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(They should be called the DPSA--the Democratic Party Socialists of
America.)
NY Times, April 20, 2018
‘Yes, I’m Running as a Socialist.’ Why Candidates Are Embracing the
Label in 2018
By FARAH STOCKMAN
HOUSTON — There was no question on primary night in Texas last month
that Franklin Bynum would win the Democratic nomination to become a
criminal court judge in Houston. The 34-year-old defense attorney had no
challengers.
But for his supporters who packed into a Mexican restaurant that
evening, there was still something impressive to celebrate. Many in the
crowd were members of the Democratic Socialists of America, or D.S.A., a
group that has experienced an enormous surge of interest since the
election of President Trump, even in conservative states. And Mr. Bynum
was one of their own — a socialist who, along with at least 16 others,
appeared on the ballot in primary races across the state of Texas.
“Yes, I’m running as a socialist,” Mr. Bynum said. “I’m a far-left
candidate. What I’m trying to do is be a Democrat who actually stands
for something, and tells people, ‘Here’s how we are going to materially
improve conditions in your life.’”
Rather than shy away from being called a socialist, a word conservatives
have long wielded as a slur, candidates like Mr. Bynum are embracing the
label. He is among dozens of D.S.A. members running in this fall’s
midterms for offices across the country at nearly every level. In
Hawaii, Kaniela Ing, a state representative, is running for Congress.
Gayle McLaughlin, a former mayor of Richmond, Calif., is running to be
the state’s lieutenant governor. In Tennessee, Dennis Prater, an adjunct
professor at East Tennessee State University, is running to be a county
commissioner.
Supporters, many of them millennials, say they are drawn by D.S.A.’s
promise to combat income inequality, which they believe is tainting
every facet of American life, from the criminal justice system to
medical care to politics. They argue that capitalism has let them down,
saddling them with student debt, high rent and uncertain job prospects.
And they have been frustrated by the Democratic Party, which they say
has lost touch with working people.
Outrage over rising inequality has simmered for years, erupting into the
Occupy Wall Street movement and the groundswell of support for Senator
Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist. But it was the
election of Mr. Trump that convinced tens of thousands that both parties
were broken and that the country was in need of a radical fix.
Since November 2016, D.S.A.’s membership has increased from about 5,000
to 35,000 nationwide. The number of local groups has grown from 40 to
181, including 10 in Texas. Houston’s once-dormant chapter now has
nearly 300 members.
“We want to see money stop controlling everything. That includes
politics,” said Amy Zachmeyer, 34, a union organizer who helped revive
the moribund Houston chapter. “That just resonates with millennials who
are making less money than their parents did, are less able to buy a
home and drowning in student debt.”
Ms. Zachmeyer, who pays about $1,000 a month in student loans, says that
financial burden helped convince her to become a socialist.
Studies suggest that young people with few memories of the Cold War
embrace socialism far more than older people do. A 2016 survey of 18- to
29-year-olds by Harvard’s Institute of Politics found that 16 percent
identified as socialists, while 33 percent supported socialism. Only 42
percent supported capitalism, while a majority — 51 percent — said they
did not.
Those results surprised John Della Volpe, the institute’s director of
polling, so much that he thought they might be a mistake. He conducted a
new study, this time of the general population, and got the same result.
Supporters of Mr. Bynum signed up for a campaign newsletter. “What I’m
trying to do is be a Democrat who actually stands for something, and
tells people, ‘Here’s how we are going to materially improve conditions
in your life,’” Mr. Bynum said. Credit Todd Spoth for The New York Times
“The only group that expressed net positive support for capitalism were
people over 50 years old,” he said. “The largest generation of Americans
in history — millennials — have lost confidence. They are interested in
finding a better way.”
Many socialist candidates sound less like revolutionaries and more like
traditional Democrats who seek a return to policies in the mold of
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. They want single-payer
health care, a higher minimum wage, and greater protections for unions.
But others advocate more extreme changes, such as abolishing the prison
system. In the case of Mr. Bynum, he wants an end to a cash bail system
that requires people accused of crimes, even minor offenses, to pay
money to be released from jail before trial.
Some local Democratic Party leaders worry that talking openly about
being a socialist is only going to make it harder to defeat Republican
opponents. And it is unclear how many older voters, who are more likely
to vote in midterm cycles, could be turned off by the idea of voting for
a socialist.
D.S.A., despite its criticism of the Democratic Party, does not identify
itself as a third party. Instead, many members work within the party’s
progressive wing to support their goals.
“Diversity helps the party,” said Christine Pelosi, a California member
of the Democratic National Committee who has focused on making the party
more connected to grass-roots activists. “I welcome their constructive
criticism.”
Many Democrats have begun to ask socialists for their support and adopt
some of the D.S.A.’s platform on health care and pay.
