Twin Cities DSA

Gender: Nonbinary (they/them only)

I have been highly active in socialist and leftist organizing both in TCDSA and in my neighborhood. In my day job, I try to shift a neighborhood organization towards systems change and do housing justice organizing. In my free time, I push for restoration of rent stabilization and founded and co-edit On the Left Bank the tcdsa lit & art zine.

I’m proud to be an active socialist and also served on the St. Paul Branch Organizing Committee for a year.

My values are socialist and anti-authoritarian. I believe we should strive to remove hierarchy where possible and create a mass movement, light on jargon and accessible to all, with translated materials and paid organizers, fighting for worker’s rights, the rights of our disabled and marginalized neighbors, racial and economic justice, and public ownership of the means of production.

The end goal of any socialist regime ought be eventual dissolution of hierarchy with abundance for all and self governance both a right and an obligation. I believe we need the mechanisms of the state to redistribute power and create structures of comprehensive education and self-governance, but in time the many hierarchies of a massive federal state ought be phased out.

In DSA we can work towards this by integrating democracy thoroughly and at every level, encouraging debate, and staying open to ideas from across the revolutionary and left spectrum while being guided by our hearts and our principles of freedom and abundance for all. A better world is possible. I’m glad to be with y’all on this journey.

Biracial, She/Her pronouns.

I’m interested in being a delegate because I have become very active in the chapter since joining in 2022, and would love to help represent Twin Cities DSA at the national convention. As co-chair of Labor Branch and Pol Ed Committee, and an active member of Soc Fems and the new Health Justice working group, I feel I have a diverse perspective to bring that encompasses many aspects of our socialist program. I have not been a delegate before, or attended the national conventions before, but would be honored to have the opportunity to go as a delegate!

It/they, auxiliary he/him pronouns.

I’m a trans organizer, I’ve spent the last 7 years fighting for our rights. I want to make sure there are voices like mine in the room as we make decisions about how DSA can be supportive to us during this national crisis. I joined DSA this year and am getting more involved in the twin cities SIO group and femsoc group

He/Him pronouns.

I’ve been a DSA member since 2018. I’m running to go so I have the opportunity to learn from comrades nationally and represent some of the work going on here in labor and intl. Would love to build ties ahead of our 2024 strike plans and chop it up about international work folks may have going on in their chapters

They pronouns.

I am super excited to connect with socialists across the country to learn from their projects and discuss the structure and strategy of the largest socialist org in the US since before World War II. I got involved in DSA in 2020, when I started Cannon Valley DSA in Northfield. Unfortunately, our chapter struggled to remain active and formally dissolved at the beginning of this year, but I learned a lot from the experience and connected with many other small chapters with similar struggles throughout the state. Since moving to the Cities in the fall with other comrades from Northfield looking to plug into the labor movement, I have been working at Starbucks as a member of Starbucks Workers United, and supported efforts to build a Young Workers Caucus across industries in the Cities. I am currently on the TCDSA Labor OC. Before getting involved in DSA I was active in a local revolutionary youth org in Northfield (which has since expanded to the Cities and named itself Red Pine, and which I am still involved in) and was involved in high school youth organizing, the fight against the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, and a variety of labor efforts. A core goal of mine at convention is to connect with other labor organizers about how to support upcoming labor struggles and the Starbucks campaign in particular, as well as to connect with other leaders from small and rural chapters to plan how our org can better support the development of such chapters.

I see two critical areas that we need to discuss at convention:
1. We must figure out how to reform our structure. Despite proposals being presented at every convention, very few structural reform proposals have been passed since our massive growth period started in 2016, and we still have a very similar structure to when we had fewer than 10,000 members nationwide. Instead, political caucuses and siloed committees and working groups have taken on much of the structural burden. This has hindered effective communication and coordination across our organization. Now, our period of rapid growth has ended and we have begun a gradual decline in membership. Now is the time that we must consolidate our gains and restructure our org in a more effective way to provide a foundation for future growth.
2. There is an ongoing debate over our long term strategy for gaining political power. This plays out currently in debates over our relationship with our elected officials and the Democratic Party. Largely, this falls along the lines of an Oppositional approach towards the Democrats that prioritizes appealing to a base who are skeptical of or disillusioned with the Dems and differentiating ourselves from the broader progressive milieu by backing candidates who are publicly critical of and oppositional towards the Dems and will advocate for socialism as an alternative vs a Coalitional approach towards the Dems that prioritizes appealing to a base of people who identify as liberals and progressives and working with other progressive orgs to pass concrete reforms and slowly win them over to socialism. Of course, there is more nuance within and between these approaches, and the strategy we ultimately decide on will not be so clear cut. Personally, I largely agree with the positions put forward by caucuses like Bread & Roses and the Marxist Unity Group, which fall on the more Oppositional side of the spectrum, although both sides make strong arguments and I will proudly work in whatever way I can to ensure that whatever approach we democratically decide to try is carried out as effectively as possible. It is our duty to win.

He/Him pronouns.

