André Vasquez, who was elected to Chicago’s City Council last year as a socialist, has voted in favor of the mayor’s budget. The Chicago DSA has censured him. This raises a big question: How can a socialist organization make its elected representatives accountable?
That's literally what the DSA needs to start doing. If you take their backing (they should be running their own candidates), then you vote how the DSA tells you to vote. The DSA membership will set the party line (obviously not a "central committee" or whatever. If you want to be taken seriously as a political org, you gotta play hardball that way.
Overall, from what we know of this story today, it looks like the DSA is doing a decent job of that. The vast majority of their elected members are voting how the DSA tells them to vote, and they promptly took action against the one who didn't. We'll see how the situation plays out over the next few weeks, but one week into this thing I don't see too much room for criticism.
they just need some core tenants and some leeway on the rest really. having a mandated policy for everything is a bad take for large organization with little governmental power
That's literally what the DSA needs to start doing. If you take their backing (they should be running their own candidates), then you vote how the DSA tells you to vote. The DSA membership will set the party line (obviously not a "central committee" or whatever. If you want to be taken seriously as a political org, you gotta play hardball that way.
Overall, from what we know of this story today, it looks like the DSA is doing a decent job of that. The vast majority of their elected members are voting how the DSA tells them to vote, and they promptly took action against the one who didn't. We'll see how the situation plays out over the next few weeks, but one week into this thing I don't see too much room for criticism.
they just need some core tenants and some leeway on the rest really. having a mandated policy for everything is a bad take for large organization with little governmental power