August 10, 2017

To North New Jersey DSA Members,

Effective organizing requires trust. When building our socialist movement and confronting power, we must trust each of our comrades to have one another’s backs. In Democratic Socialists of America, trust means both trusting comrades in our chapters and organizing committees, trusting the long process by which socialism will come about, and trusting our national leadership.

During his successful campaign for a seat on DSA’s national political committee (the 16-member executive body at the head of the whole organization), Danny Fetonte failed to disclose his work organizing for CLEAT, the largest law enforcement union in Texas.

North New Jersey DSA’s executive committee, and the delegates sent by our members to represent us at the convention, feel that Danny Fetonte has violated our trust by omitting this information. We are therefore asking for Danny Fetonte to restore our trust in our national leadership and our trust in him as an organizer interested in the greater good of DSA and his local Austin chapter by resigning his position on the National Political Committee.

While there are important conversations to have regarding Fetonte’s work for CLEAT and the contradictory goals of that organization and our own, our trust has been violated not because of the work itself but because Fetonte did not disclose this work in his candidate statement. Instead, Fetonte vaguely referred to this history as “organiz[ing] state workers”. This was a misleading characterization of his work, and we believe it constitutes malfeasance on his part. Given the closeness of the NPC vote between Fetonte and Jack Suria-Linares, it’s reasonable to believe that Fetonte would not have been elected had he been fully truthful about his work with CLEAT.

All of this is not to impugn Fetonte’s work for Austin DSA, as we understand that he has done a tremendous amount of work for the chapter. That should be praised, and no one should resort to personal attacks on him or our Austin comrades. Nevertheless, we believe Fetonte has damaged DSA’s post-convention unity by hiding relevant information before the NPC election.

There was an enormous amount of energy and positivity coming out of the convention. Delegations from across the country worked together to chart a truly inspiring course for DSA over the next two years. We should all be proud of that. But the omission of information by Fetonte has tarnished our unity and our trust in one another and is already threatening to result in irreversible schisms between our comrades. The best course of action to preserve our organizational momentum, not to mention our trust in each other and our process, would be for Fetonte to resign his position on the NPC.