Dissolution with the Democratic party has grown in the wake of the election, and one place you can see it for yourself is at a chapter meeting for your local Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Alec Wilcosky, an organizer for the Pinellas County DSA told CL that the number of his chapter’s dues payer members has grown by 13% in just the last month and that DSA has added nearly 5,000 new members nationwide since Nov. 5.
The first Pinellas DSA orientation meeting since the election also felt weird.
“We were outnumbered—new and future members to current members—so that was a really exciting growth to see,” he added. Wilcosky, who helped organize a winning campaign for
Richie Floyd, St. Pete’s first openly-socialist city council member
in a century, said that folks across the county are seeing that DSA is a viable alternative to just voting for the “D” every two years.
“They’re learning what it means to become an organizer for the first time in their lives,” he said. He knows that folks went to Trump because the Democrats offered no real vision or solution to their pocketbook issues. That opened voters up to fear mongering about immigrants and other issues that split the working class. Wilcosky knows DSA can win them over.