Adopted: 3/28 by the Mid-Hudson Valley DSA’s Steering Committee

Whereas: all 340,000 non-management UPS workers are covered by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and UPS Teamster members have been organizing escalating contract actions across the country as the contract fight heats up, and will need community support as they get closer to the August 1 deadline; and

Whereas: If they strike, they will need the whole labor movement behind them to show that when we fight, we win; and


Whereas: the Resolution #5 from the 2021 convention of the Democratic Socialist of America mandates the National Labor Commission engage DSA as a whole with labor work; and

Whereas: the Mid-Hudson Valley Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America stands in unwavering solidarity with workers and prioritizes the labor solidarity work,

Therefore be it resolved: that Mid-Hudson Valley DSA will take the following steps to be STRIKE READY: 

By February 28:

  • The Chapter will publicly commit to the national Strike Ready campaign and listening to rank-and-file UPS Teamsters about what support they need throughout the contract fight. 
  • The Chapter will ask any and all socialist elected officials with connections to their chapter to commit to supporting the Teamsters throughout their contract fight.

By March 30:

By April 30: The Chapter will:

  • Systematically ask chapter members to sign the Strike Ready Pledge.
  • Identify chapter members to assist Solidarity Captains in local support with chapter listwork and map the local labor community as outlined in the Strike Ready Kit.

By May 31: The Chapter will run a fundraiser for the DSA Labor Solidarity fund as a structure test to measure what sort of turnout the chapter can expect at picket lines. The chapter will engage in direct individual outreach to chapter members, including text messages and phone calls, as well as a social media campaign and a fundraising event.

Throughout June and July : 

  • The Chapter will canvass their membership, local contacts and the community to build support for the UPS Teamsters by asking them to sign the Strike Ready Pledge. 
  • The Chapter will support escalating contract actions as announced by the IBT, local UPS Teamsters, and the National Labor Commission.

August 1: The Chapter will turn out members and community supporters to show up at the picket line or the contract ratification celebration. 

After the fight: The Chapter will use the excitement generated by the contract fight to recruit chapter members to commit to the rank and file strategy and debrief on experience to prepare for future labor solidarity actions. 

Our next General Assembly is scheduled for February 25, 2023, location TBD. Check back this website later for more details.

What is a General Assembly?

The General Assembly is the highest decision-making body of the chapter and where the democracy happens. We elect new leadership for the chapter called the “steering committee”. Any member can run for an open position on the steering committee (3 from each county) and bring resolutions to the floor for a vote. There might be suggestions on how to change our chapter structure, so it is important you attend! Keep an eye out for an email with details.

On Tuesday, November 8th, voters in Assembly District 103 chose Sarahana Shrestha as their Assembly member. This was the culmination of a people-powered upstart campaign that began over a year ago, a victory that many said was impossible. After defeating a 25-year incumbent in this June’s Democratic primary, Shrestha beat back a right-wing Republican challenge to secure her position as the first socialist in history to be elected to the New York State Legislature from outside New York City.

This campaign was run on the Democratic ballot line, but it was not a Democratic campaign. This campaign was helped by our progressive allies, but it was not merely a progressive campaign. This was a socialist campaign with a socialist candidate, a socialist platform, and socialist volunteers.

Shrestha is a DSA member and the Co-Chair of the Ecosocialism Working Group for this local Mid-Hudson Valley chapter. Leadership positions in the campaign were all filled with DSA members new and old. Dozens of DSA members volunteered as phonebankers and canvassers, helping the campaign make over 200,000 calls and knock on over 43,000 doors.

This win builds on Mid-Hudson Valley DSA’s electoral victories in 2021, when the chapter elected five members in local elections across Dutchess, Orange, and Ulster Counties. Notably, DSA member Phil Erner toppled David Donaldson, the Chairman of the Ulster County Legislature and a 28-year incumbent. Twice, in a little over a year, Mid-Hudson Valley DSA has defeated the Democratic establishment and Republican opposition.

