The Prospects of DSA: Party Building, Power, and the Marxist Unity Group

Approximately two years into the second Trump administration, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is at a critical crossroads. In this semi-annual check-in, we sit down with members of the Marxist Unity Group (MUG)—Cliff Connolly, Gene Allen, and Amy Wilhelm—to discuss the evolving landscape of American socialist politics.
In this deep dive, our panel explores the significant shift following the passing of Resolution Seven, which officially declared the DSA's intent to transition into an independent, mass-based political party. We tackle the "New York contradictions," the limits of holding executive office without legislative support, and the struggle to maintain a revolutionary program in a "multi-tendency" organization.

In This Episode, We Discuss:
The Blueprint for a Party: Why the DSA is moving away from being a "political advocacy non-profit" toward a formal party structure.
Executive vs. Legislative Power: Analyzing the challenges faced by elected officials like Zohran Mamdani in New York and the dangers of "shortcuts" to power.
The Utility of Protests: Why street movements like "No Kings" are vital for recruitment even if they don't immediately "move the needle" on foreign policy.
Building a Worker State: The development of a revolutionary program aimed at ending capitalism in the United States.
Member Protagonism: How doubling down on internal democracy and STV (Single Transferable Vote) is the key to retaining the DSA's 100k+ membership.

Connect with the Marxist Unity Group:
Website: marxistunity.com
Publications: Check out Light and Air and the Bulletin for internal and external socialist theory.
Read: Cliff Connolly’s latest piece in Democratic Left regarding the Security Commission’s de-escalation and safety trainings.

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Transcript

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Welcome And Panel Introductions

C. Derick Varn 0:49

Hello and welcome to Varmblog. And today we are uh having our now semi-annual check-in with the Marxist Unity Group about prospects. Now that we are approximately two years into the Trump administration, we have about a half of a year of Mayor Mam Mandani's situation. Not even a half a year, more like a fourth of a year of Mayor Mandani's situation to look at. And uh there's been another convention of the DSA. And so a few other differences is I am no longer an outside bitching about the DSA, but I'm inside bitching about the DSA. So there's that. So my pretense of neutrality is barely there. And reminder to all the other caucuses: if you want to show up on my show, all you have to do is ask, even if you're the ones I complain about. So there you go. Okay, so I'm gonna let everyone introduce themselves and we'll go uh clockwise from me. So we'll start with Cliff and we'll go around from there. Cool.

SPEAKER_03 2:01

Yeah, Cliff Connolly, he any pronouns, member of Barclays Unity Group serving on the NTC steering committee.

SPEAKER_05 2:10

Gene Allen, member of Marx Unity Group Central Committee and editor-in-chief of Marx Unity Group's publications.

SPEAKER_04 2:22

Amy Wilhelm, I am a member of the National Political Committee, just at large, this program.

C. Derick Varn 2:29

And a quick reminder Marxist Unity Group's publication, despite its reputation, is not cosmonaut, it is light and air, correct?

SPEAKER_05 2:39

There are historical facts. Yes, we came originally from Cosmonaut. We have Marxist Unity Group has two publications: the Bulletin, which is internally focused but open to anybody, and is kind of more about like developing writers and writing internal reports, and light and arrow, which is edited content. We are also working on an A V club. Cool stuff is you know in the future.

C. Derick Varn 3:11

So yeah, just so people understand the relation there. Okay, and so that's everybody. We're a slightly smaller panel this time, which is probably good for people being able to follow what the hell we're talking about. And I wanted to start off asking how we feel about we've seen a lot of focus on New York. In fact, one of my recent complainings about the about DSA stuff is now I have to follow every damn borough's politics in New York to keep up with like half the Twitter conversation. But we've seen a lot of focus on New York for obvious reasons. But as a whole, where where do we feel like the DSA is right now? How are we feeling post-convention? What changes have we seen? And we'll start with Cliff and go and again go around.

SPEAKER_03 4:06

Yeah, totally. So we've seen some some big changes at convention. One of the things I'm most excited about

Where DSA Stands Post Convention

SPEAKER_03 4:12

is that we passed what was Resolution 7, Principles for Party Building, which officially declared DSA's intention to become an independent, mass-based political party. This is a pretty big step forward. Previously, like all of our joining and training materials had this big disclaimer that was like, DSA is not a political party. We're just an organization, no funny business, don't be scared. And that's over. We are going to be an independent mass-based political party. That is our goal. We, in that resolution, passed basically like some steps or like a blueprint to get to that goal, developing our own infrastructure and so on. So that is that is set in stone that is passed by convention. It also said that we are going

Party Building Resolution And A Program

SPEAKER_03 4:54

to cohere around a program, which, if all of the demands of it are taken together, would result in the end of capitalism, essentially a worker state in the beginning of socialism in what is now the United States. So we have our workers deserve more program committee that's working on updating that now, and the NPC will have oversight on that. I mean, hopefully we'll have a revolutionary program for DSA that explicitly spells out what steps we're taking to get to socialism in again, what is now the United States. Hopefully it won't be that anymore. Okay, great. Yeah, so dealing with the contradictions of being in executive office now, having a chapter endorsed, but not nationally endorsed, elected official as the mayor of New York City, the contradiction between the New York City chapter and the national organization, the contradiction of being in executive office and not having a DSA majority on the legislative branch of the New York City government. Just a lot of different contradictions there to deal with. Obviously, we've seen some stuff that we love, like getting universal childcare passed. We've also seen some things that I hate, like doing homeless encampment sweeps, keeping the SRG assaulting anti-ICE protesters and so on. And there's definitely some tension over like, are we allowed to criticize our elected officials? And what should that look like if we do?

Governing New York Without A Majority

SPEAKER_03 6:14

And it is an interesting moment, certainly, but I'm excited to see where this all goes and sort of how we struggle through it together.

C. Derick Varn 6:23

I will fight the entire New York chapter if they say I can't criticize elected officials. But anyway, go ahead, Gene.

