Groundwork for DSA-LA
DSA-LA Co-Chairs
Marc K & Benina S
From Marc K and Benina S
December 1st, 2025
When we took our seats as co-chairs of DSA-LA in January 2025, we knew this would be a year when our chapter had to lead clearly, confidently, and as democratic socialists in the face of a Trump administration that immediately set out to attack our city. At a moment when Los Angeles’ status quo coalition, including the LA County Democratic Party, liberal nonprofits, conservative philanthropists, and large parts of the labor movement, chose caution, respectability, and narrow insider strategies, DSA-LA chose something different. We chose to organize, to fight, and to bring working people into action on the streets, at the picket line, and at the ballot box.
Holding firm to democratic socialism and grounding every decision in member leadership enabled our chapter to grow by nearly 30 percent this year. This year, DSA-LA’s steering committee supported the organization as hundreds of new organizers joined the work. DSA-LA is now widely seen as the clearest and most dynamic expression of left politics in the city. This is a chapter that meets the moment.
The story of the past year is simple. When our city needed us, DSA-LA acted. Because we acted, our organization grew in numbers, in confidence, and in political clarity.
We are DSA members first and foremost, and then we are also members of Groundwork caucus. So what does that mean? Instead of leaning on theoretical political discussions (you can check those out here and here), we want to show the tangible results of our leadership. These are a few of the things that we achieved with our fellow caucus members in the last year:
We set the groundwork for the recreation of the Immigration Justice Committee with efforts led by Groundwork member Jenn M. who recruited capacity, developed programming, and moved new leaders into action. The Committee went on to stand up replicable, easy-to-plug-in actions to respond to ICE invasions through Home Depot watches in every branch, as well as Know Your Rights business canvases, which created space for members to step up and lead. Today, the chapter has a layer of newly activated leaders
Despite only having one member on the Labor Committee, Groundwork members led the majority of our labor work this past year. We continued to organize strike support, political education on the LA Labor Movement, and led the largest volunteer effort to defend the tourism workers’ minimum wage increase.
We co-led our Power to the Tenants priority campaign. Mark G. co-chaired this committee for years, working closely with members from all political tendencies to collectively chart out a strategy that led to the first reform of the Rent Stabilization Ordinance in LA in decades.
We worked with the leaders of the Political Education Committee and our Branches to ensure we had a steady stream of DSA 101s planned across the chapter, so that people interested in DSA can be welcomed and oriented to our politics and organization.
We stood up a four-part organizer training series through our Growth and Development committee, organized and led by a multi-tendency crew of comrades. We trained up 80 people, creating a deep bench of newer members to activate into the chapter’s campaigns. These members are now leaders who fill important roles across the chapter, mentor others, and train the next cohort.
We worked with the Political Education Committee to develop the Mass Organizations and Parties Introduction, which covers DSA’s mass-organization orientation and how that guides our chapter’s organizing and politics. This political education is a vital part of member development in our chapter because we often speak of mass politics and party-building, but rarely try to define it and discuss it with members.
Held six chapter-wide meetings, where each meeting had structured in-person member decision-making on important political and organizational topics that impacted the direction of the chapter.
With that foundation in place, we leave our co-chair positions confident that DSA-LA can meet the moment for 2026 and advance the socialist movement.
Why is 2026 such a critical year?
This election cycle is critical because we have the opportunity to flip two additional seats on LA City Council and expand our power by winning the City Attorney seat. We will also need to defend our incumbent city council members, Hugo and Eunisses, and school board member Dr. Rocío Rivas. If we do so and do so with resounding wins, this sends a strong signal that socialist are here to stay. Coming out of 2026, we will have laid the groundwork to begin an ideal position to win a DSA majority on the City Council in 2028.
How do we get to that point? We need a concrete political strategy, not just vibes or branding. A political strategy that’s developed through deliberation of our membership, rooted cadre development, class-struggle campaigns, and long-term power building in the labor movement.
We see that vision in Groundwork’s Building the Socialist City Slate.
The slate believes that DSA ought to build DSA first. While we must approach our relationship with other progressive and working class organizations with humility and clarity, we also must be sure to lead with our politics. We should be proud to be DSA. What makes us unique is our socialist identity, our internal democracy, and our membership funding. All members in DSA have an equal say, and we believe the mass democratic nature of our organization sharpens our politics and analysis. Saying we are socialists, loud and proud, and saying “you can be too” is why socialism is more popular than ever and why we have been able to build the largest socialist organization in a century. Our experience since 2017 has shown that engaging in mass struggle as socialists first is far more successful than submerging ourselves into these struggles as followers rather than leaders. Our politics, and our organization’s priorities, cannot be reduced to offering support to our coalition partners. We are partners, not supporters.
Building the Socialist City slate has deep ties to the labor and migrant justice movements in Los Angeles, but they are also socialists first, dedicated to leveraging the socialist movement to lead the labor movement to struggle against fascism and oppression, not union or non-profit staffers first who see DSA as a volunteer pool.
The slate is committed to building member power. We see this in two ways: building on 2025’s success in ensuring that chapter meetings are held regularly, are deliberative, and present open and democratic debate on choices of strategy and the direction of member resources. We also need to honor our commitment to a member vote taken in 2022: getting a DSA-LA brick-and-mortar office. Now that we have successfully separately incorporated (a process that was stalled out for years before 2025), Building the Socialist City slate has a plan and is deeply committed to ensuring our chapter has the resources to get a physical office in LA - an organizing hub to bring members and our campaign work together.
Lastly, we see the members of the Building the Socialist City slate as committed DSA-LA cadre that show up and do the work. We have organizing experience with the slate members, with a proven record of them showing up, organizing, building campaigns, and delivering tangible results.
The year 2026 will define the future of DSA-LA. It is a crucial moment for our chapter and the socialist movement across the country. We believe the Building the Socialist City slate is the group that can carry forward the success of 2025 and lead us into the next phase of building socialist political power in Los Angeles.
We invite you to join us in supporting them.
Solidarity,
Marc K and Benina S
DSA-LA Co-Chairs 2025
