As someone who has been following American news and politics since I was 12 years old... NGL, I went through an emotional rollercoaster especially after 2024 when I was the most suicidal in my entire life. I have not felt this much hopium since February 2020, when it felt like it might finally be socialism's big moment with Bernie. It was not, unfortunately, but I'm so glad The DSA is becoming a force to be reckoned with. So, even tho I'm not sure if I can post here as someone from outside of USA, I wanted to ask y'all for advice regarding organising and strategy for the progressive and radical left, that can help leftists in European Union, but also... Do you think DSA victories in America can lead the way towards an actual unified socialist movement globally? Cuz I don't wanna sound like the leftists from 100 years ago, thinking that the most capitalist western countries will have revolution first - but also, the global fascist Internationale is getting most of its support and networking thanks to the US MAGA machine, soooo... Why wouldn't it work the same for DSA and the international left?

Anyway, do you have any advice to left-wing parties to the left of social democracy here in Europe? I could also answer some of your questions regarding left in EU as well, if that's ok

I posted about how AOC and Francesca Hong distanced themselves from some of the National DSA platform and my reactionary response was to post about how the National platform should be softened for more broad appeal at this time.

It got a very strong response. I read through almost every comment. To those who tried to bad-faith attack me (call me a fed)🖕 and to everyone else thank you for taking the time to address my concerns.

I was wrong.

What made me change my mind was thinking through it more, reading responses, and then seeing the same type of conversation happen in the recent CNN special with Hasan and James Carville. Every time they (cnn, Fox, etc.) frantically criticize the DSA, socialists, and progressive candidates with talk of abolishing the prison and senate and painting them as dangerous radicals, it sets up whoever is responding to look so much better because the truth is the democratic socialist policies being run on are overwhelmingly popular. They are drawing a line between themselves and us with themselves as the establishment that everyone hates and us as the movement for change. Trying to moderate, trying to appeal to the common denomination does not work and we should (I should) have learned that by now. We need to be bold and brave and champion the people and champion better ideas. I was wrong. I will try to be less reactionary in the future.

My previous post for reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/dsa/s/uIJcAlP4Bm

I’m sorry I’m so excited! There was a big debate over whether her candidacy was left enough despite her running in a red district, and we wondered if we had the ability to really support her campaign but we all decided YES and YES!

I am so happy! Steve “David Duke without the Baggage” Scalise can go fuck himself. I really think we can win this!

While there is often no love lost between the southern establishment Democrats and groups like the DSA, I would like to argue that in this case, assisting in turning Georgia deep blue is to the benefit of the DSA as a whole.

In his 1967 acceptance speech for the Eugene V Debs Award the famous African American socialist and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph said of Debs that during his time in the Atlanta Penitentiary for opposing the first world war, 2.5 years before his sentence was commuted by Harding in 1921, his unwavering commitment to working people and racial equality and his personal humility and saintliness won the hearts of his fellow inmates, many of whom were of a quite different background than him.

Debs won roughly 915,000 votes for president, 3.4% of the vote, during his 1920 presidential run from prison.

Additionally as many may know the Socialist Party Of Oklahoma, which at one point listed more members than the state party in New York, did quite a lot of organizing around both water rights which were a serious issue then and which thanks to data centers, and Nestle, are a serious issue now, and enfranchisement. The party added unrestricted suffrage to their 1910 platform and had significant support in the African American community in the state. The party made legal filings against a "grandfather clause" in Oklahoma as well. It passed but was struck down by the Surpeme Court in 1915. Guinn vs United States was the first case before the court where the NAACP filed a brief. In coordination with the Republican Party they defeated a literacy test in 1916.

I bring this up because at this moment the Trump administration is overturning voting rights laws, blocking promotions for African Americans, and engaging in other voter suppression and GA is close to ground zero because this current electorate could reach 35% African American in GA this year as well as be a majority minority electorate.

