Democratic Socialism
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as an organization was founded in 1982 by serious and respected people, notably the late writer and university professor Michael Harrington, combining decades-old factions on the political left. Following the end of World War II in 1945, an economic expansion began that by 1970 would, in fact, raise the wages and standard of living for all Americans, but there were essentially opposing perspectives on how that expansion was progressing. In 1958, John Kenneth Galbraith published The Affluent Society, which became the bible of economic liberalism, arguing that the private sector would give most people food, clothing, and shelter, while only the public sector was motivated to invest in education and infrastructure. In 1959, Harrington objected that the private sector was failing to provide basic necessities, citing actual data that one-third of Americans lived in poverty, titling his article “Our Fifty Million Poor: Forgotten Men of the Affluent Society,” eventually expanding it into a book in 1962, The Other America. Both books became huge best sellers, elevating their authors as 1960s-era left-wing celebrity intellectuals, often in popular media debating conservatives such as Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley Jr.
Harrington’s main goal in forming the DSA was to distance his brand of socialism from the harsh dictatorial communist regimes of the era, Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China. Coming out of the McCarthy red-baiting scares, Americans had no sympathy for supposed economic utopias that had literally engaged in shooting wars with us in Korea and Vietnam, and continued to aim nuclear weapons at us. Harrington’s book, expected to sell a couple of thousand copies, ended up selling more than a million after a review in The New Yorker, “Our Invisible Poor,” by Dwight McDonald (who had encouraged him to write it), and it became the toast of the White House under John F. Kennedy and his successor Lyndon B. Johnson. Harrington’s prescriptions were an important basis for the War on Poverty that created a series of programs including food stamps and Medicare.
Unlike PVD mayoral candidate David Morales, who was born in 1998, I’m old enough to have attended meetings with Harrington before he died in 1989. I never considered myself a leftist, but I’ve had enormous respect for and interest in Harrington’s circle, especially from the literary side, including Richard Fariña, Thomas Pynchon, and Kirkpatrick Sale. In August, the now-89 year-old Sale published an indictment of what the DSA has become, “Michael Harrington is Spinning in His Grave” —
But any comparison between the DSA he created and what is now getting headlines for shaking up the Democratic Party is tenuous at best, and the difference between what he championed and what this younger cohort of amateurs puts forth is a great chasm whose winds are doing the graveyard gyrations. I knew Mike. He was a close friend and traveling companion; he married one of my college colleagues, and for ten years I watched him up close as he tried to make socialism a part of the American political system.
Sale notes that the DSA recently refused to support Kamala Harris for president, has become “anti-Western in policy,” and “issued a weak disapproval of Hamas for its 2023 massacres; Mike was an outspoken champion of the new Israel.” Sale continues, “Its leaders have vowed to do away with capitalism; the original DSA knew that capitalism was the economic engine that created the economy but that it needed to be supplemented with a welfare state on the Nordic model.”
I’ve been clear (“Universal Basic Income and the Future of Work: Ominous Portents,” Dec 17, 2024) about the dangerous K-shaped economy that since 1980 has stalled economic growth and produced a stagnant standard of living for the bottom 80% of the population, despite enormous growth in the overall economy that benefited only the top 20%. This dramatic rise in inequality since the Ronald Reagan presidency is a grave threat to the political and economic stability of the country, not least because a desperate underclass will embrace simplistic demagogues on both the right (“Donald Trump: At Long Last, Have You No Sense of Decency?”, Nov 2, 2016) and the left (“Opinion — Zohran Mamdani and the Pyrrhic Victory of the Democratic Party: Why he is the leftist version of Donald Trump with all of the same problems,” Nov 7, 2025).
DSA acolytes such as Morales and future PVD City Council President Miguel Sanchez endorse a number of controversial positions, notably rent control and divestment from Israel. Sanchez is mired in litigation because of his firing by Gov. Dan McKee for anti-Israel social media posts after the Hamas attack but before Israel began the ground invasion, asserting “the us (sic) is actively aiding in a genocide and they want us to look the other way.”
