Editor's Preface: This article was written by a member of Metro DC DSA. A secondary author, Alan Kelly, has been credited for their editing work. It does not reflect the views or opinion of the chapter. This article was republished here to document and anchor intra-chapter debate and DSA history. This article is published with light edits to structure and prose to keep the content timely and relevant to contemporary and future readers.
Author's Preface: This piece was written and published outside of the Washington Socialist prior to the chapter’s 2024 Local Convention on December 7th & 8th. At that assembly, chapter members with opposing viewpoints, but united in their dedication to Palestinian liberation, almost unanimously came together to suspend the rules and adopt a consensus resolution. The resolution rededicates the chapter to public-facing work on Palestine while ensuring we remain committed to anti-zionist principles internally. The newly adopted consensus resolution addressed almost every concern the authors had with the original unamended Anti-Zionist Resolution. I am always proud of our chapter and the way that we can organize and debate through challenges and re-orient our focus on mass work.
The piece below deals with my concerns about the original unamended and unadopted resolution.
ON OCTOBER 26th, 2024, a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member and organizer for Palestinian liberation tweeted out their frustrations with the ongoing mischaracterizations that the organization is somehow zionist, either in practice or in action. These mischaracterizations are largely the result of our excessive inward focus on international work and a misguided politics of deference. The recent wave of resolutions introduced in chapters across Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), including our own, is only the latest repetition of these mistakes. Following Trump’s re-election many newly radicalized and politically confused workers are looking to get involved at levels we have not seen in nearly a decade. Now is the worst possible moment to turn our focus on each other and shut out opportunities to bring more people into the organization.
I’ll withhold the name to avoid overt doxxing, but the author of the tweet that inspired this article is significant. They are (or at least were) unapologetically part of the so-called "left wing" of DSA. They were part of the wave that joined during the growth of 2016-17 and brought new energy and power into the organization. This person helped lead the charge in 2017 during the run up to the National Convention to adopt Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) and a one-state solution as the national position of DSA. Along with others, they campaigned local by local, and organized a nationwide network of supporters of BDS to change the organization's position and break with its past position of support for labor zionism. They have openly criticized the organization for endorsing AOC, claiming it was in violation of the BDS resolution. Their Canary Mission page is a mile long. While I've rarely agreed with their politics, it cannot be said that they don't have a clear eyed view of DSA and our relationship to Palestinian liberation.
From the founding of the organization’s BDS Working Group as an “autonomous” national formation in 2019, the recreation and restructuring of the International Committee in 2020, to the present day, our organization’s Palestinian liberation work has become an increasingly central concern of members. Over the past year, DSA’s mobilization for Gaza has helped rebuild the US antiwar movement. Despite major gains in public support in the US and intense attempts at repression from the Zionist establishment, the concern with Palestinian liberation across DSA has been overwhelmingly oriented inward at each other. This has been done with a particular focus around the creation of “red lines” for elected officials and scrutiny of DSA’s internal political landscape. This approach is contrary to the vast majority of DSA’s other work, which tends towards boots-on-the-ground strategic campaigns, informed by clear theories of change, and towards the achievement of specific goals. For example, we canvass to get someone elected because we think they might be the deciding vote for a progressive majority, we show up for strike support to help workers win and build a relationship with this or that union, we organize tenants to withhold rent until the landlord caves to their demands, or we mobilize our members to attend this rally to pressure X to do Y.
Our best, most effective work is outward facing and organizes people into challenging institutions of power. This outward facing work is seen in NYC-DSA’s “Not on Our Dime”, the “No Money for Massacres” campaign, and the Uncommitted Campaign. Many DSA members have played critical roles in organizing for local ceasefire resolutions, are anchors in local Palestine solidarity campaign coalitions, and significantly, in organizing labor unionsolidarity for Palestine after many decades of organized labor in the US remaining aloof from internationalism. In recent months, DSA has launched a national BDS campaign to Boycott Chevron, led by the International Committee and numerous DSA chapters. But much of our organization’s work around Palestinian liberation unfortunately does not direct our members’ energy to this outward orientation. Instead, it tends towards internal policing and narrowing our future base of active and potential members.
