By admin 
Amid the corporate carpeting and industrial artwork of McCormick Place, the Democratic Socialists of America spent a rainy weekend preparing their next steps for taking over the Democratic Party and taking down capitalism.
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The “DSA Merch” table had $30 T-shirts and $45 sweatshirts with roses and Green New Deal slogans. A table from a local socialist bookstore stocked Palestinian poetry collections, Black Panthers histories, “The Communist Manifesto” and a children’s book called “Prisons Must Fall.”
The attendees at the lakefront convention center called one another comrades. A pamphlet with a sketched red fist laid out the group’s program, including “a future without capitalism,” where “food, education, energy, medicine and transportation aren’t for-profit businesses; they are common goods and utilities.” It encouraged supporters to dream of a world where they don’t have to worry about paying rent or loans and canembrace “a socialist day off.” It pitched a 32-hour workweek, universal healthcare, reparations for slavery, and “steps towards fully abolishing the police and prison system.”
It said the DSA wants to “replace the president and Supreme Court with an executive judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress,” and it wants that Congress to be an expanded House of Representatives with an abolished Senate — a position DSA co-chair Megan Romer stuck by in a recent Fox News interview that went viral.
The DSA has taken a strategic approach to growing its power within the Democratic Party, picking off two House incumbents already this year and potentially more this month. As the group’s summit in Chicago made clear, its members see this as only the beginning of a fight against both Republicans and Democrats alike.
A recent CNN poll found that one-third of Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents identify as democratic socialists. Zohran Mamdani, a proud DSA member, is mayor of the nation’s largest city; Francesca Hong is running strong in this month’s primary for governor in Wisconsin; and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is widely discussed as a potential candidate for president in 2028.
That’s left many non-DSA Democrats uncomfortable, both for how they’re being chased from power and for being told they need to accept a hard-left swing. Republicans are eager to tie Democrats in close races to the most maximalist parts of the DSA agenda.
“We’re not knocking doors and saying, ‘Hey, would you like to abolish the Senate this year?’” said Ashik Siddique, another DSA co-chair who noted to CNN that at 38, he’s the oldest member of the group’s leadership. “I don’t think we say anywhere here, ‘These are the promises we’re making that we’re going to do.’ It really is about helping people envision what a different and better society would be, and then what it would take to get there.”
The DSA’s leadership committees barred reporters from speaking to most attendees inside the convention hall beyond a selected group of speakers — out of concern, according to spokesperson Priscilla Yeverino, that many attendees are not fully briefed on the group’s history and electoral goals. Content creators who were members of the DSA in good standing were given free rein. Name badges were printed with just first names and initials of last names. Volunteers stood outside rooms where organizers were being trained.
Siddique announced that the group is now the largest socialist organization in American history, at 120,000 members nationwide, past the Eugene Debs-era high of 118,000 Socialist Party members. Siddique added he was conflicted about the symbolism of happening to pass that mark on July Fourth, worried about seeming too nationalistic by mixing their success with Independence Day pride.
CNN’s poll found that Democrats identifying as democratic socialists are more likely to hold favorable views of the Democratic Party and its congressional leaders, while also wanting the party to move left on policy issues. But at the core of DSA thinking is the conviction not only that its members are right, but that hundreds of millions of people around the world already agree with them — and that the movement has failed to prevail only because corruption, money and powerful interests, abetted by those who acquiesce, have kept it down.
“The Republicans are in on it, the Democratic Party is asleep at the wheel, and both are funded by the same criminal class of billionaires and war profiteers,” the program declared.
‘We are connecting with folks’
For all these big dreams and high-profile primary wins, only about 600 people came to the summit, with another 300 for the attached Young DSA gathering for youth and students.
“And yet everybody’s talking about us,” Chris Rabb, a Pennsylvania state legislator who won a primary for a US House seat in May, told CNN with a smile as he arrived. With a safe general election in November, Rabb is campaigning for other democratic socialists around the country.
“We’re beating establishment candidates,” he said. “We are connecting with folks who don’t necessarily identify as democratic socialists in ways that are very impressive and strategic and intentional and inclusive that a lot of people are paying attention to. Because if the Democratic Party knew how to do this, things would be a lot different.”
Rare was the attendee over 30. Even rarer was the attendee over 40. Rarer still was the attendee spotted who was Black.
Rabb, who is Black, said he is concerned about the lack of diversity in the DSA but believes that will change with more outreach, since “the very power and legacy of this movement in this country is born out of Black progressive movements, Black radical traditions of any organization will have an understanding for its importance.”
Siddique told CNN that he shares concerns about the racial makeup of the group, which he attributed in part to structural racism in America and in part to an organization that was founded in 1982 but has only recently started to grow as a mainstream force.
Most of the time, DSA members speak in generalities about building community and the working class. This is not just deliberate but stressed: Leading a session on speaking to the media, Yeverino, the spokesperson, encouraged activists to learn to pivot from uncomfortable questions and give the answers they wanted.
