Posted by Anonymous on 2018/04/24 under Games Use the following guide to help you with your organizing conversations leading up to the April 29th convention. Please do NOT share this with anyone, it is for your uses only. Bread and Roses Keep these three things in mind Organic Conversations: This conversation guide is different from a rap, and should be much more flexible than one. Your organizing conversations with people about Bread and Roses should be as organic as possible—use the examples, issues, and stories that move you the most and connect with people about what motivates and moves them in DSA. Respond honestly to their concerns, questions, and feelings about the upcoming Convention. Follow the flow of the conversation, rather than a rigid structure. A Light Touch: When we're canvassing strangers, we have limited time, and we don't sweat it if they're not interested in what we're selling. In internal organizing for an election, every single vote counts, and we don't want to abandon people or turn them away. A light touch is best in the context of a fixed constituency. Sometimes the first organizing conversation will be unsuccessful, and that's OK—don't push too hard. Come back around for another conversation, or someone else might, and again tread lightly. People will appreciate that their opinions and autonomy are being respected. Other Slates: This document doesn’t include any specifics on other slates, and in general these conversations will succeed by focusing on the positive vision our slate is offering. But within the context of private conversations, you should feel free to speak with complete honesty about how you feel about the other political tendencies in our organization, their platforms, and why you think they won't be able to accomplish the things we want to accomplish. We don’t do ourselves any favors by withholding these feelings. Refer to the talking points at the end of the document for questions that might be brought up by people who have been approached by other slates. Conversation Guide INTRO: Establish or elicit interest in the Convention ISSUES: Identify their interest in the chapter’s future and inoculate against other slates’ plans [Tie their interests back to a platform plank.] AGITATION: Compel them to support our priorities and slate INOCULATION: Compel them to help us organize for the Convention The only way that our vision will win and make East Bay DSA successful is if we get high turnout. That’s why you and I have to try to talk to as many people as we can and get them to come to the convention and vote for Bread and Roses. ASK: Get them to commit to voting and fighting for us Talking Points and Answers to Common Questions If they say: Where can I get more info about the convention? If they say: Someone told me EBDSA isn’t democratic or “member driven”. If they say: I’ve heard DSA SF is better because members are allowed to organize anything they want. If they say: Why shouldn’t we allow people to do anything they want in the organization? If they say: I’ve heard the current leadership is not diverse, doesn’t care about diversity. If they say: Doesn’t your slate care about prison abolition? (This might be controversial, so feel free to demur on this question if you like.) If they say: Doesn’t your slate care about immigrants’ rights?
Organizing Conversation Guide
➤➤➤ Key Question: Are you planning on going to the Convention on April 29?
If Yes: Have you looked at any of the priorities resolutions we’re voting on?
If No: It’s the most important meeting in our chapter since it will set the direction for the next year, so all members should attend.
➤➤➤ Key Questions:
Where do you see the chapter a year from now?
What kind of work do you want to do with DSA this year?
What brought you to DSA when you joined?
I’m voting for the Bread and Roses slate and their priorities resolution, which has a great plan for…
1) Fighting for Universal Social Programs — If they mentioned M4A, housing, or education
2) Labor Organizing — If they are in a union or are interested in organizing their workplace
3) Electoral Capacity — If they mention Gayle/Jovanka’s campaigns or Bernie
4) Grow EBDSA — If they mention diversity, inclusive democracy, or political education
➤➤➤ Key Questions: I think it’s crucial we’re doing that kind of work. If we want to do that, won’t we need both the right priorities resolution and an SC that can carry it out?
[Start with talking points about the resolution, move to talking points about the slate.]
Example: I really believe in B&R’s vision for our [housing campaign]… We need to take those steps if we want fully socialized housing eventually. And I know [candidates] believe in that vision and are committed to fighting for it on the SC.
➤➤➤ Key Questions: Do you think we’ll be able to pass this resolution and elect this slate if members like us don’t turn out to the Convention?
[Inoculate against other slates, and tie back to ours.]
