Spreading Socialism Throughout the Land

Hello DSA Membership!

We are a coalition of like-minded candidates for NPC running in mutual support.

We aren’t a slate (at least, not in the traditional sense); underpinning our diversity of ideology and tactics is a commitment to core principles which we aim to hold DSA leadership to, regardless of sectarian or “party” lines.

The Friends and Comrades believe in:

the autonomy of local chapters transparent leadership beholden to membership at the highest levels preserving the multi-tendency nature of our organization the prioritization of doing the work over maintaing a mainstream ideology maintaining the largely apolitical administrative nature of the NPC

The Friends and Comrades are:

Hello, all. I’m Delé Balogun and I’m running for the National Political Committee of DSA. I’m running on a platform of developing a long term project for building a mass working class, socialist movement with DSA leading the charge.

My areas of focus include black and brown liberation, Palestine liberation and BDS, LGTBQI liberation, strengthening DSA’s multi-tendency core, multiracial solidarity, building a mass labor movement/party, socialist electoral strategy, and envisioning a future socialist society.

If I’m elected to NPC, this is the foundation from which my work will be based.

You can read more about my platform here:

https://delebalogunfornpc.wordpress.com/

I’m running for NPC because I have the time and skills needed to ensure that DSA will continue to grow and remain a dynamic organization. In the past six months, I have gone through the entire process of forming a chapter, holding elections, and managing a local’s day to day operations. This experience has made me particularly enthusiastic about helping new and/or small chapters get the resources and assistance they need, not only at the national level but also within their regions and states.

When the next huge membership surge happens, we need to be prepared. I will do my part to ensure that we are by working as hard as I can to build out a robust infrastructure at all levels. This infrastructure must not be primarily focused on vertical structures between national and locals. Instead, we must encourage the formation of horizontal structures: member to member, and chapter to chapter. No local should be forgotten, and no comrade should feel lost.

Check out my candidate website here: http://npc.jmb.cat , and feel free to send me an email at jordan.m.buchman (a) gmail.com if you have any questions.

My name’s Alexandra Dudley, and I’m running for NPC because I believe local autonomy is one of the strengths of DSA, and I want to make sure that continues. I think National should serve as a conduit between locals and a source for tools and structures that locals may use as they grow, and NPC should remain largely apolitical.

As a multi-tendency, big-tent organization, members and locals have varied opinions and experience building solidarity where they are — what works in Central Indiana may not work in New Hampshire. We should honor that as we honor the values of transparency and action. All power to the locals!

For more on my platform and a picture of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, check out my candidate statement at https://oh-by-jove.tumblr.com/post/163569259503/npc

I am a Nurse who was raised by a Quaker feminist to fight injustice wherever I saw it, and to have empathy with the vulnerable of society. I have seen the devastation wrought on working Americans by our oligarchs, and we must build DSA into an organization that will fight to bring the business class to heel.

As DSA continues to grow, we need to organize internally to ensure accountability to the rank and file, prepare for the struggles ahead, and build a vision of the future that reflects our desires for radical change.

We need to improve our messaging, by working to identify areas where we can define the narrative, and in the spaces where the status quo is dominated by neoliberal ideologies, we need to build compelling narratives that tap into the latent power of American left-wing grass-roots populism.

I will support and encourage local autonomy and initiatives at the branch, chapter, and regional level, to create laboratories of praxis that we can study and adapt to similar contexts nationwide

I want to ensure that socialism’s message of human liberation is front and center in our discourse and that the radical expansion of the personal freedom of working people from every walk of life is a priority in all of DSA’s work.

Check out my positions at johnhieronymus.com/home

My name is Alexander Kolokotronis. I am a DSA member based in the Central Connecticut chapter. My platform primarily focuses on democratizing the workplace, and the municipality. I am currently a rank-and-file union organizer with UNITE-HERE Local 33. This past May I participated in the “Fast Against Slow”: I did not eat for 8 days to urge Yale University to negotiate a contract with our graduate-student labor union, where I am currently a political science PhD student.

In New York City I was a Worker Cooperative Development Assistant at Make the Road NY, and the Student Coordinator for NYC Network of Worker Cooperatives. With both organizations I helped develop startup worker cooperatives as well as successfully advocated for city government support of employee-owned businesses. In 2014, I founded Student Organization for Democratic Alternatives (SODA). With SODA I started or aided in the creation of four participatory budgeting (PB) processes. I have also helped facilitate the intra-organizational PB process of The Participatory Budgeting Project.

If elected to NPC I will work to design and implement internal participatory processes, and create an infrastructure for DSA to assist DSA-member business owners seeking to convert their enterprise to a worker cooperative. Contact me here.

I’m Bradly “Brad” McGarr, a member of the Twin Cities chapter in Minnesota. I am running for NPC largely as a voice to help ensure that the strengths of DSA, both our big-tent political unity and our commitment to bottom-up democracy remain the foundation of the organization going forward.

