Today’s episode will be the first of a 2 episode series on the National Convention, one of the primary democratic mechanisms within the structure of DSA. To discuss the national convention Justin Charles from the NPC will return. We’ll also be joined by Renée Paradis. Both are members of the Platform and Resolutions Subcommittee.
Justin Charles is a member of North Brooklyn DSA, and has been a member of the DSA National Political Committee since July 2020.
Renée Paradis is a member of East Bay DSA, and has served on the Resolutions and Platform convention committee for the last two conventions. She’s also a member of the CA-DSA State Committee and a past chair of DSA's National Electoral Committee.
Today’s episode will be the first of a 2 episode series on the National Convention, one of the primary democratic mechanisms within the structure of DSA. To discuss the national convention Justin Charles from the NPC will return. We’ll also be joined by Renée Paradis. Both are members of the Platform and Resolutions Subcommittee.
Justin Charles is a member of North Brooklyn DSA, and has been a member of the DSA National Political Committee since July 2020.
Renée Paradis is a member of East Bay DSA, and has served on the Resolutions and Platform convention committee for the last two conventions. She’s also a member of the CA-DSA State Committee and a past chair of DSA's National Electoral Committee.
This is CLASS, an official podcast of the Democratic Socialists of America National Political Education Committee. My name is Elton L. K. As an organization that's reason for existence is the struggle for democracy, I thought I'd take some time to discuss the democratic mechanisms within the structure of DSA. DSA holds a convention every two years. At the convention each time, Representatives from DSA local chapters vote on a bunch of things, such as the organization's priorities and National Political Committee, also known as the MPC. We recently had three members of the MPC, Justin, Jose, and Sofia, on the podcast to discuss What is Socialism? Today's episode will be the first of a two episode series on the National Convention. To discuss the National Convention, Justin Charles from the MPC will return. We'll also be joined by Rene Paradis. Both are members of the Platform and Resolution Subcommittee. And for clarification, the DSA National Convention is different from the Socialism Conference. This year, coincidentally, both will be held in Chicago, about a month from each other. The DSA National Convention occurs every two years, and it gives DSA members an opportunity to vote on things that affect the organization. The Socialism Conference is a four day political education conference featuring dozens of panels, lectures, and workshops organized by groups from all over the country. DSA is one of the participating organizations at the Socialism Conference, but it is primarily organized by our comrades at Haymarket Books. You may remember that in the past, class released panel discussions from the 2022 Socialism Conference. The 2023 Socialism conference will be held in Chicago, September 1st through fourth. If you're interested in attending, the link is in the show notes, but back to the 2023 D s A National Convention. Let's turn to our guest, Justin and Renee. Okay, first question, what is the DSA National Convention?
Justin Charles:
Um, I'll, I'll, I'll take a stab at this and then, Renee can fill in whatever gaps I leave. Um, so the, the natural convention is a event that occurs every two years. Um, it is DSAs, um, procedurally highest, you know, uh, decision making body at the convention, um, it's basically our only opportunity to amend our constitution and bylaws, the logistical technical stuff aside, the convention is, you know. Our opportunity every two years to get together as members of the organization, um, and talk about and debate and discuss what are we doing? Uh, and what are we going to, what are we going to do for the next 2 years for us to make decisions about our priorities? And it's, uh, it's a lot of fun too. You know, you get to see folks that you don't get to see that often. It's fun. Um, it's a lot of work. You're in a room debating, uh, resolutions, uh, for a long time, uh, which can be kind of tiring, but it's all worth it, uh, to build our organization.
Renée Paradis:
The only thing I would add is just the, um, that the convention, uh, the people meeting the delegates who will be meeting in Chicago. It's it's over 1000 DSA members who are elected chapter by chapter. So the thing that's unique about convention is that it has representation from every chapter, um, across the country from the smallest. Uh, delegation sending 1 person from some smaller chapters up to, uh, New York City's, um, uh, ridiculous number of delegates, uh, who will, who will be there. We decide, you know, the political priorities of the organization for 2 years, and we also elect the national leadership body, the NPC, um, that, uh, is sort of charged with carrying out the priorities set at the convention over the course of the 2 years in between conventions. Um, so the 1st, uh, DSA convention, since our extraordinary growth was in 2017, also in Chicago, since then we had 2019 in Atlanta and 2021 online. And so this will be us coming back in person after, um, 4 years, uh, since the last in person
Elton LK:
convention. What does the platform and resolution subcommittee do, and how is it determined who is on the subcommittee?
