# Young Democratic Socialists of America

The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) is the youth section of the Democratic Socialists of America. The organization was known as Young Democratic Socialists (YDS) until 2017.

## History

Following the merger of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement in 1982, DSOC's youth section became known as the Democratic Socialists of America Youth Section. The organization played a significant role in the 1980s in the movements against apartheid in South Africa and United States intervention in Central America. It helped introduce many student activists to trade union struggles, with many of the organization's alums going on to become labor organizers and union staff members.
Following the death of DSA founder Michael Harrington and the fall of the Soviet Union, membership in DSA community chapters declined in the 1990s while the Youth Section became the focal point of activity in the organization. During this time, tensions between DSA and the Youth Section led Youth Section members to vote to change their name to Young Democratic Socialists (YDS), "establishing a separate identity in terms of both internal structure and external relations." In the late 1990s, YDS chapters, most notably the ones at Ithaca College and Arizona State University, became heavily involved in the national movement against the prison-industrial complex.
During the 2000s, membership in both DSA and YDS continued to fall. YDS leadership attempted to stabilize the organization by narrowing its national priorities and focusing on growing chapters at campuses were there was less competition from other leftist student organizations. One of YDS's long term campaigns during this time was supporting the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in their effort to raise agricultural workers' wages by pressuring fast food corporations with college outlets. YDS also participated in many coalition events, marching in the NYSPC section of the United for Peace and Justice march against the Iraq War in Washington, D.C., on January 27, 2007. In September 2009, YDS members participated in a march against the G20 in Pittsburgh. In October 2010, dozens of YDS members joined the union-sponsored One Nation Working Together march in Washington, D.C.
YDS, along with DSA, experienced massive membership surges following the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The organization provided a place to keep up the political momentum generated by the Bernie Sanders campaign, with student organizers pushing for policies around issues such as college affordability and Medicare for All. In 2017, members once again voted to change their name to the Young Democratic Socialists of America, signaling a closer relationship with their parent organization.
As YDSA continued to grow throughout the late 2010s, members wished to cohere the work of the organization around national campaigns and priorities. In 2018–2019, YDSA adopted College for All as its single national campaign, but was limited by "a relative lack of membership engagement, especially when it came to connecting local chapters to national committee work." YDSA then took the opposite approach by instituting a number of priority campaigns and committees in 2019–2020. While this encouraged members who felt they were left out of national work in the past to organize on relevant priorities nationally, later leaders felt the abundance of committees damaged national organizing by "exceeding the capacity of our membership and spreading core YDSA organizers too thin."
Still, YDSA continued to grow with the YDSA for Bernie campaign, which allowed organizers to grow and cohere the chapters around a common national priority. After Sanders dropped out of the 2020 Democratic Primaries, many Students for Bernie chapters transitioned into YDSA chapters, contributing to an influx of organizers and members into YDSA. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCC voted to replace all other priorities with the Student & Workers’ Recovery campaign, which focused on pressuring colleges and the government to aid students and workers during the pandemic. During the George Floyd Protests, many YDSA members participated in local actions against racist policing. YDSA still continues to focus on labor work, especially in organizing student and graduate workers. In 2023, the University of Oregon chapter of YDSA won their campaign to unionize undergraduate students on their campus as "UO Student Workers," forming the largest undergraduate student workers' union in the United States with more than 3,800 workers.

## Organization

YDSA chapters and members are encouraged to pursue and promote a democratic socialist political education and participate in social justice activism, often taking part in anti-war, labor and student-issue marches and rallies. Each year, YDSA members vote on an agenda for the chapters to adopt. The organization published an internal newsletter called The Red Letter. Its members run and contribute to The Activist, their official publication.
The organization runs two annual conferences: an outreach conference in the winter that includes plenaries and workshops, and a convention during the summer that focuses on debating political direction and electing the national leadership for the following year. In the past, outreach conferences have featured keynote speakers such as Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, journalist and author Barbara Ehrenreich, The Nation correspondent Christian Parenti and Columbia University professor Gayatri Spivak. Other speakers include Dan Cantor of the Working Families Party, author and journalist Liza Featherstone, Temple University professor Joseph Schwartz, long-time activist Steve Max and sociologist Frances Fox Piven.
National conferences have taken place in February 2016 in Brooklyn, August 2016 in Washington, D.C., and February 2019 in Berkeley, California. Since 2020, all national winter conferences have taken place in Chicago, excluding the 2021 convention, which was online due to Covid. The 2022 summer convention was held in Minneapolis. The 2023 summer convention was held in Chicago. The 2024 summer convention was held online.
The organization is run by the YDSA National Coordinating Committee (NCC), which consists of two co-chairs and seven at-large members (previously two co-chairs and four at-large members).
The group has a number of current chapters across the country. YDSA also has numerous members-at-large without chapters who usually work through other progressive groups to articulate an active democratic socialist presence in campus and community politics. YDS (renamed YDSA in 2017 to identify with the more prominent DSA name) expanded following youth support for Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential candidacy. According to a YDSA organizer, the group expanded from 25 to 84 registered chapters between 2016 and 2019. As of June 2023, DSA listed 125 official youth chapters.