Oklahoma City DSA by James Welch

Oklahoma City DSA is a small, but mighty chapter, experiencing a resurgence in membership and energy in this post-apocalyptic anti-Trump wave. Among other things, we are organizing around Queer Liberation, because our fair city has a strong LGBTQ+ community, due to many fleeing oppression in rural areas. We have organized the popular Queer Fight Club, where we teach a vulnerable population not only basic self-defense skills, but also how to deescalate confrontation and find support in the community. We have learned how to be protective of our members, and have faced some security concerns, which DSA has helped us navigate. We believe that Queer Fight Club helps promote a socialist future by teaching lessons of solidarity grounded in community awareness and access to vital services.

Madison DSA by Hannah Ecay

The Madison Area chapter is growing rapidly, with many new and prospective members eager to get plugged into work but a lack of pipelines for capturing that motivation. Our chapter organized around Queer Liberation because both our city and chapter have a large and vibrant queer community that is often at the intersection of multiple capitalism-induced injustices. Our chapter organized a Queer Liberation March, because despite that strong queer community, Madison has not had its own Pride March in decades. Through this organizing, we learned that there are many adjacent local organizations that are eager and willing to form coalitions with us. We also learned that our chapter has latent and organic talent in areas like coordination and security, and that our new and experienced members will rise to the occasion when provided the opportunity. The Queer Liberation March advanced the socialist cause in Madison by connecting the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights and representation to the wider array of anti-capitalist demands that affect all our community members across identities.

Cleveland DSA by Justin Wells

Cleveland DSA is working for Trans Sanctuary City Status for Lakewood, OH and then moving on to Cleveland proper. We are working on this to protect our very large contingent of trans people in our city and chapter. Pushing this work through the city council right now to put the legislation on the ballot so we’ve been canvassing folks at large gatherings getting signatures to bring to city council. One issue we’ve been having is that while we are getting a good number of sign ups we still have an amount of hesitancy from the council and our ground game for canvassing isn’t as strong as it could be. Solidarity is what makes us strong, and solidarity is what we are giving our trans family. Through our protection of our fellow workers, others know that we will protect them as well.

Chicago DSA by Silvia Olsem

Chicago DSA is an old chapter with active organizing including our trans rights flank of the Unite and Fight campaign. We are doing this because of the threats to immigrants and trans youth in the city. We have been doing a campaign of rallies and a petition campaign to pressure hospitals, with regular canvassing operations to get signatures and in the process recruit more people. We’ve learned that this was a pretty good campaign and that we need to be more organized and systemic about how we do everything. This has furthered the socialist movement by developing cadre and building the organization.

International Committee – European Subcommittee by Claudio Rau

The European Subcommittee of the IC is currently a core group of organizers with a lot of contacts all over Europe, but lacks a lot of available manpower. Apart from issuing statements on DSA’s positions regarding various events in Europe, the Subcommittee has attempted to organize a webinar with three other European socialist organizations — Alleanza Verdi-Sinistra, Die Linke, and France Insoumise — on the themes of fighting the rise of the far right in our respective countries. We have been sourcing contacts in each organization and have hosted a call with the other three partners, as well as organizing with them individually asynchronously. It is more difficult to work with a divided European left than anticipated, concerns around DSA & LFI’s anti-zionism by Die Linke killed the event organizing efforts. The hope was that it could help to create solidarity between the various socialist organizations. Still, regardless of the outcomes, it has indirectly expanded DSA’s presence in Europe and established a working link between DSA & Die Linke to clarify anti-zionist and pro-BDS positions.

International Committee – Latin America Subcommittee by Blair Goodman

The Ecuador working group of the International Committee conducted the first DSA election observer group for Ecuador‘s recent presidential election. We had serious concerns about the possibility of fraud and abuse so it seemed that we could contribute constructively by shining a spotlight. We joined with progressive international who had delegations from all over the world. We helped prevent some gross fraud, but there were many things the incumbent administration did which were inappropriate but beyond the scope of our observation. It concretely builds solidarity, reformed relationships not only with Ecuadorian politicians, but with politicians and political organizers from around the world. I met people from Columbia, Peru, Spain, and Britain, who I will have continuing relationships with.