The Democratic Socialists of America are in a “financial crisis” that will require seven-figure budget cuts and staff layoffs to correct.
News of the DSA’s financial condition surfaced as the group leads anti-Israel protests nationwide; including a pro-Hamas rally held in New York just one day after Hamas’s October 7 massacre.
“The current deficit will force us to make 7-figure budget cuts. This will require us to make painful decisions that will impact all levels of the organization. … Given our current financial state, we do not believe we can have a healthy, democratic, and effective organization while spending the amount we currently do on staff,” Alex Pellitteri, Kristin Schall, and Laura Wadlin, members of the DSA 2023-2025 National Political Committee, wrote in a proposal published last week.
“If necessary, we will then explore initiating lay-offs according to the DSA union’s contract. Be it revolved: The Personnel Committee will be responsible for determining the quantity and type of positions to be eligible for buy-out or layoff, and they will assist with logistics and a staff transition plan,” they continued.
Many American progressives believe that DSA has abandoned its domestic political commitments to go all in on the pro-Palestinian cause, executive director Zioness Amanda Berman, told the New York Post.
On the matter of Israel, DSA dissented from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.), two of the country’s most prominent progressives, in the days following Hamas’s attack. Instead of condemning the mass rape and murder of Israelis, as Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders did in October, the DSA said on October 7 that “today’s events are a direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime—a regime that receives billions in funding from the United States.”
“After Hamas’s brutal invasion of Israel on October 7, DSA doubled down on their strategy of going deep and long on antisemitism, thinking it might get them out of the hole,” Berman said. “Instead, this depraved idea dug them even deeper. True progressives, whether in the grassroots or in political leadership, will continue rejecting this extremist group and its hateful ideas in the name of true justice and equity, including for Jewish Americans.”
The DSA should be “thriving,” members Pellitteri, Schall, and Wadlin wrote, given that the “the fight for a free Palestine [is] galvanizing so many Americans, particularly young people.”
“Despite all this possibility, DSA has still been treading water, and things are going to get more challenging before they get better,” they continued. “This is not just a natural ebb in the socialist movement or technical issues in our recruitment or fundraising. We have not had strong figures at the top of the organization to lead with a political vision that inspires people to become committed socialists.”
Maurice Isserman was a founding member of DSA who quit the group in October “to protest the DSA leadership’s politically and morally bankrupt response to the horrific Hamas October 7 anti-Jewish pogrom that took the lives of 1,400 people.”
“An organization that can’t take a stand condemning a right-wing terrorist group that set out to murder as many Jewish civilians, including children and infants, as it can lay its hands on, has forfeited the right to call itself democratic socialist,” he said.