SPEAKER_05 6:31

Yeah, I mean, I guess all of what Chris all of what Chris Cliff said, like principles of party building winning was tremendous. To me, I felt like one of the biggest, two of the biggest victories were the Democrat the the that Demcon that the Democrat Democracy Commission, which kind of was like stacked staffed with dealing with the structure problem and the question of what is what do we want like at the very basic minimum of a DSA local to look like that 2019, so much of the energy in the 2019 DSA convention was around structural stuff,

Democracy Commission And STV Reforms

SPEAKER_05 7:18

none of them were passed. 2021, similar dynamic, and it wasn't it was a very big breath of fresh air that this kind of multi-tendency commission was able to like complete its project. And generally, I feel like 2025 was showing that it wasn't just that the right did a very antagonistic job in leadership in 2021 to 23, that the left like it wasn't a situation where that was like a fluke, and that like DSA being this very big multi-tenancy organization was something that was temporary. I think that it looks like going forward, single transferable vote, which is a system based around representation rather than you know, border, which tries to get median votes or approval, which tends to like turn a 51% majority into a 100% majority. It looks like single transferable vote has been kind of normalized as the main way that DSA votes for things. And that is a really beautiful thing because it being a multi-tenancy group is we were saying right before this that it seems so impossible looking at other countries' situations if you don't have an open demo like membership democracy party that lets factions exist. Like, what do you do? Because cobbling it together from local activist teams seems very daunting. Or you wait for a civil war. There's that, but I I would also just sorry quickly say that it like where DSA is now feels less to do with the convention and more to do with and even less to do with Mamdani and more to do with this very weird political moment that we find ourselves in. And I do want to highlight Cliff's piece. On the one hand, I'm saying that like I feel like we're almost in a moment where vision is more important than practical or like practical organizing is happening, but nobody knows like how we're supposed to actually accomplish the things that we are asking for, except like act on the defensive and hope that Trump like finds a new thing to fuck up. And that that is a very odd moment to be in, but I'm glad to be in it with DSA.

SPEAKER_04 9:49

And Amy, you are yeah, I don't know that I have much to add to what's been said. I think that you know, I I think DSA is still in a period of growing pains. And with the rapid growth we've seen, like that that's just a thing that continues. I think that we are in in a dispersed way, but we're trying to systematize, like, figure out like what about after Trump, you know, in Biden's presidency, DSA faced a lot of challenges. Like a lot of attrition people a lot of attrition. Yeah. I think that although I'm I'm I'm certainly not one of those people who are largely not organizing, who are kind of figuring who who will say, you know, well, we need you know, we need that kind of pain to to bring people to the left. Um but uh just objectively, like that's when people get activated, is when they have something that they know they want to fight for. Um and you know, you look through through history and and and there's always these kind of surges, there's always an ebb and flow. And how do we keep how do we keep flowing through the ebb, I guess. Like that's something that we're gonna. I think that honestly that the principle of party building points towards directions that uh we can go with that. But yeah, I I I also personally want to say, Jean, there's the multi-cendency nature of DSA, I think for all it can be frustrating at times. Um, I think we all have that frustration at times. You know, it is something that's here to stay, and it is something that is beneficial for us, and I think we're seeing that kind of come through. It's like, you know, during the or after the NPC election, or after the convention where we had an NPC election, something that I think it was the chairmanaging director now who who said, you know, it's not like there's no real majority on the NPC. You know, he said that it was really a parliamentarian rather than rather than you know, one faction or another has a majority. And I think that's a beneficial thing. Again, it could be really frustrating at times. But the fact that, you know, we have representation of of different tendencies within the organization means that although it can be hard to reach a kit reach a decision, you know, we do have that. We have everyone both our members in some form represented and the diversity of opinions. Yeah, at this point, I think that we are we really are working through those contradictions of like having an executive in office without legislative support. As we stare down the possibility of that on an even larger scale, I do think that one thing that that DSA is is still learning. Like when you talk about, you know, critic being able to criticize, being able to put forward our own politics, being able to put forward our own criticisms when necessary, even of allies. You know, I think that's really that's really important. And I think we're seeing we're seeing things that we talked about Zora, and I think we have been seeing limits those limits of that executive office, the limits of the executive being able to take action on their own. And I think the challenge for us is to understand those as such and learn from them and carry that forward.

C. Derick Varn 13:34

Yeah, well, one of the examples I think about is the current budgetary crisis in New York City, where there's been a proposed wealth tax, which needs to be shot down by HOCL, because even you need either you need even probably state legislative, not just locally legislative dominance to really push that uh without the governor getting involved, which will lead to I don't know if it's happened yet, but the threatened property tax hike, and which I would they I know it would hurt more wealthy people, but I'm like that will be felt by everybody. It isn't really the same as a wealth tax because it will be downstreamed, and that's a limitation of just not having other options. It's you know, I'm not I'm not criticizing Mamdani

Endorsements Without Clear Standards

C. Derick Varn 14:22

here, uh, but if you don't have a legislative majority, I don't know how you push that kind of stuff through in a responsible way without these kinds of you know putative gameanship things that he's you know trying to do. I I know, you know, I'm in a weird position as being friends with avowed and explicit ultra-leftists, but also normy dirtbag social democrats who complain whenever I go after AOC. It's a weird position to be in, but they they're both in my per even in my personal orbit, not just in my my chapter or whatever. But uh it is strange because one of the things that's being debated right now, I don't know if it's happened yet, is no talks about endorsing AOC with the New York chapters for various things after she's already lost an endorsement in the past. And on one hand, you know, I'm in Utah, I don't have any say in that. Um like I don't have any say in what the New York chapter is gonna do. On the other hand, it is interesting because it's like, okay, but we're talking about endorsing someone potentially for national office, not just not just regional offices, and how do we handle that? Without a program, I feel really weird endorsing anyone for a national office because I have no idea on what criterion which we would judge them. And you know, as anyone's ever, anyone who ever watches DSA X knows we like fighting about that stuff. So I wanted to ask you guys like where where are we at in regards to on one hand, it seems clear that it a majority of the DSA, at least as represented by their delegates to the convention, want a programmatic policy want a program and a programmatic approach to politics, and they want the structures to move towards becoming an independent party. At the same time, I can tell you whenever I say that that it's DSAers more than anyone else who are yelling at me. Like, so you know, maybe the minority faction is just louder now that they're no longer the majority. I don't know. But where we at in regards to that, how do we how do we handle this focus on the executive? Because it's gonna be a temptation for us over and over and over again, because that's where our national politics is, and our current legislative bodies seem so well, do they do anything? But without these legislative bodies, you you can really only have bonapartism that's really, really, really, really hard to discipline because frankly, not even not even popular, not even popular, you know, abstentions would necessarily discipline a second-term executive because they don't need re-election. So, how how do you feel like we're doing as a whole on those questions? And I we'll start with Jean. Jean, I always make your name more French, like people want to call you John, but you go ahead.

SPEAKER_05 17:49

But this is kind of perfect. Now we're like so that way by the end of it, all of us are just repeating what Amy said, and that'll be when we're all saying the best stuff. Yeah, I think that there's like a couple of problems. One is I think that the last time we talked, I said that Zoran didn't even really get the chance to be just a careerist, or I don't know if that's saying that to someone else, like, you know, Zoran Zoran got on, Zoran was nominated or not nominated, Zoran was like made mayor, and then within one day, Trump was doing was kidnapping Maduro, and we didn't even get a week of like arguing mostly about like you know, potholes in Brooklyn or something. Like, we didn't get like there there could have been a world where that was the thing that was the only thing that we talk about, and it does seem like there are a lot of international situations that are drawing our attention upwards, but I don't know. I think that in this moment there is a very powerful potential message of if you want a um, if you want like a opposition party to all of this, you need to be represented nationally, and that has to come through electing a block of nationally endorsed members who are cooperating in some way. Oliver Larkin, who's running in uh right north of Miami. I'm getting like a lot of noise. Some somewhere, potentially you okay. Sorry. Oliver Larkin was talking about like a congressional socialist caucus and as something that is separate from the progressive caucus. And I do think that part of the problem with AOC is simply that AOC was ran. AOC's like AOC precedes DSA's electoral program, even like the basis level of our electoral program, AOC, precedes that, which is difficult. There's also kind of like the New York double bind of you want electeds to be accountable to the members of DSA, and then New York City is not structurally not a fully democratic chapter, it doesn't have general meetings, it's getting up to, I think, having annual conventions, and New York City doesn't want to play ball with uh DSA as a whole, which is leading to this problem of them running candidates who are not seeking national endorsements. It's a lot of things complicated things to sort through, but I still do think that MYC doesn't have general meetings.

