Alicent Muning investigates the leadership practices of the Metro DC DSA’s outgoing steering committee, uncovering a long history of undemocratic behavior and abuses of power.
Discussion or Tribunal?
At 7PM EST on Tuesday December 17, at the behest of a friend, I listened in on the final meeting of the outgoing 2024 Steering Committee (SC) of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America (MDC DSA), the local chapter’s yearly elected leadership. This meeting, I was told, planned to discuss a controversial article recently featured in the MDC DSA’s publication, the Washington Socialist. The article, by MDC DSA member Sam Dee, covered the comrade’s experience as a staff organizer in the ongoing, UAW-affiliated unionization campaign of graduate workers at the nearby University of Maryland, College Park (UMD).1
Dee’s article, published last September, was highly critical of the organizing practices of the campaign. The SC’s discussion was prompted by a post about the article made to MDC DSA’s Instagram account in late November, two months after its initial publication, which produced a negative reaction from commenters claiming to be members of the nearby campaign. According to SC members, this was followed by five emails, two from UAW staff members and three from UMD graduate workers. Apparently, these emails stated the article was “disorganizing” to the campaign’s current work because it contained “misinformation,” though the claims to this effect, as relayed to the meeting’s attendees by SC members, seemed to be relatively minor issues of framing rather than glaring inaccuracies. The emails also apparently claimed that strategic information had been revealed by Dee. However, it seemed more the case that Dee had merely compiled information already publicly available into his piece as a part of his analysis. According to SC members, however, the emails included threats to hold MDC DSA responsible if the campaign faced union-busting from UMD administration.
I expected the meeting to be largely administrative, in which there would be a discussion of how to present the general membership with such a controversial dilemma. The meeting I entered, however, was quite different. I was shocked to find out that what I assumed would be a discussion of the article was actually an internal vote of the SC on whether to censor the article indefinitely. This vote was based entirely on an internal resolution and report, brought to the body by SC member and chapter secretary Michael M. According to rank-and-file members present, neither the resolution nor the report had been circulated to membership, and both were only made available at the meeting’s start to the dozen or so rank-and-file members who’d taken time out of their Tuesday evening to attend. In other words, this was a parliamentary tribunal on the author’s piece, unilaterally organized and overseen by the members of the SC–Carl R, Michael M, Aparna R, Eduarda S, Imara C, Emily N, Claire M, and Gary Z.2
The meeting that followed was, for lack of a better term, a mess. The meeting’s chair, Carl R, was clearly shaken by the fact that rank-and-file members attended at all. No procedural announcement was made at the meeting’s start, but SC members quickly attempted to manage it through an unclear set of parliamentary procedures that, it was obvious, was not knowledge shared by all attendees. Some rank-and-file members who’d seemingly attended SC meetings in the past were somewhat aware of how to navigate the rules. But others, who had clearly come to speak on a controversial issue, were confused by the uneven attempts to maintain the semblance of parliamentary procedure. Many were probably expecting a somewhat structured, but relatively open discussion, rather than the kangaroo court the meeting became.
The following hour revealed that the SC, minus Gary Z–the lone dissenting voice as a result of his involvement with the editorial team of the Washington Socialist–was already unified around censoring the article. This had not always been the case. Some rank-and-file members to whom I reached out afterward mentioned that this was the second attempt at a vote to censor the piece. The first had collapsed at the SC meeting two weeks prior, on December 3, when the motion to do so failed to find a second sponsor. Within the first thirty minutes of the December 17 meeting, however, numerous SC members, including R and Imara C, stated they planned to vote to indefinitely censor the piece “until the union wins recognition,” no matter what attending rank-and-file members had to say.
Not all rank-and-file members agreed on what to do, but the majority of those attending spoke against censorship of the piece. One rank-and-file member, who also identified themselves as a graduate worker at UMD, claimed the article helped them understand why UMD graduate worker unionization campaigns, of which there have been three in the past thirty years, have repeatedly failed. Yet, in light of SC member opening statements against the article, the hour or so of rank-and-file input felt like an enormous waste of time. With the exception of Z, the SC voted to censor the piece.
However, putting aside the issue of Dee’s piece itself, no one there seemed to recognize the most fundamentally shocking aspect of the meeting: that MDC DSA SC members seemed quite comfortable with the idea that they were empowered to vote internally on the censorship of a rank-and-file member’s writing. The meeting’s most disturbing element was the casual nature by which SC members acted without once wondering whether such a controversial issue should be debated and decided by the general membership. Indeed, what I had expected was a largely administrative discussion of how to effectively facilitate this. Instead, I was witness to one of the most ridiculous instances of bureaucratic abuse I’ve experienced in my decade in DSA.
I spent the following week asking myself how such an outrageous meeting could be held without any procedural resistance from either the lone dissenting SC voice or rank-and-file members. As a result, I decided to investigate the local chapter’s bylaws, as well as the record of the SC’s recent activity. What I uncovered was a long history of undemocratic leadership and bureaucratic abuse based on seemingly intentional misrepresentations of the chapter’s bylaws.
