Make the Statement by Organizing: Integrative Socialist Internationalism for DSA

NYC-DSA and Socialist Majority members meeting with Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

SMC Editorial Board Note: This piece is not an official caucus statement, but the opinion of the authors. The caucus has not voted to endorse any resolutions or amendments other than those in our 2025 Convention Platform.

Over the past two years, internationalism has provided an effective lens to view DSA’s fraught attempts to juggle the changing political winds and the internal frictions they generate. There are the desires to build broad coalitions, pursue independent pathways, and make assertive declarations against the status quo. This tension has come to boil over in three International Committee (IC) statements that the National Political Committee either retracted, rejected, or significantly revised within the past year. Yet while the debate over statements escalates, one part of the International Committee has grown into an organizing juggernaut. 

The Americas Subcommittee, commonly known as IC Americas, is the IC’s largest body, with nearly 40% of all IC members within it. Under our leadership, Jana as a current Steering Committee member and previously, as IC Americas co-chair from 2021-2022, and Christian as its current co-chair, IC Americas expanded DSA’s diplomatic relationships so that we can better learn from leaders and elected officials linked to Latin America’s most important mass parties; collaborated with the NLC for labor union exchanges, from service unions (Starbucks) to autoworkers (Autoworkers of the Americas); and revitalized the organization’s immigrant rights work. Our experience is not reflective of organizing across all of the IC’s subcommittees but our multitude of organizing approaches presents viable alternatives to the statement-oriented focus that dominates most internal work in other subcommittees as well as many external conversations regarding the IC's work. 

We witnessed this friction firsthand in July 2024 during the Venezuelan Presidential Election. While we on IC Americas insisted on working with our diplomatic partners on a shared stance that would oppose US intervention in the disputed outcome while reaffirming our commitment to democratic principles, the so-called ‘anti-imperialist’ wing of the IC published a pre-written statement congratulating Nicolas Maduro on his apparent victory. Venezuela’s official election agency never published the precinct-level data (known as actas) that our allies in Brazil, Colombia, and Chile demanded before sending their congratulations. We wanted to hold the statement or make significant edits acknowledging this dynamic until the results were published to maintain a shared position with them. The ‘anti-imperialist’ wing not only rejected our edits but published the statement once a quorum was reached. Within hours, the NPC voted to retract the statement following outrage from members across the organization.

“This raises the question of how effective declarative statements are vis-a-vis other forms of organizing within the belly of the imperialist beast.”

This controversy would play out twice more in recent months, with statements involving the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, who was named in an International Criminal Court warrant for crimes against humanity, and the bombing of Iranian nuclear infrastructure by Israel. The statement on Haniyeh’s death deviated from our platform’s stance on Palestine which emphasizes national self-determination and respect for human rights for the Palestinian people, by proclaiming him a martyr and celebrating his actions even in contexts in clear violation of international humanitarian and human rights law. Likewise, our platform’s position on Iran focuses on normalization, an end to broad unilateral economic sanctions, and nuclear nonproliferation, which breaks with the first version of the statement’s phrasing to support the “right” to nuclear development.

In both instances, the statement’s writers and supporters cited anti-imperialism, in internal messages, to justify sidestepping DSA’s anti-war principles and platform. None of these statements materially benefitted DSA, as they failed to attract new members, present current members with calls to action, offer nuanced political analyses useful for informing the foreign policy positions of our Socialists in Office, or arm chapters with resources to participate in anti-imperialist organizing.

This raises the question of how effective declarative statements are vis-a-vis other forms of organizing within the belly of the imperialist beast, especially in this geopolitical moment when multiple crises manifest themselves simultaneously and interconnectedly. While, as socialists, we do feel compelled to respond to this development, the default option to draft a statement shifts the IC away from organizing action and towards an inward-looking editorial process. As a result, there are hostile debates, uncomradely behavior on social media and online organizing spaces, and a considerable amount of “quiet quitting” of IC members turned off by this toxic atmosphere. By the time an end product is published, the moment will have passed and the content will inexorably be washed down the timeline by the endless currents of social media algorithms. 

As socialist and anti-imperialist organizers within the global hegemon that is the United States, we know that we cannot ignore international affairs. IC Americas presents a new path forward and it has generated unprecedented member and organizational buy-in for internationalist organizing within DSA. 

One of the foundations of this work has been our Cuba Working Group. Now planning its second mass-membership delegation, the Cuba Working Group has been carrying out an inclusive, multifaceted approach to its internationalist organizing, with its pressure campaign on the Biden Administration to lift Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, its logistical support for Cuban officials allowing them to visit chapters nationwide, and event-based political education initiatives. All of this has facilitated the participation of a wide range of DSA members, regardless of their tendency or position within the organization, to participate in crucial anti-imperialist organizing.