Hi! My name is Ben Caswell, and I’ve been a member of TCDSA since 2021. My introduction to DSA was helping start the UMN-Twin Cities YDSA chapter, which was foundational to my start as an organizer. After I graduated, I started working directly for socialist candidates for elected office, including our endorsed candidates (now elected officials!) Jason Chavez and Zaynab Mohamed. I have also helped get our Socialists in Office committees off the ground and have been pretty active in our electoral branch. I’m interested in attending the national convention because I have thoughts on national DSA’s relationship to local chapters like TCDSA and I’d like to learn more about/get involved in our national chapter. I regret not being able to make the chapter meeting this Sunday, but I will be out of state doing some organizing work in Philadelphia during that time. Thanks so much and I’ll see y’all at the June chapter meeting!

He/Him pronouns.

Over the past year and a half, I have been immersing myself in the TCDSA chapter to varying degrees. While I have not been the most involved person in the chapter, I would love to have the experience of helping represent us in Chicago, and it would be my honor to be one of this chapter’s delegates.

Nonbinary, He/they pronouns.

I’ve been a DSA member since 2017. Like many of you, I was inspired by Bernie’s “political revolution” and heeded his call to get involved in organizing and politics. While I’ve maintained DSA membership since, I’ve spent most of my time inside the DFL: working with candidates, caucuses, and conventions to promote the endorsement and election of democratic socialist candidates and party leaders. In 2020, I founded the Democratic Socialist Caucus which is organizing socialists in the DFL to make the party more democratic and accountable. One project I’ve spearheaded this year is the Democratic Socialist Day on the Hill, which TC DSA signed on to, to bring together socialists and friends from all parts of Minnesota around legislative issues, to squeeze the best policies possible out of this DFL trifecta. I’m a big rules and parliamentary procedure nerd. I have a few years of experience chairing or serving as a parliamentarian of large meetings and conventions. I strive to make Robert’s Rules and procedure as accessible as possible. Last fall, it was my pleasure to serve as parliamentarian and assist in planning the chapter’s annual convention. I’ll use this experience to assist our chapter’s delegation to fully express their power and voice in the national convention. On political matters, I will support leaders and resolutions at the convention that will grow DSA’s membership and expand its coalitional work, particularly with the labor movement. I’m interested in discussing proposals that would create a more dynamic and accountable relationship between national governance and local chapters. I am pretty new to national DSA matters. I aim to learn more about the organization and strategy of DSA at a national level, meet organizers from around the country, and bring those connections to our Twin Cities chapter.

Greetings, Twin Cities DSA members! My name is Janette Zahia Corcelius (she/her/habibti). I am a 31 year old Muslim, Arab-American woman from who grew up in an interracial and interfaith household.

I am running to be a Twin Cities DSA delegate to the 2023 DSA National Convention! I am running because as a member of the DSA Labor/NLC Steering Committee (formerly known as the DSLC) I would like to fulfill my duties to push labor to be a priority at the national level. Within the last two years, we have had great success with solidarity for the Starbucks Workers United organizing campaign and I am confident we will be as successful– if not more– for the UPS Teamsters Strike Ready Campaign happening this summer!

I moved to Minneapolis the weekend after Martin Luther King Jr. Day to start a new job and career as a community organizer for the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. Before moving to Minneapolis, I lived in Fairfax, Virginia– which is a part of the DC Metro area. Before accepting my position with MFT,  I was a rank-&-file member of three unions for all seven of the years that I worked as a public school educator (WTU, FEA, & IWW). I was appointed for one year as an at-large member of the board of the Fairfax Education Association and then ran in 2021 for a two-year seat that I won. While I was a member of the FEA, I helped my local and statewide affiliate lift a ban on public sector collective bargaining where our rights were made illegal for 44 years. I was able to sharpen my organizing skills through a radical-leftist opposition caucus called the Virginia Caucus of Rank-&-File Educators (of which I was a founding member of). VCORE is under the United Caucuses of Rank & File Educators (UCORE) and Labor Notes umbrella. I was also a part of Virginia Educators United and a national facilitator for National Educators United. I was also a member of the NEA BadAss Teachers Association caucus and NEA Arab American caucus where we pushed for the NEA to adopt pro-Palestinian new business items despite Zionist opposition.

Before joining Twin Cities DSA, I was a member and leader within the Metro DC DSA. I served on the Metro DC DSA Labor Working Group and co-chair of the Metro DC DSA NOVA Branch where I helped new union organizing drives and organized strike solidarity. I feel that I am uniquely apt and equipped to serve as a first-time DSA delegate for the convention as I have utilized Robert’s Rules at other statewide and national union conventions. I am prepared for this year’s convention even as a first-time delegate as I have read, signed, and co-sponsored many resolutions and proposals for this year’s DSA Convention.
Before becoming an organizer and a card carrying socialist, I have been an activist for over a decade on many various causes and issues— everything from the Black Lives Matter movement for racial and social justice, legalizing public sector collective bargaining, pipelines resistance, legalizing marijuana, protecting and funding abortions, protecting trans/non-binary/gender expansive rights, protecting and supporting public education, closing down juvenile detention centers and disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline, and more.

