On April 28, a group of DSA members submitted a platform for the 2025 DSA National Convention: Springs of Revolution. In less than two weeks, these resolutions became the most popular convention platform, each earning more than 400 signatures from members.

Springs of Revolution is a rallying call to transform DSA into a bold, revolutionary, mass political organization capable of swiftly moving with the working class and fighting back when the moment demands it. Growing out of the 2023 Anti-Zionist Slate, our members have served in local and national leadership across DSA, including in YDSA, electoral and labor projects, mutual aid and abolitionist organizing, and the International Committee. Springs of Revolution isn’t a caucus. Our team coalesced organically through years of struggling together to cut through organizing silos and synthesize a practical, forward-facing revolutionary program.

We are veterans of prior springs of revolution—from the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street to the George Floyd uprisings and Student Intifada. As students of these moments of revolutionary consciousness, we know that movements grow through ruptures that arise from the organic anger of the working class and advance through deep, intentional organizing. Most of the work happens in the quiet moments between the ruptures, building from below, neighbor to neighbor, worker to worker, which prepares us to identify key working class issues and win concessions during phases of escalation.

Revolutionary springs throughout history teach us that momentary ruptures in the reality of empire do not, on their own, ready the working class to seize control of their lives and futures. Without disciplined political organization, even the most ambitious movements buckle under repression. DSA must become an active partner in mass mobilizations and subsequent phases of escalation, consolidation, and defense, orienting towards coalitions with humility and discipline.

Indeed, repression defines the current political moment—the growing fascism of the Trump Administration and its allies in the capitalist class is a reaction to the flailing of imperialism and neoliberalism within the United States and around the world. To seize this moment, we must build DSA into a vehicle capable of activating revolutionary consciousness and steeling the working class for a lifetime of struggle. When we take decisive action at the right moments, we can harness the power of each spring of revolution to expand the political imagination of the working class.

With the Trump Administration inflaming the anger of the working class, the conditions are once again ripe for a rupture. But when millions take to the streets, will DSA answer their call?

Palestine Is Our Demand

In the two years since Al-Aqsa Flood, the cause of Palestinian liberation has electrified the masses, moved millions into the streets, and activated thousands of new organizers into DSA. Palestine is the moral compass of the socialist movement, and our north star in our pursuit of justice.

The beginning of every revolution is an exit, an exit from the social order that power has enshrined in the name of law, stability, public interest, and the greater good. Every social and economic authority necessarily intersects with and is an extension of political authority.

-Bassel al-Araj

Springs of Revolution members have led Palestinian liberation organizing for years in DSA, building local and national coalitions, helping spearhead the Gaza solidarity encampments, steering the Uncommitted and No Votes For Genocide campaigns, repairing relationships with movement partners, and supporting some of the movement’s most sustained BDS organizing, such as No Appetite For Apartheid, Mask Off Maersk, and Stop Fueling Genocide.

As leaders in the Palestine solidarity movement and in DSA, we believe that unifying around our principles on Palestine across organizing projects is critical to meeting the conditions of the current moment. In that spirit, we are proud to present R22: For a Fighting Anti-Zionist DSA and R1-A01: DSA for Palestinian Self-Determination.

Our proposals align DSA with the Palestinian national consensus represented by the demands of al-Thawabit: the Palestinian peoples’ right to resistance and self-determination, the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland. It also expands expectations that our elected officials honor a principled commitment to Palestine, building a powerful counterweight to the formidable pressure of the Zionist lobby. Some of our most compelling campaigns, including Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor, have been won due to a relentless commitment to Palestine, not in spite of it.

While we rapidly scale up our capacity to organize for Palestine solidarity in DSA, we watch as Palestinian movement organizers like Mahmoud Khalil are illegally abducted as part of the escalating crackdown on campus organizing. The struggle for Palestinian liberation in the United States is simultaneously a struggle for immigrant justice and a fight against encroaching fascism, and we must act accordingly.

Towards the Coming Ruptures

The conditions for the next rupture are clear: the Trump Administration is escalating its fascist repression and crackdown on political dissent by targeting university students, immigrants, and minority communities. In turn, the working class is taking action. ICE raids have compelled tens of thousands to the streets to physically halt deportations despite brutality from police, ICE, and the National Guard. In this crucial moment, socialists must be on the front lines.

Nationally, DSA has often been caught flat-footed in response to these moments of political escalation. Time and time again, grassroots mass abolitionist movements, from university encampments to street actions and community defense work, have been a key point of activation and revolutionary consciousness within the working class. The George Floyd uprisings and Stop Cop City movements have drawn thousands of people towards socialism. While some chapters have done better at responding to these breaks, DSA as a whole responds too slowly and weakly due to factional squabbles over national bodies, reluctance to adopt anti-imperialist and abolitionist organizing as priority lanes of work, and an absence of rapid-response infrastructure.

Our resolution, R26: Fight Fascist State Repression and ICE, supports chapters in building ambitious local and state-level campaigns around abolitionist demands and launches a national Abolish ICE campaign.

