Safe Space Socialism

[TexasTowelie]

The problem with the passage of DSAers, not just through college, but often through Boston’s elite private universities (I’ve met three members who are Harvard grad students), is that it makes them overwhelmingly middle class. Boston DSA has very few, if any, blue collar workers or low-paid service workers. It is true that most of the former students work for a living, and many are burdened by student debt. But they are nevertheless “privileged,” to use a much overused word, in that they belong to the upper one-third of the workforce nationwide who have college degrees. In the long run, their life-chances are much better than the two-thirds who possess only high-school diplomas. On average, they will make one million dollars more over the course of their lives than people of their age who graduated only from high school.

Like contemporary campus activists, many members of Boston DSA practice a form of identity politics that assigns the status of victim or potential victim to women, LGBTQ people, and people of color. Safe spaces and trigger points are very familiar to them from their college experience. Unfortunately, they also have the related tendency to repress freedom of expression, often, but not exclusively, in the name of protecting the “vulnerable.”

In my nine months as a member of the new Boston DSA, I was unable to discover the names of more than 5 of the 15 members on the group’s steering committee. When I pointed out that this was a violation of basic democratic norms, several people told me that the names were missing from the Local’s website because of fear of “doxing,” i.e., online publication of personal data. When I replied that perhaps people who are afraid of making their names public should not be in the leadership of the Local, the response was outrage. Apparently my suggestion would make it impossible for the “vulnerable” — women, trans people, and people of color were mentioned — to hold leadership positions. Would there have been a civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s or a feminist movement in the 60s and 70s if their leaders had insisted that their names be kept secret? Secrecy may be justified for underground organizations, like resistance cells working against a foreign occupation, but DSA holds public events and endorses candidates for political office. One person eventually sent me a member’s handbook that includes the names of those elected to the steering committee. It was supposed to have been emailed to members in April, but I never received it. I am told that a volunteer is now working on placing the names of steering committee members in a members-only section of the website. But after eight months of their one-year terms, the names are still missing.

I used the expression, “safe space socialism” in an electronic discussion on Slack of the missing names. At that point, one of the four moderators called a two hour break. And I was soon warned by another that I had been “aggressive” and offended “women and people of color.” Predictably, the moderator was a white guy. To be fair, however, he claimed that some people on the other side of the electronic dispute had also been warned about being aggressive. I hadn’t noticed. No one used profanity or made accusations against me, and I maintained the same decorum. There seems to be a worry in Boston DSA that debate is always on the edge of becoming rancorous, so great pains are taken to insist that members be “comradely” to one another. Maybe it’s not the college campus that is the major influence here, but rather the Internet culture in which so many young people are steeped, where disagreements can degenerate into “flame wars,” already an outdated expression. The truth is I had no idea what “doxing” means until a younger friend enlightened me.

The complete article is at https://digboston.com/safe-space-socialism/ .