Too Soon for a Summary Dismissal: A Response to Hazel W’s “Reflections on California DSA”
The following is a response to Hazel Williams's March 7 article, "Reflections on California DSA”, in Democratic Left, the online publication of the national DSA.
As former (Fred) and current (Michael) members of the California DSA steering committee we would like to express our appreciation for Hazel Williams’s examination of the first couple years of the existence of California DSA, the first official state DSA body in the country. As she notes, this is essential work in assessing the utility of such bodies going forward.
However, while we are in broad agreement with her description of the events, we have some significant differences with her interpretations of their meaning. These interpretations result from two problems: information she leaves out that would help explain the failures she enumerates; and political differences she glosses over.
One important background factor needs to be emphasized at the outset: there were few resources made available to California DSA from the national organization because national DSA is itself understaffed and without sufficient institutional resources to anticipate and prevent such problems. A simple statement of what happened doesn’t get to this underlying dynamic.
Hazel tells us that “the PAC [political action committee] had racked up thousands of dollars in fines from noncompliance prior to my term and it took me nearly a year and over 100 email exchanges with national compliance staff to bring it into compliance. And yet the PAC was not used once during my term.” This is true. We appreciate the heroic work she did in cleaning up that mess. But the PAC was not formed by California DSA. The brand-new state body in 2022 inherited it from the ad hoc, chapter-driven statewide Prop 15 campaign of 2020. And it was not used during her one-year term because there were no priority statewide elections during that year.
The first state committee, prior to Hazel’s term (we have one-year terms) set as a major goal developing an income stream and hiring staff, to address the obvious lack of necessary resources. But we did not know what we were up against. As the first state DSA structure, we had no precedents to look to, nor, as it turned out, any national rules to help us develop the financial independence we knew we needed. Indeed, just the opposite: for instance, national rules, we found, prevented us from creating a bank account.
Also key: the idea of California DSA was born in the peak moment of activism in 2020 when Bernie Sanders ran for president the second time. That level of activism continued into the first months of the pandemic as the Black Lives Matter movement scaled up and, in California, in the Prop 15 “tax the rich” statewide ballot measure campaign that fall. California DSA was predicated on what turned out to be an overoptimistic hope that a major portion of that activist cohort would continue that level of involvement. As we all know, instead we saw a national falling off of involvement and membership across the board, including in California.
Hazel notes the failure of CA DSA to live up to its founding “vision document” and enumerates the various parts of that vision we did not put in place, or only barely. Behind this failure was our inability to create the administrative infrastructure necessary to support committees, meetings, and other initiatives adequately—see as above: no money, no staff, an all-volunteer body, layered, as Hazel notes, on top of the considerable local work state committee members were already doing. As it turned out, the conditions were not favorable to generate greater resources, which could not be foreseen, absent a crystal ball.
Since Hazel’s departure, California DSA has simultaneously scaled back some of its ambitions until such time as we are able to figure out the financing and staffing, and begun, nonetheless, to achieve some of the more modest goals we laid out. Hazel mentions that when she attended the statewide zoom presentation of “California DSA 101” six members showed up. Since late 2024 we have run this introductory ninety-minute session three times, and each time we have had more than sixty participants. She laments our failure to put in place any training during her year in office. On our website we have begun to store training modules, and last month delivered a four-part, weekly “Labor 101 for Socialists” study group to fifteen participants.
Speaking of the website, we have a regular bi-monthly newsletter, California Red, that goes out to every member in the state, and we update the news articles on the site every month, providing the only means for thousands of DSA members to learn what the other chapters in California are up to.
This is especially important for our farflung at-large members. In a state the size of California, we have comrades reading California Red and attending our CA DSA 101s who have no chapter within a hundred miles. One recently joined our communications committee. She told us how grateful she is to have found her way to plugging into DSA work: “When I wasn't sure whether I was ready to make a serious commitment of my time and energy to DSA, especially since all existing chapters are many hours of travel away, meeting gracious, approachable, skillful humans on this side of the country virtually through the state org made taking that plunge far less daunting. In addition to receiving their invaluable wisdom and support, networking directly with other rural and at-large members in our huge, diverse state is, in my opinion, necessary to support courageous chapter formation across California's many forgotten, often politically conservative, rural places. The state org is the most obvious place for that.”
Hazel says, “In summary, we built much of the basic infrastructure of a state body, but struggled to achieve most of our organizational goals.” Well, no. The “basic infrastructure of a state body” would include the necessary resources of staff and finances. We “struggled to achieve most of our organizational goals” precisely because we did not have that basic infrastructure.
In this light, her conclusion that “The cost to DSA as a whole is too great, in terms of labor, money, and opportunity. It may be better to let other seeds take root” rings hollow. There are, in fact, few costs at this time to DSA as a whole, and the benefits are slowly beginning to accrue.
With extremely limited resources (the volunteer labor of about a dozen people, including the state committee and its standing committees (electoral and comms, and every other month a few dozen delegates to our state council) we are pioneering a new DSA structure. If California DSA were a person, its stage of development would be, at three years old, a toddler. It is far too soon to issue any final—especially dismissive—judgements.
We agree with Hazel that DSA members in other states should proceed with caution, with clear objectives, and a realistic plan for resources matched with its goals. Since it is likely that political struggles over social policy will increasingly occur at the state levels, we see great value in DSA organizing state formations. We are happy to share our experiences with comrades involved in any efforts along these lines.
Solidarity,
Fred Glass and Michael Lighty