National DSA Convention Report-Back
Earlier this month, delegates elected at-large or from chapters in California joined nearly 1,500 delegates from across the country in Chicago for the 2025 National Convention, the highest decision-making body of our organization. The convention takes place every two years, and it is where DSA debates priorities, amends its structure, and elects our national leadership.
Delegates spend full days moving through Robert’s Rules of Order, debating resolutions, and taking votes that will shape DSA’s work for the next two years. That process can be tense, procedural, and exhausting, particularly when the issues being debated are heavily internal. But it is also deeply inspiring: gatherings of over a thousand committed socialists in a single location are a rare occurrence in American history and an experience to be treasured. Perhaps the high point of the weekend came when Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, herself an active member of Detroit DSA, delivered a keynote address that ended with the entire hall chanting “Free, Free Palestine!”
Over the course of three days, delegates considered 59 resolutions and major amendments, with another 45 qualifying but not reached in time. The convention expanded the National Political Committee (NPC) from 18 to 27 members, four of whom are from California. The NPC guides the organization between conventions, and the expansion was passed as a part of a package of reforms offered by the national “Democracy Commission”, which was renewed for the next two years. Those will now be taken up by the new NPC.
External Facing Priorities
The vast majority of external priorities coming out of convention were established in a single vote on the consent agenda, and thus didn’t receive separate debate. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it saved time and demonstrated there is broad, near-unanimous support across the organization for these political priorities. On the other hand, it meant that these priorities were not top of mind coming out of convention, and contributed to the convention agenda overall feeling very internally-focused, with limited discussion of external political conditions and strategy. It will now be the responsibility of the newly elected NPC and DSA’s existing national committees and commissions to launch and drive enthusiasm and engagement in these big national campaigns, since they will not be top of mind for delegates or observers coming out of the convention, who are largely instead thinking about the internal contested debates as the convention’s primary takeaways.
Adopted priorities included:
Build Socialism, Defeat Trump, committed to fighting Trumpism as an existential threat to working-class power.
Support for Amazon Workers, committing DSA to supporting workers organizing against Amazon.
Towards a May Day 2028, laying the groundwork for a unified, class-conscious campaign that could help make a 2028 general strike a reality, following calls by UAW president Shawn Fain.
Support Immigrants and Fighting ICE, prioritizing DSA’s commitment to defending immigrants against deportation and state repression.
Palestine Solidarity, affirming that DSA “understands our primary responsibility as a US based organization in the heart of empire is to force our government and institutions to end their complicity through boycotts, divestments, and sanctions.” This commitment was further strengthened further in the final session, when delegates passed a resolution for “Labor for an Arms Embargo,” committing DSA to work with unions toward cutting off U.S. military aid to Israel.
Two major priorities from the last convention — a national campaign for Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy and a campaign for a Green New Deal—were scheduled too late on the agenda to be debated. A motion to move them up for consideration narrowly failed, leaving them to be taken up by the NPC.
Internal Structure Debates
The vast majority of resolutions and contested votes were fairly internally focused, looking especially at the way DSA is internally structured and the way we budget. I want to highlight two key internal votes:
One Member, One Vote (1M1V): Multiple proposals were offered, to allow all members to directly vote on electing the NPC and on national endorsements for federal candidates. 1M1V for NPC elections fell short, with 40% in favor (60% required). A second proposal for members to vote on federal endorsements was ruled out of order by the chair and never voted on, leaving all endorsement decisions in the hands of the NPC.
Anti-Zionist Resolution: versions of this resolution have been a long-running debate within DSA. Proponents have argued that DSA’s pre-2016 history in which the organization held support for Labor Zionism, in addition to votes from DSA-supported congresspeople like Jamaal Bowman and AOC in favor of funding Israel’s Iron Dome, required DSA to raise its standards for members wavering on support for Palestine. Opponents argued that the resolution undermined a unified, external facing strategy as defined in coalition with the BDS National Congress, and that the resolution’s focus on identifying Zionist sympathies in members as expulsion-worthy offences was sectarian and overly internally focused. The resolution passed with 56% in favor.
Electoral Strategy
Finally, the convention passed several refinements and continuing commitments to DSA’s national electoral strategy. In particular::
Discouraging Paper Endorsements: Chapters are discouraged from issuing endorsements without committing resources to meaningful campaigns.
Encouraging DSA to prioritize “cadre candidates”, defined as members with significant experience as activists and organizers within DSA, the labor movement, and aligned organizations, as well as “labor candidates”, defined as candidates who are both rank and file labor leaders and self-identified democratic socialists, with DSA-LA’s Hugo Soto-Martinez and NYC-DSA’s Claire Valdez listed as examples of this type of candidate.
Beyond the Democratic Party: A new subcommittee will explore experiments with running socialists outside the Democratic Party, either on an independent ballot line or in non-partisan races.
Running a candidate for the 2028 Presidential Election: DSA will join coalitions to identify a candidate who can represent the labor-left in the next Democratic presidential primary. An amendment that would have oriented this search towards running as a third-party candidate failed, and the original resolution calls for identifying a “Bernie-style” candidate who can run as a labor leftist in the Democratic primary.
