We in DSA’s Bread & Roses caucus are excited to share three resolutions we drafted collectively for the 2019 DSA National Convention, one on labor organizing and the DSLC, one on class-struggle election campaigns, and one on investing greater resources in political education. Bread & Roses is also proud to endorse the Ecosocialist Working Group’s Green New Deal Resolution.
These three resolutions and our support of the GND resolution are based on our analysis of DSA’s immediate tasks for the next one to two years.
We’re asking for DSA members’ feedback and support, especially if you’re going to be a delegate to the convention. Please sign on!
We’re also proud to share an amendment to strengthen DSA’s dues sharing program that supports small and new chapter.
While these are the proposals we have decided to collectively endorse so far, we may endorse additional resolutions in the weeks to come, including resolutions that were written by caucus members but did not undergo the collective drafting and approval process that the three above did, and resolutions written by members outside of our caucus.
Resolution #31: Class-Struggle Elections
Since Trump’s election, Bernie Sanders’s popularity has only risen. We have also seen a small but significant shift in favor of down-ballot class-struggle electoral candidates like Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Julia Salazar, Jovanka Beckles, and the Chicago City Council slate.
Just as with the strike wave, we see this as a very promising development. But again, to build the movement we need, we need to grow our capacity exponentially. That’s why we’re proposing a clear set of criteria for national DSA endorsement as well as a candidate pipeline program to help DSA develop strong class-struggle candidates. We see class-struggle candidates as those who “use elections, public offices, and legislation as vehicles to encourage working-class organization, promote progressive legislation, and build support for democratic socialist ideas.” The resolution also orients DSA’s work in the Bernie Sanders campaign towards building independent working-class power.
Resolution #32: Labor Strategy and the DSLC
In the past two years we have seen a major upswing in labor militancy across the country. In many cases, DSA members played leading roles in organizing strikes and other collective action. But to truly build a strong working-class movement, workers will have to take on the boss on a greater scale than ever before.
Our resolution on labor organizing and the DSLC will build DSA’s capacity to identify, train, and connect worker-leaders who are already DSA members. It will make supporting DSA members who want to find rank-and-file union jobs a top priority, so that they can help transform unions into militant, left-wing, and democratic organizations.
Resolution #33: Invest in Political Education
We should all be proud of DSA’s enormous growth and its outsized impact over the last few years. To build a durable movement, we need to improve our collective ability to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of our movement and capitalist class rule. We also need to better understand the history of and debates within the socialist movement.
That is why we are proposing a resolution to consolidate and develop political education materials and to make them more easily accessible to chapters. By taking what materials they find useful, and modifying them as they wish, chapters can avoid spending time reinventing the wheel. This will both make political education more accessible to more members, and free up time at the chapter level for other organizing tasks.
Resolution #34: Ecosocialist Green New Deal Priority
A radical transition is needed towards a completely decarbonized economy in the next 12 years in order to save our planet. No challenge is of greater urgency both to humanity as a whole and to the socialist project. It is of the utmost important that DSA participate in the fight to build an ecologically sustainable society.
A Green New Deal is our best hope to prevent a climate catastrophe. We recognize however that building this new society will require a massive fight against the fossil fuel industry and members of the capitalist class who profit from our current carbon-powered economy. We strongly support the Green New Deal priority campaign being proposed by DSA’s Ecosocialist Working Group and coauthored by members across DSA’s tendencies, including members of DSA’s Bread & Roses caucus. This campaign proposes a vigorous fight on the scale of DSA’s other major priority campaigns to popularize and win a robust, anti-capitalist version of the Green New Deal.
Amendment to Resolution #55: Grassroots Fundraising and Small Chapter Growth
Resolution #55 is a strong proposal to support DSA’s small and new chapters. It increases national DSA’s support to these chapters through DSA’s dues sharing program. We believe it is superior to proposed alternatives.
We and members of the Socialist Majority Caucus who coauthored this amendment with us believe that Resolution #55 can be strengthened by making allowances for chapters that do not have bank accounts. Our amendment would instruct the national organization to give chapters that do not have bank accounts their dues share through other means, potentially including prepaid debit cards, credit towards purchasing DSA supplies, and/or fiscal cosponsorships by other DSA chapters.