At the 2024 YDSA Convention, Amendment R15-1, authored by a member of LSC, passed with 78% of delegates voting in favor. This amendment censured DSA-LA elected Nithya Raman for her antagonism towards Palestinian solidarity. The amendment called for the National Coordinating Committee of YDSA (NCC) to release a letter of censure, no later than August 21, 2024.

The NCC did not release the censure within the timeframe, and instead now released a statement condemning Raman, only two months before the resolution submission process opens for the 2025 YDSA convention. The NCC wrote the statement in December, but decided to wait as they deemed it was not strategic to release the statement during the holiday season. This decision was not the NCC’s to make. Convention mandated the release of the statement within the specified timeframe.

This statement was not released publicly, and only was released on the DSA Forums as part of a broader statement on electoral politics in the new year. The NCC claims that this satisfies the requirement as stipulated in R15-1. However, it is the position of LSC that a private condemnation within DSA is no censure at all; a censure must have public pressure to be effective. A censure is defined to be a formal, public, group condemnation of an individual. There is no incentive for Raman to change her behavior based on this resolution if the statement is not made public. The NCC decided to release the statement in a way that was as minimally destructive to Raman’s political capital as possible. Even DSA-LA released their censure of her publicly on their website. By taking this position, the NCC states that electoral discipline should happen behind closed doors.

LSC calls on the NCC to respect the will of convention and release a public statement censuring Nithya Raman in a timely manner, no later than the opening of the resolution submission window for the 2025 YDSA Convention. By not doing so, the NCC is bypassing convention which is a dangerous expansion of executive power within YDSA. In the event LSC receives a seat on the NCC, we commit to following convention mandates, even if it is something we personally disagree with.

If you want an NCC that respects the democratic decisions of the membership, and you accept the LSC Points of Unity, we urge you to join LSC here.

You can discuss this on the DSA forums here.