The resolution language may be found here: Priority Campaigns Reform - Google Docs
IN FAVOR-Georgia H.
In the spirit of comradeship, I urge you to vote yes on the amendment to our priority campaigns process. The amended process is designed to help us build a more cohesive and focused way of working as a chapter, to bring together the knowledge, passion, and skills of our comrades across topic areas and geographic locations. This process will also encourage us to think critically about our strategic goals and which tactics are best suited to accomplish them.
The current system of elevating five working groups to priority status for a given year has shown itself to be a structure for generating conflict, territoriality, and atomization among our chapter formations. At a time when we have the attention of DC Council, the DC Mayor’s office, and increasing numbers of workers across our region, we need tools that will build our strategic thinking, our ability to collaborate, and our understanding of the interrelated nature of our struggles. We need fewer whip efforts against our own comrades, and more good-faith efforts to move together on our shared priorities.
The amended process requires a priority campaign to draw from a minimum of two formations, rather than elevating several single formations to priority status. This requirement encourages our topic-focused formations to communicate proactively with each other, identify areas of common interest, and work collaboratively to design and carry out a strategy. These are the types of steps that will help our formations learn from each other, build on each others’ strengths, and advance the common cause of socialism more broadly across the whole region.
At the same time, the amended process calls for funding in the annual chapter budget to support work more broadly across the chapter. While these creative, collaborative, multi-formation priority campaigns are funded with autonomous budgets, it is not a zero-sum situation for existing formations: the vision is for there to be available funding for formations to be able to continue to do other projects and campaigns with chapter support. In total, the amended structure is designed to support the ongoing work of our many formations and regions, while also actively encouraging us to engage each other as strategic partners and resources in our shared struggle. I ask you to add your vote for the bylaw amendment, for that vision of how we can work together to build the communities and the world we want to see.
OPPOSE-Paige D.
I oppose the Priority Campaigns Bylaw Amendment and strongly urge a “No” vote. This amendment is designed to foreclose the circumstances that led to Community Defense being elected as a priority campaign. In doing so, it hampers the speed and flexibility of the chapter to respond to crises as they happen. As it stands, there are many crises on the horizon that our working groups are not specifically formulated to address, like rising food prices or cancelled elections. It is imperative that we remain adaptable to whatever comes next despite not knowing what that may be. And even in the event that we have existing working groups that are nominally situated to address the current emergency, as was the case when Community Defense was created, the ability for a new working group to form with new focus, ideas and theory of change is crucial for finding the most effective response and formation.
If you are new to the chapter, Community Defense was formed quickly in response to the occupation and ICE surge that descended on the city. Had we been asked to come up with an application to make priority three months ahead of time, just at the onset of the occupation and when we were iterating patrols at a breakneck pace, before the working group was officially formed, the chapter never would have been able to vote in Community Defense as a priority campaign.
Additionally, I do not see how the new technical mandates provide the ground for greater collaboration or organization. For example, mandating that Campaign Committees be made up of members from two working groups, branches and/or permanent committees is almost impossible not to achieve, but nonetheless adds an extra administrative step.
The mandate for the Steering Committee to approve any additions to a Campaign Committee is an inappropriate overreach into working group autonomy. How much does the Steering Committee have perspective on the inner workings of a working group? Enough to overrule the members or committees who voted them in? Can anyone explain on what grounds the Steering Committee might disallow someone from leading a working group? If there is a serious concern about a working group leader, there is already a process for grievances that covers all members. Instead of expanding democratic measures, this amendment reduces them and centralizes power.
If we want to expand collaboration, it will take deeper work than scheduling more meetings. It’s not a matter of setting down rules, it’s a matter of leaders reaching out and having conversations with other leaders. And if Steering sees a breakdown between working groups they can employ the organizing skills we use every day in our work. This amendment does not achieve its stated intention as such, and I vote against its adoption.
OPPOSE-Nicole Z.
I plan to vote no on this bylaw amendment and urge other chapter members to do so.