This phenomenon has resulted in years of "controversies" and online drama, with more or less bi-monthly, very public airing of internal grievances. Things came to a head in 2022 when the BDS & Palestine Solidarity Working Group leadership was suspended by the DSA National Political Committee (NPC) for repeatedly going rogue on Twitter and using DSA resources while acting like it was an independent organization. The Working Group refused to take accountability and hold itself to the same standards as other DSA national bodies. Following that suspension, at our 2023 convention the organization voted to recommit, re-emphasize, expand, and place Palestinian organizing with all of the organization’s international work - in the far larger, more active, and more democratic International Committee. That leadership ban is what led to the very same "boycott" DSA is still supposedly facing to this day.
The BDS Working Group went on to fulfill its trajectory, leaving DSA in November 2023 and becoming a separate organization itself — with a statement denouncing DSA as irreparably Zionist and unsafe for Palestine organizing, at the very moment that DSA was uniting the whole organization to mobilize in a national crisis response campaign for Gaza, which the BDS WG did not control and dismissed as “electoral tailism.” It later dropped references to BDS from its name, due to strategic differences with the BDS Movement like disagreeing with the BDS emphasis on nonviolent civil society pressure on Israel, now calling itself simply “Palestine Solidarity Working Group (PSWG).” Ironically, the PSWG’s disaffiliation announcement came within days of two dozen DSA members publicly announcing they were leaving DSA in an open letter — because they thought DSA now supports Palestine too much. For different reasons, both the anti-Zionist PSWG and the actual Zionist letter-signers leaving DSA seemed united in their discomfort with DSA’s support for the actually existing BDS movement.
Meanwhile, members of DSA still fight with each other in a rush to adhere to the specific demands of particular outside organizations. Many members believe in good faith that if we just agree to whatever an org is asking, all of the “controversies” will stop. But we have to recognize all of this for what it is — a pattern.
This internal dynamic of deference is not an isolated phenomenon. Mirroring DSA’s current handling of internationalism was DSA's organizing around Black Lives Matter, police abolition, and prison abolition. Like our commitments to anti-zionism, DSA adopted firm positions in favor of police and prison abolition as far back as 2017 and 2019. Despite this, each time there was a mass racial justice upsurge, tepid white members would repeat the claim "we need to wait for Black leadership," as if we as a multiracial organization or we as socialists didn't have a stake in participating and supporting these struggles as DSA ourselves. One could assume that some white members did not even see a place for themselves in these struggles. This reached a comical peak in 2020, when the chapter waited weeks to respond to what was a clear nationwide uprising that was already in the works, all because of a perceived responsibility to defer to a handful of specific Black-led organizations. These organizations we selected to defer to were responding with alternatives of their own, when it was clear at the time that the real movement was outside Lafayette Park and without their particular leadership. We missed crucial opportunities to engage with the movement in this period. Deferring our political lines to outside organizations did not strengthen anyone then and does not strengthen anyone now. We must think for ourselves collectively, as an organization, and assess our goals and strategies accordingly, not let someone else tell us what they are.
This tendency of deference has played out in the electoral arena as well. In 2018, the chapter ran a primary slate of six people in Montgomery County to try to fundamentally shift the balance of power to progressives in the county. Among that slate was a long-time chapter member. The race was part of a coordinated campaign to force the left into being a real presence in the most powerful county in the state of Maryland. Because of the chapter's work, almost all the progressive groups matched our exact endorsements and came to our canvasses, almost entirely eliminating progressive vs. progressive fights. It meant that in this crucial moment, DSA got to speak for and lead the whole progressive wing of the county just through our intervention. Then, that longstanding member accepted an endorsement from the cop union.
He wasn't endorsed by the cops because he's some cryptofascist, but because he's a union-loving hippy who unironically thanks public sector workers “for their service.” That same candidate later got in major trouble with the police union on multiple occasions during his first term — notably around a "reimagining police task force," where he didn't even give their union a seat. A Black-led organization prominent in 2018 publicly announced that they were "boycotting DSA" until the chapter un-endorsed. The chapter spent the next month ripping itself into camps deciding whether or not we should un-endorse. Some of the conflict was generative. The chapter learned the importance of well-written questionnaires and upfront conversations with candidates about the expectations we have as an organization. The vote was close, but the candidate kept his endorsement.
He ended up winning that 2018 primary by 32 votes, beating out a slick pharma executive multimillionaire and guaranteeing that workers were not an afterthought in the county. Is he Lenin reimagined for the modern era? No. Is he part of a 10,000 step project to rebuild a serious workers movement? Unfortunately, yes. And it will only get messier.
