DSA Electeds Are Carrying on the Socialist Tradition in New York
One hundred years ago, five socialists elected to the New York State Assembly were expelled for their views. Today, a slate of five Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidates are following in their footsteps by fighting for working people and terrifying the political establishment.
Tenants organize a rent strike in Harlem, 1919.
Now that the absentee ballots have been counted for the primary races, it’s clear that the New York State legislature is about to include five DSA-endorsed members, all of them committed socialists.
There’s a historical precedent for this.
In 1919, five socialists were elected to the New York State Assembly. They weren’t the first — in fact, ten socialists had been elected in 1917. Only one of 1919’s five — Samuel DeWitt, of the Bronx — was newly elected. The rest — Manhattan’s August Claessens and Louis Waldman, the Bronx’s Samuel Orr and Brooklyn’s Charles Solomon — were incumbents first elected in 1918 or 1917 (terms in the assembly back then were only one year).
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