On March 18th, 2022, the National Political Committee (NPC) of the Democratic Socialists of America officially dechartered the DSA’s BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group (WG). This disciplinary action constitutes the latest development in an antagonistic relationship between the WG and the highest political body of the DSA that most recently came to national attention during the WG-led call for DSA chapters to expel Representative Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) for accepting a J Street political junket to Israel, slandering BDS, and voting for increased funding to Israel’s Iron Dome system. The NPC opposed expelling Bowman, even as individual chapters dissented from the NPC’s stance on the issue.
Terminology
Dechartering means that the BDS and Palestine Solidarity WG has been disbanded. Members of its steering committee are ineligible to hold DSA national leadership positions for one year. Furthermore, the NPC has moved to ensure that future DSA Palestine work will be folded into the DSA’s International Committee, with leadership that is hand selected by the DSA NPC, as opposed to maintaining the autonomy to select and appoint leadership that had been previously enjoyed within the WG. To clarify, the DSA’s decision to dissolve the WG and instead have Palestine work be housed within its International Committee means that the DSA is actively disbanding its only working group exclusively dedicated to Palestine, and leaving it to its body tasked with international affairs to take up Palestine and BDS work amongst myriad other causes.
A wave of criticism
The NPC’s move has already prompted a wave of criticism. “Bowman gets to stay in the DSA but Palestinians don’t,” poet and activist Remi Kanazi tweeted. “Sounds about as democratic as Israel.”
Journalist Ali Abunimah tweeted, “I remember how some @DemSocialists types were saying @JamaalBowmanNY should not be expelled for arming Israel to murder Palestinians because DSA is an “abolitionist” organization. Apparently that hesitancy to punish/discipline disappears with Palestinians and their supporters.”
WG member Shireen Akram-Boshar tweeted, “DSA’s leadership, the NPC, has now moved to dismantle the BDS & Palestine Working Group, & ban its steering committee members from leadership roles nationally for the next year. This is disgusting. Repressing dissent & support for Palestine.” Akram-Boshar added that the NPC had already initiated this process by disabling the WG’s website.
The NPC’s defense
In a statement regarding its March 18th move to decharter the WG, the DSA NPC claimed that “the conflict and political disagreement about Jamaal Bowman’s actions became a crisis point for DSA, with negative effects cascading through the Palestinian liberation and Progressive movements writ large.”
The NPC’s statement went on to stipulate that a mandate that had been newly passed by 2021 Convention allowed for the NPC to standardize committees, which resulted in the NPC creating National Committee Criteria. The NPC alleged that the reason the Palestine WG is now being dechartered is for its failure to comply with these criteria. It further mandated that from this point forward DSA Palestine Solidarity and BDS work would be folded into the DSA’s International Committee. It spoke of BDS Working Group leadership having engaged in “repeated smears, bullying, accusations, and misrepresentation of events with good faith attempts to reach common understanding rather than enact disciplinary measures.”
According to their statement, the NPC took issue with a February 18th Twitter thread by the WG. According to the NPC, “The reason for asking the thread to be taken down was that it contained misinformation about what Bowman’s office told DSA in an off-the-record meeting and that it violated the Code of Conduct (by making accusations instead of “sharing analysis and opinions”) and the Code of Conduct’s explanation that debates “be conducted with civility and respect, as comrades committed to the same struggle.” The NPC then asked the WG to provide DSA staff with credentials to their social media accounts. The NPC’s statement avers that it was the WG’s failure to meet these demands that resulted in the WG’s disbanding by the NPC.
An open statement initiated by DSA members “In Support of DSA’s Democratically Elected Leadership” claimed:
“The official BDS working group Twitter account has made posts attacking individual members for participating in chapter debates, endorsing particular NPC candidates, publicly questioning the motives of DSA members who have disagreements with them, and waging a campaign to undermine the NPC’s decision not to expel Jamaal Bowman. Simply put, it is not up to any national working group whether a member should be expelled; it is the decision of the democratically elected NPC. In the face of this repeated unwillingness to respect the democratic norms of the organization, the NPC had no real choice but to take action.”
As of this writing, this statement currently boasts over 570 signatories.
More to the story
But this narrative of an unruly and hostile working group that left no choice for a sympathetic, beleaguered leadership body but to shut it down against their best intentions is being disputed.
In an important thread that shared the NPC’s full statement as well as giving context to the implications of the body’s decision for the WG, WG member James Wray tweeted, “The NPC post lies countless times, but notably BDSWG had come into full compliance before NPC voted to dissolve after being strong armed into handing over all social media credentials under threat of dissolution. They did EVERYTHING asked of them and we’re still dissolved.”