DSA has been going through necessary and difficult growing pains… With the decline in membership (despite Millenials and Gen-Z being explicitly anti-capitalist), the Railroad strike aversion and debacle, DSA-electeds and Zionist alignment, and issues with anti-imperialist struggles… I am still a proud member of DSA who hopes to turn the tide on these snafus. I strongly believe we can come out from under these challenges with new strategies that tighten up the processes of our socialist organization. We need to have accountability measures for our DSA-electeds. We must spend greater focus on new labor organizing, and organizing in strategic industries by pushing our members to salt. We need to teach our DSA members how to grow our organization in this most opportune time of late-capitalist destruction. Our generation and generations below us are desperate for a new system that supports and protects them. I am tired of seeing our youth experiencing and dying from racial and gender-based violence– while suffering from despair, nihilism, and fatalism– without economic opportunities while experiencing the threat of real climate catastrophe. The reality is that union density is abysmally low in many states— especially in the south. We need a labor and climate strategy to turn the tide on economic anxiety and environmental anxiety.

My vision is that the DSA will continue to support unionization efforts across the country in local, statewide, and national capacities. I believe it is important that we connect and build coalitions with other leftist organizations and parties, labor unions, labor coalitions, and labor publications to support the inevitable and necessary need for an eventual general strike.

To achieve the world of our dreams, we must build a multi-racial working class movement that is ready to organize and fight to secure our future and DSA is the organization that can make this happen!
Vote for me, JZC as a Twin Cities DSA delegate!

He/They pronouns.

DSA is my political home, and has been for over four years. I helped start the YDSA chapter at the University of Minnesota, and have been regularly engaged within the electoral sphere of the chapters work for years. I have attended two DSA conventions, two YDSA conventions, and served as an elected member of YDSA’s highest decision making body from 2021-2022. I am eager, should I be elected as a delegate, to be a guide for other members of the delegation with less experience navigating the organization at a national level. I believe deeply in the mission of our organization, and feel that being a steward to this project is critical to the long term flourishing of working class power in this country. I consider myself a Marxist, and identify with the Party Surrogate electoral strategy for our organization, which hopes to navigate between the poles of realigning the democratic party, and plotting a break from the party (dirty break). Anti imperialism is also an essential tenet for socialists in the imperial core in my view.

Cis-male, He/Him pronouns.

I am running to represent the chapter as a delegate because I believe I have a first hand understanding of our chapter’s sentiments on important resolutions that will be debated in Chicago. I have been a paper member of DSA for a few years, but I became active in the chapter this past November. I have been so excited about the goals and programming of the chapter as a whole and Political Education in particular. With one exception, I have attended every Chapter and Political Education committee meeting in the last 7 months. In that time I co-organized two chapter debate nights for political education and am in the process of co-organizing a third debate night and a Farm-Labor documentary film viewing night. All of these events touch on core issues that will be debated in Chicago such as our relationship to the Democratic Party, our issues with maintaining discipline among elected socialists at the national level, and concerns about building and maintaining DSA membership. Though there is disagreement on exact tactics within our chapter, it is clear to me that Twin Cities socialists are tired of playing a supportive role to a Democratic Party that betrays workers at every step. If selected as a delegate, I would support resolutions that I believe increase the autonomy and negotiating power of the socialist movement in national politics. I would look to discuss every resolution vote with fellow delegates and members following the convention remotely. My wife and I rent in Minneapolis, and I work as an adjunct instructor at colleges in the Metro. I have been thrilled to see the surge of union organizations in the cities and at the University of Minnesota in particular. I see in my own work how the education industry extracts high tuition from working-class students, underpays instructors who are hired and fired each semester all to pay high salaries to a few chief administrators and funnel money to contractors with political friends. I am a committed socialist, and I would be honored to represent our growing and dynamic chapter at this historic convention.

They/He pronouns.

I’m a queer socialist up in Minneapolis. I take a different approach to socialist organizing in where as I engage in local DFL (democratic farmer labor party) electoral politics. I’m taking a different approach than many socialists in that I’m looking to use the funds and powers of the state to create systemic change locally in Minnesota.

He/Him/His pronouns.

I’ve been a DSA member since January 2019 and am active in the Electoral Committee and Socialists in Office Committee. I am also a rank and file union member with the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. If I am elected a delegate you can expect that I will vote for DSA to prioritize electoral and labor work at the convention.

Electoral: I will support proposals that build out the capacity of chapters to run their own campaigns, including communication, field operations, and candidate development. I think strong DSA-run campaigns are really important for our organization’s future. Maintaining close working relationships with electeds in office is critical as well: that’s why I have been active in our local Socialists in Office committees and will support proposals to build such committees out nationally and at local levels. Politically I think DSA should continue to take an ecumenical approach to electoral work. We should run candidates on and off the Democratic Party line and experiment with what resonates with working class voters. I think our horizon as an organization absolutely needs to be the formation of a working class party, but am open-minded about how we will get there.