My analysis reveals that beginning in 2021, chapter leadership began to isolate themselves from the membership through a two-tiered procedural system that allowed the SC to make constant executive decisions outside the role the bylaws prescribe for the body. I trace the origin of this undemocratic, two-tiered system to the pandemic year of 2020, during which a group of prominent members used the crisis to subordinate chapter functions to the SC and its administrative subcommittees, a process which undermined the democratic structures outlined in the chapter’s bylaws. In the years that followed, the SC has become increasingly empowered to violate their organization’s stated procedure by handling the business of the organization without the consent of the general membership.
This piece should be understood as a negative report on the state of MDC DSA. It is my opinion that the chapter is in a deeply atomized state. While there are many positive projects occurring within MDC DSA, the past four years of undemocratic, bureaucratically abusive leadership have created a situation in which organizers in different initiatives often maintain a wide distance from both the chapter’s central structures and each other, for fear of being scrutinized and reprimanded by unaccountable SC members. My goal is to rectify this situation by exposing leadership’s undemocratic behavior.
However, I also seek to prove to DSA members that chapter bylaws should be taken seriously as macro-procedural documents. While there is a long history of discourse in the DSA on the micro-procedure of parliamentary order, there is much less focus on the macro-procedural order represented by documents such as bylaws. As this article will show, MDC DSA SC members regularly misrepresent the chapter’s bylaws to obscure their own violations of the chapter’s separation of powers and democratic procedure. But they are only able to do this because the bylaws are not well understood by the local chapter’s membership. I hope that this article’s analysis of the chapter’s bylaws can provide the grounds for MDC DSA members to begin contesting the undemocratic practices of their leadership, as well as give impetus to members in other chapters to take bylaws seriously as a means of establishing internal democratic procedure.
What is the Role of MDC DSA’s Steering Committee?
The following is an analysis of the MDC DSA’s bylaws which outlines the chapter’s separation of powers and the role of the chapter’s SC. We’ll start with a simple, concrete question: was the SC allowed to unilaterally censor the writing of a rank-and-file member? Based on the current bylaws of the MDC DSA, the short answer is no. The long answer is that if certain specific conditions are met, the SC could vote on such a matter, but these conditions were clearly not in place on December 17, and any decision the SC made would likely still have to be given final approval by the general membership. The local’s bylaws, if read closely, clearly establish the chapter’s separation of powers and provide for what decisions could and could not be made by the SC on December 17.
Bylaws are often difficult to interpret because they are meant to be a mutually-constitutive set of guidelines rather than a series of autonomous, independent statements. Good bylaw interpretations put sections in dialogue with one another. Bad bylaw interpretations take a single section and draw implications based on an isolated reading. The latter is clearly what MDC DSA’s SC did in the case of holding their vote on Dee’s article. Section 7.1 of the organization’s bylaws state that:
In order to ensure the chapter speaks in one voice, statements or endorsements by chapter members or formations that could reasonably be interpreted as creating a new obligation or position for MDC DSA as a whole must be approved by the Steering Committee, a general body meeting, or the local convention.3
Taken in isolation, this implies that the SC is capable of making a decision on the speech of a member if it is interpreted as obligating the organization in a certain way. Setting aside the issue of whether or not Dee’s article actually did this, however, the section itself includes the caveat that the SC is merely one of three possible bodies which could make this decision.
This section cannot be taken in isolation, because section 3 of the local chapter’s bylaws sets clear limits on this power by establishing the proper, regular business of each chapter body. Section 3.1 states that:
In the absence of a local convention, the members present and assembled at a general body meeting represent the general body membership and are the highest decision-making authority in the chapter. The general body membership shall allow for the democratic introduction of proposals through a resolution process.
Followed by section 3.1.1, which states:
Resolutions may be adopted by the general body at any scheduled general body meeting. Resolutions shall require a rationale, a statement of purpose in the form of “whereas” clauses, and the action(s) to be taken by the chapter in the form of “be it resolved” clauses.
All resolutions considered by the general body shall be put to the following process:
First Read – The Steering Committee shall debate the resolution and may propose amendments in an open meeting. Non-steering members present may debate and propose amendments as well. The Steering Committee is not empowered to place a resolution on hold and prevent a resolution from being sent to the second read.
Second Read – Final debate, amendment(s), and vote: The purpose of the second read is to take a final vote on any resolution. Resolutions in the second read shall be put to a formal debate and final vote. Rules regarding deliberation shall follow the standard rules of order and any special rules of order adopted by the general body.
Exceptions to the Two-Reader Process – Any resolution may bypass the first read if it is considered an emergency resolution. In order to be considered an emergency resolution, the content and purpose of the resolution must be time-sensitive and of crucial importance to warrant the skipping of a two-week consideration period for a resolution. A two-thirds vote of the Steering Committee or three-fourths vote of a general body is required to deem a resolution an emergency resolution. Emergency resolutions will follow the regular rules of order required for adoption by the general body: a majority vote or two-thirds vote depending on the type of resolution.4
If specific conditions are met, the SC can bypass this process and take executive action. The means by which this is done are covered in section 3.5, which states:
Urgent matters that would regularly require a general body meeting vote may be voted on by the Steering Committee and, if adopted, be put to a ratification vote by a majority or two-thirds vote as the bylaws require at the next voting meeting.
