Saturday, November 10, 2018

There are Socialists in the House

The Socialists in the House
Two socialists were elected to the House of Representatives on Tuesday. It doesn't happen often.


Rashida Tlaib, born and raised in Detroit, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, won election in Michigan’s 13th district, making her one of the first Muslim women, as well as the first Palestinian-American woman, elected to the House.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose father was born in the Bronx and whose mother was born in Puerto-Rico, won election in New York’s 14th district and will be the youngest woman ever to serve in the House.

Both are members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Two socialists were also elected to the House in the pre-World War 1 period. During the same general time, socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs attracted over a million votes (6 percent of the total cast) in the presidential race. The sewer socialist Victor Berger, a founder of the Socialist Party, was first elected to the House in 1910 and, in 1914, Meyer London, also a founder of the Socialist Party and who was elected to Congress from a district on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Democratic socialist Ron Dellums represented the San Francisco Bay Area from 1971 through 1998, and Major Owens represented Brooklyn voters from 1983 through 2007. Both joined DSA after its founding in 1982.

-RW 

(via In These Times)

1 comment:

  1. From what can be seen there's only one major difference between the Democratic Socialists of America in 2018, and the National Socialist German Worker's Party of the 1930's. The National Socialists all spoke German.

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