Why I Just Quit DSA

www.thenation.com/article/activism/quit-dsa-gaza-israel/​After over four decades as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, one of the group’s founding members is leaving in sorrow and anger.

MAURICE ISSERMAN
 
 
I’ve belonged to only two nationally organized left-wing groups in my life: the first, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) for just over a year; the second, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for 41 years. My membership in SDS ended in 1969, when I was 18 years old, without any input or agency on my part, when the organization collapsed around me in a chaotic maelstrom of rival manifestos, mass walkouts, fervid chanting, and a few fistfights, all of which scattered the group’s thousands of members to the winds. My membership in DSA ended with considerably less drama last week, when at a somewhat more advanced age I resigned from the organization via an e-mail. I left 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, mostly civilians, and saw over 200 hostages carried off to Gaza, both groups of victims including children and infants.
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/quit-dsa-gaza-israel/
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Opposing view: 
I’m a Proud Jewish DSA Member. Here’s Why I’m Not Quitting.
Maurice Isserman’s scurrilous piece—written at a time when Gaza is under horrific assault—does not reflect the organization I know.

HADAS THIER  https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/im-a-proud-jewish-dsa-member-heres-why-im-not-quitting/
Hadas Thier is the author of A People’s Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics.