by By Sarah Milner
For a Campaigning Youth Organization Working Toward a Politically Independent Mass Working-Class Party
“At our 2020 Convention, YDSA had just 765 members in chapters across the country. Today, less than three years later, YDSA has more than 1,900 members nationally,” the YDSA leadership reported in March 2023. On full display at last year’s YDSA Conference was a dynamic new layer of activists, especially in the South, where the fight against oppression of trans and black youth is especially urgent. To make the most of this energy and potential will require a solid strategy for building YDSA into a powerful socialist force.
Building YDSA into a Youth Wing of a Future Socialist Party
One of the most significant divides in DSA is over how to achieve socialist political independence. In Reform & Revolution, we believe that socialists need to build an independent political party. This party should be a mass membership party – not just a ballot line, but a social institution – with publications, civic life, mutual aid programs, and a strong connection to the organic movements of the working class.
But getting to that point is a complicated task. Though increasing parts of the US are disgusted with both dominant parties, neither DSA itself nor public figures like Bernie Sanders have so far given a clear lead in this direction. Without a bold lead, it will be hard for workers to become conscious of the need to get involved in building a new force.
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DSA can and should offer itself as a stepping stone toward a democratic socialist party. It should get actively involved in struggles,put forward bold, effective strategies to build and win them, and link this to a clear message of socialist political independence. Our campaigns should always bring people into our organization.
YDSA has a unique and important role to play in this process. It should one day become the youth wing of a socialist party. That means building a movement open to all young people, organizing not just on campuses but across all of society.
How do we get there? YDSA needs to connect to youth in the process of struggle and prove our commitment to the working class by bringing students into the labor struggles. We need to directly agitate against the Democratic Party while strategically engaging in electoral work to build the power of DSA. Insofar as we vie for trust, influence, and leadership, we want it to be organic and based on genuinely convincing people; we should not downplay our politics for the sake of snagging official posts. We also need to build durable, self-renewing structures which can persist across cycles of student graduation, keeping both the ranks and the leadership filled and active.
Here are four steps we could agree to take at the 2023 YDSA Convention to move in this direction.
1. National Campaigns
R&R has proposed a national campaign for trans rights to both DSA and YDSA this year. Every year, YDSA and DSA should organize a nationwide event on a major political issue, putting forward clear socialist demands and kickstarting a campaign.
But organizing successful days of action requires much more than just calling for them. It takes months of outreach and coordination, thousands of hours of volunteer labor, and significant work from national leaders. National days of action should not simply be one-off campaign events, but steps forward that strengthen the basis for future organizing as part of a broader strategic vision. In 2022, the national abortion rights walkout (YDSA convention Resolution 14, tinyurl.com/ydsa-r14) was a qualified success, mobilizing dozens of schools but also sapping energy from our leaders and failing to make a major impact.
Students will be taking on trans rights organizing. YDSA should be there to offer that organizing a home.
This year, we should incorporate the lessons we learned. YDSA should organize with clearer independence and a bolder public profile, and we should manage our own media outreach. We should begin contacting chapters months in advance, with a wider outreach team. We should focus less on the details of the day of action itself, and more on helping chapters come up with plans for ongoing trans rights campaigns within which days of action can serve as useful flashpoints or springboards for further organizing. We should have coordinated national projects like shared fundraisers, national media projects, and a pipeline to get new members into national YDSA leadership. We should take care to establish a larger time to implement the campaign, with a plan to plug them into ongoing national YDSA work after the campaign concludes.
Despite the difficulty of organizing them, national days of action help us make a coordinated, stronger impact. Students will be taking on trans rights organizing in the coming year. YDSA should be there to offer that organizing a home, a unifying nationwide vision, and a clear set of socialist demands.
2. Prioritizing Labor Work
Labor work is foundational for socialists. The working class has its greatest power at the workplace, and it is there that workers come into consciousness of their exploitation.
As students, we don’t have very much leverage. But when students connect to workers, or organize as workers themselves, radical youth ideas can gain a practical political power.
There is currently a divide between the socialist movement and the wider working class. Actively immersing ourselves in workers’ struggles where possible – grappling with all the complex questions that arise, helping each other learn new lessons, and trying to use our socialist ideas for the benefit of the movement – is one of the best ways to overcome this. YDSA has a particularly important role to play: by demonstrating to workers that students can be close allies, with valuable contributions to make in terms of both ideas and practical efforts, we threaten the very foundations of the forces which divide the working class.
By connecting to workers and proving our value to the labor movement, we are uniquely well positioned to bring workers into other struggles – such as for queer rights, reproductive freedom, and eco-socialism.
To do this, YDSA should not only continue its strike solidarity campaigns, but also directly aim to link organized labor to other struggles on campus. The immense power of the working class comes not from it being an oppressed group, but because its labor makes society run. Every student protest will be strengthened – both numerically and strategically by connecting to labor. We should aim to introduce socialist ideas to workers tactfully, in the process of fighting alongside them for better contracts and higher wages. Both campus workers and the wider labor movement will take note that socialist students are showing up to support them.
At the same time, YDSA should make a concerted effort to convince radical students of Marxist ideas–a theory of socialist change rooted in the revolutionary potential of the working class.
3. Expanding Off Campus
Currently, YDSA focuses primarily on campus organizing. But young socialists should consciously be trying to build a wider organization, open to any radical young person, whether they are in school or not. YDSA should also make a point to form chapters in high schools, since these are places where both future college students and young workers interact.
We cannot expand from the campus to the whole working class overnight; this will be a years-long project requiring a longer-term organizing vision than anything we have attempted before. But YDSA should set this as a definite goal. This is why R&R has proposed a resolution for the upcoming YDSA convention which sets out small, manageable steps and a six-year timeline to try to develop YDSA into an organization of socialist youth in general – not just students.
Our resolution (“Building the Youth Wing of a Socialist Party”) proposes four steps: a yearly public forum, a national committee to investigate and propose an initial strategy for this process, a debate and discussion in The Activist, and an effort to encourage all chapters to hold one public-facing, off-campus event per year. These steps would be a solid beginning that can be implemented in accordance with the capacity and organizational needs of YDSA.
4. Building Regional Organizing
If building party-like structures requires ambitious off-campus organizing, one way to begin this work is to coordinate on state and municipal levels for shared campaigns, instead of purely organizing on a campus-by-campus basis between national meetings.
This, too, will be a long process, but some concrete steps YDSA can take over the next year are to hold a joint call with chapter members in a region to identify shared problems and strategies, and to help regional organizing groups set up joint communications platforms. In some areas, such as the Midwest or the South, where regional organizing opportunities are clearer, these regional groups can even start campaigns of their own for issues like abortion rights.
Ultimately, every step we take as an organization should aim to accomplish five goals: build the power of the working class, secure real victories where possible, develop organizations of the working class, win socialist leadership for working-class movements, and raise the consciousness of workers and radical youth.
Sarah Milner
Sarah Milner, she/her, is a rank and file union organizer and member of Portland DSA and Portland State University YDSA. She co-chairs the Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy Campaign. She has previously been the co-chair of PSU YDSA and of Portland DSA’s Electoral Working Group. She spent two terms on the chapter Steering Committee. She is a member of the Steering Committee of Reform & Revolution caucus.
