Tell your daughter capitalism is bad when she wants to open her own business.
I had the honor of being named a “master community organizer” by the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work few years ago. I grew up in the racially mixed, working class Northside of Minneapolis in the mid-1960s, and I was volunteering for DFL candidates while in high school. I paid my way through De La Salle, working at fast food restaurants, caddying at Oak Ridge, delivering papers, and after high school, working in the bottle house at Grain Belt and in the pipe yard at Midwest Pipe Coating. I became a decent hoops player, an American Legion baseball player, and I knew my way around a pool table.
I moved to Pennsylvania in 1968 as a VISTA volunteer community organizer. When I got there, I was already prepared to organize around issues that mattered to people – the African American residents public housing projects, the white ethnic residents deteriorated millworker housing, disappearing jobs, and jobs that were never there on the hills above the mills. Poverty. Crime. Kids without a place to go.
I came back to Minneapolis. I’ve lived in various parts of the Northside. I bought a home on Portland Avenue on the Southside, I lived on Franklin Avenue, and in Marcy-Holmes, my wife is African American. I have two bi-racial sons and four multi-racial grandchildren (with Native and Chinese ancestors). I currently live in a multi-racial, mostly immigrant community.
I suspect that my life story is mostly foreign to the members of DSA. How many DSA members can you find in pickup hoops games in local parks? How many DSA members are coaching little league baseball teams, or mentoring school kids at the local community center? How many DSA members are familiar with the local ethnic or dive bar? Do you know the name of the bartender? If you want to appeal to the broader community, you have to share the life experiences of those who are not college educated, who struggle to find positive activities for their kids, who are comfortable having a beer at night with friends who are paid by the hour. Defund the police? Are you crazy? Ask the neighbor who has suffered break-ins and car jackings. Ask the abused spouse whose husband threatens to beat her every time he gets drunk. Tell your daughter capitalism is bad when she wants to open her own business.
My advice to DSA members is: Get out of your bubble! Learn from the life experiences of neighbors who don’t ride bikes every day, who are concerned about crime and want a police officer to show up when they call 911, and who aspire to own their own business someday. Life in Minneapolis can be a place of opportunity, but not if your vision prevails.
The issue of diversity in DSA has certainly touched a nerve, at least with a few of our Times readers. And some of you question whether I know anything about DSA, socialism, and the social life of DSA members. To all of you who found my comments offensive, let me respond:
I’ve never been to a DSA meeting. I am not a dues paying member. However, as I have worked closely with communities around the campus, I’ve had numerous discussions with students, at least some of them very likely DSA members or supporters. I’ve had the opportunity to speak at the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University, and at community meetings in Dinkytown. So I suspect I’ve exchanged ideas with at least some DSA members or supporters. I’ve tried to escape my “bubble.”
I grew up in North Minneapolis. I had various jobs in order to pay my way through De La Salle and the University of Minnesota. I worked on truck farms, delivered papers, worked on the clean-up crew at Grain Belt, delivered mattresses for a small North Minneapolis business, worked at several fast food restaurants for $1 per hour, and later while in school in South Dakota, set up and delivered mobile homes throughout the Dakotas. I belonged to two labor unions.
I played a lot of pickup basketball, knew where to find the games in Minneapolis; played league baseball and softball, flag football, and coached little league.
Over the past 60 years, I’ve lived in north Minneapolis, south Minneapolis, Dinkytown, and Corcoran, where my great grandfather homesteaded in 1855. I count as friends African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans (all in my family) and Hispanic Americans. I’m proud to say I’ve worked in some pretty tough neighborhoods, and I’m also proud of my Irish, German, and Russian Jewish ancestry.
I’ve studied various governmental philosophies during my academic career. I’ve had professors who were socialists, others who were capitalists. I’ve employed members of the Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party (they didn’t get along very well.)
