Sacramento DSA condemns Donald Trump’s threats against Iran, including his April 7th statement on Truth Social that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” We also fiercely condemn Israel breaking another ceasefire by continuing its bombardment of southern Lebanon.

Imperialist war only serves capitalists and billionaires, not working people. As socialists we stand in solidarity with the people of Iran and condemn the senseless strikes which have led to the deaths of over 2,000 Iranians. We also extend our solidarity to the people of Lebanon, as Israel bombs infrastructure, displaces more than a million civilians, and attempts to occupy land south of the Litani River.

Trump’s escalating threats to wipe Iranian civilization off the face of the Earth are despicable and dangerous. While this is an escalation of rhetoric, it is also simply a more blatant demonstration of the warmongering which has been moved through implication, propaganda, and political and economic pressure by every administration over our entire nation’s history. As such, we must be aware of the ways reality is invented for us through the use of well timed propaganda and the mainstream media’s delegitimization of targets of the US empire.

No conflict can be viewed in a vacuum when the influence and weight of capitalism is ever looming, twisting the narratives and undermining legitimate resistance movements. The capitalist class always moves with an eye on increased profits, decreased input costs, and demonization of workers and grassroots movements working for the rights of people everywhere.

To oppose the imperialism of the capitalists and the billionaires, we must work together. One step you can take to fight back against the capitalist interests pushing us into this unjust war is to commit to boycotting Chevron. Chevron is one of the largest suppliers of natural gas to Israel, even as they bomb homes and schools in Gaza and Lebanon. This imperialist war with Iran has, perversely, destabilized Chevron’s activities in Israel, opening a window for organizers to push for a permanent end to their investment in genocide. Join the Sacramento DSA International Committee’s Boycott Chevron campaign to demand Chevron stop fueling genocide and to begin to build the foundation for international working class solidarity from Palestine to Iran and beyond.

We have a world to win. Let’s get to work!

• Steering Committee of Sacramento DSA

The fundamental case for corporate accountability rests on the principle that significant power—whether political or economic—must be subject to ethical scrutiny. In a globalized economy, the actions of large-scale enterprises have profound consequences for the communities and environments in which they operate. Consider the devastating impact that corporations like Union Carbide, Nestlé, Monsanto, and Halliburton have had on the environment and human lives.¹ When a corporation’s pursuit of profit intersects with regions marked by conflict, repressive governance, economic injustice, or social inequality, the company ceases to be a neutral bystander and instead becomes an active participant in the local landscape. If an organization benefits from or reinforces systems that result in human suffering or environmental harm, it incurs a moral responsibility that transcends simple legal compliance. Therefore, corporate accountability is not merely a regulatory preference but a necessary safeguard to ensure that private interests do not supersede human rights and dignity. In the absence of a unified global authority to govern these interactions, public awareness and ethical pressure serve as essential tools for aligning corporate behavior with the broader interests of humanity.

One of the most troubling, contemporary, examples of a lack of corporate accountability involves the Chevron Corporation. While its economic power and technological capacity are often framed as engines of development, Chevron’s operations in Israel and Venezuela reveal a more troubling dimension of corporate involvement in human rights abuses. In both cases, Chevron’s activities raise serious concerns regarding complicity, accountability, and the exploitation of people in politically volatile environments by non-state actors.

In Israel, Chevron’s involvement in the Tamar and Leviathan offshore natural gas fields has positioned the company as a critical contributor to the country’s energy infrastructure.² These gas fields supply a substantial portion of Israel’s electricity, thereby reinforcing the operational capacity of the Israeli state. While energy development is frequently presented as politically neutral, such claims become untenable when corporate profits are closely intertwined with prolonged military occupation and structural inequality. Revenues generated from Chevron-operated gas fields flow directly into the Israeli economy and, by extension, support state institutions that administer and enforce policies in the occupied Palestinian territories. As a result, Chevron’s presence cannot be separated from the broader political context in which systematic restrictions on Palestinian movement, economic activity, and self-determination persist.

Furthermore, Chevron’s stake in regional energy infrastructure, including gas pipelines operating in the eastern Mediterranean, intersects with security policies that have restricted Gazan’s maritime access. According to Investor Advocates for Social Justice:

• “The Company holds a partial stake in the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline, which transports gas from Israel to Egypt along the coast of the Gaza Strip. Under international law, including the Hague Regulations and Geneva Conventions, economic activity in occupied territory without the agreement of the affected population is considered unlawful and may constitute “pillage,” a war crime. The pipeline is also closely linked to Israel’s longstanding naval blockade of Gaza, which restricts Palestinian maritime access and has had a devastating impact on the region’s economy since 2009.”³

Although Chevron does not directly administer these policies, its operations benefit from and reinforce a system sustained through coercive state power. In this respect, Chevron exemplifies how corporations become embedded within structures of control and repression while maintaining formal distance from their consequences.

Chevron’s role in Venezuela also raises concerns about corporate ethics and humanitarian responsibility. The oil giant continues to operate in Venezuela even as the United States government has sanctioned the Caribbean nation’s economy. According to a report last year by EuroNews,

• “Chevron’s operations are structured so that cash flows and profits do not directly benefit PDVSA (Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company) or the Venezuelan state under current sanctions licences….The Venezuelan government does not receive fresh revenue from these operations — no dividends, no budget income, no direct cash transfers….US officials argue that Chevron’s continued presence actually strengthens sanctions enforcement rather than undermining it.”⁴

Basically, Chevron functions as the sanctions arm of the US government by not having to pay taxes or royalties to the Venezuelan government. Add in that Venezuela must sell its oil abroad for debt relief and it becomes clear that the country and its people are being exploited by state and non-state actors.⁵

This means that Chevron’s ongoing oil production in Venezuela has not translated into meaningful improvements in living conditions for Venezuelans experiencing shortages of food, medicine, and basic services due to U.S. sanctions. As two economists at the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted:

• “It is important to emphasize that nearly all of the foreign exchange that is needed to import medicine, food, medical equipment, spare parts and equipment needed for electricity generation, water systems, or transportation, is received by the Venezuelan economy through the government’s revenue from the export of oil. Thus, any sanctions that reduce export earnings, and therefore government revenue, thereby reduce the imports of these essential and, in many cases, life-saving goods.”⁶

Chevron has also faced numerous allegations of failing to comply with mandated cleanups, leading everyday, working-class people to bear the social and economic costs.⁷ Their privileged status highlights a recurring pattern in global energy politics: corporations maintain access to strategic resources while civilian populations suffer.

With the Trump administration’s recent coup against Venezuela’s government, Chevron stands first in line to profit from Trump’s oil grab as the only U.S. company currently operating in Venezuela.⁸ This has ramifications for Americans as well. If Venezuelan oil production is increased, it is likely that more Venezuelan heavy crude oil would be imported by U.S. Gulf Coast refineries, largely located where Black, Latino, Indigenous, and low-income communities are already exposed to fossil fuel pollution.^9,10

Boycotting Chevron should therefore be understood not as an isolated consumer choice, but as part of a broader effort to impose ethical constraints on corporate behavior within the international system. Historically, boycotts have functioned as tools to expose moral contradictions, mobilize public awareness, and pressure powerful institutions resistant to reform. Consider the progressive, humanitarian, impacts of the Montgomery bus boycott or international divestment from South Africa’s apartheid regime.¹¹ In the absence of effective international regulation of corporations, public accountability becomes one of the few remaining mechanisms for challenging corporate complicity in systemic injustice.

Ultimately, Chevron’s involvement in Israel and Venezuela illustrates a wider failure to reconcile profit-driven enterprise with ethical responsibility. A boycott, while limited in scope, signals a refusal to normalize corporate practices that benefit from occupation, repression, inequality, and human suffering. In doing so, it affirms the principle that economic—like political—power, must be subject to moral scrutiny.

