Sacramento Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela DSA member announcement. (Photo: Councilwoman Valenzuela)
The Foolish Dalliance Left Wing Politicians have with ‘Democratic Socialists’
Socialism has a demonstrated record of producing tyranny and misery
By Katy Grimes, October 13, 2023 10:39 am
With the Hamas attack on Israel Saturday, American Democratic Socialists have openly expressed support for the terrorists and a Palestinian State, while simultaneously stating that the Israelis deserved the attack.
DSA is steadfast in expressing our solidarity with Palestine.
Today’s events are a direct result of Israel’s apartheid regime—a regime that receives billions in funding from the United States.
End the violence. End the Occupation. Free Palestine. 1/5
— DSA (@DemSocialists) October 8, 2023
Ignorant, obtuse university students joined forces at Harvard, and in a letter titled “Joint Statement by Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups on the Situation in Palestine,” the 31 student organizations — including the Ivy League’s affiliate of Amnesty International — condemned Israel, even as its residents are kidnapped and more than 700 have been killed by the terrorist organization. the New York Post reported four days ago (The death toll is much higher now). The Harvard students (and students at other elite universities) held Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ mass slaughter — sparking outraged condemnation and calls by a congresswoman for the Ivy League school to denounce the “abhorrent and heinous” support of “evil and terrorism.”
DSA SF stands in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle for decolonization. (1/4)
— DSA San Francisco (@DSA_SF) October 9, 2023
While the student groups are flagrantly showing just how uneducated and historically illiterate they are, elected politicians aren’t far behind, and have either remained uncomfortably silent on the attacks, which by default is support for Hamas. Some politicians, who openly practice or just dabble in socialism, openly sympathize with the Palestinians and terror groups, rather than Israel, American’s close ally.
I’ve analogized California’s growing Democratic Socialists of America problem with the sanctuary city conundrum – it sounded cool at first, and local politicians got to hang out with the rabble-rousing, edgy, cool DSA members, nibbling around the edges without actually committing to practicing socialism… until now with the Hamas attack on Israel. The chickens are coming home to roost. Now the DSA, and local DSA chapters, are openly siding with Hamas and Hezbollah, while others of the local DSA members are silent. This is so similar to just how un-fun the sanctuary cities are now, filling up with illegal immigrants, despite how cool it looked and sounded to the media when officials talked about being a virtuous sanctuary city.
Why are they so boldly proclaiming their socialism now? Do constituents and voters really embrace socialism, despite its miserable outcomes and policy failures? Economist Milton Friedman explained in his introduction in 1994 to the 50th-anniversary edition of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom:
“To understand why it is that ‘good’ men in positions of power will produce evil, while the ordinary man without power but able to engage in voluntary cooperation with his neighbors will produce good, requires analysis and thought, subordinating the emotions to the rational faculty.
Surely that is one answer to the perennial mystery of why collectivism [and socialism], with its demonstrated record of producing tyranny and misery, is so widely regarded as superior to individualism, with its demonstrated record of producing freedom and plenty. The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument. And the emotional facilities are more highly developed in most men than the rational, paradoxically or especially even in those who regard themselves as intellectuals.”
In California’s local city councils and boards of supervisors, DSA members are more bold than in the State Legislature. This is a listing on Wikipedia, sourced and verified by Democratic Socialists of America laying claim to their candidates, Democratic Socialist chapters, and reported on by several California news outlets:
| Konstantine Anthony[102] | Burbank |  California |
Mayor | 4th | since 2022 |
| Nikki Perez[103] | Burbank | California |
City Council | At-Large | since 2022 |
| Elizabeth Alcantar[112] | Cudahy | California |
City Council | At-Large | since 2018 |
| Antonio Lopez[114] | East Palo Alto | California |
Vice Mayor | At-Large | since 2020 |
| Antonio Lopez[114] | East Palo Alto | California |
Vice Mayor | At-Large | since 2020 |
| Larry Agran[80] | Irvine | California |
City Council | At-large | 1982–2014, since 2020 |
| Nithya Raman[120] | Los Angeles | California |
City Council | 4th | since 2020 |
| Eunisses Hernandez[121] | Los Angeles | California |
City Council | 1st | since 2022 |
| Hugo Soto-Martinez[122] | Los Angeles | California |
City Council | 13th | since 2022 |
| Bertha Perez[5][124] | Merced | California |
City Council | 3rd | since 2020 |
| Nikki Fortunato Bas[137] | Oakland | California |
City Council | 2nd | since 2019 |
| Caroll Fife[138] | Oakland | California |
City Council | 3rd | since 2021 |
| Janani Ramachandran[139] | Oakland | California |
City Council | 4th | since 2023 |
| Lissette Espinoza-Garnica[144] | Redwood City | California |
City Council | 3rd | since 2021 |
| Eduardo Martinez[145] | Richmond | California |
Mayor | At-large | since 2023 |
| Melvin Willis[146] | Richmond | California |
City Council | 1st | since 2021 |
| Gayle McLaughlin[147][148] | Richmond | California |
City Council | 5th (formerly at-large) | 2005–17, since 2021 |
| Claudia Jimenez[149] | Richmond | California |
City Council | 6th | since 2021 |
| Katie Valenzuela[154] | Sacramento | California |
City Council | 4th | since 2020 |
| Monica Montgomery[16] | San Diego | California |
City Council | District 6 | since 2019 |
| Dean Preston[67][156][157] | San Francisco | California |
Board of Supervisors | 5th | since 2019 |
| Justin Cummings[158] | Santa Cruz | California |
Board of Supervisors | 3rd | since 2023 |
| James H. Coleman[144] | South San Francisco | California |
City Council | 4th | since 2021 |
There are DSA school board members, transit board members, and a significant list of former DSA local office holders.
