TRBACC Report #4: None of Us Can Do It Alone

By Sarah Milner and Judith Chavarria

[For an overview of the campaign please read this article “Organizing a Fighting DSA Campaign for Bodily Autonomy“, prior reports from the TRBACC Steering Committee can be found here: Report #1: DSA’s Campaign for Trans and Reproductive Rights, Report #2: Time to Move the Campaign Forward, Report #3: Every Part of DSA Has a Role to Play]

The December 4th meeting of DSA’s Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy Campaign Commission (TRBACC) marked five months since the passage of A Fighting Campaign for Trans and Reproductive Rights at DSA convention. Five months on, the campaign is starting to move forward, but there’s general agreement that we haven’t started quickly enough. We’d like to outline what this situation means for the campaign.

Looking for New Horizons

When the Convention resolution (“MSR-21”) was drafted, it was written by Reform & Revolution with a rapid timeline in mind, similar to the implementation of YDSA’s R19, “For a Mass Socialist Campaign for Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy.” That timeline was what 62% of convention delegates agreed to when voting for preparation to “start in Fall 2023, with a campaign launch in January 2024 and a national day of action in Spring 2024.” We argued in a detailed implementation document for a public campaign kickoff in January so chapters would have time to build towards a national day of action on March 31st (Trans Day of Visibility) as a national flashpoint. The day of action would serve as a powerful boost to local organizing efforts, provide striking press coverage for DSA, and energize chapters and members. DSA would not just be a disparate collection of chapters working in their local areas, but tangibly be a mass organization fighting for people’s rights.

This vision was based on our caucus’ particular analysis for how campaigns are best run. Judith wrote extensively about the content of this vision in her article “Organizing a Fighting DSA Campaign for Bodily Autonomy”:

DSA is capable of forging a movement that is greater than the sum of its parts. At the chapter level, on-the-ground organizers must recognize their efforts as fostering the consciousness and organization necessary to fight for the rights of oppressed and working people everywhere; internally, this campaign can be part of the difficult work of turning DSA into a truly nationwide, member-led organization. That’s going to require a concerted effort linking every battle, every local campaign to a common socialist banner.

We believe DSA campaign leadership should be organized as an action committee – tasked primarily with carrying out the will of convention – which moves quickly to arrive at broadly shared messaging, local and national coordination, and bold strategies. We expected this committee to start holding open meetings, which all members could attend, within its first few months. These meetings would allow for a broader layer of discussion, and allow for greater capacity for difficult but necessary tasks like calling chapters for one on ones, or texting members.

It is now clear that the campaign will not be implemented as passed by the Convention and that we’ve pushed to follow through on.

TRBACC has become a fundamentally different committee. Notably, it meets once every two weeks, as opposed to Sarah’s proposal for once a week (as the Campaign Organizing Committee in YDSA does). From the beginning, the campaign steering committee has primarily functioned as a deliberative body: designed to discuss strategy and fine-tune our approach. Our timeline was perceived as unrealistic and overambitious by most of the committee. At every meeting held so far, at least one of Sarah’s proposals have been tabled or delayed. 

We feel certain that every comrade has been working from a position of good faith and a genuine desire to see this campaign succeed. However, we believe the current route the committee is taking is going to lead to sluggish outreach to chapters, and to a much smaller launch call and day of action than we have the capacity to organize. That will have downstream effects on the local campaigns, which could have used a strong and active national campaign to boost their efforts.

It is now clear that the campaign will not be implemented as passed by the Convention and that we’ve pushed to follow through on. Our plan of action will need to emerge over a longer timeline, decided on with input and buy-in from all of TRBACC’s members. This raises an important question: what does it mean to implement the will of Convention? To answer that would require its own article, but our belief is that the resolution passed at Convention helpfully laid out a timeline and approach that the committee was responsible for implementing. Still, while we do not agree with the direction the TRBACC SC has chosen, we will work hard to make the most of what we can still accomplish.

We still believe that the proposals Sarah has drafted, following the approach of the resolution and based on our ideas of a fighting and active campaign, will help DSA have the best impact it can have. However, it’s going to take a shift – from simply putting them forward to making sure comrades feel a shared sense of ownership – to facilitate moving forward together. That shouldn’t be done by sacrificing our political vision, but by finding agreement where it exists, clarifying minor disagreements, and making sure genuine disagreements on the substance of the proposals are voted on by the body with less delays.

Weaving the Campaign

TRBACC has taken a few important steps forward since our last update. The most significant of these is that an interest form has been emailed to DSA chapters for starting a local campaign! We will be collecting the data from this form and holding one-on-one discussions with chapters: starting with those already running campaigns, moving onto those which express they want to participate in campaigns, and then contacting all chapters. Outreach is an indispensable part of this campaign and it’s heartening to see it begin.