Shrestha will serve alongside her DSA slatemates from New York City. Together they will be part of the historic Socialists in Office committee which represents a shared commitment to legislation that improves the lives of working class people. They will act collectively to wield power together. They will fight for the New York Health Act, Good Cause Eviction, the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, the Build Public Renewables Act, the Clean Slate Act, the New York For All Act, expanding abortion rights, universal childcare, fully funding our public schools and universities, raising the minimum wage, taxing the rich, adding the right to strike to the New York State Constitution, and more.

For Mid-Hudson Valley DSA, Election Day was not the end, but just the beginning. We run elections because they can be an important way to build power, and to contest the influence of corporate money and the far right. But elected officials can never alone deliver the transformative change we need. Alongside our electeds, DSA works to build power in the streets and in workplaces to grow a mass movement that can take back power from the capitalist class and bring it back to working class people.

In this election cycle, many Democrats have chosen caution and moderation, ceding the narrative to a right-wing movement that whips up fear without providing real solutions to violence or social decay. Our victory proved that the people of Assembly District 103 were ready for a politics that speaks to hope over fear, one that demands the beautiful future the working people of the Hudson Valley and New York state deserve. Our momentum continues to grow as more of our friends and neighbors join the fight for a better world, and as democratic socialists, we will continue organizing and agitating to make that future a reality for all.

About MHVDSA:

We are a member-led and member-funded, democratic political and activist organization, but we are not a political party. While we recognize the importance of electoral politics, we know that the multiracial working mass movement we need won’t be built solely by electing better candidates, but by building power through labor organizing, mutual aid networks, tenant organizing, and much more. We fight for systemic change that empowers working people. Our chapter covers Dutchess, Orange, and Ulster Counties in Mid-Hudson Valley, New York.

Please join fellow Democratic Socialists for the annual general assembly of your chapter, the Mid-Hudson Valley DSA, on Sunday, 2/20 at 5pm. This meeting elects the leadership, sets the governance structure and updates the priority for your chapter, and your participation is key!

Please RSVP via ActionNetwork.

As at past General Assemblies, we will be “passing the hat”. This time we are incorporated as a chapter and can more easily accept money via ActionNetwork. We hope to set up a system that will accept ACH transfers to reduce fees in the near future. Donations to the chapter fund the chapter’s work but are not required to maintain DSA membership which you do by renewing with National DSA at dsausa.org/join

A portion of monthly donations made to National DSA are passed on to the chapter so we encourage you pay dues monthly.






Last Saturday members of MHVDSA marched for justice and in solidarity with Black Lives in Pleasant Valley, New York. We witnessed the white supremacy and violence of “Back the Blue” counter-protestors against us and our Black and Brown comrades. This event reaffirmed our desire to defund the police, kick law enforcement unions out of the labor movement in the short-term and ultimately abolish police and prisons.

We want to defund the carceral state and re-invest resources in systems that address social problems with care and accountability, not punishment.

One of the lead organizers, a Black veteran, has received death threats and has to flee the place he has called home for 15 years! This is unacceptable. Support our comrade Royal here.

Further information on the protests and the attacks are here and here.

We will continue to fight. A better world is possible. Solidarity!

From August 1-4, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia, the Democratic Socialists of America held our bi-annual national convention, gathering 1000 elected delegates from chapters in all 50 states. It was by far the largest DSA convention ever, and the largest socialist gathering of its kind in generations. Although DSA has existed since 1982, the 2017 convention represented a new beginning after the 2016 surge that took our membership from around 6,000 to 25,000. DSA’s size has doubled again since that time, with the 2019 delegates representing an membership that is now close to 60,000 strong. Mid-Hudson Valley DSA sent a delegation of five, three of whom were attending a national convention for the first time.

The core objective of the convention was to set national political priorities for the next two years, to direct the use of national DSA’s approximately $4 million budget (which comes mostly from member dues), and to elect the 16 member National Political Committee (NPC), which is the governing body that oversees the day to day operation of the national organization. In addition, there were speakers including Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour and Sara Nelson, International President of the Association of Flight Attendants. Delegates also attended breakout groups where we learned skills and made cross-chapter connections to aid our work on everything from tenant organizing to operational security.

DSA is a big-tent, multi-tendency organization, and that diversity made itself felt on the convention floor. There were differences over both external organizing priorities and the internal structure of DSA, which were debated and voted on over the course of the weekend.

