NPC Slate

Priorities

DSA’s National Political Committee is the highest leadership body in the organization. Made up of 16 members plus representatives from the Young Democratic Socialists of America, it makes important policy and organizational decisions for DSA in between biennial national conventions.

For the 2019 DSA National Convention, Bread & Roses is proud to be running a five person slate for NPC including Marianela D’Aprile, Marsha Niemeijer, Megan Svoboda, Natalie Midiri, and Rachel Zibrat.

If elected to the NPC, Marianela, Marsha, Megan, Natalie, and Rachel will work to prioritize five areas of work.

1. Organize with the Rank-and-File

The greatest power we have as working people to end exploitation and oppression is the power we have in our workplaces to stop the flow of profits to the capitalist class. That power can only be unlocked, though, when we successfully organize with our coworkers.

DSA has a responsibility to help build a new militant, democratic, and left-wing labor movement that can truly unlock that power. The rank-and-file strategy is at the core of our vision for doing that. We need democratic socialists across the country to get union jobs and organize with their coworkers to transform their unions. And we need to improve our capacity as an organization to do strike solidarity work in our communities, assisting workers in struggle whenever they need it.

2. Build Bernie 2020 and Beyond

In 2020, we have a chance through the Bernie Sanders campaign to popularize a platform of demands that could materially change the lives of Americans and build working-class power. DSA must seize this opportunity by doing our best to help win the Democratic presidential primary for Bernie Sanders. Sanders is far and away our best hope to beat Donald Trump in November 2020. We must also use the campaign to organize alongside millions of new activists, build class consciousness on an unprecedented scale, and expand DSA.

By the end of the campaign, we must be prepared as an organization to channel this momentum into down-ballot electoral campaigns, workplace actions, and mass protests that push class struggle politics even further.

3. Fight Oppression

A socialist world cannot coexist with racial, national, gender, and other forms of oppression.

We believe that DSA must foreground demands that can help destroy these forms of oppression in all our campaign work. And as an organization we must be prepared in the next two years to mobilize on a national scale in coalitions to defend the right to abortion, to defeat police and gender violence, to end mass incarceration and the brutal immigration regime, and to stop US military interventions in Venezuela, Iran, and around the world.

4. Expand Mass Action Campaigns

We support propaganda and legislative campaigns for big demands that are popular with millions of working people and draw sharp lines between the interests of millionaires and billionaires and everyone else.

In 2019, we support renewing DSA’s Medicare for All campaign and launching a new fight for an anti-capitalist Green New Deal.

5. Strengthen DSA’s Political Education Projects

Every socialist knows at least ten people who are curious about class-struggle politics and how capitalism works. Political education is our best means to train ourselves to convince those people of the importance of building a movement that fights capitalism, white supremacy, imperialism, patriarchy, and climate catastrophe.

DSA must therefore beef up its political education program in the next two years, including applying more resources to political education courses and kicking our communications and media game to a new level.