C. Derick Varn 20:55

Oh, okay. That makes it the hardest chapter even more confusing.

SPEAKER_05 21:00

Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, it's a fun little problem to think about like how do you make a 15,000-person local democratic organization meaningfully democratic, but not one that is getting solved in this moment.

C. Derick Varn 21:24

You also seem to have the problem of like uh what I think about it's like the R Revolution problem, which is like the relying on things outside of and not controlled by the DSA to do future funding and even internal disciplining. And if you know anything about from our revolution, it's led to all kinds of things, including some very for-profit houses that spend a lot of money on John Fetterman, which doesn't make us lip out at all. Nope. Not being sarcastic there. Yes, I am. So the the question becomes to me is like, how do we deal with this? And the other thing I think maybe this is a structural question is how to think about how to get beyond this structure. Um you know, checking in with uh the with the DSA Twitter or DSA X there's a lot of debates right now, like how to respond on protests on Iran and this, that, and the other. And what I've seen from people like Eric Blanc, comrade, and friend of me. I don't know him personally, but I feel like I'm arguing with them on X a lot, is uh focus on prior progressive uh movements, but judge solely, solely by the number of cadres they got out there, not by if their policy goals were achieved

Protests And The Question Of Leverage

C. Derick Varn 22:46

in any way. And I do wonder about that because if you're a programming organization, it's not just about cadre, it's also about can you actually do the program or not? And then I wanted to get your thoughts about how we get into a different mindset around that.

SPEAKER_05 23:04

I'm just gonna really quickly and then I'm gonna let our NPC members talk. But that was I've been thinking about this. There's this person who was like, the Black Panthers didn't fail. They made a great hospital in Seattle. And I'm like, that's cool. That wasn't their goal. That was not their goal at all. Their goal was not to have laundromats or nice bookstores or like they were trying to overthrow the United States and overthrow white supremacy and they failed. And like it's like the fandomization. We don't want to be mean to this like parasocial relationship we have to ex-revolutionaries. But if we don't actually like we can't let ourselves like fall into this kind of like, well, isn't stopping the Iran war the friends we made along the way? Like, no, it is not. We weren't able to find a lever of pressure on the Trump administration on foreign policy within the last three months that he started doing this insane adventurous nonsense. And that's gonna keep on being a problem. It's something that it makes sense why people were arguing about protests. I attended a PSL protest this week, and all of the speakers were talking like Cosmonauts Letters section, which is something that we can get into. But I was just thinking like we marched in a circle and then like came back to and then did another chant. And I'm like, this has nothing to do with anything. Like I'm doing, like I'm doing this, I'm glad that I'm here with these comrades, but like this isn't moving the needle on Donald Trump, whether or not he's going to nuke Iran or not.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

Yeah, I I agree with that.

SPEAKER_04 24:56

I think something that we have seen is like even the hardcore like constant protests, even a lot of the kind of supporters for that are are coming, it's not entirely fair, but you know, groups that do a lot of protests all the time, or even time you come around to like this isn't doing anything. Or it isn't it isn't there's no power in it. And that's a hard one because a lot of the time our own I mean our own historiography of our our our what successes that maybe the left, but I think expand that a little bit, say, you know, progressive values, some of which are leftist values. The kind of historiography of that is, well, you know, there was this big march on Washington, there were student protests everywhere. And it's I I think that there's there's two sides of that. One is like the conditions have changed since that time, and also a few things have despite the dominant choreography, a few things have happened solely with protests, solely with asking loudly. I'm not gonna say nicely, but you know, just with making demands, um, even in large numbers. And so I think that that is that is like that raises something of like what is power? We talk a lot a lot of things in in in DSA, we talk about building power. And unfortunately, I think sometimes that can become a bit of a bit of a thought terminal cliche. Um it's like, oh, this thing's gonna build power, we have to do it. Or, you know, this thing builds power, we're not gonna worry about. I don't know. But I see that in in in conversations about a lot of the electoral work, and it's something that makes a a challenge. It's one of the challenges with kind of trying to have a more programmatic electoral program, is that a lot of the time, you know, well, getting people in office builds power. Set that aside. Um what happens a lot is then getting people in office becomes the priority, keeping people in office. You know cutting deals to to try and you know get parts of the agenda passed while abandoning others. And like that's something that I I think we see especially through I I don't want to keep going back to this so much, but it it's both like a thing now and a thing and a future thing to think about. That's something we see especially through executive office, both with socialists now, socialists in the past, and progressives in the past, is that things fall by the wayside if they have to in order to get some of the agenda passed. And there's also like so questions of what is power also who's getting power, but power essentially, I don't know where I saw this definition, is the ability to impose your own will regardless of opposition. And the only way that we can do that, the only way that you know the worker the working class, the worker movement, however you want to put it, the only way that socialists can do it is through majoritarian action. And there's a tension, I think, between the kind of idea if we want to get socialists in office to do good things, and you know, we want socialists in office to be organizers in chief. That's such a good name, that's such a good term. Sometimes or you know, being that lead organizer supporting mass organizing is going to look a lot different from being able to cut those deals. You have to speak truth to power, even when you have some modicum of it. And that can create risk. There's a, there's a like, yeah, see, sometimes it's like, okay, well, want to have a programmatic thing. You know, we want to have a program electoral program. Well, what about when people disagree with the program and then don't select our our our candidates? It's like, well, then we try harder to convince them. You know, we use the bully pulpit of the use bully pulpit in office and and use that use the opportunity of running from up for office to to speak to people, and if you don't win, you don't win. But yeah, I think in those terms, like the the there is that tension of fighting for reforms, which I I'm not trying to to say that we shouldn't fight for reforms. I think we do have to, obviously, and we do have to in some cases when you have to deliver. But when we can't deliver, we have to be clear about why. You know, I I think one thing that just keep coming back to this. Um you know, it was reported this week that I guess New York's gonna the NYPD gun gun excuse me, gang database is here to stay. And that was like a big thing that that Zoran said, or we're gonna get rid of the gang database. And it's something that honestly, socialists and progressives have been saying, like, we had it rid of this for a long time, but now it's just it's gone. I mean, you can look at looking at progressives, looking at the presidency, Obama promised to close Gitmo. It's still there. We are still occupying a region of Cuba to run a prison. And I I think that was earnest. I think that was an earnest promise. I think that's something he really wanted to do. And just as just the same, you know, I think that the the promises of of the Zorn campaign, those were earnest promises. You know, we're not gonna mess with uh funding for libraries and other public services, we're gonna get rid of the SRG, we're gonna get rid of the game database, and it's just running running headlong into oh, the executive isn't actually a monarch as much as the federal executive is allowed to act like one. And yeah, I I think that I I think the big thing is exactly that. It's like when we have are we doing this to try to do good things, or are we doing this to try to bring power to everyone? And that is kind of the unresolved thing. I think also in terms of programmatic orientation, there is some tension about what a program should be. You know, there is a I I think that a lot of time there is kind of a tendency to shy away from things that would be might be seen as alienating to some people. And you know, I know that some of the discussions around this is kind of the revision of working served more has been like, well, we don't want to include, you know, this particular thing because that might be alienating to people. And it's like, okay, but like if we believe it's right, we should say it. And we should put forward what we believe and try to wing people to that rather than putting forward what we think will be popular and you know, trying to to I don't know. You know, I think that risk that risks being like a bait and switch, which nobody likes. But then also, yeah, I mean, when we have when we have something that is our position, that is a comprehensive our position, what does it look like to for for the working class as a whole to take power? What does it look like to do that in a way that isn't just like it's expressed through this or that person that we trust to whatever extent? Which is kind of what it looks like now when we talk about building power in DSA. How are we going to balance that against all people want to get in office? And when someone's in office, like it's that's a career. Yeah, I think figuring out how to express that and then how to make that part of an electoral program. I think whether or not candidates want to play along in some cases, that is something that we need to we need for sure.

