At the 2025 DSA National Convention, Democratic Left hosted a writing workshop for members which focused on writing chapter reports. We will be publishing reports from over a dozen states over the coming weeks. You can find the first collection, focusing on immigrant-rights campaigns here.

Twin Cities DSA by Aaron Wagner

MAPE, the largest union of Minnesota state workers, has endorsed Twin Cities DSA-endorsed state senator Omar Fateh for Mayor of Minneapolis. Typically the union stays out of municipal elections, but makes an exception for members and former members. After the TC-DSA Labor branch learned that Fateh was a former member they pushed the union’s PAC to endorse. The large number of DSA members in MAPE ensured that the endorsement was debated. This work bolstered the reform efforts inside the union that DSA members are spearheading. This shows that electoral and labor work inform and help one another.

Columbus DSA by Catherine Pearce

Columbus DSA is rebuilding its political momentum by forming its first campaign since early last year. Our campaign, Democracy in Columbus, will be supporting this momentum by building the skills of our members to regularly participate in organizing actions as well as creating an amendment to our city’s charter to create real districts in our city. This amendment will make it so that our city council members will actually be representative of the districts they elected for. This will make it easier for the future of not only electoral work in our area, but also the long term development of our members.

NYC-DSA by Josh Youngerman

NYC DSA is running Zohran Mamdani for mayor. The reason for running him is that there is a chance to elect a democratic socialist. After winning the democratic nomination, we are beginning the process of knocking on doors for the General Election. This furthers the socialist movement because by electing Zohran mayor, we can gain traction to elect more Socialist mayors around the country.

Tampa DSA by Magalys Oro-Fernandez

Tampa DSA is a medium-sized chapter that has been growing in response to our country’s current political landscape. We are organizing around public transit because just as our chapter has been growing, so has our city, and our total car-dependency has never been more apparent. Our fare-free campaign is quite ambitious, a lesson in and of itself, teaching us how to slow down in order to accelerate our socialism. The transit campaign helps further the socialist movement because there’s few symbols as democratic as the bus: a vehicle for the people, child or elder or in between, funded by the people’s taxpayer money to benefit their community and natural environment.

Delaware DSA by Philip Bannowsky

A divided chapter struggles to unite around a cultural commemoration of the Nakba. Members promoted this event to give representation to Palestinian voices and to engage diverse organizations around a key issue. They organized by asking various state organizations to cosponsor and recruited artists to perform their own and Palestinian work. Some learned that we needed more control over participants while others learned to avoid bureaucratic quibbling. Some believed the project advanced militancy while others learned to build broader coalitions independently.

Indiana DSA by Jackie H.

Northwest Indiana DSA stands as an attempted oasis within a heavily dispersed & alienated population. NWI is a group of small rust belt cities with no central metropolitan area- a challenge that strains the limited capacity of our small chapter. At NWI DSA we work to effectively mobilize our capacity by joining with other grassroots struggles like with our local Palestine actions, and leading smaller activities where able to grow our chapter and build a community presence. The latter strategy is embodied by our upcoming medical debt buy-back campaign, where our chapter will raise a relatively small amount of money to relieve a large multiple of debt for the struggling indebted healthcare receivers. We also strongly value political education, and have seen great success in developing members with our chapter reading group and interactive presentations.

Rochester DSA by Gregory Lebens-Higgins

Rochester DSA is a healthy and growing chapter. One of our ongoing priority campaigns, run by our City Vitality Working Group in coalition with allies, is called Grant’s Pass Resistance, premised on opposition to the Supreme Court ruling legalizing the criminalization of homelessness. The campaign is built around awareness and outreach. Speak to Council sessions are used to voice support for public housing and social welfare policies, while outreach bridges the gap with the community we aim to serve. An important lesson has been the formation of coalitions—when working in coalition, it is important to maintain an organized democratic space (a la Robert’s Rules), just as within chapter deliberations. Often, this requires DSA representatives stepping up, as other groups may lack structure. In Rochester, this coordination introduces allied organizations to DSA’s democratic principles of organizing, and organizing with the homeless population expands our definition of the working class.