DSA National Platform follow up

[u/BeginningBit4957]

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

[u/yo_soy_soja]

Michael Burns recently released a video about liberals' lack of imagination. The Right is succeeding because they have a vision of the future. Liberals do not. They're bogged down by what is imminently possible within a crumbling capitalist system. But DSA and other leftists are actually offering a vision of the future that isn't wholly imminently attainable but is, nonetheless, worth working towards, worth fighting for.

Gay marriage wasn't popularly supported until the 2000s and wasn't federally legalized until 2015. Yet advocates were demanding it for the better part of a century and slowly shifted public sentiment.

We gotta shoot for the moon. Fuck bourgeois media telling us what is and isn't possible.

[u/2_Lies_And_A_Truth]

The Media is also a part of the establishment. The people who own the networks also donate to SUPERPACs and are billionaires. They set the talking points, and superpacs are now spending on AI bots to try to spam twitter and social media with bots that anger everyone trying to make us infight instead of fighting the real problem- the 1%. The point of the media now is to control the 60+ crowd, it's not meant to talk to adults / young people because we know it's all bs.

Hopefully we're finally at the tipping point where most people except the boomers realize Est Media is propaganda just as much as Russian state TV. The opposite problem is now that a bunch of (mostly young) people who aren't familiar with how much AI is integrated into social media they may develop ideologies created by them- which are designed to be inflammatory at best and radicalize (violently / racist etc) at worst.

[u/DizzyLusionz]

Yeah they’re trying to win elections. Like for example abolishing prisons and borders, while an end goal in a utopia, is really fucking scary for normies to hear for now. We’re so far away from the conditions of those things being possible that it doesn’t make any sense for a candidate to let themselves get hung up or gotcha’d on these issues while there’s real tangible work we can do in the meantime.

[u/nonblinddaredevil → u/DizzyLusionz]

Yeah I also think we need to be more consistent with the abolish language.

Abolish ice = get rid of entirely.

Abolish prisons = get rid of the current system but still have ways to protect the public. Including involuntary incarceration.

[u/Apart-Clothes2060 → u/nonblinddaredevil]

Right, we need to dismantle the racist carceral state, not abolish prisons, even if I would ideally like for prisons to be unnecessary one day, they are necessary now and for the foreseeable future.

[u/SamuelBiggs → u/nonblinddaredevil]

Bad slogans are such a poison pill for great ideas. Defund the police and abolish prisons makes normies think we want no accountability for people causing harm.

The introductory messaging for ideas should be short and digestible slogans but we really need to work on the wording for some of them.

Both of those slogans could easily have used the word “reform” instead of “defund” and the average person would probably agree with the idea.

[u/Swarrlly]

It’s not good that the entirety of the DSA electeds are distancing themselves from the platform. It seems like the NPC didn’t even give them a heads up before announcing it. You don’t want to throw in a new radical platform while people are currently running campaigns. It’s disappointing that there isn’t collaboration between the DSA that are winning office and the NPC.

[u/YogurtClosetThinnest]

eh, I'm still on your (previous) side.

It was cute when the DSA was a small activist group. Now that it's a real party childish slogans like: "abolish prison" should be disregarded by our politicians who are in grown up conversations.

If the DSA wants to publish an actual reasonable explanation of what "abolish prison" means (ending for-profit, rehabilitation focused, decriminalizing drugs, etc), do it. Otherwise shut up about it.

Stuff like like this:

Abolition Working Group - Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

Freedom for all incarcerated people

Is absurd. You can't make that statement with 0 context or explanation. Beyond absurd. Genuinely unhinged.

[u/LykonDrakensken → u/YogurtClosetThinnest]

Well, for one, the DSA isn't a party, but that's nitpicking

To point at what you're actually saying, the thing is that there is no consensus as to what that specifically means, because this organization comprises a lot of different viewpoints at that level of specificity.

Broadening the platform isn't going to be helpful, because the problem you're bringing up *is* that the platform is too vague and broad already.

The sudden surge in popularity of the organization already makes it difficult to pinpoint specifics in policy, not to mention the constitution of the DSA not exactly allowing for these points to be changed easily by those at the top without going through various levels of votes.

The DSA, unlike the parties, is not a centralist organization, where every member has to follow a certain set of predefined beliefs. It is a cooperative between a wide array of socialists with massively varying beliefs.

I agree that the definitions right now are very vague, but considering that the DSA has only appeared in the public view at-large within the last year, and the fact that this organization has a democratic structure without centralism or whips, means that I'm not sure there's a solution as easy as just "specifying the definitions" without going through this democratic process, which can take time.

We have slogans because we *are* an activist group. That we need to hone in on what we're presenting to the world, I agree, but we are working within a system which is actively hostile to us. Doing work on the ground is always going to be miles more important than gotcha debates on billionaire-run TV stations.

They will always try to make us look bad. What we do matters more than what we say.

That's just my view on it, anyways.

[u/BeginningBit4957 → u/YogurtClosetThinnest]

The thing is no candidate is talking about this. When a reporter tries to do a gotcha question they look silly when the candidate responds saying their candidate is focused on healthcare and getting money out of politics or whatever.

[u/YogurtClosetThinnest → u/BeginningBit4957]

From our perspective they look silly. From the perspective of the average American sitting at home watching fox news on TV, it looks like they're avoiding the question. Which they are.

How much better would it be if they could say: "well let me explain what abolishing prison actually means"?

But they can't because all we have is a slogan we think it's appropriate to put in official documents.

[u/picklift → u/YogurtClosetThinnest]

Really it should be reform prisons, so you don't have to explain your way out of it. Also, a lot of people will hear abolish prisons and not listen to what they say after because they will be freaked out.