Democratic Socialists of America

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a multi-tendency, democratic-socialist, and labor-oriented political organization in the United States. Its roots are in the Socialist Party of America (SPA), whose leaders included Eugene V. Debs, Norman Thomas and Michael Harrington. In 1973, Harrington, the leader of a minority faction that had opposed the SPA's transformation into the Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) during the party's 1972 national convention, formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC). In 1982, the DSOC, which Harrington described as "the remnant of a remnant", 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. Upon the DSA's founding, Harrington and the socialist feminist author Barbara Ehrenreich were elected co-chairs of the organization. Following the merger, the DSA became the largest socialist organization in the United States, with a membership of approximately 5,000 ex-DSOC members and 1,000 ex-NAM members. From 2015 to 2021, DSA membership increased 15-fold from 6,200 after Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, the presidential victory of Donald Trump, the 2018 election of DSA member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Membership peaked at 95,000 in 2021, when the organization had 239 local chapters, before declining to 77,575 members by August 2023. Between 2013 and 2017, the median age of its membership declined from 68 to 33, leading some, such as Holly Ottesrbein of Philadelphia Magazine, to credit the organization for the rise of millennial socialism. The DSA's stated goal is to participate in "fights for reforms today that will weaken the power of corporations and increase the power of working people", with a long-term aim of social ownership of production as public enterprises, worker cooperatives, or decentralized planning. To this end, it has endorsed candidates for political office and led various organizing campaigns for public electricity, social housing, tenants unions, and abortion rights, among others.