I helped a number of community newspapers and KFAI get started. I have the video of Saul Alinsky’s last speech before he died, given at Sabathani Community Center in 1972. We were organizing an anti-redlining campaign at the time.
There is much more I could share with my DSA friends, and next time I am in town, I would love to meet some of you for coffee. Or at your favorite dive bar.
Thanks for the write up! When your policy os to borrow from Peter to pay Paul, you will always get Paul’s vote
Whether a person plays pickup basketball or not should not be relevant to the question of whether that person
is well qualified to set policies in city government. The issue only really intersects city government on the park board.
I find this article and the ensuing commentary a bit bizarre.
The federal government, mainly in the form of the president, is threatening the city with illegal violence.
We have serious housing and addiction problems and a deadlock in city government about how to deal with them.
The DFL at the state level is not handling its fraud problem well and that is a threat to hopes for a blue wave in
the 2026 elections. (This particular issue does not appear to have anything to do with the DSA.)
Let’s focus on these and other real issues and stop arguing about who plays pickup basketball.
Woods Halley
Of course the issues Woods Halley mentions are critical. But you are missing the point. When I worked as a VISTA volunteer in McKeesport PA. the Harrison Village public housing project housed nearly all Black residents. My job was to get to know the residents, build trust, and organize people to take action. The quickest way for a young white guy to make friends, build trust, and organize residents was through pickup basketball games. By building a strong level of trust, we we’re able to to challenge the racist policies of the housing authority, secure funding for an early child development program, and force the county to revamp its terribly unjust magistrates court system. Pickup basketball opened the door to building a strong community organization. If you want to know more, contact me.
I confess. I don’t know any members of DSA, and did not interview any members before I wrote my opinion piece. However, I have read and reviewed the policy positions, seen the results of actions taken by City Council members, and talked with many friends and acquaintances throughout the Twin Cities. I did not know that the DSA has a softball team or a group that plays pickup basketball regularly. But I do object to the ad hominem characterization of my opinion as s “mindless screed.” Even though I no longer live in Minneapolis, I trust the opinions of people I know, and rely on the published positions and media reports describing the DSA and its members.
So do DSA members have legitimate issues, and fairly widespread support on these issues? Of course, and I would agree with the diagnosis, thought not with the prescription.
The current administration in Washington, completely under the influence of the “billionaire class” and ideologues like Stephen Miller, are destroying democracy and doing great harm to the working class. Police departments in many cities have been troubled by corruption and racism. Congress has created a taxing system that rewards the rich and penalized the average wage earner.
But the socialist answer to these obvious issues? Defund the police! Destroy capitalism! Read the DSA platform if you have happened to miss these fundamental prescriptions. Who wrote these prescriptions and other public policy positions? Why, members of the DSA.
As I’ve talked with many friends and acquaintances throughout the city, I find little agreement with the prescriptions offered by DSA. My guess is, and it is just my opinion, that DSA does live in a “bubble,” that the softball games and pickup basketball games are played pretty exclusively by members of DSA, and DSA members who visit dive bars sit in booths and converse with one another, not engaging with the average patron. Correct me if I’m wrong. but I have watched pickup games at local parks and I don’t see white, typically DSA members calling “Next!” to compete with the mostly Black youths on the court.
Since I read the comments offered to my opinion piece, I’ve called friends in various neighborhoods and asked them, do they support defunding the police? Do they support doing away with capitalism? There has been literally zero support for these fundamental policy positions. I don’t have to interview DSA members or personally know members to read what you believe. Your supporters on City Council have taken actions consistent with your beliefs. so I stand by my earlier essay. Get out of your bubble.
You live in DC and call people who are likely to already agree with you because they are your friends, and ask them if they support DSA policies. That’s the very definition of not stepping out of your bubble. I don’t expect the CEO of an international consulting firm to agree with DSA’s policies, that’s not our audience! Just stop pretending you have some good-faith critiques of us when you don’t live here and don’t know what you’re talking about.