I’ve been an active chapter leader since 2020 and over the years, I’ve seen chapter members repeatedly try to perfect our chapter structures in the hopes that this will somehow create stronger and more powerful campaigns. This bylaw amendment feels an example of that. To me, obsessing over bylaws and structures has always felt like a distraction from just going out and doing things and building power.
I’m sympathetic to the idea that priority campaigns should be focused around achieving a single, set goal, rather than simply funding on-going working group activities, but I don’t see this by-law amendment as leading to that. In 2023, I wrote a priority campaign proposal to pass rent stabilization in Montgomery County. Because there were only five spots and seven priority campaign applications, we ended up combining priority campaigns with the Social Housing Working Group, which at the time was focused on passing a piece of social housing legislation in DC led by Janeese Lewis George. We ended up splitting the priority campaign funds but did not coordinate much beyond that. We were working in different jurisdictions and had different, although complementary, goals. If we reduce the number of priority campaign from five to three, I worry that these kind of mishmashes of disparate campaigns in order to access funds will continue.
I also find the requirement to have participation from different formations of the chapter kind of baffling. Being an active participant in a certain formation of the chapter is not a set identity. If folks in the chapter want to work on something together, they are welcome to collaborate, start a new working group and even propose a priority campaign. If anything, this by law amendment prevents that from happening.
Please vote no on the amendment.
IN FAVOR-Nell G.
I support the priority campaign reform bylaw amendment because it will help cohere our chapter to work more collaboratively towards shared goals. By requiring multiple formations to collaborate, we will be able to carry out our chapter program more wholistically. Meanwhile, we will reorient our operating budget so that all WGs have access to more resources and the priority status is less about special access to money, and more about collaboration. As a co-sponsor, I can attest we had a good process developing this proposal with input from multiple formations and I believe it reflects a shared vision, while remaining open to change in the future.
IN FAVOR-Giancarlo V.
There are so many things that our chapter can achieve beyond just winning elections. But in order to win those things, and keep building our skills and base when we’re not trying to get somebody elected, we need to build what elections require of us: campaigns. With this bylaw amendment, the chapter will be able to more meaningfully exercise our democratic muscles, more clearly debating which goals we want to put our resources and time towards achieving. Having to assess campaigns’ theories of change, power analyses, and strategies will sharpen all of us, and ensure that we’re still growing our base and increasing the skills of our active membership even when we don’t have the focal points of electoral campaigns to work around.
OPPOSE-Evan S.
Anyone who organizes or wants to organize with DSA should be strongly opposed to this bylaw amendment. This amendment will not produce more organizing, collaboration, or transparency. To be clear, the resolution does not even provide a rationale or any analysis of why this amendment is necessary or why it would work. Rather, this would draw out the priority campaign process, require obligatory meetings, create a byzantine bureaucratic structure, and necessitate more paperwork for organizers. In other words, organizers and Priority Campaigns would be burdened by work about work.
So then, what does this amendment seek to accomplish? First, it would restrict the number of priority campaigns from five to three and give preferential access to all DSA resources to those three campaigns. Instead of broadening our organizing or responding to issues as they rise and fall in importance and prominence, this would restrict the chapter’s organizing presence in the many different fights against fascism that we face. What will happen to campaigns that do not achieve priority campaign status? What does this say about how our chapter views the increasing number of fights and struggles that it excludes from organizing resources? Rather than working together, this amendment incentivizes us to fight against each other for fewer priority campaign designations.
Second, this amendment would arbitrarily force working groups to join together to apply for priority status for no other reason than the idea that groups are not already collaborating when organizing. While this belief is not only false, it also disorganizes working groups that have specific purposes and organize in different settings. Working Groups and Priority Campaigns are currently free to collaborate as they see fit, and do so all the time. Working groups that closely align have already joined together under a single group, as did BAWG. Rather than freely collaborate on an action, training, or canvas, groups would be tied together under a new layer of management just to access priority funds, to say nothing of Steering’s control over which individuals can be included on a Campaign Committee.
