The
Democratic Socialists of America (
DSA) is an
organization of
democratic socialist,
social-democratic and
labor-oriented members in the United States, whose ideological views range from democratic socialism to
eco-socialism to
libertarian socialism to
communism. It is the largest socialist organization in the United States.
The DSA's roots are in the
Socialist Party of America (SPA), whose most prominent leaders included
Eugene V. Debs,
Norman Thomas and
Michael Harrington.
[4] In 1973, Harrington, the leader of a minority faction that had opposed the SPA's rightward shift and transformation into the
Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) during the party's 1972 national convention, and formed the
Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC). (The other faction that split after that convention was the
Socialist Party USA (SPUSA), which remains an independent democratic socialist political party.) The DSOC, in Harrington's words "the remnant of a remnant", soon became the largest democratic socialist group in the United States. In 1982, it merged with the
New American Movement (NAM), a coalition of intellectuals with roots in the
New Left movements of the 1960s and former members of socialist and communist parties of the
Old Left.
[5]
Initially, the organization consisted of approximately 5,000 ex-DSOC members and 1,000 ex-NAM members. Upon the founding of the DSA, Harrington and the
socialist feminist author
Barbara Ehrenreich were elected as co-chairs of the organization. The DSA does not run candidates on its own ballot line in elections, but instead "fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people." The organization has at times endorsed
Democratic electoral candidates—notably
Walter Mondale,
Jesse Jackson,
John Kerry,
Barack Obama and
Bernie Sanders—and the
Green Party candidate
Ralph Nader.
The DSA is the largest socialist organization in the United States today.
[6][7] As of September 2018, membership stood at 50,000
[8] and the number of local chapters was 181.
[9] As of December 2017, the median age of its membership was 33, compared to 68 in 2013.
[10] In the
2017 election, 15 candidates who were members of the DSA were elected to office in 13 states, most notably
Lee J. Carter in the
Virginia House of Delegates, adding to the 20 members already holding elected office nationwide.
[11] In November 2018, two DSA members,
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and
Rashida Tlaib, were elected to the
House of Representatives as Democrats. Eleven were elected to
state legislatures.
[12]
Dorothy Ray Healey, "The Red Queen of Los Angeles", was an important link from the
Old Left of the
far-left organized labor oriented
Young Workers League of the '30s to the
CPUSA during the
Cold War and then to the
New Left of the
Vietnam War protest era.
See also:
History of the socialist movement in the United States and
List of Democratic Socialists of America who have held office in the United States
Formed in 1982 by the merger of the
Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the
New American Movement (NAM),
[13][14] the DSA is a
501(c)(4) nonprofit organization.
[15] At its founding, it was said to consist of approximately 5,000 members from the DSOC, plus 1,000 from the NAM.
[16]
Dorothy Ray Healey served as Vice Chair in 1982.
[17]
The DSA inherited both
Old Left and
New Left heritage. The NAM was a successor to the disintegrated
Students for a Democratic Society. The DSOC was founded in 1973 from a minority anti-
Vietnam War caucus in the
Socialist Party of America (SPA)—which had been renamed
Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA). DSOC started with 840 members, of whom 2% had served on its national board, and approximately 200 of whom came from SDUSA or its predecessors (the
Socialist Party–Social Democratic Federation, formerly part of the SPA) in 1973, when the SDUSA stated its membership at 1,800 according to a 1973 profile of Harrington.
[18]
Earlier iteration of the DSA logo
The red
rose is part of the official logo of the DSA,
[19] having traditionally been a symbol of
socialism[20] since the 1886
Haymarket Affair and the resulting
May Day marches from the 19th century to the current day.
[21] It was drawn from the logo of the DSOC, its precursor organization, and previously of the Socialist International, which shows a stylized fist clenching a red rose, the fist being substituted with a bi-racial
handshake pertaining to the DSA's staunch anti-racism.
[22][23]‹See TfM›[
failed verification] The fist and rose logo had been originally designed by
Didier Motchane and others for the new
French Socialist Party founded in 1971
[24] and was later shared by socialist and labor political organizations worldwide.
In electoral politics, the DSA was very strongly associated with
Michael Harrington's position that "the left wing of realism is found today in the Democratic Party". In its early years, the DSA opposed
Republican presidential candidates by giving critical support to
Democratic Party nominees like
Walter Mondale in 1984.
