2026 Member Convention Bulletin

Issue #1 - Tuesday, April 14th, 2026

Convention Updates 

We are excited to announce Chicago DSA’s 2026 Membership Convention. Our Member Convention is where chapter members gather to reflect on our work in the past year, debate and decide on our direction for the year ahead, and hear from candidates seeking election as one of our Chapter Officers.

The convention will take place on Saturday, June 6th at The Flats downtown (829 S Wabash Ave). As with our last General Chapter Meeting in March, check-in will begin at 10:30AM with time for socializing over (free) coffee, and then the meeting will be called to order at 11:30AM. We will break for an hour for lunch around 1PM, and then reconvene at 2PM to continue business. The meeting will adjourn no later than 4:30PM. Please note that the exact order of business is subject to change.

 This will be a hybrid meeting with members able to participate by attending in-person or by Zoom, but we highly encourage you to attend in-person if you can. We will again be offering Child Watch for parents on site as well. Please RSVP by Tuesday, June 2nd in order to request Zoom or Child Watch. co-chairs Lyra S. (co-chair-1@chicagodsa.org) and Sean D (co-chair-2@chicagodsa.org). 

Timeline for Convention and Officer Elections

Please see below for a timeline of key convention dates, including dates for 2026 Chapter Officer Elections. Future communications will share more information on the Officer Elections and forms for submitting Officer Nominations, bylaw amendments and resolutions, and to volunteer at the Convention.

• Saturday, May 16th: Bylaw amendments due

• Sunday, May 17th: Officer nominations open

• Friday, May 22nd: Resolutions due

• Saturday, May 23rd: Draft agenda released

• Sunday May 24th: Officer nominations close

• Tuesday, May 26th: Officer candidates announced

• Friday, May 29th: Resolution amendments due

• Saturday, May 30th: Revised agenda released

 Pre-Convention Period

Our convention is an opportunity for members to come together and reflect on our work of the past year, strategize for the year ahead, and also consider major long-term strategic questions with a level of depth that we may not usually have time for during the rest of the year. In order to help facilitate this, this year we are holding a Preconvention Period that will encourage member discussion in the weeks leading up to the Convention.

The hope is that this will be a generative process that gets members talking about the major political questions of the day, creates opportunities for members to put forward different ideas outside of formal proposals, surfaces important debates and disagreements as well as common ground, and build members’ muscle for political writing and debate, and hopefully inspire more members to go long form in Midwest Socialist. The primary vehicle for this PreCon discussion will be a weekly Convention Bulletin. Branches are also encouraged to work PreCon discussion into their meetings in April and May.

The weekly Convention Bulletin will be compiled by the Co-Chairs and will include any convention related news, information, and updates; a prompt for discussion with members given the opportunity to submit written responses; publication of Member Submissions for the previous week’s prompt; publication of Member Replies to previous Member Submissions; and announcements of any convention related articles published in the last week on Midwest Socialist. 

Members Submissions for weekly prompts must be at minimum 50 words and at maximum 300 words. Member Submissions may be edited for length and clarity, and the Co-Chairs reserve the right to not publish Member Submissions that are not germane to the prompt, are significantly lacking in cohesion and clarity, are in violation of the Feminist Process or the Code of Conduct, are unnecessarily polemical or mean-spirited, or otherwise considered to be improper for publication. Members may also submit replies in response to Member Submissions, following the same criteria as above. Members are encouraged to submit in-depth commentary and editorials to Midwest Socialist

Prompt for discussion, week 1:

With the victory of Zohran Mamdani and DSA recently achieving 100,000 members nationwide, how can our chapter build on the current momentum behind democratic socialism over the next year? What opportunities and potential threats lay ahead?

Submit a response using the Bulletin Submission Form linked here. Member Responses for this Prompt will be published in next week’s Convention Bulletin. Please try to submit responses no later than Sunday evening every week.

Please contact leadership@chicagodsa.org with any questions.