After my youngest left home, I started to join my husband on bike rides. He’s ridden for 30 years; to work, to the store, to tennis, to swimming, on grueling forced rides with our poor children, but I stopped in high school and hadn’t been on a bike in years when I resumed. He bought me a fancy bike but I never warmed to it – too heavy and big, so I gave that to my youngest and found a smaller bike in the shed (pictured) that I love. I’m here to tell you it’s like riding a bike. Fun! I’m the least graceful person alive so if I can manage this, anyone can. Highly recommend it.
Wanted to talk a bit about DSA’s efforts at social events for young people, because I think it’s very smart and something Democrats could do, if we have any money left over after paying cranky, ancient multimillionaire consultants who appear on cable news to trash Lefties.
From the excellent Foreign and Domestic substack, John B Judis:
The Wall Street Journal opinion page is known for taking occasional potshots at liberals and leftists, and I suspect its editors agreed to send a young writing fellow, Kendall White, to visit meetings of New York’s Democratic Socialists of America chapter with the idea that she would make fun of the fanatics and whackos who gathered at these meetings. Instead, she found convivial gatherings. “From a book club to a hootenanny, it wins over the young by putting the ‘social’ into socialism,” her article was subtitled.
White spent a month attending “Coffee with Comrades, a Socialism 101 course, a new-members social, a book club and even a hootenanny. The DSA also hosts board game nights, running clubs, World Cup watch parties, a softball league and birding trips.” At the “New Member Social,” White found that “many of the attendees were charming and funny, and all were friendly. I left with a few phone numbers and an invite to their group chat and upcoming meeting.”
I looked at the weekly newsletter for DC Metro DSA, where I live. If my wife and I had the interest, we could attend not only a “New Member Community Cohort,” but also a “Spanish Club for Socialists,” “The People are not One Book Club,” and the “Leftist Baking Club.” My wife also discovered a knitting group. In offering these kind of activities, DSA is not veering from the deadly seriousness of the older socialist left but emulating its earlier most successful parties. Eugene Debs’ Pre-World War I Socialist Party held days-long encampments that were modeled on religious camp meetings where thousands heard talks and sang and socialized. It had book clubs and sports leagues for its members.
The pre-World War I German Social Democratic Party, the most important party of its day, had choirs, gymnastic associations, sports leagues, and schools and reading groups. It owned cooperative grocery stores and even funeral parlors. These activities offset the anomie of daily life. They are probably even more important now when many forms of daily association -- neighborhood bars, company sports teams, and even unions -- are disappearing.
The Republican right addressed the problem. In the last decades, Republican success has been predicated on megachurches, gun clubs, business associations, and a host of smaller political groups around the Tea Party. But and where political organization among mainstream Democrats has disintegrated.
Kendall reports, “If you’re a young moderate Democrat wanting to meet like-minded friends, good luck. I filled out the New York State Young Democrats interest form two weeks ago and have yet to hear back. There aren’t any events listed on their website. Even if there were, I doubt they would have as much folk music and free beer as the DSA shindigs I attended.
This Los Angeles DSA event was heavily promoted on Tik Tok with a very clever video of young women descending stairs wearing “formals” like tattooed Lefty debutantes:
DSA-LA cordially invites you to the biggest socialist party of senior year, DSA-LA’s Y2K Prom!!
Join us for a night of grinding to early 2000s R&B, scream-singing along to the best of pop-punk, and slow dancing with your sweetheart. Come in your sparkliest dresses and most ill-fitting suits as we hearken back to a time when tips were frosted and clips were butterflied!
This event is a fundraiser for the chapter to support our continued work fighting ICE, electing socialists, and building a city that empowers working class Angelenos!
My father remembers attending Socialist picnics with my union-organizing Grandma in Scranton PA when he was a kid. She was a garment worker, ILGWU, so imagine a bus full of exhausted women garment workers and their children heading out to a park for a day or R and R. He remembered these trips fondly. Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign is like this, very “building a community” in addition to winning races. I think it’s the way of the future.
