Chicago is a great city. I was happy to return, especially in the summer this time. Sara and I arrived Monday afternoon, took notes on activist art at the Chicago History Museum on Tuesday, and on Wednesday morning we missed our bus stop on the way to the convention center and had to walk fifteen more minutes, making us late.
I will admit, I did not think I was going to get much out of the convention as a newly elected delegate from the YDSA Kansas State chapter. Sara and I both had the attitude of “It’ll be interesting." I thought that we would probably be further left than the tone of the convention, as it had felt like at the Winter Conference, where most of the time was taken up by student union (not socialist) and student worker union training. To my surprise, the convention showed opposition to those strategies. R23, Bread & Roses’ student union resolution, failed 60/40 after an hour of debate.The impotence of this strategy will be demonstrated when I explain what it is. Unlike a student worker union, which is obviously a union of workers leveraging their labor power, the student union is a group of students who are leveraging their…. tuition? to have more control over the university. The theory of change here is not very clear which is why it is a bad idea. Student governments were also introduced in the 60’s to give students more control over the university, and look how that turned out. Now they are a tool of the institution. Student unions are also popular in some other countries which are not socialist, which is the reason that some people like them, but I think that counts against the.. What it is not is student labor organizing. I obviously have no problem with labor organizing. (though I did find it strange that one speaker on the floor bragged that they had a 4000-strong student worker union, but only 93 YDSA members. How is a non-socialist org of any kind going to promote socialism?
Our convention experience was significantly improved by Stephen Sykes, a delegate from Florida International University and a contender for the At-Large NCC, who put together an information guide and group chat for un-caucased delegates like ourselves. That facilitated our meeting with other delegates and getting lunch together on Wednesday. These comrades would never have been on our radar before and it was so refreshing to meet like-minded people from all over the country we could work with.
It might behoove the reader to understand what a caucus is, and a little about the history of the YDSA, as I understand it. I will be giving my uninformed opinion, which is just what I have picked up during the convention. Like the DSA, YDSA did not take off until after Bernie 2016, which skyrocketed membership. So many things in the organization are new or in progress. The YDSA, like everything in a Marxist analysis, is in constant change. At this convention, we passed a national program after much debate, whereas previously YDSA was hesitant to have a national campaign, according to one speaker. A resolution to create three standing committees instead of requiring each committee to recharter each year also passed. This gives the impression that YDSA is moving towards a more cohesive party. It is still on the upwards trajectory, instead of one the way to stagnating and breaking apart due to inter-party strife.
Another evidence of this is the opposition and failure of the resolution to increase international solidarity by investing time and resources in traveling internationally. Sounds… ok, but there was also a provision which included avoiding “uncritical support of any state,” which many people took to mean that they were not interested in actually existing socialism. They failed to mention going to any socialist state and instead talked about the student movement which has not yet achieved socialism, even if they are very strong organizations. Our comrade Carmen from East Tennessee University pointed out the hypocrisy in this. “Why is the National Coordinating Committee traveling to Brazil when they cannot travel to Tennessee?” However, International concerns were in fact prioritized at the convention by the recharter of the Youth International Committee (YIC). This resolution and the resolution that proposed the committee be an organizing body first, and an outreach body second, which seeks more effective ways to connect internationally.
Another amazing aspect of the convention was the effectiveness of Robert’s Rules. It was exhilarating, in the nerdiest way, to see a body of over 200 people behave more or less in accordance with each other. No doubt that there were some characters which were disruptive, and no socialist convention would be complete without them, but they were only could cause disruption because they knew more about the rules than anyone else. All their disruptions were by proposing motions in accordance with the rules. Any member of the body was able to motion a point of information or a point of order. It was structured and it was democratic. It was democratic BECAUSE it was structured. If a general body, say in charge of a country, was using these rules to conduct daily business, they would no doubt iron out the kinks of personality and stop spamming the call the question motion to become a well-oiled machine of democracy.
We proved this point during the last debate of the convention. Sara gave a speech I wrote in opposition to the R3, another nothing red state organizing resolution that sought to take the responsibility to create propaganda away from chapters and delegate it to a national body. I thought this was both impossible for a national committee to do, and a waste of time, and we said so. Here is a section of our speech:
The challenge of organizing in Red States is not that different from organizing in Blue States. They are all capitalist states. By sectioning off Red State organizing, blue states pretend that they are closer to socialism in some way that the working classes of my state are not. There is low class consciousness across all states in the United States. Red States simply need the same attention that blue states get. That is the true contradiction– resource allocation is not determined by the bourgeois color of your state but by your membership number.
Another speaker in opposition stated correctly that every year, a red state or rural or southern organizing resolution comes up, and none of them have yet addressed the problem. Perhaps next year I will throw my hat in the ring as well.
Overall, the convention was a great success. We saw the right of the party start its decline, hopefully into irrelevance, while the left of the party, as well as an independent Marxist-Leninist, gained influence. This only proves to me that the YDSA is vibrant socialist organization well on its way to becoming a truly effective Socialist party.
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