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 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.
On the 40th anniversary of the classic labor film Norma Rae, this new review takes a look back at how well it presents the union organizing process. We’d love to see it paired with some of the labor films that followed it, such as 9 to 5 (1980), Silkwood (1983), and Matewan (1987) — or with its most contempoorary peer, Boots…
American history does, however, offer a specimen of what is today called right-wing populism that includes virtually all the 12 characteristics: the multi-million-member northern Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, also known as the second Klan. It argued that the U.S. was intended as and should remain a nation of white Protestants, “Nordics” in Klanspeak. This national destiny was being subverted by immigrants, namely Catholics and Jews. It is possible that a majority of native-born Protestant Americans shared this attitude, so this second Klan did not need to be secret or violent; it operated by promoting its ideas and electing its members to office. It even claimed to be defending democracy, though of a particular type: majoritarian or “plebiscitary” democracy, in which a majority could override minority interests. Its electoral strategy put into office 16 senators, scores of congressmen (the Klan claimed 75), 11 governors, and thousands of state, county, and municipal officials. Journalist Dorothy Thompson, whose early warnings about Nazism—an extreme form of right-wing populism– were influenced by observing the 1920s KKK, pointed out that a dictator “never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship.”
The reproductive justice movement represents a more expanded socialist vision for reproductive rights in line with our goal of removing all political and economic barriers to full participation in society. It makes common cause with movements to end police brutality, raise wages, expand public housing, and win Medicare for All. Leaders in this movement such as SisterSong and Forward Together have been defeating oppressive ballot measures, building a base in their communities, and publishing books and key research. Meanwhile, the pro-choice camp has engaged in narrow legal and electoral fights to keep Roe intact. Despite their efforts, there are fewer and fewer clinics, laws regulating abortion grow more burdensome, and anti-abortion protesters have become increasingly violent in their tactics.