I know many, if not most, of us in the DSA are extremely skeptical of the possibility of becoming influential in, much less taking over, the corporate-run Democratic Party. But a tipping point could theoretically be reached when, in order to maintain their power in the organization, the corporatists will have to make serious concessions to the progressive and Democratic Socialist wing of the party if our electoral victories mean we are impossible to ignore. If this happens, it may be only a matter of time (and effort) before they have to relinquish their power in the party. I know you all will probably say I am being extremely naïve here, but there is a distortion that happens in our thinking when confronted with a powerful entity in which their power seems much more immovable and entrenched than it really is or has to be. The Democratic Party has only become a capitalist-dominated organization to the extent that Democrats have let it become so, and it only remains so to the extent that we see it as as an unchanging and immutable force. The Democratic party has always styled itself as primarily a party of working people, and this is still the base of the party which ultimately concedes power to the party leaders. Any party will only ever really consist of its rank and file members, who make up the vast majority of its membership, not its apparatchiks and elite leadership, whose interests are antithetical to those of the majority. In essence, the problem confronting us in regards to the Democratic Party is not different from the one confronting us in regards to capitalism itself- revolution depends on the ability of the proletariat to envision change and embody their own inherent power. Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony is that it is not something inherent to the capitalist class but something given to it by the workers in their own assumptions about what is possible to change. If we don’t learn from this, we will never bring about true revolution, either in the party or in our society in general. I don’t see a future in being relegated to an obscure, small monolithic third-party, at least not in a two-party non-parliamentary system like ours currently is. The only way to change that two-party dominance in our system is by actually winning elections to be able to legislate democratic reform, something which in our winner-take-all system only happens through one of the two parties. I don’t see the possibility or the desirability of a successful armed insurrection in which this country’s deepest beliefs in the democratic, peaceful transfer of power are themselves forcibly overthrown. If all this makes me a believer in realignment, so be it- if it makes me a pragmatist, all the better.

To my knowledge r/demsocialists is the official DSA subreddit and the fact this subreddit claims to be the DSA subreddit I think is somewhat misleading. I suggest the new moderation try to clarify this and link to the official subreddit.

Alert the Hard Rick Metropolitan Park casino project casino is up for a vote. The Ferry point Ballys casino is also on the agenda write to the commissioners about both and be ready to testify about both.:

(1)designcommission@cityhall.nyc.gov review the plan and please email the public design commission on input and flaws in their plan. Also your overall opposition to a casino. (Get friends family to email)
(2)RSVP to come in person since the opposition is mobilizing No Casino Press Conference @ 10/20 Public Design Commission Meeting · Luma
https://luma.com/jcdj6hnq

(3)getting it out to as many community members is important. sign up to testify via Google teams or in person preferably in person these are the instructions for testifying you must sign up ahead of time to be allowed to testify :
https://www.nyc.gov/site/designcommission/design-review/testimony/public-testimony.page

All of this and common decency

Section 5: The Role of Electoral Politics

The fundamental task of democratic socialists is to build anti-corporate social movements capable of winning reforms that empower people.

As someone living in a rural area myself, I find the uniformly right wing nature of politics here unfortunate, and I also don't see the left really trying to gain support in rural parts of the US (unless you count the few centrist or center-right Democrats who run and lose here)

The typical political narrative here is mostly about stopping the govt from interfering in our lives, and, bizarrely, cracking down on crime, which there is very little of here, but the republicans in office keep insisting it is increasing (it is actually decreasing).

Distrust of large corporations is a thing here just like it is in more liberal places, and I see no reason why a leftist argument about limiting the power of government and corporations to oppress the people could not appeal to people here, but I don't feel like leftism is really a thing here.

So I'm curious if anyone has ideas for how this could be changed? I think the fact that leftism is mostly associated with urban centers helps to maintain a sense in the more rural parts of the country that leftists are some hostile "other", and overcoming this geographic divide would lead to a rapid increase in overall national support for leftists.

EDIT: I'm trying to start a general discussion of how to advance leftism in rural areas, not to ask others to do work for me.