Footnotes:

1. CorpWatch: The 14 Worst Corporate Evildoers

2. AFSC: Chevron Fuels Israeli Apartheid and War Crimes Additionally

3. Investor Advocates for Social Justice: Proposed Human Rights Policy Implementation

4. EuroNews: Why Chevron still operates in Venezuela despite US sanctions

5. Venezuelanalysis: Chevron Back in Venezuela, A Tale of US Imperialist Arrogance

6. CEPR: Economics Sanctions as Collective Punishment: The Case of Venezuela

7. AmazonWatch: Chevron’s Global Record of Denial and Destruction

8. USPCR: From Palestine to Venezuela, Chevron Profits From U.S. Imperialism

9. S&P Global: US Gulf Coast refiners seen benefiting from increased use of heavy Venezuelan crude

10. PBS/NPR: Oil refineries release lots of water pollution near communities of color, data show

11. Ethical Consumer: History of Successful Boycotts

(DSA members march for Medicare for All outside the capitol at the Cesar Chavez Day March)

Health care is a human right. Gallup polls show that Americans support comprehensive reform to the US health care system, yet little has changed in recent years to adequately address the significant flaws that create confusion, unnecessary costs, and inadequate care. Bernie Sanders brought the idea of Medicare for All to the national stage during his presidential campaigns: a single-payer health care system that would deliver consistent care to all Americans. As we look at our national politics today, achieving this goal feels like a distant dream.

As we navigate a second Trump presidency, many leftists have encouraged folks to turn towards their local politics, working to enact change in our communities. As the capital of California, Sacramento offers the opportunity to engage with both city and statewide movements. National Nurses United—the country’s largest union of registered nurses—has been working for years to push forward the movement for universal health care. They have worked on a variety of campaigns to champion this cause, including the national Medicare for All campaign. But did you know there has also been action towards establishing CalCare, a push to guarantee universal health care for all Californians?

In February 2024, California Assemblymember Ash Kalra introduced Assembly Bill (AB) 2200, the California Guaranteed Health Care for All Act. National Nurses United states that AB 2200 “would enact a comprehensive framework of governance, benefits, program standards, and health care cost controls for a single-payer health care coverage system in California.”.

Studies show that a single-payer system would reduce overall health care costs, as spending tied to upholding the administrative complexity of our current system would be drastically decreased when you consider that health insurance administrative costs are often tied to finding reasons to reject care to maximize profits. This bill envisions a California where everyone is guaranteed comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and mental health care regardless of income or employment status.

While universal health care in the US may feel distant, the infrastructure that is needed to create these systems has already been thought through. As we continue to feel abandoned by centrist Democrats with empty promises, motivated by donor dollars rather than their constituents, now is the time to envision the society we want to live in. We know that health care reform is an issue that people are passionate about; one that expands beyond political divides. A compassionate government program like universal health care is possible as long as we keep the conversation going. Check out National Nurses United to learn more about both CalCare and Medicare for All legislation, join Sacramento DSA and our Healthcare Committee, call on your elected officials to keep pushing for reform in our health care system, and never stop believing in a society that collectively cares for its people.

DSA members and allies rally for Medicare for All outside of Rep. Doris Matsui’s office in downtown Sacramento.

In April of this year, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representatives Pramila Jayapal and Debbie Dingell introduced the Medicare for All Act of 2025, the legislation for single-payer universal healthcare, along with over 100 Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate who signed on as co-sponsors.

Sadly, but not unexpectedly, Sacramento’s two Representatives—Doris Matsui and Ami Bera—are currently NOT co-sponsors of the bill. Despite the urging of a vocal and diverse local coalition for Medicare for All, including Sacramento DSA, Matsui and Bera refused to sign on, signifying their defense of a highly inefficient, profit-based system that makes it extremely difficult for half of U.S. adults to afford healthcare when they need it.

While the Trump administration accelerates the corporate attack on the working class and cuts funding for popular, necessary programs like Medicaid, Democrats like Matsui and Bera fail us by not pushing for the most effective solutions to problems that Sacramentans face every day.

It’s not enough to simply oppose Trump’s cuts when we have a status quo where more than half of Californians are skipping medical care due to cost and more than a third of Californians have medical debt. We spend about twice as much per person as other industrialized countries, but millions of people, many with insurance, still can’t get care. In combination with steadily worsening wages and economic conditions under decades of both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations, it’s no surprise that so many Americans have lost faith in politics.

Single-payer universal healthcare is the bare minimum of pro-working class policies that we desperately need, and we need elected officials who will actually work to pass it. The fact that half of elected Democrats in the House and a majority of Democrats in the Senate don’t support Medicare for All is both a disgrace and political malpractice that facilitates the rise of Trumpism.

However, the reality is that because of how entrenched the healthcare corporations are in our political system, too many politicians will not support it unless we build enough political power to either force them to support it or replace them. This is a long-term fight and it’s going to take a deep commitment to grassroots organizing and a willingness to engage in a diversity of tactics.

Sacramento DSA will continue to fight for guaranteed healthcare on both the federal and state levels. We urge readers of this blog to sign our petition, call your rep, and demand that they co-sponsor Medicare for All. Stay tuned for more blog posts on different aspects of our fight for healthcare justice over the coming months, and join our chapter’s Healthcare Committee to get more involved.

Members of Sacramento DSA deliver letters to the offices of Reps. Doris Matsui and Ami Bera urging them to co-sponsor Medicare for All.

By Benjamin Arriaga

My friend and comrade Jimbo Jackson, and fellow Socialist Majority caucus affiliate, submitted three proposed bylaw amendments for the upcoming local convention. Although my comrade and I affiliate with the same national caucus in DSA, I write this to share my disagreement with his proposals for our local chapter. However, I do make an exception of what I would like to see amended at least in his third bylaw amendment, as detailed below. In the interest of transparency: at this time, we are both expected to step in as Convention Chair and Convention Parliamentarian. I have taken steps to enlist other comrades and receive assurances from them that they will accept these roles when his proposals and my proposals reach the floor. I spoke directly with Comrade Jackson about my position on his proposals and that I would be submitting my position statement for publication with a copy provided to him before its online publication. This autumn season I also began my first annual term as a State Council Delegate to California DSA for our chapter. (FYI: We are allotted four delegates and our chapter has yet to hold an election for the fourth seat.)

First, a word about our process: According to our chapter bylaws, our chapter’s membership is required to hold a local convention annually. Despite the fact that we technically have the ability per these same bylaws to amend the bylaws at any of our general membership meetings, I think that specifically holding an annual local convention encourages us to highlight for this type of meeting a chance to address long-term timescale questions. In comparison with a labor union federation it can serve the same function as a “leadership summit” or in a capitalist enterprise, the “company retreat.” In other words, this type of meeting is intended for asking questions about our structure, our capacity, our strategy, and ultimately for affirming our vision as a democratic socialist organization.

On Comrade Jackson’s Bylaw Amendment #1: Pertaining to CA-DSA delegate role, I urge to vote Nay. I plan to vote Nay due to my observation that this would confine the imagination necessary for nonsectarian representative democracy as a principle in our organization. Allowing for our elected delegates (myself included) to exercise initiative, to communicate well with others, or to find ways to collaborate is naturally an extension of the basic practice of representative democracy. We elect a person to do things. If we don’t like what they are doing, then we let them know, and if they don’t compromise, then we choose someone else by majority rule. Additionally, the original language would also confine the expression of dissenting opinions and the “pledge not to act unilaterally” is so broad as that it might discourage our delegation from adding to the discussion or the work of building the very new California DSA State Council without seeking endless, additional approval. Effective, nonsectarian, representative democracy does not require stipulated language of this type.

By contrast, I urge to vote Yay on the California DSA Delegate Term Activity Resolution I authored and submitted. I agree with Comrade Jackson that California DSA would indeed benefit from collaboration but I argue that this does not need to be stipulated through a bylaw amendment. Instead, my resolution would prompt myself and my fellow State Council Delegates from our chapter to use our heads and take lead on action items to help create a political program for our communities and lead by example at California DSA State Council.

On Comrade Jackson’s Bylaw Amendment #2: Pertaining to political priorities of the local chapter, I also urge to vote Nay. Although one or more of the concerns motivating this amendment are valid, such as “a need to improve communication and coordination as a chapter,” I do not think restricting ourselves through our bylaws to a specific number of priorities would actually improve our chapter’s operations. We cannot legislate or formally deliberate a shortcut around the work of organizing.

The question of our priorities is an organizing question, just as much as it is also a political one that faces every member regardless of holding an official leadership role. It requires setting aside ample time to meet and discuss and develop plans with other comrades to choose what we shall focus on achieving and by when. To assist with that effort, which involves political education, I submitted the Standard Spoken Introductions Resolution to emphasize a new general practice. We may call this a form of popular discipline, perhaps, for our members to take up if they agree with me about its necessity. I think when we practice saying a consistent hard brief pitch of what democratic socialism means, popularizing that kind of message discipline internally can take us on a path to resolve ourselves to be consistent in our messaging overall and the criteria by which we adopt future priorities that can matter to our communities.

