Critique Is Not Dismissal: In Defense of Honest Reflection Within DSA

In March 2025 I published a piece in DemLeft reflecting on my tenure as Co-Chair and Treasurer of California DSA. In it, I explore CA DSA’s successes and challenges, reflect on core lessons, and offer questions to help organizers across the country reckon with what it means to build a middle layer in DSA.

In May, comrades Fred G. and Michael L. responded to my piece in the California DSA Newsletter. Rather than building on or critically engaging with the analysis, however, they deeply distort its contents.

In my piece, I propose that the new CA DSA State Committee conduct a reflection on its work in order to assess what its path forward should be.

To their credit, the comrades spend a portion of their piece doing that, stating “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.”

This is not news to me. After all, I authored the resolution that scaled back CA DSA’s ambitions and successfully agitated for it to pass because I expected it to help in exactly the ways it did.

I refer to some of these successes in my piece, stating:

“In early 2024, when I felt like our experiment had largely stalled out, I put forward plans to drastically scale back, focus on a central priority, and even consider dissolving…As a result, involvement in CA DSA has largely increased, with some larger chapters like SF and LA folding ARCH campaign work into their existing electoral efforts, and smaller and medium chapters like San Diego, Long Beach, & North Central Valley with no existing campaigns stepping up to do campaign work.”

Importantly, however, I go on to urge the new State Committee to conduct the kind of rigorous and sober analysis I did of my own term by asking itself whether it achieved the goals of its own vision document such as “did we achieve material wins and have a significant impact on external political organizations and terrains of struggle?” and “did we grow and strengthen chapters?”

While the authors fail to explore these questions rigorously, they do offer an alternate diagnosis for California DSA’s challenges by citing a lack of staff and funding. I am glad for this opportunity to contrast meaningful political differences. I personally don't believe we should create and maintain new bodies in DSA that require staffing and funding without securing these things beforehand. And while I believe staffing has its place, I support the much more member-focused approach outlined in this piece by the Red Star caucus.

Unfortunately, instead of conducting a deeper investigation or engaging in more substantive internal-facing critique, the authors quickly pivot to a defensive misrepresentation my piece, ultimately muddying the waters:

“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.”

But this was not my conclusion at all. The authors simply plucked a sentence out of context and called it my conclusion. What I actually wrote was:

“Now that the campaign is over, we should assess CA DSA once again and consider whether this pivot has addressed the contradictions and challenges above…If the answer to these questions is largely yes, our task should be to build on this priority structure while we move forward, doubling down on what worked and letting go of what didn’t...If the answer is largely no, we should not repeat our mistakes or muddle along. 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.”

In other words, I don’t come to any conclusion about what California DSA should do - I call on its organizers to carry forward the torch of self-reflection and make a diagnosis themselves based on what they find. It’s disingenuous to quote the last sentence on its own and claim that it’s my conclusion instead of acknowledging that it is part of a hypothetical.

This misrepresentation is not minor. It shapes the framing of their entire piece, from the title - “Too Soon for a Summary Dismissal” - to the final line, which reads: “It is far too soon to issue any final—especially dismissive—judgements”. An ironic ending to a piece that dismisses the entire framing of my reflection.

I’ll end by plugging Vicki Legion’s great work Constructive Criticism which serves as a critical guide for DSA members interested in the healthy giving and receiving of constructive criticism - one that honestly engages with the positions we disagree with in order to build towards a better organization. In my capacity as Steering Committee member of the national Growth and Development Committee I plan to help run Constructive Criticism sessions for chapters across the country in order to foster a culture that welcomes critique earnestly and sees its value in the collective project for liberation.