Importantly, the NPC’s vote to disband the working group was reached by a vote with 52% in favor, and 47% opposed to disbanding the WG. Three of these opposing members, Jen M., Jennifer B., and Kara H. clarified their reasons for opposing dechartering in a “Letter of Dissent” to DSA members, which is included here in full:
“As you know, the BDS WG and the NPC have disagreed since November after the NPC presented a decision to not discipline DSA member and congressman Jamaal Bowman. The BDS WG made the argument that the organization shouldn’t allow our highest elected officials to vote to fund the Israeli military, meet and associate with Zionist organizations, and make trips to Israel, crossing Palestinians’ BDS picket line. Not only does our comrade’s actions go against the organization’s mandate to support BDS, Palestinian comrades were betrayed by not only his lack of solidarity, but by the material consequences of his actions, including direct, irreparable harm and injury to their friends, families and communities in Palestine.
“We understand that the issue of BDS itself is fraught. Clearly, many of DSA’s most prominent elected officials do not agree with the BDS movement, members of the organization themselves have overwhelmingly supported BDS at convention, and currently 52 chapters have voted in favor of expelling Jamaal Bowman. This is an imbalance we have only barely begun to reckon with.
“It is our understanding that in November, Congressman Bowman’s Chief of Staff told the BDS WG that they were “100% committed” to taking Congressman Bowman’s name off the Israel Relations Normalization Act as soon as it was “logistically feasible,” noting broad concerns about Riverdale and Scarsdale potentially remaining in their district. As it was explained to the BDS WG, comrade Bowman signed onto the bill because 3,000 verified constituents requested his sponsorship.
“In February, after the new lines for Bowman’s district were announced, Bowman removed his co-sponsorship and many of our comrades on the NPC were quick to take victory laps and claim credit for “successfully negotiating” this move in an attempt to denigrate the BDS WG’s call for action. They even went so far as to declare it a “critical move for Palestinian liberation.” This was a mockery of the Palestinian struggle wherein national leadership used Palestinians as a tool to stroke their own egos.
“The BDS WG responded by posting on Twitter calling out the mischaracterization of events. The tweet thread was immediately met with censorship demands by the NPC, which had no social media policy in place at the time.
“It is incumbent upon us, the NPC, to work with our comrades to make sure they are heard, that their work and perspectives are respected, and that the political will of the membership is kept at the heart of all of our work.
“To be clear, our minority bloc in the NPC supports national bodies sharing their social media keys with the National Communications Director for account recovery purposes. Our comrades in the BDS WG also seem to agree, as they have since handed over their passwords to staff. However, we (the undersigned NPC minority and the BDS WG) oppose demands to censor a national body’s speech, especially Palestinian speech, and especially with no transparent process or explanation. By contrast, the majority of the NPC appears to have a shared interest in wanting the BDS Working Group censored and/or dissolved.
“Regardless of the BDS working group ultimately complying with the national committee criteria, the NPC majority decided to move forward with punishment in order to use their authority over them to set an example and force DSA discourse. We are concerned that a small working group’s leadership is subject to more significant consequences for posting online than one of our most well-known members received for literally voting to fund the oppressive military of an apartheid state and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
“But the concern that ultimately prompted us to write this dissent is that this situation was a failure of leadership.
“From the initial clash over expulsion to when the consequences were voted on in February, there were no conversations between the NPC and BDS WG. At no point did the NPC reach out to talk about their online behavior or their noncompliance with the guidelines for national bodies, more specifically, not sharing their passwords.
“But when the BDS WG put up a twitter thread the NPC did not agree with politically, there was a swift demand to decharter them for noncompliance and to have them remove the tweet, an unhealthy mix of governance and political disagreement. Instead of struggling politically with a common purpose, the NPC majority has elected to place the so-called “problem” working group under the control of a different working group. The situation that the NPC was unable to rectify has now been swept under the rug and made someone else’s problem. This is not leadership.
“Leadership is not easy, and neither is winning socialism in the heart of the empire, but this is our elected mandate and–in this case–we have failed to do the former and taken a step backward on the latter.
“We remain committed to creating an organization that serves its members and taking action that grows the movement. We have had members from BDS Working Group, AFROSOC, and Disability Working Group reach out to us because they have no trust that the current NPC will not censor them. These national bodies are organizing homes for some of society’s most historically oppressed people. We should be uplifting their voices, not fighting to silence them.
“We invite you to commit to struggling through conflict, to remain true to our anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist values, and support us in standing with our Palestinian and Palestinian-allied comrades against censorship.”
A troubling picture
The letter paints a troubling picture of a leadership body with members that sought, on the one hand, to censor and repress the WG’s movements at every turn, while at the other cynically claiming their victories as its own when most expedient.
One WG Steering Committee member who requested anonymity on the basis of currently living and organizing in Palestine speculated that the NPC’s conduct in this regard could be boiled down to three tendencies that remain prominent within the organization’s leadership: Zionism, opportunism, and investment in power/authority. The first point is tied to the very historical fabric of DSA. As Steven Salaita tweeted, DSA co-founder Michael Harrington avowed in an interview that “supporting Israel is an anti-imperialist endeavor.” Meanwhile, the last two dimensions were reflected in the NPC’s attempts to censor the WG (and various other grassroots Palestinian voices by extension) and the NPC’s refusal to engage in an authentic, organic process of collaborative exchange and refinement, opting instead to misrepresent crucial timelines and defaulting to mere authority while still ironically invoking “member democracy.”