The last two general meetings have had good turnout, but only a small percentage of the active members who canvass and participate in our organizing showed up. If people like us—who are committed to DSA and plugged into the real work of the organization—don’t show up, the paper members and the other slates will be a higher proportion of the membership.
➤➤➤ Key Question: [Tie back to issue] If you want us to [fight for housing], you should support Bread and Roses! What do you think we’ll need to get their priorities resolution and candidates elected?
[Affirm their ideas and make the following asks.]
Commit to coming to Convention and voting for the Bread and Roses resolution/slate
Commit to telling three comrades about Bread and Roses and asking them to support
Express their support by sharing social media or writing a position paper
convention.eastbaydsa.org
EBDSA is 100% member driven. No one is getting paid to do this; we are all volunteers.
There are competing ideas about democracy in our chapter—one that emphasizes a lack of structure, small spaces that can dominated by loud voices, and ours that is geared toward maximum participation, political deliberation, and effective collective action.
We want as many members as possible participating in our collective decision-making and organizing. That is Bread and Roses’ vision of inclusive democracy.
A horizontal structure with lots of autonomous working groups means work gets siloed into small groups. This makes building real outward-facing campaigns difficult and favors informal hierarchies. Bigger, more inclusive campaigns are the most effective and democratic vehicles for building mass socialist politics.
Democracy is about a large majority having ownership over the work and resources of the chapter, and most importantly over its political direction. Democracy is not everyone gets to do what they want. Majority rule means that most people will decide upon a course of action, and the minority that loses the debate doesn’t get their way. If everyone just did their own thing, thus avoiding the majority-rules democracy stuff, then we might as well not be in an organization together.
That’s why we started doing strategy meetings for the M4A campaign. We generated lots of ideas and then focused on the most practicable ones that everyone agreed on.
We recognized we needed to be open to more tactics and the bylaws team (many of whom are part of Bread and Roses) wrote new bylaws making it easier for members to create new committees.
Making EBDSA more representative of the working class population of the DSA and building solidarity are some of the main goals of the Bread and Roses platform. We plan to form a diversity committee to help develop a diversity plan of action and carry it out.
All of the campaigns we have endorsed aim to reach the widest segment of the working class and engage people along material lines that have a direct impact on their daily lives.
Working with diverse, working class partner organizations is a good start that doesn’t objectify people based on race or ethnic background.
Our society is deeply segregated, and mostly white people came to DSA on their own. Over the last 18 months we’ve been building a solid core of activists who can carry out political work that is compelling to diverse working class communities. This is essential for DSA to prove that it is worth the time of working class activists and activists of color.
Part of organizing the working class means helping them deepen their political thinking about the inequities of our world. Most working people, and most African Americans, don’t actually want to reduce policing in their neighborhoods. (The last graph on this study has polling numbers.) This is partly because, ever since the 70s when neoliberals started to dismantle the US social welfare state, the only solution on offer to increasing poverty and crime, especially in black communities, has been increased policing and incarceration. While we unequivocally oppose police violence and repression and mass incarceration, we have to recognize that advocating for the abolition of police and prisons is not going to win over most working-class POC, and will probably alienate them. We can and should call for reforms of prisons and policing, especially if we can tie these demands to the rebuilding of a welfare state and a powerful labor movement that would eliminate the true roots of poverty and crime.
Here is a long good but long recent article on the topic if you have time. (If you want to skip the really interesting but very historical background, scroll down to the last section called “Abolition or Reform?” for a summary of the argument against abolitionism.)
We’re committed to solidarity among the working class, and immigrants are a key part of our class—which is why we need to be vocal and in our opposition to deportations, the disenfranchisement of immigrants, and the racism/xenophobia of the right wing. We strongly support demonstrations against deportations and the work of the Immigrant Rights Caucus in EBDSA.
However, to go beyond demonstrations and half-measures like “sanctuary cities,” the left needs to stand united to to fight against the oppression of immigrants, which means building a united, multiracial working class majority through fights for universal programs and the revitalization of the labor movement. These coalitions can both transform material conditions for immigrants and show millions of workers that they have shared interests with other workers, citizens and non-citizens alike.