DSA Leadership Blocks Vote On Kshama for Congress + Kills Free Childcare Campaign

Rank-and-File DSA Members Should Fight for an Endorsement

Summer Miller

The leadership of the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has been maneuvering in recent months to block a discussion in the organization on endorsing Kshama Sawant’s independent socialist campaign for Congress.

Last year, DSA members voted to create a deadline of December 1 for campaigns to request an endorsement. Kshama’s campaign missed this deadline by nine days. DSA leaders are using this missed deadline as justification to refuse to hold a debate and a vote of the membership.

This “missed deadline” is just an excuse. The December 1 deadline had not even been posted to the DSA website at the time when Kshama’s campaign applied for the endorsement.

The reality is that DSA nationally is shying away from taking on powerful Democrats.

New York mayor and DSA member Zohran Mamdani recently endorsed corporate Democrats Kathy Hochul and Hakeem Jeffries. New York City DSA voted against endorsing a DSA challenger to Jeffries, the top-ranking Democrat in the House who is rabidly pro-capitalist, pro-ICE, and pro-genocide.

In an email rejecting Kshama’s endorsement request, Seattle DSA leaders argued that “a campaign against a high-ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives will be a far more challenging uphill battle than a city council race.”

But these are exactly the kinds of fights the socialist movement needs to take on.

Seattle DSA made another serious mistake in January, in abandoning a planned ballot initiative to tax the rich for free childcare in Seattle. Calling for DSA members to reject the campaign, a section of DSA leaders cited “a number of unexpected roadblocks.” The chief “roadblock” was that the leadership of “SEIU 925, the leading childcare union, has strongly opposed our initiative” and this would  “risk harming our relationship with organized labor.”

SEIU 925 leadership claimed that having universal childcare in Seattle would “be inequitable for Seattle residents to have better childcare while surrounding areas don’t.” This is bullshit. Winning universal free childcare in one city would build the movement for winning it statewide.

In the New York mayoral primary, SEIU leaders endorsed Andrew Cuomo over Zohran Mandani. The same union officials who don’t want to fight for free childcare are the same ones that hold back strikes and funnel union money and endorsements to corrupt Democratic Party politicians like Cuomo.

The socialist movement cannot build power while staying chained to the Democratic Party or the union bureaucracy. We need a clean break. 

In relation to Kshama’s campaign, Seattle DSA leaders also argue that they “do not think the relationship between our chapter and Kshama's organization has been altogether positive.” 

I’m a former member of Kshama’s organization, Revolutionary Workers. It’s true that Kshama’s organization has been sectarian towards much of the left, including DSA. For example, Kshama and her campaign should have publicly committed to helping build DSA’s childcare initiative. They should have organized inside of DSA to move forward with the initiative. This could have resulted in the initiative moving forward on a strong basis. Instead, they ignored it.

But this is no excuse for DSA leaders to block a vote on a potentially historic campaign for Congress. We can’t fight sectarianism with sectarianism. We need to fight it with principled working-class unity.

Rank-and-file DSA members need to get organized to demand a debate and a vote on Kshama’s campaign. We need to build a militant wing of DSA to break from the Democratic Party and back the strongest independent socialist campaign in the country.