Renée Paradis:
So the subcommittee is, is one of many convention subcommittees. There's a rules subcommittee, um, an elections and credentials subcommittee. Or maybe it's rules and credentials and elections. I always forget which goes where, um, programming subcommittee. Um, and all of those folks are working to put on the convention. And so the particular charge for the resolutions and platform committee is, um. Gathering all of the items that either DSA members, or the national political committee, or national priorities committees want to put on the convention agenda surveying the delegates to see what. Uh, resolutions or proposals people want to have considered, um, working with authors of, uh, proposals to potentially consolidate, um, ones that that concern similar items and new this year. Um, a large part of the convention agenda is going to be taken up with these priority resolutions by the national committees. And so we're also encouraging authors of standalone resolutions that might work better as amendments to the consensus resolutions to either consider or, or definitely reformulate their proposals as those kinds of amendments. So, it's basically. Doing the administrative work and the political work to put together a convention agenda that, um, reflects what delegates want to consider and the important, um, political, uh, questions facing the organization and structural questions.
Elton LK:
What is a national committee consensus resolution?
Justin Charles:
The consensus resolutions are, we have national bodies, um, who we've asked, um, you know, a select group of, of national bodies, um, To submit resolutions that the body has decided, um, you know, as a whole, um, represents what they want to do, um, for the next, you know, for the next couple of years. Um, and part of the reason, you know, the NPC wanted to do this is because we, you know, we, we think, um, one of the ways that we can kind of arrive at, at some level of, of. Unity and, you know, consensus as an organization is if our national bodies can kind of put forward, uh, you know, a road map, um, and that we can, we can, we can get together a convention and decide whether or not we agree with that road map. One of the things that I found interesting is, you know, we kind of expected that the consensus resolutions might have some, like, dissent from within the groups, for example, from within the committees. But really, we haven't really seen that. We've seen kind of a relatively high level of unity for folks in these national bodies, which is, which is encouraging. Um, but the, the, the committees that are going to be submitting that have submitted consensus resolutions are the National Electoral Committee, the Green New Deal Coordinating Committee, the Housing Justice Commission, the Growth and Development Committee, International Committee, National Labor Commission. Uh, the multiracial organizing committee and why DSA. Um, so we see these groups, um, as, as kind of representative of, like, big representative streams of work for what DSA does and. Through the submission of these consensus resolutions, which then general membership can submit amendments to, we can kind of centralize the debate and discussion around the things that. The N. P. C. understands to be kind of core to what D. S. A. does.
Elton LK:
What are some of the National Committee consensus resolutions that will be up for a vote at this year's convention? Can you talk about what it is that will be controversial?
Renée Paradis:
I guess what I would want to focus on is what, which of the consensus resolutions are drawing amendments. Um, because I think that's going to be where we see a lot of discussion and debate and unsurprisingly, I think the 2 that have drawn the most amendments so far, and we can see it because we have a hub where people are submitting their amendments to gather signatures and, you know, people also will circulate amendments in various ways unsurprisingly, the 2 that I think have drawn the most amendments so far, or the electoral, um, uh, committee consensus resolution, Um, DSA's electoral strategy has been discussed and debated at every convention that I've attended. I've attended all of the ones and since 2017, and I don't expect this year to be any different. And we've also seen some amendments being circulated to the National Labor Commission consensus resolution around the sort of level of priority given to various kinds of engagement with the labor movement and some of the language in that resolution. So I would anticipate that we'll see the most debate around around those two. Priority resolutions
Elton LK:
describe the National Labor Commission's consensus resolution called our role in a resurgent labor movement.
Renée Paradis:
So, I would say the National Labor Commission resolution is, is pretty, um. Uh, uh, continues the work that the NLC has been doing. Um, and I think the amendments that we've seen are about, um, the level of priority given to various kinds of work and specifically, uh, to what extent the rank and file strategy should dominate our labor work and whether or not that frame should be the 1 through which we engage with the labor movement. Predominantly. Um, I, you know, uh, will admit to not being as, um. Thank you. Much in this debate, as I am in some of the electoral debates, but that's, I think the, the biggest pushback we've seen so far on the, on the NLC resolution. There's also a proposal in the NLC resolution to pay the 2 co chairs of the NLC. So there is an amendment circulating to take that provision out. Um, there are many proposals at this year's convention, including the, the NLCs. Propose a resolution, but also including some standalone resolutions and structural change that would increase the number of elected DSA leaderships who receive some kind of remuneration from the organization. So, right now, the members of the steering committee of the NPC, which is 5 people are entitled to receive stipends from a proposal that was passed at the last convention. And there are multiple proposals that would expand that level of of paid national leadership, including the NLC resolution.