As well as in section 6.1.1, which states:
The Campaigns Council will assemble as either an ordinary meeting or a joint meeting with the Steering Committee. Joint meetings with the Steering Committee will take place once per quarter. Steering Committee resolutions and decisions can be made by majority vote of the Steering Committee members present during these meetings,5 which will be treated as meetings of both the Steering Committee and the Campaigns Council for the purposes of activity requirements.
Taken together, these four sections clearly establish the following:
- Outside the local convention, the general body meeting is the highest decision-making authority in the organization.
- This means that, barring convention, the general body meeting is the highest executive authority of the bodies capable of making decisions on member speech.
- The general body meeting is the normal forum in which business (i.e. all resolutions) is heard, debated, and voted on.
- Votes on resolutions can occur only after a two-reader process unless adopted as an “emergency resolution.”
- The SC can only bypass the process by which business is normally addressed in general body meetings and make unilateral executive decisions on said business if it is either (a) demonstrably urgent and adopted as an “urgent matter,” after which it must still eventually be ratified at a general body meeting,6 or (b) in the context of a formal joint meeting between the SC and the Campaigns Council (CC).
It is clear from this that the vote taken by the SC on December 17, which was based on a resolution introduced by M, was in direct violation of the organization’s bylaws. Neither meeting was formally described or announced as a quarterly joint meeting of the SC and CC,7 meaning the SC was not empowered to vote on resolutions unilaterally. The original attempt to move for a vote to censor the article at the December 3 meeting was not even presented as a resolution, nor was it preceded by a discussion of the urgency of the issue or adopted formally as an “urgent matter.” The very fact that the vote failed to find a second sponsor demonstrated a lack of urgency regarding the issue among the members of the SC.
The December 17 vote, which I witnessed, again lacked a discussion of the urgency of M’s resolution, nor was it formally adopted as an “urgent matter,” and even lacked a formal read process. Rank-and-file members were not allowed to introduce amendments, and there was no sense that anyone in attendance believed the resolution would be brought to a general body meeting for a second read. The SC merely voted to censor the article and called it a day.
This is well outside the purview of the local’s SC, for which the MDC DSA’s bylaws clearly establish a largely arbitrational and administrative role. For instance, while the national DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC) is described as “the collective leadership and the highest decision-making body of the organization between meetings of the Convention,” the MDC DSA’s SC is never given the power to make decisions for the organization between conventions, or even general body meetings. The primary description of the body states that the SC is merely:
the highest elected body of MDC DSA and is the political leadership of the chapter when the membership is not assembled, subordinate to the bylaws as well as resolutions passed by members at general body meetings and local conventions which may overturn its decisions.
The most important aspect of this section is that, unlike the NPC, the MDC DSA’s SC is not identified as the “highest decision-making body” in any context. Indeed, it is merely the “highest elected body.” Between general body meetings, the SC is the chapter’s “political leadership,” but the role of leadership, which we will see is clearly defined in the bylaws, is not identified as an executive one. In other words, the SC is not an executive power.
As the last clause of the above-quoted section implies, the SC is capable of making certain types of decisions, but only within the specific arbitrational and administrative roles established for the body in sections 2.2, 2.3, 3.0, 7.1, 7.4, 7.5, and 7.8. Readers who peruse these sections will find that they empower the SC to make decisions in cases that arbitrate “disputes between chapter formations that may arise.” They also give the body wide latitude to interpret the chapter’s code of conduct in the event of such disputes, as well as in instances of activity by members that breach previously established code of conduct precedent. Besides this, the primary roles of the SC outlined are (a) the general administration of the chapter through regular contact with committees and working groups, (b) the facilitation of democratic decision-making by the general membership through the presentation of business at general body meetings which they are responsible for scheduling and overseeing, and (c) the implementation of decisions made by the general membership.
The bylaws of MDC DSA are interesting. In principle, they are far more democratic than those of the national organization. They effectively make the general body meeting a permanent, collective, executive body. The SC is given the administrative role of preparing and presenting business for the exercise of that executive authority on a regular schedule, as well the responsibility for carrying out the will of that authority. Although an exception is made for “urgent matters,” giving the SC executive authority for time-sensitive decisions, these must still be ratified at a subsequent general body meeting. It is clear that MDC DSA’s bylaws were either originally designed, or at some point rehauled, to make facilitation of executive authority, rather than executive authority itself, the proper and primary role of chapter leadership.
In the case of Dee’s article, none of the special conditions necessary for the SC to take unilateral executive action were present. There was no dispute between chapter formations, nor did the SC identify a breach of the local’s code of conduct. Rather, it was a dispute between MDC DSA and another local organization. The failure of the SC to attempt a vote on December 3 also precluded the possibility of the issue being seriously adopted as an “urgent matter,” which, in any case, was not done. Nor did the SC formally describe either December 3 or 17 as a joint SC-CC meeting.