We spent weeks discussing the threat of the boycott of DSA at that moment, but our organizing ultimately was not set back at all. We have continued to organize on all the issues we care about — including issues covered by other racial justice groups. The biggest issue we faced by continuing to stand with that candidate is that every once in a while we would cringe when he said something that wasn't entirely in line with our politics. We made the same sacrifices for our causes before — like when Bernie would say something about how fire departments are socialism (or got elected with police union support) — we need to learn to sit with some of that discomfort again.
The organization that threatened to boycott Metro DC DSA in 2018 has long since ceased to exist. In 2021, this group had 22 staff and millions upon millions of dollars in grants. But they're gone and we're still here due to the fundamental difference between DSA and any given non-profit, advocacy, or activist group: DSA is attempting to build a democratic organization modeled like the workers' parties of a bygone era. We believe in collective decision-making, strategic campaigns, and collective resources funded by membership dues. We aren't some amorphous "movement." We aren't a "single issue" organization. We don't just organize on the terrain as they see it. Our actions or decisions are not made in a vacuum.
A similar dynamic played out again at our 2021 Local Convention, when there was an effort to transfer a significant amount of chapter funds to an organization engaged in local Indigenous organizing. Members debated the question and ultimately decided that our chapter’s treasury was best used to fund our own campaigns. Some newer members of the chapter posted that they were quitting, citing this as just another example of DSA’s chauvinism. Local Convention attendees quickly raised more money on social media for the non-profit than the resolution ever called for. What some incorrectly viewed as a resolution deciding on the importance of an issue, namely “whether or not Iindigenous solidarity was important,” others rightly understood that it was actually a resolution advocating for a particular strategic approach. Our members decided that this proposed approach would not be DSA’s. Three years later, that other group is no longer active.
Even in 2017, when the organization had a near total rebirth and revitalization, we were still not immune to thinking that some of our problems might go away if we deferred our decision-making and strategy to others. In the aftermath of A12 and the right-wing violence in Charlottesville, where our chapter alone had dozens in attendance at the counterprotests, a well-meaning but in-over-their-head NPC member set up an informal fundraiser on GoFundMe. It soon raised over $200,000. This was a blessing that also posed a major risk for the organization, since the fundraiser was technically organized in DSA’s name. Victims of the attacks started reaching out asking to receive disbursements. We were not a professional or mature enough national organization to handle this type of undertaking. Nonprofits, especially those on the political left, are an easy target for audits that scrutinize handing out cash to even the most deserving. The NPC decided to hand over the money to a national organization that supposedly specialized in disbursing funds. And it went poorly. For over a year, victims of the violence from that traumatic day did not receive the money they needed. It was embarrassing, and rightfully so, but at the time, members repeated the same refrains that may sound familiar today: “If we don’t do XYZ, we won’t be able to organize around this issue any more.” Many members said that this debacle would be the end of MDC DSA’s work on anti-fascism. That line wasn’t true then, when our chapter mobilized people to show up at anti-fascist counterprotests and it isn’t true now, as our chapter continues to organize every day around Palestinian liberation.
So, where does that lead us to today? Looking forward to the 2024 Local Convention, the fundamental question at hand as we consider the “For an Anti-Zionist Metro DC DSA” resolution is whether DSA is able to set its own political lines, democratically, as a collective group, with its own considerations about resources, strategy, and understanding of our role in that struggle.
Despite pernicious claims to the contrary, DSA is already an anti-Zionist organization. The only people that seem to dispute this are online activists, confused members, and organizations that compete with DSA in a “marketplace of organizers” for volunteer hours. Evidence that DSA is Zionist seems to hinge on old references to our historical founding with Harrington — as if the organization hasn't entirely changed since 2017 — and our associations with Bowman and AOC, notably ignoring our role in supporting other members of the “squad,” such as Bush, Omar and Tlaib. One can easily attack Bowman for his past ignorance of the Palestinian struggle, but the fact that Bowman took incredible risks to criticize Israel, ones that ultimately cost him his seat and objectively set back the movement, cannot be ignored. Is DSA allowed to have a different analysis on Bowman's strategic importance than Within Our Lifetime (WOL) or Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)? Is DSA allowed to say that it was better for workers, socialism, and Palestinian people that Bowman stayed in Congress rather than AIPAC’s George Latimer? The same goes for Cori Bush.