SPEAKER_03 34:23

On the like how BSA interfaces with the current protest wave, I don't think that our ruling class particularly responds to, you know, the sort of peaceful protest movement that we're seeing right now with no kings. I also don't think that our ruling class particularly responds to more violent or militant protest either. I think the the question is economic leverage, right? And so we can look at some big examples of that. You know, Dr. King did not live to see the Civil Rights Act being passed, right? He played a major role in building up this movement, raising the expectations, building all this infrastructure, tragically was killed. And then after that, when every major American city was on fire with riots, that caused a major economic disruption and the Civil Rights Act was passed. I think there's been a lot of haymade about how the George Floyd movement did not accomplish all of its goals. That's certainly true that that protest wave in 2020 did not accomplish all of its goals, but it did accomplish a major demand, which was put Derek Chauvin in prison. And I don't think that that would have happened if a police precinct hadn't been burned to the ground, right? If there was not that, not this threat, but active economic disruption happening. It is that question of leverage. That's it. That's the only thing there is when you're trying to win a demand, is just do you have the leverage or not on the person you're negotiating with to get them to acquiesce to that demand. And right now, the people with the most leverage over the United States government is the Islamic Republic of Iran. And God speed to them, if they can use that leverage to end this war, that would make the world a safer place for everybody on planet Earth. I don't think that like no kings or you know, anything we're seeing in the streets at this moment is gonna be a factor in Trump's decisions about the war in Iran. But I think it's absolutely worth us engaging with. I don't know that we needed to endorse it and say that it you know matches our theory of change, but we're past that. So at this point, I've seen uh massive returns on attending and interfacing with No Kings protests, bringing people into DSA through that metric, just having this forum where there are hundreds and hundreds of people, even in small towns, out on the streets, pissed off, ready to hear the good news of democratic socialism. That's huge. Um, and not just ready to hear it and like become sympathizers or even just join, but to get active. The last No Kings protest that I went to, we got like 60 ballot petitions signed for Oliver Larkin, who's running for Congress in Florida, on, you know, as a as a DSA endorsed candidate, clearly with anti-Zionist, anti-war positions. So that was really cool. A lot of the people then showed up to like a new member orientation afterward. That was really cool. Um, so there absolutely is utility, I think, in interfacing with the the street movement as as such that we're seeing right now. But I definitely don't want to do

No Kings As A Recruitment Channel

SPEAKER_03 37:31

that with the illusion that like we're gonna get the No Kings organizers to become socialists. I I think that there's some some comrades who see it that way. And respectfully, I do not see that possibility. What I do see is being able to move masses of people who are politically activated right now away from those sorts of liberal organizations and into a revolutionary program, which DSA is building.

C. Derick Varn 38:01

And that point about No Kings is interesting because I I gathered that it is regionally variant who participates. Here it is really, really old. It is overwhelmingly people over 55. And I know that's a stereotype, but like I've gone and that's what I've seen. We were able to pivot a lot of people towards various things, including the DSA, though, when they attacked uh collective organizing rights here in Salt Lake, and we won that battle even in even the reddest of counties because we had to win it in every single county in the state. So even in you know, I don't know what you guys know about central Utah, but it makes upstate New York seem like San Francisco, so at a hundred perspective, yeah. Um so the for for my New York listeners, I I guess I'm gonna stick with that because A one tenth of the DSA is in New York, and B, or maybe one eleventh, I'm not sure, but it's a lot, and B most of my audience is also in New York, well, not most, but it's the largest city when I add all the boroughs together. That listens to me. Uh so one of the things I think that I find interesting in this moment, though, to tie it back to what you're saying, Cliff, is that we do have to interface with this protest movement. I am of a weird, you know, a lot of people will hear me say protest don't work, and I still say that, but I'm like, but you should still do them, and they go, why? And I'm like, well, in-person interaction as a socialist is super important, particularly on with younger people who have primarily encountered politics as various forms of fandoms on the internet, and think about it that way. I mean, I have I've had younger people figure with me, no, all politics is parasocial now, and I'm like, no, you don't actually get stuff done in your city through parasocial relations. Like you just don't. I'm sorry. That's not how they won in New York City, that's not how mom Donnie won. But that is a that is a constant threat. I think it's an interesting threat, also with focusing on the executive, with always focusing on the executive these key like big figures, like you know, people know AOC, and AOC, you know, not only does she predate the current iteration of a DSA socialist politics, but and she doesn't really completely come from it either. You know, as I was said, she was she may have been in the DSA for a while, but she's also a Kennedy staffer. The thing that uh that I think that I don't hear enough about is like beyond these like key figures, you know, or flashpoint figures. I mean, I know, and this person's not endorsed by the DSA, nor are they a member, but there was a lot of Jacobin magazine ink being spent on him, Graham Plantner. And I'm like, I I I don't have you know, I'm not gonna weigh into whether or not I think all the criticisms of Plantner are legitimate, he might be great, I have no idea. But I do know we had a similar strategy towards John Fetterman, and that that did not go well. And it it just makes me think like what kind of institutions should a DSA be building? And I don't like both within itself but also around itself to have a platform for a for a programmatic response that is also building towards being a party. Because one thing I'll say right

Building Institutions Beyond New York

C. Derick Varn 41:43

now is is I'm glad we have that thing from the from the convention. And the my big thing about the DSA being structurally a political advocacy nonprofit is that we can't act like a party until we change that. That's a fairly easy thing to change before people freak out. I'm not saying that like you can't change that, it's actually a matter of tax paperwork, it's not that big a deal. But it is things like that we have to change. I also am not sure like how much I feel like because right now it feels like the national, and I know you know we have national NPC people here, sometimes it doesn't feel like it's the national, sometimes it's the how do we respond to whatever the hell is going on in New York committee. So I what I wanted to get get how do we get out of that? Because of course, New York's gonna be big for any organization, it's the biggest city in the country, but it does seem and and we've dsa has historically not just with mom donnie, but even with Dinkins, had success in in New York. But how do we transfer that right now? I mean, there's like what 140 DSA electeds or so right now. I was just looking it up, but remarkably few in things like school boards or anything like that, or any kind of like small civic organization. I think I think there's like five school board members and one controller for school somewhere. And I was kind of interested in like that because if you look at how our opponents build power, they do laterally and horizontally organize, and we tend to do Hail Mary kind of quasi-bonapartist campaigns. And I I guess I want to get your response about how do we get people to think differently and what kind of institutions would the DSA need to join with, support, create itself to do this lateral and horizontal coordinating? And I'll let anyone respond who wants to.

SPEAKER_03 43:44

So I think I disagree with the framing a little bit, and I'll explain why. My experience on the NPC is maybe probably less than a tenth of the time on the NPC is spent on anything to do with New York, which I think is an appropriate number if that's about how many members we have there. So that seems fine to me. On the question of the electoral program, I don't think it's true that we tend to focus on these bonapartis Hail Marys. I think that's a relatively new development that we've seen with Zoran Mamdani. And then I think I would characterize the mayoral candidate in Athens, Georgia that way as well. I don't think it makes sense for us to be focusing on these executive offices before we have an actual legislative majority. I've made that clear many times. I am voting against anyone who applies for our endorsement for executive office if they don't have a majority of DSA members in the legislature of whatever body it is that they're that they're running for, whether it's governor, mayor, whatever it is. I don't think that that project is. Worth our time, I do think that we should be focused on building up these majorities, not just in smaller offices, but also in Congress. We should absolutely be focusing on a congressional slate, which there absolutely is a constituency for both NDSA and actual constituencies that we have to win the elections of. And I'm certainly not opposed to going to some of these like smaller offices. My chapter has an elected official who's the chief of the water or something like that. I don't know what it is, but it's like some, I don't know, 10 people voted in this election to make him in charge of the water. So if we had a bunch of offices like that in Orlando where I'm from, I don't know. That that would open up some interesting opportunities, but I'd much rather focus on things like a majority on city council legislature lecture, the state house, Florida representatives, and then you know, getting people elected to Congress as DSA members from Florida as well. That would be where I would want to focus. Um, and I think once you have that sort of horizontal majority, if you want to, if you want to call it that, I think that's when we can start looking at building up this sort of executive electoral program. But I think it's it's premature, it's a shortcut. And in the end, it's going to produce these contradictions where DSA is in charge of the police department and we're not doing anything to change how they operate. That's the current situation in New York City. That's unacceptable. We never should have found ourselves in that position. I think it is just impatience that drives that kind of decision making to go like there's climate change, there's war, there's genocide, like we have to right now seize the levers of state power. And in the American magic imagination, that's executive office. But that only works for the ruling class, right? The constitution, executive office, all these levers of power, those are there for them. They're not there for us. We have to build up actual majority support in the actual population of the United States of America or whatever polity it is, if it's a if it's a city, then then the city, right? But unless we have the actual majority support of the working class, we cannot govern. And trying to take these shortcuts to governing before we've built that majority is only going to produce DSA homeless encampment sweeps.

SPEAKER_02 47:04

And I'm not interested in that project. So I'll leave it there.

SPEAKER_04 47:13

Yeah. I think I wanted to add like specifically about that kind of horizontal organizing. One or or or or lateral, however you want to put it. One thing that our our you know, our real opponent, our our real opponents, they're all our opponents, but the right, the political right of the US has done is is things like offices, things like community centers. And that is something that, I mean, that's something that in in its in its heyday, the Communist Party, the socialist movement generally, that was a big thing. I think that's something we need to figure out how to build with the resources we have. That's the challenge. I mean, and and in a big way, like the right could do that because they just have shit tons of money. They have unlimited functionally unlimited money. You can hire a couple of people to to staff an office for, you know, just just to be there to to to appear to be community. And generally people from the community. Like let's let's you know, I don't know if I want to say credit where credit is due, but like they're not they're not bringing in outsiders to staff these. And you can just do that when you have Coke money, right? Whether that's Coke Brothers or Coca-Cola, I don't know if there's much difference at this point. But yeah, that's and that's something that is is is a real challenge for us because we are member funded and we're all paying, you know, for what DSA can do out of our own paychecks, out of our own funds. And that's yeah, I I think that is a strength. It is also means we have less resources. You know, something that we're doing right now is we're supporting we're we're getting the program back going in, supporting chapters and opening office spaces. I think that is an important step in that direction towards having somewhere that we can have people come together and organize, have that in-person interaction. We used like school boards and things. I think that we have to reckon how to do that. Um, and this kind of comes back to that programmatic thing, right? I think even for something like a school board, that's something where we need to to have that programmatic idea of like what are they gonna do when they run into constraints. Because a lot of times school boards don't really they have a lot of power over the school district. And I think in a lot of places, in some cases, it would be really beneficial to to have a socialist voice there. At the same time, school boards end up having to oversee austerity and don't have any real control, if any at all, over funding human finances. So that's a fine-line block as socialists. It's different from being, you know, a unitary using this in different ways from like unitary executive, but for being one person that's the head of executive power. But it is still it's a fine-line block, you know. We we need to, you know, in that kind of thing, whether it's a school board, whether it's um any of the other kind of quasi executive offices that often are pretty like low turnout or uncontested. That's one of those things where we need to be able to uh we need to be able to step up and say, yeah, you know, we are we are fighting against necessarily, but we're putting our guns on the state too. And so we're gonna need to I mean I don't know pass a pass a deficit budget and dare the state to do something about it. Work, I don't know what work means there. This idea, but yeah, like those kinds of things. It's a fine line to walk. It I think it is it is certainly worth doing in some cases. I mean in some places, honestly, like I I think we could challenge school board just on the basis of the school board does things that are are just terrible for children just on non-monetary policy. And like that's kind of a mirror of the way that the monster liberty shit happens. But yeah, uh there are challenges I think with any of that that that we face that the the political right does not, but you know, there way there are ways that we're working towards building that ability to to organize, to build community. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 52:20

Um yeah, like going back to the thing that we talked about before this about like what like left populism, what is it feels like it has such a draw right now, and part of it is platforms that like social media and streaming kind of push people towards rhetorical modes. But I also feel like there's this spectacle we've been dealing with for the last 20 years of on the one hand, my hair has been crazy today. I am sorry. On the one hand, Rochester, New York passed by 75% a police accountability board in 2019. That's higher proportions than like any elected official in Rochester has. So it's like everything, all change seems impossible, except when Trump wants to do stuff and then he can do whatever he wants. And it's like very specifically that, and that I think gives people this idea of you don't have to follow the rules, you just pretend that they don't exist. And it's like, no, if the court is aligned with the executive, you can do whatever you want. In any other situation, uh, good luck.

