Members of DSA went to Cuba and met with Dissidents (and declined to meet with the President)
Members of DSA went to Cuba and met with Dissidents (and declined to meet with the President)
Late last year, the International Committee organized a DSA delegation to Cuba consisting of members of our national leadership and rank-and-file DSA members. The delegation to Cuba came in the context of a particularly harsh period of repression by the United States. Cuba was placed back on the US ...
The entire article is very good and gives a solid reasoning (for baby leftists, not anyone here) of why we need to support Cuba. It also highlights the weakness of both the DSA and the DSA IC from within that allowed this to happen + the steps they need to take. Give it a read. (The more I read stuff like this plus the history of real movements I realize why things like DemCent and other hardline ML things are needed but that's not a discussion for here).
I'm highlighting just the parts relevant to the title.
Multiple delegates chose to skip out on parts of the programming, including declining to meet with the president of Cuba, who held a frank conversation with the delegates who did attend for more than two hours.
Throughout the trip, members of the delegation from the Reform & Revolution Caucus (R&R) and the Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC) criticized the Cuban government both to our Cuban hosts and other DSA members, and skipped out on multiple delegation events. Most shamefully, both Maria (representing R&R) and Renée (representing SMC, and a member of the current NPC) skipped out on meeting with President Díaz-Canel, who spent more than 2 hours in a frank discussion specifically addressing the critiques these very same DSA members brought up to their Cuban hosts earlier on the trip. This means that the Cuban hosts were listening thoughtfully to the critiques and relayed them back to the President. That our Cuban comrades would care this deeply and thoroughly about our critiques is a sign that they honor us as equals and truly want to make ties with U.S. socialists, as relatively powerless as we are.
Maria in particular met with anti-government opposition groups while on delegation, which when taken together with the fact of her skipping the meeting with the comrade President suggests a goal of undermining the Cuban socialist state, not defending it against U.S. imperialism. Furthermore, R&R declined to follow what few guidelines the International Committee offered around discussion of the trip after returning. Delegates were instructed to keep news of the conversation with President Díaz-Canel private until an official reportback; R&R decided instead to discuss this at their caucus panel, pre-empting the official reportback.
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This is a result of trying to turn "Leftism" into a social club. None of this matters to any of these strivers.
Socialist parties and orgs should be social clubs (amongst many other things, ofc). That isn't the issue with DSA or this person in particular
Communist organizations should be composed of Communists, not people who want to hecking chill with their friends and post epic "organizing" memes.
I sincerely doubt there's a single person who joined a party because it seemed fun who became an actual Communist.
The Bolsheviks were partially an extremely large and vast social club
You need to be if you want to maximize membership retention, engagement, and interest in organizing
Being sociable with your comrades and being a social club are two different things. No one who's joined a party because they wanted to have a good time has ever contributed to revolution.
Not everybody is gonna shoot guns in a party lmao, you still need scut work for administrative work, propaganda making, etc.
PSL holds lots of social events to the general public for making propaganda and art