Finally, regarding Comrade Jackson’s Bylaw Amendment #3: Pertaining to clarifying committee operations and the organizer role, I urge that someone move to amend its original language when it is on the floor. My recommendation may be best laid out in the following points: • Strike out all language that raises the needed participation threshold to 5 dues-paying members to form a committee and keep our status quo requirement of 3. • Strike out all proposed changes to the Committee Operations subsection of our bylaws. • Accept the proposed change to the Organizer subsection that strikes out the stanza with the “ultimate responsibility” and “liaison” clauses. • Accept the proposed addition of a Committee Membership subsection (while changing to 3 signatories instead of 5 signatories). • Insert after the sentence starting with “Only SacDSA members in good standing” and ending with “committee members,” the following language: • “Committee meeting attendees who are not SacDSA members may call themselves fellow-travelers so long as a member or members in good standing sponsors or takes lead in helping them learn about DSA and assume(s) a responsibility to the chapter for their fellow-traveler’s actions when participating in public-facing political activity.”

At any future general membership meeting, we can make two motions: any dues-paying member could move to introduce a bylaw amendment to expand our Steering Committee to include our Committee Chairs; any dues-paying member can also move to dismantle a committee that the majority agrees with dismantling, howsoever it may be justified during any debate if and only after someone seconds that motion.

I grant that Comrade Jackson is well-intended with his proposals. This does not change my worry that his proposals seem like attempts to reshape our structure to more strictly mimic a democratic centralist model. Democratic centralism, in simple terms, involves a periphery that reports to a center and a center that is elected from a periphery, etc., but that tends to fix and concentrate authority at the center once questions of debate are considered settled. This model has gained a nostalgic following in some groupings outside of DSA but also within whole national caucuses in DSA. Their various attempts to transform our organization, especially now, may exacerbate current trends of “procedural overhead” or “second-job professionalism.” These can burn people out. Nonetheless, the renewed appeal of democratic centralism across different caucuses and chapters in DSA may be a result of real frustration with where DSA is at now. The actual problem of internal organizing deserves its own theorization as well as the construction of an alternative for this historic moment.

The need for this theorization demands collaboration with other comrades to continue this conversation with Sacramento DSA in mind as our material, organizational anchor.

In early August of 2023, I had the privilege of attending the DSA National Convention as a delegate for our chapter. Although I originally planned to attend as our chapter’s alternate, circumstances arose where I was obliged to replace one of our elected delegates.

This was my 3rd convention as a delegate and my 4th convention overall since joining DSA in 2017. While I am sad that I had to replace one of our elected delegates, I am beyond grateful for the opportunity to participate. I say I am “beyond grateful” because no words can do justice to how proud I am of my fellow delegates. Nor can they properly describe how far our organization has come in the last six years.

For those who might not know, the DSA National Convention is the highest democratic body in our organization. Delegates use the space to set our priorities and rework the structure of our organization for the next two years. It is also the space where our national leadership, the National Political Committee, is elected.

At this convention, I saw where DSA stands, where we are going, and what it means for our chapter.

Like any other organization, SacDSA is not perfect. We still have much work to do to improve communication between our committees and campaigns. Also, we need to have a serious talk about the grossly unfair distribution of labor in this volunteer-run organization (and why that labor tends to fall on the shoulders of people who aren’t cis het white guys like me despite the fact our membership is mostly cis and white).

That being said, thanks to what I saw during this awe-inspiring weekend in Chicago, I am thrilled to report that DSA is lightyears ahead of where we were at the 2017, 2019, and 2021 conventions.

2017: Socialism Is Cool Again!

In 2017, DSA had just exploded to somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 members after Donald Trump’s 2016 victory. At the time, we were in a state of chaotic reorganization thanks to the expansion. We were a bunch of eager young leftists taking over an organization that was once notorious for having an average membership age of 60-65 and was scoffed at by many leftists for being “zionist” and Pro-Israel.

At this convention, there was a massive new radical energy entering the organization that shifted us harder to the left than ever before. But in that energy, there was little guidance because it was here we saw in real-time what being multi-tendency means in a democratic organization that exploded in membership so quickly. Still, it was a beautiful sight and an honor to be a part of that convention too. The 2017 Con reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Hunter S. Thompson, “We had all the momentum… We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.”

Regarding that multi-tendency tendency, it was there that the factionalization of DSA began to rise. Much can be said here about the different caucuses, but as a biased member of a caucus myself (the Socialist Majority Caucus), I will instead focus on the direction DSA took, and do my best to set my sectarian hot takes aside.

From this convention going into 2018 and 2019, debates about our internal structuring and the direction of DSA became more intense and divisive. There were many reasons for this, some incidental and some with gross consequences for the organization. For example, there was the snafu where a single member began fundraising for Charlottesville DSA members and comrades who were victims of the Unite the Right Rally violence that ultimately killed Heather Hayer. Said member raised hundreds of thousands of dollars with no plan for distributing the money and had no contact with the NPC or any NC DSA chapter members prior to starting the fundraiser.

There was also the incident where one of our newly elected NPC members from 2017 was outed for repeated acts of sexual assault, and the drama that unfolded when another newly elected NPC member was called out for organizing a union of correctional officers.

The point is, we were excited, but we had no fucking idea what we were doing, and because of that, drama ensued.

2019: “Guys, Can We Keep The Chatter To A Minimum!?” By the 2019 con, it was all about the Bernie momentum. Bernie was not only poised to run in 2020 but it seemed like he was on track to win the Democratic nomination. This was why the major tier of the 2019 electoral plan oriented itself around our Democratic Socialists for Bernie campaign. The peak of this at that convention was the passing of a resolution that prohibited DSA national from endorsing any other Democrat if Bernie lost the nomination, which he did.

But the tone of 2019 was much different and much more divisive than in 2017. This convention was also much less democratic than in 2017. Delegates were bombarded with bad-faith attacks by sectarians who smeared our convention chairs and used procedural nonsense to bog down progress whenever they did not get their way.

I am not joking when I say we delegates lost a full day of debate and voting thanks to constant, idiotic procedural motions. Debates about the convention rules and needless credential challenges against delegates stole hours of work from us. There were similar challenges in 2017, but 2019 was atrocious, vicious, and disillusioning for many. Several members, including some SacDSA delegates, came home lethargic and despondent about our organization. On a personal note my comrades, this was heartbreaking for me. Despite any issues in 2017, I came back to our chapter inspired and energized to get involved with my organization. I was hoping 2019 would do the same thing for the comrades coming to convention with me.

Not only did the complete opposite happen, but the convention was so chaotic and so full of members attacking each other in bad faith that I ended up, in a moment of poor judgment, grabbing the mic and having a full-on anxiety attack on the convention floor. I also made the mistake of forgetting I was no longer in California and therefore forgot that regional dialects don’t always carry over. Long story short, after my anxiety attack a trans/nonbinary comrade took the mic and took furious exception to the fact I referred to the delegation as “guys’’ and not as “comrades.”

The moment has since become a right-wing meme still making rounds on Twitter and Tik Tok to this day. When it first went viral, I was promptly doxed by Fox News and several right-wingers. Fun fact, the now out-of-work Tucker Carlson said my name at least 8 times in one 10-minute segment, but probably because “James Jackson” is such a fun name to say. Who doesn’t love alliteration, right?

My point is that after such a hellish convention and that nightmarish experience with the far-right, I was a little apprehensive about ever going back to being a delegate.

Fortunately, weed is legal in Chicago now, so for the 2023 convention, my anxiety was properly under control. Attending this convention and seeing that I could keep my cool in the face of bad-faith sectarianism was just one of the things that made the 2023 convention so healing for me.

2021: F*ck You Covid

The 2021 convention was our first, and likely our only, all-virtual convention due to COVID. I can only say so much about this convention because 1. I was not a delegate and 2. The shift to an all-virtual meeting was a challenge for everyone involved, especially in the wake of where socialists stood in 2021.