Rent control ordinance
A rent control ordinance failed when the City Council fell one vote short of overriding a veto from Mayor Brett Smiley in May, but Morales promised he would sign it. An experienced friend and colleague of mine (who started rehabilitating houses at age 12 with his father, decades ago) predicted, based on analysis of national precedents, that rent control would suck $1.6 billion from PVD real estate values in the first year, $3.0 billion in the first five years, and $5.3 billion in the first 10 years. Worse, the decrease in value would be unevenly distributed (whether owner-occupied or not): 5% for single families, 10% for small multi-families (2-5 units), and 12% for larger (6 units and up). Because property values are the basis for taking out loans to repair properties, he expects owners will be forced to cut back on maintenance and repair. He points out that racist lending practices historically prevented home ownership by minorities who are only now starting to catch up, but, according to 2022 government data, median net worth, compared to a white family, is 15% lower for a Black family and 22% lower for an Hispanic family; home ownership as a portion of wealth is 41% for white families but 64% for Black and Hispanic families. Decreases in home values therefore cause disproportionate regression in economic circumstances for Blacks and Hispanics.
Anti-Israel ordinance
(Source: https://x.com/DavidMoralesPVD/status/2078094662397567435 )
At least rent control has a real connection with the city, but the proposed ballot referendum Question 7 — “Divesting from foreign countries conducting severe violations of human rights such as ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation, or genocide?” — plunges city government into the realm of foreign affairs. The text makes UN agencies the principal arbiters of what is prohibited, including foreign countries and “complicit entities.” Proponents have made clear that, although not explicitly mentioned, their target is Israel and companies that do business there.
One of the most basic principles of government is that the immense powers entrusted to it by the public must always be used in the interest of the people thoughtfully, deliberately, and carefully, rather than in paroxysms of emotion because, dammit, something must be done!
In Feb 2026, the City of Medford, Mass, adopted a similar “Values-Aligned Local Investments Ordinance” that is ensnared in a complicated federal court dispute (“Chertok v. City of Medford”, (1:26-cv-10589)) entailing residents as plaintiffs and intervenors, incurring mounting legal costs as it potentially heads to trial. While I have made no effort to investigate, it appears likely that the costs of litigation will far exceed the amount of money whose management is in dispute.
The extremely broadly-worded ordinance before the voters in PVD does not even seek to define its key terms. I recently explained at great length (“Opinion – PVD Mayoral Candidate David Morales May Not Hate Jews: But the Jew-haters support him”, Jul 29, 2026) that the word “genocide” means something very different from what most people mistakenly believe it means. The ordinance text states “‘Complicit entities’ shall mean corporations which directly and knowingly enable and contribute to severe violations of international humanitarian law and human rights such as ethnic cleansing, apartheid, illegal military occupation, or genocide,” which sweeps within its ambit almost every large company doing business with Israel, such as Google and Microsoft, as well as every significant mutual fund, such as those indexed to the S&P 500.
The ballot question has attracted coverage in the international press, notably in the Israeli newspaper “Ha’Aretz,” commonly regarded as left-wing. Local group Neighbors Voting No On 7 PVD has been active on the web and social media.
PVD Treasurer Shomari Husband, a council appointee and CPA, was quoted in The Boston Globe saying it “would be impossible to monitor continuously, because some of these funds are constantly rebalancing, buying equities. It will definitely be a daunting task for me.” PVD Solicitor Jeff Dana was quoted, saying the ordinance would violate the Providence Home Rule Charter, which specifically charges the Board of Investment Commissioners to decide where to invest city funds.
Dana asked William Smith, the retired chief judge of the US District Court in Rhode Island, for an independent legal analysis; according to WPRI News, he wrote, “I believe the proposed ordinance is highly problematic, likely unenforceable, and, if adopted, will lead to confusion and disruption in the city’s investment commission, as well as damage to the city’s pension investments. This, in turn, will doubtless lead to complicated and expensive litigation against the city.”
PVD Chief Operating Officer Courtney Hawkins wrote that language in the ballot initiative was “extremely broad” and “would seriously limit the number of investment opportunities available to meet the criteria defined by the initiative. To comply with this question the fund may also need to frequently sell otherwise performing assets that are suddenly added to the list of complicit entities.”
