Member Statements on PCR01: Make Labor a Chapter Priority Campaign for 2026
IN FAVOR by Chris A
To build socialism in the DMV, we must organize workers within their workplaces. Workers can effectively fight the capitalist class only when they are organized, educated, and prepared to engage in class struggle. I organize with the Labor Working Group because we are the leading formation within Metro DC DSA mobilizing in solidarity with workers fighting for better conditions within their workplaces, building worker militancy both within and outside of established unions, and supporting organizing projects at currently unorganized workplaces through our partnership with the DC Workplace Organizing Committee (DCWOC).
If you believe that we need to place and support salts to organize strategic workplaces (like Amazon) to take the fight to the capitalist class, if you believe that we should be supporting our fellow DSA members as they organize within their workplaces, and if you believe that we need to continue reaching out to workers across the DMV to build a powerful, organized, multiracial, multilingual working class movement, then I ask you to please vote to give the Labor Working Group (LWG) priority status for the upcoming year.
IN FAVOR by Shreya B
Organized labor is one of the most vital tools we have in the fight against the capitalist class. As socialists, we understand this: a militant labor movement can bring the bosses to their knees. The Labor Working Group’s primary aim is to agitate for a more militant and socialist labor movement.
Labor needs priority campaign status in order to continue its work in the new year. We are standing in solidarity with striking Starbucks baristas and with fired federal workers. We will continue to stand in solidarity with workers across the DMV in 2026 (and beyond!), in whatever form that may take. We have exhausted our priority campaign funds this year on solidarity efforts like delivering food to striking Starbucks workers; we hope that we will receive the funding to do similarly next year. We must build a mass movement of the labor rank-and-file–please help us in building that by voting for Labor as a 2026 Priority campaign.
IN FAVOR by Jonathan N
Over 90% of workers in America are unorganized - no union, subject to workplace subjugation by the bosses. Even though DC is somewhat better on this front (~11% of workers are unionized), we have a long way to go to advancing workplace democracy with our socialist unionism. As a beginner organizer with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, I have been trained from the ground up by Labor and EWOC colleagues to support workers’ campaigns and guide them on the organizing path to building real economic power. The DC local of EWOC and the Labor Working Group partnering to support the working class on the ground represents our best opportunity to turn the tide against the capitalist class and towards the people. As a united front of LWG and EWOC, priority campaign status will see hundreds of workers organized, dozens of unions made more democratic for the rank and file, and scores of bosses forced to reckon with our democratic movement. Support Labor as our priority campaign, and support the labor movement by organizing TODAY!
IN FAVOR by Alexa KP
Socialism is the party of and for the workers. This past year, we have seen oligarchs grow richer, hundreds of lay offs, community members kidnapped on their way to work, union busting, and further attacks on the working class. At the same, we have witnessed everyday people rise up against the bullies, the fascists, the oppressors. The Labor Working Group (LWG) members spend countless hours coordinating with workers to organize strikes, educating our community on rights of the workplace, providing salts to workplaces in order to build unions from the inside, and so much more. For example, the past few months, LWG has been spearheading major progress with the Starbucks Workers United to get baristas good faith bargaining. That is why I urge you to please vote for the LWG priority status for 2026. LWG needs all hands on deck to fight the class struggle, especially while the working class needs us most. Achieving priority status would provide the much needed tools and resources to support unions and union-seeking workers in solidarity as well as gain their trust and partnership with DSA.
IN FAVOR by John O
We need to build DSA into a true party of, by, and for workers and put the lie to the Democrats’ and Republicans’ ridiculous claims of being champions of the U.S. working class. To get us to that point, though, we need to prove to workers that we are resolutely with them in their workplace struggles. If we as socialists aren’t there when workers organize unions and enter into battle against their exploiters, we will not win workers over to socialism and be capable of making DSA more representative of this country’s multiracial, multilingual working class majority. If we fail at that fundamental task, then we will share in the blame for the phenomenon of millions of abused, ignored, and exasperated workers of all races and backgrounds gravitating toward a right that promises them redemption through aiming fire at fellow workers at home and abroad. As a practical matter, if we don’t sink deeper roots in the working class, we will have less power to exert pressure at the point of production, in the streets, and at the ballot box in service of workers and oppressed peoples the world over.
