Democratic Socialists of America
The Democratic Socialists of America is a socialist political organization in the United States. It is the country's largest socialist organization, with more than 95,000 members as of January 2026. A big tent of socialists on the left wing of the political spectrum, the organization is primarily organized around the principles of democratic socialism, with its members active in electoral politics, labor organizing, and direct action campaigns. DSA, which is not a political party with a ballot line, has a decentralized structure in which local chapters and ideological caucuses have significant autonomy. The organization's largest chapter is in New York City, where the organization is also headquartered.
DSA was formed in 1982 when the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement merged. The merger was seen as a symbolic healing of the rift between the Old Left, represented by DSOC's social democrats and trade unionists, and the New Left, represented by NAM's activists who emerged from the social movements of the 1960s. Initially led by Michael Harrington, the organization functioned as a small advocacy group for its first three decades, continuing DSOC's strategy of "realignment" by working within the Democratic Party to push it to the left.
DSA was a minor political force until the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-identified democratic socialist, after which its membership swelled from about 6,000 members in 2015 to more than 90,000 in 2021. This growth gave DSA a much younger and more activist base, and shifted its strategy toward one centered on building an independent political force, though this remains a subject of internal debate. The organization's platform calls for reforms such as a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and free higher education, with a long-term aim of social ownership and democratic control of the economy. DSA's foreign policy is non-interventionist, strongly supporting spending cuts to the U.S. military and pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist causes.
DSA engages in electoral politics by endorsing candidates who align with its values, including Democrats, Working Families, Greens, and independents. Notable DSA elected officials include U.S. representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. In 2025, over 250 DSA members held elected public office across 40 states, with 90% elected after 2019.
History
Origins and founding (1973–1982)
The Democratic Socialists of America was formed in 1982 through the merger of two left-wing organizations: the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee and the New American Movement.DSOC was founded in 1973 by the socialist intellectual Michael Harrington. Harrington had become a prominent national figure after his book The Other America helped inspire the war on poverty, and he was a leader of a faction within the Socialist Party of America and later the Socialist Party USA. He had resigned as co-chair of the Socialist Party in 1972 in protest against the party's rightward drift and its stance on the Vietnam War. Growing from a few hundred members to nearly 5,000 in less than a decade, DSOC was a union of Old Left social democrats, trade union leaders, and progressive youth dedicated to working as a left-wing pressure group within the Democratic Party. Harrington envisioned the DSOC as the "left wing of the possible", and its main strategy was "realignment", the idea that socialists could work with labor unions and social movements to push the Democratic Party to the left, drive out its conservative Southern wing, and transform it into a social democratic party. A key project for this strategy was the Democratic Agenda, a DSOC-inspired coalition of labor and liberal activists that challenged the centrist policies of the Jimmy Carter administration from within the party during the late 1970s.
File:Dorothy Healey standing before jail cell in Los Angeles, Calif., 1949 Trim.jpg|thumb|upright|Dorothy Ray Healey, a prominent member of the New American Movement
The New American Movement was founded in 1971 by Michael Lerner and other former members of Students for a Democratic Society, the main campus-based organization of the New Left. Emerging from SDS and the socialist-feminist women's unions of the period, NAM was led by New Left veterans who sought to recover the early SDS's humanistic, revolutionary spirit while rejecting the Maoism and vanguardism that had led to its implosion. In 1974, the organization was bolstered by the entry of Dorothy Ray Healey, a longtime leader of the Communist Party who had broken with the party over its lack of internal democracy and its support for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. NAM developed a socialist feminist and Eurocommunist orientation, emphasizing Gramscian Marxism and building a grassroots presence through local struggles around affordable housing, utility rates, and reproductive rights.
By the early 1980s, both organizations saw a need for unity. DSOC had influential union allies and a foothold in mainstream politics but few young activists. NAM had a more youthful activist base but lacked DSOC's political influence. The merger convention, held in Detroit on March 20–21, 1982, created DSA with a combined membership of 6,000. It was a deliberate effort to heal the rift between the Old Left and the New Left. Harrington took the lead of the new organization, which adopted DSOC's strategy of realignment while incorporating NAM's commitment to socialist feminism and grassroots organizing.
