this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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United States | News & Politics

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

Yes! Thisis from when there was a primary fight for Bernie and there were a lot of new people trying to figure out how things work and organize. The DSA in the state did a decent job organizing people to follow the primary process to gain seats exactly by the rules. Dems fought them for years and years, making it very clear that there is no space in the party for any left contingent with any influence. The first thing they did was mass quit and then take/hide the funds. This was from the "unity" group in the state, too, lmao.

I had to go back and google a bit to find examples as I followed this in real time, more or less. I'm sure there are better ones. But here are some examples.

An article from 2021 talking about how the bureaucrats in the party mass-quit: https://theintercept.com/2021/03/08/nevada-democratic-party-dsa/

And a liberal follow-up of how the party reasserted itself two years later: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/democratic-socialists-swept-power-nevada-judith-whitmer-rcna72905

And a neo-Trotskyist take that from both periods: https://socialistcall.com/2021/04/24/dsa-democratic-party-nevada-takeover/ and https://socialistcall.com/2023/08/02/independent-party-dsa-convention-proposal/ . If you're not used to neo-Trotskyists, one of the things they love to do is write long essays and what "should be done" without funneling frustration into practical work. But they do have okay insider info sometimes.

And more neo-Trotskyists lol sorry for listing so many, other groups with better ideas are generally dismissive of the attempt and don't write long-winded articles on it like Trots do: https://www.socialistalternative.org/2023/06/29/pulling-out-the-rug-what-happened-after-dsa-and-bernie-supporters-took-over-the-nevada-democratic-party/

It's an important lesson that unfortunately must be taught over and over again, viscerally, for people to actually believe it: liberals will fight the left far harder than they will fight overt reactionaries.