Labor: It’s important for DSA to pass resolutions at this convention that will grow our ability to engage our members *as workers*. This can be contrasted to approaches that identify the core aspect of DSA’s labor work as building “organization-to-organization” connections. This coalition work is important (especially in boosting our electoral work and reaching more working class voters!), but I place more emphasis on the role DSA members can play organizing their own workplaces and fighting to democratize and energize their unions.

I was a delegate from Boston DSA to the 2021 virtual convention. I prided myself on being an approachable delegate open to being persuaded on votes, and I hope that if I am elected this year members will approach me with their own political ideas for what should be passed and prioritized at convention. Solidarity!

(Nonbinary; they/them)

Since joining TCDSA in 2021, I have been involved in a number of projects within the chapter. I currently serve on the labor branch’s organizing committee, where I have supported our chapter’s labor solidarity work. I am also an active participant in the Street Corps Working Group, where I have helped to get more TCDSA members involved in, and trained for, protest marshaling and first aid. Additionally, I have participated in the new state-level Socialists in Office group that is seeking to provide better coordination and communication with our endorsed state legislators. I am a member of AFSCME 2822, a union local representing Hennepin County clerical workers. I am active in my union through my local’s new hire and welcoming committee, and I recently became a delegate for the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation. I have also contributed articles to my union’s newsletter on rent control and the fight for the East Philips Urban Farm. Additionally, I worked with members in my local and other DSA comrades to successfully get AFSCME Council 5 (my local’s state body) to endorse strong rent control in Minneapolis at its state convention.

I believe there are many challenges facing Democratic Socialists today. How do we support the sudden rise in new union organizing and growing militancy within long-docile unions against the backdrop of a nationally falling union density rate? How do we fight back against an emboldened far right that is increasingly using the courts to restrict our rights including abortion; state legislatures that try to unseat or silence progressive lawmakers; and a media apparatus that weaponizes queer/transphobia, racism, and xenophobia? How do we leverage DSA’s recent wave of electoral victories into an organized force that can seriously contend for power and push back against the neoliberal consensus within the Democratic Party that prioritizes corporate profits over the interests of workers and the environment? How do we build  true international solidarity at a time when competing global powers, including the US, China, and Russia, threaten civilians across the world?

These are all million-dollar questions that we face, and I regret to inform you that  I do not have all the answers. However, no DSA member, politician, or left-wing microcelebrity has all the answers. In order to take on the bosses, the politicians, and the capitalist system, we need to all work together. I believe that the national convention provides an opportunity for a wide-ranging array of perspectives within the DSA tent. We need to build a framework that DSA organizers can bring back home with them across the country. 

I feel that I am uniquely prepared to take on this work of bringing our members together.  My experience since being involved with the chapter has given me the perspective to appreciate the importance of employing a variety of tactics and ideas in order to win working-class victories. Below I provide my thoughts on some of the major issues that will be on debate at the convention.

Labor

As a member of DSA’s National Labor Commission, I voted on revisions and attended the debate on the consensus resolution. Generally speaking, I am satisfied with it as written. I am particularly excited about the resolution’s support of EWOC, the rank-and-file strategy, and internal efforts to increase union democracy. One notable lacuna in the resolution, however, is a discussion of the role of the labor movement in fighting racism and sexism. We need to connect our labor work to racial justice,  LGBTQ+ discrimination, and feminist issues, including reproductive rights. We also need to support  BIPOC, women,  and queer people within the labor movement.  If there is interest among others in our chapter in devising an amendment to better address this, I would be happy to assist in bringing such an amendment forward.

Electoral Strategy, the Democrats, and the 2024 Presidential Election

I believe DSA should encourage a flexible electoral strategy, where local chapters should be able to determine the criteria for their endorsements based on their local political situation. Generally speaking, I support continuing to focus nationally on endorsing Democratic Socialists running under the Democratic Party ballot line. I believe it is possible to embrace an “inside–outside” strategy of maintaining DSA’s organizational independence from the Democratic Party, while using the power that we build to pull the Democratic Party left. In my view, the key to this strategy is finding mechanisms to better support our endorsed candidates in office. Therefore, I would be excited to support the consensus resolution from the National Electoral Committee that supports building Socialists in Office Programs.

An additional key issue on the electoral front is what to do about the 2024 presidential election. Like it or not, presidential elections are one of the times when regular working folks tune in to politics.  Additionally, I believe the candidacy of far-right Republicans, most likely Trump but possibly DeSantis, must be vocally opposed. While I do not believe DSA needs to formally endorse Biden, I believe chapters should be able to make decisions on how to engage with the presidential election in whatever way makes sense to them given their local conditions. Chapters and DSA electeds should be permitted to canvas and make statements for Biden or against the Republican nominee. Therefore, I oppose the language currently in the resolution, “Defend Democracy through Political Independence,” that would discourage DSA-endorsed electeds from tactically endorsing Biden. Additionally, I believe many of the issues at stake in the 2024 election, including voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and reproductive freedom, are essential issues. I believe that the proposal “Fighting the Right by Defending Abortion Rights, Trans People, and Democracy” provides a good groundwork for us to address these issues.

