Here’s your August Dispatch, featuring Convention results and updates. Read on for more!

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• From Maria — On the Shoulders of Giants
• Join Us Tuesday 8/29 for Teamster Strike Ready Debrief Call
• Give Your 1% for the 99% — Switch to Income Based Dues Today!
• Meet Your Staff

From Maria — On the Shoulders of Giants

“I would not be a Moses to lead you into the promised land, because if I could lead you into it, someone else could lead you out of it.” These famous words were spoken in 1906 by the father of socialism in the United States, Eugene Victor Debs. Debs was a union leader and founder of the Socialist Party, and each of us stand on his shoulders and the shoulders of many others throughout the last hundred years.

I like this quote for many reasons, and it felt particularly relevant as DSA delegates gathered last weekend for our national convention. We are living in very dark times, yet it is also an energizing time to be a socialist. Partly that’s because Bernie Sanders and AOC have forced socialism back into the mainstream political conversation. But it’s also because of you and how we, together, embody Debs’s sentiment.

You are DSA, and DSA is built by trial and error and collective lessons and decisions, not by blindly following a fearless leader because they have the correct politics. DSA teaches us all to fight effectively, to think critically, and to work together. 

Read the rest of my speech to DSA’s recent national convention in Chicago, Illinois, check out the Convention results here, and watch out for additional information to be released in coming weeks.

In solidarity,

Maria Svart
DSA National Director

Join Us Tuesday 8/29 for Teamster Strike Ready Debrief Call

The DSA National Labor Commission will hold a debrief of the UPS Teamster portion of the Strike Ready campaign on Tuesday, 8/29 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT! On this call, you’ll hear directly from workers about their views on the contract vote, and then from our comrades at the Big 3 autoworkers about what we can expect from Strike Ready this fall. RSVP today!

Give Your 1% for the 99% — Switch to Income Based Dues Today!

At our National Convention earlier this month, DSA members came together and did what we do best — we made democratic decisions to set the course of our mass working class organization over the next two years.

But building power requires organizing our people and our money, and we need to step it up to make sure we can fully fund the ambitious plans we’ve laid out for our next two years. Will you step up to the challenge and help build the powerful mass working class organization we need to win by giving your 1% for the 99% and switching to Solidarity Income Based Dues today?

Make the switch today:

• Go here and enter the email associated with your DSA membership
• Select Solidarity Income Based Dues
• Submit the page. Any existing dues payments you have will be automatically canceled and replaced with your new Solidarity Income Based Dues amount

Meet Your Staff

Let’s give a warm welcome to the latest members of our organizing team!

Alicia, Field Organizer

Alicia is based in St. Louis, Missouri but born and raised in East Texas. In St. Louis DSA she was the chapter Co-Chair for two terms and Labor Co-Chair for one. She also has workplace organizing experience through TNG-CWA and EWOC.

Milo, Electoral Campaigns Organizer

Milo has been an active member and chapter leader in his home chapter of Mid-Hudson Valley DSA in New York. He has significant experience, having served as the field organizer for Sarahana Shrestha’s historic state assembly campaign in New York where she became the first socialist elected outside of New York City to the state legislature. Milo then served as Mid-Hudson Valley DSA’s representative on the NY Socialists in Office Committee where he gained insight and experience building a co-governance project with DSA members and electeds. Milo was also a core leader of New York’s public power campaign, the Build Public Renewables Act, the first major piece of Green New Deal legislation to pass nationally. He looks forward to using his experience of organizing strategic electoral and legislative campaigns to be a resource for members across the country who continue to make history!

Yusuf, Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) Organizer

Yusuf is our National YDSA Organizer out of Eastern North Carolina. He has experience in labor organizing, organizing on college campuses, and in the general areas of grassroots organizing in the rural south — predominantly in African/Black communities. He comes to you as a recent graduate with a BA in Political Science and African, African American Studies studies, an intern with the ACLU, and as a labor fellow with UE-150. Yusuf is dedicated to the struggle for decolonization, the struggle for socialism, and against imperialism. When Yusuf isn’t in the streets organizing, he’s working out or reading.