Introducing: The Liberation Central Committee!
Alina S. (Lower Manhattan, NYC-DSA)
Role in Liberation/Other Organizing: Liberation Agitprop Committee, CSC of Socialism is the People, Central Committee of Break the Chain
Why are you a communist?: I’m a communist because my former homeland was destroyed by the United States. I grew up in the Soviet Union with my parents, surrounded by free education, stability, and time to actually enjoy life together. After the collapse of the USSR, driven largely by American interference, my family and I moved to the United States. My adolescence here was the complete opposite: poverty, instability, and barely any time with my family. I grew up believing in the so-called American Dream, only to see the truth behind it. Though I explored other political ideologies, including libertarianism, anarchism, neoliberalism, none of them reflected my real world experience as an immigrant or offered the discipline and purpose I was searching for. Reading about communism changed that. It made my life make sense. It made my identity make sense. It made the future make sense. I will always stand by communism because it is the only movement truly built on the liberation of the masses.
Where do you see LC in 2028? Where do you see DSA in 2028?: I want to see Liberation keep growing and becoming more diverse. We’ve already come a long way since the beginning, but we still need more women in the caucus, especially in leadership roles, especially with political education and other programs within LC. A lot of us, myself included, speak more than one language, and I’d love for us to use that. We should start offering classes and discussions in languages other than English. That kind of outreach will really strengthen our work. Looking ahead to 2028, DSA needs to be focused on the masses. One of DSA’s biggest weaknesses right now is how disconnected it is from the everyday struggles of so many communities across NYC. If we want socialism to have a real chance, that has to change. We need to put mutual aid and community work front and center. Organizing with and learning from the masses is crucial and I hope to see a lot more of that in DSA in the years ahead.
Chris W. (STL)
Role in Chapter/DSA: Political Education Committee Co-Chair (September 2025-current), Acting Chapter Co-Chair (June-September 2025), Executive Committee (September 2024-September 2025). DSA International Committee (Middle East/Africa Subcommittee). AFROSOC Executive Committee
Role in Liberation: Political Education Committee
Why are you a Communist?: Why wouldn’t I be? This society is sick, it has reduced millions upon millions of people to a miserable existence, it brought my people over here as slaves and has denied us all the rights of human beings, and it has sown chaos and destruction all over the world. Communism is the only hope for the continued existence of humanity as a species and further development. To not be a Communist is to be a nihilist.
Where do you see Liberation in 2028? Where do you see DSA in 2028?: I’ve seen this caucus grow from a handful of organizers committed to Maoism to almost 100 in less than a year. This has proven that there is space for Maoist organizing and line in DSA, and we will continue to grow as we remain firm in our principles and expand our caucus at the local level through mass work and involvement in leadership and organizing. Every Liberation member must be an organizer, first and foremost, not just to grow our caucus but to bring masses of working class people into DSA and empower them. As we lay the foundation for Maoism in DSA at the local level, through political education and grassroots organizing, Liberation will be able to establish a presence in national leadership by 2028. This is our strategy - a long march through the chapters. We have to defend and expand the gains the Left made at convention this year, and also struggle against rightist counter-attacks. This can happen only through unity and coordination of Left slates and caucuses and principled engagement to win over the rank and file to our collective positions. I’m optimistic about the state of the Left and DSA as a whole. People want real socialism, not a fake version.
Shane M. (Space Coast)
Role in Liberation: Political Education Committee Chair
Why are you a communist?: I am a communist because I recognize that capitalism is a global system of exploitation rooted in imperialism, settler colonialism, and racial hierarchy. The wealth of Amerikkka is built on genocide, slavery, and the extraction of labor and resources from the Global South. Communism offers an economic alternative and a total social transformation. The abolition of class domination, private property in the means of production, and all relations of exploitation between nations and peoples. I align with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Third Worldist analysis because it most clearly names the contradictions between oppressor and oppressed nations, between the imperial core and the colonized world, and between the bourgeoisified labor aristocracy and the global proletariat. My communism is therefore internationalist, anti-imperialist, revolutionary, and a struggle for the empire's overthrow.
Where do you see LC in 2028? Where do you see DSA?: By 2028, I see Liberation consolidating itself as a disciplined revolutionary pole within DSA, an organization capable of ideological leadership, cadre formation, and practical campaigns that break from liberal economism. Liberation should be where Marxist analysis and proletarian internationalism are practiced through education, agitation, and disciplined organization. I envision local cells rooted in community struggle, prisoner solidarity, tenant defense, migrant solidarity, and anti-imperialist agitation. Liberation should serve as the ideological backbone of a left realignment. Pushing DSA’s base toward revolutionary politics rather than electoralism and NGO logic.
Where do you see DSA in 2028?
By 2028, DSA will either deepen its contradictions or resolve them. The organization stands at a crossroads. It transforms into a genuine proletarian and lumpen/proletarian front aligned with international struggle or becomes a social democratic pressure group within the Democratic Party. If Liberation and our allies succeed, DSA could evolve into a mass anti-imperialist organization with roots in the working poor, political prisoners, tenants, and colonized peoples of Amerikkka. If not, it risks becoming irrelevant to real class struggle. The task is to wage the ideological and organizational struggle necessary to win its base to anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, anti-settlerism, and anti-zionism.
Kevin M. (El Gato) (East Bay)
Chapter/Role in chapter: Migrants Defense Committee, Co-Chair
Role in Liberation: Labor Committee
Why are you a communist?: Class consciousness and awareness of different forms of oppression (both personal and otherwise) came to me as a kid in my teens. Especially learning the history of the US’s role in Central Amerika in the 70s and 80s, growing up in a majorly Central Amerikan community. Reading and practicing different socialist methods growing up, communist trends were recurring and had the strongest history. My own organizing experience showed the pitfalls of other socialist methods. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism specifically offered more guidance and practical development for organizing in my community, workplace and internationally. Positions and writings put out by Maoist and Maoist-influenced traditions I also found to be the most inclusive, ground-up, mobilizing and energetic positions. Marching in that same direction I proudly consider myself a Communist.