Therefore, the proper business of the December 17 meeting should have been either to:
(a) present M’s resolution for a first read, during which both SC and rank-and-file members should have been allowed to present amendments before it was submitted to a second read at the next general body meeting
or,
(b) discuss how to best educate the general membership on the issue and facilitate a democratic debate on the question of censoring Dee’s article in the weeks leading up to a first general body meeting read of M’s resolution.
Instead, the meeting was a show trial, during which SC members attempted to use the facade of the meeting’s stringent, but uneven, micro-procedure to control an unexpectedly large rank-and-file presence opposed to their pre-made decision, as well as to obscure their blatant macro-procedural violations of the local chapter’s bylaws.
The MDC DSA Steering Committee’s Undemocratic Two-Tiered Systems
The undemocratic behavior displayed on December 17 did not appear overnight. The unilateral censorship of Dee by the SC, without even the semblance of democratic discussion within the organization, was merely the egregious end result of a pattern of undemocratic leadership. This pattern is marked by a total failure of SC members to properly interpret the chapter’s bylaws, follow the democratic procedure outlined therein, or maintain coherent records accessible to members.8 As a result, SC practices that regularly violate the separation of powers outlined in the bylaws have been normalized in the chapter, creating a situation in which the general business of the organization is dealt with almost exclusively by a small group of leaders isolated from the input of membership.
If one takes the time to work through the chaotic mess that is the chapter’s archives, which are scattered across an unnavigable web of platforms, it becomes apparent that, since 2022, there are actually two types of resolutions passed in MDC DSA; general resolutions and steering resolutions. Besides a reference to undefined “steering committee resolutions” in section 6.1.1 and the implication of such resolutions in section 7.4, the bylaws do not explicitly account for a type of resolution or resolution process specific to the SC. Indeed, as shown in the block quote of 6.1.1 in the previous section, since they are never again mentioned, it implies that these resolutions are specific to joint SC-CC meetings.
The practice of passing resolutions formally described as steering resolutions seems to have been first introduced by the incoming 2022 SC in their inaugural January 4, 2022 meeting, though it was not adopted officially until the following meeting on January 18. Although the resolution establishing the practice outlined protocols for SC record keeping, which were unfortunately abandoned the following year, it does not define what distinguishes a general from a steering resolution. Since the bylaws also do not define the content of the seemingly synonymous “steering committee resolutions,” one would assume that steering resolutions are limited to addressing business of a purely administrative and arbitrational nature, since that is the role of the SC. However, in practice this is far from the case.
While some steering resolutions do involve business appropriate to the SC’s role, an analysis of the last four years of SC minutes reveals that, through these resolutions, the SC habitually attends to business which should be addressed by the general membership according to the chapter’s bylaws. The failure of the SC to define the difference between general and steering resolutions has allowed SC members to make unilateral executive decisions on business outside the body’s purview by glossing them over as steering resolutions. Indeed, steering resolutions are the primary way in which the SC sidesteps internal democracy through unilateral executive action.
Despite the fact that steering resolutions are not defined as distinct from any other resolution by the bylaws, the SC regularly passes them without submitting them to a two-reader process open to the general membership or adopting them as “urgent matters.” The historical pattern which emerges from this is one in which, no matter the actual content of a resolution, many of those introduced by steering members are de facto considered steering resolutions and adopted unilaterally by the SC. Most of those introduced by rank-and-file members, however, are considered general resolutions and subjected to the two-reader process outlined in the bylaws. In other words, the chapter’s SC regularly acts in an executive role, bypassing normal procedure by making use of a special type of resolution that is not accounted for in the chapter’s bylaws. This creates a two-tiered system of resolution adoption, in which leadership maintains a permanent, undemocratic advantage over rank-and-file members.
In addition to this method of ruling by so-called steering resolutions, the SC has a long history of unilaterally endorsing political statements, actions, and issue campaigns despite the body not being given the authority to make such politically outward-facing, executive decisions by the chapter’s bylaws. Indeed, the SC is never identified as a decision-making executive body and so, by default, cannot make these decisions, unless they are adopted as “urgent matters” to be later ratified by the general membership. The 2021 SC, seemingly unaware of the explicit procedure outlined in the bylaws for this type of chapter business, developed a whole system by which rank-and-file members were forced to request leadership’s unilateral approval for such endorsements, which is still in regular use today.9
However, there is one instance in which the SC did formally adopt such an endorsement as an “urgent matter;” their vote to endorse a resolution supporting the Maryland Uncommitted campaign brought to them by a rank-and-file member on March 12 2024, which was followed by the endorsement’s ratification at the following general body meeting.10 This means that outgoing SC members did understand there was a formal process they must follow to make politically outward-facing executive decisions. Instead, they repeatedly chose to maintain a two-tiered system in which they could internally vote on such endorsements unilaterally, at their own whim, while subjecting those of rank-and-file members to the more stringent official process. Indeed, three other endorsements of a similar kind were unilaterally passed by the SC at the same meeting without being adopted as “urgent matters” or subject to later ratification. What differentiated the resolutions on these other endorsements was their sponsorship by members of the SC.
