We’re in the middle of a generational crisis in which unprecedented numbers of working class Philadelphians will likely be evicted from their homes.

Yet on Monday evening Philly DSA’s steering committee rejected a housing committee proposal to begin anti-eviction canvassing.

Millions of people nationwide are thousands, and even tens of thousands, of dollars behind in rent, with no way to make it up. Philadelphians are routinely subject to illegal lockouts, despite the ostensible eviction moratorium in the city.

The only way we're going to fight against this crisis is through organization, and to organize we have to hit the streets.

Groups across the country & other DSA chapters are on the ground talking to tenants because they know that's the only way to organize against landlords.

Nonetheless, the controlling caucus on the Philly DSA steering committee, which calls itself "Momentum," voted as a bloc against the proposal.

Momentum's initial justification was that it’s too risky for our members to canvass when COVID cases are high.

There was no response to various members pointing out the fact that other DSA chapters have come up with COVID protocols for canvassing,

that the CDC guidelines don't caution against canvassing, that the Steering Committee itself encouraged membership to attend busy picket lines during the pandemic, or that there was no surge of cases this summer when masses gathered (with masks, of course) out in the open.

This reasoning is, to put it generously, extremely misguided. Because of a fleeting chance of personal risk we should abandon our commitment to working class organizing, to fighting the upcoming wave of evictions, and to working in solidarity with tenants who face genuine risk.

If safety is really the concern, let's have a conversation about whether to just flyer outside, whether we should wear N95 masks, what lowered level of cases would allow for safe canvassing, and whether community spread caused by illegal lockouts/evictions is even more dangerous.

But instead of engaging with these questions, the Momentum members just bloc voted down the proposal without any engagement with the arguments raised by members outside their voting bloc.

There was also no acknowledgment of the fact that there is already...

a group of Philly DSA organizers motivated to do this work and who have been working with outside groups to get it going.

What purpose does it serve to tell them that if they want to do tenant organizing, they’ll need to do it without Philly DSA’s support or approval?

When confronted with the numerous reasons why this project can be done safely, focus quickly shifted (thus preventing any debate on the safety issue) to a different concern: We can’t know up front whether this canvassing tactic will be successful.

Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I’m a little shocked.

For one, socialists have been on the defensive in this country for decades and suffer a power deficit relative to their opponents. If only we had the luxury of only engaging in tactics that we knew would be a success!

And even if we could, that approach means organizers can't experiment to find new effective tools for building working class power.

But ultimately, the plan is strategically sound, and has a set of dedicated organizers behind it who are committed to adjusting course if and when changes are needed. In an uncertain world and a crisis situation, that should be enough.

It's perhaps even more troubling, however, that the idea that “we only do tactics we know will succeed” is a standard Momentum holds only outsiders to, but not itself.

If that were really the standard by which the chapter decided on work, we never would have spent months doing

Medicare for All phonebanking to get Dwight Evans to support the bill. Did we know it would be successful? In fact, is there any evidence that it ultimately was successful?

Of course, that’s not to say we shouldn’t have done the phonebanking! It was important to try. But it

was a tactic with uncertain prospects for success--just like housing canvassing (though I’d argue there are important structural reasons why housing canvassing is more likely to succeed--leave that aside for now).

By the steering committee’s logic, we shouldn’t have tried it.

At the end of the day, if it were just one vote on one tactic, perhaps it would be more understandable. But this is just the latest example of a much longer trend in which Philly DSA members present ideas that they are excited to execute under…

the auspices of Philly DSA (this is the second anti-eviction proposal the steering committee has knocked down, not to mention the recent mutual aid proposals, among others), and then the Momentum caucus organizes (either in general meetings,

in bloc votes on the steering committee, or by delaying key decisions) against it.

This kind of stonewalling is especially concerning when it hamstrings a committee that the chapter voted overwhelmingly to create and empower.

We have a lot of members excited to do housing work--and to do it now, while we're in a moment of crisis--who have been told repeatedly that Philly DSA doesn't want them doing that work.

What an odd message for a socialist organization to send to its members. What an odd way for a socialist organization seeking mass mobilization of the working class to behave.