Socialist Majority

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Socialist Majority is a caucus of the Democratic Socialists of America.

DSA Socialist Majority

In 2023 Rael Almonte Reyes stood as a Socialist Majority slate candidate for Democratic Socialists of America NPC together with Colleen Johnson, Melina Herrera, Sarah Callahan, Grace Mausser and Renee Paradis.

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Rael Almonte Reyes is a member of NYC-DSA. He has served on his local branch's (Bronx & Upper Manhattan) Organizing Committee and Electoral Working Group. He has also served on the Citywide Leadership Committee (CLC) and the NYC-DSA Citywide Electoral Steering Committee. He has worked on several DSA endorsed electoral campaigns, including Vanessa Agudelo, Kristen Gonzalez, David Alexis, among others.[1]

About

From the Socialist Majority website:[2]

1) Our urgent task is to build a socialist majority.
To build a socialist majority, we need to engage working people in effective campaigns around immediate demands. We need to organize in a way that recognizes and combats white supremacy, patriarchy, and all other systems of oppression as well as capitalism. We need to help build a powerful labor movement and work to elect democratic socialist candidates to office. We need to operate in a democratic way within our organization, while holding each other to a standard of generous and comradely behavior.
2) Organizing working people around immediate and radical demands is our path to power.
Policies once viewed as radical, like a $15 minimum wage, have become overwhelmingly popular because millions of working people have advocated for themselves through campaigns that speak to their conditions and aspirations. Socialists should advance these issues, connect them to a long-term vision of democratic socialism, and build DSA—and a new socialist majority—in the process.
3) Effective, well-targeted campaigns around specific demands are at the heart of DSA’s political work.
Campaigns that win specific concessions from particular power centers, using tactics that large numbers of people can participate in, build confidence, skills, and power for the working class.
4) DSA should embrace a democratic, bottom-up model of campaign development that connects local struggles with broader movements.
Campaigns developed and tested at the local level should inform national priorities through democratic processes.
5) Dismantling racist and oppressive institutions is central to our fight.
The working class, both in the U.S. and internationally, is multiracial. We will not be able to build a socialist majority without tackling white supremacy, imperialism, and other forms of oppression head on, in society, in our coalitions, and in DSA.
6) Socialist feminist praxis informs our organizing and organizational culture.
Our organizing practice should recognize that all members of the working class have multiple identities, including gender, sexual attraction, race, ability, and others, that shape their experience of oppression. Building a socialist majority will require consciously building bridges across the divisions that various forms of oppression have created.
7) DSA works most effectively in coalition with organized progressive and working-class groups.
Millions of working people across the country are fighting for their own interests by organizing themselves in groups like labor unions, tenant and neighborhood associations, and other community organizations. DSA should build strategic and sustainable relationships with these organizations by campaigning for working-class demands and should also foreground the structural analysis that connects disparate issues to a democratic socialist program.
8) Socialists should engage the labor movement at all levels to build a united, fighting working-class movement.
Building a militant, progressive and democratic labor movement is a central task for socialists. DSA members have a wide variety of roles to play, including organizing as members of the rank-and-file, as union staff or officers, in our own non-union workplaces, and in targeted strategic industries. All labor movement work that advances our class struggle is important to building a socialist majority.
9) DSA can and should be the face of the democratic socialist electoral movement growing across the country.
The electoral campaigns of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other democratic socialists at all levels of government have engaged millions of working people in discussion of socialist demands, and have played an important role in DSA’s growth. Electoral campaigns should be a key part of DSA’s strategy to forge a socialist majority.
10) We will strive to practice solidarity with each other, even in disagreement, in a way that transforms us as individuals and strengthens us as a collective.
Comradely conversation and debate over ideas, tactics, and strategies is the lifeblood of a democratic organization like DSA. Toxic or factionalized disagreement fails to change minds and fails to move our work forward. We want to uphold norms of debate, of democratic governance, and of communication that prioritize treating one another as comrades in mutual struggle rather than adversaries to be torn down.

Inside/Outside Project

The Inside/Outside Project (I/O) The convergence within the inside/outside trend is also happening within the Inside/Outside Project. Through the Inside/Outside Project there is an increased possibility of coalescing sections of the socialist Left around a shared Left strategy and program. The current (June 2022) participants in the project are Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), Communist Party USA (CPUSA), LeftRoots, Socialist Majority Caucus of Democratic Socialists of America, and Liberation Road.[3]

2020 Leadership

Founding

The Socialist Majority Caucus was formed in early 2019 by DSA members across the country from dozens of chapters and organizing committees. As the name suggests, we look forward to a movement that wins over broad swaths of the working class to democratic socialist values and our shared principles. We recognize this can only be accomplished through a movement that doesn’t just win in every geographic region of the country, but also one that mirrors the composition of the working class—especially its most oppressed groups. However, we also recognize that by any appreciable metric the capitalist class and their right-wing allies hold control and power over much of our economy, state, and culture. DSA’s strategy is not to retreat in fear, equivocate in impotence, or offer revolutionary sloganeering that amounts to little more than symbolism; rather, our answer is—organize.

As a caucus, our approach to this strategy—which will be outlined more fully in our coming platform—means applying a critical socialist lens to the following areas:

Local organizing: we believe chapters are best equipped to assess their own specific, unique material conditions and how this shapes the context of their work. Winnable campaigns that tackle clear targets and make tangible shifts in power structures are the best way to build our own capacity and confidence in preparation for tackling larger and more consequential issues. National organizing: we also recognize that some problems transcend individual cities, or even states and regions, and may require the coordinated efforts of not only DSA, but allied left-progressive and working class movements in coalition. Electoral organizing: in order to secure victories won in the streets, we understand the necessity of critical engagement with state power. This arena is also uniquely suited to build connections with the working class, as it is the only explicitly political outlet many folks engage with. Labor organizing: we fully believe DSA can help grow a militant and democratic labor movement that is both oriented toward rank-and-file power and ready to struggle against oppressive forces, including white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. Internal Organizing: our members, even those who have joined more recently, share a deep love and commitment to DSA as an organization. It is from this place, and not one of malice, that we seek to improve it. The qualitative changes we have undergone from a small, mostly regional organization to what is hopefully a mass organization in its embryonic stages are undeniable; it is time the structures of the organization begins to reflect these changes as well. We in Socialist Majority are united in our positive vision for DSA and for the world we’re working toward. We seek to ground our work in the hope and joy of a socialist future. Our political tradition is that of movement organizers who have worked to transform everyday working people into leaders and organizers themselves, who have kept the fire burning during times of repression and fanned the flames as mass movements have challenged the status quo.

We believe the DSA model for mass politics is crucial to our growth. Our low barrier to entry allows new socialists the space to develop their politics through struggle, political education, and the practice of formal democracy. We believe we should maintain and strengthen these elements of our organization.

Caucus members will be present at the Chicago DSA preconvention conference, this coming weekend April 12–14th, to answer any questions and provide further information. We are open to all DSA members that share our values and align with our shared principles—you may sign up here.

In solidarity,

Signatories list

Socialist Majority Caucus signatories list April 25 2019:[6]

More names had been added by March 4, 2020.

References

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ Shared Principles (accessed May 12, 2023)
  3. ↑ [chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://roadtoliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Liberation-Road-2022-2025-Strategic-Orientation.docx.pdf]
  4. ↑ [2]
  5. ↑ [ DSA http://www.midwestsocialist.com/2019/04/11/op-ed-why-we-joined-socialist-majority/]
  6. ↑ [3]
  7. ↑ [4]
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