The Playbook: Inside DSA’s Strategy to Infiltrate America’s Classrooms
Democratic Socialists recruit members to become teachers, not to educate, but to build “working class power” and reshape the next generation
The Democratic Socialists of America published an explicit recruitment manual in 2018 urging members to become teachers, not to improve education, but to exploit teaching jobs for their “political, economic, and social potential.” The 6,000-word pamphlet, Why Socialists Should Become Teachers, lays out a coordinated strategy modeled on 1920s Communist Party tactics to infiltrate schools, radicalize unions, and gain access to students. Seven years later, the strategy is working. DSA-backed candidates now hold at least 23 school board seats across 15 states, union officials who keynote DSA conventions lead the nation’s largest teachers unions, and DSA partners run workshops teaching educators about “heroic resistance to Zionism”, some with funding traced to a Shanghai-based billionaire with documented ties to Chinese Communist Party propaganda operations.
“Militant Minority” Strategy
The DSA pamphlet frames teaching through a Marxist lens: “It is teachers who train, both socially and technically, the workers of the future.” Rather than a calling to educate, DSA describes teaching as a multi-year infiltration project. “Unlike ‘salting,’ in which a worker goes into a non-union workplace for a short period of time,” the manual instructs, “committing to rank-and-file labor organizing should be seen as at least a multi-year project and ideally longer.”
The goal isn’t to convert every teacher. DSA explicitly states that “many of the people we organize with will hold a mix of conservative, racist, sexist, and other bigoted beliefs.” Instead, socialists must build a “militant minority of class-conscious teachers that can move our unions in a more militant and democratic direction.” The document cites the Communist Party’s Trade Union Education League from the 1920s as its organizing model.
Once embedded in schools, DSA teachers gain access to shape young minds. “Your exchanges with students can help shape a generation of critical thinkers and political actors,” the pamphlet promises. “You may even have the opportunity to teach about social justice and liberation history.”
Controlling Both Sides of the Table
DSA’s 2023 National Convention passed a resolution titled “Run DSA Candidates for School Boards,” formalizing the strategy nationwide. The resolution declares “the teacher movement is the tip of the spear of a revitalized labor movement” and commits DSA to running candidates “dedicated to building the working class movement.”
The strategy creates what Parents Defending Education described as control of “both sides of the table”. DSA members lead teachers unions while DSA-backed candidates sit on the school boards negotiating with those unions.
In Los Angeles, DSA members Jackie Goldberg (board president 2019-2023) and Rocio Rivas (current board vice president) sit on the LAUSD board. United Teachers Los Angeles president Cecily Myart-Cruz keynoted the 2019 DSA National Convention. DSA-LA members describe themselves as “dual members of DSA-LA and UTLA.”
Chicago’s story is even starker. The Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), founded by DSA members including current vice president Jackson Potter, took over the Chicago Teachers Union in 2010. DSA describes this as “a textbook case of the rank-and-file strategy in practice.” Former CTU president Jesse Sharkey is a longtime identified socialist.
Nationwide, at least 23 DSA-backed school board members now serve in California, Illinois, New York, Texas, Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado, Kentucky, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, and Tennessee.
Palestine Curriculum and China-Linked Partners
DSA’s education agenda extends beyond labor organizing. In 2022, DSA’s National BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group created an “Educators for Palestine Series” teaching about “heroic resistance to Zionism.” Black Lives Matter at School endorsed and promoted the program.
Oakland teachers led an unauthorized pro-Palestine teach-in during the school day in December 2023. The Oakland Education Association had endorsed DSA school board candidates in 2022, and DSA member Mike Hutchinson now serves as Oakland school board president.
The workshops were co-led by Code Pink and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC). Both organizations raise foreign influence concerns. Code Pink has received approximately $1.4 million, about 25% of its funding, from Neville Roy Singham, an American billionaire now based in Shanghai. Singham shares office space with a Chinese media firm dedicated to telling “China’s story well,” official CCP propaganda language. His office displays a banner reading “Always Follow the Party” and he attended a CCP workshop on promoting the party internationally.
Between 2017 and 2023, Singham-controlled entities funneled approximately $278 million into six U.S. nonprofits, including Code Pink and The People’s Forum, which hosts DSA events.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) urged the Justice Department in April 2025 to investigate whether Code Pink must register as a foreign agent due to “Chinese Communist Party ties.” A January 2026 Network Contagion Research Institute report accused DSA itself of potentially violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act due to trips to China, Cuba, and Venezuela involving “in-kind benefits from foreign government-linked entities.”
AROC, the other DSA education partner, is fiscally sponsored by Tides Center but does not publish financial information.
Union Money Floods the Ecosystem
While direct financial ties between DSA and teachers unions remain opaque, the two operate as ideological allies within a shared funding ecosystem. Since 2015, the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association have distributed $669 million in member dues and PAC funds to left-wing political entities, including $1.965 million to a single 2017 Los Angeles school board race.
The unions gave $1.755 million to Midwest Academy, which provides organizing training for radical activists, and $490,000 to the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center. California Teachers Association alone spent over $12 million on political activities from January to October 2024, with every endorsed candidate a Democrat.
DSA’s West Virginia teachers shifted the 2018 strike’s messaging from “teachers deserve a raise” to “tax the corporations.” The foreword to Why Socialists Should Become Teachers celebrates this: “With socialists active in our organizing, we’ll be in a strategic position to make bold, visionary demands to take on the capitalist class.”
Colorado teacher Bryan Lindstrom, a DSA member, posted on X: “Critical race theory is a component of everything I do.” Milwaukee school board member Missy Zombor wrote on October 22, 2023: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
The socialists published the playbook. They’re following it. And they’re already in America’s classrooms.