Bernie lost, Biden was already president, the pandemic was taking everything from us, and the overall tone of that convention was a collective head scratch. It didn’t matter what your faction was in 2021 because we were all asking the same question, “Where is this organization going now!?”

But by 2023, we figured it out.

2023: A New Hope

There are some sobering realities to take away from the 2023 convention. DSA has seen a decline in membership which means a decline in dues, which means a decline in resources for both future and existing campaigns. However, despite such a decline, one saw comrades with more hope in their organization than ever before. I lost count of all the comrades I met who were attending a DSA con for the first time, and this was the one to have as their first. (Thank god they missed 2019!)

As a 4-time con veteran, I knew just how far we had come after only the first day of voting.

As already mentioned, both the 2017 and 2019 conventions were slowed down by tedious bad faith procedural motions that included things like challenging the credentials of delegations (NYC DSA in 2017 and East Bay in 2019), and in 2019 there was the infamous day-long rules debate. But comrades, when this convention’s opening day saw zero, and I mean zero, challenges to the rules and not a single credentials challenge, it was clear that this con had one and only one vibe. “Fuck the bullshit, let’s get to work!”

The 2023 convention chairs handled any bad faith that came their way beautifully. Shout out to two of them, Beth H. and Sandy B. who oversaw some of the most intense debates. It was also beneficial that this convention utilized something called Openslides, an online tool that allowed members to voice their procedural motions in a more constructive way than screaming into the microphones. It also eased the chairs’ ability to spot, and squash, bad-faith actors who were obviously abusing procedural motions.

But the real achievement belongs to the maturity of delegates who handled both their losses and victories with poise and dignity. Even after votes riddled with intense debate, comrades moved forward in a fashion that sent a clear message that we just wanted to vote and take our work back home to our chapters.

Some of the most intense votes included a vote where the BDS working group was to be absorbed under the banner of the International Committee, which passed, and a vote to expand the NPC in hopes that more members would create a fairer distribution of labor for our national leadership. That motion failed narrowly despite having a near supermajority.

Full disclosure, I was strongly in favor of both of these above-mentioned resolutions. Of all the resolutions in 2023, the NPC expansion was the issue I was most strongly in favor of (and still am). So it did hurt me when that failed. That said, I still went through the convention with the collective dignity and eagerness my comrades shared to build DSA.

Regarding the NPC election, going forward it will be interesting to see how our stance as a multi-tenancy organization will manifest in our work. Thanks to the use of a Single Transferable Vote counting system for the NPC election, our NPC is once again reflective of our big-tent posture. We have some pro-electoral NPC members, some anti-electoral, and a sprinkling of other ideological tendencies. It will be interesting to see where that takes us, especially because this NPC saw more of the anti-electoral block elected than ever before.

One think piece is not enough to sum up the concise and healing effect this convention had on me and so many others. Nor is it enough to go into detail about the debates around still important issues in DSA like BDS, Anti Zionism, Trans rights, our electoral strategy, and more. However, what can be stressed is the newfound pride I have in this organization, especially in this chapter.

It has been years since I have seen our chapter handle themselves the way they did at this convention, and I include myself in that little hint of complimentary criticism. I came into this organization in 2017 as loud and angry as the most annoying Twitter sectarian. I came home from the 2023 Chicago con with hope and understanding about my comrades. And I thank my fellow delegates for that. Sac DSA delegates showed pragmatism, patience, poise, research skills, dignity, and good faith in ways I haven’t seen in years. Our whole delegation deserves our thanks, especially our delegation chair, Sara C.

On yet another personal note, I cannot praise Sara enough because when I first joined DSA in 2017, the first major task I had for the organization was serving as delegation chair. It was incredibly stressful. I lost hours of sleep and was riddled with panic attacks about voting cards and Robert’s Rules. Once Sara was delivered to us in Chicago, I saw nothing from her except all of the perfect qualities of a delegate that I mentioned above. This convention was a smashing success, and it is thanks to comrades like Sara who made it such a success. Stepping up as a delegation chair for the first time is like learning to swim by getting thrown into the deep end head first. Some sink and some swim, but Sara soared.

I am not mincing words when I say that every single person who dares to call themselves a Sac DSA member should be very proud of their delegation.

The World To Win

There is only one thing about this convention that makes me sad, and that is the fact that not everyone from SacDSA could be there. If we had all been there, so many in this organization would have had their faith restored, not just in DSA but in the concept of organizing. My only hope now is that the rest of the delegates and I can bring this energy to every meeting, every event, every campaign, and every Mutual Aid Monday!

We do have to take things like our lower membership numbers and our ongoing internal debates seriously, but not to the point where we forget, as I did in 2019, that we are all comrades. Despite so many ups and downs, so many democratic socialists are still here, still fighting, and still ready to do the work.

And I think we’re more ready than ever before! We are fighting to re-elect our comrade Katie Valenzuela to the city council and we are ready to send two more friends of our chapter (Amreet Sandhu in District 6 and Dr. Flo Cofer for Mayor) to join her. Another thing I learned at the convention when talking to delegates from other chapters was that our decision to focus on these races and not overextend our capacity further marked our maturity. Our chapter got just as many compliments about our city council campaigns as we did on our decision to focus our limited resources on them. The decision to not only endorse but also to prioritize is a true mark of political maturity. It shows we are taking this work seriously, and that was the entire vibe of this convention. We have matured as an organization.

DSA is not what it was when it was founded in 1982. It is not what it was when socialism fell out of favor in the 1990s. It is not even the organization it was in 2017 or 2019. We are now a real socialist organization. An established and mature collective of eager organizers who take this work seriously. We’re in this to win, not just to flex how radical or progressive we are, and I’m here for it!

So long as we stay this course and keep our heads held high and maintain a sense of dignity through our internal debates, that “world to win” we keep talking about is ours!

I have never been happier and more eager to tell everyone I know, “Why yes, I am a member of Sacramento DSA. Allow me to introduce you to my comrades.”

James J. Jackson is a member of the SacDSA steering committee and served as its co-chair in the 2019-2020 term. He has written for Sac News and Review, the Sac DSA blog, Democratic Left, and Socialist Forum. He also writes fiction, poetry, and journalism under the pen name Jimbo Jax.

On Aug 1, 2023, the Sacramento city council heard from an impressive 36 members of the public, and thereafter spent an additional 3 hours in passionate debate. This resulted in the narrow 5-4 passage of the Ordinance Authorizing the City Manager to Implement a Temporary Shelter Program. The ordinance gives full authority to the City Manager, Howard Chan, to select locations and establish safe grounds for our homeless population.

This is the third time Mayor Darrell Steinberg has suggested a plan like this, but this was the first time he had a majority of support on the city council for it. The ordinance is targeting a very specific problem. As we astutely heard from Council Member Katie Valenzuela, enforcement of city code upon our unhoused population is in a constant state of displacement with no destination. This style of enforcement has harmful effects on the unhoused with no progress towards a solution. In addition, this type of shuffle-along policy is in direct violation of Martin v. Boise, which states cities cannot enforce anti-camping ordinances if they do not have enough homeless shelter beds available. This makes our current practices not only ineffective, but illegal.

It has taken a few iterations of this ordinance to pass with previous versions being bogged down in deliberation due to the complexities of the negotiations and NIMBYism when choosing safe ground locations. With the passing of this ordinance, the City Manager will have full discretion and 60 days to select the city owned parcels of land among the 8 districts and move as many people into these safe shelter zones as is possible. These will be unmanaged zones to reduce cost, but the city will, by law, be forced to provide a “dignified” level of support to all who reside there. This “dignified” level is still up for discussion between the county, the City Manager, and City Attorney Susana Wood. This specific lack of clarity around the word “dignified” is a reason why Mayor Pro Tem Mai Vang, a supporter of safe ground, voted no on this ordinance as presented.

Although there were some dissenting opinions from the public, more praised the measure than protested it. “This is a dream I have had for 13 years,” a member of the public who helps with safe grounds said in public comment. “For the first time I agree with the mayor,” said a DSA member as he started his two minutes at the podium. After public comment, Caity Maple mentioned that she and Katie Valenzuela had been advocating for this since the first day they joined the council stating, “It’s kind of amazing that we are here.”

