Red Star Newsletter - July 2026

Hello from Red Star! Curious about what we’ve been up to? Read on to find out!

National Work Update

NPC Update

This has been an exceptionally busy month for our national co-chairs, with dozens of media appearances in the wake of DSA electoral victories. Megan Romer was interviewed by Empire State Weekly, Time, and NPR Here & Now.

In April, DSA Co-Chair Megan Romer attended the Party of the European Left conference in Brussels, and spent a day with militants from the Workers' Party of Belgium (PTB). Red Star member Matt M spoke with Megan about the conference, her impression of the cadre-oriented PTB and their militant approach to organizing, and what their party model might be able to offer the left in the U.S. Read the condensed transcript here, watch the video on YouTube, or listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

At the July NPC meeting the body unanimously adopted Hazel W’s plan to conduct an organization-wide membership survey The last survey was conducted in 2021 and the organization has grown significantly and become much more diverse since then.

John L requested DSA demographic data from the joining member survey for 2024-2025 and for 2025-2026 which will support the org wide membership survey effort and give a clearer view on the current organizational joins. He also hosted a West Virginia interest meeting with the organizing department that gathered members from 3-4 potential new chapters. John is also working with DSA members in Alaska to go through the chapter pipeline and is helping several other chapters get Member Cohorts going to give comrades a level playing field. John will also serve as Co-Chair for DSA’s first ever Socialists Summit.

Growth & Development Committee Update

Red Star has pushed for a vision of chapter development in GDC that rationalizes and centralizes developmental milestones, and part of that goal involves working with staff to collect data on how DSA chapters are doing. GDC Steering recently passed a resolution that standardizes the Chapter Development Rubric as the way we'll be collecting data and planning interventions with chapters. We hope that as people apply the rubric to their own chapter context, they'll see clear next steps to take to push their chapter forward, and we encourage you to go through this rubric on your own with people in your chapter!

GDC Trainings Subcommittee Update

GDC is looking to help you bring Constructive Criticism workshops to your chapter! Working through our disagreements and filling in each other’s blind spots is a necessary part of being able to win in the class struggle. We can’t win alone and it’s up to us to learn how to struggle together productively. Fill out this interest form to get connected to GDC and organizers from across the country. You can build the foundations for fostering a culture of healthy conflict in your chapter.

Socialist Forum

Socialist Forum, DSA’s quarterly theory and debate publication, is looking for contributions. Building a movement together requires us to communicate and debate our views in order to create stronger alignment and helps us apprehend the challenges and issues we face. If there is a debate you want to weigh in on or an article you have been wanting to write, consider pitching to Socialist Forum! The editors are happy to work with you to make your vision a reality.

Red Star in the Spotlight: Our Members Share their Socialist Analysis

Red Star Writes

Red Star has published an article weighing in on the prospect of a DSA endorsement in the 2028 presidential election and responding to threats from NYC DSA leadership in splitting from DSA. Red Star believes that DSA is made stronger by struggling within the organization to build collective unity, not by breaking off whenever we don’t get our way.

NPC and Red Star member John L published a two part article about multi-racial organizing in Democratic Left. The first part, Socialist Multi-Racial Organizing, not Progressive Neoliberalism, analyzes the current state of DSA’s attempts to organize the multi-racial working class and argues that we can only succeed by translating our aspirations into on-the-ground activity. The second part, Multi-Racial Organizing in Practice, follows up by discussing the practical steps DSA can take to build an effective approach to racial organizing.

In her piece for Democratic Left, Building the Party, One Office at a Time, NPC and Red Star member Hazel W explains how DSA’s Office Matching Funds program helps lay the foundation for building a party by opening 20 new local chapter offices and disbursing $140,000, investing in permanent spaces, and strengthening the infrastructure needed for sustained, coordinated organizing nationwide.

In State & Coercion: The Revolutionary Necessity of Both, Sudip B examines the concept of state power, what it is now, how it should be used by socialists, and how socialists should present these ideas to the masses that we seek to organize.

Red Star’s “Reading Now”

What Is To Be Done?

Join Red Star on August 6 at 5:00PT/8:00ET in discussing excerpts Lenin's 1902 text What Is To Be Done? This text, still relevant to our work nearly 125 years later, outlines the necessity and tasks of a revolutionary socialist party. What Is To Be Done? poses many questions we still have to answer in our current moment of increased political discontent. RSVP here for the zoom link & collaborative reading document.

Monthly Quote

Criticism — the most keen, ruthless and uncompromising criticism — should be directed, not against parliamentarianism or parliamentary activities, but against those leaders who are unable — and still more against those who are unwilling — to utilise parliamentary elections and the parliamentary rostrum in a revolutionary and communist manner. Only such criticism — combined, of course, with the dismissal of incapable leaders and their replacement by capable ones — will constitute useful and fruitful revolutionary work that will simultaneously train the “leaders” to be worthy of the working class and of all working people, and train the masses to be able properly to understand the political situation and the often very complicated and intricate tasks that spring from that situation.

— V.I. Lenin, Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder

Recipe Korner

Blueberry Cobbler

By Zoë L

Ingredients

• 2 cups blueberries
• 1 stick butter
• 1 ¼ to 1 ½ cup sugar
• ¾ cup flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 pinch salt
• ¾ cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325° F
2. Cover blueberries with ¼ to ½ cup of sugar to taste
3. Put 1 stick of butter in a deep baking dish (9x13 or equivalent) and melt the butter
4. In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, milk, and the remaining cup of sugar
5. Pour the batter into the pan over the melted butter but do not stir
6. Place the sugared blueberries on top of the batter
7. Bake at 325° F for around 45 minutes. The batter will rise to the top as it cooks and turn crisp and brown as it cooks
8. Serve with whipped cream