Our 2025 NPC Candidates

Christian Araos (Long Island)

Clayton Ryles (Los Angeles)

Jeremy Cohan (NYC-DSA)

Katie Sims (Ithaca)

Leslie Chang (Los Angeles)

Renée Paradis (NYC-DSA)

Seth Woody (Troy)

Christian Araos (Long Island) Clayton Ryles (Los Angeles) Jeremy Cohan (NYC-DSA) Katie Sims (Ithaca) Leslie Chang (Los Angeles) Renée Paradis (NYC-DSA) Seth Woody (Troy)

Christian Araos (Long Island)

Christian is the co-chair of the DSA International Committee’s Americas Subcommittee. Over the last five years, he’s helped build relationships with parties like PT and Morena, and recently launched and co-drafted the charter for the International Migrants Rights Working Group.

Clayton Ryles (Los Angeles)

Clayton is a militant labor organizer and elected leader on DSA-LA’s Steering Committee. As an organizer with UAW Region 6, he’s helped postdocs form organizing committees through contract campaigns and prepare for strike votes.

Jeremy Cohan (NYC-DSA)

Jeremy is a longstanding NYC-DSA powerhouse and a former chapter co-chair. A socialist who studies teachers’ unions, political economy, philosophy, and Marxist theory, he recently volunteered on his 30th DSA campaign with Zohran Mamdani for Mayor.

Katie Sims (Ithaca)

Katie is a member of the National Electoral Commission Steering Committee and has served as Ithaca’s Electoral Committee Chair since 2023. They've coordinated 3 local field campaigns in Ithaca to elect socialists, including Jorge Defendini's recent re-election to the Ithaca Common Council.

Leslie Chang (Los Angeles)

 Leslie is a founding member and leader of DSA-LA's Eastside Branch. She is currently at the forefront of fighting ICE in LA: leading Know Your Rights presentations, supporting campaign development, and building coalitions with community groups.

Renée Paradis (NYC-DSA)

Renée is running for a second term on the National Political Committee. An experienced election attorney and organizer, she was a key early architect of NYC-DSA and national DSA’s electoral strategies. She’s worked for too many DSA campaigns to list, from Bernie Sanders to the Michigan Uncommitted campaign, which she introduced to DSA.

Seth Woody (Troy)

Seth has been leading at the nexus of movement building and electoral politics for over a decade. Most recently, they were the Organizing and Field Director for Uncommitted and also organized in Asheville in the wake of the 2024 floods.

Christian Araos (Long Island, he/him)

Watch a clip of Christian, introduced by International Committee leader Jana Silverman:

I am running for NPC because I believe in the potential of DSA to inspire the masses in both the US and abroad to build popular struggles to win socialism. This is a singular opportunity for DSA to take advantage of popular discontent with both the Trump Administration and the Democratic Party leadership to become a powerful political force in national politics.

As one of its thousands of volunteers, I am seeing how positive a first step the Zohran campaign has been. I also believe that we can replicate the success of that campaign across the country. We are seeing that it is both possible and necessary for current and hopeful electeds to not back down to the Israel lobby and their allies; that our rank-and-file union members can organize their locals into supporting those officials; and, just as importantly, mobilize a multiracial, multigeneration core of volunteers, staffers, and organizers.

On the IC for the past five years, I’ve focused on building institutional relationships with parties like PT and MORENA. In building these connections, we’ve been able to share organizing experiences and trade perspectives on internal and external organizing. As a result, we have strengthened our understanding of how to build successful movements to gain working-class power, just like what we’re seeing with Zohran’s campaign.

We need a DSA that opposes Trump by engaging the multigenerational, multiracial working class and pulls them into our movement. I want to spend the next two years on NPC serving DSA by making this a reality.

Clayton Ryles (Los Angeles, they/he)

Watch a clip of Clayton, introduced by National Labor Commission Co-Chair Ryan Andrews:

I’m running for NPC because I’d like to contribute what I can as an organizer to help build our national organization. We’re in a moment of extreme peril where our communities are suffering from an emboldened and empowered fascist movement. This is very clearly seen in LA, where even modest protest and popular resistance, as compared to our history of collective action, have been met with brutal state violence and deployment of the military. If we don’t laser focus on building power now and using that power to break fascism, we might lose our opportunity as the fascists cement their grip on government.

I’m hoping to use the skills that I’ve honed in DSA and UAW as an organizer to help build the national organization so that we can meet the moment. As a UAW organizer, I have been extremely proud to help postdocs at USC form their union from the first days of the organizing committee to now, when they are at the end of their first contract campaign and preparing for a strike vote.

I have also been proud to help develop our political organizing apparatus with new locals in LA and help other workers on the path to forming their unions. I plan to bring my experience to the NPC by working with chapters on membership recruitment to build mass campaigns, developing leaders to take on roles organizing members, and helping us build out our organizational structures, and collaborating with movement partners to build a united front against fascism and for the multi-racial working class.

Jeremy Cohan (NYC-DSA, he/him)

Watch a clip of Jeremy, introduced by New York State Assemblymember and Socialist in Office Claire Valdez:

We are witnessing the terrifying rampage of the dictatorial and fascist far right. A dying empire is no less deadly for that, and the US is sponsoring a genocide in Gaza, while the threat of nuclear war rises. The Democratic party establishment has done zero to oppose Trump, with the fate of democracy and the species in the balance.