International Solidarity and Foreign Policy

DSA has done a lot of admirable international work,  including publicly supporting Lula during Brazil’s presidential elections and after Bolsanaro’s coup attempt, raising awareness of the civilian impact of US sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, and opposing US involvement in Yemen’s civil war. Still, there is room for improvement. One area that I have been dissatisfied with is DSA’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While I appreciate DSA’s condemnation of the invasion and support for negotiations, I think we should be more proactive in forging ties with left-wing groups and trade unions in Ukraine, as well as supporting left-wing Russian dissidents. Additionally, I think DSA’s current stance of opposing all military aid to Ukraine is misguided. Additionally, while I understand why the platform position of “immediate withdrawal from NATO” was initially adopted, I believe it is not a currently tenable policy considering both the current invasion in Ukraine and the lack of an agreed-upon counter proposal for replacing NATO. If amendments are brought to convention resolutions to address these concerns, I would be supportive of them. I would also be supportive of a compromise that could focus on mandating DSA “teach the controversy” around military support for Ukraine, acknowledging that this is an issue that the left is divided over.

Structural Reforms to DSA

I believe that the widespread dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of DSA’s national leadership is partially the result of its national structure. There are a number of structural proposals being put forward to address this. I lean toward supporting the “Democratize DSA 2023” proposal that would expand the size of the National Political Committee and a proposal to elect two national full-time paid co-chairs. However, as someone with less experience dealing with DSA’s national structures, I would plan on consulting with other delegates about structural proposals to glean their institutional knowledge.

He/They pronouns.

I have been an active DSA member since 2017, in TCDSA for the last three years. I am currently an organizer in TCDSA’s electoral work and Socialists In Office Committee though I have also been active in Rent Control, Housing, and Environmental work in the past. I see DSA’s major need is to both grow the org and increase the engagement of its members. To do both of those things we need to have better organized and more powerful campaigns with more aligned labor unions, tenants unions, and electoral organizations. Right now, National DSA is not well positioned to help chapters like TCDSA so I see the purpose of this convention as at once improving National’s ability to be useful to chapters and also blocking anything that would cause National to either further lose capacity or that would be active detriments to or distractions from our chapter work (by for example imposing unnecessary structures, directing resources to unstrategic ends, or imposing policies which would make successful chapter organizing harder). I am skeptical of proposals that overly focus on bylaws solutions to what I see as primarily organizing and strategy problems. I will support those resolutions and NPC candidates who focus on building National’s capacity while not disrupting what is working well for TCDSA.

She/Her/They pronouns.

Hi all! My name’s Maxime (max-eem) and I’m very excited to self-nominate to be a delegate to DSA’s National Convention. I’ve been an inactive member of DSA (both in Michigan and Minnesota) for a couple years and became more actively involved with TC-DSA last winter after attending a New Member Social. I very quickly immersed myself in the East Phillips Roof Depot fight mainly by supporting communications efforts and being a body. I’m also a member of DSA’s communications team and hope to become more involved with the labor organizing team in the near future. Since leaving my job in the hospital system in 2020, I’ve been engaged in research and work regarding pipeline resistance and Indigenous Peoples inherent rights and land tenure through grassroots, non-profit, and electoral/political work. I continue this work while working in the non-profit sector through food access and communal land holding with Women’s Environmental Institute and Sharing Our Roots. While supporting East Phillips and Little Earth’s fight with Minneapolis, I’ve become increasingly interested in municipal governance and am anxious to become more engaged in local politics in the Cities. As a response, I applied for and received the role of Council Assistant to Councilmember Nelsie Yang (Ward 6) in St. Paul, who is DSA-endorsed. While in graduate school in Michigan, I was a GEO union member and used my background in the healthcare field on the Trans Healthcare team in researching and building planks for negotiations with the university. After moving to Minnesota, I felt reinvigorated to contribute to labor organizing after attending a rally at the Shakopee Amazon warehouse. When East Phillips and Little Earth secure the Roof Depot site, I am hungry to get involved with DSA’s labor team and larger city-wide organizing. In my year of living in Minneapolis, some of the most obvious social issues that plauge the Twin Cities include racist policing, housing injustice, theft from the working class, and false solutions to the climate crisis. Closing the income inequality gap, assuring housing for all, activating solutions to the climate crisis, defending trans, non-binary, and queer loved ones, and striking down the bans on bodies are all solutions that I feel can be developed in being in community and work with fellow Democratic Socialists. I would love the opportunity to attend the National Convention. I want to learn more socialist-based theory, historical and modern applications of democratic socialism and how chapters around the U.S. are strategizing to implement more equitable and just policies on all levels of work. I would be deeply grateful to continue learning from fellow DSA’ers and coalesce on making the Twin Cities more healthy and safe. Thank you for taking the time.

He/Him pronouns.

