Addison G. and Steven R. make the case for R7 to approve a new program and set a clear political vision for YDSA.

Why a Program?

Over the past two years, YDSA conventions have voted to move towards adopting a program to unify our organizing work. In 2023, delegates passed A5: “Programmatic Unity for YDSA,” which established acceptance of the “aims of the platform” of YDSA as the basis for YDSA membership. The 2024 convention followed up on this with R18: “For a YDSA Program Committee,” which created a multi-tendency committee to draft a new program for YDSA. Members of Bread & Roses, Reform & Revolution, Constellation, Marxist Unity Group, and uncaucused independents served on the committee and helped draft R7: “For a National YDSA Program,” which delegates will vote on this year.

What is a program? How is it different from YDSA’s existing platform? A platform is a laundry list of policies that YDSA supports with long expositions under them. A program, however, is a practical roadmap to political power that informs and is informed by our organizing work. A program forms the bedrock of the political life of a party.

Unlike the platform we have now, which sits unused on our website, a program would be an organizing tool at all levels of YDSA. It would give a unified direction to our work at the national level and help our chapters engage with the mass audience we seek to recruit from by communicating what YDSA is, what we do, and what it means to be a member.. It would act as a bridge between the campaigns that define our chapters’ day-to-day work and our long-term project of building a socialist party, making it a political home for working and oppressed people, and using collective power to win a freer, more democratic world.

Of course, YDSA can’t accomplish those tasks alone. We are participating in the construction of a mass party as its youth wing. DSA will need its own program to reach millions of working-class people and organize them into a party that can truly challenge the undemocratic capitalist state, and it is important to consider how YDSA will relate to the rest of DSA in this context.

Right now, DSA does not have a program for YDSA to relate to, and the process of creating one is ongoing. Just like R7 at our own convention, several resolutions have been proposed for this year’s DSA convention concerning the role and content of a future DSA program. YDSA has the chance to shape what that program looks like by leading by example and passing a strong unifying strategic document of our own that elaborates on how DSA’s roadmap to power relates to conditions specific to the youth and students we organize with.

Why This Program?

A program is a device for political education and storytelling, and the way it is structured conveys a particular narrative about where our movement comes from and where it’s going. The draft program presented by R7 follows a four-part structure: a preamble, two sets of demands, and a conclusion. The preamble begins that narrative with the first line:

“We live in a country governed by a small elite of bosses and billionaires—the capitalist class—who dominate nearly every aspect of public life. They control our political institutions, most major media outlets, the education system, and every level of government, from local city halls to the U.S. Senate. The capitalists use their power to extract wealth from the vast majority of people: the working class.”

This is YDSA’s power analysis of American society, which informs the why and how of socialist organizing on our campuses and in our communities. The preamble goes on to explain how working-class youth confront this reality in our daily lives.

It also presents a revolutionary democratic socialist theory of change as an answer to that reality: by “leading class-struggle campaigns on our campuses and entering strategic industries to remake the labor movement,” working-class students and youth can take immediate steps to “build the political alternative our class needs by changing the trajectory of our peers’ lives and creating a generation of young revolutionaries capable of transforming society.”

Next come the demands. These are separated into immediate and long-term objects of our struggle. The immediate demands speak to what YDSA is fighting for now: sanctuary campuses, an end to political repression, freedom to organize in the workplace, divestment from imperialist violence, livable and sustainable communities, inclusive and accessible education, and democracy and transparency in our schools and workplaces. Each of these demands speaks to struggles YDSA chapters are already leading across the country. For new chapters, they could also serve as ready-made campaigns to organize around, an aspect that would make the program immediately useful for both new chapter leaders and their NCC mentors.

The long-term demands represent YDSA’s political horizon. These demands tie our current campaigns and organizing into the question of which class holds political power. They illustrate what a society ruled by the working-class majority would look like, and the role young people and the educational system would play in it. Along with the conclusion, this part of the program offers students and youth an inspiring vision unlike anything the capitalist parties are capable of providing. This is what sets us apart as socialists: giving people a future worth fighting for.

Delegates considering R7 should not take the task of adopting a program lightly. A good program is more than just a wishlist. It has the potential to be a tool we use in our day-to-day organizing all over the country. In a year, chapters could be tabling for the Fall Drive using the program to structure conversations with incoming freshmen about how signing a sanctuary campus petition relates to the fight to depose Donald Trump and the system that brought him to power. The Youth Labor Committee could use the program to recruit members to launch student-worker union drives or industrialize in strategic industries by connecting the battle for democracy to the need to build strike power at the commanding heights of the economy. As we work towards a potential 2028 mass strike, the program R7 presents will help us sharpen our work and function as a north star for our long-term aspirations.