Report: DSA’s Campaign for Trans and Reproductive Rights

Sarah’s Report from the First TRBACC Meeting on October 8

By Sarah Milner

DSA held the inaugural meeting of its Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy Campaign Committee on October 8. This meeting brought together the 13 person leadership body for convention Resolution 21, which called for a DSA to organize a mass campaign for trans and reproductive rights. This campaign is an enormous opportunity for DSA to have a major influence on the key issues of our moment. R&R will be writing regular updates on this campaign, alongside commentary on how we hope it will proceed. 

News and updates: 

YDSA’s quick start

DSA’s opening meeting means we join a campaign-in-progress in YDSA. YDSA’s Campaign Organizing Committee has already held meetings to plan our next steps, graphics, and initial outreach plans. There has been exciting conversation about the possibility of advertising the campaign at the YDSA Winter Convention: this would be a great opportunity to energize our members and increase participation. One possibility is even holding a rally, fundraiser or public event at the winter convention itself. 

This speed and development from YDSA is extremely exciting – YDSA chapters will be leading the struggle on the front lines of some of our most important organizing spaces. Moving quickly in YDSA, and coordinating effectively between YDSA and DSA is one of the best ways to amplify the impact of this campaign. One potential danger is that the YDSA campaign moves much faster than the DSA campaign. Last year, with a similar campaign, we learned that it’s essential to move quickly, empower committees, and start messaging chapters as soon as possible. DSA could learn from YDSA’s experience. Now that the DSA committee is up-and-running, we need to move fast and catch up to YDSA. 

Establishing group norms and a commitment to democracy

The TRBACC committee opened by discussing important questions of norms, procedure and bylaws. We agreed to use Robert’s Rules, with a simple majority to make decisions, and create comms structures. One important decision was to communicate with members and to use the forum when possible. In R&R, we feel it is essential to engage in a public way, accessible to all DSA members, as frequently as possible. This vote is a great first step. We hope all members of DSA will offer their ideas, feedback, and support to this campaign, and will engage regularly in the forums and elsewhere.

Ultimately, this should be a campaign for all DSA members, organizing collaboratively, with large public meetings supplementing campaign SC meetings. I hope we will create a wider action committee, open to members, where more people can get involved, take on tasks, and participate in discussions. 

Meeting regularity and establishing a vigorous campaign

As a committee, we agreed to meet biweekly for at least the next two months, with the possibility of having future subcommittees meet on the alternate weeks. I had hoped to have the SC meet every week, but most committee members said meeting biweekly was the quickest pace they were interested in. 

This slightly slower pace of meetings, and the inevitable hurdles of the first meeting left me worried about the vigor of our campaign. I had hoped that, at this first meeting, we would establish subcommittees, begin outreach to the National Labor committee, the Housing Justice Committee, and the National Electoral Committee, and start coordinating with staffers about how to implement this campaign. Instead, the meeting mostly focused on initial logistical questions. A slow start is okay, but we have a kickoff rally to lamb for January and a day of action to organize in March. We want to have chapters running their own campaigns before then. By the end of the next meeting, we need to have our leadership structure finalized, and start working quickly to get campaigns, our kickoff, and our day of action prepared. 

As a committee, we asked our NPC members to begin looking into accessing chapter leader data to use for mass outreach. Of all the aspects of our campaign, this may be the most important. Quickly and consistently communicating with chapters to work one-on-one and develop local campaigns is essential for the success of the national campaign. At its heart, this must be a chapter run campaign, with DSA chapters meeting their local conditions with dynamic demands and strategies that connect consciousness and energy to our campaign. This means committee members need to start outreach and campaign development as soon as possible. 

In the past, DSA campaigns have too frequently come in the form of emails from national that chapters ignore. We need to win over chapters to the idea of  participating in this campaign, talking to them, working with them to develop a campaign strategy, and helping them to implement it. If we are going to convince chapters this campaign matters, we need to start talking to them as soon as possible! 

Our next steps:

Because we spent our first meeting mostly on setup and logistics, it is essential to hit the ground running at our next meeting. To that effect, here are some next steps R&R plans to write proposals and plans of action on establishing, staffing and convening subcommittees

► Hour-long biweekly meetings can only do so much of the work for a campaign. To truly get started, members need to be assigned specific tasks, subcommittee teams, and meeting times. 

► Specifically, we need teams of people working on the following tasks 

1.  Setting up a January kickoff rally. The NPC proposal set the deadline of our kickoff of January 31st. To get a kickoff ready in January, we need to be quickly working together to bring in popular speakers, coordinate chapter participation, set up watch parties, and advertise the event.
2. Coordinating with chapters. We need a subcommittee conducting outreach, messaging, and chapter development. This committee should specifically assign liaisons to the 10 largest chapters in DSA and immediately begin working with them to develop plans of action. They should also work to draft a model resolution and have it ready to present by the first meeting of November. This work will be helped immensely by comrades in chapters like Portland, Miami and Triangle DSA, who have already started work on local campaigns. 
3. Preparing public facing material for the campaign. We need to quickly set up a website, graphics, and announcement posts for the campaign. I also suggest we vote on a temporary list of demands, while we work on crafting a longer and more fully developed one, to give us an initial outline to work with chapters, post on our website, and use in early communication. 
4. A committee dedicated to coalition outreach and outreach to DSA committees. We should immediately reach out to the National Labor Committee, National Electoral Committee, Housing Justice Committee, and International Committee to ask them to endorse our January kickoff, and use their committees to set up public events on trans and reproductive rights. Simultaneously, we should develop a list of unions, other organizations, elected officials, and public figures to endorse our campaign, and join coalition work around our campaign. 

► In addition to creating subcommittees to take on these roles, there are some other steps we can take before or at our next meeting: 

1. Immediately request access to contact lists for DSA chapter leaders 
2. Invite key staffers to next meeting (the first meeting of November) 
3. Talk with and ask the NEC to start conversations about gaining endorsements from elected officials