We have exciting opportunities ahead of us, but only if we can clarify our message, reach out to people who may not realize they share our ideals, and diversify our organization. I want to ensure that the NPC remains a unifying body, receiving it’s guidance from local, state, and regional DSA bodies created by the membership and led by the rank-and-file membership.

I want ensure that options are left on the table for deliberation, push for increased cooperation with sibling organizations both domestically and globally, increased transparency of the DSA organization at all levels, and increased access to ability to participate by all members regardless of demographics or geography. I’m up to the task of serving on the NPC as much as anyone else, but I am also a working parent, not a professional organizer.

For more information, please see my full Statement of Candidacy: https://mindofmcgarr.wordpress.com/2017/07/16/statement-of-candidacy-for-dsa-npc/

As a current member of the NPC, I have born witness to the enormous growth of DSA and the work it took to foster it. Part of our success is due to our common belief that we are a big tent organization on the Left that respects the democratic process. Due to these convictions, the organization is as diverse and multi-tendency as it has ever been. Yet, there is much more work to be done. I believe the path forward is to build upon this legacy with a focus on Community and Unity.

Born to teenage parents in a small town, I was taken in and raised by my grandparents. My grandmother, who worked on an assembly line, instilled in me a tremendous respect for working class feminism. She showed me that women can do anything a man can do and deserve the same opportunities to pursue a fulfilled life. My grandfather is a Mexican immigrant, foundry worker and union man who believes in hard work and standing up for yourself when you are getting screwed over. Once I discovered Socialism, it was an easy sell.

In my adult life, my values drove me to join the DSA. I became active in the Atlanta area, and eventually found myself on the Metro Atlanta DSA steering committee. From there I pursued and won a seat on the National Political Committee of the National DSA, where I helped found the Solidarity Economy Working group and assisted various other committees.

The most important thing to me outside of family (my partner, Hope and our dog Frida) is my mission to build an organization and society where everyone has a seat at the table, and where everyone has a say in guiding their destiny.

You can read more about my platform here: https://brandonpaytoncarrillo.com/npc-platform/

I’m here to listen first. Listening is one of the most vital skills to organizing. I believe in the power of our locals across the country, that you know what’s best for your chapter.

I want to listen and help you get what you need to be successful in making the most impact in your community.

To do that the NPC must have transparency to build trust with the members they are working for; have excellent communication skills, not only listen, but help people coordinate in all 50 states; and understand the needs and surpluses among all chapters so that we all can work together.

I believe that we must share our internal politics, externally, and our external politics, internally. It’s why I’m running for NPC.

I want to use my experience organizing people in nonprofits and private companies; my knowledge of rural, suburban, and urban challenges; and my time to make you excited to wake up in the morning and think about how DSA is going to help you build a fairer, democratic, socialist future.

You can learn more about my platform at: https://www.medium.com/@dan_pozzie

My name’s Jetta Rae. I’m from Oakland. I see myself, foremost, a neighborhood organizer. I don’t see this as contrary or in conflict with my desire to participate in national administration of the DSA.

For me, one intrinsically informs the other.

My experience as a frontline activist — organizing free meals, clothing drives, direct actions against neo-Nazis and police — has facilitated a strong tendency towards small, focused organizations united through a decentralized network of solidarity and mutual aid.

DSA should commit itself to tasks of national consequence — single payer for all, dismantling the prisons, disarming the police, ending deportations. That agenda, in its immensity, is best enacted through small, agile chapters actively engaged on the front lines of struggle in solidarity with local organizers.

For me, “power to the locals” isn’t a pithy political precept, but a pragmatism rooted in radical trust. We have to operate with the trust that people engaged in local struggles know what their chains look like.

Likewise, we should work to earn the trust of those communities through political support focused on improving immediate material conditions. If we can’t win the neighborhoods, we won’t win the cities.

I am running for NPC primarily to continue supporting DSA in its transition into the largest contemporary socialist organization in the United States. My administrative skills, historical knowledge, ideological positions, and organizing experience can be of use in restructuring the national organization to better support chapter, regional, statewide, and national campaign.

I joined DSA in 2014, having founded a YDS chapter at my alma mater, Hamilton College. There i worked to build relationships with the Women’s Center to highlight the importance of international abortion rights. I also helped push a diversity curriculum requirement for the school alongside the Black and Latino Student Union. Furthermore, I have been active in supporting labor unions and workers center both in Los Angeles and New York City.

I have had experience organizing students, tenants, undocumented carwash workers, Uber drivers, and fast food workers. I want DSA to focus more on combating anti-immigrant politics at the workplace and in coalition building as well as focus on internal structural development to stay as an independent organization from either the Democratic Party or Labor Unions.

We can work tactically within the Democratic Party and throughout the trade union movement when need be, but we should remain independent as DSA to avoid being influenced by organization. We should be influencing coalitions.

You can learn more about my platform here: https://medium.com/r/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdsaconvention.org%2Fnpc%2Fcandidate%2Fjack-l-suria-linares%2F