Simply put, there is no socialism without workers. Please vote to grant the Labor Working Group (LWG) priority status for 2026 so that our chapter can serve as a vehicle for workers to win the class struggle. As the current and incoming Organizing chair of the LWG, I will continue to make sure that we are initiating and supporting new workplace organizing drives through our DC Workplace Organizing Committee (DCWOC). We will also be launching our own local DMV version of DSA’s Workers Organizing Workers (WOW) program so that we can recruit, train, and place salts in strategic workplaces and industries throughout the area. Both of these projects are essential for bringing workers into DSA’s orbit but also for giving the labor movement a much-needed infusion of new blood as too many of our labor movement’s wounds are self-inflicted. As the LWG, we must help workers build militant, democratic, member-run, internationalist unions and organizations that fight not just for the immediate interests of their own members but for the interests of the whole working class - and for power. In the words of Karl Marx, who surely would have voted to prioritize Labor were he a Metro DC DSA member, “The political movement of the working class has as its object, of course, the conquest of political power for the working class, and for this it is naturally necessary that a previous organisation of the working class, itself arising from their economic struggles, should have been developed up to a certain point.”
IN FAVOR by Avram R
In 2025, labor has been massively under attack. In DC specifically, the federal government laid off thousands of workers including many working for the infrastructure that imperfectly works to protect workers’ limited unionization rights. Meanwhile the continued consolidation of wealth and corporate power, and the excuse of AI, has justified hundreds of thousands of layoffs in the private sector. 2026 will bring more of these attacks on labor.
Fundamentally, making Labor a chapter priority is about power - whatever our other goals, we cannot achieve them without collective power. While MDCDSA is one form of collective power, the organization cannot succeed without allied democratically-run organizations dedicated to working class power. There is a reason the saying goes, “There is Power in a union”. It is a means of building our own membership and building the wider coalition for a democratic socialist project.
Finally, as an organization dedicated to the kind of participatory democracy which we use in our business, and one that recognizes that labor is crucial in the fight against authoritarianism, it is crucial that MDCDSA continue to prioritize Labor as a chapter priority. As examples from Solidarity in Poland, to the UGTT in Tunisia, to more recent examples of unions in South Korea and Italy, labor has always played a crucial role in democratic struggle. Blocking encroaching authoritarianism and building towards a participatory democracy in the future depends on strong unions that are themselves run democratically.
IN FAVOR by Sam G
Comrades,
I would like to urge you to vote in favor of Labor as a priority campaign for 2026!
This year, I’ve been proud to serve as the Labor Working Group’s Solidarity Chair. We’ve built infrastructure to reliably turn out DSA members to picket lines, and I’ve also done my best to support workers who have run into the limits of stagnant labor leadership. Just three days ago, we distributed over 400lbs of food to striking Starbucks workers, and will continue to distribute food & turnout members to pickets in support of their strike!
As Education Chair next year, I seek to support our know-your-rights trainings led fabulously by our lawyer comrades, have more regular trainings for shop stewards on running shop floor democracy, and collaborate with other working groups on educational programming about the labor movement’s history.
Our task is to merge the labor and socialist movements together, but we must rebuild both. The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee is a crucial organization that’s supported workers organizing al across the country, and I’m proud that an EWOC local has been established this year. Additionally, DSA’s WOW program helps train salts and will be a crucial vehicle to engage our chapter members in bringing class struggle to the workplace.
Finally, DSA has a democratic structure that far too many unions lack. It is imperative that our Labor Working group becomes rooted in rank & file worker democracy, with greater representation of service workers and other sectors that are underrepresented in our chapters membership.
If you believe in building a worker-led DSA, support Labor as a 2026 Priority Campaign! Thank you for your support!
IN FAVOR by Joe R
I’m writing a member statement IN FAVOR of making Labor a priority campaign in 2026.
In late spring this year, I helped kickstart and form the organizing committee for the restaurant worker solidarity campaign that has turned out hundreds of people to dozens of pickets in support of workers at Starr restaurants seeking to unionize with UNITE HERE Local 25. For me, this was one of the most exciting developments in the chapter this year and provides a model we can replicate to stand in solidarity with workers organizing and striking around the DMV. We used our picketing operation to help drive turnout for the extremely successful May Day Rally, a DSA-led event with a class struggle message that was endorsed and supported by an unprecedented breadth and depth of unions in the area for our chapter. From Starbucks strike solidarity and the launch of the Amazon campaign, to organizing new workers through the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) and Workers Organizing Workers (WOW), chapter labor organizers have been developing and improving on a lot of fronts simultaneously at a critical juncture for the labor movement.