I have been a member of Twin Cities DSA since April 2020. I currently serve as the chapter treasurer, help to coordinate the chapter’s newsletter, and have served as the co-chair of the Electoral Committee since it was established in 2021 to oversee the newly adopted endorsement process and coordinate canvassing for candidates. Something always on my mind is that while DSA has existed since 1982, its membership largely joined in the last 8 years. Our organization has been in flux for a decade, but for all the false starts, conflict, and mistakes, I am proud of the work being done, and I think that DSA is starting to find it’s footing both locally and nationally.

If selected to be a delegate, I support structural changes to DSA that don’t leave the oversight of an organization of tens of thousands of members to 13 people, a collaborative electoral program that prioritizes meaningful legislative change and demonstrates the values of DSA, the continued development of our labor solidarity and support work, such as the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee and UPS Strike Ready, and support for chapters to develop their infrastructure and organizing capacity for local efforts. My priority is to realize the potential of DSA to be the socialist institution that America has lacked, and for DSA chapters to be trusted and rooted fixtures of their local communities.

He/Him/His pronouns.

I served as treasurer of Twin Cities DSA until 2017 and I served as interim political education director in 2016. I am active in my AFT Local 06504. I am currently treasure of my AFT local at UW River Falls. I previously served as president of my AFT local and helped organize our local and served on the organizing committee and personally talked to people about why joining a union is important and helped get cards signed which led to a successful election and a union. Last year as president I helped to build a coalition against outsourcing our custodial and grounds staff at UWRF. I support organizing the unorganized and ensuring democratic unions where the concerns of the working-class are paramount. I would be proud to be a delegate from TCDSA. I pledge to support resolutions and candidates for the National Political Committee who are devoted to continuing DSA as an organization that embraces a wide spectrum of socialism and socialist politics and class struggle-based organizing. DSA is best when locals and individuals organize and decide which initiatives and activities are important. At the national level we do need a NPC working toward consensus and a NPC with members who reflect the wide-diversity within DSA. If elected as a delegate I would be happy to discuss with members the various resolutions and NPC candidates. I am also a person of color. I am half-Asian and I have served as a delegate previously.

He/Him pronouns.

I have been a DSA member since 2019. I have a lot of experience in governing conventions but never for DSA. My first experience with DSA was a YDS education convention in NYC in 2004

He/Him pronouns.

As an active member since 2017, DSA means a lot to me. I have previously been a Regional Organizer for national’s Medicare for All and “DSA for Bernie” campaigns, and helped with local electoral work and graphic design. Since 2021, I have volunteered much of my time with DSA’s International Committee, assisting with educational events on topics such as Cuba’s historic new “Families Code”, the electoral defeat of the right wing in Colombia, and BDS. I have attended the 2019 and 2021 conventions, and would love to be there as a resource for new delegates’ questions.

I think it’s important for us to not sugarcoat the present state of DSA, or to simply use the ’23 convention as a pep rally. DSA is currently struggling. We have lost upward of 20 chapters and well over 10,000 members ’21-’23. I believe we need to strengthen our internal democracy, recommit unwaveringly to our socialist platform, reverse the harmful anti-BDS decisions of the current NPC, guard against attempts to moderate DSA or transform us into a progressive NGO, and elect a new NPC that will commit to fulfilling the mandates of convention. Solidarity forever!

She/Her pronouns.

I joined TCDSA in 2019 and was an At-Large Steering Committee Member in 2021 and 2022. Currently I spend most of my time in DSA with the Internal Organizing Committee. Previously I was an active member in SocFems and the Health Justice Working Group, and I helped to establish the St. Paul Branch. I was a delegate at the 2021 national convention (which was virtual). The national convention is a special opportunity to learn about the work other chapters do and meet comrades from across the country. If I’m elected delegate, I’ll bring back what I learn to our own chapter and apply it to our local work. Since I was a delegate at the 2021 convention, I’ve become more familiar with issues at the national level of DSA. Some of the resolutions I feel most strongly about are ending the contract with the current National Harassment and Grievance Officer, reinstating the BDS working group, holding future conventions hybrid, and establishing a DSA Editorial Board.

He/Him/His pronouns.

I’m interested in representing chapter interests on a national level, networking with members from across the country, and reporting back to the chapter on my experience when it’s finished.

I’ve been an active organizer with Twin Cities DSA for over five years. Currently I’m most active in electoral and internal organizing. Historically, I also spent time working in health justice and operations. This would be my first national convention. After witnessing the last two conventions, I have a good sense of the significant demands this meeting makes on the participants. I feel mentally prepared for what will amount to a very, very long weekend.

If elected, I will be open to dialogue with all members on how to best represent the chapter with my votes. In moments of uncertainty, I will align my votes with the Socialist Majority caucus principles https://www.socialistmajority.com/oursharedprinciples for decision making.

Reach out over Slack if you want to chat.

He/They pronouns.

Before TC-DSA I was an executive board member of the Northern Illinois Chapter of DSA. Since being in TC-DSA I have been primarily involved in founding and developing our chapters Street Corps Working Group which focusses on mutual aid and community defense programming for the chapter. I am in favor of strategies that strengthen DSAs connection to the community and strengthen it as an independent and mass socialist organization.

They/élle, he/él pronouns.