Like the resolution process, a two-tiered system has emerged around the process of endorsing political statements, actions, and issue campaigns. This clearly has no basis in the chapter’s bylaws, but allows SC members to sidestep their responsibility for compiling, preparing, and presenting chapter business to general body meetings when it suits them, while forcing business they want buried to go through the stringent two-reader process outlined in the bylaws. A record of SC’s use of these two-tiered systems to sidestep the chapter’s democratic procedure, including those mentioned above, is provided in a subsequent section.
In conversation, some rank-and-file members claimed the SC legitimizes these executive actions and two-tiered systems by appealing to informal precedent established in numerous, erratically-produced internal guidelines that can only be accessed with great difficulty. One rank-and-file member even described some of these documents as “secret.” Indeed, the chaotically-kept records of the chapter do include dozens of guideline documents scattered haphazardly across random chapter Google drive folders, tucked away in obscure corners of the chapter’s public website, or buried in the impenetrable maze that is the chapter’s badly-maintained, members-only wiki, archive, and loomio pages.
The most egregious example of this regards the bylaws themselves. In my research, I noticed that during the January 18, 2022 meeting of the SC, the body adopted “updated ByLaws.” This confused me, as the SC is not empowered to make changes to the bylaws. Additionally, the bylaw document that was linked was neither available to myself or other members.11 I was only able to access the document through the help of a former SC member, a copy of which I have made available here. This SC motion to adopt these bylaws seemed to be in reference to bylaw changes which I discovered were adopted during MDC DSA’s December 2021 local convention. But the document “adopted” a month later by the SC included bylaw amendments that were not adopted by the membership. Of most importance, however, is that the bylaws publicly available to members on the chapter website have not been updated since December 13, 2020, meaning that the SC is operating according to bylaws that the membership does not have access to, unless they are willing to go to great lengths to find them as I have.
My above analysis of the MDC DSA’s bylaws takes into account the bylaw amendments I discovered in my research. But the fact that the SC works according to bylaws which are unavailable to the membership means that the above-quoted member is, in effect, correct regarding secret documents.
It is likely that SC members have also been acting according to internal guidelines that misrepresent the SC is an executive body. Indeed, so-called steering resolutions passed by the SC as recently as this past October erroneously make this claim. For instance, the steering “Resolution to Improve Transparency of Steering Committee Votes,” the main sponsor of which was SC member Emily N, misrepresents the chapter’s bylaws by claiming the SC “is the highest decision-making body of the chapter outside of the Local Convention.” This is incorrect. The bylaws explicitly refrain from describing the SC in this way. Instead, section 3.1 states that “in the absence of a local convention” this authority is held by general body meetings.
But whatever these internal guidance documents state, the SC is still “subordinate to the bylaws” of MDC DSA. Any procedural guidance for the SC laid out by internal documents that violates the organization’s bylaws is illegitimate. Indeed, SC members’ misrepresentation of the chapter’s bylaws has led to a situation in which the SC has been in an almost permanent state of bylaw violation for years.
The COVID Pandemic as the Historical Origin of an Unaccountable Steering Committee
The history of the SC’s undemocratic behavior can be traced specifically to 2021. The SC meeting minutes from 2017 to 2020 show that the SC’s actions prior to 2021 were almost entirely administrative and arbitrational. Funnily enough, the only other instance I found of controversy over an article in Washington Socialist occurred in 2018, when a piece produced backlash from rank-and-file members. In response to the controversy, the SC correctly pointed out that executive decisions on the censorship of writing for the publication were outside its purview, stating “that Steering was not an editorial board for the Washington Socialist and that the body would not take the role of approving or vetoing this piece.”12
Why, then, did the 2021 SC suddenly begin to take unilateral executive actions? It seems that it was the result of a crisis produced by the pandemic. Between April 2020 and February 2022, a period of just under two years, there is no record that any general body meetings occurred. The SC itself seems to have either stopped meeting entirely or failed to record any meetings for over a year between April 2020 and June 2021. Of course, in the face of an unprecedented crisis, a period of adjustment is expected. But a year of the SC failing to meet itself, and two years without the facilitation of a single general body meeting, nominally the organization’s highest executive, does not represent adjustment on the part of chapter leadership, but total failure.
Despite the fact that by May 2021, at least according to the chapter’s records, the highest executive and administrative levels of the organization had effectively ceased to exist, prominent MDC DSA members Ryan Mosgrove and Shane K took to the pages of the Washington Socialist that month to announce that the chapter was, in fact, at the tail end of implementing a new “mobilization model.” In this piece, Mosgrove and K argued that the inherited democratic structures of the chapter, namely the general body meetings, were alienating to new or “paper-only” members, who they claimed saw these structures as “too large, difficult to understand, or unnecessary.”13 Mosgrove and K outlined how, over the previous year, chapter leadership had pioneered a new, better model. In short, the so-called “Metro DC Socialist Mobilization Model” effectively moved all organizational energy into the administrative subcommittees of the SC, and began to both integrate new members and mobilize “paper-members” into these subcommittees directly through a network of one-to-one personal relationships.
