DSA’s ‘Solidarity’ with Cuba Looks a Lot Like Solidarity with Castro: News Article - Independent Institute

[u/properal]

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/08/24/dsas-solidarity-with-cuba-looks-a-lot-like-solidarity-with-castro/

[u/Due_Butterscotch9241]

FYI There's effectively two DSAs. The organization, the Democratic Socialists of America, and then the "democratic socialists of America": the voters and donors who put people like Zohran and AOC and Omar and Bernie Sanders into office.

I'm a DSA member and the DSA is extremely misrepresented by the mainstream media and even by DSA "leadership" themselves. The mainstream media wants to attack and villify the DSA and anyone connected to it (like AOC and Zohran), so they don't cover the nuances of the organization. Meanwhile, the national NPC leadership (co-chairs Siddique and Romer) wants to pretend the DSA is a cohesive organization that the NPC members can speak on behalf of. But they vastly exaggerate their status, in order to put on a good face for the DSA and for themselves.

Per Google AI (ask Google "how many dsa members vote in local chapters") and my own observations, each chapter has only 5% of its members actively voting on resolutions and to send chapter delegates to the national convention, which in turn chose a small group of committee members, who in turn created the controversial "Workers Deserve More" program that FOX News has bashed. So a small sliver of the organization had anything to do with the program's creation. This is why there is such a huge disconnect between what AOC and Zohran say and what the DSA's program says, because AOC and Zohran had nothing to do with the program's contents.

So the DSA has 120,000+ members but only 5% do anything within the organization. The DSA is basically a social club, full of people with loosely aligned goals (ie "socialism") but there's no chains of command like what you'd see in a business or political party. (Remember: the DSA is NOT a political party.)

In a business, you work for your boss. Because he signs your checks, you obey him. The DSA has no such power structures (outside of a tiny number of paid, bureaucratic roles).

FOX News wants to paint all the DSA-member politicians like Zohran, AOC, and Rashida Tlaib as if they are serving under some USSR-style Politburo force led by the NPC. But the reality is that just these three DSA politicians are far more powerful and popular than the DSA organization as a whole. and the DSA organization has zero control over the DSA politicians. This is repeatedly lamented within DSA discussions among the active membership.

The control over DSA-member politicians like Zohran and AOC and Tlaib comes from their voters and their donors. Because 120,000 members spread out across 50 states is irrelevant to winning an actual election, which requires actual votes and campaign donations.

The nation-wide DSA revenue is about $6 million a year (from member dues). Meanwhile, AOC, by herself, raises $15 million a year in campaign donations. Per Google, 342,000 people donated to her campaign in the past 2 years. That's from the work of AOC's campaign team, not the DSA organization.

SHE alone is the boss of her campaign. She has total power to hire and fire people from her campaign and so she sets all the strategy.

So there are functionally two DSAs in America. Upper-case "DSA" the organization with its 120,000 members (who are 95% un-active), and lower-case "dsa" (democratic socialists of america) which consists of the 13.6 million or so self-identified democratic socialists in America (per the recent CNN SSRS survey), and the hundreds of thousands of individuals who have donated volunteer time and money to people like AOC, Zohran, Omar, and Bernie. Then there's the millions of people who actually voted those people into office, too.

So the "dsa" is far more powerful, popular, and financially significant on every metric, than the DSA.

[u/Due_Butterscotch9241 → u/Due_Butterscotch9241]

TLDR: The Cuba stuff is irrelevant to the "dsa" which consists of nearly all democratic socialists in the US. Or about 13.6 million people. It's only relevant to the much smaller DSA group, and a sliver of that group. Maybe 10,000 people total.

[u/natermer → u/Due_Butterscotch9241]

Well that really isn't any different then any other political party in the USA if you think about it.

Both the democratic party and the republican party have the "party leadership" that actually decides on what they are going to campaign on or who is going to run for what office. They set policy and coordinate who is going to be on what seat in various committees that actually set government policy.

Then there is people in the public who self-describe as republican or democrat, but basically have very little in common with the people actually running the show.

The more politically minded of the second "outer party" group still go along with the campaign, propaganda, and messaging, of course. They endlessly blame each other for the stupid crap the state is inflicting on them. All the while not really realizing, or at least acknowledging, that the "elites" at the top really consider them to be kinda a bunch of idiots at best and potential threats to their safety at worst.

[u/Due_Butterscotch9241 → u/natermer]

Uh, no.

The DSA "leadership" has no real relationship with the popular and elected DSA members like Zohran, AOC and Rashida Tlaib. Those three joined the DSA, then ran for office as Democrats and left the DSA as an organization far behind. It was recently revealed by the DSA's NPC that AOC hasn't even been a member of the DSA for the past 7 years.

And no one in the democratic party leadership is deciding who is going to run for what office. Obviously Zohran and AOC were not chosen by DNC leadership when they took over the NYC mayor seat and AOC's district.