However, Council Member Karina Talamantes lashed out at the mayor and accused him of not visiting her district and for the lack of good neighbor policies in the ordinance. Her rationale that we don’t want to give the City Manager unilateral decision on this issue was thwarted by Vice Mayor Guerra’s reminder that it takes 5 votes to give him the power and 5 votes to remove that power should the council be dissatisfied with the city manager’s direction. Although the good neighbor policy was amended by Vice Mayor Guerra’s motion, Council Member Talamantes still voted no, seemingly out of frustration with the Mayor.

Safe ground is not a new concept and has been utilized successfully in places like San Diego, LA, and in many other states. Safe ground has some of the highest impact per dollar invested due to economies of scale and ease of creation. It becomes easier to ensure safety and provide services to the unhoused if the city gives them a sanctioned space to reside.

This ordinance does not come to us in perfection. There is a lack of clarity on the services that are required to be offered at each site. How can we be sure that these grounds are safe? There is debate on if Howard Chan, the City Manager, is the right person to drive this initiative, in addition there is a lack of metrics which define success. There is also a lack of specificity in the geodiversity of the plots to be selected outside of the mayor’s directive to the City Manager to “try your best”. Even with these faults, the council voted to pass in hopes that it will quickly show signs of progress for the city.

My Opinion:

After watching this debate unfold for over 6 hours, I have come to the following conclusions:

Human beings need a dignified place to reside. Given we have a fully utilized 1100 bed capacity to house our 10,000 unhoused people, this ordinance will be beneficial and could potentially lead to upwards of $5 million in funding to create a more permanent destination for our remaining 8900 unhoused citizens. We should continually advocate for the most vulnerable among us, and funding initiatives that favor solutions over bandaid enforcement is a key to success.

When the rest of the council rightfully asked for City Manager Chan to be receptive to public input, Council Member Sean Loloee of district 2, voiced an undemocratic opinion. Stating, “I don’t think, when it comes to the sites, advocates or activists really help the situation.” As someone who is supposed to represent the people, I find it disgraceful he would try to silence them. Or perhaps he thinks the public dumb and incapable? The experience of the social workers who are on the ground, and the homelessness population itself need to be involved in giving comments for this process to maximize success.

I will echo the council members in saying that we should not lose focus on the long term goal of housing for all, but until we are able to achieve this politically and financially, this is good policy. The council did well, although barely, to realize perfection should not be the enemy of progress and passed this step towards addressing our city’s homeless crisis.

By: David Mandel

Originally submitted to the Sacramento Bee, but was rejected.

The latest violence in Gaza [August 5-7] disappeared from headlines in record time, after “only” three days of heavy Israeli bombardment and in response, rocket fire from Gaza toward Israeli territory.

But even in that brief time, the damage wrought was overwhelming horrific. At least 49 Palestinians were killed, including 17 children, and hundreds wounded, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. There were no serious Israeli casualties.

While some of the Gaza casualties were apparently caused by rockets that fell short, they would not have been launched if not for Israel’s self-described “pre-emptive strike,” itself a blatant violation of international law.

Beyond the immediate carnage, anyone who cares about the fate of Israelis, Palestinians and others affected in the region should not let this episode fade into the background, as has happened so many times before.

Since 2008, Israel has now waged five major assaults on the Gaza area, plus frequent additional attacks, killing nearly 4,000 people – one-quarter of them children – and destroying tens of thousands of homes and businesses. They previous ones lasted much longer before cease-fires were arranged, only to be broken again.

Why the outbreak this time, and why only three days? Analysts, citing formal and informal statements by the parties, have proffered several reasons:

• A flexing of military muscle by Israel’s leaders is a common pre-election tactic to solidify support among hawkish Israeli voters. Interim Prime Minister Yair Lapid is gearing up toward a Nov. 1 contest, for the fifth time in four years pitting the loyalists of former premier Binyamin Netanyahu against a diverse, shifting and also mostly hawkish coalition, united only around its opposition to him.
• But Israelis also have a habit of disaffection from the inconveniences posed by lengthier wars. So the quick cease-fire too was likely seen as an electoral asset.
• With fuel supplies cut off by Israel along with other crucial goods, shutting Gaza’s only power plant amid a heat wave and no clean water, failure to stop fighting would have downgraded conditions from hellish to doubly deadly, making Israel look bad.
• At least some elements of the international community may be losing patience with repeated bloody episodes of Israeli attacks on the Gaza fish barrel, so the short “mowing of the lawn,” as Israeli leaders have referred to their periodic initiatives, may have been meant to avoid further alienation, with short memories conveniently taxed by Ukraine, Taiwan and other current global flashpoints as well as domestic situations.
• Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza, abstained from joining the fray. Had the exchanges continued, it might have felt obligated to join in. So by halting the assault, Israel maintained political divisions among Palestinians along with its de facto arrangements with Hamas for slight easing of life for Gazans.

Nevertheless, the situation remains dire for Gaza’s 2 million-plus inhabitants, most of them descendants of refugees forced from their homes during Israel’s establishment in 1948. Israel and Egypt continue to impose full closure on the territory, with minimal – and fluctuating – exceptions to head off mass catastrophe. Health, nutrition, livelihood are all precarious.

Meanwhile, in various parts of the occupied West Bank, 2022 has seen a steady uptick in land takeovers with expulsions of Palestinians, city dwellers and rural farmers alike. These are invariably accompanied by brazen settler violence, abetted by the military, and by further crackdowns on any semblance of political resistance. The recent visit by President Biden underscored the utter lack of a diplomatic horizon.

The latest attack’s brevity seems to have been mostly successful in eliciting the desired response in Washington: many senators and representatives (“progressives” among them) had no comment at all, leading some optimists to conclude that they refrained from cheering for Israel when unlike in other rounds, there was no doubt this time about “who started it.” But almost all of those who did speak up mouthed the usual reflexive phrases about Israel’s “right to defend itself,” no matter how hollow it echoed.

It’s a nearly sure bet that the latest round will spawn calls in Congress for additional funding for Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket batteries (of dubious value, according to some experts) and other arms. Suddenly, Ukraine has supplanted Israel as by far the largest “beneficiary” of such transfers of our tax dollars to the U.S. arms industry via the ever-expanding “defense” budget.

When will we conclude that it’s time to devote our scarce resources instead to human needs at home and globally, and to planetary survival?

For starters, let’s stop pretending that the vast majority of us benefit from U.S. support of regimes that occupy their neighbors and repress democracy, including Israel.

by Ian Lee

A spectre is haunting the working class – the spectre of Proposition 22. All the powers of the center-Left and Left have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: the Service Employees International Union, the Democratic Socialists of America, and even much of the Democratic Party (including Joe Biden), etc.

We have a real shot at defeating Proposition 22. But it is by no means certain. The most recent poll I’m aware of, coming out of UC Berkeley and reported in the LA times, showed that 39% of likely voters will side with the Gig Companies (Yes on 22), 36% will side with the actual drivers (No on 22), and 25% are still undecided – with a 2% margin of error. So we can win – and live to fight another day, building a movement of hundreds of thousands of drivers to form the largest, most consequential Labor Union in California history. Or we can lose – and set workers’ rights back by decades. But it will be up to us and the conversations we have with one another. As the poll showed, the drivers are neck and neck with the gig companies, and so indeed, every conversation about Proposition 22 is going to matter to decide the fate of the development of neoliberal capitalism.

That is extreme language, I am aware, but I do not believe it is hyperbole. I have been organizing rideshare and delivery drivers for a year now, and I really do believe this: Proposition 22 represents a fundamental paradigm shift within the development of neoliberal capitalism.

Never in my career have I received so many DMs from people, period. People are confused about Proposition 22, many of them Leftists who are accidentally siding with the Gig CEOs! It’s understandable – Uber, et al., have spent $183 million so far in what is amounting to the most expensive ballot proposition in California history. Every gig driver and gig customer has received push notifications on their phones urging them to Vote Yes on Proposition 22. As Louis Althusser might say, “Dannnngggg, the Ideological State Apparatus is in full swing, bro.”

My hope is that I can answer the most common questions I get asked about Prop 22 in this post.

1. OK, so what is Proposition 22? What is its history?

In January 2020, the California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5). AB 5 codified into State Law a California Supreme Court Case called Dynamex. Basically, it gave a three-prong test to determine if an “independent contractor” can actually be classified as an independent contractor under California Labor Law: (a) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hirer in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of such work and in fact; (b) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and (c) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hiring entity.