IC Americas expanded on these initiatives recently to make further innovations in bilateral diplomatic relations and internal organizing. Last year, we organized the first-of-its-kind binational political education exchange involving the DSA Fund and the Fundação Perseu Abramo, the political education foundation of Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). This seven-part program brought together cadre members of both DSA and PT to share analyses and strategies regarding labor work, party-building, ecosocialism, internationalism, and constructing left coalitions to fight the far-right menace in the Americas. 

Jana Silverman, Renée Paradis, and Mila Frati of the Fundação Perseu Abramo of Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) in São Paulo, November 2024.

In 2024, IC Americas also organized and led a delegation to Mexico which both participated in electoral observation activities and also engaged with at-large members to hold a deep discussion with Mexican independent union leaders, who provided unique insight on the challenges organized labor continues to face in Mexico, despite having a sympathetic regime in power. The IC has also recently partnered with NYC-DSA to host insightful exchanges with leaders and elected officials from global mass left parties, ranging from La France Insoumise and the Belgian Workers Party to Argentina’s Frente Patria Grande.

“While some statements can help codify the shared views that reflect our ideological big tent and be of use to foreign partners, maximalist statements rooted in sentiment and detached from clear policy demands alienate US-based elected officials, union leaders in DSA’s orbit, and rank-and-file members.”

Now, in the wake of Trump’s return to office, the IC Americas subcommittee has quickly and decisively pivoted to immigrant rights organizing. The International Migrants Rights Working Group (IMRWG) has swelled to involve more than fifty chapters to support both local and national campaigns targeting the deportation apparatus that is terrorizing working-class immigrant communities across the US. We offer chapters the practical resources and coaching needed to start organizing without requiring their members to adhere to any ideological criteria beforehand. We encourage members to trade knowledge and experience—whether as union organizers, ICE-watchers, or mutual aid providers—without questioning their commitment to anti-imperialism or anti-capitalism. As a result, we have commanded respect and attention even within DSA’s fractured and decentralized structures, as evidenced by the multiple Zoom calls with over 1000 RSVPs and 500 attendees that the IMRWG has convened in recent months. 

We have light-heartedly dubbed our overarching internationalist organizing principle the “Racecar Theory of Change,” with the idea being that like a well-designed Formula One car, our organizing success depends on our ability to integrate all aspects of DSA into each other as seamlessly as possible, to allow for maximum performance and winning policy outcomes. We rely on union organizers to steer their unions away from labor nationalism so that they can be safe spaces for noncitizen members; we rely on deep relationships with parties abroad cultivated through responsible, institutionalized diplomatic work in order to better understand their needs, aspirations, and strategies; and we rely on member participation to demonstrate that DSA possesses a mass base capable of mobilizing around socialist internationalist solidarity campaigns. This integration allows us to root our response to any geopolitical situation in our members’ concrete abilities and connections, not dissimilar to a high-performance racecar that is able to perform under any set of conditions, no matter how adverse.

Statement politics, with its singular focus on disputing editorial content, threatens this dynamic. While some statements can help codify the shared views that reflect our ideological big tent and be of use to foreign partners, maximalist statements rooted in sentiment and detached from clear policy demands alienate US-based elected officials, union leaders in DSA’s orbit, and rank-and-file members. One clear example of this was the controversial January 2022 IC statement regarding the drive to war between Russia and Ukraine, which only centered the US and NATO’s role in the situation and failed to even mention Russia’s role in escalating the tensions that inevitably led to armed conflict. This statement set the stage for heavy criticism from the mainstream press, political figures, and even some of our own members, including Socialists in Office; and pushed many members to leave the organization.  

Although we sympathize with the frustration that this statement-itis produces among many members and distinct political tendencies within DSA, we also do not think that unhelpful external interventions can healthily and productively change IC organizing culture from the inside. In particular, we do not think that we can produce the necessary changes through litigating the IC’s politics and strategies from the outside every two years through Convention resolutions or amendments that lack an organic connection to internal IC dynamics and debate. 

Instead, we believe that the best alternative for SMC and DSA members is to avoid the editorial debates and carry out effective, integrative internationalism by participating directly in the IC. For this reason we support the IC Consensus Resolution (CR02) in its unamended form. We are also encouraged by R19: From Palestine to Mexico: Fighting Fascist Attacks on Immigrants and R36: A Unified Democratic Socialist Strategy for Palestine Solidarity that are rooted in strategy and inclusivity. These approaches reflect the on-the-ground, day-to-day actual internationalist organizing work that has helped to make DSA a political reference for dozens if not hundreds of mass left parties worldwide. Our statement is our organizing in practice!