Third, this bylaw amendment will inevitably lead to more time spent satisfying the additional paperwork and processes this amendment demands, eating into the limited time that organizers have. Even now, almost no one reads the campaign reports we are required to write. Who will actually read these new forms and applications? To imagine that changing the paperwork and elongating the application process for priority status will make our chapter’s organizing more effective or wider reaching makes no sense. We need to be organizers, not management consultants.
Over the years, many resolutions have sought to dictate how working groups function in the hopes of fulfilling an unclear and unarticulated vision of organizing the working class. These resolutions inevitably fail to support DSA’s organizing because you cannot replace the hard and difficult work of organizing with endless internal DSA politicking. This is not the first and will not be the last attempt to create additional barriers to organizing in the name of promoting organizing. This amendment does not make organizing easier, more accessible, or strategic. This resolution is nothing more than armchair socialism and to expect this to help, rather than hurt, is magical thinking. I urge you to vote no on this bylaw amendment.
IN FAVOR-Far
I am writing to highly encourage people to vote in favor of BA1, the Resolution to Amend Priority Campaigns Bylaw. It presents a thoughtful vision to adjust our current process and would allow our organizing to put its best foot forward in this time of growth. I have been serving as the Campaigns Council Chair this year, and for a good part of last year, and doing so has given me a view into all of the excellent work happening throughout the chapter in the working groups. There is excellent work happening inside and outside of “priority campaigns”. Currently there is a lot of murkiness in how our chapter defines a “working group” as compared to a “campaign”. What this murkiness results in is that currently our priority campaigns process is used more for the promotion of individual working groups and their ongoing work, and often not towards achieving tangible goals within reasonable timeframes which is what underpins the concept of a “campaign”. Furthermore the rudimentary budgeting requirements for priority campaign proposals currently does not encourage the allocation of our budget most strategically.
This change to our current procedure solves a number of things and also helps us move towards a better way to categorize and support all of the work we do. Under this new system a “Priority Campaign” would be required to interface with more than one formation or working group, which encourages our priority work to represent a wider section of our chapter and encourages more from people across the chapter to plug into our priorities. It also has more thorough proposal formation and budgeting requirements which encourages more deliberate campaigns. There are people who see the reduction of priority campaigns from 5 to 3 to be a narrowing of the scope of our chapter. I disagree, because the reforms in this amendment tangibly accomplish the opposite. They widen the collective universe of our work and our imaginations on how we can support it.
First, the reforms presented in this bylaw amendment, explicitly ask our priority campaigns to have a broader scope, and to ask us to view the work we do through an intersectional lens. This asks us to clarify and better articulate our priorities as a chapter. Another thing that people often pre-suppose is that the only way for working groups within our chapter to thrive is through becoming priority campaigns. On the contrary, by better clarifying the concept of a “Priority Campaign”, we are able to better understand collectively that working groups can continue to exist and come into existence as the conditions of the world make them necessary. Working groups will always be able to inform a priority campaign application, when the nature of their work presents an opportunity for a discrete campaign to achieve a specific goal in the world.
Further, having fewer, more thoughtful priority campaigns with more explicit budgeting expectations, will mean that our resources are better allocated. This will then allow working groups’ continuing work to be supported through the collective resources of our chapter. This will ask us to grow the capacity of our democratic decision making to support and fund all new and emerging work in the working groups outside of the priority campaign system. We will have to treat our chapter’s resources more collectively. It is ultimately all of our collective responsibility to participate in the political life of our organization and effectively shepherd our chapter’s resources, and this reform will better cultivate that.
So I would again wholeheartedly encourage people to please vote IN FAVOR of BA1, the Resolution to Amend Priority Campaigns Bylaw, this reform will allow us to step forward as a chapter with more confidence, and clearer purpose.
OPPOSE-Doug T.
This amendment is seeking to solve organizing problems through bylaw tinkering. But bylaws don’t solve organizing problems.