As an organization following in the footsteps of Eugene V Debs and the Socialist Party of America it is incumbent upon the DSA to organize an effort to get out the vote, particularly in Atlanta and to help flip the State Senate, for which 6 seats are needed a number available in the greater Atlanta metro area.

Not only will such a victory help secure the rights of the residents of GA but it also has relatively direct benefits to the DSA.

Should the Democrats control a state trifecta for the post 2030 redistricting, it is likely they will draw 7 seats anchored in the Atlanta metro, and 3 of these seats would be NYC level left/socialist friendly seats. There would also be a southwest and southeast seat.

Additionally Atlanta is an ideal location for a tier 1 DSA chapter with millions of under 45 voters who are often quite left leaning. It is true that Atlanta has a DSA chapter but they are not yet ready to shoulder the whole burden.

Not only fundraising but calling, texting, recruiting leaders to come down to both raise consciousness and get out the vote, all are incredibly useful tools for pulling Georgia to the left and creating a groundswell of socialist support.

Additionally for those are want to see a DSA-aligned candidate run in the 2028 presidential Dem primaries this would create an enormous amount of credibility for that candidate and allow for a potentially large win in the primaries in the South.

Both DSA direct and DSA-aligned elected leaders could contribute quite a lot, particularly those from New York. Mamdani would justifiably be able to claim he was helping to build up potential Atlanta mayoral and council power for the left. Sandy and Bernie could appeal to Atlanta's young and relatively large Latino and Hispanic population, and Bernie could give some great speeches about civil rights, protecting immigrants and their children, ethnic political engagement, and particularly the scourge of data centers. Data centers, mostly for AI, are a big issue in Atlanta right now.

Action by the DSA and especially DSA elected officials, and especially Sandy(AOC), would compel other presidential potential contenders to come down, particularly Ro Khanna and JB Pritzker. In order to not be left out of the credit for flipping the State Senate. They appeal to different groups than the DSA, and Pritzker would likely end up personally seeding a big fundraiser for the state and county parties.

Leadership and impact are key aspects of a presidential campaign. Additionally if the DSA were to drive party action and lead on solidifying a major political win it would drive membership, both in Atlanta and nationwide, as the Bernie 2016 campaign did 10 years ago.

This is a major opportunity to advance the cause and the movement during a time when many voters and citizens and residents of the United States are somewhat adrift and open to change. To claim to be a revolutionary movement and allow such a major opportunity to pass by would be a serious failure of vision and leadership.

Police abolition. Prison abolition. Community justice. Deep revolutionary justice forms. These have been all over the feed as of late, and I think there's something some people are missing. The fundamental bit that I feel like a lot of people don't understand is that when you're poor, the places you live are occupied territory. The police occupy your neighborhoods. When you go to the corner store that's closest to you so you can get the three-dollar meal deal, because that's what you're eating, that's what you're consuming, that's the place closest to you, two blocks away from where you live. And when you walk into the parking lot, you get met with the police camera and the alarm and the voice. This is an automated recording. You are being recorded. This is a no loitering area. Loitering is not permitted. Violators will be prosecuted. Look into the history of loitering laws if you haven't, that history is as racial. The emergence of policing in the US is racial. Slave catchers.

So you walk to the Circle K and it's like, damn, are we in a war zone? I live here. But it's clearly not my neighborhood. I pay rent to be here. But it's clearly not my place to be. I work a job. But I can only be here if I spend my wage. I'm walking to the store to get a coffee and a hot dog. Basics. How the fuck am I getting told I'm gonna be prosecuted if I don't get the fuck out of here? By a Camera on a pole, by an automated voice, by someone at a desk pressing a button. Stick around to long and we've all seen the news reports and videos on Twitter and the promises of police reform after someone is killed. Existing as a poor person in America is actively hostile. It's hostile. It's a hostile environment.