The success of these local and national campaigns rests on our willingness to learn from DSA’s past mistakes. Reluctance to engage in coalitions rooted in Black and brown communities has made it difficult for our organization to learn from and reap the deep self-organization and politicization latent in immigrant and nonwhite communities, inhibiting our ability to organize effectively for Palestinian liberation, abolition, and principled internationalism. When future opportunities present themselves, we must act decisively. R37: Building a United Front Toward 2028 pushes DSA to begin building with a Left-Labor-Liberation coalition ready to contest the 2028 presidential elections and respond to the UAW call for a May Day 2028 strike.

Together, these resolutions commit DSA to proactively organize towards the political rupture made inevitable by rising fascism, within rather than merely alongside the existing coalitions that stand ready to turn that rupture into decisive action.

Restructuring for a Path Forward

Unlike nonprofits or NGOs, DSA is a mass membership organization financed by the contributions of its rank-and-file and governed by their democratic decisions. Rather than waiting for coordination and direction from an opaque layer of bureaucrats and financiers, DSA is capable of mobilizing thousands of socialists in organizing deeply grounded in our chapters, the center of gravity where our deepest, most consistent and impactful organizing happens.

Only by equipping chapters with the resources and guidance they need can we transform DSA into the formation the movement demands. DSA’s role is not only to overcome decades of depoliticization and disorganization of the working class but to rebuild the very social fabric of our communities and country. Alienation is capitalism’s most powerful weapon. Member dues allow chapters to pursue bold campaigns and build deep roots in their local communities. But at present, only 20% of monthly dues income is given to locals. Hence, R43: Locals-First DSA: Increase Dues Income for Locals and Stabilize National Budget.

Given DSA’s recent membership surge and budgetary surplus, we have a critical window to reconstitute our distribution of resources to maximize our ability to retain and develop this new layer of membership. R43 more than doubles local chapters’ share of dues to 40% of all dues income by 2027 and thereafter, giving our locals the resources they need to build and sustain new organizing, and meet accessibility needs like childcare and language interpretation to facilitate political participation by a broader section of the working class. Giving 40% of dues to locals is in line with best practices adopted across the labor and socialist movements, from the Communications Workers of America Union (CWA) and UAW to left parties such as the PT in Brazil. By keeping more of our dues income local, we ground our organization in our communities and incentivize our chapters to assertively recruit and retain new membership.

DSA’s electoral project, as some of our most public-facing organizing, can generate massive victories for socialist legislation and candidates. The deep community organizing work of our chapters—tenant unions, militant labor struggle, integration in neighborhood and faith organizations—creates the necessary conditions for seismic upsets and helps cohere the base that rallies behind our candidates. When we run candidates for office, their shares of public support largely reflect the existing movement in public opinion.

At its best, DSA is tremendously capable of mobilizing in our tens of thousands to win great electoral victories, exercising the power of our elected officials to achieve wins for the working class, and defending our electoral project from the assault of the political establishment. But a lack of binding standards and accountability for the candidates we endorse has sometimes caused a disorganizing lack of political cohesion across corners of the organization. When DSA endorses a candidate, they should represent our democratically-decided political positions as our tribunes in office.

Our amendment, CR05-A02: One DSA: Towards a Unified Endorsement Process, replaces DSA’s current two-tiers endorsement with a unified process whereby electoral candidates endorsed by their local chapter will be considered endorsed by DSA as a whole. To the rest of the world, the distinction between a local and national endorsement has long been moot: a DSA-endorsed candidate represents DSA. To move as one organization, we must treat all endorsements as relevant to the collective health of all of our chapters. By elevating the power of local endorsements, CR05-A02 makes all endorsed candidates eligible to benefit from the full power of DSA’s mass membership and national organization, empowering every local, including smaller and more rural chapters, to organize and adequately finance more ambitious electoral campaigns.

With well-funded local chapters at the center of our projects, DSA will be prepared to meet the moments that stand before us in the next two years and further.

Ahead to Convention

As students of history, we know that DSA is capable of rising to the moment and activating millions within the working class into collective action. But in order to do that, we must transform DSA into a vehicle that is ready to act and prepared to champion the demands of the entire working class in moments of escalation.

This transformation is not only possible—it is already in motion. Our path forward is clear: we will build a fighting mass organization that champions Palestinian liberation and anti-imperialism, leads the fight against fascist state repression, and organizes with accountability in broad coalitions, while grounding our projects in the deep roots and community-building taking place in chapters across the country.

As members look ahead to the 2025 National Convention, we are proud to present the Springs of Revolution platform to members and delegates. Through the harshest and most inhospitable winters, spring again will come. Within our lifetimes, the blossoms of liberation will grow over the decaying remains of empire. Every DSA member has a unique role to play in crafting the beginnings of the better world that is possible. We look forward to seeing you in Chicago.

-Ethan Eblaghie, Ahmed Husain, and Francesca Maria