School Board DSA members in California:
| Ingrid Gunnell[203] | Glendale | California |
School Board | Area B | since 2022 |
| Rocio Rivas[207] | Los Angeles | California |
School Board | 2nd | since 2022 |
| Jackie Goldberg[208] | Los Angeles | California |
School Board | 5th | since 2019 |
| Kenneth Mejia[209] | Los Angeles | California |
Los Angeles City Controller | At-Large | since 2022 |
| Kelsey Lino[210] | Los Angeles | California |
LACCD Board of Trustees | 7th | since 2022 |
| Jason Boxer[212][213] | Manhattan Beach | California |
School Board | At-large | since 2020 |
| Mike Hutchinson[220] | Oakland | California |
School Board | 4th | since 2021 |
Only one California state legislator, Assemblyman Alex Lee (D-Palo Alto), is openly a member of Democratic Socialists of America.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸
— DSA Long Beach 🌹 🏝 (@DSALongBeach) October 11, 2023
However, nearly all of California’s most progressive politicians coalesce with labor unions, radical environmental groups, extremist sexual identity groups, even the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the World Workers Party, independent chapters of Black Lives Matter, along with chapters of the Democratic Socialists for America. These groups also expressed support for Hamas’s atrocities in the name of “resistance” and “liberation,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported.
The ADL reports:
- The DSA San Francisco (CA) chapter put out a statement on October 9 condemning “Israel’s ongoing occupation and the apartheid regime” and “the U.S.’s continued funding and support of Israel’s decades-long colonization of Palestine,” but did not condemn the violence committed by Hamas. The statement read: “Violent oppression inevitably produces resistance. Socialists support the Palestinian people’s, and all people’s, right to resist and fight for their own liberation. This weekend’s events are no different. Decolonization is the only path towards peace. A better world is possible. We call on all those who share our vision of global working-class emancipation to join the fight to end the occupation and decolonize Palestine – from the river to the sea.”
- DSA Long Beach (CA) wrote on October 10 that their chapter “fully supports and stands in solidarity with the people of Palestine in their struggle for liberation from military occupation, colonialist oppression, and the brutal apartheid system imposed by the state of Israel.” The group alleged that, “for far too long, Israel, a settler colonial regime, has dispossessed, incarcerated, tortured, and murdered Palestinians by the thousands” and added that, “there is no symmetry between the Palestinian people’s struggle and the genocide being carried out by the Zionist terror state.”
- At an October 8 protest in Anaheim, CA, co-sponsored by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a speaker celebrated this “moment where Hamas is taking control, they’re resisting,” and at a rally in San Francisco a speaker declared, “The resistance is liberating land from ‘48 that has been occupied for 75 years. The intifada lives and Palestine lives!”
In addition to refusing to acknowledge the horrific losses suffered by Israel this week, Flo and Katie are also refusing to comment on the horrific behavior by DSA chapters around the country.
Can they seriously ignore what their own party members are doing at these rallies?— John Meyers (@cogmeyer) October 10, 2023
While California has yet to see any political race at the state level between Democratic Socialists and Democrats, local council races have been much more open to the socialists.
Is this the future – is that why DSA members are so open now about their politics? Or are they feeling desperate as voters recognize that their policies are dangerous and destructive? F. A. Hayek warned in the Road to Serfdom of the dangers of state control over the means of production. “For Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would inevitably lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of nazi Germany and fascist Italy.”
The Hamas attack this week on Israel is indicative of and much too reminiscent of the horrors of WWII. California politicians must heed this warning as voters now know this.
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November 17, 2019 -
Notice that the DSA does not mention the hundred millions of dollars Palestine received from the Biden Administration. And I’m not talking about East Palestine, Ohio where Poopy Pants still has not visited.
To concrete the United States as a vassal of the globalist (UK) empire, we must be broken up into smaller bits. The same is being tried against Russia (they even publish neoconservative maps of the break-up).
These “DSA” types should be denied organizational oxygen – there must be an effort to persecute members of these groups. What other solution is there? Wait for the stolen votes to be miscounted?
It is indeed a “foolish dalliance.” In many instances, DSA was alluring due to the woke indoctrination they received in school. So naive…
It is not a dalliance. They have bought a house, have 7 kids, 4 grand kids and 3 dogs if you know what I mean.
Many seem to be in some sort of prolonged puberty. They’re extremely naive and highly impressionable. It’ll take some years and significant sobering life events to bring on maturity.