[25] In 1988, the DSA enthusiastically supported
Jesse Jackson's second presidential campaign.
[26] Since 1995, the DSA's position on
American electoral politics has been that "democratic socialists reject an either-or approach to electoral coalition building, focused solely on a new party or on realignment within the Democratic Party".
[27] During the 1990s, the DSA gave the
Clinton administration an overall rating of C-, "less than satisfactory".
[28]
The DSA's elected leadership has often seen working within the Democratic Party as necessary rather than forming or support
third parties. That said, the DSA is very critical of the corporate-funded Democratic Party leadership.
[29] The organization has stated:
[30]
Much of progressive, independent political action will continue to occur in Democratic Party primaries in support of candidates who represent a broad progressive coalition. In such instances, democratic socialists will support coalitional campaigns based on labor, women, people of color and other potentially anti-corporate elements. Electoral tactics are only a means for democratic socialists; the building of a powerful anti-corporate coalition is the end.
Electoral positions
In 2000, the DSA took no official position on the
presidential election, with several prominent DSA members backing
Green Party presidential candidate
Ralph Nader while others supported
Socialist Party USA candidate
David McReynolds and others voting for Democratic nominee
Al Gore.
[31]
In 2004, the organization backed
John Kerry after he won the Democratic nomination. In its official magazine, the DSA's
Political Action Committee said that a defeat for Kerry would be taken as a defeat of the mainstream left, but that “On the other hand, a Kerry victory will let us press onward, with progressives aggressively pressuring an administration that owed its victory to democratic mobilization from below.”
[32]
The only resolution on upcoming elections at the DSA's 2005 convention focused on
Bernie Sanders's independent campaign for the
Senate in
Vermont.
[33] The organization's 2007 convention in Atlanta featured record-breaking attendance and more participation by the organization's youth wing. Sanders gave the keynote address.
[34]
In 2008, the DSA supported Democratic presidential candidate
Barack Obama in his race against Republican candidate
John McCain. In an article written in the March 24 edition of
The Nation, DSA members
Barbara Ehrenreich and Bill Fletcher Jr., along with
Tom Hayden and
Danny Glover, announced the formation of Progressives for Obama,
[35] arguing that Obama was the most progressive viable Democratic presidential candidate since
Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.
[35]
Following Obama's election, many on the
political right[36] began to allege that his administration's policies were "socialistic", a claim rejected by the DSA and the
Obama administration alike. The claim led DSA National Director Frank Llewellyn to declare that "over the past 12 months, the Democratic Socialists of America has received more media attention than it has over the past 12 years".
[37]
For the
2016 presidential election, the DSA endorsed Sanders as its favored presidential candidate. Sanders’ candidacy prompted a surge in DSA membership among young voters.
[38] The DSA made it clear that Sanders'
New Deal-inspired program did not fulfill the socialist aim of establishing social ownership of the economy, but considered his campaign to be a positive development in the context of contemporary American politics,
[39] since he was a self-identified democratic socialist candidate as well as "a lifelong champion of the public programs and democratic rights that empower working class people".
[40] The DSA ran the internally-focused #WeNeedBernie campaign to mobilize DSA supporters for Sanders.
[40] After Sanders' defeat in the
2016 Democratic primaries, the DSA called for the defeat of Donald Trump, but did not officially endorse Democratic nominee
Hillary Clinton.
[41]
2017 off-year election gains
In the
United States elections of 2017, the DSA endorsed fifteen candidates for office, with the highest position gained being that of
Lee J. Carter in the
Virginia House of Delegates.
[42] DSA members won 15 electoral offices in thirteen states, bringing the total to thirty-five (the DSA, having changed its electoral strategy at its national convention, had anticipated picking up approximately five seats):
city council seats in
Pleasant Hill, Iowa (
Ross Grooters),
Billings, Montana (
Denise Joy),
Knoxville, Tennessee (
Seema Singh Perez),
Duluth, Minnesota (
Joel Sipress) and
Somerville, Massachusetts (
JT Scott and
Ben Ewen-Campen); and the seat in the
Virginia House of Delegates contested by Carter, among other offices.
[43][44] 56% of the DSA members who ran in this election cycle won compared to the 20% previously in
2016.
[44] These results encouraged dozens more DSA members to run for office in the 2018 midterm elections.