Jacob Crosse
16 hours ago

On Monday, federal agents searched the Washington home of Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar and confiscated her phone, her personal computers, her notebooks and passport.

The search, conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is the opening move in an effort by the Trump administration to strip a sitting member of Congress of her citizenship and deport her.

The immigration Gestapo has been deployed against an elected representative over paperwork filed when she was a child three weeks before an election in which she is all but certain to win a fifth term. The first Somali elected to Congress, Omar won her last two elections with 74 percent of the vote and her August primary with 81 percent.
The Trump administration is asserting the power to overturn the election and drive a political opponent out of Congress and out of the country.

This is an attack on democratic rights that must be opposed by the entire working class.

To obtain a search warrant, prosecutors must persuade a judge that there is probable cause to believe a crime was committed and that evidence of it will be found. What is this supposed crime?

Investigators working for Trump claim that Omar or her late father misstated her age by one year on the paperwork through which she became a citizen in 2000, when she was 17. Her father died in 2020. The same allegation was examined in 2019 and again under the Biden administration, and both reviews found insufficient evidence to proceed.
Denaturalization cases ordinarily proceed as civil lawsuits based on the government’s own records. Former immigration officials told Reuters that it is “extremely unusual for them to involve search warrants.” No raid was needed to read a 26-year-old immigration file. The administration is searching for a basis to impose the punishment Trump has repeatedly demanded, deportation.

On the evening of October 12, hours after the raid, Trump took the stage at a campaign rally in Youngstown, Ohio and delivered a fascist diatribe against Omar. “She’s a disaster,” he said. “She comes in from a country without laws, without police, without military. All they do is shoot each other, and she comes into our country and she says, ‘I have a constitutional right.’” The crowd answered with chants of “deport.”

On the same day his administration raided her home, the president mocked the idea that a Somali-born member of Congress had constitutional rights at all.
Omar is a member of the Democratic Party, and the Socialist Equality Party has fundamental political differences with her politics. But she is being targeted for definite political reasons.

Omar came to the United States as a child refugee from the civil war in Somalia and has represented Minneapolis in Congress since 2019. She was an original member of the “Squad” of four “progressive” Democratic women first elected to Congress in 2018, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressely and Rashida Tlaib.

Omar and Tlaib are in the crosshairs of the Trump administration due to their characterization of Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide. Omar has also called Trump’s war against Iran an “unlawful operation” that “must end immediately.” In January, at a town hall in her district, she declared, “We must abolish ICE for good.”

The persecution of Omar is also bound up with a fascistic and racist campaign against Somali immigrants. At a cabinet meeting last December, Trump called Somali immigrants “garbage,” and said, “Their country stinks.” That month, ICE launched Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, which spread across Minnesota and produced more than 3,000 ICE abductions, along with the murders of US citizens Renée Good and Alex Pretti.
The administration has ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Somalis and opened a review of naturalization cases from Somalia and 18 other countries for possible denaturalization. On October 8, four days before the raid on Omar’s home, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Minnesota “is being taken over by Somali Immigrants,” and urged, “Fight back Minnesota, fight back!”

The fusion of anti-immigrant agitation with the persecution of left-wing opposition has a long history in the United States.
Between 1917 and 1921, as the United States entered the First World War and the ruling class reacted with fear to the Russian Revolution, the American state waged a war against democratic rights at home.
Victor Berger, the Socialist Party congressman from Milwaukee and himself an immigrant, was convicted under the Espionage Act for opposing the war. On November 10, 1919, the House voted 311 to 1 to bar him from his seat. His constituents elected him again, and on January 10, 1920, the House excluded him again, 330 to 6.

The anarchist Emma Goldman’s citizenship derived from her marriage to Jacob Kershner, and in 1908 the government revoked his naturalization. When it moved to deport her in 1919, officials ruled that the revocation of her husband’s citizenship had annulled hers as well. On December 21, 1919, Goldman and 248 others were put aboard the Buford, the “Soviet Ark,” and deported to Russia. J. Edgar Hoover, then 24, was on board to see them off.