Smiley said in a statement, “This proposal will be unproductive, burdensome to our election officials and will harm the finances of our city and our already underfunded pension system. I urge voters to vote no.” Smiley contends the ordinance is illegal on its face: “The charter provides for citizens to go get signatures and put a question on the ballot, and they got the necessary signatures. But the charter also says that any citizen petition can’t cause the city to have to spend more money for it. This process can’t encumber additional funds, it can’t cost the taxpayers money or otherwise imbalance the city’s budget.” Smiley was quoted by WPRI News saying, “I think it’s highly likely that there will be a lawsuit, which is yet another way in which this is going to cost taxpayers money because then they’re going to be defending against a lawsuit, against something that we know is unlawful.”
More importantly, the ordinance is the latest building block in a campaign encouraging, whether intentionally or not, anti-Jewish rhetoric and agitation in PVD, a city in the past highly friendly to Jews in a state that has been a bastion of religious liberty for almost 400 years. In 1790, George Washington wrote to the Jewish congregation at Newport, “For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Members of the council flew a Palestinian Arab flag from City Hall (“Opinion — PVD City Council Flies Palestinian Flag: Check your privilege while globalizing the intifada,” Jun 8, 2025): “There is a First Amendment right to stand on the sidewalk shouting, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ an antisemitic call to exterminate the State of Israel, and, ‘Globalize the intifada,’ a call to murder Jews in Providence or Boston by sending suicide bombers to blow up buses and cafés.“ RI recorded 26 antisemitic incidents in 2025, according to the ADL.
The RI Board of Rabbis unanimously issued a statement —
We believe that Question 7 must be evaluated according to what it is likely to achieve… At the same time, with campaign rhetoric that singles out only Israel for divestment – with no sanctions or criticism toward others in the conflict, and with no broad vision of ethical investment of city funds – the measure does not advance justice. Rather, it creates the impression of a hyperfocus on Jewish people, which directly impacts our local Jewish community. The measure has already created profound anxiety and isolation for many local Jewish residents by singling out Israel and leaving individuals feeling unfairly held accountable for foreign government actions. Such selective scrutiny does not build peace; it erodes trust and isolates our Jewish neighbors, rather than unifying us around shared values.
PVD rabbis Barry Dolinger of Congregation Beth Sholom, Sarah Mack of Temple Beth-El, and Michael Fel of Temple Emanu-El, jointly published an op-ed in The Boston Globe —
To be absolutely clear: This campaign is directed only at Israel. Voters need to understand that distinction: A broadly worded principle is being advanced through a campaign focused on one country, the world’s only Jewish state.… We must ask of this action: Whom will it help, what can it accomplish, and who will bear its costs?… A one-sided municipal verdict on a complex foreign conflict can give new force to those already targeting Jews locally. As we have witnessed firsthand, someone bullying a Jewish child or harassing someone walking to synagogue here in Rhode Island is unlikely to distinguish between the Israeli government’s actions and that citizen living their Jewish life. Public campaigns operate in that imperfect world.… Antisemitism already is changing Jewish life here. People in our communities regularly consider whether it is safe to publicly share their Jewish identity. Their concern rests on having experienced antisemitic harassment for identifying as Jewish, not simply discomfort with a neighbor’s political opinion.
The future of Jews in the Democratic Party
The DSA is a schismatic wedge splitting the Democratic Party away from some of its most faithful and reliable supporters. According to the most recent (Sep 2026) semi-annual survey by the non-partisan Jewish Voters Resource Center: 67% of Jewish voters plan to support a Democrat for Congress, compared to 26% who plan to support a Republican; 25% of Jewish voters approve of President Trump’s job as president, while 75% disapprove; and 71% of Jewish voters say they are emotionally attached to Israel. However, 65% disapprove of the current Israeli government’s policy related to the West Bank and Gaza; and 27% of Jewish voters have a favorable view of Prime Minister Netanyahu, while 67% have an unfavorable view. Even if the DSA drives American Jews out of the Democratic Party, it seems unlikely they will seek a home in the MAGA-fied Republican Party: 52% of Jewish voters think Trump is antisemitic, 68% think Trump is racist, and 74% believe he is corrupt.
In PVD, how much damage will be done to the city by the relentless battering of Israel, fomenting anti-Jewish sentiment by pandering to anti-Western socialist nonsense instead of rational economic policy? How much will it cost the taxpayers to defend illegal virtue-signalling in court? How many Jews will decide to depart the city where they are being made unwelcome?
[Opinions of writers published are not necessarily those of Motif.]