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A "mass line" project where we plan to hold community "listening sessions" in the more impoverished parts of town
Yes to a mass line but I wouldn't do a "DSA Town Hall" in an impoverished neighborhood unless you happen to have a lot of members already in that neighborhood. Start by looking up and reaching out to existing organizations in that community and then do something public with them.
Internal membership development is a requirement for a functioning chapter.
I'm with you on this. The member that proposed this has good intentions. We have a problem in that the active members of the chapter are white while the people we are trying to serve are primarily POC. I get why people from majority-minority communities would be cautious about working with us! Wish I knew how to organize through racial differences.
Wish I knew how to organize through racial differences.
Bruh I just told you how. Any sizable POC community will have some sort community organization. It could be a mutual aid network, tenant union, special interest group, etc. It could be a much larger than your chapter or just a couple old ladies working out of their kitchen. Find them, figure out what their doing, and help them.
When I was in the organization I found that their internal organization was genuinely horrific and it was no surprise that they could barely do anything except glomming onto Democrat campaigns. You should focus on identifying who your members are, where they work, what they want to do, and what skills they have and how you can get them to be active. Train them to be semi-cadre who actually have a degree of discipline, education, and investment in the organization. Then you should work with them to identify and solve the issues they face, especially if they're genuine proletarians.
We're trying. One of the big pushes we have is a member survey that asks these kinds of questions. Like most DSA chapters we're looking at 90% of our dues-paying members being "inactive" as in they never show up to meetings or events. I want to get more of these people active or figure out why we never see them at meetings, socials, etc.
The solution to that is to have a committee of people call these people and schedule 1-on-1s. Follow the standard organizing conversation steps:
The Socialist Platonic Dating Committee. I've done it, it works. For paper members its still all online stuff. Meeting them IRL breaks that reality for them.
That sounds like a good start. When I ran the membership committee in my area we ran some surveys and it was sort of helpful to identify the structural barriers to participation.
Making an effort to just reach out and talk to less involved members on a regular basis can be surprisingly effective too. I wanted to do more of it but nobody really wanted to pursue it with me so it died.
Take everything I say with a grain of salt because I don't know much about your org or who is in it.
The first thing I would do is take a step back and ask why you are predetermining a year's worth of organizing if it is not already more or less consensus. This might have the smell of being overly focused on committees and decisions when what is really needed is research, self-reflection, or just building a program organically.
I'm going to ask a bunch of questions. You don't need to personally answer them by any means but they are the kinds of questions I would suggest thinking about.
Does your chapter already have any campaigns?
Are they going well?
Are they represented in this list? If not, why not?
Are there opportunities to grow or modify those campaigns?
What worked well last year and what had room for improvement?
Are you working in any coalitions? If so, have you talked to them about strategic planning for the next year and identified any projects? If not, could you identify organizations with which you'd like to work in coalition?
Do any of these proposed focuses have planning documents and committees? Timelines, bottom liners, budgets, goals? Any opportunities to help your members gain leadership and organizing skills?
Do you plan on recruiting? If so, what will "new recruits" do? Do you have a political education pipeline and people to lead it? How do you handle and/or minimize toxicity or harmful liberalism?
Okay so for the four listed items:
I think political education is usually a good idea and even better if you can tie it to action of some kind. Can you think of a way in which a local project could be informed or framed by a Marxist perspective? Or maybe just ask that question during the reading session. The best way to prevent reading groups from only being reading groups is to use them to forward a practical goal.
I think an agitprop program would be infinitely better if there were specific campaigns for which to make agitprop. The "agit" part of agitprop is for agitation. For what are you agitating and why? If this is something that someone has particular interest in I would not shoot them down, but I would help with grounding it in a campaign or two.
I would 100% scrap this. Instead, you should do research and practical projects in that part of town (which will also lead to insights) so that you can identify a better project. A mass line requires already being embedded with that population, knowing how to gain trust, having that trust, and pulling in a strategic direction. Do you have members from that part of town? Do they have strong community ties already? Think about how you could authentically create trust and ties. Think of reasons you should be present in that community and how you could support it. And rely on gathering real-world experience to answer that question.
A Crisis Pregnancy Center campaign sounds great and topical. Have you identified your target audiences, how you will reach them, and how you will follow up with people interested in helping your campaign? Have you considered holding a rally and inviting speakers from organizations with which you might want to work in coalition?
I hope this is helpful!
Apologies for getting back to everyone a few days late. Since I put this post up we had another chapter meeting and there's been some internal things I had to focus on. Organizing is fun...
I think political education is usually a good idea and even better if you can tie it to action of some kind. Can you think of a way in which a local project could be informed or framed by a Marxist perspective? Or maybe just ask that question during the reading session. The best way to prevent reading groups from only being reading groups is to use them to forward a practical goal.
