Red Star Opposes NPC Expansion (Again)

Red Star recommends that Delegates support a motion to divide the question on the DemComm Omnibus. We support specifically separating NPC Expansion and DemComm Rechartering from the other planks, and voting these two items down. If the Omnibus is not divided, we support voting down the entire thing.

While some items in the Omnibus may improve small aspects of DSA’s functioning, the negative impact of expanding NPC and rechartering DemComm without election significantly outweigh these benefits. Any items that are not Constitution or Bylaws amendments can be brought back to the next NPC meeting and swiftly passed.

The Democracy Commission is a project that was chartered by the 2023 Convention, with Commissioners elected by delegates shortly after Convention. Over the last 2 years, they have carried out a protracted negotiation to produce a package of proposals to “Improve DSA’s Democratic Practice.” This package has been brought to the 2025 Convention in the form of an Omnibus Resolution, one voting item which contains 10 distinct resolutions on 10 distinct topics. One of these proposals will be familiar to long-time DSA members; the specter of NPC expansion is again haunting Convention, this time accompanied by a slew of other ideas that have been kicking around the org for years.

Rather than look at the repeated failure of NPC expansion as a sign that DSA’s membership opposes the idea, the Commissioners instead took it as a mandate to cocoon it in a protective covering of less controversial changes, to smooth its passage via convention.

NPC expansion is again being held out as a cure-all for the political ailments of DSA. Once again, its proponents have expressed only a vague explanation of this claim. And so, once again, Red Star is compelled to express its opposition.

Here, we briefly reiterate Red Star’s main objections to NPC expansion from last convention, which hold equally true for this year’s version. We encourage people to review the more thorough elaboration from last time.

Opposition to NPC Expansion

Expanding the NPC doesn’t make it any more democratic

It’s never been clear exactly what proponents of expansion mean by the claim that NPC is not Democratic enough, or how making it larger would improve that. What metric would improve by making NPC 25 people?

Having more seats does not make a leadership body more democratic. Expanding the NPC means elections become less competitive, taking away from the membership's ability to select the composition of their leadership. Expanding the size of the NPC until every faction is able to win a seat also does not make a leadership body more democratic.

The original source for the current NPC expansion proposal, a recommendation from the outgoing 2019 NPC, makes no mention of any deficit of Democracy, just of administrative capacity. Which goes to the second point;

Political leadership shouldn’t be a pool of labor

This issue lies at the core of a lot of problems with how National DSA functions; currently, NPC members are expected to function like Super-Organizers, able to chair multiple national committees, lead multiple campaigns, and get air-dropped onto any organizing call to provide capacity. This expectation is often at odds with their actual elected role as political representatives, who are empowered to make decisions under parliamentary procedure which the rest of DSA carries out. Instead, the NPC often ends up making decisions about how to direct its own labor more than anything, and misses opportunities to both develop future generations of leadership by delegation and entrust member-leaders to head up committees.

This NPC in particular has had an issue of creating a host of Committees filled largely by NPC members, with a few staff and trusted caucus-mates added in. With this model, it’s no wonder that prior NPCs have recommended expansion, but the reality is that treating NPC this way stunts the development of an actual middle layer of leadership to carry out committee and campaign leadership at NPC's direction.

One particular administrative function that was invoked last time around was the question of “liaising,” an ambiguous line from the DSA Constitution which MegaNPC advocates have construed as an obligation for 18 NPC members to act as personal messengers back and forth between 200 chapters and dozens of National Committees. The magnitude of that task changes only slightly by the addition of 7 more members to the NPC, but besides that, this informal “liaising” is of dubious benefit at best. Neither chapters nor NPC derives much benefit from occasional perfunctory check-ins; an organic and meaningful connection between Chapters and National DSA has never and will never come about this way.

Not all NPC members have the same skillset, and not all will necessarily be well-suited to liaison work. Forcing all NPC members to be responsible for liaising will inevitably leave some chapters with the short end of the stick.

Instead, we should be enabling members to do this kind of work, and prioritize building a genuine democratic apparatus to connect national to chapters, rather than settling for "liaising." 

Expanding NPC makes coordination more difficult

Through the current term the NPC has struggled with votes, coordination, and even making quorum. Scheduling meetings to accommodate 18 people has already proven difficult, leading often to low meeting attendance. This has proven difficult even when votes happen asynchronously, with online votes regularly failing to make quorum.