The Harrington era (1982–1989)
In the 1980s, DSA functioned as a home for a diverse group of activists, including democratic Marxists, Fabians, religious socialists, former Communists, and labor Zionists. All were united by opposition to Reaganism. DSA continued the DSOC strategy of working within the Democratic Party to support progressive candidates and policies. It did not endorse Jesse Jackson's 1984 presidential campaign, but was part of the Rainbow Coalition that supported his 1988 campaign. A central ambition for Harrington was to build a "conscience constituency" of educated professionals who, he argued, were predisposed to social planning and could become allies of the poor and the labor movement in a new progressive coalition.File:Barbara Ehrenreich 1982.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Barbara Ehrenreich, a socialist feminist and co-chair of DSA from 1983
DSA's membership and influence during this era extended across academia, the labor movement, and politics. Its intellectual wing included Irving Howe, Michael Walzer, Frances Fox Piven, Richard Rorty, and Iris Marion Young. Cornel West became an honorary chair of DSA and developed his "prophetic pragmatism" in dialogue with the organization's multi-tendency traditions. Barbara Ehrenreich became co-chair with Harrington in 1983. The organization also had influential allies in the labor movement, including AFSCME presidents Jerry Wurf and Victor Gotbaum, UAW president Douglas Fraser, and Machinists president William Winpisinger. Its political reach extended to elected officials like Congressmen John Conyers, Bella Abzug, Ron Dellums, and Robert Kastenmeier; New York mayor David Dinkins; and feminist icon Gloria Steinem.
DSA played a significant role in Central American solidarity activism, opposing the Reagan administration's policies in El Salvador and Nicaragua in solidarity with the Sandinistas and leftist rebels. DSA was also particularly active in the anti-apartheid movement, linking struggles for social justice abroad to those at home. Despite these efforts, DSA's membership remained small, growing to 8,000 by 1983 but never surpassing that number during Harrington's lifetime. Harrington's final book, Socialism: Past and Future, written as he was dying of cancer, served as a "letter to the next left", urging it to adapt socialist values to the newly globalized, post-industrial world.
Stagnation and opposition (1990–2015)
After Harrington's death in 1989, DSA struggled for relevance in the 1990s and early 2000s, a period during which Gary Dorrien has said the organization struggled "merely to hang on". With the collapse of Communism in 1989 and the rise of Third Way neoliberalism under President Bill Clinton, the political space for democratic socialism seemed to vanish. In many parts of the country, DSA chapters functioned primarily as study groups for "scattered, stubborn types holding out against the 1990s", with the youth wing, the Young Democratic Socialists, largely responsible for keeping the organization afloat. Direct-mail campaigns in the early to mid-1990s boosted paper membership to 10,000.Despite its small size, DSA maintained a principled opposition to the Democratic Party's neoliberal turn. In 1995, DSA updated its foundational document, "Where We Stand", placing economic globalization and the power of multinational corporations at the center of its analysis. It called for a humane social order based on democratic planning and market mechanisms and for "economic democracy... from below, through a democratic transformation of the institutions of civil society." DSA also initiated key campaigns during this period. In the early 1990s, it made the fight for a single-payer healthcare system a major national priority, sponsoring a multi-city tour by Canadian health advocates to promote the model. It actively campaigned against President Clinton's signature policies, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, the 1994 crime bill, and the gutting of welfare in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. It also founded the Prison Moratorium Project in 1997 to oppose mass incarceration. In 1999, DSA activists participated in the anti-globalization protests surrounding that year's World Trade Organization conference in Seattle.
In the 2000 presidential election, the organization was divided and took no official position, with prominent members like Cornel West supporting Green Party nominee Ralph Nader while others reluctantly supported Democratic nominee Al Gore. After the 9/11 attacks, DSA actively participated in the anti-war movement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and developed an "Economic Justice Agenda" that prefigured many of the proposals of the 2016 Sanders campaign. In 2011, longtime YDS leader Maria Svart was hired as National Director. In the wake of movements like Occupy Wall Street in 2011, Fight for $15 in 2012, and Black Lives Matter in 2013, the socialist movement began to gain new steam; by 2012, membership stood at 6,500. In 2014, an internal Left Caucus formed that challenged some of DSA's assumptions and advocated a pro-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions position, which at the time was difficult to discuss within the organization.