I will forward this feedback on. Theory and Practice need to go hand-in-hand or else the lessons aren't going to "stick."
I think an agitprop program would be infinitely better if there were specific campaigns for which to make agitprop. The "agit" part of agitprop is for agitation. For what are you agitating and why? If this is something that someone has particular interest in I would not shoot them down, but I would help with grounding it in a campaign or two.
There are a lot of potential messaging campaigns in this proposal. One example:
Jesus Was A Socialist - Spread messages highlighting specific Bible passages to show Christians that Jesus would be aligned with us and not the Capitalist class. Co-opt the existing pro-Christianity messages that cover our city.
I would 100% scrap this. Instead, you should do research and practical projects in that part of town (which will also lead to insights) so that you can identify a better project. A mass line requires already being embedded with that population, knowing how to gain trust, having that trust, and pulling in a strategic direction. Do you have members from that part of town? Do they have strong community ties already? Think about how you could authentically create trust and ties. Think of reasons you should be present in that community and how you could support it. And rely on gathering real-world experience to answer that question.
"Think about how you could authentically create trust and ties" is the million dollar question for me. We've tried hard to do this and failed. I think a big part of it is our member demographics don't match the class nor racial background of the people we are trying to organize. Basically, how do a bunch of college-educated white labor aristocrats make authentic connections to people who may not have the same education, be much poorer, and come from different minority groups?
A Crisis Pregnancy Center campaign sounds great and topical. Have you identified your target audiences, how you will reach them, and how you will follow up with people interested in helping your campaign? Have you considered holding a rally and inviting speakers from organizations with which you might want to work in coalition?
I like the rally idea. We have coalition partners that are much better at organizing rallies than us, but we can learn and do our own. I'm thinking this one is going to be merged into the agitprop proposal.
Does your chapter already have any campaigns?
We started the year with a public transit advocacy campaign. We tried to improve the level of service of our bus lines because they are notorious for simply not showing up when scheduled. That campaign ended a few months ago, long story, and we switched to tabling in public places up through the election. Our goal was to get more people comfortable talking about Socialism in public. It was kind of successful but hard to know since there were no measurable metrics for this kind of activity.
Are they going well?
Better than years past. We keep growing as a group and getting better at being effective. Still have a lot to learn and we have several flavors of "left" in the chapter that makes it hard to have a strong coherent stance on anything besides "Capitalism bad"... see this post. That's the downside to being a "big tent" kind of organization.
Are they represented in this list? If not, why not?
These are all new campaign ideas. Part of this list is coming from comrades gaining more personal experience and doing more reading. I think the general consensus is we're trying to find what we can realistically do and not just spin our wheels as a group.
Are there opportunities to grow or modify those campaigns?
Yes, after our last meeting we held a straw poll to see what projects people were most interested in seeing developed more before the final vote on what we pick in January. The Membership Development proposal got the most votes, while the other three were roughly even in votes. We're working on merging the three proposals into one project (agitprop, mass line, and crisis pregnancy centers)
What worked well last year and what had room for improvement?
Our main project didn't go so well, but we learned a lot of lessons from it! Be more proactive when forming coalitions, don't just take people at their word, do your own outreach work, and don't assume just because you are in front of news cameras that you will actually be covered. We had lots of camera time during our campaign and that translated into ZERO screen time on the local news. Now we know the corporate media, even local branches of it, are going to avoid us. We have to be our own media.
Are you working in any coalitions? If so, have you talked to them about strategic planning for the next year and identified any projects? If not, could you identify organizations with which you'd like to work in coalition?
Food Not Bombs is the big one, but there are others. I'm most proud that we made inroads with the local CPUSA branch (who aren't in line with their national line), local PSL people, mutual aid groups, the local Maoists, etc. That work will hopefully continue next year and only continue to forge bonds across the community.
Do any of these proposed focuses have planning documents and committees? Timelines, bottom liners, budgets, goals? Any opportunities to help your members gain leadership and organizing skills?
All of these have timelines and need to have clear goals plus steps for running them. We learned that we need more planned out ahead of time because we can't plan well "on the fly". At the same time we need to be flexible and able to respond to changing conditions so I'm curious how this will play out next year.
Do you plan on recruiting? If so, what will "new recruits" do? Do you have a political education pipeline and people to lead it? How do you handle and/or minimize toxicity or harmful liberalism?
We need to figure this out. We have a "rose buddies" program where new members get paired with an experienced member to be their "buddy" for a few months, help them learn how to jump in, when the meetings are, etc. Most poli ed is needed at this stage for sure especially since we get a lot of recent ex-Democrats joining us.
Breakfast program
The classic and also way less complicated than a lot of these proposals. Hmmmm....