That may seem like a bunch of legal mumbo-jumbo, but to the Gig CEOs, it was really Bad News Bears. Anyone with common sense knows (a) that Uber Drivers are actually controlled by Uber’s algorithms, (b) that rideshare driving is CENTRAL to Uber’s business model, and (c) that most full-time drivers would not otherwise be independently driving people around if it weren’t for the existence of Uber. And so under all three tests, Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Instacart, etc., would have to classify their drivers as employees.

As employees, drivers would be entitled to things like: a basic minimum wage, benefits (after 30 hrs/week), sick leave, unemployment insurance, and most importantly, the Right to Form a Union.

CEOs be CEOs, man. They don’t want to give workers that stuff, and so since January the Gig Companies have actively been disobeying the law and illegally classifying gig drivers as independent contractors. This has been the subject of – I don’t even know how many lawsuits at this point, but countless lawsuits from drivers, lawsuits from the State of California, and lawsuits from many city attorneys in California.

CEOs don’t give up. Nota Bene: the Gig CEOs created Proposition 22, which would re-classify drivers as independent contractors.

That’s what Proposition 22 is really about.

2. But don’t Gig CEOs actually care about drivers? I heard that Proposition 22 helps drivers?

The way I like to think about it is this. Uber, etc., are spending $183 million to pass Prop 22. It is the most expensive ballot proposition in California history. If Uber really wanted to improve work conditions, pay, benefits of drivers, as they say is the point of their Prop, then they could do that tomorrow. They’re a corporation. They could raise wages tomorrow. No, what Prop 22 is really about is DECREASING wages (compared to employee status), avoiding state/local/worker lawsuits, and NOT PAYING TAXES to the State. And look, I get it, corporations are corporations: they want to maximize profits. But maximizing profits means decreased wages, unfortunately. Bottom line, Uber doesn’t actually care about drivers.

Here’s a case example: when you factor in gas/mileage, Lyft drivers often do not even make minimum wage. So for these Lyft drivers who are not even making minimum wage, you know what Lyft started to do at the beginning of the pandemic? Charge drivers for PPE! Can you imagine that? Charging drivers for PPE when they don’t even make minimum wage.

But that’s their business model: Lyft has taken the false position that drivers are independent contractors, and so under this logic, of course they would charge their drivers for PPE.

But we all know, that’s sick – literally. As a campaign, we received calls from drivers scared about their access to food, scared about housing insecurity, scared about their health, and even a few drivers who expressed suicidal ideation.

These were drivers – many of them – who sleep in their cars and work 60-80 hrs a week, and still barely make ends meet. And then – to be CHARGED for PPE? These gig corporations do not care about drivers.

3. If Proposition 22 passes, won’t drivers lose their flexibility?

According to the State Attorney General, the City Attorney of San Francisco, the City Attorney of San Diego, and the City Attorney of Los Angeles, as well as the State Labor Commissioner – they’ve all said that Uber is lying about schedules/flexibility. There are plenty of employees, even Union Employees (such as day laborers), that work flexible schedules. There is nothing about being an employee that mandates fixed schedules. Uber CAN implement schedules, but that would be their decision. And that’s PRECISELY why drivers are organizing a Union – to have collective power and a seat at the table to say NO to fixed schedules.

4. I’m a True Independent Contractor and so I’m scared of opposing Prop 22…

I understand why it would be confusing! As an independent contractor myself (videography/photography), I understand your confusion and fear. The reality is that the reason Uber wants drivers to be independent contractors is so (a) they can pay the drivers less and (b) independent contractors are not allowed to form legally recognized unions.

AB 5 did have unintended effects on artists and true independent contractors. Through AB 2257, artists and true independent contractors are no longer effected. AB 5 has been fixed. But Prop 22 doesn’t have anything to do with true independent contractors. Prop 22 deals with (this is language from the actual Prop), “App-based rideshare and delivery platforms to transport passengers and deliver, food, groceries, and other goods as a means of earning income.”

5. What if Uber, et al., leave California?

California is about 15% of their entire revenue. Do you think Uber would leave that much revenue behind? Look, the day they threatened to leave California was the day before a State Appeal’s Judge was deciding on an injunction on Uber/Lyft… it was entirely, entirely a political move for the media.

6. You’re being intense, Ian. OK, I get it, I get it. No on Prop 22. But why are you subtly quoting Freud, Marx, Althusser, and saying stuff like “Proposition 22 represents a fundamental paradigm shift within the development of neoliberal capitalism”?

Look, I get it. I’m sort of an intense guy.

But Proposition 22 does indeed represent a fundamental paradigm shift within the development of neoliberal capitalism.

First of all, if Prop 22 passes, it will require a 7/8th majority in the State Legislature to overturn. It is truly, truly a poison pill, and so if Prop 22 passes, it will set a precedent for Gig Workers in this country for Decades – setting a precedent that Gig Workers do not deserve a basic minimum wage, benefits, sick pay, unemployment insurance, and the Right to Form a Union.

Before the pandemic, there was an estimate of 400,000 rideshare and delivery drivers in California. But it won’t stop there. More and more, capitalists – in the pursuit of profit – want to convert workers to independent contractors. Uber is right now looking to expand independent contracting to even more sectors – the “Uberfication” of all work. Per Uber’s very own website, the Industries that Uber will be expanding to first with an army of independent contractors are: hospitality, real estate, consulting and financial, and government. These armies of independent contractors will be used for: sales and marketing, events, facilities, executive assistants, and procurement.

This goes way deep into even our ability to understand capitalism. As we recover from this pandemic, Gig CEOs will try to use the recovery as an opportunity to fundamentally shift the structural conditions of labor relations in a way that I believe will result in a fundamental epistemological break, in the same way that the creation of Urban Cities centered around Industrial Production in the hyper-speed rise of Capitalism in Marx’s time created a fundamental epistemological break with the theory of before.

We are in for a world of hurt if Prop 22 passes. But if we defeat Prop 22 – and the polling says we can, if we have the conversations we need to have with our friends, families, and neighbors – we have the opportunity to create a mass movement of Gig Workers and form the most consequential Labor Union of our lifetimes.

Vote No on Prop 22. Way more importantly: Organize.

By: Benjamin Arriaga

To check out the original text of Resolution 9 visit sacdsa.org/local-convention/

Many may be surprised at how much is left up to their personal judgment after joining the Sacramento DSA. We each unexpectedly receive the freedom to make our own conclusions about what qualities to search for in more experienced members we can choose to follow, to lead, to learn from, or to engage with in debate. Each new member may just encounter a mixture of interactions, pleasant and less than pleasant. We are people after all. Not all relatively seasoned or “old guard” members may share the same opinions or experiences with the DSA, or with struggles and leftwing activism in Sacramento. At some point, a new member may have the following statements expressed to them about what the DSA is: “We are the left wing of the possible,” “We focus on making non-reformist reforms,” “We are a pre-party formation” or “We are a party surrogate,” and “We turn thinkers into fighters and fighters into thinkers.”

Since 2018, more than a year after I joined, I wanted to share a blog post about how I have been approaching things. In that same amount of time, I have revised my initial presentation and its content too often to count. There was an adjustment period during which I tested my thinking whilst on the ground for how to approach radical politics. This involved learning how to be comfortable with being agitated in good faith by others more familiar with life as leftwing political actors. Changing events, priorities, magazine and podcast subscriptions, new influxes of members, new responsibilities, and decisions all shook up but improved what I could call my analysis.

The resolution I have put forward stems from this analysis. I will introduce it by sharing explicitly what I think of Resolution 9, its potential relationship both to the development of a unity in practice for the Sacramento DSA and to the functional development of radical politics locally. However, I will start by directly addressing the objections made to Resolution 9 by the Collective Power Network (CPN) Caucus members in our chapter.

To The First Objection: Our Commitment and the Movement

First, let me clarify what appears to suggest a factual misunderstanding with the term “chapter resources.” The only resources that would go to individuals potentially outside of the DSA are funds raised by DSA members to cover the costs of living incurred by said individuals. Those selected individuals have to be working closely with members on a Standing Committee to be possibly considered to apply. The Standing Committee they know our chapter through would adopt the task of designing a curriculum for/with them. The final decision for a final plan, after vetting of the curriculum by the Socialist Education Committee and vetting of the logistics by the Executive Board, goes to the general membership in this process. This can be found in the text of Resolution 9.

