Political Disagreement in NYC-DSA: Breaking Down the No More 24 Vote and Ensuing Discourse

By Joe W, Boston DSA 24-26, NYC-DSA 19-24, 26-
April 28, 2026

Top line takeaways, to be addressed in order:

• NYC-DSA overwhelmingly committed to a pressure campaign to end exploitative 24 hour home care shifts at the state level.
• No membership vote was overturned by NYC-DSA leadership.
• NYC-DSA maintains a vibrant democratic structure that accommodates its status as DSA’s largest and most successful chapter.
• The character of the public debate over No More 24 rapidly shifted from political disagreement to hostile factionalism to outright lies and threats as a direct result of the tactics employed by the NYC-DSA minority factions.

Introduction:

In the last week or so, an extended debate about a New York City Council proposal, an NYC-DSA resolution, that resolution’s amendment, and a policy issue has spilled out of NYC-DSA spaces and into national DSA discourse and social media. The tenor of this debate has reached a point of high political tension, insult, and hyperbole, largely led by prominent posters of one political faction. This faction has spread a narrative rife with intentional misinformation designed to elevate their position and obscure their minority status in the chapter— principally, that an unrepresentative NYC-DSA leadership cabal killed a “membership vote” to support vulnerable workers against ostensible slavery because they did not want to offend Zohran. Not only is this narrative plainly untrue, it is insulting and uncomradely to those in the chapter who are actively trying to chart a course where DSA can use our political power to both guarantee care for the elderly and disabled and to protect workers from brutal shifts and wage theft.

In this discursive environment, no space was allowed for the complexity of NYC DSA’s processes or the actual nuances of the No More 24 political fight. Instead, it was cast as a moral black and white where the only correct position was to commit to a pressure campaign for the local No More 24 bill; all other positions were, in this schema, tantamount to an endorsement of unpaid labor. The Citywide Leadership Committee ("CLC") deliberating on a recommendation and passing an amended version mutated into a coup from above by Groundwork and SMC members in leadership, overruling the so-called “will of the membership” that had allegedly endorsed the original resolution. The amendment itself was recast as a poison pill that should have been ruled out of order, despite it being directly tied to the stated purpose of the original resolution, which was to end the system of home care worker exploitation supported by the state. And because much of this factional attack happened on X, a public forum filled with bots, bad actors, and sectarians outside the organization, the tenor of debate rapidly accelerated out of control and into threats of violence against individuals and denunciations of the organization as a whole.

While we do not seek to proscribe members on the losing end of votes from voicing their frustrations, we do argue that they should exercise care to prevent political disagreement from creating an environment of uncomradeliness. More importantly, we ask DSA members nationwide to understand intra-DSA conflicts that spill onto X as having multiple perspectives that they should seek out and interrogate, as the perspectives most readily available in online echo chambers are naturally shaped by those who primarily spend their time inflaming others on Twitter and not those who spend time pursuing politics in the real world.

What Happened:

In New York State, a Managed Care Organization ("MCO") assigned to the patient decides what level of home care a patient can access based on their level of disability and income, then disburses state Medicare funds based on that assessment. In the most severe cases, disabled patients are assigned for 24 hour (round the clock) care, which is paid in one of two ways: the MCO either pays multiple people for a full 24 hours worked or a single person for 13 hours worked. The latter scenario is the problem- round the clock care is 24 hours, not 13. The daily wage dispensed for 13 hours is a near poverty wage when prorated for the actual 24 hours on duty. The City Council bill, Intro. 303, would ban the latter scenario under New York City labor law, capping shifts at 12 hours per worker without providing funding to convert all patients covered by the 13 hours of pay system to a true around the clock system. The difference between these two systems is not abstract; as written, Intro. 303 reduces home care coverage for thousands of Medicaid patients without directly funding any replacement.