While we do not agree with the direction the TRBACC SC has chosen, we will work hard to make the most of what we can still accomplish.

The single best thing a chapter can do to help is fill out this form and start their local campaign! The more DSA members involved at a local level, the easier it will be to bring people in to support our work at a national level. 

Conversations with chapters are how TRBACC distinguishes itself from previous DSA campaigns like the PRO Act phonebanks. To have a truly effective intervention there needs to be deliberate and consistent one-on-one outreach from national, which tries to help chapters start campaigns and convince them of the importance of campaigns at the same time. TRBACC probably won’t grow DSA much with emails or social media posts, but individual chapters running campaigns and hosting events at a local level – connected to an exciting national campaign with a unified purpose – can have a much more significant impact on our trajectory. We have already seen this potential in practice with DSA’s Palestine solidarity work, and the empowering nature of the Strike Ready campaign with its local Strike Captains.

In addition to this, we will be assembling a model resolution for chapters to democratically establish local campaigns. As with our outreach, resources like this will be part of what proves the value of national coordination.

It will take some time for chapters to get their campaigns started. This is one of the reasons Sarah pushed so hard for a robust timeline. As it stands, the committee will be contacting and working with most chapters only three months before the day of action. We had hoped that dozens of chapters could be running campaigns before the kickoff, but that seems unlikely to happen now. This is an important lesson for DSA’s future campaigns – start early and talk to people as soon as possible! 

Demands and Challenges

Our platform was another important development. Working with Genevieve, a comrade from SMC, Sarah put forward the following demands:

• Medicare for All, including free abortion and transition care
• Overturn all bans and restrictions on trans and abortion rights
• Full protection of trans identity under expanded federal anti-discrimination laws
• Self-selection of gender markers on all identification documents
• Union protections and housing justice for all including just cause employment and eviction protections 
• Trans and abortion reproductive rights sanctuary cities that don’t comply with unjust state laws
• Guarantee youth the right to consent to reproductive and gender-affirming care
• Right to privacy and safety at adequately resourced public schools

Baseline national demands are important for several reasons. They’re necessary to cohere a broader coalition which can help bring participants into the campaign who aren’t already active DSA members, but are active in the fight for trans rights. Demands are also the means by which we convey our politics to ordinary people: they should help people understand what we are fighting for, and why. It’s also vital that we make our demands visible. We need a website, graphics and pamphlets which can help us do that, which will require more than just the committee leadership. 

With these demands introduced, we are now preparing for our national kickoff. While initially planned for January, this rally will now take place on February 3rd. Mark your calendars! The more chapters participate and members participate, the better!

The delay is yet another consequence of the committee’s passivity. Still, given where things stand, Sarah agrees with her comrades on TRBACC that organizing an earlier date in January is just not realistic.  

With a host of prospective guests and a national scope, this online kickoff is a chance to showcase the strength of DSA’s political approach. If we can get dozens of chapters to tune in from across the country, ideally in vibrant chapter-wide watch parties, then we’ll be well positioned to mobilize them for our day of action and everything in between. But it’s going to take a dedicated effort from every member of TRBACC to make this work – none of us can do it alone.

Where We Go From Here

Sarah intends to take the lead on contacting chapters, something she has ample experience with from working on last year’s national YDSA campaign. She’s also going to draft a work plan and strategy proposal for TRBACC to begin connecting with possible coalition partners, which is necessary for growing the mass base of this campaign. This is where we think she can be of the most help, but it’s by no means an exhaustive list of TRBACC’s broader responsibilities. A campaign website still needs to be finalized, and the headway that’s been made needs to become a sustained effort to make the most of the time we have left.

To contact chapters, make websites, fliers, and campaign toolkits, and follow through on the myriad tasks needed for a successful campaign, thirteen people just aren’t enough. Part of why leadership has been passive is that without enough capacity, it’s easy to delay. But capacity is solvable. By empowering members to apply to join the campaign, especially members in the Queer Socialist Working Group and Socialist Feminist WG, we would not only have more capacity to engage in necessary tasks, but also have much more buy-in from DSA leaders already engaged in this work. A Slack or Discord can be made, and an Airtable form could easily be sent out via DSA’s dispatches to members. The TRBACC SC can choose qualified members to join, delegate tasks to them and hold meetings of the entire committee once a month. Our proposed implementation written in September includes this in detail.

In the last report, we said that TRBACC needed a clarity of purpose it didn’t have yet. With the steps that have been taken since then, we believe it’s still possible for that clarity to shine through, but the challenges are just as visible. It’ll be up to each of the committee members to navigate the next few months with a deft hand and a bold outlook for a campaigning DSA.