On a more serious note, I personally think it would be arrogant of us to assert that the DSA has a monopoly on the movement to which we belong. The CPN in Sac DSA states:

We object firstly to sanctioning the practice of dedicating significant chapter resources to individuals who do not share commitment enough to our organization to join it and contribute to DSA as a crucial part of our movement.

It is more important during this pandemic than ever for the DSA to consider itself a part of a wider progressive left, the labor movement, an anti-imperialist left, the movement against climate change, the movement against white supremacist violence and carceralism, and the movement for the unhoused in Sacramento. I would be pressed to find a clearer example of insular thinking than this framing for an objection to Standing Committees devoting themselves to raising funds to support the socialist or radical education of one or more workers, regardless of their membership in the DSA.We as a chapter can only begin to barely qualify as democratic socialists if we have only called ourselves socialist without grasping the fact that there needs to be a layer of democratic institutions we help to reconstruct or assist in some way if there is to be a democratic socialist movement at all. These alternative institutions outside our political control would be necessary to develop independent workers’ and social movements, culture, and general training resource institutions for struggles they directly experience. More than a hundred years of Marxist thinking supports the idea that a socialist movement and a workers movement both work best when they run parallel or in tandem (see Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, Hal Draper’s 1970 lecture on Dual Unionism, or this interview of Bob Master in 2019).

I cannot promise with Resolution 9 that Standing Committees will test themselves for their commitment on different issues or fronts that fit their stated goals. If they engage with promising and committed people who are not socialist but who would like to participate in some education from the DSA, especially if they are from constituencies we would like to increase our membership with, I would be disappointed if their ability to learn about socialism from socialists was handicapped by the demands made by their living costs. I would be even more disappointed if there was no standard process for working around such an obstacle, which can be daunting for people, new members, and anyone who just learned about the DSA from one of our members out at a protest or knocking at their door.

To the Second Objection, Part 1: On Pedagogy and Formal Minimum Criteria

The CPN’s second objection reads:

Significantly, we also object to the individualistic, professional-managerial class character of sabbatical; DSA and the working class as a whole are strengthened when we commit to collective educational projects which link us together in a practice of critical pedagogy. The development of solidarity and collective liberation will not be served by acting as an ally organization which provides a scholarship fund for special individuals.

I concede that Resolution 9 may essentially sound like a scholarship or grant application process for people to learn more about the DSA. I will admit this can be the case for what this process can result in at minimum, but I picture this process outlined by Resolution 9 to offer more than this, especially as a means for our organization and political analysis to collectively mature.I think the CPN should be praised for engaging with some references to Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy for the framing of their second main objection to Resolution 9. Freire’s book Pedagogy of the Oppressed was in fact a resource I consulted in thinking about the content and structure of a meaningful political-educational project in general. I had difficulty determining how that could be articulated in the hard text of this resolution. Whereas I accepted a friendly amendment framed out of a similar concern, to include a required final presentation by any person who is provided paid educational leave, I chose to leave open the possibility of incorporating lessons from Freire for structuring political education at the discretion of the Standing Committee acting as sponsor and the Socialist Education Committee reviewing any submitted curriculum from the former. I thought flexibility with training design in a presumably socialist organization would encourage creativity within unique circumstances. I felt that attempts to literally outline a standard that would fulfill the promise of critical pedagogy would crucify both my intentions and what I think were Freire’s intentions with his ideas of pedagogy.

With that said, I think the process in Resolution 9 is flexible enough that it could theoretically be used to structure the planning for a collective educational project linked by practices of Freire’s critical pedagogy. The use of this language about critical pedagogy for an objection from the CPN sounds like a misplaced effort to criticize an imagined method for teaching and learning that has not even been included in the resolution text. With a stretch, perhaps this objection could be pointing to the parts of the resolution text that outlines the division of official bottom-line responsibilities for submitting a curriculum for approval. Some formal asymmetry of ownership of the curriculum is assumed in the text for the purpose of assigning formal responsibility within our organization.Informally, what benefits we gain from learning are always at the individual learner’s discretion and initiative. Likewise, the impact of a lesson sinks deeper the better a teacher tries to understand the way their student understands. From those two premises, I do not see how Resolution 9 could prevent someone or a Standing Committee from applying Freire’s lessons in designing an informal investigation of themes in the unique living code within a community and a curriculum that makes sense to the community within those specific conditions.

To the Second Objection, Part 2: On Professional Shadow Boxing

Here I will examine the claim by CPN about “the individualistic, professional-managerial class character of sabbatical.” My inspiration primarily for Resolution 9 was drawn from an episode of The Dig, a Jacobin -affiliated podcast hosted by immigration journalist Daniel Denvir. At an hour and 28 minutes into the interview, “ Mike Davis on Coronavirus Politics,” Denvir asks his guest, Los Angeles historian Mike Davis, for what could explain the lack of internationalism on the left today in contrast with the left of the 1960s-1980s. In his response, Davis claims that the lack of internationalism today is related to two factors. The first he names is the class composition of the socialist left. Whereas support for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in his 2020 presidential primary run included huge numbers of working class-origin college graduates and working poor high school graduates, the major socialist organizations in the country have not proportionally matched the demographics of the support for his primary campaign. Davis shortly asks the major question for socialist organizations that supported Sanders: Do they make conditions for demographic representation, for more working class leadership? Davis followed this question by repeating a point made by Russian socialist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, made more than a hundred years ago in a pamphlet titled, “What Is To Be Done?” Lenin had said, and Davis agreed, that it would be a crime for advanced militant workers to just be left in the factories. Immediately thereafter, Davis says themovement should get them sabbaticals to acquire intellectual skills and homogenize intellectual skill. In order for socialist organizations today to gain working class membership and leadership, especially from the most intensely exploited branches of industry, socialist organizations must get involved dealing directly with problems of people who do not have a college degree or family source of income.

On one end, the description of “professional-managerial class character” in CPN’s second objection sounds like the often-repeated self-criticism of our organization to address our own membership composition. Interestingly, a leftist scholar recommends using paid educational leave to begin to address this. On another end, it might insinuate the use of a coded language for saying that intellectual skill has a class character, should not be homogenized in an egalitarian organization, or that means to acquire intellectual skill are harmful in some way for our chapter to provide to anyone outside of our chapter, regardless of commitment to movements larger or more significant than the DSA is now. I could understand a misreading of the term “sabbatical,” which has different definitions within religion and academia, but this confusion does not appear to be at work if the CPN read Resolution 9.

I have thought about our chapter’s class composition, its relationship to our internal debates, and the historical-geographical context of racial segregation in Sacramentofor a long time. I have observed that the professional-managerial class (PMC) is a regular punching bag for the problems facing the DSA about its own composition from other members of the same sociological category—the PMC. If any of us who volunteer to run this organization fit or do not fit within this sociological category called the PMC, a term coined by Barbara Ehrenreich, then I think it behooves us to make sure we think and speak in ways that advance constructive internal debate, an analysis based on more than buzzwords. The circular slinging of “PMC” as an insult sounds like a disempowering dialogue for everyone who gets involved.

Elitism has always been a problem for revolutionary movements of the oppressed that included members of more privileged classes joining their struggles. This elitism of more privileged allies is poorly substituted by play-acting as stereotypes of their fellow oppressed comrades. Many anti-PMC voices ironically only offer their own contrarian self-awareness as a source for alternative cultural norms of behavior to substitute what they find wrong about the not-so-unique elitism of the fellow PMC they caricaturize. This anti-PMC/pro-PMC dialogue very much resembles the performance of anti-whiteness from the white liberal antiracist that the anti-PMC crowd likes to castigate as PMC and neoliberal. Projecting an imagined ideal of possessing an authentic, usually anti-intellectual, working class sensibility is also a road to failure that has been tried by the New Communist Movement of the 1960s-1980s period (Max Elbaum, p. 170-171, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che). Veterans of those years regret the alcoholism, homophobia, and views against marijuana that they took upon themselves for the sake of appealing to their imagined average working person. Today progressives and socialists must grasp that verbal opposition to neoliberalism does not extricate a person from elitist habits nor does it accelerate the development of a Marxist analysis.At some point all circular firing squads need to stop loading empty rounds and go pick new targets.