This was part of a broader assault on all political opposition. Opponents of the war were jailed under the Espionage Act, socialist newspapers were barred from the mails, and the Immigration Act of 1918 authorized the deportation of immigrant anarchists, socialists and labor organizers. Joe Hill, singer, song writer and labor activist, was executed at the Sugar House Prison in Utah in 1915 after being framed for murder. Frank Little, like Hill a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), was brutally lynched by Pinkertons in Butte, Montana in 1917.

The lesson of that period is that the attack on immigrants and the attack on left-wing politics form a single operation. Opposition to war and exploitation is branded the work of foreigners, and foreign birth is made grounds for silencing it.

In the current situation, the stakes extend far beyond one Democratic Party congresswoman.

Some 26 million naturalized citizens live in the United States, according to the Congressional Research Service. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse counted at least 105 civil denaturalization suits in the first seven months of 2026, including 50 in July alone. In the entire period from 2008 through 2025, it counted 125.
The attack on Omar is also part of a conspiracy against the elections themselves. On October 15, the Justice Department sued California to block the counting of mail ballots from more than 20,000 registered voters it claims are likely noncitizens. A similar claim of nearly 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s rolls collapsed when the state’s review did not establish a single one.

The aim is not to purge the rolls of a handful of ineligible voters. The administration is laying the basis for declaring the results of the November 3 election fraudulent, for throwing out ballots in states it does not control, and for treating any outcome it rejects as the product of “alien” voting.

The response of the Democratic Party establishment is virtual silence.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Democrat and fellow “Squad” member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does not have so much as a press release on her congressional web site denouncing the fascistic campaign against Omar. While Ocasio-Cortez’s Instagram is filled with daily updates on the congresswoman's’ efforts to freeze her eggs, there is nothing about ICE and the Trump administration’s attempt to denaturalize and deport her colleague.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, an ardent supporter of the genocide in Gaza, has said nothing during the more than five days since Omar’s home was raided.

The Democrats’ sharpest attacks on Trump are reserved for his policy toward Russia, not for his assault on democratic rights. What they fear is not dictatorship, but a movement of the working class they cannot control.

A party that answers the persecution of one of its own office-holders with nothing more than a mildly worded press release will not defend the rights of workers.

Trump is the personification of a financial oligarchy that confronts a deepening economic and geo-political crisis. It is waging an escalating global war and faces growing resistance from the working class at home.

The unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of a small group of billionaires is incompatible with democratic forms of rule, and the ruling class is turning to dictatorship. As was the case a century ago, the scapegoating of immigrants serves to divide the working class and prepare repression against every form of opposition.

The defense of the democratic rights is a class question.

Native-born and immigrant workers must unite in rank-and-file committees in every workplace and neighborhood to oppose the raids, deportations and denaturalizations.

This fight must be connected to the struggle against war, the capitalist oligarchy and the system that give rise to them.

-The original posting of this article in full may be accessed here:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/10/17/qiqm-o17.html

The U.S. healthcare system costs significantly more than any other developed nation while leaving millions uninsured or underinsured. A persistent narrative suggests that guaranteeing universal, publicly funded healthcare would inevitably require broad tax hikes. However, fiscal analysis reveals an alternative reality: American taxpayers are already paying enough to fund comprehensive universal coverage. Whether approached through a conservative lens of cutting government waste, eliminating corporate cronyism, and enforcing free-market price transparency, or a progressive lens of securing healthcare as a baseline public right, the underlying arithmetic is the same. The root issue is not a funding deficit, but a fragmented, heavily bureaucratic system that inflates prices and diverts tax dollars away from direct patient care.
Direct expenditures on medically necessary care currently stand at roughly $4.49 trillion out of an overall national healthcare footprint exceeding $5.28 trillion. A substantial portion of this expense is driven by opaque, artificial price inflation. While U.S. hospitals incur approximately $1.5 trillion to $1.6 trillion in actual operating expenses for labor, facilities, and supplies, they generate between $4.5 trillion and $7.5 trillion in gross billed charges. Using internal "chargemaster" rate schedules, sticker prices are frequently marked up 300% to 500% over the actual cost of delivery, serving as an inflated baseline for insurer negotiations rather than reflecting true economic value. In turn, massive healthcare conglomerates absorb tens of billions of public dollars each year through government programs and contracts—such as UnitedHealth Group's more than $265 billion in lifetime federal prime obligations—without corresponding gains in consumer affordability or population health outcomes.