In Pittsburgh, eight Democrats in this year’s midterm cycle sought the
endorsement of the local D.S.A. chapter.
“People are more willing to come out and say ‘I’m a Democratic socialist
running,’” said Jorge Roman-Romero, 24, who helps lead a new D.S.A.
chapter in Tulsa, Okla., where six Democratic candidates — four of whom
were willing to run as Democratic socialists — sought the group’s
endorsement. “It’s not a liability to say that anymore.”
But others, especially among the influx of new members, want to keep
their distance from the Democratic Party, which they see as hopelessly
compromised by corporate donations.
“The new, younger people are much more willing to say ‘We’re not going
to tie ourselves to the Democratic Party,’” said Frances Reade, 37, an
education researcher who joined the East Bay D.S.A. chapter in
California on Mr. Trump’s Inauguration Day. “At the same time, we’re
nowhere near being able to launch a third party.”
Ms. Reade, who made campaign calls for Hillary Clinton in 2016, said she
joined D.S.A. after experiencing a “profound disillusionment with the
Democratic Party” in the wake of Mr. Trump’s victory. The organization
gave her an outlet to pour her energy into: door-knocking in a “Medicare
for All” campaign, and discussing political texts in free evening
classes put on by members of the group. The classes, known as socialist
school, included readings by Karl Marx and articles in Jacobin, a
popular new socialist magazine. Ms. Reade has become a class instructor
and vice chairwoman at the East Bay chapter, which has about 1,000 members.
“If, after the election, I had tried to join the Democratic Party, what
would I have done?” she asked. “There’s no night school to learn more
about ideas. The Democratic Party is essentially a fund-raising apparatus.”
Acceptance of socialism today still falls far short of its heyday in the
1910s and 1920s, when the Socialist Party of America had over 113,000
members and more than 1,000 elected officials, including two members of
Congress, according to Jack Ross, author of “The Socialist Party of
America: A Complete History.”
By the 1950s, socialism was widely seen as antithetical to the American
way of life. In 1982, Michael Harrington, author of “The Other America,”
a seminal book about poverty, helped found the Democratic Socialists of
America, which aimed to realign the Democratic Party toward increased
protections for unions and the poor. But the group never gained much
traction, until now.
Across the country, socialists are focusing on hyperlocal issues. In
Cincinnati, activists helped save the wing of a public library from
privatization. In Austin, they pushed to pass what has been called the
first mandatory paid sick leave requirement in the South.
“There’s a lot of power in getting people to come together and do things
together,” said Bryan LaVergne, 22, a biomedical researcher in Houston
who became a socialist after a drug therapy he had been working on was
purchased by a private company that increased the price.
“Houston is incredibly atomizing,” Mr. LaVergne said. “We sit in our
cars, drive to our suburbs, don’t know our neighbors. We’re countering
that.”
Mr. Bynum, the candidate for judge in Houston, approaches politics in
that same spirit. He collected nearly all of the signatures required for
his campaign outside the county jail, from family members of defendants
who could not afford to post bail. He has forsworn donations from
lawyers practicing before the court that he is running for, and intends
to staff a table outside the jail during the campaign, with the help of
D.S.A. volunteers.
He wants his campaign to highlight injustices in Harris County, where
historically roughly 40 percent of defendants in misdemeanor court were
kept in jail because they could not pay bail.
Mr. Bynum, an immigration expert in the county’s public defender’s
office, is not the first to raise issues of how unfair Harris County’s
bail system is to the poor. Other Democrats have fought for the same
cause. The system of cash bail is now in dispute in a federal court.
But the Harris County Democratic Party is struggling to figure out what
to make of Mr. Bynum, who they say stands a good chance of being
elected, along with other Democrats on the local ballot in November. Mr.
Bynum’s Republican opponent, Dan Simons, a former prosecutor backed by
religious conservatives, is already fund-raising under the slogan
“Reject socialism.”
“We cannot afford to have Democrats, let alone Democratic Socialists,
take over our county and state,” he wrote on Facebook.
Gerald Birnberg, a former chairman of the Harris County Democratic
Party, has discouraged Mr. Bynum from talking about socialism or bail
reform on the campaign trail. Socialism is too taboo in Texas, he said.
And although bail reform is important, he said, “it’s not an issue that
inspires voters in Harris County.”
The way to win in November, Mr. Birnberg advised, was simply to turn out
Democrats. To do that, the county Democratic Party needed money to pay
for mailings and voters lists. In a meeting, Mr. Birnberg, a 71-year-old
lawyer, asked Mr. Bynum to contribute $20,000 to the effort.
Mr. Bynum made no promises.
“If I have the money, I will give them money because I can’t organize a
get-out-the-vote campaign by myself,” Mr. Bynum said. “But I am focused
more on building a movement than I am on helping Democrats get elected.
My priority is reaching people who aren’t being spoken to at all.”
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