Last Saturday, the NYC-DSA Citywide Leadership Committee passed a resolution (48 votes yes to 14 votes no) to exert pressure on the State of New York to properly fund Medicaid reimbursement for home health aides. The goal is to take the fight for fair and equitable working conditions and wages to the state, which has the power to both end 24 hour shifts and maintain round the clock coverage for the disabled in a way the City of New York does not. The passed resolution had been amended (by a vote of 50 to 13) from an original proposal creating a pressure campaign against the City government of New York to pass the bill currently proposed to the City Council. But again, that bill if passed would address the labor abuse question only, limiting home care shifts to 12 hours without securing commensurate funding for round the clock care. The idea of the City bill is to force a crisis into the State’s hands and in that way push Governor Kathy Hochul and the State Legislature to act to further fund Medicaid- but neither the bill nor the original resolution provide any strategy for ensuring said funding is provided, or provided without matching cuts to other needed services.

The City Council No More 24 bill was introduced by Chris Marte, a liberal on the Lower East Side who has long jockeyed with DSA for influence in the progressive sphere. Marte has adopted this issue as his pet one, largely because of an active base of home care workers in his district. But Marte has not always engaged with this issue out of the goodness of his heart. I myself personally saw him and his volunteers use this issue as an interpersonal line of attack against volunteers for his primary opponent in 2025, despite his opponent also supporting ending 24 hour shifts. Marte has often waded into intra-left political fights by monopolizing maximalist positions for personal gain without concern for the second order effects of his proposals. He is a proponent of the buffer laws that would ban protests at illegal land sales, and he is infamous for routinely deploying half-truths to score political points. This is perhaps part of why Zohran did not support Marte in his bid last year to be made New York City Council Speaker despite his progressive credentials, a move Marte allegedly took as a slight. Marte is now likely enjoying the division he has sown for both NYC DSA and Zohran in this moment.

This is not to say No More 24 is a Marte-specific campaign or that Groundwork believes it is something DSA should be mobilizing against. There is a strong argument that Marte’s interest in passing it is the product of a genuine organizing campaign from his constituents in Chinatown, many of whom feel the immediate effects of New York’s exploitative home care labor system firsthand. Many other prominent New York City elected officials, including NYC-DSA electeds like Chi Ossé and Shahana Hanif, have signed on to the bill and will vote for it when it comes up. Indeed, in a political system wherein workers are often locked out of avenues for positive change, neither Groundwork nor the chapter’s leadership has felt a particular need to force our electeds to pick a side on the bill as stands. The question we’ve tried to address instead is how to use our power as DSA to address the inherent contradiction of this predicament that pits two sections of the working class against each other. We do not wish to commit the org's focus solely to a city-wide solution simply because it is already on the table, but rather use our influence to expand this fight to the state level where a durable and just solution can be fought for and delivered. We understand and have grace for those in our movement who look at the same conditions and seek to address labor exploitation by the most immediate means available. But the modal form of politics in which both No More 24’s most stringent advocates and the NYC-DSA minority faction operates does not extend this same grace.

Instead, the widespread opposition to abusive working conditions and poor pay is being subdivided, limiting the power of its public support. The pertinent political question for the chapter was thus threefold: do we support a limited and divisive bill written by an unaligned and occasionally hostile liberal for his own personal gain? Do we commit to a pressure campaign for a bill that would force a crisis on the City, thereby leaving people who need round the clock care in danger? And do we support a bill that requires placing our faith (not to mention the lives of vulnerable New Yorkers) in corporate Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul choosing to do the right thing? The vast majority of the CLC found this an unappealing position, and elected to engage this problem with the seriousness it deserved by pivoting to a state level pressure campaign.

