THE 2026 TRIANGLE DSA PROGRAM

About DSA

DSA is a member-led, member-funded, democratic, multi-tendency mass political organization. Unlike the capitalist political parties and corporate PACs and non-profits, we are a democratic organization of your neighbors and coworkers, who have come together in a fight against injustice and for a better world. Together with our comrades in DSA across the country, we in Triangle DSA are building a truly politically independent, multi-racial working class socialist party.

This independence means that we are not beholden to the capitalist class, neither through dependence on political parties that serve the capitalist class like the Democrats and Republicans, nor through capitalist-funded foundations and NGOs. Instead, we are building a revolutionary democratic socialist party that fights back, and is accountable to the working and oppressed peoples of this land, rather than wealthy donors and corporations.

Through democratic deliberation and practice, we shape our individual experiences into unified collective action. In doing so, we will build a united front among the working class for the defense of political freedom and democratic practice from fascism. We need a party that is for and by the working class in order to stop the capitalist parties from continuing to wage war against our communities at home and across the world.

The Capitalist System in North Carolina

In North Carolina, workers face some of the most oppressive conditions in the country. So-called “Right to Work” laws are actually meant to stop unions, and public workers are prohibited from organizing for their rights altogether. As a result, union membership is lower here than anywhere else in the country. Teachers are paid crumbs to teach our children. Rent control is illegal, and policies that would result in more affordable housing are restricted or banned. Racist voter repression, gerrymandering, and intimidation by fascist thugs expose the illusion of American democracy.

State officials support racial terror and criminalize those who resist. Women, transgender, and gender non-conforming people face constant attacks on their bodily autonomy and human dignity. Our communities are increasingly impacted by climate disasters, like Hurricane Helene and Tropical Storm Chantal, while survivors are left on their own to rebuild. Politicians in the state government take bribes from corporations like Duke Energy, Smithfield, and Amazon to pollute land, water, and air, overcharge customers, underpay workers, and poison our neighborhoods. North Carolina is not a democracy, but is instead a capitalist dictatorship - an oligarchy, ruled by big businesses and their puppet politicians.

At the same time, North Carolina has a rich history of struggles for liberation and democracy. Tens of thousands of Indigenous peoples evaded the Federal Government’s policy of genocide and removal, and many continue to fight for their sovereignty, lands, and cultures to this day. Enslaved people freed themselves, aided by abolitionists, and went on to build thriving free Black and multiracial communities. Black rebels, Indigenous guerillas, and abolitionists helped defeat the Confederacy and suppress the Ku Klux Klan.

Textile workers, farm workers, and meatpacking workers formed labor unions and the textile union workers of Gastonia sparked what became known as the famous Red Decade of class struggles in their 1929 strike. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which spearheaded student involvement in the Civil Rights movement, formed in 1960 at Shaw University in Raleigh. The environmental justice movement as we know it today began with a grassroots Black struggle against toxic waste dumping in Warren County. People-powered movements continue to step up to fight for justice when those in power will not. Triangle DSA is building upon this legacy of radicalism to defeat the injustice and oppression that has too often won the day.

The Capitalist System Around The World

Capitalism, the political and economic system that is destroying our lives, is built on exploitation. The system was created by the genocide and dispossession of Indigenous peoples, chattel slavery, and patriarchal domination of women by men. Our history in the South is one of Indigenous removal, racial terror, segregation, Jim Crow, and violence towards Black, Indigenous, and immigrant communities. However, the capitalist system is built not just on the exploitation of U.S. workers, but also upon imperialism and settler colonialism - the ongoing domination, dispossession, and the extraction of wealth from the oppressed and colonized nations of the world.

We stand as one with all revolutionary socialist, communist, and workers’ parties and organizations around the world. We are committed to dispelling myths about presently existing and past socialist systems and movements, standing in solidarity with them against colonialism and imperialism, celebrating their achievements, and learning from their experiences where they have erred, stumbled, or fallen short. We have much to learn from the experiences of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Venezuela, and other socialist projects in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia.

Triangle DSA recognizes the interconnectedness of all struggles against capitalism, including labor and tenant, anti-imperialist, anti-colonial and Indigenous, anti-racist and abolitionist, feminist, queer and trans, and for the land, water, air, and life on our planet. It is the task of a socialist party to unify these disparate struggles. We must rally the oppressed in a shared recognition that all of the evils that they are struggling against are rooted in capitalism, and that collective liberation is possible only through a unified struggle for socialism.

We struggle for socialism and justice at home, but recognize that it is only as one unified, global movement of the working class, oppressed, and colonized peoples that we can struggle through to the next horizon of human emancipation, heal our social and natural relationships, and ensure that we thrive together on our irreplaceable, beautiful, and bountiful planet for countless generations to come.

Our Political Horizon

Though Triangle DSA is a multi-tendency organization with as many perspectives on strategy and tactics as there are members, as a whole, our outlook, and that of the socialist movement as a whole, is based on the revolutionary social science of historical materialism. This knowledge, an application of economic and social laws discovered by the socialist theoretician Karl Marx, showed decisively that the misery of the people under capitalism will not last forever. Marx showed that as the economic development of human society has progressed, it has led to a number of social formations - modes of production - that emerge to facilitate economic production.

However, each historical mode of production has also contained the basis for revolutionary transformation. It was once a mainstream view that monarchy was the default state for humanity, but in truth, feudalism itself paved the way for capitalism to emerge. The nobility resisted, and it took a while from the establishment of the first merchant republics to the overthrow of most of the world’s aristocracies, but their overthrow was ultimately inevitable.

In the same way, capitalism has inherent tendencies, such as the separation of management from ownership, the consolidation of highly efficient supply chains, and the emergence of increasingly detached speculation, which leads to private owners, and the profit motive as a whole, not only becoming less necessary to production, but actually hindering it. Within the capitalist economy, a more efficient system without private ownership is struggling to be born. The knowledge that a better world truly is possible has emboldened generations of working people and the oppressed to unite and struggle together.

We believe that the united masses will achieve this, and transform society in the U.S. by overthrowing the capitalist oligarchy and establishing a Democratic Socialist Republic that will serve and be led by the people, usher in a good life for all, and end the imperial project of domination and ravaging of the world. This republic will be a true democracy, where the working class, united with all other oppressed and colonized peoples, wield all economic and political power, and use this power to ensure everyone’s needs, dignity and equal rights are met as free people regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, or nationality. Our long term goal is a world free of all oppressive structures that exist under capitalism—in a word, communism.

THE WORKING CLASS OF NORTH CAROLINA DEMANDS!


A Real Democracy North Carolina is famously anti-democratic, but the issues with our political system don’t begin and end with gerrymandering. The U.S. political system is built to keep control away from the people. Our State and Federal Constitutions, taken together, even enshrine the right of oligarchs to buy politicians and prohibit collective ownership from competing with private profits. We demand an end to the gerrymandered state legislature, and the overturning of all policies which restrict the democratic rights and political freedoms of the people. To that end, we aim to form a united front with like-minded organizations and movements to decisively confront the oligarchy. However, ultimately, we reject the claim that the political system of the U.S. society, where rights exist mainly in reality for the rich and mainly on paper for the poor, is actually democratic. We remember well that the current ban on rent control, for example, was proposed by Democrats, long before the Republican takeover. We do not believe it will be enough to just throw the Republicans out. We believe it is ultimately necessary to replace the U.S. political system with a substantial workers’ democracy, without interference from the wealthy, based on popular participation in politics and governance, and a political order that overall unites rather than divides the people.	Economic Justice We demand a decisive shift in the balance of economic power away from the capitalist class and in favor of workers. We demand that the wealth of the richest be subject to a tax, and we support raising income taxes on the rich, for-profit corporations, large inheritances, and private colleges and universities. We additionally demand a 32-hour work week without reduction in pay, and the establishment of a $30 per hour minimum wage, inflation adjusted to 2025 USD. We demand that the commanding heights of the economy, including sectors key to establishing a dignified universal standard of living - housing, healthcare, transportation, education, and utilities - be brought into immediate public, democratic ownership. Any above-cost charges from these sectors should be invested into just social outcomes, rather than pocketed as individual profits. More broadly, we demand an economic system based on meeting the needs of all humans rather than growing the private profits of the few. This economic system must be sustainable and refuse to sacrifice the prospects of future generations for short-term gains. New measures of economic success besides growth and return on private investment must be used to track progress towards these goals. By establishing these baseline redistributive policies and taking steps to ensure economic development is sustainable for the generations to come, we will build the foundation necessary to dismantle capitalist relations of production and construct a socialist economy where the means of production are collectively owned and democratically controlled.
Racial Justice Triangle DSA demands comprehensive reparations for the historical injustices faced by Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color. These reparations must include economic assistance, affirmative action, other social programs, sovereign political rights, and be pursued relentlessly in order to achieve complete economic and social equality, and the final dismantling of white supremacy. Although recognition of grievous historical and ongoing harms is important, addressing these historical injustices materially is a necessary precondition to the era of peace and universal kinship we seek. We demand the immediate abolition of ICE and legalization of immigrant communities. It is not immigrants but artificial scarcity and artificially high cost of living, which make housing unaffordable and jobs scarce. The ruling class bears the exclusive blame for that, and not immigrant workers. We condemn the program of fascist terror being waged against them, presently by the Trump administration, but that has historically continued during Democratic administrations as well. We stand with immigrants as our neighbors, fellow workers, and human beings.	A Decolonial, Plurinational Republic We demand, in addition to other reparations, the formation of a committee of representatives from Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous nations to direct the internal decolonization of North Carolina and the United States. This internal decolonization may involve the enforcement of sovereign treaty and land rights, the expansion of land bases, an end to all unwanted industrial and extractive projects, the just renegotiation of clauses in treaties which continue colonial injustices, and/or other measures advocated by this committee. We further demand the right of peoples in any US colony - American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Hawaii, the Black nation, and all Indigenous nations - to determine their own destinies, up to and including independence. Within the Democratic Socialist Republic, all nations and peoples will retain their sovereign rights, and enjoy true material and social equality within a plurinational framework. The Democratic Socialist Republic will necessarily be decolonial. It will rectify historical injustices, decisively end white supremacy, abolish all other forms of national subjugation, coercion, and oppression, and work to inaugurate an era of universal kinship, mutual respect, and unbreakable solidarity.
Unions For All DSA seeks a society where the working class is organized, and the deck is stacked in favor of the worker instead of the boss. We demand the repeal of “right-to-work” and all other anti-union laws, and the right of public sector workers to organize, form unions, and strike. We believe that every worker deserves the right to collectively bargain through unions, and to organize free from retaliation from employers or politicians. This excludes police and prison guards, who are class traitors and act as an arm of capital. We do not recognize police and prison guard unions and associations, or any rights for police and prison guards to organize into unions. We organize for and stand firmly with all efforts to oust police and prison guards from organized labor. The struggle to rebuild the labor movement in North Carolina will be long. However, it was socialists that first built the labor movement, and we believe that it will be socialists that rebuild it. By abandoning socialism, the labor movement of yesterday set itself up to be divided, conquered, and in most cases defeated by the ruling class. A reinvigorated socialist labor movement will not make the same mistake again. Triangle DSA members are active in existing local unions such as UE150 and the Teamsters, are organizing new unions, and developing worker-organizers through EWOC, a joint project between DSA and UE.	Healthcare For All We demand the passage of the Medicare for All Act. The U.S. spends more money per capita than any other nation on healthcare, but because the ruling class prioritizes corporate profits over human life, it is both subpar and inaccessible. Rising healthcare costs and the ease with which Republicans have dismantled the Affordable Care Act demonstrate what socialists have been saying all along - making healthcare a human right is morally and economically necessary. The example of Cuba proves that with socialism, even an impoverished nation under a crushing decades-long economic blockade by the most powerful nation on Earth can achieve a world-class healthcare system. Cubans have better healthcare outcomes than residents of the U.S., and they have also achieved stunning medical innovations, including the development of a vaccine for lung cancer. DSA supports massive public investment into medical research that prioritizes healthcare outcomes, rather than shareholder returns.
Education And Employment For All We demand the establishment of public education and job training at all levels, from pre-K to post-graduate programs, as a universal human right. We additionally demand an end to all programs and policies, such as charter school initiatives, which divert funding from public education to private profit. We also demand the removal of all barriers to high-quality secondary education, not just at universities, but community colleges and trade schools as well. Economic development inevitably changes and displaces industries. Because our society has not guaranteed adequate education and training as a right, millions of workers have been left stranded in uncompetitive, antiquated industries, and communities have been left devastated. By guaranteeing universal and generous public assistance for workers who are retraining for jobs in emerging industries, we will guarantee a better life for all working people while ensuring that our economy remains dynamic and innovative. We seek a model of full employment, where workers are not chained to any one employer.	Affordable Housing For All We demand the repeal of all measures which bar the State or municipalities from instituting rent control ordinances or building social housing to compete with private landlords. The housing crisis will not be solved by making it easier for developers to build luxury housing. By guaranteeing housing as a human right and building an abundance of dignified social housing, we can radically lower the cost of living and improve social stability for everyone. Under North Carolina’s particularly restrictive legal environment, we commit ourselves to pursuing the maximum possible wins for the working class, for dense and affordable housing, and against displacement, developers, and sprawl, as evolving circumstances dictate. We additionally support the organization of democratic, socialist, and tenant-led unions. We believe that tenant unions should serve as a bridge between unpoliticized tenants and socialist movement, and should actively bring them into political life and cultivate them as political leaders. This is an alternative to those advocacy organizations, bankrolled by politicians and developers alike, which ensure tenants never become a genuine political threat.
Bodily Autonomy We demand the right to have children, to not have children, and for children to be parented in safe and sustainable communities. We demand universal and free reproductive healthcare, including abortion, contraception, pregnancy tests, and fertility support on demand, without any outside interference or intimidation. We demand the closure of all Anti-Abortion Clinics, which falsely represent themselves as reproductive health clinics. In North Carolina, these fake clinics outnumber real abortion clinics by 7-to-1. By promoting myths and anti-abortion ideology, they harm all of their clients, regardless of their desire to be pregnant or not be pregnant. Triangle DSA is proud to be at the forefront of efforts to educate the community about and to struggle against these fake clinics locally through our Abort Fake Clinics campaign. While the fight for Bodily Autonomy does not solely impact women, socialist feminism allows us to understand that the rampant oppression of women and other gender oppressed people alike emerges, not as the male chauvinists claim, from biology, but from the social reproduction of the relations of production within the family unit. Socialist societies such as the Soviet Union accordingly pursued gender equality policies which had effects in metrics such as educational attainment lasting for decades after its dissolution. The socialist transformation of society that we seek will not be finished until the complete material and social equality of genders is realized.	LGBTQ+ Liberation We stand in resistance to and demand the repeal of the fascist homophobic and transphobic laws enacted by the State Legislature, including but not limited to SB2, HB808, HB574, SB49, and the anti-queer definition of marriage in the NC Constitution. We demand, in their place, the enactment of comprehensive anti-discrimination ordinances which establish legal sanctuaries for queer and transgender people against all forms of discrimination. We additionally demand the right to seek gender-affirming healthcare and determine one’s own legal gender on demand. This demand includes the right of transgender youth to seek and receive life-saving gender-affirming care at all ages. We additionally demand the legal protection of queer and transgender youth from all other abuses, such as forced outings and so-called “conversion therapy”. The cowardice and backsliding by Democratic politicians in the face of the present homophobic and transphobic moral panic decisively shows that they can never be trusted to fight for the people against fascism. DSA and the socialist movement, by contrast, will always continue to stand with all working and oppressed people. Queer and transgender people are our members, comrades, and neighbors, fighting not just for themselves, but for the liberation of all.
Action on the Planetary Crisis The planetary crisis poses an existential threat to human society. Climate change, caused by capitalism’s continued reliance on fossil fuels, has severely destabilized the natural processes that sustain life as we know it, leading to one climate disaster after another. Corporations in sectors ranging from cars to plastics drive the pollution of our land, water, and air. The capitalist food system relies on unsustainable overuse of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and water, while causing deforestation, mass extinction, and the oppression of smallholder farmers, agricultural workers, and animals. North Carolina is no stranger to this crisis. Hurricanes Matthew, Florence, and Helene have devastated our state and killed or displaced thousands. Fossil capitalists and chemical manufacturers have severely polluted our rivers. For decades, the health of North Carolinians has been threatened by toxic waste dumping and harmful farming practices. In solidarity with the Global South, Indigenous nations, China, India, and all working class movements around the world pushing to take this crisis seriously, Triangle DSA demands the rapid downscaling of the most destructive and wasteful sectors, such as fossil fuels, weapons, and plastics, and massive investment in essential sustainable sectors, such as renewable energy, public transportation, sustainable agriculture, and sustainable building materials. These sectors must be placed under public democratic ownership, and these efforts must be accompanied by a massive infrastructure and jobs program to ensure a just transition for all workers and farmers. Triangle DSA is actively campaigning against the Duke Energy dictatorship, for socialized power, and for an ecologically sane approach to development through its Solar Bond campaign and Ecosocialism Association.	Public Safety We demand an immediate redirection of public funds away from policing and to unarmed first responders, social workers, and programs which improve public safety by addressing deficits in public health and alleviate poverty. The U.S. police and criminal justice system were founded on slave-catching and strike-breaking, and are sustained by a myth that it is possible for a society to police its way out of economic misery and social inequality. This backward system exists at the expense of public safety, and we do not believe it can be salvaged. We additionally demand an end to the failed War on Drugs and the persecution of unhoused people. Imprisoning non-violent drug offenders and forcing unhoused people to migrate does not make the public more safe, but instead ensures that people experiencing precarity are denied the support and economic security they need to recover. We hold that by building a society in which education, universal public healthcare, housing, and an overall dignified quality of life are standard, we will also be creating a far safer society. We further reject that any militarized, racist police force will be necessary to pursue just resolution, ensure public safety, and prevent recidivism in the event of remaining sporadic crimes.
Anti-Imperialist Solidarity American foreign policy, which pursues the unilateral and violent political and economic enslavement of developing nations for corporate profits, is a road to ruin for everyone. We stand in particular solidarity with the nations of Cuba and Venezuela against the U.S. program of state terror and enforced economic ruin waged against them. We also stand against the new Cold War with China, which is a nation that strikes fear into our ruling class primarily because it is a far more equitable partner to developing nations than Western finance is, and because it represents an alternative political and economic model to the neoliberal Washington Consensus. We demand an end of all U.S. sanctions on these nations, and all other nations which are opposed to unilateral U.S. domination of the world. U.S. imperialism is a crime against humanity and an obstacle to global progress, even when it is directed at societies which are not perfect.	An End To Exporting Fascism Abroad The imperialist foreign policy of the U.S. does not just sanction nations which pursue peaceful development independent from U.S. corporate profits - it also materially supports oppressive regimes and fascist movements abroad. We demand an end to all aid for oppressive regimes and subversive movements which aim to repress or punish resistance to U.S. imperialism. We additionally and especially demand a complete end to U.S. support for its genocidal apartheid client state of Israel, support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and stand in unwavering solidarity with the people of Palestine in their pursuit of political sovereignty as they choose, from the river to the sea. Triangle DSA has supported and engaged in political action at all levels, from elected office to our grassroots No Appetite for Apartheid campaign, to divest from Israel, to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and to hold Israeli war criminals accountable for their crimes against humanity.