for the course for democratic socialists, and even widely popular, the discussions in #internal-forum alone reveal that there isn’t consensus around what kinds of demands to include, how many, their scope, and how to articulate them. The inclusion of “Abolish Carceral Systems in Their Entirety” and “Abolish MPD” have been easily the most discussed and is an example of both the lack of consensus and the uneven development of the demands in the document. More importantly, we should say what we actually mean. For example, both of our endorsed candidates in DC this past primary cycle ran on ending MPD collaboration with ICE, against the youth curfew, (free) universal childcare, funding more third spaces for youth, and deepening our investment in prevention and social programs over punishment — all demands that reduce engagement with and reliance on policing and prisons and bring us closer to our vision for a socialist society. They both won with the highest number of votes of any Democratic primary candidate in their respective races in history, set the tone for other candidates and races throughout the District, and will be able to push for them from a position of strength and with a mandate. That is much closer to what it would look like to create a program with a set of near- to medium- or long-term goals that bring us and the communities we organize in closer to our vision of the world we want to build together. It would make absolutely no sense for our candidates to make the deliberate choice to run on the same platform or set of policies, but instead use demonstrably unpopular language (e.g. “abolish/defund the police”) that will resonate with fewer voters and open themselves up to unnecessary attacks — and then either lose otherwise winnable races and achieve nothing, or perhaps still win but by a less commanding margin and with fewer candidates adopting the same positions or seeing those positions as defensible, making it less likely to achieve them once in office.

It would be one thing if this was going to be yet another document in the DSA universe with a list of demands that, if realized, would make for a better world. But this resolution would also ask prospective candidates to “accept,” “fight to implement,” and “promote” the chapter program (not just the demands), including on campaign materials. The same way it wouldn’t make any sense for our candidates to choose to run campaigns on unpopular language or policies, it wouldn’t make sense for candidates to answer yes to either of the proposed questions for the same reasons if the program itself could force them into the same situation. Moreover, it is plainly unrealistic that candidates would promote our chapter program rather than the campaign platform they create specifically for their race and in much more detail, because in most cases it would simply be a confusing and much less persuasive use of their time and resources to do so. I’ve served on the chapter’s Steering and Political Engagement committees for nearly two years now, and regularly engage with our candidates and elected officials… and we’re facing more scrutiny than we ever have before, so it behooves us to take this extremely seriously and make sure we’re not shooting chapter leaders and candidates in the foot. All this attention presents an immense opportunity to win more people over, making how we communicate about our positions and vision that much more important.

Every campaign is going to have a specific context and set of political dynamics, and not every candidate is going to be a longtime cadre member who shares 100% of our/these positions (I think we’d be hard pressed to find that even within DSA). A simple yes or no answer to a lengthy document with a long list of demands spanning many jurisdictions, levels of government, scope, and timeline is not going to cut it. The only honest answer would be no, or even to say yes, “in the sense that my campaign platform will align with this and advance many of these priorities,” not that they’re going to run on the chapter program rather than their campaign platform. If we want a clearer set of demands in the program, we should use the bullet points that are already there (!), or at least treat it with the seriousness it deserves and produce a stronger document that (most) members can agree on and be proud of. And if we want to incorporate it into the candidate questionnaire/endorsement process, we should instead build on our existing question(s) about candidates’ top platform planks/policy priorities and ask “how do they align with our program?” For example, in national endorsement applications for candidates, they ask for a brief summary of the platform, any particular issues of concern for the local chapter, and then “How is the platform aligned with DSA national’s positions and Workers Deserve More Platform?” For ballot initiatives, they ask “Does this advance one of DSA’s national priorities? If so, which and how?” This would allow candidates to speak to their actual campaign priorities and context, and also demonstrates alignment and commitment to advancing our goals. Should this pass, we should quickly revisit to address these issues.

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31

AGAINST-Ken B.

As a member of the 2025 Program commission, I share some of the same criticisms and concerns about our program as expressed by the authors of this resolution. While our current program has broad buy in and was adopted unanimously, it has some serious gaps and shortcomings. It expresses a coherent theory of change and I feel the electoral and tenant organizing sections are fairly strong, but most other aspects of the program are lacking and fail to seriously engage with the question of how the chapter should orient itself on their respective subject matters. Broadly, it is a laundry list of reportbacks from disparate working groups rather than a document putting forth a coherent positive political vision. As such, I can understand why these comrades sought to bring some sort of change to this document and make it one that can be used as a basis for guiding the chapter’s work and political orientation rather than a reflection of it.

Unfortunately, I do not feel that what they have brought to us truly addresses these concerns, but rather compounds them with additional burdens for the chapter to bear. The “demands” laid out by this resolution are jumbled, conflicting, and scattershot at best. Many of these topics are already covered by our existing questionnaire, others are politically quixotic and will alienate both voters and electeds, and some sections have glaring oversights, such as the omission of any mention of abortion or other reproductive care in the section titled “Fight for Reproductive Justice and Trans and Queer Liberation.”

I do not believe that expecting our endorsees to swear by a list of “demands” like this is a productive or comradely way to engage with potential DSA electeds. We already ask electeds about many topics in great detail in our questionnaire, and we give members the opportunity to pry further in candidate forums and other deliberation around our endorsements. I do not think this “door in the face” strategy of insisting on fealty to a list like this would add anything at all to our questionnaire, and would likely lead to even candidates who would be committed to our policies and proposals deciding that our organization is not worth their time. At a time when DSA nationally and our chapter in particular are making strides in building political power, it would be a grave mistake to chase away curious prospective endorsees who are considering aligning with our movement.

Aside from the general imprudence of swearing electeds to a list of demands like this, the demands surrounding “abolition” of the police and prison system are particularly thorny when it comes to getting elected officials and voters on board with our politics. While I hate police as much as the next communist, this is not rhetorical terrain we are currently in a position to push on. At best, we can expect our endorsees to artfully dodge the question, as Chris Rabb and Darializa Avila Chevalier have done when pressed on it. At worst, we can expect them to wholly distance from us and our positions, as Francesca Hong and others have done. Even National DSA Co-Chair Megan Romer has been unable to articulate what abolition truly means, and her caucus’ attempts to do so just call for police and prisons but by another name and with socialists in charge of them. If we cannot explain abolition even to ourselves, how can we explain it to voters or demand that endorsees stand by it?

I greatly appreciate comrades trying to bring politics into the foreground of our chapter discussions and to have our work more coherently oriented around political goals. However, this resolution does not accomplish that. It only gestures towards politics, or the idea of politics, while in reality marginalizing us from our working class base and taking a standoffish and belligerent attitude towards prospective endorsees. I would be happy to work with any of the proponents of this resolution to distill our program into a simpler set of demands that reflect broad buy in from the chapter, and while I encourage all chapter members to vote NO on this resolution, I also hope conversations around this will continue as we head to 2026 local convention.

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