DSA nationally has huge potential with our membership model, size, reach, and popular political vision. And left leaders like Zohran Mamdani, Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, and AOC are leading the way in presenting a path both toward opposing the far-right, but also challenging the neoliberal politics that gave rise to them in the first place.

However, our national organization's leadership has too often allowed factionalism, purity politics, and disorganization to undermine the work. In the key fights of our day against fascism and oligarchy—e.g. the fight to block Medicaid cuts that has the real potential to pull people who supported Trump out of his coalition—the national organization has been mostly absent.

My hope is that my experience in leading strategic electoral, legislative, and anti-imperialist campaigns, in building co-governance with socialists in office, in working to cohere people across caucus lines both through mutual understanding and through a relentless focus on power-building for the working class and the left, will all be of service to the organization and its work in this crucial period. Now is the time! 

Katie Sims (Ithaca, they/them)

Watch a clip of Katie, introduced by National Political Committee member Colleen Johnston:

I don’t like the way things are right now: our economy is deeply unfair, I don’t know whether I’ll be able to get healthcare when I need it, I worry about my friends getting evicted, and I’m pissed off that my taxes go to endless, horrific wars. Democratic socialism is the right response to this, but I don’t want to just be right—I want to change it.

DSA has the potential to be more impactful than it currently is. Because I’ve seen us fail to meet the moment in the last two years: not taking a position on the Trump election, beefing with our allies and electeds, and slashing organizing capacity with staff cuts. We’ve been too focused on debate and discourse, and not enough on action. Millions of people around the country are asking what they can do to fight the far right and the do-nothing centrist democrats, and the NPC has not had a strategy. 

I’m running for NPC to help us meet the moment with coordinated, strategic action. As an NEC Steering Committee member, I’ve helped act as an organizer, meeting with chapters to help develop campaign ideas and plans. I’ve produced training materials that can help advise chapter leaders so they can adapt a strategy to their own area and run with it.

We need to be more proactive and collaborative, more focused on organizing than orating. My experience in chapter and national leadership prepares me well to bring this kind of political leadership to the NPC.

Leslie Chang (Los Angeles, she/her)

Watch a clip of Leslie, introduced by movement veteran and former National Political Committee member José La Luz:

I am running for NPC to help build an organization that has the capacity, campaigns, and candidates to contest for power in 2028. My vision for DSA is one that emphasizes solidarity over individuality. Over the next two years, we need to participate in a united front to defeat the MAGA movement.

Our NPC must be willing to engage in struggle with membership and mobilization organizations at the forefront of the anti-Trump movement so that we remain visible in the fight for democracy, and surface the best strategy and tactics for moving the American working class to our socialist values.

This means organizing with unions and workers’ groups, civic organizations, faith groups, political leaders, and affinity groups to build a diverse coalition capable of reaching a broader base than we could do alone. Through this united front, we must also develop a mass line: one that spells out a positive and optimistic vision for expanding democracy in the United States. We must also work internally across states and chapters to develop popular, external-facing campaigns that champion this mass line and expand and deepen our base.

Renée Paradis (NYC-DSA, she/her)

Watch a clip of Renée, introduced by Zohran Mamdani Field Director Tascha Van Auken:

I believe that DSA can become the democratically run, mass membership socialist party that it needs to become, and I’m running for reelection for NPC because I think my experience, knowledge, and skills make me a strong asset to the organization in that role. For me, running for the NPC is an act of service to the organization, to my comrades, and to the movement. I would be honored to be elected to a second term.

Right now, the Democratic Party’s base is enraged and mobilized, while the party’s leadership fumbles uselessly. 2026 and even more so 2028 represent an enormous opportunity for the left to take power electorally. DSA could, if we turn our focus from talking primarily to people who already agree with us, to building a mass organization that can work effectively in coalition with a popular front, be a part of a winning coalition for the presidency in 2028.

As terrible as what’s happening now is—and I am proud of my record of correctly predicting how Trump would govern and advocating for DSA to fight the right—it opens the door for a democratic socialist president to take the kinds of big swings necessary to build a sustainable majority for social democracy. That is only possible, however, if there’s a mass mobilization behind them–uniting those who are protesting against ICE, union members who will be part of the UAW-convened general strike, and, yes, members of Indivisible who are out at the No Kings protests. The dangers we face are too severe—not just the ascendant MAGA right but the ever-worsening climate crisis—to be precious about who we organize with.

Seth Woody (Troy, they/them)

Watch a clip of Seth, introduced by the co-founder of the Uncommitted Movement, Layla Elabed:

DSA is the single most important socialist, power-building, membership organization in the country, and we must be disciplined in playing our role. We have the potential to have an enormous impact in the current crisis of capitalism and of the working class, but are failing to meet the historical moment; we’re simultaneously recoiling from disciplined action to build a united front against fascism while irresponsibly and erratically driving the organization away from its core principles for no discernible good reason.

As an organizer, I have spent over a decade experimenting with and leading social-movement organizations at scale, training leaders to run and win effective campaigns in their communities, while building deep relationships with grassroots leaders in the social-movement left.

Our organization is unnecessarily isolated in a historical moment that necessitates united front politics while also lacking critical leadership experience and skills amongst its highest leadership body. As an NPC member, I am prepared to bring relationships, experience, and a disciplined work ethic to the work of leading as an NPC member. The opportunity for DSA to lead is here; I believe the experience and relationships I have are needed to fully realize that opportunity.