Expanding the NPC would exacerbate this problem, needing to coordinate the schedules for even more people and chase down votes for even simple organizational functioning. A frequent argument for expansion is that it will lower the level of commitment required to serve on DSA’s highest body, thereby empowering members who can only be available a few hours per week. Does this serve DSA? Can someone unable to participate in the vast majority of deliberation and work on NPC actually improve the body’s ability to make decisions, let alone take on new liaising responsibilities?

The problems of National DSA and the NPC can only be resolved through the resolution of political contradictions

As the authors of the Democracy Commission note, there’s been various attempts at amending the DSA Constitution and Bylaws over several rounds of convention, clearly pointing to deep-seated issues with the function of the National apparatus. Just as clearly, the various tweaks and adjustments that have been made to our operations (including some very substantial changes) have failed to resolve these issues. That is because our problems exist in the political realm, and aren’t able to be addressed by merely changing the form in which political struggle takes place. So long as DSA is stuck in the current political stalemate between its Left, Right, and Center, no amount of changes to NPC’s size will produce the desired effects of unlocking some missing capacity for decisive action.

The Problems with the DemComm Omnibus

In the interest of maintaining the compromises that produced this package, the Democracy Commission Steering Committee has begun a campaign to prevent Convention Delegates from dividing this Omnibus into its constituent parts.

This campaign makes 3 main arguments (in decreasing order of high-mindedness):

1. These proposals are deeply and essentially linked, and genuinely comprise one single, indivisible Resolution to reform DSA’s structure. Dividing the question is not only inadvisable, but contrary to the Spirit of Compromise (and the letter of parliamentary procedure).
2. Dividing the question threatens to upset the careful balance of DSA’s factions. If any part of the Omnibus fails, its proponents may vote against other parts of the Omnibus that they had opposed, and the entire package might fail piece by piece.
3. Dividing the question would waste valuable delegate time. Debating these 10 proposals would take far more time than simply accepting the package as written and voting it up or down.

Let’s briefly dispense with these arguments before moving onto the procedural question.

The Omnibus is readily divisible into discrete resolutions

 In their statement to membership DemComm steering committee said:

While the components are presented in sections for readability and comprehension, it is best understood as a single reform with many parts, each designed, negotiated, and developed specifically to act together. 

Red Star members were present throughout the drafting process, and would at best call this description overly generous. While it is true that the reform planks were drafted to avoid overlap, when the Democracy Commission entered its final stage of assembling the omnibus, each plank (all eleven of them) were voted on individually, with no guarantee that any one plank would make the final combined proposal. When other planks failed, as a number did, no one withdrew any plank, citing its dependence on another. In fact, each one was expected to stand on its own merits to be included in the final omnibus. There’s no reason why Ending Constitutional Membership has some deep synergy with the Archive Policy, except that DemComm was able to get caucuses to agree to swap them.

The Omnibus is caucus horse-trading, not a grand political synthesis

The Democracy Commission’s charter explicitly required the Democracy Commission’s work to be visible to members, as much as members would engage with it. But although the formal meetings were technically visible to membership, the actual work of DemComm took the form of backroom negotiations where caucuses swapped proposals out of the sight of membership.

The Omnibus doesn’t represent a groundbreaking achievement in overcoming DSA factionalism, as some of its proponents would suggest, but rather an entrenchment and formalization of the wheeling and dealing that National DSA politics already overly incentivizes. The various factions have accepted a temporary truce because each is confident that they are getting more out of the bargain than their rivals. This truce is so fragile that DemComm Steering deems it necessary to make a special plea to Convention to treat their Resolution with special care, and preserve it from close examination. Is this supposed to be a qualitative step forward for DSA? Does an agreement constructed on this rickety foundation have the potential to usher in a new era of Democratic harmony in DSA?

Procedure protects convention’s democratic mandate

Finally, the question of time spent on debate. It’s true that giving the DemComm proposals the time they deserve would take much longer than simply voting the package up or down. Thanks to the Commissioners presenting these resolutions as a package, the Delegate survey did not identify which ones were unobjectionable and could be on consent, or which ones were unpopular and should not be agendized. Instead, the entire 20 page proposal was given one score, and time is only allotted for 6 two minute debate points, or about 12 seconds per speaker per plank.

Opposition to reseating Commissioners without an election

Another objectionable plank of the Omnibus would reseat the Commissioners for another 2 year term without an election, making them the longest-serving elected political positions in DSA. This plank is particularly objectionable considering that the Democracy Commission largely failed to address the problems it was originally assigned. In the original proposal, the measure identified, as examples; the lack of intermediate leadership layers, the political autonomy of the unelected National Director, the ineffectiveness of the National Political Committee, and the method with which NPC members are replaced.