Elton LK:
What is the motivation behind paying certain DSA leadership positions? One of the
Justin Charles:
things that we've, we've, we've kind of encountered over the past couple of years is we don't necessarily have the capacity to do all the things we want to do. Um, you know, as Renee said earlier, convention is where we decide all the stuff we want to do, but we. Are basically saying to the NPC that we would elect a convention. It's your job to go figure out how we actually do this stuff. It's proven quite difficult for a body of 16 people or 18 people, including YDSA reps to decide from all of the stuff. Usually way too much stuff that gets past the convention. What is most important and how do we actually achieve it? We see, we've seen proposals, you know, a proposal around increasing the size of the NPC, but also, you know, as we're discussing, you know, how, you know, compensating members of the NPC and other national body leadership. And I think in an, in an effort to incentivize people to like. You know, if you're getting paid, um, this is like something very important that, you know, you're going to be setting aside quite a bit of time for. There is a kind of urge to professionalize our approach to how we do our organizing in DSA. I think that there's, there's positives and negatives to that, but I don't think that like, I mean, this is me editorializing a bit. I don't think like, Paying people is the silver bullet that some might think it is back to
Elton LK:
the NLC resolution our role in a resurgent labor movement. I won't go into details, but I wanted to. mention some of the highlights in this resolution. They are things that may be familiar from previous conventions. First of all, rank and file strategy. Then there's organizing the unorganized, standing in solidarity with all workers in struggle, continuing our work in DSA's national labor priorities. such as Amazon and UPS, building DSA's capacity for growing membership, and advancing union democracy. Okay, so, given that these are the things in the resolution, What is the debate around whether or not we should pass this
Renée Paradis:
resolution? The the reason that we want to pass this resolution is we want to continue our labor work Um, I think that you know One of the reasons why the consensus resolution model was adopted is there's this always this push and pull at convention between member written resolutions, which may be somewhat orthogonal to the main work that DSA does sort of You know, day in day out on the electoral and labor fronts. Um, and so doing the consensus resolutions allows, like Justin said, these national bodies that are going to be engaged in work over the next 2 years to outline what they see that work is looking like and have a political discussion about what that work should look like. And, you know, I think with respect to labor, we, I think every socialist agrees that the DSA should do labor work. It's, you know, the, the essential for any socialist organization to be really engaged in and matched with the labor movement. Um, and I think that there's actually like, as, as with many things that DSA broad consensus about all the kinds of work we should be doing. Um, and a lot of the debate tends to be around that, uh, those small differences in emphasis. So, you know, from, from my perspective, you know, I, my view of labor work and DSA is yes, and that we should be, you know, um, engaged with the labor movement on all fronts and, and, you know, encouraging socialists to coalesce a left pole of the labor movement. You know, in the, in the country in the world, and I think that there's no question that the labor consensus resolution will pass because I think there's broad support for it. I think the question is, in what form it passes and and whether or not some of these amendments that shift emphasis, um, end up passing on the floor.
Justin Charles:
Yeah, I would just add that. I think the, you know, what we're seeing, you know, in the consensus resolution is basically saying we want to keep doing what we're doing with a few additions. I think the amendments, you know, or to some extent, kind of reorienting, um. The existing labor strategy, um, or seek to reorient. And I think, I mean, the, I guess the, the, the, the key point of debate is like, to what extent would the amendments deemphasize, um, the existing emphasis, which is the rank and file strategy, uh, in favor of a kind of, you know, broader reconfile has been the emphasis. Um, but. Organizing new shops, DSA members organizing wherever it is they already are, you know, and I think also the question of how we relate to existing union leadership. So, I think, um, and I think this is an interesting. Debate because I think it kind of relates to kind of the larger questions that are happening outside of this resolution, particularly in the, in the electoral resolution, which is like, what does it mean for DSA to be independent from existing union leadership, or if you want to. Put it in words that have certain connotations, labor bureaucracy, or how does DSA relate to, you know, democratic party establishment? What does independence mean? Does independence just merely mean declaring ourselves, uh, the third party? Uh, does it mean building up our own infrastructure? While also relating to existing, uh, electoral landscape, because, you know, the law of the land is, as it regards parties, is rigid and not, not all that hospitable to us, but like it exists and we have to, we have to negotiate with that regardless whether we like to or not. There's all sorts of questions around what it means for us to be an independent entity struggling against entrenched power in a whole bunch of terrains. So I think that's, an overarching theme for, for a lot of the stuff happening at convention, whether it be in labor or electoral or outside of that.
Elton LK:
Thanks for listening to Class, an official podcast of the Democratic Socialists of America National Political Education Committee. Thank you to Casey Sticker for sound engineering, theme music, and editing. And to Palmer Conrad for help with content and administrative work. If you're inspired by anything we've been talking about, if you think the system is rigged and democracy is the solution, join DSA. Become a member. If you're already a member of DSA, please share this podcast with your local chapter. CLASS is intended to be a resource for chapters and members to articulate, apply, and share socialist theory with DSA and the wider working class. Also, remember to rate and review us on iTunes or your favorite podcatcher.
