I continue to believe that the ideological distinctions between major formations in DSA right now are smaller than they were several years ago, in part because of deeper maturity of DSA as an org. But caucuses are still critical to DSA's development as an org in my opinion.

What caucuses do particularly well, imho is A) cadre formation and B) putting useful containers around conflict within DSA. Within six months of joining DSA I was on an OC; I wasn't ready - but no one was. Joining @DSAEmerge has helped me mature as a socialist by leaps and bounds

@DSAEmerge helped me thru political education, helped me understand different political currents in DSA, and helped me learn things like how to whip for a competitive election, how to write a formal resolution, how to run a meeting by Robert's Rules.

But being in a caucus also helps contain conflict - and helps keep conflict political rather than personal. W/o structures that people can join that mediate conflict chapters are run by cliques of insiders that by virtue of being informal are much less accountable to members.

(I'll add that the latter is my view from having been in a minority caucus in NYC-DSA in a chapter with more than two caucuses active; I'm aware the view looks different where you have basically a single-caucus landscape).

A question I have right now is: if politics of caucuses are converging, which I think they are - see the debate between CPN and B+R over the party question and the ballot line - does it still make sense to have the caucus be primary site of cadre formation?

One thing I've always been clear on w/in my time in @DSAEmerge is that we are committed to building Emerge *in order to* build DSA. So the q is: as caucuses are sophisticated sites of cadre formation, how can we take our skills and push them out thru DSA's official channels?