Voting Brought Me Back To DSA. Every Member Deserves a Voice.
How Metro Detroit DSA's 1M1V reform made chapter life accessible again after post-leadership burnout
Aaron B. alongside members of Metro Detroit DSA, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, at a rally in Detroit in 2022.
By Aaron B. | Metro Detroit DSA
I became a socialist after reading and studying theories of democracy–at its heart, socialism means collective decision-making. That's why socialists throughout history have fought for everybody’s right to vote whether in unions, civic and political organizations, or the government itself. That same principle is what draws me to support Groundwork’s One Member One Vote (1M1V) proposals for DSA’s National Convention. These proposals are directly inspired by the recent win of the same provision In the UAW, and similar reforms in other unions and political parties like Labour in the United Kingdom, whose adoption of 1M1V in 2014 enabled the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader (and current right-wing leader Keir Starmer is trying to get rid of).
After my time as co-chair and a brief stint as parliamentarian in Metro Detroit DSA, I was thoroughly burned out. I had decided to leave the organization in order to take care of myself and my mental health. When I felt ready to get back into organizing, I returned to DSA, though I was still largely not involved in the chapter. To be honest, I felt very unsure of how the chapter had changed over the year I had been gone–what issues was the chapter debating, what campaigns were we involved in? I didn’t know the answers to either of these questions. I also wasn’t ready to attend as many meetings as I had in the past. As co-chair, my time in DSA was reaching 10 to 15 hours a week, the idea of attaining that same level of involvement invoked a sense of dread.
At the same time, I very much felt like an outsider in my own chapter. It was only when people reached out and asked for my vote that I was able to learn about what the chapter was really engaging with. I would ask my comrades questions about what I was voting on, how the chapter was feeling about various topics, and slowly but surely I found myself getting back in touch with the chapter. These conversations I had with people were not simple. I was often asking them hard questions and then debating the ideas that were brought to me before ultimately reaching a decision about my vote.
These kinds of conversations wouldn’t have happened before my chapter, Metro Detroit DSA, passed a “One Member, One Vote” resolution in March of last year. While this resolution, which broadened members’ ability to vote in chapter decisions, had a different structure than Groundwork’s national reforms, which focus on enabling members to vote on national endorsements and NPC elections, the principle is the same: enabling members to take part in important decisions through votes. I did my best to attend regular meetings as well as attend canvasses and other events for Layla Taha, a local candidate our chapter had endorsed for State Representative, and what I found the most valuable in keeping up with the chapter were the political asks. Having the opportunity to participate in the decision making of the chapter, especially after being disengaged, helped me feel bought into the work and rekindled the desire to be an active member.
I relate this experience to the members I come across in DSA - people with lives outside of DSA. In my journey, I recognized the need to establish boundaries and have activities outside of DSA. I spent a lot of time reconnecting with friends, getting back into healthy routines after a health scare, and rediscovering my hobbies and interests. Between all of this and the forty-hour work week, I found I didn’t have time for that same time sink I put into DSA previously. If we are to encourage healthy participation in our organization, we need not to encourage these activities but recognize them as necessities. It should not be a requirement to forgo any of these pastimes to be involved in our organizations decision making. Not even mentioning those who have families or professional obligations that require greater than forty hours of work, unconventional schedules, or other responsibilities that provide challenges to being directly involved.
Comrades in my chapter have often heard me remark about being on-call for some weeks. I remember one week being on-call and having to walk out in the middle of a general body membership meeting to attend my job! It would have been incredibly alienating to have been deprived of all my decision making power as a result. While easy for some to take time off work (or not have to at all!) and travel to Chicago for our National Convention, this proves much more difficult for others. To build a true mass movement, we need to include a mass number of people, and not exclude them from weighing in on the direction our organization will take.
Critics of Groundwork's 1M1V resolutions may claim they won't re-engage members, and that our rank and file members are not capable of making important decisions. I often tell people in the chapter that they know more than they think they do, and I firmly believe that to be true about our membership. To the challengers of 1M1V, I ask how a more opaque and distanced leadership selection system results in members having buy-in to our national leadership.
I also urge that there are different levels of engagement, all of which are valuable. At the “lowest” level of engagement, the financial support of every single person who chooses to pay dues in order to be a member of DSA is invaluable to our organizing. At the next rung up, we have members who come out when called, whether it to be canvasses or the strike lines, who give up their valuable free time to support our efforts. I and other comrades believe that despite these members not having reached the higher rungs of the ladder, they still should have a say in the highest levels of leadership in our organization, and we need leadership that actively resonates with our broad membership. When I look at DSA’s national leadership body, I mostly see people who are vastly out of touch with our rank and file members, which in my eyes is dangerous and a sign of misalignment in the organization. That’s why I think it’s important to bring these decisions back to the rank and file membership, so that our membership and leadership can speak with a more united voice, one which is more representative of all of us here in this chapter as well as chapters across the country.
Aaron is running on the “DSA For All” slate to represent Metro Detroit DSA at DSA’s National Convention in August of 2025.