Ever since I’ve joined MDC-DSA in 2017 there’s been a tendency in our chapter towards what I call “org chart” socialism. It’s the idealistic and well meaning idea that reorganizing our chapter’s structures and procedures will help fix our organizing problems. I’ve seen countless different proposals pass, get implemented, and then fail to really change anything. Well, other than burden members with additional reporting and meeting requirements of marginal utility. Doubt this? Well when’s the last time you personally read the midyear reports of every chapter formation?
I’m also saying this as the former co-chair of the chapter’s internal organizing committee, the predecessor body to the campaigns council. The campaigns council was established to “fix” the problems of the internal organizing committee. I’m sad to report it hasn’t. And now we’re attempting to “fix” the supposed problems of the priority campaigns process.
If there’s a desire to make campaigns work in closer coordination on long term projects, that will require actual organizing. Demanding the creation of cross chapter committees will not help generate smart and effective long term cross-chapter campaigns. More importantly, it won’t motivate organizers to push these bold ideas into action, which is always the real challenge.
I think the goals of this bylaw amendment are desirable, but its approach is falling into the trap of “org chart” socialism. Better committees won’t create better campaigns.The org chart isn’t holding us back. The beauty of MDC-DSA is you don’t need permission to bring an idea into practice. The only barrier between you and your dream priority campaign is convincing other members to start the work with you! That’s easier said than done, but bylaws are not the reason it’s hard to do.
The most significant material effect of this bylaw amendment will be reducing the number of priority campaigns from 5 to 3.
Other than creating more bureaucracy of questionable utility, the real impact of this bylaw will be reducing the number of priority campaigns from 5 to 3. I understand this was done to encourage campaigns to join together in their applications. But I think trying to shoehorn joint campaigns together for the sake of having joint campaigns is not a wise idea, especially if it comes at the cost of a worthwhile campaign who has a focused idea that maybe isn’t easily connected to other chapter work. Or maybe it does, but the natural partner chapter formation is preferring to join with another priority campaign. I think it would be a real loss for our organization if an otherwise good campaign lost out on the benefits of being a priority campaign only because of unnecessary scarcity being created by this amendment.
The amended bylaw now has a broken clause which imposes impossible conditions on priority campaigns.
The recently passed amendment which restored one year terms for priority campaigns was a good fix, but unfortunately it left a gap in the underlying bylaw amendment.
According to the now amended bylaw amendment, priority campaigns must fulfill a number of reporting responsibilities in order to receive funds, including:
“Presentation at local convention during the priority campaign’s mid-term updating the campaign’s timeline and budget”
How are one year priority campaigns supposed to present at local conventions mid-term? Conventions are annually held in December. Are there plans for a local convention in the summer now?? To fix this will now require a follow up bylaw amendment.
Please vote no on this bylaw amendment. Its text is broken. It won’t address the problems it’s seeking to solve. In reality, it will only create new ones.
IN FAVOR-Rakshith R.
This bylaw amendment advances 2 things:
- expands democratic control over priority campaigns by submitting it to suspension by majority vote and maintaining the 1 year timeline
- it requires multiple chapter formations, at least 2, to be behind a priority campaign
Our local chapter has faced the criticism of being a number of “autonomous working groups” in a trench coat, all doing their own thing, and being susceptible to the influence of outside organizations, who wish to take advantage of the potentially free labor we perform.
The core problem here is a loss of sovereignty of our chapter over our work, and we often tail the behavior of other apparatuses. We take an advance towards self-sovereignty here through pushing chapter formations to *work together*, and through strict democratic governance over the proposal and finishing of a priority campaign.
While this amendment is a step forward, there are also some half steps backwards. Half steps that should be named:
The chapter program, democratically debated and defined at mass meetings, should be used to govern out strategy and work. Instead, this bylaw amendment reverses the direction, with the priority campaign leading to modification of the program and to SIO positions.
1 Like
IN FAVOR-Alex Y.
This proposal will reform our priority campaign system in a way that will improve how we select and operate them compared to how we currently do it. Unlike most other chapters, we currently tie our priority campaigns directly to our chapter’s working groups, essentially making the working groups themselves the priorities rather than the actual campaigns they are supporting. We have also seen in recent years how competitive it has been for working groups to claim priority campaign status. This fixes that issue by promoting more collaboration between working groups and provides more resources for working groups not directly working on a priority campaign so they can continue to effectively operate regardless of having that status.