An official accounting of all the resolutions passed is still forthcoming. However, key priorities that were approved include eco-socialism and the Green New Deal, labor organizing (both within existing unions and among unorganized workers), organizing for affordable housing, and opposing mass incarceration. Anti-fascist organizing and anti-imperialism also received a boost, as new national committees were formed to concentrate on each. And the centrality of reproductive labor was recognized, as we passed a measure to concentrate on child care, both by ensuring that child care is provided at our own DSA events, and by allocating resources to the national fight for guaranteed paid parental leave. In addition to all of this, DSA will continue its support of the Bernie Sanders campaign and Medicare for All, which have been two of our most prominent projects in recent years.

The resolutions that were passed create national working groups and allocate staff time to our priorities. This will help to support local work in our chapters. For example, MHVDSA’s efforts to secure tenant protections in places like Kingston and Newburgh, alongside allies such as the Kingston Tenants Union and Community Voices Heard, will be aided by national support and connections to ongoing housing work in other DSA chapters from New York City to Washington DC to Omaha to Des Moines.

The convention also adopted a resolution stating that national DSA will not endorse any 2020 Presidential candidate in the event that our current endorsed candidate, Bernie Sanders, fails to secure the nomination. While some argued that the overriding imperative of defeating Trump should make us open to other candidates, the majority were apparently swayed by the argument that no other candidate aligns with DSA’s values and objectives in the way Sanders does. This does not, however, prevent members or local chapters from working on another candidate’s campaign, as many undoubtedly will in the event that Sanders loses.

Some of the most contentious proposals at the convention concerned how DSA is organized: how the dues paid by every member are used and distributed, and how national bodies are organized and connected with local chapters. Delegates rejected several measures that would have decreased spending on national staff in favor of redirecting money directly to chapters; we also declined to adopt resolutions that would have replaced the NPC with an “assembly of locals”, or supported regional organizations to mediate between the local and national.

However, we did pass a measure on “Grassroots Fundraising and Small Chapter Growth” that should help small chapters like Mid-Hudson Valley DSA. This measure sets up a national dues drive to encourage members to switch from annual to monthly dues. Any member reading this is encouraged to go monthly if you can! Doing so provides a more reliable stream of funds to DSA, but it also helps chapters: chapters can directly receive a share of dues according to the portion of their local members who pay monthly, and this share is doubled for the first 50 chapter members, which is especially helpful to small chapters like MHVDSA.Towards the end of the convention, the assembled delegates elected our new National Political Committee. Of those elected at the 2017 convention, only one was successfully re-elected to the new body (most chose not to run again). The previous NPC struggled with personal animosity and factional infighting–time will tell whether the new body, which includes representation of all of the main political tendencies in DSA, will be able to work together more productively. However, the convention was promising on that score: the constructive debate and well articulated political visions displayed on the floor showed that DSA, which has filled up with young and inexperienced organizers over the past few years, has taken great steps forward in political maturity since 2017.

Predictably, the right attempted to ridicule the conference proceedings, which were live-streamed for anyone to watch. Failing to find the chaotic convention and outlandish resolutions they no doubt hoped for, the likes of Fox News seized on particularities of the convention’s ground rules. Simple and sensible requests that delegates not clap (so as to respect those with certain disabilities and to make the proceedings speedier and less divisive) and that we use gender-neutral language (such as “comrades” rather than “you guys”) were portrayed as outrageous fringe ideas rather than simple agreed-upon norms of efficient and respectful debate. That the reactionary media (along with a few fellow travelers among “left” critics) were reduced to such meager sniping suggests that the truth of the convention was closer to the impression it left on this author: it was a remarkably disciplined and well-run meeting, where delegates experienced true democratic participation at a scale that is rarely found anywhere else in contemporary life, even in most unions and progressive activist groups.

The real test, of course, will come over the next few years, as local chapters including MHVDSA attempt to follow through on the commitments made in Atlanta. But we return from the convention energized, and reminded that our struggles in the Hudson Valley are not just are own, but that we are part of a broad movement for socialism in the United States and around the world.