New American Movement

No, I mean, not really.

I think when we, you know, DSA was formed from two organizations, the New American Movement, where I was active in here in Los Angeles, and mostly on the West Coast in the Midwest, and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which was led by Michael Harrington, basically East Coast-based.

And we wanted to form an organization that we said would be working within the Democratic Party and become what we call the left wing of the possible.

And so, you know, that's what our vision was.

But the major socialist group in America is the Democrat Socialists of America, DSA.

It was founded in 1982 as a merger between two other socialist groups, New American Movement and the Democrat Socialist Organizing Committee.

But it languished in obscurity for years with about 5,000 or 6,000 members after it was founded.

But Now it has over 120,000 members, including, as Professor Kenworthy mentioned, the mayors of New York City, Seattle, also Providence, Rhode Island.

Yes.

I mean, look, if I understand your question correctly, yes.

I mean, if we want to break this cycle, this populist cycle, if we want to diminish over time the attraction of populists, I would say both on the left, on the right and the right, because let us be clear, there are some fairly radical, I would say, anti-democratic groups.

tendencies on the left, particularly in Europe these days, if we want to diminish the support for these kinds of parties, then the only way to do that is for mainstream parties to come up with something that's better.

So DSA was founded in the early 1980s out of a merger between a group called the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which was led by an American socialist intellectual named Michael Harrington.

and a group called the New American Movement, which was essentially a group of veterans of the New Left, veterans of groups like Students for a Democratic Society, who were trying to regroup a kind of socialist politics in the 1970s.

And in the early 80s, those two groups merged and formed DSA.

And unfortunately, from basically the moment of its merger, DSA more or less stagnated.

And so Harrington had become one of the most famous socialists in the United States and had led a small group in the 70s called the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee that really worked to influence kind of the left wing of the Democratic Party and had some success in doing so, but by – The end of Jimmy Carter's presidency had grown kind of disillusioned with that approach.

The other group was a group called the New American Movement, which had been founded by a lot of veterans of the new left, of groups like Students for a Democratic Society in the 60s, who in the 1970s attempted to kind of regroup and chart a course for left-wing politics in that avoided kind of the insanity of groups like the Weather Underground that had kind of spiraled out of Students for a Democratic Society while still holding true to socialist principles.

And by the late 70s, 19 early 80s, those two groups had kind of discovered that they had a pretty similar outlook and so formed or merged and formed the Democratic Socialists of America.

And while there were very high hopes coming out of that merger, the organization really went into stagnation throughout the 80s and 90s and was never able to build a kind of large activist base of the sort that DSA has now.

with that approach.

The other group was a group called the New American Movement, which had been founded by a lot of veterans of the New Left, of groups like Students for a Democratic Society in the 60s, who in the 1970s attempted to kind of regroup and chart a course for left-wing politics that avoided kind of the insanity of groups like the Weather Underground that had kind of spiraled out of Students for a Democratic Society while still holding true to socialist principles.

And by the late 70s, 19 early 80s, those two groups had kind of discovered that they had a pretty similar outlook and so formed or merged and formed the Democratic Socialists of America.

And while there were very high hopes coming out of that merger, the organization really went into stagnation throughout the 80s and 90s and was never able to build a kind of large activist base of the sort that DSA has now.

His primary beneficiaries, his parents, had long passed away.

So the money defaulted to his backup beneficiary, the New American Movement.

Which was a radical nineteen seventies socialist group.

Right, a group which no longer exists.

He wasn't married, has no children, left no will, listed his parents as his beneficiaries on all the financial instruments, but they're already long dead.

He also selected as a backup beneficiary, and here's the fun one, there is, uh, there was an obscure 1970s socialist group called the New American Movement, or NAM, and, uh, the documents that he wrote regarding the beneficiary is the New American Movement or any successor thereof.

Boy, that's important.

Well, NAM has disappeared.

They bring in their money from dues.

Uh, its last tax return in 2024 showed net assets of $4.7 million.

Can you imagine what'll happen if it gets 6.6 million? However, uh, before any money is transferred, uh, there is the administrator of the estate, a nephew, Martin Hecht, who filed a suit arguing that his uncle had not left money to the d- DSA, and that is the Democratic Socialists of America, but to NAM, right? The New American Movement, and it is now defunct.

It doesn't exist anymore.