If you take a look at the organizational structure of Philly DSA, you might notice that there are a lot of committees. They tend to have clearly defined functions in their titles; there’s Outreach, Social, Political Education, and so on. But there’s also one that’s… a flower?

Unfolding the petals of LILAC’s name to discover its full title–the Local Initiative/Local Action Committee–does little to dispel the mystery around its function. What’s the scope of “local?” Initiative toward what, and what kind of action? The answers to these questions, it turns out, are as vague as the name itself.

Compounding the issue is the fact that LILAC is now distributing its own voting guide for our upcoming general meeting, something no other committee does. Members of LILAC have also formulated a Libertarian Socialist Caucus, and another group they call a “Campaign For a Better Philly DSA,” the latter of which associates itself with the LILAC voting guide.

All this strangeness around LILAC has a simple explanation: it isn’t actually a committee at all, but a reform caucus posing as one. Its purpose is not to perform an essential task within the local, but to push a political stance.

There is nothing wrong with members organizing around shared politics within their chapters. I do it, and you should too. But LILAC has pulled a bait-and-switch on the membership by disguising itself as a committee, which gives it a veneer of neutrality as it recruits members to its platform. The original resolution to establish LILAC billed it as a simple, functional committee that would draft campaign resolutions. It has since vastly expanded in scope, attempting to pitch its leaderless, “anything goes” structure as an alternative to the principles that currently define our movement.

To my mind, this will not make a better Philly DSA. It will take us back to a time when left politics were at a dead end in America.