I am glad our situation in the DSA is not so terrible that we would be afraid to admit in casual conversation that culture is not always easy to understand, especially as culture changes in the country or at our workplaces. When it comes to talking about some overconfidence from people we might designate as PMC, it would be important to let those people know that not everyone carries around the same cultural toolkit or had the same cultural opportunities. We must plainly ask them to move back when they suck up too much air in conversations. Ehrenreich illustrates this in an interview with Jacobin assistant editor Alex Press about the purpose she had in coining the term PMC. She emphasizes that anyone who is committed to the movement ought to exercise the humility to listen to people and to avoid using people as unthinking props. These are human tests of character and passing them can build trust across divisions of class, race, gender, or any other social division. The elitist wielding of liberal sensitivity to multicultural knowledge over other people’s heads is what has given “liberal” a bad connotation for many people.Some may invoke Ehrenreich anyway to say that class background neatly determines ideology or amount of dislike for people in general. But I think Ehrenreich sufficiently addresses her intentions in her interview with Alex Press, so I will say no more on questions about personal behavior.

I would be disappointed if any DSA member demonstrated sour behavior (like what Ehrenreich speaks about) to someone receiving a Resolution 9 stipend. Elitism is a serious error that does not go away with or without Resolution 9. With Resolution 9, the possibility at least remains open that Standing Committees stay vigilant of how elitism can ruin their chances of enlisting a new member or engaging in a new mutual political-educational project with other DSA/non-DSA activists. With that said, elitism would worst of all harm the reputation of our organization.

Final Justifications: My Approach to Radical Political Community in Greater Sacramento

The research that informed the justification for Resolution 9 within its text was inspired from a mental connection I was able to draw between points Mike Davis raised in his Dig interview and research about Sacramento that I have previously encountered. In his second point in response to Denvir’s question about leftwing internationalism in the States, Mike Davis identified that immigrant youth and youth of color from within the United States demonstrate the most internationalism –the most interest in the prospects of the oppressed all over the world. The potential for an internationalist current to take root in a way that elevates the potential of these latent constituencies will not be realized if we on the left, as Davis says, “remain content to stay within the same left-populist shell.” By left-populist, I think what Davis means is the bubble of progressive voices framing everything as a fight between the American people and an oligarchy, but who steer away from agitating the staid, ahistorical imagination of suburban middle class culture. To the extent that this appears to be another proxy argument for again castigating the often-slurred “downwardly mobile professional-managerial class” in the DSA, Davis in the same half-hour brings up that it is the upper-echelon of this class that volunteers.However, it may be left to this upper-echelon to figure out how to step outside of its comfort zone (or ideological reading corner).

Some may quote Davis from the interview I cited to say that class composition has a neat direct causal impact on the decisions over strategy in a socialist organization.The assignment of a correspondence between political outlook and class composition in revolutionary organizations has precedent in two other historical situations. With Trotsky, some may see his labeling (or mislabeling) of a “Right Opposition” made up of peasant landowners as a political error of his that closed off the opportunity to challenge Stalin before it was too late. But it was Mao Tse-tung who is often credited as the first to articulate a related concept of this phenomenon of class fractional interests in revolutionary parties for general application. Applied during the Cultural Revolution, this idea was extended into a bigger claim that all differences of opinion were a reflection of class outlook or which class people would identify with: bourgeois or proletarian. This was called the thesis of two-line struggle. It is the idea that any revolutionary organization inevitably develops a camp within itself that seeks to become a new bourgeoisie or that slowly becomes an objectively counterrevolutionary headquarters (Max Elbaum, p. 158, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che). Unfortunately, we do not need to look far to find examples of socialist sectarian infighting either inspired by these ideas or unknowingly repeating similar behavior. I will return to this two-line struggle thesis further below but with modifications.

I agree that class composition can have an influence on our thinking. What almost gets overlooked in this acknowledgment however is that practices, or mechanisms, for organizational acknowledgment of internal class composition allows an organization the chance, or process, to think of how to account for the current composition as a variable in that organization’s interpretation of events and its planning of interventions and campaigns. I certainly think that campaigns outside of the organization must be tied to interventions within the organization. Stretching out too far runs the risk of being industrious in activism without adequate reflection. Spending too much energy refining differences of opinion within runs the risk of being insular in thinking without genuine connections to people. I think Resolution 9 would foster the opportunity to acknowledge our class composition in a process that could bridge between internal educational interventions and external strategic campaigns.

Passing Resolution 9 would give us a process that indirectly would require us to unify thinking between internal interventions and external campaigns and keep both sides (inside/outside DSA) relevant for the Sacramento Area. It would benefit us by forcing us to grasp the latent composition of what a majoritarian cross-class alliance in this region would look like. Davis himself says that he thinks that the principal problem for Marxist analyses of politics in general is “the failure to map comprehensively the entire field of property relations and their derivative conflicts.” (p. 178, Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx’s Lost Theory) This means we need more economic interpretation of how people make a living here in order to make sense of how different demands may be understood by different class fractions or labor markets. Steps in that direction of both study and struggle could help us develop the concrete analysis needed for organizing both our chapter and those constituencies with accessible tools to collectively think through what links our oppressions together.

Here are working definitions I use when thinking about politics in the Sacramento DSA, in the Sacramento radical left community at large, and the labor movement in Greater Sacramento:

• Socialism is the direct rule of the proletariat (derived from Latin for “offspring”) or total working class, paid and unpaid labor.
• Internationalism is the principle that democratic socialists must view the liberation of workers and oppressed peoples around the world as fundamental to overcoming capitalism.
• Critique is the field of function that exposes hierarchy to its alternatives or at minimum the possibility of an alternative.
• Functions as such are the effects of processes within a social system that may either contribute to or detract from its maintenance or development.
• Angela Davis has said, “Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.’” Politics has the function of demonstrating the answer to the question “What grips the majority of decision-makers in this setting?” Therefore, the function of radical politics demonstrates the answer to “What grasps the majority at their roots?”

For investigating what cross-class alliances may need to be fostered both through and by our organization, I thought it was important to invert the function of a two-line struggle theorem. Frantz Fanon,the Algerian theorist of psychological decolonization, had written in The Wretched of the Earth about two zones in Algeria when it was a French colony:

The zone where the natives live is not complementary to the zone inhabited by the settlers. The two zones are opposed, but not in the service of a higher unity. Obedient to the rules of pure Aristotelian logic, they both [38] follow the principle of reciprocal exclusivity. No conciliation is possible, for of the two terms, one is superfluous. [39]

Upon hearing this passage at an event hosted by our chapter’s International Committee –a screening of the documentary Concerning Violence – I had developed a modified two-line struggle theoremto guide my thinking about the prerogatives of the modernized proletariat in the United States. My aim here is to share a conceptual compass forfacing the direction of a mutual decolonization of our needs and desires from market-driven devotion to the production of commodities. Here is what I came up with:

• A bourgeois political theory in form is what kind of politics that seeks to attract a new market of labor-power to change other markets of labor-power to produce more profit/commodities.
• A proletarian political theory in form is what kind of politics that seeks to decolonize its labor of commodity relations to negate commoditization in specific spheres of social production.

Part of a program or project to map Sacramento’s oppressed constituencies I think must march through the research of economic sociologist Dr. Jesus Hernandez. I believe his research makes him the closest person to a Mike Davis for Sacramento in a way similar to how Mike Davis made his name analyzing the LA region. The justification text in Resolution 9 already summarizes in broad-scope what I had drawn from my days as a previous student of Hernandez. We must be keen to identify the people whose class interest lies with the power structure in our metropolitan system of governance. Thusly, we could take a more concentrated approach to exposing the contradictions in our regional political economy. We have already seen the unwillingness of the power structure to protect and serve its people. I would say that the work of the Nathaniel Colley Coalition is doing much of the analytical work of defending the historical-material legacy of civil rights liberalism in our region. The civil rights legal community in Sacramento actually reformed the institutional-material conditions for people in Sacramento and across the United States. (See our Housing Committee to learn more about a recent setback in that coalition’s fight in a decision by Sacramento City Council to move forward with demolitions at Seavey Circle to make way for the West Broadway Specific Plan.) The fact of a larger landscape of historical-material conditions that have a history of being challenged locally must bring us to the recognition that our active membership would have to be more than teachers but also, or more so, students of the people we are aligning ourselves with. Voting no on Resolution 9 would merely but indefinitely postpone this fundamental and necessary task.