OPPOSE-Patrick H.
In my opinion the proposed amendment to the Priority Campaigns Bylaws is an overall net negative for our organization. I urge members to vote NO on the proposed amendment. The American People are being attacked on all sides in a non-stop barrage from the federal government. Narrowing our focus to only 3 campaigns will negatively impact our ability to fight fascism. Our opponents’ priorities are wide-ranging, therefore our counter-action needs to be as well. Limiting our priorities to only 3 campaigns will remove resources that are integral to our struggle, and will, ultimately, cede ground to our ideological foes. We have had some amazing victories in the last year, electorally, legislatively, and beyond. We are building on local and national momentum, membership is growing by the week and limiting ourselves now is not the way to continue to grow. Again, I urge members to vote NO on this proposed amendment.
OPPOSE-Chad O.
I oppose the Priority Campaigns Bylaw Amendment currently under review by the chapter. I believe that the Amendment serves only to introduce additional procedural and structural changes rather than building the organizational and leadership capacity that will strengthen the work of the chapter. I also believe that these changes will add to the administrative burden and barriers that organizers in the chapter undertake, further leading to burnout and disengagement.
Over the last nine years of my engagement in this chapter, I have seen its members attempt to improve the operations of the chapter by imposing process and structure, to no end. I’ve been a lead organizer of the Migrant Justice Working Group, an organizer with Stomp Out Slumlords, a member of Ad-com, an elected co-chair of the now-defunct Internal Organizing Committee (which made me one of the first Campaigns Council leads), and one of the creators and facilitators of the first chapter organizer training. And I have been to countless GBMs, local conventions, national conventions, and regional forums. This has exposed me to numerous bylaw, resolution, and procedural discussions and debates brought to the membership that demand more and more from an already small and over-extended group of organizers. These discussions mistake organizing/leadership issues with procedural/structural ones.
The Amendment fails to provide any theory of change of how the proposed changes will lead to the desired outcomes. The Amendment proposes new and updated paperwork for working groups to file, additional meetings to attend, an increase in oversight by the Campaign Coordinator and Campaign Committee, and forced coalition building (although having members from other working groups attend your meetings hardly makes a coalition), with the intent of creating a more coherent chapter strategy, fostering working group collaboration, curbing rogue working groups, and reducing working group autonomy. However, there is no clarity on how the proposed changes will lead to these outcomes. Will more meetings inherently lead working groups to play nicely? Will additional reports foster working group coordination? Will working group dependency lead to better chapter strategy? More likely, these additional burdens on working groups will bury their work in ineffective process.
This chapter has tried to legislate collaboration and working group viability through the Internal Organizing Committee, the many iterations of the Campaigns Council, by increasing the “minimum requirements” of priority campaigns, tinkering with the budget (2022-CONV-BA1.A4 & 2024CON-CR1-A1), and developing a chapter program. All of these have amounted to a list of actions, but no desired outcomes. There is never an analysis of how these actions will lead to the desired outcomes of equal resources among working groups and genuinely improve our chapter. At least the original bylaw amendment pointed to other chapters’ success with priority campaigns. Without a realistic strategy, we will face yet another effort to level the playing field through bylaw changes and resolutions.
Rather than creating change in the chapter’s strategy, the Amendment will put even more pressure and workload on an already overworked group of people. The life of a steering committee member, working group organizer, and committee organizer is a life of being told that what you are doing is never enough. You are constantly being peppered with “You should be doing’s” with no commitment to providing material support to those demands. This has to stop.
We worry about burnout and how it leads to organizers abandoning the work. We preach self-care. We expect the work to be sustained for long periods of time, but we constantly ask for more and more of organizers. I have shouted this from the rooftops for 9 years, and I will continue to do so: This is a volunteer-led organization!!! We do not get paid. We dedicate our time and labor to this work because we believe in it. Forcing bylaws and resolutions on people will not motivate them to change course. What will motivate them is organizing. Not “organizing” in a way that lacks any tactical clarity. But organizing in a way that leads people in a particular direction based on inspiration, understanding, and relationship building.