The concept of a CLC may be confusing to many DSA members around the country. New York City DSA is an exceptionally large DSA chapter, and as such its structures are different from any other chapter's. This difference is often confusing, not just for non New York DSAers and outsiders but for some within NYC DSA. Where most chapters have monthly or quarterly General Meetings, where all matters of political education, chapter deliberation, social bonding, and campaign development are discussed, such meetings are simply not feasible in a chapter of 15,000 (outside of emergencies). National DSA recognized this impossibility when it exempted NYC-DSA from the all member general meeting requirement in Dem Comm, instead allowing the delegated convention to stand in its place. In response to this scale, NYC DSA has democratically adopted a layered structure to allow for democratic representation, member input, and campaign direction. Members are locationally broken into branches. Branches serve numerous purposes: they’re the local social hub for the chapter, deliver political education about specific local issues, implement chapterwide campaigns, serve as a landing space of newer members and can vote to recommend a proposal be discussed by the Citywide Leadership Committee (more on this later). The CLC is largely made up of members elected proportionally by their branch to one year terms, but it also includes the Steering Committee (elected officer and administrative roles) and priority campaign coordinators, as well as permanent seats for the Electoral and Labor Working Group coordinators. This roughly 70 person body functionally constitutes the chapter’s legislature, where proposals and resolutions are debated, amended, and then voted upon. The Steering Committee is then in charge of oversight and implementation, including of all branches and working groups. This entire structure is democratically determined and subject to change and redress at the delegated Convention, held every other year. Every member of the current CLC and Steering was elected last year to perform this deliberative role with a turnout of about 2900 members, or 24% of the chapter.

As stated above, branches have the ability to take straw polls of members on whether to advance a proposed resolution to debate at the CLC- these are called recommendations. This is NOT a chapter- or membership-wide vote on the merits of the resolution itself. It is a vote on whether the branch recommends the CLC take a proposal up and pass it. Recommendation votes may be put on in person, hybrid, or absentee at the Branch Organizing Committee's discretion, and members get one week's notice that a recommendation vote will be happening. Such recommendations need only have the average of the last 4 branch meetings’ attendance for quorum. The CLC can not consider or introduce proposals until they have been recommended by at least one branch.

Three of NYC-DSA’s seven branches voted to recommend the original resolution in support of Marte’s No More 24 bill to the CLC. About 400 combined members participated in this recommendation process on about a week’s notice. About 330 total, or about 2% of chapter membership, voted to recommend the pressure campaign in support of the No More 24 City Council resolution (these numbers are estimates and are open to correction). A contributing factor to this paltry turnout is the perception among many members that branches are not particularly deliberative spaces, and as such branch attendance lags behind many other NYC-DSA organizing spaces. Simply put, many experienced members do not expect the branch meeting to be one of high stakes political conflict. The ensuing result is that factions who wish to have their political priorities considered by the CLC find it fairly easy to agendize a potential recommendation, whip their bloc to vote at a branch meeting, hit quorum, and get the recommendation sent up to the CLC with little opposition. This process comes with benefits and drawbacks: members should have the ability to put political questions directly before our leadership, provided there is sufficient local buy-in. But this process often happens with little input from the vast majority of members, especially cadre members not directly involved in branch administration who often jettison branch meetings from their schedules in favor of chapter priorities. Needless to say, the products of these branch recommendation votes are neither indicative of chapter opinion nor inclusive of the vast majority of chapter membership. They are neither designed for that purpose nor treated that way by membership.

The Discourse:

