We are launching emergency actions THIS WEEK. Here’s what you can do now: Contact your DSA chapter about local actions. The Socialist Feminist Working Group and NPC asks all local groups to mobilize as soon as possible. The Senate may vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation this week or Saturday. Print out a DSA Stop Kavanaugh sign and bring…
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest socialist organization in the United States. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few. We are a political and activist organization, not a party; through campus and community-based chapters, DSA members use a variety of tactics, from legislative to direct action, to fight for reforms that empower working people.
DSA and YDSA chapters organize around a variety of issues based on local priorities, especially labor solidarity and anti-austerity work. However, the national office provides resources and support for the main activist priorities of the organization as voted on by delegates to our national convention:
Health care is a huge segment of our economy and health care access is a deeply and widely felt need. In the capitalist system, you have to pay to get care or go without, and under a democratic socialist system, we would collectively provide care as a society. Medicare for all is a stepping stone towards that vision and our campaign is designed to build a working class base of people fighting for state and national power. Click here to go to the campaign website.
Capitalism pits us against each other and workplaces are fundamentally authoritarian unless workers can self-organize and build collective power. This is why people build unions, and why employers undermine them. It is also why the capitalists as a class constantly work to undermine unions and promote narratives about unions that frame them as unnecessary, undemocratic or ineffective. We are forming a national project to fight back and build power in the economy, since outside of Wall Street, workplaces are the place where the owning class extract resources from the working class. Click here to learn more about the Democratic Socialist Labor Commission.
Bernie Sanders launched a political revolution and we’re continue to build it, supporting democratic socialist candidates running for local and state office. We’re also grappling with how to build independent political power to hold candidates we elect, and others, accountable to their constituents rather than the donor class. Click here to go to our electoral website.
A recent article called for “wholehearted praxis” in how we interact with our comrades, and argued against “internal policing.” I think the intent was good, but the article did not offer a concrete analysis of what goes wrong in personal interactions where there are legitimate political disagreements, and only gave vague advice about what…
The democratic left generally agrees that using renewable energy is necessary to defeat climate change and is becoming more focused on moving our nation to a renewable future. Yet we also know that climate change is a global problem. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) latest forecast gives us a hint of what we need to do globally.
Those of us who declare ourselves socialists must reaffirm our radicalism, envision a truly revolutionary anti-capitalist future, and understand that today, as in Gilded Age America, the our cause is increasingly that of a radical democracy struggling to be born.