Leadership is not realized through the things we write and say, but in the things that we do. It’s spending less time in endless meetings on Zoom or at the local library. It’s closing those spreadsheets and documents containing the next bylaw or resolution you want to bring to the floor. Instead, dedicate yourself to actually talking to people. You want to have a GBM where Priority Campaigns discuss their work? Awesome. Set it up. I’m sure the WG leaders would be more than happy to be there. You got an idea you want to collaborate on? Go for it. Come to a meeting and pitch it and see if other people are excited about it and want to help. Invite your comrades to have a cup of coffee and really listen to where they’re coming from and provide them with the opportunity to be inspired by your ideas. It will be hard. People will disagree, and people will argue. And we will fail over and over again. But it’s a lot more productive than passing bylaw after bylaw, hoping for different results.
IN FAVOR-Andie V.
Comrades,
The resolution before us I think is once of the most important pieces of internal legislation that we have yet deliberated on. This past year has been a historic one for our chapter. Our organizers helped members of MDC DSA win Democratic primaries for DC Mayor and Ward 1 Councilmember. When Janeese Lewis George and Aparna Raj assume office in January, our chapter will have 6 Socialists in Office across the DMV. This is a major accomplishment and it necessitates for a paradigm shift within our chapter.
It has been proven that the working people concur with our analysis of the current conditions and agree with our theory of change. Now it’s upon us to present them a DSA theory of governance and in my opinion passing this new Priority Campaigns Resolution is the first crucial step towards that.
The amendment proposed by comrades Paige E., Sam D., Geo H. and others makes our priority campaigns more mature and structured. It necessitates critical analysis of our resources and compels us to have more serious commitments to delivering real material gains to the people of the DMV. This new language of the bylaw will make us think of ourselves as governing partners to our SIOs.
Our SIOs will face major challenges in fighting for our values on our behalf. We cannot be caught distracted on the sidelines. We have won a historic chance for our region; we must act accordingly. Regardless of what we collectively decide the priority campaigns to be: taxing the rich, reinstating TOPA, fighting for childcare, mass tenant organizing, mutual aid distributions, or else we must be ready to commit resources, time, and volunteers just as we have this past year for Janeese, Aparna, Gabe, Josie, Imara, Shayla, Raaheela, and Zola.
Moreover, election cycles come and go but to maintain our connection to the working people and to actually achieve our “Workers Deserve Better” program we have to be running effective campaigns all the time. We have shown the “DSA difference” when it comes to electoral work, now let’s make sure all our campaigns have the same level of organization, coordination, energy, and strategy.
In his seminal article "Learning to Love the Machine: Some Assembly Required our comrade Patrick Dalton wrote in the Washington Socialist, “We need an organization that can build a sense of loyalty with their base through protecting and promoting its interests.” One of the main ways it can be done is as he says by showing that we are out there “fighting for our base outside of election season.” So let’s take the next step in the journey of this Big Red Machine.
Thank you for your time comrades.
IN FAVOR-Zach T.
Good bylaw change! Highly encourage people to vote yes! Sorry not much more to add, read the “Where As” of the doc it lays it out pretty well!
IN FAVOR-Sam D.
Comrades, we have not changed our priority campaign process or design in years and it is now lamentably out of touch with the state and capacity of our growing chapter. Now, more than ever, we need to be identifying concrete campaigns that will help us build socialism in the region and to help our membership connect across political issues. This bylaw amendment provides new resources for chapter formations to develop campaigns and clarifies expectations around reporting and chapter financing. In addition, this amendment requires that campaigns be the product of collaboration between two or more collaboration—this means that instead of elevating working groups as before, we will be advancing a collective project that members across the chapter want to accomplish in the next year. Building the capacity to do this is necessary for us to fight for our chapter program, so please, support this priority campaign reform.