Unfortunately, none of these problems were addressed by the Democracy Commission in its final omnibus. Instead, Commissioners simply put forward their personal or factional hobby-horses to receive the imprimatur of Official Consensus. Renewing this process for a further 2 years, and empowering the same body of commissioners without an election, will produce the same underwhelming results.

DSA suffers from a surplus of overlapping bodies, chartered to serve as fiefdoms for various factions to receive a veneer of legitimacy. Removing DemComm from election by delegates and making it a standing body rather than a specially chartered commission will entrench it as yet another such body.

Convention is being asked to simply trust the process and not scrutinize the product. But where does this leave opponents of NPC Expansion? Unlike last convention, this time around, the resolution is buried in the DemComm Omnibus, and has attracted little notice or discussion, especially compared to the heated debate from last convention. What approach can delegates take if they want to debate or vote against this plank from the Omnibus? Broadly, there are two options: separate out the objectionable parts from the package, or vote the entire thing down. 

How to disentangle NPC Expansion from the DemComm Package

Robert’s Rules of Order provides a robust procedural framework for enabling member democracy in DSA. Red Star views it as important for all DSA members to understand these rules, not as a mere formality but as a shared codification of parliamentary principles that mean we can conduct democracy in a fair and efficient manner.

In its section on principles underlying parliamentary law, Robert’s Rules establishes that “[u]ltimately, it is the majority taking part in the assembly who decide the general will, but only following upon the opportunity for a deliberative process of full and free discussion.” (RONR 12th ed. Principles). This is a fundamental principle underlying how the Rules go on to lay out the functions of deliberation. “Division of a question” is a motion intended to allow the body to consider separately “a motion relating to a single subject contains several parts, each of which is capable of standing as a complete proposition if the others are removed” (RONR 12th ed. 27:1). 

However, the Rules go further: “a series of independent resolutions or main motions dealing with different subjects…must receive separate consideration and vote at the request of a single member” (RONR 12th ed. 27:10). This rule ensures that the body really has “the opportunity for a deliberative process of full and free discussion,” giving the right for any member to ask the body to discuss a truly independent matter separately. This avoids an excessive combination of unrelated proposals, which actually obstructs a truly deliberative process if members need time and attention to discuss the important and separate matters at hand. 

This is precisely the situation the convention is in with regard to the Democracy Commission proposal. Though much of the reform package is relatively uncontroversial reforms, there are also weighty and controversial reforms that deserve the convention’s undivided attention. Because the proposals in the omnibus are in fact independent items “dealing with different subjects,” they can be divided on demand, without requiring a motion or vote of the convention to separate them. This ability to divide on demand is a core part of the motion to divide in Robert’s Rules, and its application in this case has been confirmed by the advice of the convention’s parliamentarian.

It is possible that the ruling of the chair allowing division may be appealed by a member. Robert’s Rules provides for this motion as a method by which “the question is taken from the chair and vested in the assembly for final decision” (RONR 12th ed. 24:1). Formally, the question in an appeal is if the ruling of the chair will be upheld as the judgment of the assembly; a majority or tie vote in favor sustains the decision, and the chair may vote if it would affect the outcome as usual. The appeal must present a different case for an alternative ruling than the one given by the chair; there must be multiple possible “reasonable opinions” on the chair’s application of parliamentary law (RONR 12th ed. 24:3). 

Red Star recognizes that there are many proposals competing for the convention’s agenda and attention over the few days of convention. Robert’s Rules also establishes the purpose of applying parliamentary law “to arrive at the general will on the maximum number of questions of varying complexity in a minimum amount of time” (RONR 12th ed. Principles). It is clear that there are pressures in different directions on convention deliberation, both to give each proposal the due deliberation needed, but also to give as many proposals as possible that opportunity. 

Red Star’s Recommendation

Red Star recommends that Delegates support a motion to divide the question on the DemComm Omnibus. We support specifically separating NPC Expansion and DemComm Rechartering from the other planks, and voting these two items down. If the Omnibus is not divided, we support voting down the entire thing.

While some items in the Omnibus may improve small aspects of DSA’s functioning, the negative impact of expanding NPC and rechartering DemComm without election significantly outweigh these benefits. Any items that are not Constitution or Bylaws amendments (including the Archive Policy, Member Input Policy, and National Commission Policy planks) can be brought back to the next NPC meeting and swiftly passed there.

Further Discussion

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