Dear comrades, I am running to bring the combative edge of the working class of the Twin Cities to the DSA National Convention. My experience with DSA goes back to 2016. In that year, I helped found the Iowa State University YDSA after organizing caucuses for Bernie Sanders. In 2017, several YDSA comrades and other community members helped form the Ames Tenants Union, which I led until 2020, when I moved to the Twin Cities and joined Twin Cities DSA. During my 7 years in DSA, I have been engaged in in socialist organizing on multiple fronts: Tenant organizing in the Ames Tenants Union; labor organizing (first in the IWW and now the IBEW); electoral work in Iowa and Minnesota; serving on the steering committees of 3 different chapters; and rallying comrades against police brutality and encampment evictions. In 2017 and 2019, I was selected by comrades at ISU YDSA and Heart of Iowa DSA to bring our perspectives to the National DSA Convention. I would be honored to do the same for the Twin Cities. My foremost goals are: (1) Centering the working class in a just transition from fossil fuels towards clean, renewable energy, like NYCDSA’s success in building to a Green New Deal; (2) Developing DSA’s electoral work along class-independent lines, like our own Robin Wonsley’s incredible work; And (3) Developing camaraderie between DSA chapters in the U.S. and between DSA and socialist parties internationally, like our International Committee’s trips to Cuba, Brazil, and Chile. I believe that working towards these 3 goals builds a working class that is strong, inclusive, and anti-capitalist. If elected as a delegate, I would work to inform myself and our other candidates about all issues in the agenda and at stake. As well, I would work to connect our delegation to our membership, so that we can properly represent all of our comrades. In Solidarity, Javier Miranda

He/Him pronouns.

I’m currently the co-chair of the labor branch, but I’ve also participated in a slew of other sections of TCDSA work, including Education, Environment, Outreach, Internal Organizing, and more. My primary focus at the moment is union work and preparation for the 2024 strikes.

He/Him pronouns.

I became a member of DSA at the end of 2020. For most of the past year, I have been active in the Street Corps Working Group and the East Phillips Roof Depot Defense Working Group, focused mainly on building ties with existing community defense and mutual aid collectives in the city. I am not currently a union member, but am likely to be in the carpenter’s union by the time of the convention.

I believe that DSA must become a more structured and responsive organization at the national level. It must become easier for chapters across the country to coordinate in order to face the challenges ahead. For us in the Twin Cities, we will need a robust national organization behind us in order to have the strongest effect that we can have in the upcoming 2024 struggle. I want to attend the national convention to hear from other chapters and the current national organizers about their struggles with the organization, learn about their struggles and the tactics they’ve used, and to debate the changes that need to happen within national DSA.

For my part, I believe much of the problem derives from DSA’s disproportionate investment in personality-based electoralism. In America’s federal system, most electoral politics is a regional concern, so it should be no surprise that focusing on electoralism at the expense of other organizing, results in regional fracturing. Some opportunities exist within electoralism to raise popular conscious and advocate for a transformational agenda, but the American electoral system is not a democracy and our participation in it should be ruthlessly critical, opportunistic, and dispassionate about the process and the personalities. Strategically, we need to remember that all of the accelerating threats to freedom and the environment from capitalism put us on a tight deadline to turn things around, and we know that achieving change through this undemocratic electoral process is cripplingly slow. Electoralism may be the surest strategy to defeat capitalism if we had infinite time, but it guarantees we will be defeated by the clock, if it is the primary tactic we utilize.

She/Her pronouns.

I have been a member of the Twin Cities DSA since 2017. During that time I’ve been involved with the electoral branch and housing branch. I’ve worked on health justice. I helped with creating the Solidarity Fund, the Socialist Reading Group, and I’m working to relaunch the Religion and Socialism working group. I want to be a delegate or an alternate to the 2023 convention to meet comrades from across the country and share ideas and strategies on organizing and working in different areas. TCDSA has had a lot of success getting candidates for office elected at the local level, and I believe the 2024 presidential election is going to be a true test of our abilities. Mobilization against attacks from the right, and unfortunately from the left, is going to be a critical part of preventing a Trump or Trump surrogate victory. I think there are issues facing us that provide opportunities to collaborate across branches, working groups and age groups. This will make us stronger as a chapter. Students are facing crushing loan debt and others are struggling with medical debt. Income inequality is immense. We are in a housing crisis – evictions are up and landlords are fighting rent control so they can raise rents, and make a profit at the expense of people who most need a place to live. These issues affect all of us and I would love to bring new strategies back to TCDSA for how to mobilize and fight for workers. Finally, I’m part of the middle to older contingent of the chapter and I believe that we should send a balanced delegation to the convention. We should consider age in addition to gender and sexual identity. I have a viewpoint gained from years of experience which is going to be different from those younger than me.

Queer woman, she/her pronouns.