“This is probably why you’re frustrated with a lot of politicians. But it works!” she told them. (She also urged members to be concise and exact in their press releases for added appeal: “We are disciplined and militant — also when it comes to grammar and getting facts right.”)
The group has neither interest nor patience for Democrats across the country who worry the DSA is pulling the party so far left that it makes winning elections harder.
“A lot of the pundits, a lot of the media, likes to say about these independent voters, swing voters, as if they’re in the middle,” said Gabriel Sanchez, a Georgia state representative who was one of the group’s approved speakers. “‘Independent voters,’ all that means is that they don’t identify with other Democrats or Republicans.”
Even with the many printed copies of the DSA program, members were divided over how much to stand by it.
“I’m going to fight like hell to make it happen,” said Mitch Green, a Portland, Oregon, city councilman. “I mean, I think none of this is easy. And these are big swings. And I think it’s important for an organization like ours to aspire to do big things.”
Diana Moreno, who earlier this year won the special election for the New York State Assembly seat Mamdani vacated to move to Gracie Mansion, said non-DSA Democrats should pay attention to how the group is whipping up support. Democrats, she argued, are “out of touch and losing primaries, and with a base that’s deeply angry at their inability or unwillingness to fight against the far right.”
To Moreno, democratic socialism “means healthcare, that means housing, that means childcare. That is the responsibility of government to actually guarantee for its citizens because it’s something that we need to live.”
Clear unity on one issue: Israel
Beyond a general push to end wars, the foreign policy issue discussed in most detail was opposition to Israel.
“The weight of our organization now has affirmed an anti-Zionist position, that affirms that ‘from the river to the sea’ in present-day Israel and Palestine, people should have equal rights,” Siddique said. “We haven’t affirmed a position on one state vs. two states.”
Cutting off all arms was a baseline demand. “Zionists” was used interchangeably with “billionaire class.” There were keffiyehs in many colors and sizes — a variety of scarf knots, one turned into a halter, one turned into a sarong, another repurposed into a tote bag, some used as shawls to protect against McCormick Place’s central air-conditioning, some paired with cut-off shorts.
“Cuban Americans are harder to appeal to with socialism because they have their own version of Zionism,” one attendee was overheard telling another.
At one of the panels, Morales touted working on a bill she picked up from Mamdani in the New York State Assembly that would strip tax-exempt status from groups that do work deemed detrimental to Palestinians.
At another point, when an Ithaca, New York, council member was recalling being warned about participating in Palestinian solidarity rallies the day after Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, an audience member loudly giggled multiple times.
Regarding a candidate who doesn’t describe the war in Gaza as genocide, Morales told CNN, “I don’t know if I would trust their judgment in other issues, because I think to me it’s blatant and clear that what’s happening in Palestine and has been happening for now years is considered a genocide.”
Israel denies that its war in Gaza following the October 7 attack constitutes a genocide.
Looking to Ocasio-Cortez in 2028
What’s next for the DSA is obvious in the minds of many. That’s why the group placed invitations for an event at a funky bar on the chairs of the rooms being used for panels: “DSA for AOC.”
Ocasio-Cortez was DSA’s first big victory when she won her primary in 2018 — Bernie Sanders, her political godfather, is a democratic socialist but not a DSA member. In 2024, DSA’s national political committee threatened to pull its endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez because it accused her of not doing enough to oppose Israel.
Now, DSA members are looking for her to be their next big hope.
“The only position, the only position in the f**king world that can actually fight fascism, that can actually fight the climate catastrophe, is the presidency of the United States, and so raise your hand if you are ready to take on that fight these next two years, to go to the f**king top,” said Jeremy Cohan, a member of the New York City DSA chapter’s steering committee, exhorting the crowd at the bar.
Cohan told those listening they need a candidate who was all in for “Medicare for All,” a $25 minimum wage, free college, a Green New Deal, ending arms sales to Israel and calling Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide.
As CNN has previously reported, Ocasio-Cortez is looking at running, but is adamant she will do so only if she thinks she can win rather than to stage a protest candidacy. Multiple members that night and over the weekend said they’re not sure anyone could be a second choice, but whoever it is would have to sign on to at least most of their program, which they expect to expand by the time they meet for a full convention next year.
A spokeswoman for Ocasio-Cortez did not respond over the weekend when asked by CNN whether she would have anything to say to DSA members who want her to run.
“Beyond just the question of yes or no, do we endorse AOC, how do we do it, how do we use it to keep building our own organization?” Siddique said.
Another DSA organizer stood up when he finished. “Nobody’s getting out of here without some good ol’ fashioned calls to action,” she said, clapping her hands between words.
“Anybody here know how to win a presidential campaign?” she said.
No one raised a hand. Prepared organizers in the crowd started holding up QR codes on their phones for others to scan. This, they said, was how it’s going to start.
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Rain started falling. They cheered for the end and rushed inside.