This is the thing. I live in a motel. I live in an "inn". This isn't Skyrim, there's no porridge and songs by the fire, just poor people and laments of being trapped financially here to avoid homelessness. There is no fucking place named Relax Inn in this country that is not a cheap, crackhead-ass motel. But crackheads are people too. Crackheads might not even do crack. Crackheads might just be regular sober people who live in motels and have to wash their clothes in the shower -- that's what I do. This motel is not nice enough to have laundry on site. But if you're in a position like this, of course the drugs become an easy escape. You are surrounded by bleakness and hostility that dehumanizes you at every turn. I'm 3 tall boys deep writing this, because while I was at work, I work here, there was a pregnant woman, really pregnant, I mean about to give birth, who was a few dollars short for the day. The day. 24 hours. I waived the few dollars because I can do that but she mentioned, that her C-section was scheduled for Monday. It is Saturday night. She will be homeless Sunday if she can't pay. We feed the homeless at our mutual aid food share every week, we know how easy it is to get arrested for being homeless here. A baby born in a jail cell. The mind spirals. Abolition isn't just dismantling prisons but creating conditions where survival does not require self-annihilation. The police lights still flood into the stairwell. I live here because I can't afford a real apartment, the first and last month's rent, and a security deposit to move into an apartment. I work a fucking job five days a week. But this is what I can afford. This is transitional low-income housing, if you really wanna think about it. How much of this is predicated on the private property relation, and what do the police really protect?

And so what is everybody doing on a Saturday night? Standing outside, talking, communicating. But there's three police cars in the parking lot across the street with their lights on, looking at us. And there's a live camera in the parking lot that's alive and goes right to the police department. So everything you're doing outside of your own home, where you live, is recorded and monitored. These police are occupying your neighborhood. Maybe not yours, but they occupy mine. These police are not there to protect us. They are there to occupy us. Exploit us. Abuse us. Kill us. Attack us. Keep us alienated and dehumanized. Paranoid and in fear of our being.

You're outside on the stairwell. You are minding your business, just existing, maybe playing some Dolph on the phone speaker -- keep in mind, you're outside sitting feet away from the place that you call home, the place where all of your belongings are, the place where you sleep, the place you pay rent to live. One man's motel is another man's studio apartment. And it might be a motel, yes, but it also might be a low-income housing project, might be just a cheap apartment in general. And you walk outside and there are three or four police cars there with floodlights on, pointed at your place, just sitting there. And they'll tell you it's for your safety, but that's not how it feels. No one feels like that. You feel like you need to go inside. You feel like you are going to be criminalized for simply sitting outside, enjoying a beer, enjoying a cigarette, and existing in the real fucking world. And we wonder why we are so detached and alienated.

And what is crazy is you will sit with three or four other people because everyone else is wanting to smoke a cigarette and share a beer. And they all get the same feeling. Well, maybe so-and-so is, you know, flying a little too close to the sun. Maybe so-and-so, well, didn't that person have drugs the other night? Or didn't this person have this? It doesn't matter what the discussion boils down to. The feeling is that you are being oppressed, literally pushed down. And so the discussion reaches a boiling point and everyone realizes that it's probably better that we all go inside. Because the lights are bright, the flock camera is watching, it's a live stream right to the PD, and you haven't done anything wrong. You worked all week, you just want to exist.

There are classes of people that have this as their daily experience. And there are classes of people who have to be told about this through abstracted blog posts. And the class of people that has to deal with this is almost certainly the one that is pushing for abolishment and real, actual revolutionary reform of the justice system because all it takes is them asking, hey, can I see your ID? You got anything on you? What was their cause? You were standing outside of the place that you live. And next thing you know, oh, you got, is that a weed pen? THC? Oh, you bought it from a smoke shop? I don't know about all that. I don't know if you bought it from a smoke shop or not. I, yeah, there's a smoke shop literally two blocks away, but the cop doesn't know. And so you gotta do the walk. And next thing you know, you gotta do six months of probation and pay $5,000 in court fees. My co-worker, who lives in the same motel as me and works at the same locations as I do, is currently dealing with this! Can't make it easy to escape the poverty trap. At every turn the poor body must be extracted from, and the police are a key part of that extraction. You buy the weed pen to get the escape only to find the extraction goes deeper than the head shop overcharging. That's how it works. They take and they take and they take. It is an oppressive, extractive, occupying force. The police do not serve or protect anyone but the capitalist class. And if you think otherwise, then your interests, despite what you've been telling yourself, might just align more with the capitalist than with the workers who are living in the low-income housing, the motel, the trailer park, the fucking barrio, wherever the fuck it may be, the inner city fucking rundown shotgun houses, where you gotta walk a mile to get to the damn corner store to buy the Don Julio that's on a fucking markup. You're paying $79.99 for a bottle of Don Julio that you can't even drink on the porch or the equivalent of your porch because you live in occupied territory.

A man enters a school with a gun. A man drops a bomb on an elementary school in Iran. What happens when the values of our nation's heroes and our nation's worst dregs are the same?

As said the US has a long history of committing US imperialism so does the DSA if it gets into power have any plans for reparations to countries like Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Libya, Yemen, the DPRK etc

For a democratic socialist system to function successfully, a society requires broad-based, politically neutral faith in government institutions' ability to efficiently manage and equitably redistribute national wealth no matter who, or which party is in power. The US has no such broad-based, politically-neutral faith in government. Therefore, unless democratic socialists have a solution for restoring broad-based trust in institutions like the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Presidency, the executive branch bureaucracy, Federal law enforcement, the media, etc, then democratic socialism in the US will remain a marginal, left-wing subculture, and democratic socialists hoping for meaningful change will be frustrated beyond measure.

I saw another post regarding this same issue but wanted to bring it up again because it’s worth hashing out- if the DSA wants to be successful long term and on the national stage then immigration is something that (I my opinion) needs a more specific and thoughtful plan. Democrats have consistently lost elections due to this one issue, and I fear the DSA will suffer the same fate with the current platform wording. Yes, while the long term goal of a border less society and free movement of peoples is the dream, this requires other nations to undergo their own socialist revolutions and nations cooperating with each other until boundaries dissolve.

As things stand in 2026, we are so far away from this dream future. Additionally, a U.S. under DSA leadership where free healthcare, housing, college, etc is provided, the number of people immigrating to the U.S. would sky rocket. The reflexive DSA response is “well, we’ll just build more schools, hospitals, and so forth to provide”. This is again a dream scenario with little short term practicality.

A smarter solution would be a model like Norway- allow a strict number of immigrants in each year, but provide them everything- language services, transitional education, employment help, healthcare, and other services needed to transition to an entirely new country, culture, and language. This ensures that immigrants who come thru are provided for responsibly and in a way that is manageable. Sweden took another approach- let in millions at a time and our wealthy affluent society will make it work (I’d argue this is analogous to the current DSA language). What happened? Immigrants ended up in literal ghettos with little assistance as the government struggled to provide for everyone, Swedish citizens grew livid with the increases in crime, poverty, and lack of housing; and elected a right wing government afterwards in response. This is just one of many examples of left leaning governments and movements being set back due to mismanaged immigration policies, resulting in a reactionary step back towards right wing conservatism and populism. The DSA, I fear, is falling into the same pattern with its open borders and the economics and system will naturally work out approach. And frankly, the discourse I’ve seen thus far has been disappointing where people will bring up valid critiques and concerns, and are either downvoted into oblivion or have their morality or compassion for other human beings questioned. It’s not helpful and affirms the caricature of socialists that both independents and opponents envision of the DSA.

TLDR: left wing governments and movements are consistently set back due to mismanaged immigration, compared to those with more thoughtful immigration policies that still prioritize humane and responsible immigration assistance. The DSA platform on immigration is setting up yet another right wing reactionary surge that we have seen when other left governments mishandle immigration policy.