Bread & Roses YDSA is bringing forward six resolutions to the 2023 YDSA Summer Convention. These resolutions recommit YDSA to the dirty break and rank-and-file strategy, advance our labor and electoral work, put forward a strategy to fight the right through class independence and mass action, deepen YDSA’s political education work, establish YDSA’s own International Committee committed to class-struggle internationalism, and request increased resources and support from DSA. Together, these proposals would advance YDSA in the next phase of our organization’s growth and maturity. Read our resolutions below and sign here to express your support!
Recommitting YDSA to the Rank-and-File Strategy
From Starbucks and Amazon to campus dining halls, from reform caucuses in established unions like Teamsters to independent unions, the labor movement today is being revived by young workers. As the working class is in a unique position to force major concessions from the ruling class and win democratic socialism, young socialists are taking on struggles in the workplace, building militant class-struggle unions, and developing socialist leaders on the shop floor in what is known as the “rank-and-file strategy.” And in the process of building working-class power among young workers we can recruit new organizers to being rank-and-file organizers in strategic industries for the long haul.
Since 2022, the Student Workers Alliance (SWA) has been the home of many undergraduate workers organizing on and off campus. SWA has become the organizing committee of the larger Student Workers Alliance Network (SWAN), but has steered away from class-struggle unionism in its use of political tests for leadership. However, a clear class-struggle orientation of labor militancy is integral to the strategy’s execution, as political consciousness cannot be manifested through mere agitation or propagandizing by socialists in the workplace.
We reject the position of “red unionism” and instead see SWA as a place in YDSA where all young student workers should be able to get the resources they need to build militant unions in their workplaces, where students can get support in taking jobs in strategic sectors, and where student workers can be mentored into socialist leaders. This can only happen through building SWA and SWAN into a federation of student-worker unions that treats all members, socialist and not, as equal participants in class struggle and democratic decision-making.
Read our Recommitting YDSA to the Rank-and-File Strategy resolution here.
Recommitting to Building an Independent Working-Class Socialist Party
Students are tired of voting for the lesser-of-two-evils in elections, but lacking strong direction for supporting socialist candidates, we will not make progress in these campaigns. In preparation for the 2024 election cycle, YDSA must have a strong blueprint for working on class-struggle electoral campaigns to provide an alternative socialist vision to the capitalist status quo and mainstream capitalist political parties.
To further build working-class power to challenge capitalism, YDSA must commit to positioning itself as a future youth wing of a socialist party. Supporting chapters with guidelines for supporting socialist candidates, providing resources for running an electoral campaigns that build class struggle and address deeply-felt working-class needs, and building tools for a media presence that clearly advertises our socialist politics will help build an alternative working-class politics in the electoral arena.
Read our Recommitting to Building an Independent Working-Class Socialist Party resolution here.
Fighting the Right through Mass Action
The recent attack on abortion access, gender-affirming healthcare, and education on racial and gender injustice reflects an alarming trend of the right’s authoritarian incursion on civil rights. YDSA chapters running campaigns to fight for social justice have the potential to unite these struggles with the struggle for economic justice, as well as develop lifelong socialist leaders, when they focus on democratic mass action and building class independence in our campaigns and organizations.
Political education calls will orient chapters’ campaigns toward a strategy of mass action, as well as provide concrete skills like power mapping and media tools. These calls will empower chapters to reject compromise with the Democratic Party, NGOs, and other establishment organizations that use self-defeating strategies, and instead encourage coalition building with labor unions and identity-based groups to build alternative power on campuses.
Read our Fighting the Right Through Mass Action resolution here.
Class-Struggle Internationalism
As socialists in the heart of empire, we simultaneously recognize both the global nature of capitalist exploitation and the central role the U.S. plays in maintaining this system. We should critically support the struggles of all colonized and oppressed peoples, aim to learn from youth and student movements, national liberation struggles, and democratic socialists embedded in the labor and social movements.
YDSA should prioritize the struggle between the international working-class and our collective — and at times competing — oppressors, not the rivalries between nation-states. A class-struggle international orientation will provide a consistent framework for supporting left-wing workers' struggles for democracy and socialism everywhere, not just in nations allied with U.S. empire. A YDSA-run Youth International Committee (YIC) will facilitate connections between student organizers of the U.S. and abroad, support anti-imperialist campaigns such as BDS, and provide consistent support to our comrades around the world.
Reestablishing the Youth Political Education Committee (yPEC)
The future of the socialist movement relies on developing lifelong socialist organizers who can establish and sustain YDSA chapters with robust political education programs, structures for leadership development, and connections to the national organization. However, many chapters lack connections to the national organization or the mentorship to institute robust political programs locally.
Allowing the Youth Political Education Committee (yPEC) to facilitate connections between YDSA chapters, provide resources for political development, and plan national political events for chapters to participate in, will enhance chapters’ relationship to the national organization and allow chapters to reach their full potentials. Direct mentorship and training from the yPEC following an organizing-approach — through the deliberate recruitment of leaders — will ensure burgeoning chapters are supported in a concerted effort of nationwide political development.
Read our Reestablishing the Youth Political Education Committee (yPEC) resolution here.
Support for a Growing YDSA
YDSA chapters have been at the forefront of struggles for social and economic justice on campuses across the country, including recent fights for healthcare and reproductive justice as well as unionization drives. As the future of the socialist movement in this country, YDSA needs more resources to continue these struggles; the YDSA Consensus Resolution would allow YDSA to receive more resources in the form of an expanded YDSA budget, a third staffer to support labor organizing campaigns, and YDSA representatives on DSA’s Budget & Finance and Personnel committees. The YDSA National Convention should send a clear message of support for this resolution to our DSA comrades who will be debating and voting on it at the DSA National Convention.
Read our Support for a Growing YDSA resolution here.