i went to a dsa meeting in hamtramck once, just as an observer (i'm a canadian.), and it felt like one of those mass interviews for a fast food restaurant. i was hoping it would be some kind of grassroots, direct democracy type affair and was rather shocked by what it actually was, namely an exceedingly hierarchical, top-down organization with no interest in democracy at all. they had absolutely no interest in anybody's opinion whatsoever, they were just looking for recruits to regurgitate the platform.
Aly Alexandra
Right?! That’s why I wanted to do this. The way they speak to their members disgusted me.
deathtokoalas
it was quite a while ago now, and i was camping out between an after hours gay dance party that went until 7:00 am and a punk rock bbq that started at noon, hamtramck being the party district in detroit, so i was a little less than 100% mentally, but the way i remembered it is that the way they explained it was essentially that the members and even the candidates are just opinionless shells and the dsa is the platform, which is written by an unelected clique that just intends to hire people to push it. so, it's like a fake band, almost - a composer that hires people to play the parts. you might think that joining the dsa means participating in a political movement and going to general assemblies and having a democratic process and whatnot, but the idea i got was that it's kind of more like getting a job, and the platform is essentially the training manual for that job. as such, i walked away from it feeling like it was a kind of a ponzi scheme.
the organizers at the meeting were abundantly clear on that particular point, though - the candidates don't have personal views. they don't analyze anything independently, and they're expected to suspend individual dissent, if it exists. they are merely creatures of the platform; the platform is supreme.
there's a review of my weekend in detroit, including a brief write-up of my experience at the dsa, at my deathtokoalas blog. find a "remove white space" site to construct the link: