Co-Chair Candidate Profile: Carlos Callejo III

The Activist interviewed the candidates for national co-chair at the 2024 YDSA national convention. Current NCC member at-large Carlos Callejo III discusses their run for co-chair.

YDSA’s National Convention is on the horizon. Though the event will be online this year, the key elements that make convention important will remain. Hundreds of YDSAers will gather to discuss, debate, and vote on resolutions impacting all areas of socialist organizing, from labor to Palestine, and much more. What passes on the convention floor becomes policy, determining the strategic and ideological direction of America’s largest youth socialist organization. The NCC is YDSA’s highest organizing body, comprised of “co-chairs,” who sit on DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC) and at-large members. This year,five candidates are running for the position. 

The Activist sat down with Carlos Callejo III, from Cal Poly Pomona YDSA, and spoke about his decision to run. 

The Bread & Roses statement on Carlos’s  candidacy can be found here. 

The questions and responses in this interview have been edited for clarity. 

Q: Could you talk about your work and time at Cal Poly Pomona, what chapter campaigns you’ve undertaken, what successes or failures you’ve had, and what those experiences taught you about effective organizing and leadership?

Carlos: With my best friend Thomas Malone, I co founded Cal Poly Pomona YDSA in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. There was a lot of trial and error trying to work out things during such a tough time.  There were many lessons learned during that period, such as not delegating enough, not doing enough leadership development, and carrying too much of the weight. So once I started doing said things, that helped foster a good core base of socialist organizers. From there, we started working on actual building out of real campaigns. For example, trying to stop mental health funding cuts on our campus, which we did; passing rent control in the city of Pomona; working with tenants’ rights groups; and trying to help the CSU undergrad student worker union. 

Q: Given all you’ve done on campus, what made you run for Co-chair? Why did you feel it was vital for you to throw your hat in the ring?

Carlos: Great question. When it came to running for the NCC, the first time I ran, I had no intention of running for national.  That was not a personal goal of mine, but there was a lot of encouragement from people like my YDSA mentors, Abdullah Farooq, who was the YDSA LA coordinator at the time, and Anna Bonomo. They said that I had a perspective to give, coming from a working class Chicano community, having prior organizing experience outside of YDSA and DSA spaces., They said that was a valuable insight that I could bring. I did that first run, and I learned a lot. And I — I think — learned more of the mechanics of national.  So, when it came to running for co-chair, there were a lot of things that I felt were at a critical moment, when it came to Palestine, for example. [Finally,] many of the seeds I planted across California YDSA have been starting to sprout. And I’d really love to have the opportunity to water those sprouts more and build on that formation. 

Q: Given that you’ve already run for the NCC before, what do you plan on doing differently now that you didn’t do previously? 

Carlos: I built a local chapter from the ground and I had some experience in mentoring and citywide formation work. But I didn’t have much experience with national, and I didn’t really see the full scope of it, in a sense, and how things function. So I took a more, perhaps you could say, more of a technocratic approach to things, initially. What I found that works better is more relational organizing. That’s what I felt in my experience. However, that [relational organizing] takes time. You could say that it’s harder, but it has a better payoff in the long run. So again, I didn’t see that [initially]. I felt hesitant sometimes to do things. But now, coming in for a second term, I know that I can use my imagination a little more.

Q: What would you say is your campaign platform?

Carlos: Well, there’s a couple I’ll say. For one, I think having national events in person is vital. I’m going to be working hard to achieve that for YDSA, because you lose key, social aspects and community building when you have these events online. So I want to ensure that these national events, conferences, and conventions are at a space where people from across the country can come share stories and build relationships. Of course to do that, we have to fight for the YDSA budget. This stuff does cost money. Nevertheless, we have to look forward. We need to have an exciting vision for our organization. Laying the foundation for five student unions and starting on that now, because it is a three year process. So I think it is great for YDSA to be the ones to introduce a concept that’s well developed overseas,  and bringing it here to the Imperial core would be fantastic. [Finally,] I would say diversity. I really think we need to work on [diversity]. That’s something I’ve noticed since I started back in 2020. It’s been a core part of my organizing ethos: building up young, diverse, socials of color, and really doing it. I hear a lot of—I’ve heard a lot of talk about it, and I understand that—but I’m sincerely, really serious. I feel very hard about that issue [diversity]. We have to be an organization representative of the multiracial working class.

Q: Given your membership of the Bread & Roses caucus, could you talk a little bit about what their values are and how their values will impact your decision making if you’re elected co chair?