By comparison, peer nations provide universal coverage at a fraction of the cost. The United States spends over $14,775 per capita on healthcare, while the United Kingdom spends roughly $6,747. This divergence is driven primarily by administrative complexity and unconstrained pricing leverage. The multi-payer American billing system forces providers and insurers into protracted claims arbitrations, creating administrative waste that consumes nearly 25% of all domestic health spending. Peer nations systematically reduce these burdens by negotiating standardized reimbursement schedules and leveraging bulk purchasing power for prescription drugs, stripping out layers of non-clinical bureaucracy.

Federal fiscal data underscores the scale of existing public investment. In Fiscal Year 2025, the U.S. government collected $5.26 trillion in total revenues and spent approximately $7.01 trillion across all functions. The single largest component was $1.98 trillion allocated to public healthcare programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Health Administration. In effect, nearly 38% of all federal tax dollars collected are already dedicated to health coverage, yet these funds insure only about 40% of the population. The remaining 60% must secure private coverage, absorbing rising deductibles and out-of-pocket costs while their existing tax contributions already underwrite an inefficient delivery pipeline.

Applying peer-level administrative discipline demonstrates how far current resources could stretch. If the U.S. matched the UK’s National Health Service cost structure, covering all 340 million Americans would cost approximately $1.87 trillion annually—well beneath the $1.98 trillion the federal government already spends. Crucially, the U.S. does not need to accept the chronic underfunding or wait times that often challenge the NHS. If America simply froze per-person spending at its existing public rate of roughly $14,775 while eliminating bureaucratic churn, chargemaster markups, and pharmaceutical price-gouging, that same capital would support an exceptionally well-resourced system.

The United States could deliver world-class clinical capacity, shorter wait times, and comprehensive coverage without levying a single cent in new taxes. Simply put there is no benefit to American taxpayers with the insurance system when we could have better care, no insurance bill and also not have to pay a single cent more in taxes to get it. The people lobbying to keep the ludicrous system we have are the very same people profiting from your anguish.

Sources Used:
1. Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, "How does health spending in the U.S. compare to other countries?"
2. OECD Health Statistics / Health at a Glance, "Health expenditure per capita"
3. U.S. Department of the Treasury / Congressional Budget Office, "Federal Budget and Revenue Data for FY 2025"
4. American Hospital Association & CMS National Health Expenditure Data, "Hospital Expenditures, Operating Margins, and Gross Billed Charges"
5. USASpending.gov, "UnitedHealth Group Federal Prime Contracting and Sub-Award Obligations"
6. Annals of Internal Medicine / Health Affairs, "Health Care Administrative Costs in the United States and Canada: A Comprehensive Breakdown"

The DSA has Hakeem Jeffries by the balls and can hold up his Speakership. What demands should they make of him?

Someone is trying to tarnish the DSA in a very serious way. DSA people wouldn't do this.

I’m a student-journalist looking to cover some of Philly’s labor news for an assignment. If you or someone you know is currently on strike or involved in a Union, please reach out. I’d love to hear from you!

Denying foreign bots would be an endeavor, I personally don't believe in having a restricted Internet. The PRC Great Firewall prevents their citizens from engaging in social discourse with foreigners, then further they don't only collect all Internet data, they filter it then arrest, interrogate, intimidate, force confessions, and arrest people. That's not democratic at all. Explicit targeting of foreign bots could be a legal mechanism to stop foreign actors from influencing our nation. Foreign is harder in trying to stop because it risks impeding free thought, discussion, and organizing internationally.

Domestic is easier? Constitutional Amendment limiting the government from propagandizing in all forms of media that isn't a personal account?

Curious to hear other's thoughts.

I found this article illuminating and I haven’t seen it posted anywhere yet.

https://jacobin.com/2026/10/dsa-socialism-organization-workers-elections

It recounts the history of the DSA and how it compares to other socialist movements in the US, draws some parallels and identifies some differences that may be important in how the organization fares in the future.