How to Move Your Idea Forward in the Chapter

Mika Murphy

Hello comrades,

As new members join our local chapter they are looking for how to move forward proposals and ideas for chapter work. A critical component for any healthy democracy is a well-developed structure for how to engage and move forward ideas. Below, I hope to write a helpful guide for turning ideas into collective projects using my experience as a chapter member for a few years.

Socialize your Idea

A helpful maxim for much organizing work is: Socialize before you organize!

Building bonds with comrades allows you to have a low-pressure group to explore ideas, build comradery, and understand the strengths and weaknesses of those who you’ve made collective goals with

Additionally, our local chapter requires 5 signatures for constitutional members to move forward proposals, resolutions, and bylaw changes to the chapter general meetings where our whole democratic body can discuss and vote on things.

So, this provides a good first step for engaging democratically, socialize your ideas with comrades, incorporate feedback, and build a little group of folks to pursue your collective ideas together.

You can accomplish this task in a few ways:

• Go to chapter socials and make friends with other chapter members! Exchange contact information and keep in touch. It is helpful to first establish a social connection and then to pursue the task of project building.
• Go to the working group, committee, or section meeting which best matches the proposed idea and ask for time on the agenda to discuss the merits of the idea with comrades.
• Post your idea on the Discord in one of the general body, small group, or socializing chats and see what people think! You can also ask for people to put a special emoji on the idea if they would be interested in pursuing collective work together. Then, you can maintain a list of these folks and follow up with them one-on-one to explore the idea together.
• Ask folks to engage in a collective reading together to understand the ins and outs of your idea through a historical, socio-political, or local lens. This can align folks around shared objectives and paint a pathway towards winning.

It is an absolutely critical skill for all socialist organizers to be able to speak to their idea kindly, hear criticism, incorporate feedback, and persuade others to join in the process of laborign towards a collective goal. However, not everyone is skilled at this kind of sociality. So, it is incumbent on seasoned organizers to help other chapter members along in the process of idea and project building. And, it is incumbent on all members in our democratic collective to be vulnerable and ask for space for their ideas to be heard. Additionally, if you feel that you have a hard time with the social skills above then find a kind and social comrade to help you make the social lift!

Find or build a working body

After an idea is socialized and initial objections and excitements are brought up and incorporated then it is time to get more serious about working towards a strategic project which builds the power of DSA and builds working class consciousness with workers in our region. So, at this stage with a supported idea in mind it is critical to find or build a working body that can regularly check in and hold one another accountable in the deliberation and research process. It is also helpful to find or build a working body because many chapter members have special expertise over external or internal processes. By incorporating notes from these comrades in the beginning we can avoid pitfalls. For example, some proposals may be infeasible by virtue of scale, specialized knowledge, legal issues, or other obstacles.

So, it is critical that we build a working body to explore and deal with obstacles in a compelling way. You can accomplish that by taking any or all of the following steps:

• Create a one page (or short) proposal that includes information of the who, what, when, where, and socialist why for engaging in a specific project. This proposal should seek to address how the idea works with chapter capacity, current goals, and building power for DSA as our working class vehicle. Create this proposal with your first initial comrades!
• Present a proposal in one of the various chapter working groups, committees, or sections and ask that it be taken up as a priority. Political leadership of these bodies will make themselves available to help you build the idea and create space in our collective meetings to explore it.
• Ask that an official or unofficial subcommittee or sub-working body be created to flesh this idea out more. And, ask that the political leadership of the main body help foster the growth and development of this committee to the end of producing an actionable plan.

Now, you are cooking with gas. At the end of this stage it should begin to become clear which obstacles and strengths are present for winning this DSA project.

Create a proposal with definite objectives

Finally, any successful campaign requires a strategic plan with definite objectives to make our work the best it can be. Therefore, we seek to write and document the plans we have for winning. This allows us to have institutional memory, evaluate current work, and criticize ourselves towards the end of winning.

Some helpful tips for writing a proposal with definite objectives:

• Keep work time-bound. By keeping work associated with specific segments of time or events we can check in with the success or failure of a campaign at any point. Moreover, keeping things time-bound allows us to plan our work in a sustainable way and understand the work load that we may need to delegate to hit objectives.
• Keep goals specific. How many folks does your campaign need to win? What is your target universe? Who are you hoping to build consciousness with through struggle? Many of these questions can and should be answered preliminarily before work begins. By being specific we tailor our work towards present conditions better.
• Identify whether or not the project works well with existing DSA work. If it does, then seek input and feedback from organizers with similar experiences. If it does not, consider why we should pursue this project over other projects and consider what internal objectives winning your project might necessitate. It is absolutely okay to ask that our local chapter change. But, in order to get our chapter to change priorities it takes clear communication about why one project is more important or strategic than another. And, it also takes clear communication about the political implications of pursuing other work.

At this stage, a proposal will likely need to be continuously workshopped, put into initial action through testing small events, or you may find that the proposal is ready to be taken on as a whole-chapter priority.

Some Final Discussion

I hope this guide is helpful in pursuing new ideas and engaging in our local democracy. One amazing thing about our organization is that it is completely member-directed, member-funded, and member-run. So, the most crucial component of getting new ideas started and over the finish line is understanding and engaging with other chapter members. This means that both long-time members need to extend a helping hand to new members and that new members need to think about how to engage socially in the devleopmonet of a project. That is democracy in action. I wish you and your ideas the best!

Resources:

• DSA offers a “Developing Strategic Campaigns” training that can help identify what objectives need to be considered to build organizational power
• Many of the soft-skills of socializing in this article can be helped substantially through understand and practicing “listwork” which is a bread and butter organizing skill we should all seek to hone. Please reach out and ask Mika M our membership coordinator or other successful member-leaders to help you develop that skill.