There's definitely too low of a barrier to entry imo, there needs to be more strictly established points of unity for DSA nationally, because liberal elements can have a detrimental effect. However, mass national engagement with socialism is gravely important and DSA has proven its highly capable of driving numbers. Radicalization and learning comes after normies get engaged, and that's part of growing the left in a country that's as ignorant as the US. Whether that means people join and then leave to join PSL or something its good either way and leads to national leftist growth.
The thing about DSA is that if your chapter is small, you can go in and take it over with a group of people or at least challenge leadership enough to change up the strategies and what not happening in that chapter. Its a matter of people getting engaged and getting others to join you and actually forming coalitions where you live. At the end of the day if you're doing something like running a food aid or organizing protests or campaigns for certain issues like housing it doesn't matter whether you're working with MLs or lib socs or soc dems, and it gives you a chance to actually meet people and change their views.
It's also very rare for chapters to only focus on elections anymore, theres tons of things you can get involved with in DSA now. There's certainly problems with leadership not being well organized but thats a problem with us all being new at all this and figuring out the best way to do any of this. It's all volunteers after all.
There's definitely too low of a barrier to entry imo, there needs to be more strictly established points of unity for DSA nationally, because liberal elements can have a detrimental effect. However, mass national engagement with socialism is gravely important and DSA has proven its highly capable of driving numbers. Radicalization and learning comes after normies get engaged, and that's part of growing the left in a country that's as ignorant as the US. Whether that means people join and then leave to join PSL or something its good either way and leads to national leftist growth.
The thing about DSA is that if your chapter is small, you can go in and take it over with a group of people or at least challenge leadership enough to change up the strategies and what not happening in that chapter. Its a matter of people getting engaged and getting others to join you and actually forming coalitions where you live. At the end of the day if you're doing something like running a food aid or organizing protests or campaigns for certain issues like housing it doesn't matter whether you're working with MLs or lib socs or soc dems, and it gives you a chance to actually meet people and change their views.
It's also very rare for chapters to only focus on elections anymore, theres tons of things you can get involved with in DSA now. There's certainly problems with leadership not being well organized but thats a problem with us all being new at all this and figuring out the best way to do any of this. It's all volunteers after all.