For R22: The Importance of United Front Coalitions

Rollins College YDSA successfully campaigned for free Plan B through a well-organized coalition. Former chapter cochair Sofia Baker argues for R22: “For Coalitions that Strengthen YDSA” to help YDSA chapters build strategic coalitions and united fronts to strengthen campaigns.

In the 2025 Spring semester, Rollins College YDSA, led and won a campaign for free Plan B on campus. One of the major factors in securing this win was the broad support we received on our petition, with almost 10% of the student body signing onto our demands within a few weeks. We effectively activated the student body and rallied them around our demands by forming cross-organizational relationships and collaborating with a coalition to expand the reach of our campaign. 

Coalition-building has incredible potential to grow YDSA and strengthen our campaigns. However, if done incorrectly, it can hurt a chapter by straining capacity and limiting membership growth. As YDSA continues to engage in mass campaigns, especially with the Sanctuary Campus Campaign likely to become a national priority at this convention, we must have a clearly defined strategy for engaging with other organizations in a way that grows YDSA and the socialist movement. This is why I, alongside my fellow Reform & Revolution comrades, wrote R22: “For Coalitions that Strengthen YDSA.” 

R22 calls for a set of convention-mandated best practices for building and engaging in coalitions to serve as a set of guiding principles for national leaders when advising chapters. Coalitions are a necessary and powerful organizing tool, but they are also just that: a tool. We must learn to use them properly and avoid the pitfalls of overly-bureaucratic pseudo-bodies outside of YDSA, partnerships with organizations that represent the interests of school administration, and watering down our demands and politics to appease a coalition partner. 

If chapters bend to the will of a coalition partner rather than lead with concrete demands and a principled socialist theory of change, their campaigns will wither and fail. For example, an early ally in the Rollins YDSA Plan B campaign was our Student Government Association (SGA). However, SGA’s theory of change was incompatible with our campaign: they were focused on a legislative solution rather than organizing a mass movement, and after meeting with the campus clinic, wanted to weaken demands from free and accessible Plan B to a vague sexual health awareness program. It no longer made sense to continue this partnership, so we severed it, continued our campaign, and focused on building up support from student groups who were willing to fully sign on to our demands. 

This is a key aspect of the strategy laid out in R22: reevaluating and ending partnerships if they jeopardize the health of the chapter or its work. The same applies to organizations pushing for adventurist tactics that recklessly endanger YDSA members and put them at unnecessary risk of disciplinary or legal action that does not serve to further the campaign and puts an end to productive organizing. We must treat coalitions as transient formations that come and go as political struggles start and end. While we should maintain goodwill between YDSA and friendly organizations whenever possible, keeping coalition formations in place after a campaign has run its course is not necessary. 

Our goals when forming coalitions are to engage sections of the campus YDSA has not established a presence in which can be convinced of the necessity of socialism, move past those in the activist layer and tap into the disengaged layer, and bring these students into YDSA. When we form united front coalitions with forces marching under different banners for a common cause, we create a mobilizing force that allows chapters to exert pressure on a target to win change on and off our campuses. A united front approach allows us to maintain political independence and clarity while still benefiting from the strength in numbers of a larger formation. When we understand coalitions as formations centered around a set of concrete demands rather than a unified political vision, we are able to avoid sectarianism and opportunism. 

The united front does not require us to reach ideological consensus with our allies or require them to accept the entirety of our political vision. This allows us to hold strong to our long-term political vision while not alienating organizations that support our short-term demands. At the same time, the united front encourages us to remain outward-facing with our revolutionary vision and not hide our politics or uncritically support our allies despite any regressive positions they may hold. We must be running campaigns as proud open socialists if we wish to push the socialist movement forward in any meaningful way. The united front allows us to do this while still engaging broad sections of the campus.

As it stands, YDSA has no set practices for how best to engage in coalitions, and if we fail to set clear guidelines for how we engage with other organizations, we put the health of our chapters at risk. The united front is a balanced and strategic approach that allows us to engage in mass politics while presenting a strong socialist vision and winning students over to our class-struggle approach. A vote for R22 is a vote for strong socialist campaigns in YDSA that grow our chapters and skilfully exert pressure to win concrete demands.