“We see our role as a Palestine focused Working Group as uplifting the grassroots, the marginalized, those without power,” the anonymous DSA member continued. “Meanwhile, the NPC takes our work and uses it as a means to get closer to centers of power, like the political establishment.”
A canny politician, enabled by the NPC
The “unruly WG narrative” also obscures another important aspect of the DSA’s conduct: what actually transpired during the Bowman debacle.
The NPC’s statement and the majority of online discourse surrounding the issue tends to frame it as a schism that began when the WG began openly pressuring chapters and the NPC to expel Jamaal Bowman. In fact, despite the constant assertion of the NPC and their supporters that Bowman is moving left and deserves room to grow, newly revealed details suggest that Bowman’s duplicitous conduct has been more or less consistent from the start of his nomination by the DSA.
There are two main paths that a politician can follow to achieve a nomination from the organization. One is by deciding to run in a race after having been a DSA member and running in direct coordination with DSA principles. This is known as a “cadre candidate.” The other is when someone who already intends to run for office becomes a DSA member. This was the case for Bowman.
DSA members who run as candidates may seek national endorsement by the DSA. This process involves completing a questionnaire submitted to DSA for approval. Mondoweiss obtained a copy of Bowman’s nomination questionnaire. When asked, “Do you support cuts in US military aid to Israel and Saudi Arabia per the Leahy law (a federal law prohibiting U.S. military aid and arms sales to countries carrying out systematic human rights violations), including through H.R. 2407 (to end U.S. funding to Israeli torture and maltreatment of Palestinian children in military prisons)?”
Bowman responded, “Yes! It also goes against treaties that we have signed, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As per the constitution, treaties are the law of the land. We are breaking away from values we swore to uphold and protect.”
Bowman’s conduct in office has been a direct contradiction of the position he claimed when securing a nomination from the DSA. Rather than an “ultra-left” group of internal agitators, or “wreckers,” the main culprits in the story seem to be a canny politician who will do whatever it takes to get a nomination from an organization that will assure him some clout within the Leftist and wider progressive constituencies, and an organizational leadership body determined to help him achieve this every step of the way, with little to no regards for the principles they supposedly uphold.
Not so surprising
Such sanctioned betrayal and tokenization of struggle may seem to be surprising conduct for an organization nominally dedicated to the advancement of socialism, but we are in a moment where various Leftist causes are in vogue. Liberal politicians neutralize what began as radical causes and concepts, turning them into recruitment mechanisms for their own campaigns. Along the way, promises get broken, organizers get burned, and business as usual gets repackaged as “progress.” This is precisely why the “win the elections first, move them left later” approach is not only disingenuous–it’s counterrevolutionary.
As Sociaist Alternative writes in its critical assessment of the DSA’s decision to decharter the Palestine Solidarity and BDS Working Group,
“The crisis that has erupted in DSA due to the NPC majority’s action is a symptom of a broader decline in DSA. The roots of this decline are to be found in the move to the right of DSA-backed elected officials including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, other members of the Squad, and Bernie Sanders, and the refusal of DSA leadership to forge a political approach based on working class struggle, independent of the Democratic Party. The organizational manifestation of this rightward political drift has looked like stagnating growth, very low levels of activity of most members, and now organizational maneuvers to limit full democratic debate.”
Pushing forward
Fortunately, whatever the majority of the DSA NPC might suggest, there is a wide world of political struggle outside and beyond electoral politics. Palestine cannot be reduced to the patronizing condescension of a leadership body more interested in self-advancement than collective liberation, and the NPC’s autocratic move to disband the WG will undoubtedly continue to have ripple effects that will far outpace the measly self-importance of the censorious body, as more and more individuals realize the inherent injustice of silencing Palestinians on behalf of authorities who vote to fund their ongoing genocide.
Most importantly, the WG’s efforts over the years have inspired robust debate and changed the way people think about the possibilities of organizing for Palestine. They have shown us that it is not only possible, but necessary to push for accountability when politicians backtrack on promises to withhold funding for Zionist genocide and ethnic cleansing. And they have demonstrated, in painstaking real-time, and often at great disadvantage to their own standing, how Palestine gets kicked to the curb again and again when the going gets tough, and why it’s so necessary to fight for a political reality where this is no longer the case. That is the meaning of solidarity, far more than any self-aggrandizing cooptation of their principled Palestine work by the NPC.
It’s incumbent upon all of us concerned supporters of Palestinian liberation, Palestinian and non-Palestinian alike, to push for the NPC to reverse its shameful decision to decharter the WG. As the WG’s example teaches us, it’s our duty to create the alternatives we need when no existing political structures or spaces will currently accommodate Palestinian liberation. Palestinians have shown us time and time again that they will not compromise on their liberation, and whatever an autocratic leadership body decides, that means we can accept no compromises when it comes to uplifting and fighting on behalf of that liberation struggle.
A peripheral battle not likely to advance liberation.