Why disband the EWG?

The workload of the EWG leadership is a serious problem, but if it were the only one, we could solve it and keep the EWG intact. But it’s not the only important thing here. I think the group should be dissolved and reconstituted in the branches (and I think there should be several more branches) because the branches are better suited than a citywide group to handle the main work the EWG does, endorsements. Other jobs the EWG does or should do should be reassigned to other citywide committees.

When I say we should dissolve the working group, not just reassign some of the work internally, here’s what I mean. In the Dec. 20 meeting, we voted 12–0 to advance Jeanette Taylor to the membership for an endorsement vote. Taylor’s running in the 20th Ward, which includes parts of Woodlawn, Cottage Grove, Back of the Yards and Englewood. Her background is exceptional and her platform is good. The primary question we grappled with was not ideological but practical: Could DSA, particularly the South Side branch, provide support and resources for Jeanette in that area?

Of the 12 of us who voted to advance Jeanette, none of us lived within 8 miles of her ward, to my knowledge. I highly doubt any of us had been to her ward. I don’t think any of us had been to a South Side branch meeting or consulted with the South Side branch on whether they thought they could support Jeanette’s campaign with volunteer work. Even if one or two of us had, we as a group were simply not qualified to make that decision. We might as well have been debating a candidate from Springfield. A citywide group is not the right venue for that conversation.

Our solution to this problem was to advance Jeanette under the assumption that the South Side membership would organize to win the final vote, if there’s enough support for her campaign among South Side members, or not organize for it, if there’s not enough support. In other words, we resorted to handing off the work to the branch. That’s the best we can do, but it’s still pitting the South Side branch against the inertia of the much larger North Side and forcing them to reach a quorum and a 2/3 mark that’s way out of proportion to their size.

Ultimately, given the size of the branches, North Siders are extremely likely to decide on Jeanette’s endorsement. This is a bad setup on its face, but what we know about volunteer support makes it worse.

We’ve learned so far this election cycle that our volunteer base is almost entirely local — our volunteers generally don’t travel, so support for a candidate is going to come from nearby members. Tina Groeger gave voice to this at the December membership meeting in reference to our Lift the Ban canvassing. When she started LtB canvassing on the Far North side, where she lives, it activated a whole new crew of DSA member canvassers who weren’t coming down to Hyde Park or Logan Square for those canvasses. We have to understand our capacity as a network of local nodes of volunteers, not a citywide volunteer pool.

We’ve also almost universally agreed that an endorsement from CDSA is not just a stamp of approval, it represents our willingness to work to get the candidate elected. So we need a process that gives those local members the power to decide on an endorsement, since they’ll be doing the work that comes with an endorsement, instead of all the rest of us trying to guess what they will work for and voting that way.

In October, several North Side comrades spoke out to endorse only two candidates for alderman, both North Siders. South Siders spoke up to endorse a candidate on the South Side, and, knowing what we know about our localized capacity, we can call it extremely fortunate that they prevailed. Now we should ask: What business do North Siders have advocating for or against an endorsement on the South Side? We know that almost to a person, they won’t come down to volunteer for candidates there, and South Siders won’t come up. We know they won’t know much about the district or the community organizations that the candidate works with — many times in the citywide EWG we’ve heard members guessing at what voters in this or that ward will do, but those guesses are made without knowing anything concrete about the ward. In short, we know the best judgment and the final authority should rest with the branch membership, not citywide membership.

To replace the citywide EWG, I propose a directly elected board to oversee all endorsements in a particular branch. I think it should be a subset of the branch steering committee, maybe 5 people out of the branch SC, maybe the entire branch SC. I think they should re-read our current endorsement process, take the parts they like, and discard the rest.

I know in this post and its companions, some of my language has been dire, verging on dramatic. That’s intentional, because we will not get a clearer sign than this that the status quo has to change. If we don’t do anything, Ada’s and my successors will not see the problem through the same lens or reach this conclusion. They’ll blame themselves, because they can’t manage what Steve and Ada somehow managed, and they’ll either quit or narrow down their focus to just a candidate or two in order to get things done. This is our best chance to fix the system before that happens.

Main page
What’s up with the workload?
Why disband the EWG?
Why break up the branches?
What in its place?

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