I appreciate your willingness to engage, and I think we would agree on many things – the damage that the current administration is doing to our country in so many ways, the need to reform local and state government, the obscene tax system that rewards the wealthiest. I live in the DC metro area, and my community has been hit especially hard by the Musk/Trump cuts to government agencies. My immediate community is probably 90% immigrants, so we suffer even more than Minneapolis from fear of ICE But I don’t have to live in Minneapolis to know what I I am talking about. I’ve probably lived in more parts of Minneapolis than you have, and still have friends in many parts of the city. I’ve worked with organizations and businesses throughout the city. For example, I’ve been helping a church on Penn Avenue on the Northside to create a commercial kitchen. I know what it’s like to be a member of a labor union. Do you? I know what it’s like to work in a fast food restaurant for $1 an hour. Do you? I’ve studied socialism since I was in high school. Have you? I’ve helped rebuild neighborhoods and business districts in at least a half dozen cities. Is DSA able to claim similar accomplishments? How many jobs has DSA created? I think it’s wonderful that you have a softball team and a group that plays pickup basketball. But who are you playing with, and against? I’ll bet your softball and basketball participants are all DSA members. You are right – I talk to friends, and most of them agree with me. However, when I was last living and working in Minneapolis, my organization employed a member of the Communist Party and a member of the Socialist Workers Party. Do you know the difference? Let’s agree that we all live in bubbles of one sort or another. But I am willing to bet that my “bubble ” is considerably larger and more diverse than yours, and more representative of Minneapolis. I await your response.
TCDSA has a softball team and there’s a group that plays pickup basketball every Saturday. And the average DSA member is, if anything, spending too much time in dive bars. Literally no clue what you’re talking about in this article.
By your essay, it seems you don’t know anyone who’s a member of TCDSA. If that’s so, how can you know that a DSA member isn’t involved in their community to the broad extent that you mention? How can you tell if a DSA member is or isn’t at the local pub shooting pool? How do you know that DSA members “live in a bubble”? I suspect you do not know, otherwise why would you say you “suspect” your life story is “mostly foreign” to any DSA member? To me, your essay is a mostly mindless screed against something you know little to nothing about and serves no purpose other than a rant that was published. But know this, exit polls in NYC show that 80 percent of voters aged 18-29 voted DSA; pretty much the same in Seattle and, I suspect, in Minneapolis. Have a nice Holiday.
If you look at the New York totals, 50% voted for the socialist candidate, Mamdani. 40% for the democrat Cuomo, and 7% for Sliwa, the Republican. Many voters, according to most analysts, were voting for “change” because of the scandals surrounding the current mayor and his lack of leadership. Many voters found the two competing candidates flawed. This was not an “80%” vote for DSA policies and programs. It is safe to say that many New Yorkers just found Mamdani the most attractive candidate, the one who talked about reducing the cost of living, giving free bus rides, and taxing the rich. Neither the New York vote not the Seattle vote were ringing endorsements of DSA policies.
Thanks for this piece. You wondered where are the DSA members playing basketball with neighbors on the Northside, or maybe even soccer with kids on the Southside, or coaching little league? I get the impression that most DSA members don’t watch sports or care about hobbies like those. They are young, white childless, and are more focused on intellectual activities and political organizing (this is not meant as an insult—it’s plainly obvious), and probably wouldn’t feel comfortable or capable playing pickup basketball. They couldn’t bridge that gap even if they wanted to, by virtue of their personalities and aversion to sports (some of them use terms like “sports ball” to poke fun at their own ignorance of events like the World Series, Superbowl, and maybe even the World Cup, which you’d think they’d like, given that it’s more “international” and therefore perhaps less capitalistic).
When it comes to bars and alcohol, I think many young people these days, DSA or otherwise, have cut back on drinking, so there’s a generational shift happening. It does make it harder for people to connect with one another. Lots of younger folks like THC drinks, so maybe that’s an avenue to pursue.
Thank you…