C. Derick Varn 54:00

Yeah, and I mean Trump loses as much as he wins, too, to be actually more than that. That's another element of it. But uh we don't talk about that because it because it's like downstream of the news cycle, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_05 54:11

To the left Bonapartist question, it's something I've been thinking about because like the the earlier the the earlier left-right distinction before the Bowman affair was kind of like pro or anti-Burnie, and it was really like pro-Burnie campaign versus pro-localism, effectively. Like, no, it's not about running someone for president, it's about like working really hard to have a community garden and stuff, and like that, or like working hard to have like local initiatives, and it's about that hard work that we're gonna be doing for years. That's what politics really is. And I feel like it's unfortunate that the people who argue for this are so opportunistic about it, but there is something to the fact that Mamdani running for an executive office got like double the New York City DSA's membership. I hear stories about like, you know, union activists for for Zoran, and then that becomes this whole thing, and then people are doing stuff branching out of that. I do think that there is a purpose to these bigger runs. It's just that we don't have that coordination to be like, we're gonna run Eugene Debs, and that's actually about running to get five congressional people elected. What I would hope is that we can get to the point where maybe you do run a state senator, but that's really about running like a city councilor and like a couple of people at a school board or something like that. I I like Amy's point about the programmatic nature being necessary because I will say, for example, yeah, like there was to have a slate to make it into a political issue rather than because like when you run for school board, it's all technocratic stuff, you know.

C. Derick Varn 56:13

I was about to say that there are examples of the DSA running for school boards that aren't those four that mentioned that I those four people that I was thinking about, and they're usually like protect trans rights, which I'm all about, but also that's not actually the majority of what you're gonna do in a school board at all. And your point about austerity, absolutely true. One of the weirder things about school boards is depending on the state, and this is another issue about the United States if we really have to deal with, is depending on the state's gonna be very, very different as to what powers a school board has. Like in my state, school boards can actually raise their own taxes, but that's not true everywhere. There's there's a truth in taxation and reconciliation, but the school board by itself can raise can raise the property tax mileage rate. I don't think that's actually very common in most of the country. So it's it's actually an interesting uh like thing to to point out. I mean, one schools are actually funded radically differently, uh like not just from state to state, sometimes from city to city. But I do think we we have to get into this idea that that socialist can run things, but I also worry about us trying to do that prematurely for the same reason that Amy's implying is that like we don't want to be stuck like I don't know, Rudolf Hilfording and the Weimar Republic totally went totally well when he did this administering austerity because we got because we constitutionally are are legislatively have to, and I'm also not sure, even and I maybe I want to get your ideas on this that we should be very careful about even pushing specific policies unless we already have legislative control. Because, for example, I thought about the debates in 2019 about Medicare for All, and there were some versions of Medicare for All that were being celebrated by Democrats that of course they didn't do when they had the power to do so, but that's neither here nor there that if they had done would have discredited the concept of Medicare for All because it was a bad plan, but it would have had our Bernie's branding all over it, and you know, I don't know what to do about that. I mean, I really do kind of lose sleep thinking about like what part of the chicken and the egg we handle here, but maybe that's one thing I want what you know, none of you can represent all of mug, I know that, but what is like the general feeling amongst mugs about mugs, caucus, and constituency about how we handle these problems of advocacy before power or our small positions before before or during the creation of a program? And I'll let anyone who wants to respond to that, respond to it.

SPEAKER_03 59:07

I think there's there's two separate problems here. And one is how much are we controlling the conversation, how much messaging discipline, how much messaging capacity do we have? That's number one. And then number two is do we have the votes to win XYZ policy?

Offices School Boards And Austerity Traps

SPEAKER_03 59:28

I would be totally against constraining our imagination, constraining our program, constraining our demands on the basis of, well, what do we actually have the votes to do, even based on this argument of, well, what if it just gets co-opted and then the Democratic Party is able to control the conversation? Have you ever seen the Democratic Party control a conversation? For God's sakes, they they can't do that. We're really good at it. And and you inherently have the advantage when you're pushing the more radical version of something because it's easy for the media to sensationalize. We, relative to our size, get way more press than anything that the mainstream Democratic Party does. I can't take a piss without there being a New York Post article about it, is like kind of how it feels, right? That's that's life in the DSA, baby. So I don't really see this as a problem. I think if we put forward a radical revolutionary set of demands, and then parts of the ruling class try to co-opt it and push a shittier version of it. At this point, I feel like it's intuitive to the public to be like, oh, this is like a shittier version of the thing I actually want that won't work. Like that, that is the experience of American politics at this point. And I think it would be very easy for us to control that conversation. You know, I think there's a lot of like comms infrastructure that we can continue building. But one certainly positive thing about the Zorron campaign is it clearly showed when you put forward a more radical version of demands that the Democrats will try to water down, they're not capable of co-opting that anymore. I I think that that used to be the case. I don't think it's the case anymore. So I don't see that as a good reason to constrain ourselves. I think we absolutely should be agitating for the demands that will put the working class in control of this country, doing it on those terms and saying, listen, we don't live in a democracy, and it's time to change that. And here's the things that will change it. The Democrats are never going to say, we don't live in a democracy. You don't get a say in what your government does, and we're going to change that. So tying all of our different policy demands to that fundamental lack of democracy, I think is what will make it impossible for that message to be co-opted. But, you know, the challenge there is we have to have the messaging discipline to do that. The way that Zoran tied every question that came up back to affordability is what DSA candidates should actually be doing with democracy, including affordability. Affordability is something that we should be tying back to democracy. You can't afford to live, therefore, you cannot afford to be a political subject. There's better ways to put it for campaign messaging, but that I think really should be the core of the messaging that DSA is putting out. That's not something any of our opponents are going to touch with a 10 foot pole. What they're going to do is have a crazy New York Post article with us with Satan horns and hammer and sickle. And it's just going to make people like us more. So I'm really not worried about that problem.