Where do you see LC in 2028? Where do you see DSA in 2028?: In our first year I saw Liberation grow from 10 people being scolded by the wider DSA membership, to now close to 100 affiliates considering cadre and applicants. We’ve mended relationships broken by DSA in the past and continue to make ties with groups and organizers who wouldn’t have considered working with DSA before. We’ve taken new and inactive members and turned them into point-people and leaders in their chapters and their communities. Can’t stop, won’t stop. In 2028, God willing, Liberation will be a force of progress and a guiding light for DSA down the red road to liberation which members across the country will respect and recognize if they don’t already. As for DSA as a whole, I could only hope what I see in my chapter continues to expand across the country and DSA becomes a vehicle of mobilization and struggle for the working class in all of its diversity. I hope for more meetings exclusively in other languages. More projects that see DSA members in the streets of neglected communities building networks and movements. In apartment buildings organizing rent strikes and assemblies. In the building trades and warehouses pushing for more militant democratic organizing. At the polls and in local office? Of course but we can’t rely on settler colonial government bodies to be our vehicle for liberation. Liberation comes from the workers, the masses and their party which we will continue to build.
Dare to struggle. Dare to win. All power to the people.
Matty L. (they/them) (Kentucky)
Role in Liberation/Other Organizing: Co-chair of Labor Committee, EWOC and IWW organizer
Why are you a Communist?: My own lived experience of abject poverty, child labor, and doing backbreaking shifts in a sweltering factory, and then again at Amazon during the height of the pandemic made me find that my purpose in the Labor Movement to be the first one In this small town to really stand up to mega corporations. Further investigation and refinements of my ideas led me to knowing that the systems of exploitation and competition that Europeans have created has destroyed and continues to destroy the livelihoods of all BIPOC folks more than anyone else and has brought our environment to the brink of collapse. Revolutionary solutions are needed to course correct before it's too late.
Where do I see DSA in 2028: DSA will be molded into something unrecognizable from its traditional PMC hegemony, the explosive growth of our Caucus means that the organization will shift to having a makeup of true Communist Cadres. DSA will be a force of salvation and transformation in every community across this country, and a shining example of the reinvigorated movement for Liberation.
Skrilla (Northwest Indiana)
Role in Liberation: Labor Committee
Why are you a Communist?: I'm a communist out of a necessity for survival. It, and it alone, is the only tool for liberation and emancipation, for all under the heel of oppression. From a point of pragmatism, of there being no other option. All other roads lead to the death of the world, both metaphorically under the heel of the oppressor class forevermore, and literally, as capitalist exploitation rips our planet apart.
Where do you see LC and DSA in 2028?: I see Liberation as a dominating factor in 2028, no doubt. As unhealthy as political determinism is, I can't help but view things from a positive and optimistic perspective. It's natural to me in the circumstances I find myself in. I believe that Liberation will sway DSA in a direction that can lead to it being a proper vanguard for the masses, and of course, that would mean I see DSA too as being the vehicle for change as well.
Thistle G. (Central Indiana/Indianapolis)
Role in DSA: Chapter Political Education Secretary
Role in Liberation: Political Education Committee
Why are you a communist?: I am a communist because I am convinced of the effectiveness of the means and methods of communism. From the outside, communism seemed to me to be a particular kind of philosophy. Now I know communism to be a TOOLKIT. The tools were oblique to how I was taught to understand things at all. I was convinced of the effectiveness of these tools by my comrades, by my study, and by my direct experience. I have lived my life disabled and frequently homeless, watching the anarchist projects I depended on to live fall apart one after the other. When I applied the tools of communism to my life, my life transformed. I want those tools for anybody who has ever been starving, sick, neglected, abused and exploited.
Where do you see LC in 2028? Where do you see DSA in 2028?: I think that if we don’t get dialectical materialism and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism into the hands of regular people, we are deeply fucked. In 2028, I see Liberation holding more regular trainings for Liberation cadre and DSA members, as well as teaching cadres to hold 101 political education sessions in their local chapters. On the national stage and locally, we have to be struggling to bring the internal DSA line to a point that is decolonial, anti-imperialist and aligned with the interests of the proletariat in the imperial periphery as well as the colonized peoples in our own context. As a caucus we also have to be creating a broad spectrum of materials to enable us to hand the tools of communism to as many people as possible. If we have not made considerable progress on these two fronts by 2028, we need to reexamine our methods. In 2028, I see the DSA running material support programs including socialist soup kitchens and child care. I see us standing with and among the communities of racialized people being targeted by ICE. I see DSA cadre organizing tenants' unions, court watch rotations, and aid for homeless encampments. I see the DSA supporting grassroots organizing projects in our own communities, using the tools of communism to extend our collective reach, braiding our work together, coordinating action across city and state lines. Among our comrades we have access to a considerable body of practice. Through the process of the Mass Line, we can have access to a much broader pool of practice. That said, practice is only one pillar of communist organization. We also need analysis, derived from practice. As communists we cannot keep doing what seems like a good idea at the time, or reacting to shit. We have got to get from noticing stuff to actually influencing stuff. In 2028, I see the DSA with a dedicated and competent data-processing wing of the Party. Dialectics teaches us that every part of creation is changing all the time. This is our brief moment to change shit, on purpose. I invite you to take up the tools to do so alongside us. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