[9]
2018 elections
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, representative from
New York's 14th congressional district
Rashida Tlaib, representative from
Michigan's 13th congressional district
In the
2018 midterm elections, the DSA had anticipated seeing the first DSA member in Congress and reaching 100 elected officials nationwide from its strategic down-ballot campaigns.
[6] 42 formally endorsed people were running for offices at the federal, state and local levels in 20 states, including Florida, Hawaii, Kansas and Michigan; Maine's
Zak Ringelstein, a Democrat, was its sole senatorial candidate.
[45] Local chapters have endorsed 110 candidates.
[46] Four female DSA members (
Sara Innamorato,
Summer Lee,
Elizabeth Fiedler and
Kristin Seale) won Democratic primary contests for seats in the
Pennsylvania House of Representatives, two of them defeating conservative male Democratic incumbents.
[47][48][49][50] Additionally,
Jade Bahr and
Amelia Marquez won their primaries in Montana for the
State House[51] and
Jeremy Mele won his primary for the
Maine House of Representatives.
[52][53] In California,
Jovanka Beckles won one of the top two spots in the primary and advanced to the general election for a
State Assembly seat in the
East Bay.
[54]
On June 26, DSA member and endorsee
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won the Democratic primary against incumbent Representative
Joseph Crowley in
New York's 14th congressional district in a surprise
upset, virtually guaranteeing her the congressional seat in the heavily Democratic district which spans parts of the Bronx and Queens.
[55][56] Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi, however, dismissed the win as "not to be viewed as something that stands for anything else"
[57] and argued that it only represented change in one progressive district.
[58] Conversely, head of the
Democratic National Committee Tom Perez proclaimed her to be "the future of our party"
[59] whereas the
Trotskyist International Committee of the Fourth International critiqued her and the DSA as being a "left" cover for the "right-wing Democratic Party", particularly in regard to foreign policy.
[60] Six weeks after Ocasio-Cortez's primary victory, DSA member and endorsee
Rashida Tlaib won the Democratic primary in
Michigan's 13th congressional district.
[61] Both Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib went on to win their respective general elections to become members of Congress. Ultimately, about a dozen members (or non-members who were endorsed) won office in their state legislatures.
[62] In the aggregate, the DSA had backed 40 winning candidates at the state, county and municipal levels.
[12][63]
Ocasio-Cortez's victory and the subsequent publicity for the DSA led to more than 1,000 new members joining the organization the next day, approximately 35 times the daily average
[64] and their largest ever one-day increase in membership.
[65] These signups helped boost the organization to 42,000 members nationally in June 2018.
[66] That number increased to 50,000 by September 1, 2018.
[67]
DSA members elected to Congress in 2018 include Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and incumbent
Danny K. Davis. DSA members elected to state legislatures in 2018 include
Hawaii Representative Amy Perruso,
New York Senator Julia Salazar, and
Pennsylvania Representatives Fiedler, Innamorato, and Lee.
[68]
2019 off-year election gains
See also:
Chicago City Council Socialist Caucus
The
2019 Chicago aldermanic elections saw six DSA members elected to the 50-seat
Chicago City Council: incumbent
Carlos Ramirez-Rosa as well as newcomers
Daniel La Spata,
Jeanette Taylor,
Byron Sigcho-Lopez,
Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, and
Andre Vasquez.
[69] In the
2019 off-year elections, DSA members made further gains by capturing over a half dozen city council seats across the country, such as
Dean Preston becoming the first democratic socialist elected to the
San Francisco Board of Supervisors in forty years,
[70] while
Lee Carter won reelection in the
Virginia House of Delegates.
[71]
2020 elections
Presidential
The DSA endorsed
Bernie Sanders after in an advisory poll 76% of the participating membership approved his endorsement
[72], despite being objections from a part of the DSA membership concerning statements by Sanders on among others
slavery reparations.
[73] No other candidates were included in the poll. After Bernie Sanders dropped out in April 2020, the DSA explicitly did not endorse the presumptive nominee
Joe Biden.
[74]
Down-ballot
United States Congress
As of the August 5, 2020 elections, four nationally endorsed DSA candidates for
Congress have won their primaries.
Jamaal Bowman won his primary in the
New York's 16th congressional district against 30 year incumbent
Eliot Engel.