Carlos: It’s quite essential. We [Bread & Roses] believe that socialism is democratic, and we should try to implement [democracy] in every aspect of our organizing. So that means reaching out to the multiracial working class, meeting them where they’re at, listening to them, and building strong campaigns that benefit them. I think that’s core, and I also want to ensure that the student body, the base we’re reaching out to, has a say in those politics. It’s one thing to have a niche group of activists who claim to speak on behalf of the multiracial working class. But if we’re going to be honest, that’s often not the case. So Bread & Roses really stands for that. Hear from the student body and ensure that they have a say. They have “buy in” to this socialist project that we’re trying to create.

Q: Of course, perhaps the biggest issue in the YDSA and DSA space right now is Palestine organizing. Could you talk about YDSA’s  Palestine organizing so far, what we’ve done well, what we’ve done poorly, and what you would do if elected co chair on this front?

Carlos: Following October 7, I really have to hand it to a lot of our local chapters. They did some excellent work in response, and I respect the hell out of them for doing that. I will say that while DSA national moved too slowly, B&R NCC members, like Noah Thompson from the University of Oregon (UO), really had to push national into action. So I think in the future, we need to be quicker on the draw. We have to be able to adjust accordingly to moments that occur. I think part of that, too, is we need to have more direct contact with the membership. We may be running a campaign and have our set in stone campaign priorities already, but, frankly, the energy changes and moves over time. That’s all right. But, we have to be able to have the flexibility to do that. For example,  the emergency Palestine calls that we ended up doing, fantastic! We need more of that. We need to be able to talk with our base membership and see where the energy is, so that we can help them. We can help them achieve successful campaign wins and victories on their local campuses.

Q: There’s been a lot of discussion in YDSA and DSA spaces around endorsing candidates who some feel have been insufficiently pro Palestine in terms of their legislative activity. Specifically referring to the endorsement of AOC, which has been a very contentious subject.  If you were a member of the NPC, how would you have voted on re endorsement? More than that, how should DSA, and indeed, YDSA be relating to its electeds?

Carlos: I do have some experience in this regard, with respect to DSA LA and their situation with LA City Councilor Nithya Ramen. I helped rally with DSA LA and present the YDSA perspective when it came to that vote. We had members from numerous chapters, like UCLA, CSU, Northridge, Cal Poly, Pomona and more, share their thoughts and take up space in a critical moment. For context, I did, again, speak in favor and voted to unendorse Nikki Rahman, and I still continue to stand by my vote. But the main point of that was “what was her relationship to DSA LA?” and “How did her actions impact us in our local organizing?” I would keep those same thoughts when it comes to AOC, or any federal official.  What has been our relationship with them, and what can we do to build on it in the future? And sometimes that’s not always going to happen. Sometimes they’re going to reject having a relationship with this. If that’s the case, then I think we cut them loose. Frankly, that’s just my opinion, but I do think it’s key in the future. I would say, just for clarity, that I would have voted for the conditions that B&R set out, because I think it’s important that we try this out. We’re trying out our new federal SiO program. I think it’s worth the shot. But in the future, we do need to beef up our program, and develop stronger, more organic relationships with candidates. I think a lot of the issues we’ve been facing with our candidates would be solved if we had our if we were running more cadre candidates—people from DSA, people we could trust, people who know our organizing principles and stand by them. Therefore, we wouldn’t have to worry about unprincipled votes like that or at least worry less often.

Q: On a somewhat different subject, perhaps the second biggest issue in YDSA at the moment is the budget. Of course, YDSA had its budget cut somewhat substantially. The current convention is online as a result. Could you talk a little bit about what you would do to recoup those funds, and what YDSA should be spending its money on? 

Carlos: Well, I think it’s a damn shame that the budget was cut because I genuinely believe that YDSA is doing some of the most dynamic work in the American socialist project. We firmly deserve a budget — end of story. I look at what we did back in Chicago during DSA convention; it was really beautiful to see a cross tendency YDSA coalition come together late at night, organize, strategize, go through talking points, and then go out onto the convention floor, and whip votes, argue for a particular political vision that the Socialist student movement is worth investing in.

Q: If that funding is returned, what do you think are some key priorities in where it should be going?

Carlos: I think in person national events are key. I have said this since the beginning: I think it is the best thing that we can do for YDSA. Having people from so many different backgrounds and different corners of the country come together in one spot and share a space and discuss strategy, experiences, differences is beautiful. So, making sure that these in person national events happen is a top priority.