IN FAVOR by Zach T
Labor is at the heart of the socialist project. This past year we have supported workers and increased class solidarity in dozens of ways. At the heart of our work is Organization, Agitation, and Education. Voting to make Labor a priority campaign means making sure we are on the picket line supporting workers struggles, in the shop floors organizing workers into new unions, and in public spaces educating workers on their rights and how to fight back.
The project I am most excited about is our Amazon Solidarity Organizers who will be working next year to organize the 2nd largest corporation in the united states and build labor collations through the region. This is a decade long project but it needs to start yesterday and Socialist are the only group that can effectively get it (as we have seen in many other cities).
IN FAVOR by Paul C
Through this document I formally register my support for the above resolution.
MDC DSA should prioritize Labor for the following reasons:
Labor organizing prefigures a future socialist governmental structure through grassroots democratic groups
A union provides short- and medium-term benefits like higher pay and better conditions, but more importantly, it increases the sense of members of their ownership of the shop floor and the means of production
Per Jane MacAlevey in her book Raising Expectations and Raising Hell, union contract negotiation is one of the best ways to educate adults on class politics. I have found similar clarification on the picket line, seeing active pushback from bosses at STARR restaurants
Union Organizing often centers self-identified working-class and BIPOC populations who may not encounter formal socialism in their everyday lives, who are natural allies with socialist causes, who naturally understand class conflict, and who DSA has set priorities for outreach
There is high need; union density is low, and for any truly successful socialist movement, high density, especially among socialist-allied unions, will be extremely helpful, or perhaps compulsory for success
Impact of fights can be quite concrete and strong.
In conclusion, please pass PCR01!
IN FAVOR by Guido V
Comrades, I urge you to vote yes on making Labor a priority campaign in this coming year. Our labor organizers have done an incredible job of building and contributing to the labor movement of the DMV and the fight is ramping up. We face billions of dollars of opposition. Now is the time to invest our resources into the labor movement. Vote yes.
IN FAVOR by Emma D
I’m writing to encourage members to vote for the Labor Working Group as a 2026 priority campaign.
Working class organizations are the vehicles through which our class exercises its power and that unions in particular, with their strike power and ability to meet and politicize workers in their workplaces are especially important in the generational class struggle we’re engaged in.
Choosing the Labor Working Group as one of our 5 priority campaigns this year would mean dedicating our resources as a chapter to continue and expand the Labor Working Group’s vital organizing efforts.
As a priority campaign in years past, we have:
Asked hundreds of Starbucks customers to stand in solidarity by not crossing baristas’ picket lines and distributed hundreds of pounds of food to picket lines;
Organized a May Day rally that brought over a thousand people to pickets with workers fighting an egregious union busting campaign at Starr Restaurants and turned out DSA members to weekly pickets;
Deepened our chapter’s relationship with DMV local unions like Unite Here Local 25;
Supported new organizing through our partnership with the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee local here in DC;
And much more.
Our plans this year are only going to get more ambitious as we continue to organize the unorganized; continue our solidarity work to build labor’s power, bring workers into DSA, and deepen our chapter’s relationships with DMV unions; and support our members to organize within their unions for greater militancy and in support of our chapter’s other priorities, like supporting our endorsed candidates for office or fighting for an arms embargo.
Please vote YES to continuing to make labor a priority in our chapter.
IN FAVOR by Eduarda S
Metro DC DSA should reaffirm its commitment and strategic interest in organizing workers and advancing labor rights in the region. The Labor Working Group (LWG) does important solidarity work with our region’s unions, provides education on labor rights and history to workers, teaches people how to organize their workplace, and advocates for policies that improve the lives of workers. As a priority campaign, we will be able to print more organizing flyers to reach workers, support striking workers with solidarity funding, and host events that bring people out to learn more about DSA. We will stand side by side with unions and push them to become more socialist in their politics. We will stand side by side with not-yet-union workers who seek to change their conditions and help them get organized. And we will recruit workers into DSA so our movement is stronger every day. Make Labor a priority campaign for 2026!