[75] In the
New York's 14th congressional district incumbent
representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated her primary challenger
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera by a landslide.
[76] In
Michigan's 13th congressional district incumbent representative
Rashida Tlaib defeated her primary opponent
Brenda Jones with over 60% of the vote.
[77] Cori Bush defeated incumbent representative
Lacy Clay in
Missouri's 1st congressional district.
[78] Additionally three other DSA members (although not nationally endorsed) will be on the general election ballot in November:
Shahid Buttar in
CA-12,
Cathy Kunkel in
WV-2 and
Antonia Eliason in
MS-1.
[79][80][81]
In
Tennessee, Marquita Bradshaw won the Democratic nomination for the
2020 Senate election.
[82] Although not nationally endorsed, she was endorsed by the Memphis-Midsouth chapter of DSA.
[83]
State legislatures
In
Pennsylvania and
New York the DSA made further gains in the
state legislatures. In Pennsylvania
Nikil Saval and
Rick Krajewski won their primaries in
Philadelphia for respectively
state senate and
state house.
[84][85] The three incumbent DSA Pennsylvania state house members won their primaries with no or only nominal opposition.
[a] In
New York City the national DSA endorsed
Jabari Brisport,
Zohran Mamdani,
Marcela Mitaynes,
Phara Souffrant Forrest, and
Julia Salazar for the
state legislature[86], all of whom have won their primary elections.
[87] Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas and
Emily Gallagher, also DSA members (although not endorsed), both won their primary challenges against incumbents in the New York State Assembly.
In
California the DSA endorsed Jackie Fielder for
state senate, who came in second in the
top-two primary with 33% of the votes
[88] Other DSA members or candidates who are endorsed by a local chapter won their primaries for the state legislature in
California,
Maine,
Kentucky and
Montanahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Socialists_of_America#cite_note-90.
Local races
Nationally endorsed candidate Nithya Raman took a second place in the top-two primary for the Los Angeles city council district 4.[89] DSA member Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic primary for Washington, D.C. city council ward 4 against incumbent Brandon Todd.[90][91] Early in the 2020 election season candidates endorsed by local DSA chapters were elected to city councils in Sacramento, Burlington, Madison and Stoughton.[92][93][94][95].
Membership
In the early 1980s, the estimated membership of the DSOC was 5,000, but after its merger with the NAM[96] the membership of the organization grew to an estimated 7,000 in 1987.[97] In 2002, Fox News said there were 8,000 members in the DSA.[98]
Two founding Idahoan DSA members at a big tent event in late September 2018
Following the election of Donald Trump as President, the DSA experienced a rapid expansion of its paid membership. In 2017, the organization passed a resolution calling for the national office to provide the group's paid members with a copy of a financial report in non-convention years. A first such report covering the whole of 2017 and the first half of 2018 was published in August 2018.[99] As of June 2020, the organization claims over 70,000 members.[100]
Structure
The DSA is organized at the local level and works with labor unions, community organizations and campus activists on issues of common interest. Nationwide campaigns are coordinated by the organization's national office in New York City. As of 2017, the DSA website listed 85 local chapters, two statewide chapters, 29 Young Democratic Socialist chapters and 63 organizing committees.[101] As of April 2018, 181 chapters were extant.[9]
Governance of the DSA is by the group's National Political Committee (NPC), which since 2001 has been a 16-person body.[102] The DSA's constitution states that at least eight of the NPC's members shall be women and at least four members of "racial or national" minority groups.[103] A 17th vote is cast by the representative of the DSA's youth affiliate who elects one male and one female delegate who split the vote. The NPC meets four times a year.[104]
The NPC elects an inner committee of six, including five of its own members and one representative of the youth section, called the Steering Committee. At least two of these are constitutionally required to be women and at least one a "person of color", with the National Director and the Youth Section Organizer also participating as ex officio members. This Steering Committee meets bi-monthly, either in person or by conference call.[105]
The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) is the official student section of the DSA. The YDSA chapters and members are encouraged to pursue and promote a democratic socialist political education and participate in social justice activism, often taking part in anti-war, labor and student-issue marches and rallies. The YDSA publishes a newsletter called The Red Letter[106] and a blog titled The Activist.[107] The organization's national activities revolve around supporting the DSA campaigns and initiatives and organizing various student conferences, usually held in New York City. The YDSA is a full member of the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY).[108]