C. Derick Varn 1:02:54

As we were talking about before the show, since joining the DSA, I've now appeared in the New York Post article. And I'm not even in New York. So, like, not even a little bit. So there's that. I'd be interested in when I go do my decadely New York visit this summer

Messaging Discipline And Democratic Demands

C. Derick Varn 1:03:14

to promote a book, if if I'm going to get new a New York Post haters showing up. But anyway, that's a good point. Well, what's everyone else's response to the to those issues? I guess, I guess the one thing I do want to like separate about a little bit though, I wasn't so much focusing on demands, but if we had the votes on a policy, but not on administering that policy for some strange reason. I guess I guess what I'm taking from you, Crift, is we we could easily pivot to opposing the policy that was done in our name because it's shitty, like we should have done with the ACA in in like 2014 or whatever. And I I do think today that would go over a lot better than it did 10 years ago. I mean, I really do. I mean, because we everyone just watched the Democrats fuck everything up. But um, and your point about the DSA is actually fascinating. DSA is, you know, by far the largest left organization we've seen since the SPA now, you it it's it's comparisons priorly adjusting for adjusting for populations was the SDS and then the Communist Party uh of the of 1945, but only the Communist Party of 1945, because the only time it was more than like 40,000 people right after World War II. And then it and it managed to collapse down to 5,000 people in six years. Now, a lot of that's the red scare, but a lot of that's also like bad internal management and stuff like that. The DSA had an interesting problem that I that I maybe want to tie into this question as well that you asked the other part that Cliff answered, because it it does seem like we get a lot of people excited about campaigns that are not exactly what the DSA actually spends most of its time doing. Because, like, my commentary about like oh the Hail Mary campaigns, I actually know that's not fair, but that's the only thing you hear about. And so, as you guys maybe answer that other question, can you tie in? Like, what do we do with these things that we think are tactically problematic, but build cadres real fast? Like, you know, executive runs or the Bernie Sanders campaign or the Green New Deal, which I don't think I actually oppose the Green New Deal, but you know, you know what I mean. Anyone, any uh Amy, Janine, you want to pick that up?

SPEAKER_05 1:05:47

Now I'm Jane. This is this is new, all sorts of pronunciations of this name.

C. Derick Varn 1:05:52

Yeah, it's gonna get weirder and weirder.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:54

Yeah, I I feel really bad because this week my boyfriend was like, is your theory of change that more people need to write articles? And I'm like, it's not only that. But I do think that part of the problem, I wrote this introduction. We read Rochester's local newsletter republished Go Left Young Writers. And I like had an introduction that's like, we're the only people who are gonna tell our stories because like there's no money to get be made off of talking about working class or like socialists. And that really it's something I've been thinking about. What we're we're talking about protests, the way that people are talking about like campus protests that you know, we spent we've spent three years talking over the campus left, and now that we're like looking at the immediate history, it it Doesn't make sense, but it's still like, let's go to Brett Stevens and ask him what the campus left is up to. It's like we're just going to op-ed writers. And I think that part of the problem is that while DSA does have a very like it is a larger socialist or organization than we've had in a long time, a lot of people are still like the discourses that are going on in DSA are totally alien to a lot of people still. And that is part of it is the problem of like, you know, part of the part of it's the problem of our press. Part of it is the problem of us. And I do think that getting out like a lot of these pos getting out positions and like having people more broadly thinking about like how do we get the working class to rule is something that's really important. I'll also agree with Cliff. I feel like really the biggest and most important demand that we need to be constantly forwarding is the lack of democracy in this country. Without that, like without acknowledging that, we get into this really sloppy analysis where everything like is potentially possible if only we believe in it enough, or if only we canvas enough and we're ignoring like the structural problems at the heart of the US.

C. Derick Varn 1:08:19

So we're going to Amy, do you have anything to say? And then we're going to do a wrap-up.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:29

I ended up, I'm sorry.

C. Derick Varn 1:08:37

So final things, I guess I'm going to throw out some context. DSA has grown massively, New York chapters are doubled. The mystical 200 uh 100k number has now been surpassed. I think we're between five and ten, excuse me, five and ten thousand over that. I'm not quite sure exactly where we are. But I have been pushing people on like retention. It's you know, because I'll be honest with you, I know more I know more ex-DSAers than DSAers, and I know a lot of DSAers. And maybe getting people back, maybe we want these people back, you know, now that now that we're moving more towards the party, and the whole complaint about we're just, you know, the Democratic Party's, you know, you know, like sheepdog campaign or whatever

Retention Protagonism And Member Democracy

C. Derick Varn 1:09:24

that I hear a lot is not as true, if it was ever true at all. So what do you guys see as a way to get people back involved and keep them involved? Because you know, my fear is like you get some big rush over someone like Mam Dani, but like, you know, we don't know that all these I think Mam Dani's been doing a really good job. He's a great, he's actually a great politician, but I also think all the structural problems make this still a serious issue because eventually you're gonna run into funding problems and stuff like that that you can't just fix through the will of the mayor, and that's in a in a city where the mayor has a lot of power, and like thank you, Giuliani and Bloomberg. But if you could easily end up in a Brandon Johnson situation where you get stalled, and because you're stalled, your popularity drops dramatically, or in an AOC situation where AOC's popularity, uh, even amongst people adjacent to DSA seems to rise and fall by the second. Like, I actually can't keep off if I'm supposed to hate her or love her on any given day. And I worry about if we're associated with particular figures, all right, that our fates are tied to figures that we that maybe they're good cadres, maybe it's not even about them, but that they hit walls that we can't get around. And I really do think like it's easy to do that with the Democrats. It's a little bit harder to do with with Zoran Mamdani or even Bernie Sanders, although we've probably have managed to do that somewhat with Bernie Sanders. But with Zoran, I mean he's a cadre. If you have to go after him from the standpoint of of stuff that's not even necessarily his fault, I think I want to be clear on this. It's not like the betrayal narrative. This is the he can't do it, but we need to make sure it's understood that he's not going to. And if we don't, why you know we might be tarred with that failure. I I just think like, how do we do that and keep people engaged and in and building this program? And what ways do you guys see for us to do that? Because I what I don't want to see is another 2019 where where DSA was almost at 100K and within a year and a half, the DSA lost almost 30,000 members, depending on how you calculated it. It's a lot. I mean, it was a quite a bit. And I definitely don't want a situation. Now I don't think we're underware scary conditions as bad as Trump is. We haven't had that yet, where like the historical uh socialist movements who hit this kind of numbers and then collapse down to five to like 10 to 5k in less than three years because they couldn't get anything done. And so I don't want that. I think we have momentum, I think the momentum needs to be maintained, but I don't know that it can be maintained off of an uh off of an individual or a city. And so, what ideas do you guys have to keep it going?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:40

