DSA and YDS chapters organize around a variety of issues based on local priorities, especially labor solidarity. The national office provides resources and support for priority national issues:

Immigrant Rights

• One of DSA’s two major national campaigns is for immigrant rights, in particularly pushing for reform in 2013 which best furthers human and worker rights. In other words, we seek reasonable and equitable path to citizenship, an end to policies which promote racial profiling and encourage worker exploitation, and a recognition that the tremendous resources spent on border militarization and deportations are unnecessary.

• Our immigrant right campaign involves solidarity activism with local immigrant and immigration advocacy groups and worker centers and unions pushing for national reform or to address state, local, or workplace issues.

• In addition to standing in solidarity, we do educational work to promote our understanding of how global capital creates the conditions which force people to migrate, by controlling global financial institutions and the governments of nation states. We also debunk commonly held myths about immigrants and immigrant workers’ effect on the job market in the U.S., and promote a vision of rights for all workers, regardless of whether they have papers.

• Write a letter to the editor against anti-immigrant sentiment and for better legislation than is currently being discussed. Background information can be found in a recent National Political Committee statement on immigrant rights.

• Share our flyers and literature, and posts from the Talking Union, Democratic Left, and The Activist blogs! For example, a recent Talking Union post discussed a guest worker program analysis, Close to Slavery.

• DSA members may contact the national office for an organizing guide with more ideas for immigrant rights solidarity work or to join our immigrant right action team.

Stop the Austerity Agenda

• DSA and YDS chapters are mobilized (via rallies and lobbying visits) to protect poverty alleviation programs and universal social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare. We also argue for cuts to the bloated Pentagon budget for unnecessary military hardware and new revenues by taxing the wealthy and instituting a “Robin Hood” tax on financial transactions. The sequester budget cuts will harm not only the most vulnerable in our communities, but our economy as well.
  

• Write a letter to the editor against austerity cuts. Background materials in the resources section of this website.

• Call Congress (202)224-3121 and the White House 202-456-1414! Script: “Hello, I'm a voter and I’m calling to say: stop the deficit hysteria and speak out to protect public programs. It should be a national shame that almost 1 in 4 American children live in poverty! We have the money to preserve Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, extended unemployment benefits, WIC, home heating assistance, and other critical anti-poverty programs. Pay for them by stopping corporate welfare, cutting Pentagon waste, and instituting a “Robin Hood” financial transactions tax. Thank you for your time.”

• Sign the petition to support the “Robin Hood” Financial Transactions Tax.

• Share our flyers and literature, and posts from the Talking Union, Democratic Left, and The Activist blogs!

• DSA members may contact the national office for an organizing guide with more ideas for building grassroots pressure against austerity cuts.

 Abolish Student Debt

•  YDS's primary national campaign is for Affordable and Accessible Higher Education. Many YDS chapters are fighting for tuition freezes and to protect education funding in state budgets.

• DSA and YDS chapters can host a GET UP training on higher education and student debt and collect petition signatures to help pass the national Student Loan Forgiveness Act.

• Sign the petition for the Student Loan Forgiveness Act.

• DSA members may contact the national office to join our student debt action team.