The socialist movement and the left more broadly have irrationally failed to organize in the face of the mass death and disability of the COVID-19 pandemic. SCORE is attempt to band together socialists of all stripes to scientifically and politically educate our comrades while independently fighting for an end to the COVID-19 pandemic that resides in material reality.
Please read our Points of Unity and consider joining!
SCORE members can identify themselves on social media using the ❤️🩹 emoji in their handle or bio. This emoji selected via competitive online voting on January 5, 2024.
The nominator noted in their submission that it's red (the standard socialist color), health related, indicates compassion, and gestures toward fixing what's broken (e.g. the Left and its abandonment of the vulnerable).
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We are engaged in a variety of projects. See if any of these interest you or suggest one! When we select projects, we try to keep in mind that we are a small mostly online organization, so it is difficult to pull off local actions for now (but we are very happy to support them!). We also consider whether a project is a novel or otherwise significant contribution to the fight against COVID-19 to avoid duplicating effort.
The projects below are a summary of what people are practically working on, but we are working towards a more formal set of goals and projects approved democratically.
SCORE grew out of the COVID Isn't Over talks given through Central Jersey Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in October and December 2022. Several attendees thought it would be worth starting a Discord server and so one was created. Soon after over a hundred people flooded in from existing communities, but there was no structure for how to handle this nor any democratic mandate for anyone to manage the organization. There was a lot of excitement since there have been a lack of explicitly left organizations fighting the pandemic.
Many comrades contributed to holding meetings and discussions during the initial period. At this time the group was informally referred to as the Pandemic Organizing Working Group (POWG). Political differences between horizontalists and comrades in favor of organization were brought to a head in March 2023 when an interim governance proposal was produced and unanimously voted on by apparently active members. However, the comrades in favor of a completely flat organization without positions of responsibility boycotted the election silently. After the approval of this resolution, the server was brigaded in early April which caused most of the initial energy to deflate. This crisis forced an organizational split where those in favor of having an organization moved to a new server in June 2023.
We tried to resolve the political conflict in the group by first attempting to address all expressed concerns. This didn't result in the re-unification of the group, so we worked on creating a set of Points of Unity and Code of Conduct in May. At the end of May, we began moving people over to the new server that agreed with the Points of Unity and instituted an onboarding process to ensure that new members have sufficient agreement to be able to work together in a multi-tendency socialist issue-based organization.
During this time, the main projects were mutual aid information sharing and the resolutions exchange project. The resolution exchange project aimed to share pandemic policies, perspectives, and organizing with members of other organizations, principally Democratic Socialists of America chapters. This project attracted more DSA comrades to the space including several from North Carolina Triangle DSA, which had passed an evidence based policy which was shared.
By chance, a POWG member from Central Jersey DSA was also on the executive board of the DSA Disability Working Group. Through a collaboration between members in several DSA chapters and the DSA Disability Working Group, a resolution (eventually named DSA Organizing for Pandemic Justice") was formulated to be sent to the 2023 DSA National Convention in late February and March 2023. Most of the work took place in DSA Disability Working Group from this point forward, though regular reports were shared in POWG and personnel belonged to both organizations.
The national resolution then required 300 signatures from DSA members in good standing to be accepted to the convention by April 28. A number of the active members in our group were focused on this effort. Several members of the organization were elected by their DSA chapters to go to the August convention to fight for the resolution.
At the Chicago convention, the resolution was the least popular of all eligible and did not make it onto the debate schedule. Nonetheless, comrades continued to fight for pandemic and disability justice by whipping delegates and National Political Committee (NPC) members on these issues. As a result of these efforts, there was an influx of new people interested in organizing with the DSA Disability Working Group, showing the utility of the strategy even when the resolution failed to pass.
On June 28, 2023, the first Steering Committee election results were finalized with the election of two members out of seven positions and our first Internal Grievance Officer was elected. On September 9, 2023 the organization's name was chosen to be Socialist COVID-19 Organizing, Resistance, and Education (SCORE) after a nominations and revision process. On September 20, 2023, we launched our website.
In October 2023, one of our members began developing https://afterparty19.info and got feedback from SCORE members and from other members during its development both in our digital space and in our bi-weekly geneal meeting. The website was launched in BETA on November 10, 2023 and has been used in at least one large event of almost a thousand people.
On January 5, 2024 we selected the ❤️🩹 emoji via a membership wide vote to add to our social media handles to help SCORE members increase their visibility to the public.
On January 19, 2024 SCORE member Mark Denning suddenly and heartbreakingly passed away. To our knowledge, Mark's passing was unrelated to COVID-19. Mark had joined a few months prior and had already made substantial contributions. Mark suggested the ❤️🩹 emoji in our contest. He also revived interest in our publication when it was faltering in late December 2023 and suggested the technology platform we ultimately selected. On January 28, 2024 we held a memorial for Mark attended by people that knew him. We will miss you Mark and are grateful for the life and wealth of knowledge you shared with us.
On March 7, 2024, we adopted a charter that will govern the purpose and democratic practices of the upcoming SCORE publication. The charter was adopted 16-0.
On April 1, 2024, we elected three new steering committee members, two internal grievance officers, and four editorial board members.
On April 26, 2024, we updated our grievance procedures. This document was developed by our Internal Grievance Officers. It was adopted 13-0.
In August 2024, we launched our social media presence on Twitter/X, Facebook, and Instagram.
On August 28, 2024, we launched Dynamic Zero, our publication for encouraging debate about pandemic strategy.
Last updated September 8, 2024