-----Original Message----- From: Alex LoCascio <alexlocascio at juno.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>DSA basically sees itself as a liberal pressure group within the
>Democratic Party. Their recruitment literature is specific about this.
>They're part of that whole Dissent/In These Times clique that worships
>the likes of Irving Howe and Michael Harrington. If I'm not mistaken,
>they're the spineless wussies who decided to pooh-pooh the Sandinistas
>when it was convenient for putative "leftists" to do so.
DSA without question has generally had a pragmatic orientation to working to elect the most leftwing Dems possible, with left Dems like Ron Dellums and Major Owens being members of DSA. The organization has also had many people who support third party politics as well. The latter have probably been growing in recent years. It's also worth remembering that DSA was formed out of the merger of Harrington's Socialist Party faction, DSOC, and the New American Movement which included a broad range of New Left activists - it has never been as uniform as a lot of DSA's left critics have made it out to be.
As for DSA attacking the Sandinistas, this is just false and nasty propaganda. While there are no doubt some people in DSA who might have criticized the Sandinista (and with 10,000 members, this is hardly surprising), DSA chapters did a lot of solidarity work against the Contras. In fact, as I understand it, DSA helped the Sandinistas join the Socialist International of which DSA is one of the two American affiliates, the other one being Social Democrats USA.
--Nathan Newman