This is the context by which the original No More 24 resolution made it to the CLC: a series of low turnout advisory votes whipped for by a political minority that, while numerous enough to get the recommendations over the line, is not numerous enough to have won a significant number of seats in the chapter’s delegated deliberative body. As soon as this dynamic became clear, and a proposed amendment to target the No More 24 campaign toward the state was brought forth, this local political minority instead pivoted to a comms campaign to undermine the chapter’s legitimacy in both public and organization-wide spaces. This tactic, of buttressing one’s losing political position with a targeted bad faith campaign, has quickly become the routine practice of the caucuses and tendencies that are unable to organize a base in order to seriously contest leadership or chapterwide votes in NYC. Leadership is publicly villainized over political disagreement, made to seem illegitimate, and othered through a combination of procedural complaints and the outright spreading of misinformation. Direct factional attack, such as naming and shaming the caucuses of the majority, Groundwork and SMC, for the fact that chapter leadership is largely sourced from them, has become commonplace. In the days before and immediately after the CLC vote, chapter leaders as well as the chapter’s two largest caucuses were called pro-slavery both directly and by implication- and not just by random Twitter trolls but by many nationally prominent members and factional leaders. Much of this factional harassment entirely failed to recognize the difference was one of political strategy, not moral scruples. The product was public messages of burnout, in-fighting, and eventually threats of violence from members, sympathizers, and hangers-on throughout the country, who were being fed inaccurate information by one faction for political gain. Whether they understand it or not, DSA posters leveraging these false accusations in the public sphere create a direct permission structure for the worst actors to undermine our work, disrupt our organization, and insult and attack our members. This result can not be extricated from the strategy of unproductive public tension heightening taken on by the NYC-DSA minority.

In the absence of explicated reasoning for Groundwork’s so-called pro-slavery position, the chapter’s factional minority has instead produced a fantasy: that SEIU 1199, and “big Labor” in general, has trapped Zohran into a pro-slavery position which we in GW and SMC, as the tailist electoral supremacists they’ve assigned us to be, must protect him from being criticized for. This delusional and frankly insulting caricature of our politics proved incurable for the most aggressive factional sectarians, who instead saw behind every extended hand and stated position the dagger of so-called reformism. This refusal to engage in good faith and instead retreat into caricature and fantasy is the most damaging trend throughout the organization, and it has metastasized in New York into a full scale campaign to disorganize DSA’s strongest and most successful chapter. The NYC chapter's minority has realized that its best means of recruitment (locally and nationally!) in the face of the overwhelming success of the Zohran campaign and the chapter’s electoral project is an antagonism that attracts the cynical, the burnt out, the oppositionally defiant, and the unsatisfiable. It is through this lens, knowingly or not, that they have elected to spread the malicious lie that the NYC chapter, and in particular its leadership, is undemocratic, politically unprincipled, or morally bankrupt. The lie has made it to other chapters, where Groundworkers (including myself in Boston) are routinely made to answer for NYC leadership, despite in many cases having little knowledge of the underlying incidents and no way to untangle the web of mischaracterization, hostile framing, and outright political lies that have been forced onto members’ Discords and Twitter feeds.

But no matter how many issues are catastrophized and spread to a national audience, and no matter how much specific posters insist marginal voices are in fact the majority, fantasies do not simply become true through repetition. New York City DSA is a chapter that gets things done, that has amassed more political power and influence than any other in the country, and has done so all while maintaining a democratic culture where our collective decisionmaking is foregrounded. No one could have sat through the Chi Osse endorsement forum and watched hundreds of members, including electeds who waited in line just like the rest of us, debate and vote on a question of nationwide political significance and come away telling you anything else. If we are to truly build a unified organization that can seriously contend for political power together, the lies, the mischaracterizations, the hostility, the threats, and the intentional outrage campaigns must stop. Political debate is good- it’s healthy and productive for us as socialists to develop positions through conflict, disagreement, contradiction, and dialectical interrogation. But the elevation into uncomradeliness, hyperbole, and insult proscribes such debate, forcing those that wish not to deal with those attacks out of the conversation and in doing so leaving widely shared, politically meaningful positions unexplicated. I am writing this piece precisely to voice the positions of those who have thus far chosen to avoid such a toxic discourse, whose voice and say in internal DSA matters should not be dismissed by a national audience simply because they are not on Twitter.

We are not functionting properly as an organization when we do not accept that we have a responsibility to conduct our politics with respect, democratic discipline, and an eye towards the public.

Solidarity

Joe Whitcomb

Groundwork National Co Chair