Yeah, I I think the absolute key is doubling down on DSA's democracy. Point taken about 2019, another thing that happened within a year and a half of 2019 is the society came to a screeching halt. So I do think that had a lot to do with you couldn't physically see anyone, at least where I was in Chicago at the time. I think it was probably different in Florida. Anyway, doubling down on DSA democracy, I think is the answer to that. DSA is the only space that I've experienced in this country where you actually have a say in the decisions that affect your life, at least within that organization. That's not my experience in my home. It's controlled by someone else. That's not my experience at work, it's controlled by someone else. That's not my experience in government, that's controlled by someone else. DSA is the only thing that I'm part of the collective control of. Doubling down on that is how we retain people. And I think the failure to do that is often what turns people off. I've been in five different DSA chapters. New York City is one of them. I lived up there in Central Brooklyn for about a year. And frankly, I felt condescended to when I went to New York City DSA branch meetings because it was just people who'd been elected to leadership telling me what was going on and like what events there were. And okay, please show up to these things. And it was just kind of like, okay, this is like another place where I'm potential labor, but I don't, I like there's no collective decision making happening in this space. And I think that that more than anything is what frustrates people. That's an extreme example. But I think in every DSA chapter, there's times where you're like, I don't really feel like I got as much of a say in this as I should have. Or I don't think that the way we made this collective decision was quite right. And DSA is so unique in that it's the only organization I know of like trying to solve that problem. And we're not there yet. But as Gene John Jane mentioned, we have the Democracy Commission reforms that I think, you know, really went in the right direction. We're continuing to refine this. I think just having a mandate, like if you're a DSA chapter, you have to have a general meeting, even if it's delegated or whatever it is. There has to be regular spaces where members get to decide what the chapter does. I think definitely is needed coming to more collective agreements about how we do that. Like right now, we have mandated STV for delegate elections to convention. Why don't we mandate STV for fucking everything, like every election? Maybe it's not appropriate for every single one, but I think for most it is. So continuing to have those conversations of how do we make it so that if you join DSA, you are a political protagonist. And that's that's a dual question of the internal structure reforms and the external, make your chapter go out and win things so that the decisions you make in the chapter have an effect on the community at large, whether that's through something like a mutual aid program or through an electoral program where you have elected representatives in government trying to carry out your will. Just absolutely being uncompromising about the fact that DSA is the only democratic space available to most people in the United States. That's what makes us special. That's what makes a hundred thousand people join DSA and not CPUSA or PSL or the IWW or any of these other like left-wing sects and grouplets. I've been in all of them, right? And never was I treated like an equal member who had an equal say with everybody else. That's not a thing, except in DSA. That's the DSA difference that we need to absolutely make the foundation of all of our decision making, I think. And that's how we keep people around.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:35

Yeah, I agree with that. I think Cliff used the word I was going to, which is uh members need to be protagonists. I gotta give it to our comrades in Red Star. They they talk about protagonism a lot. And I think that yeah, there is that tension of with we have these big figures, uh, but we need to expect them to help help to develop members of DSA as protagonists, help to develop that idea of you know, we are we are deciding and we are we're deciding things and we are having fights collectively. Sometimes with each other too, but you know, um we are we are deciding things collectively, we are making those together. We are all you know contributors and actors in this. We're not just here to you know be a movement to support extra extra V person. We are yeah, it is for everyone to be a part of it. And I think that yeah, completely agree. I think that's what keeps people around. That's what um you know, we when how do we get through those slow times? We need to make sure that members feel that they are they are they have ownership and they have that it's their organization and it's their privilege and the responsibility at the same time and say that's how I feel about it to be a part of DSA and to be yeah to lead us out.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:17

I think that there's also the element of developing our national apparatus more. Comrades in mug are doing amazing work on the national electoral committee or commission. Yeah, and that is really a powerful thing, you know. If really any any chapter that's trying to like go slightly above like what they are capable of, normally you have to, you know, in Rochester, one of the biggest progressive figures is like a billionaire or like a millionaire, like real estate agent, and you deal with this like stuff everywhere in every city, like you're gonna be dealing with like how do you get money, and people who have a lot of money are going to have that's the whole thing that we're doing, right? And being able to like point national resources towards a strategic campaign where we have a good candidate where we're able to win, it's gonna generate like surprise victories that I think could align like bigger stuff than we think. It's also something that like there are a lot of there are so many groups in the United States. Every city has like dozens and dozens and dozens of groups, but you don't have something that's democratic, that's operating at a national scale, and uh because of that, so many other groups are kind of they are solving problems by not getting to the level where they have to have them, and that is I don't know, Trump nearly killed a 90 million people this week. It's an imminent it's I'm not saying like be urgent and like give up on the strategy of patience and like be cut let's all become opportunists. I'm saying there are stakes to us not getting power, and there are horrific costs that are happening when we fail to operate at the national level.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:27

Also read 2666, it's a really good novel.

C. Derick Varn 1:20:31

Oh yeah, I will also endorse reading anything by Roberto Boleño at the end of the show. 26 2666 uh blew my mind when I read it, I think about a decade ago. But anyway. Oh I wasn't expecting to do a literary endorsement. All right, where can people find out more about what Marxist Unity Group is doing?

SPEAKER_05 1:20:54

Anybody MarxistUnity.com slash forward slash light dash and dash air or just Marxist Unity Group MarxistUnity.com. Ask a punk. Um ask any real people in your area, they'll know.

C. Derick Varn 1:21:17

There's no Marxist Unity people in my area yet, but anyway, thank you guys for coming on. We'll come back and do this again. Hopefully, the world won't end between now and then because that'll be a real barrier to socialism

Where To Read More And Closing

C. Derick Varn 1:21:31

if we're all dead. And shall I maybe uh you know, maybe I don't know, maybe anyway. I'm not gonna get into weird metaphysical speculations. Thank you for your time, and I hope people get something out of this. And I await the comments of people complaining about me being a hypocrite for joining the DSA gladly because I'm still just as annoying as I was before I was in the DSA, and about the same things. You're annoying now. You're agitating. Yeah, about say now I get a vote. Now I get to vote annoyingly. Um, to to back up. And I don't know, it does feel good. It does feel good to have a say even when you lose it a lot, like not lose the say, but lose the vote. But at least I got the vote. All right. Thank you. And people should definitely check out Marxist Unity, they should check out the DSA main site. And DSA has a national publication. I wish they'd and it's not Jackman magazine, despite what people think.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:34

Um national publications.

C. Derick Varn 1:22:37

Yeah, I I am glad that they're finally beginning to use them. I feel like before, like the Democratic Socialist or whatever was like, oh yeah, that exists, even if you're in the DSA.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:50

But not only do we have national publications, your boy Cliff Connolly has an article coming out in Democratic Left this month. I don't know when you're publishing this episode, but it'll be in April about the security commission trainings that we helped put together for Stop the Bleed, De-escalation, firearm safety, unarmed self-defense, and protest marshalling. So building up that security infrastructure. We didn't talk about that at all, but you can read about it on Democratic Left very soon.

C. Derick Varn 1:23:19

Yeah. So actually read Democratic Left if you want to check out about uh these things, because it actually is the official DSA publication, despite what people think about Jack magazine again. And thank you guys for coming on. See you later. Bye.