PYM's letter to DSA last year about the boycott references "member-politicians" and then condemns DSA's failure to "hold them accountable." Behind this is a disagreement between organizations on where power over elected politicians comes from. Disciplining or expelling these electeds, or even just withholding our endorsement, is not the same as "holding them accountable." This is not a parliamentary system, in which we could set party lists and strengthen our hand over electeds. We must make strategic endorsements and intervene with resources because we think the outcome would be better for our organization and the working class. The membership status of an elected does not mean that they bow down to our collective line automatically, as nice as that would be. Membership in DSA is $5, but accountability ultimately derives from power.
What "accountability" can we achieve in disciplining an elected official? Most times, if we help someone get elected to office and they equivocate or “betray us” on one of our issues, they end the situation stronger from losing their association with us. Politicians are no longer clamoring for progressive credentials in 2024. We are a liability in almost every way apart from our numbers and organizing strength. Withholding that support is only a credible threat if it’s more powerful than the benefit from losing us. So, should we just wait for a Perfect Politician™ who won't ever betray us? Or should we just abstain from the evil arena of electoral politics altogether? No and no, because our interventions have been able to advance our politics in real, material ways, more than decades of left abstentionism or quixotic campaigns ever have.
Turning now to the specifics of the resolution, we must first understand the language put forward within the context of deference politics, but this time deferring to PYM and WOL. Most of the rationale is boilerplate stuff that the average DSA member would agree to without even thinking. The rationale does notably obfuscate the fact that the conflict over banning the leadership of the BDS Working Group was not due to a disagreement over the importance of Palestinian liberation, but rather the working group’s refusal to engage in the democratic structures we operate in within DSA.
The rationale also accepts at face value the claim from WOL that DSA would have been campaigning for "Joe Biden surrogates," which is the type of attack on our style of work that we shouldn’t accept — especially in a resolution we are expected to pass. WOL and organizations like WOL are functionally abstentionist, going so far as to accuse Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress, of spreading zionist lies. DSA is not and has never been abstentionist, with the vast majority of the organization in agreement about the need to identify strategic opportunities to intervene in the electoral arena to expand the space for non-electoral organizing. Accepting this point in the rationale demonstrates a lack of respect for ourselves and the work we do.
We should not feel the need to start every conversation with an apology for being in DSA. We are here because we believe in the project, and if any of those among us do not, they should be in another organization.
At this point the average DSA member is so conditioned to say, “Well, I’m in DSA, but I’m actually probably further to the left than most DSA members.” But if everyone that’s active is saying that, can it possibly be true? We should be proud of the fact that we’re in the largest organization of socialists and communists in decades, and be proud of the fact that we’re in the largest anti-zionist socialist organization in the country. Too much of this organization is concerned with the opinions of people who pathologically hate DSA, thinking that we might win them over so long as we prove we’re cool communists too. They will always think we’re Harrington’s organization.
So what can actually be done for DSA to advance the Palestinian struggle? First we must recognize how little power we currently have over this situation in our state of disorganization. This is not to dissuade people from action, but rather to inspire some clear thinking that reorients ourselves outward instead of inward. Israel's lobbying commands obedience from both parties, and the handful of politicians that stood up to a genocide faced unprecedented challenges, with the most expensive House primaries in history. Let's be clear: the loss of two squad members will not force them to be better on Palestine, but will force hundreds of elected officials to be worse for fear of facing the same attacks.
We need to re-dedicate ourselves to public-facing campaigns, run by our own members, that organize the sympathetic, alienate the opposition, and convince those in between. After a year of genocide, and as we now face an increasingly dangerous and hostile federal terrain, many of us are turning back inward to things we can control, like our local chapters. But doing so is a clear mistake. We need to return to moments that remind us that our position, opposing genocide and apartheid, is shared by the majority of people in the US — even if we have to build that political majority ourselves. National DSA has taken a tremendous step forward by trying to prioritize the #StopFuelingGenocide BDS campaign against Chevron. This proactively reorients our work toward a campaign with a clear opponent: one that can unite our allies against a common enemy and allows us to actually talk to people who may not already be mobilized. This is exactly the type of work that the BDS National Movement expects of us. We must develop approaches that help us build that majority for Palestine.