I would love to be considered for a delegate position at this year’s national convention! I have been an active member of TCDSA since 2015 and was part of the core group of organizers that revitalized our chapter after the first major surge in DSA membership. I have held two Steering Committee roles throughout the years, including co-chairing the Socialist Feminist branch for the first two years after working with others to create the branch. I was elected to be a delegate in 2017 and I was part of the national convention organizing committee handling logistics as well as being a training facilitator during the convention. Currently I am part of the communication committee within TCDSA. Suffice to say I’ve been kickin’ it with DSA for a while now and I’m super pumped to be part of this year’s convention, where if elected I get to be part of making our chapter’s voice heard! Outside of TCDSA I have been active in several organizing spaces including both city council campaigns for Robin Wonsley and Sheigh Freeberg’s campaign for State Senate where I have been deeply involved in communication strategy, graphic design and field work. On the daily, I’m a caregiver for my lovely mother who has early-onset vascular dementia. Because of my role as a PCA caregiver, I am now a rank and file member of SEIU Healthcare union. I also play a key role in the newly established tenant association within the senior subsidized building where me and my mother live. Our group is actively organizing against rent increases that are displacing the elderly community living on fixed incomes. If elected, I look forward to having conversations with rank and file members within our chapter about the plethora of decisions we will be voting on at convention, along with what skills they would like me to focus on during the convention trainings. Since I am currently active within electoral and communication spaces, I plan on focusing my outreach and skill development in these spaces too. Another great opportunity I look forward to is connecting with members from across the country. These relationships offer a wealth of knowledge along with tangible organizing skills that our chapter will benefit from. As a queer, working class woman I tend to view things through an intersectional, feminist lens that’s deeply rooted in a working class analysis. Over the years I’ve developed a wide range of skills and a mature organizing perspective that centers on prefigurative politics – where our organizing spaces, structures and community are only truly healthy and valid if they reflect the future we are working to create. Therefore I plan on heavily considering how proposals will be carried out vs. strictly what the proposal is. If elected, I plan on setting up a study group with fellow delegates so that we can go through the 2023 DSA Convention Compendium over the summer and discuss the “nuts and bolts” of all the proposals and NPC candidates. It’s important for people to be both informed and feel free to discuss their views before we get to Chicago. I will be an advocate for diverse opinions at these study groups, we don’t have to vote the same way to represent our chapter. I also plan on being active when it comes to fundraising for the convention if elected. Making sure each delegate has as little personal expense as possible is important to ensuring we can truly be a democratic body. Plus fundraisers are a blast! I love being part of throwing a good ol’ fashioned TCDSA party where everyone has a chance to gather and chat about all the convention topics delegates will be voting on. Thanks for reading my statement and if elected I look forward to connecting with you about all things convention!

He/Him/His pronouns.

I have been a DSA member since 2016 and active in the chapter since early 2017, serving as a labor branch chair, chapter co-chair, and getting involved in other projects around the chapter. I have attended the 2017, 2019, and 2021 conventions. I am a member of the national Socialist Majority caucus, though not super active. I would like to see the 2023 convention address a national leadership and working group model that has not proved effective in addressing questions of the organization between convention.

She/Her pronouns.

I want to meet folks from other chapters around the nation to build power toward a worker-powered multi-racial socialist future.

Asian, Male, He/Him pronouns.

Hey all, my name is Aidan, and I’ve been a DSA member since 2021, when I finally decided to join after admiring the organization’s work for a while. I’ve been a student organizer since I was a high schooler. It was there where I helped found a political organization with fellow leftists, which eventually brought me towards socialist organizing and, of course, DSA. Since high school, I became involved in the at-the-time relaunched YDSA chapter at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. My time here has solidified my belief in the socialist project and led to me ending up on the YDSA @ UMN-TC Steering Committee, which I was just re-elected to once again last April. At YDSA @ UMN-TC, I have been involved in a variety of successful organizing. I am most proud of our solidarity campaign for UMN Teamsters workers in the Fall of 2022, whom we worked directly with. We were the essential undergraduate student organization in their fight for a fair contract, which they ultimately won. In addition to my work at the UMN, I’ve been trying my best to assist the launch of multiple new YDSA chapters across the Twin Cities. I have also been involved in Twin Cities DSA’s Electoral Committee and Socialists in Office Committee, where I’ve tried my best to help whenever possible to support our socialist candidates for office and maintain relationships with them. I am running for delegate because I have faith in DSA as the organization to fight for the world we want to win. I hope to use the various organizing experience I described earlier to represent our chapter at the 2023 Convention and make further connections with other socialist organizers across the country, to assist the organizing our DSA & YDSA chapters and members are working on across the Twin Cities.

He/Him/His pronouns.

My experience in DSA has centered on TCDSA’s Political Education Committee, as well as authoring articles for Socialist Forum. I’m running because I think DSA should be a premier organization for the cause of creating wider moral and political communities.

White, cis-male, he/him pronouns.

As an active member of TCDSA, I would love the opportunity to network with comrades around the country doing similar organizing work. Sharing about our environmental justice work with the Roof Depot and learning from other environmental justice organizers will improve the quality and effectiveness of the EJ fights that DSA comrades are waging. My opinion of DSA National remains low, frankly. However, I would love the opportunity to do my part in improving our organization and network with other passionate comrades.