Meet the Candidates
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The 2025 YDSA Convention will be held in Chicago, IL, from Wednesday, August 6, to Thursday, August 7. For more information, please check official YDSA convention website
The Bread and Roses caucus is excited to introduce our slate of candidates for the 2025-2026 YDSA National Coordinating Committee: Allen Dominguez (Texas State University) and Gerica Noerdinger (Gnomon School of VFX / Hollywood YDSA) for national co-chair seats, and James Hernandez (Florida International University), Megan Christle (Virginia Tech), and Michael Ramirez (New York University) for at-large NCC seats.
Our Vision
As the far-right grows globally with Trump as its political leader, the working class is suffering from austerity, antidemocratic attacks, and limitations on our civil liberties. The capitalist class continues to gain wealth and power while their greed makes it increasingly difficult for us to thrive — or even just get by.
In the student movement, Trump’s government has attacked student activists who are fighting for Palestine and academic freedom, most notably Mahmoud Khalil, in order to “break the back” of social movements. The full-scale repression of the student movement is an effort to suppress mobilizations against Trump’s agenda. Further, ICE’s intensifying immigration raids and militarization have devastated immigrant communities with deportations and fear.
It is, however, not all bleak. Workers, students, and marginalized communities have shown a willingness to fight back. DSA won the Democratic mayoral primary election for Zohran Mamdani, an open democratic socialist who ran on making life more affordable by taxing the rich and did not shy away from solidarity with Palestine. University of Oregon Student Workers, a union that came out of a YDSA-driven campaign, won a historic first contract that includes increased wages, base pay of $16 per hour, sick leave for work-study, harassment protections, and more. We are rebuilding connections between the labor movement and the socialist movement and are organizing toward United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain’s call for a general strike in 2028, as DSA members take jobs in strategic industries to build a more militant, strike-ready labor movement.
Read more about our vision for YDSA here.
Our Proposals
R13-1. Rank-and-File Strategy Amendment to Rechartering the Youth Labor Committee
Sponsor: Allen D (Texas State University)
Our amendment to the base labor organizing resolution recommits YDSA to the Rank-and-File Strategy (RFS) as our guiding orientation for labor organizing. RFS is a long-term strategy to rebuild a militant labor movement from the bottom up and re-link that movement with the socialist movement through socialists organizing on the shop floor as rank-and-file leaders. We want YDSA to continue encouraging students to pursue careers in strategic industries of our economy that are ripe for union militancy, such as teaching, nursing, and logistics. Further, we also reemphasize the last YDSA convention’s mandate to work with the Rank & File Project to support young activists in taking jobs in these industries.
R23. Building Campus Consciousness, Democracy, and Militancy through Student Unions
Sponsor: Megan C (Virginia Tech)
YDSA must move beyond the top-down coalition model that limits our ability to organize students and grow the student movement and YDSA. Instead, we propose that, based on the success of San Francisco State University’s student union in winning divestment and student unions in Quebec and elsewhere abroad in stopping tuition hikes through student strikes, YDSA engages in building militant and democratic organizations that can bring students outside of YDSA’s base into struggle and expand YDSA’s base of potential recruits: student unions. We will further this years-long organizing project by continuing to identify five campuses with healthy YDSA chapters and the potential to create student unions within the next two years, offering them curated mentorship and political education resources.
R10. Building an International Student Movement
Sponsor: James H (Florida International University)
This resolution positions YDSA in solidarity with the international working class and devotes resources to back it up. While fighting against capitalism at home, YDSA would support workers around the world in their struggles for economic and political self-determination, no matter the political character of their governments. To do this, we will form relationships with international youth socialist groups, student organizers, campus and youth labor organizers, and other social movement activists to share strategies and tactics, engage in political education, and collaborate on major campaigns and international events.
R13-2. Building a Fighting Youth Movement for May Day 2028 Amendment to Rechartering the Youth Labor Committee
Sponsor: Gerica N (Hollywood YDSA)
The call for a general strike on May Day 2028 by UAW President Shawn Fain presents a critical moment for workers to flex their muscles as an independent force from the political duopoly. Despite US union density sitting below 10%, there has been an inspiring uptick in labor militancy alongside a growing pro-union sentiment, and young workers are playing a leading role. Following the success of student-worker union drives steered by YDSA, such as those at the University of Oregon and Macalester College, we as YDSA are ready to build towards May Day 2028. But for a major labor action that aims to be a general strike, our amendment mandates we dramatically scale up our systematic rank-and-file efforts, develop political education materials to popularize the May Day 2028 call among young workers, and identify at least five viable student worker campaigns or unions to either strike for recognition or coordinate collective actions together during spring 2028.
R26. Building Regional Power: Organizing Regional YDSA Networks
Sponsor: Michael R (New York University)
Region-wide organizing can allow for more ambitious campaigns that go beyond a single campus. They must be set up for success with ample resources and support. That’s why Bread and Roses is proposing that the YDSA National Coordinating Committee organize formal networks of YDSA chapters in university systems (e.g., the California State University system, the State University of New York system, the University of California system, etc.) and across regions to foster cross-chapter collaboration, share information, and grow campaigns. Chapters across university systems would be connected by NCC members through joint meetings, group chats, coordination on joint campaigns (e.g., student worker union organizing, fighting tuition increases across a university system, etc.), and meetings at national YDSA conventions and conferences.
Friendly Amendment to R3. Build Red Area Chapters Into Bases of Power
Sponsor: Allen D (Texas State University)
Our amendment to R3. Build Red Area Chapters Into Bases of Power was accepted as friendly, meaning it will be included in the final version of the resolution at convention. It added emphasis about how YDSA must fully recognize the diverse working class of the South and context about roadblocks our organizing faces in red areas, such as more moderate and apolitical student bodies and more difficult but beatable labor organizing conditions. If the base resolution passes, our amendment would also commit the YDSA Red Region Organizing Subcommittee to host at least one Spanish-speaking organizing conversation training per semester, fund NCC chapter visits to red-area chapters, and encourage chapters in red states to engage in mass organizing initiatives like student worker unions and recruiting students who are pursuing careers in the strategic industries of healthcare, education, and logistics.
R14-1. Amendment to Logistics Organizing Resolution
Sponsor: Michael R (New York University)
This amendment aims to make the resolution more coordinated by organizing simultaneously at multiple Amazon workplaces to exercise collective power with union activity at associated worksites, recognizing that past campaigns targeting singular workplaces have been diminished by union busting. In addition, with high hostility to organized labor in Amazon, this would place emphasis on recruiting schools with developed labor programs to take on organizing to prevent burnout of first-time organizers going into the high-stakes environment of an Amazon organizing drive.
Our members also worked on R9. Developing a Diverse YDSA Through Political Means Endorsement, and we are endorsing this resolution because we support rechartering the Chapter Health & Intersectionality Committee (CHIC) to continue building an organization that is welcoming to comrades of color and femme comrades, who are underrepresented in YDSA. CHIC is a vital national committee and is integral to ensuring that our chapters and national work empower and support all of our members through mentorship and leadership development of those with marginalized identities.