In hindsight, the “Metro DC Socialist Mobilization Model” represented something quite different than the rosy picture given by Mosgrove and K. In the blackout years of 2020 to 2021, chapter leadership took advantage of the crisis to produce a structure of member-integration and mobilization based on their one-to-one personal networks, which sidestepped the inherited democratic structures outlined in the bylaws.14 Over time, as organizational energy was systematically pulled away from general body meetings, the inherited democratic structure and procedure of the organization atrophied. As the majority of the chapter’s organizational energy became centered in the chapter’s administrative functions, the SC began to take on an increasingly executive function, though chapter leadership never proposed changes to the chapter’s bylaws that meaningfully reflected this procedural transformation.
The crisis produced by the pandemic is necessary to understand how chapter leadership was able to oversee this revolution in the way MDC DSA functioned and produce a structure so different from that outlined in the bylaws. The pandemic produced conditions that necessitated adjustments by the chapter if it wanted to continue to function effectively. But as Mosgrove and K unwittingly reveal, leadership’s response was not to devise a way in which the chapter’s democratic structure and procedure could be reproduced virtually, but instead to clandestinely claim executive power over the chapter’s functions by appealing to more effective “mobilization.”
To their credit, this did maintain the chapter through these years, but it did so at the expense of the organization’s internal democratic health. As the crisis waned, the “Metro DC Socialist Mobilization Model” began to break down. Indeed, as it was primarily based on one-to-one personal networks, a nepotistic model not particularly amenable to democratic decision-making, its effectiveness decreased as “normal conditions” returned, and as the model’s architects, the personalities behind the personal networks, became less active in the chapter’s leadership and administrative subcommittees. What was left over from the model’s collapse, however, was the undemocratic inheritance of an SC isolated from the membership and empowered to make unilateral executive decisions in violation of the chapter’s bylaws.
A List of Possibly-Illegitimate Executive Decisions Made by the MDC DSA’s Steering Committee, 2021-2024
The following decisions were seemingly made unilaterally by the MDC DSA’s SC. This means that the decisions were made by the SC alone, bypassing the two-reader process and general membership vote, without having been adopted as “urgent matters” or submitted for later, general membership ratification. Therefore, they bypassed the will of the chapter’s actual executive body, the general body meeting. A few of these decisions are egregious infringements of the limits placed on the SC’s authority but most are innocuous, insofar that they likely would have been adopted by the general membership anyway. However, innocuous or not, the SC’s regular violation of the separation of powers established in the chapter’s bylaws negatively affected the democratic health of the organization and set the precedent on which the outgoing 2024 SC relied for their undemocratic decision to censor Dee.
On August 31, 2021, the SC unilaterally adopted a resolution materially committing the organization to support an effort to create a committee on reparations for Black Americans in Greenbelt, MD, a suburb about 10 miles north of DC. This resolution was not adopted as an “urgent matter.” As there are no records of general body meetings occurring in 2021, there is no way to confirm if this decision was ever ratified. The fact that the SC voted to adopt it, something they are not empowered to do outside specific circumstances, implies that there was no intention to put the resolution through the two-reader process before a final vote by the general membership.
Between June 22, 2021 and December 7, 2021, the SC unilaterally voted to endorse three statements and two actions.15 Not one of these decisions was adopted by the SC as an “urgent matter,” despite the fact that a few would have qualified. Although most were innocuous, and likely would have been ratified by the general membership, one was not: the SC decision to sign onto the national DSA BDS & Palestine Solidarity Working Group’s statement calling for Jamaal Bowman’s expulsion by DSA’s NPC on November 30, 2021. As any DSA member active over the past few years knows, this statement would have produced significant debate among the chapter’s general membership. SC members themselves were split on the question, which only passed five to four, a rare moment of disagreement in a body which I’ve found almost always makes decisions by unanimous consent.
The 2022 SC, possibly as a result of the accountability created by their brief attempt at better internal record keeping, did not breach the limits of their authority through the use of so-called steering resolutions. Though incredibly difficult to find, the 2022 SC secretary created a complete archive of that year’s resolutions, one of the only documents of this kind that I’ve come across in my research. This document reveals that the so-called steering resolutions passed by that year’s SC dealt exclusively with administrative and arbitrational business within the SC’s purview.
The 2022 SC did, unfortunately, continue the practice of unilaterally voting to endorse political statements, actions, and issue campaigns. Between January 18, 2022 and December 6, 2022, the SC voted to endorse two statements, two actions, and three campaigns,16 none of which were adopted as “urgent matters.” These were universally innocuous and would have almost certainly been ratified by the general membership. Again, it must be stressed that the precedent set by sidestepping internal democracy through unilateral executive action that violated the local’s bylaws was degrading to the chapter’s democratic health, no matter how seemingly innocent the decisions being made.
