YDSA’s National Coordinating Committee calls on DSA to pass Resolution: #32 Strengthening YDSA.

At YDSA’s national convention, we passed two resolutions (R3. Building a YDSA Mentor Program and R14. Resolution for Supporting a Growing YDSA) that ask for DSA’s cooperation. These resolutions affirm the importance of YDSA to both DSA and to winning socialism as a whole. Specifically, they ask that the YDSA National Coordinating Committee (NCC) be granted decision-making power over expenses related to national YDSA conventions, conferences, and campaigns, allows all NCC members to attend DSA NPC meetings (with voting rights reserved for the YDSA Co-Chairs), mandates the hiring of additional staff for YDSA and greater input from the NCC on the hiring process, creates stipends for NCC members to allow them to focus more time on organizing and less time working part-time jobs (in addition to studying), and grants YDSA the authority to direct the YDSA Mentors appointed/elected by DSA Chapters through a national mentorship program.

While these measures were adopted at the YDSA convention, to be fully enacted they must also be approved by the DSA convention through Resolution #32: Strengthening YDSA. As members of the YDSA NCC, we urge the 2021 DSA Convention delegation to pass Resolution #32. Not only does passing this resolution affirm the democratic decisions made at the 2021 YDSA Convention, the highest decision-making body in YDSA, but it also affirms the strategic importance of YDSA within DSA.

As we continue our efforts to expand to HBCUs, community colleges, and high schools (which has been greatly aided by the hiring of an additional YDSA organizer last year), YDSA continues to root DSA within the working class and especially working class communities of color. Furthermore, in YDSA we are developing our members into lifelong socialist organizers who will increase the power and capacity of DSA in the long term as they go on to organize in their future chapters. YDSA also helps to grow other forms of worker organization, like unions, as our members will go on to work in a variety of industries and geographic locations equipped with the skills to organize their workplaces. 

For these reasons, the YDSA NCC enthusiastically supports Resolution #32: Strengthening YDSA and we strongly encourage all convention delegates to vote in favor of it. With your support we can start a chapter on every campus and grow YDSA into a mass-organization capable of developing generations of future socialist and labor movement leaders.