However, the practice of using so-called steering resolutions to sidestep democratic procedure returned in 2023. On April 25, 2023, the SC unilaterally adopted a resolution politically and materially committing the chapter to support IBT-represented UPS workers in the case of a national strike. There is no evidence the resolution was subjected to any of the proper procedures, despite the fact that adopting such a politically outward-facing resolution was outside the SC’s purview, and clearly required a general body meeting and general membership vote. Indeed, the resolution was formally recorded as a steering resolution even though the minutes show it was brought to the body by a rank-and-file member, the only case of this happening that I’ve come across in my research. Considering that the resolution would have likely been incredibly popular with the membership, it is unclear why this resolution was adopted by the SC unilaterally. The only rational explanation is that SC members couldn’t be bothered to take the time to engage the general membership in the democratic adoption of an unambiguously popular resolution.
On July 18, 2023, the SC unilaterally adopted a resolution to censure the MDC DSA-endorsed DC city council member Zachary Parker. It was not adopted as an “urgent matter,” ratified later, or subjected to the two-reader process. The vote on this censure is probably the most egregious example of the SC violating the chapter’s separation of powers included in this report. The bylaws state that “a resolution to unendorse or censure an endorsed candidate may be debated through the ordinary resolutions process.” There is no other reference to censures or unendorsements, meaning there are no grounds for such resolutions to be adopted unilaterally by the SC, and it clearly should have been subjected to the democratic procedure outlined in the bylaws. As a longtime DSA member who has lived in the DMV for a number of years, I can say that the censure of Parker, who I remember quite blatantly broke with the organization’s principles, would likely have passed. Again, the logic behind the SC’s violation of the chapter’s democratic procedure in the case of a resolution that would have been popular makes little sense, unless we assume SC members were merely too lazy to bother with the democratic procedure designed to engage the membership, or too ignorant of their own bylaws to understand there was a procedure at all.
The practice of unilaterally endorsing political statements, actions, and issue campaigns continued apace in 2023. Between March 14, 2023 and November 7, 2023, the SC unilaterally endorsed four statements, two actions, and two events,17 none of which were adopted as “urgent matters.” These were universally innocuous and would have almost certainly been ratified by the general membership. There is no explanation, besides their own disinterest in the work involved in democratic decision-making, as to why the SC failed to follow the procedure outlined in the bylaws in these cases.
On July 2, 2024, the SC unilaterally adopted a resolution to materially commit the chapter to the efforts to reelect candidate Cori Bush, endorsed by DSA’s national organization, to the US House of Representatives in Missouri’s first congressional district. This action is a good example of the SC’s tendency to misrepresent the chapter’s bylaws. The minutes reveal that SC members recognized the bylaw’s sections on endorsements did not account for what kinds of powers regarding the commitment of resources to nationally-endorsed candidates fell within their purview, especially if those endorsements had not been formally reproduced at the local level. Rather than deferring to the chapter’s executive body, the general body meeting, or following the democratic procedure of adopting the resolution as an “urgent matter” and submitting it to a later ratification vote, the SC made the choice to sidestep internal democracy and make a unilateral decision themselves. Indeed, the minutes show that SC members believed it was their job to tell the membership what to do vis-à-vis Bush, rather than facilitate a space in which members could decide for themselves, with longtime SC member Tim S claiming the SC needed “to pass something formal so we can point to something if chapter members are confused.” Again, the decision to materially commit the chapter to Bush, a popular figure among DSA members, may seem innocuous. The general membership would have likely ratified the SC’s decision if it had been properly adopted as an “urgent matter.” Still, the SC’s bypassing of proper democratic procedure to make a unilateral executive decision on an issue over which their authority was not established in the bylaws continued to reinforce the undemocratic practices of the body.
The 2024 SC unilaterally endorsed a flurry of political statements, actions, and issue campaigns, twice as many as any previous SC. Indeed, during 2024 the SC largely became an endorsement machine for chapter leadership, who were responsible for bringing half of these endorsements to the body for consideration. Between January 16, 2024 and December 17, 2024, the SC unilaterally endorsed three political statements, eleven actions, four events, and two campaigns,18 none of which were adopted as “urgent matters” or submitted for later ratification. Again, these were universally innocuous and many could have legitimately been considered “urgent matters.” But the failure of SC to follow the proper procedure designed to democratically engage the membership, especially considering that the 2024 SC approved an average of two such endorsements a month, damaged the democratic health of the chapter and set the stage for the undemocratic, December 17 kangaroo court.
Call For an Investigation of Former MDC DSA SCs’ Leadership Practices
As shown above, the blatant case of undemocratic behavior on December 17 was made possible by a precedent set by the SC’s own actions. The normalization of undemocratic practices has systematically misrepresented the role of the SC to the general membership and produced a leadership that feels entitled to powers of decision-making outside its purview and prone to undemocratic abuse of its members’ positions. The history of this behavior can be traced back to 2021, its origin point being the crisis years of the pandemic.
DSA members everywhere should be shocked that one of the organization’s largest local chapters has maintained a leadership willing to engage in undemocratic practices and misrepresent its own bylaws to obscure its behavior. That Dee’s tribunal included the participation of SC members who have served multiple terms–specifically Michael M, Carl R, Aparna R, and Imara C–should sound alarm bells. The fact that these longtime leaders so casually partook in a process which blatantly violated the organization’s separation of powers should put into question the legitimacy of every decision made by the SC over the past four years.
In the authoritarian context of capitalist society, practicing democracy is extremely difficult. As a socialist organization, DSA has an obligation to lead by example through the practice of democratic decision-making at all levels of the organization. There is no excuse for sidestepping internal democracy. Chapter bylaws are not lines of text to be written and then ignored, but important constitutional documents that establish separation of powers and democratic macro-procedure. It is clear that members of MDC DSA’s SC between 2021 and 2024 have not only failed to facilitate internal democracy, but have knowingly misrepresented their own bylaws to the membership and intentionally engaged in undemocratic practices that repeatedly violate the local’s principles. Combined with the SC’s poor record keeping practices and their failure to properly educate members regarding the bylaws, this has produced a situation in which SC members have been able to isolate themselves and their actions from the judgement of the chapter’s general membership.
Former MDC DSA SC members must be held accountable for this history of undemocratic behavior. The first step in this process is for MDC DSA members to become better acquainted with their chapter’s bylaws as a means of holding their leadership accountable to the democratic procedure outlined therein. A continuation of the undemocratic status quo can only mean an increasingly uncertain future for the chapter.
- Dee’s article was republished in Portside soon after its original publication in the Washington Socialist. See: Sam Dee, “How a Hot Shop Burns: The UMD Graduate Labor Union Card Campaign,” Portside, September 26 2024, portside.org/2024-09-26/how-hot-shop-burns-umd-graduate-labor-union-card-campaign.
- A few MDC DSA SC members were absent.
- In all following quotes, bolded language is my own emphasis.
- It should be noted that this section was altered in the last MDC DSA local convention by a successful Bylaw Amendment, “BA2: Clarifying Chapter Business,” which made this reader process for resolutions even more stringently within the exclusive purview of general body meetings. Interestingly, this amendment was sponsored by SC member Aparna R, who seemingly had little issue in violating both the previous and updated versions of this bylaw in order to censor the speech of a rank-and-file member.
- This is the only reference to “steering committee resolutions” in the bylaws, which are never further elaborated on. Even so, these clearly can only be introduced in very specific circumstances. These so-called “steering committee resolutions” will be addressed subsequently.
- In this context, ratification is a formal procedure by which the general body meeting can retroactively approve or reverse an SC decision that may already be in the process of implementation.
- SC meetings held jointly with CC were typically formally described as such. For instance, see the minutes for the joint SC-CC meeting held on June 7, 2022.
- That SC members are incapable of interpreting the organization’s bylaws is proven by the chapter’s current organizational chart, approved by the SC on July 5 2022, which claims exclusive executive powers for the SC not delegated to it by the chapter’s bylaws. These include the claims that the SC “speaks with the voice of the chapter when General Body is not together” and “approves Chapter Level Statements & Event/Coalition Endorsements.”
- The process is outlined in this application document, which according to the file’s internal information was created on October 18, 2020. The first instance of the use of this application process, according to my research, was in the SC’s August 17, 2021 meeting.
- In fact, it is not clear how the SC framed their endorsement of the Uncommitted Campaign. The SC minutes imply they approached it as a campaign endorsement. However, the later general body meeting minutes seem to show that it may have later been reframed by the SC as a candidate endorsement. The opaque nature of the SC’s practices and the members’ constant use of executive powers outside their purview makes it difficult to comprehend the rationale behind the body’s actions.
- I asked three fellow members of the organization to attempt to access this document and none could. My own access was last checked on January 20, 2025.
- From the SC meeting held on September 4, 2018.
- The terms “paper-only” or “paper-member” are used in DSA to refer to members who pay dues but do not otherwise actively participate in the organization.
- The extent to which this effort on the part of the chapter’s leadership may have been related to internal caucus politics, especially regarding the former caucus Collective Power Network, will not be dealt with here. But the timeline of these events overlap with developments in internal MDC DSA caucus history enough to make a connection likely. See Sam Dibella, “Shades of Collective Power,” Cosmonaut Magazine, August 23 2023, cosmonautmag.com/2023/08/shades-of-collective-power/.
- These endorsements were made on July 6, 2021, August 17, 2021, October 12, 2021, and November 30, 2021.
- These endorsements were made on January 18, 2022, March 1, 2022, March 15, 2022, June 7, 2022, August 16, 2022, and December 6, 2022.
- These endorsements were made on March 14, 2023, April 11, 2023, April 25, 2023, May 9, 2023, August 29, 2023, and November 7, 2023.
- These endorsements were made on January 16, 2024, February 13, 2024, March 12, 2024, April 9, 2024, May 21, 2024, June 3, 2024, July 16, 2024, August 13, 2024, August 27, 2024, September 10, 2024, September 24, 2024, October 8, 2024, October 22, 2024, November 6, 2024, and December 17, 2024.