This month, I will be implementing a new rule: anyone who has not introduced themselves on the corresponding county listserve within the next 30 days will have their email address removed from the listserve, as I explain in my "Socialism Is Not Voyeurism" paragraph.
There were no reports about the Democratic Party in the Report folder of the website, so I don’t have any stories to report from the various Democratic clubs across the country.
Toward the middle of the newsletter, you will find the strongly worded email that I am sending to every Democratic and Republican Party chair across the United States, as well as Rosa’s report from last month’s SDA salon.
Social Democrats of America is a membership organization with the sole purpose of defining and educating Americans on Socialism and working within the U.S. Democratic Party, hence making us Socialists, and Democrats.
SDA is officially five years old, as it was incorporated on July 23, 2021, as an offshoot of DSA after they left the Socialist International.
The last five years were about documenting what it would take to create the conditions in the United States to ensure that all the lessons learned from Michael Harrington, Jesse Jackson, Ralph Nader, and Bernie Sanders have been incorporated.
This monthly newsletter is an attempt to leave crumbs of the arguments I am making to demonstrate that Socialism is a very simple concept.
Turning FIFA into a Public Company: An IPO Proposal
Gianni Infantino’s and Donald Trump’s idea of turning FIFA into a public company through an IPO may seem far-fetched, and it seems dead on its merits. The Europeans, as they usually do, shut down the idea flat out.
FIFA is one of the last non-profits, just as the New York Stock Exchange once was, and the exchange did not disappear because of it.
The question of a FIFA IPO is really, who gets to have the return on the benefits? From a Socialist point of view, is going public a bad thing?
First, we must ask the right questions, such as: “Who benefits from the IPO?” The people of the world, or the oligarchs of the world?
This is a very interesting subject that has repercussions touching every domain of this newsletter, starting from what Socialism is, how to get involved to propose soccer fields in the community, and partnerships with for-profit and non-profit organizations.
And ultimately, who captures the value created?
What is Socialism?
In every newsletter, the same question repeat itself, but after month (years) of organizing, I have been In every newsletter, the same question repeats itself, but after months (years) of organizing, I have been slowly getting to a very simple one-liner.
I think I have it down to three words: “FREEDOM,” “LIBERTY,” and “EMANCIPATION” for all mankind.
If you don’t believe it, SDA is not an organization for you.slowly getting to a very simple one liner.
The reason I keep bringing up the question is that each time I try to reduce it to the shortest possible answer so I can silence any detractor in the mass media. The problem over the years has been the implementation.
In 1920, Lenin called on Socialists to build a better Socialism by creating the Communist Party, and in 1981, the Premier of the French Communist Party announced on TV that the Communists would not ask the Socialist Party to be Socialist.
In other words, Socialism is to be defined by the Socialist Party, putting an end to 60 years of debate over who decides what Socialism is.
DSA is getting more attention by using old Communist phraseology like “Democracy” or “Working Class,” and because they manage to win more major elections than us using the term “Socialist,” they are everywhere, confusing the American public.
What makes me laugh is watching the American right-wing media trying to lump Communism, Socialism, Ecology, and the Left into a homogeneous group, while watching American liberals trying to define themselves as the left when they should be defining themselves as center-right.
This is driving the world crazy. But when I mean the world, I mean the media across the whole world.
Everyone is having fun watching the Americans struggle with the right’s attempts to recreate the conditions for a new Red Scare.
While watching the world go crazy, I learned something about China and its flag. I have not verified the historical details of the symbolism, but according to Wikipedia, each small star on the flag is said to represent one class:
The Working Class (workers/proletariat)
The Peasantry (farmers)
The Urban Petty Bourgeoisie (small business owners and artisans)
The National Bourgeoisie (patriotic capitalists and middle-class business owners)
I will let you have the discussion about how China ended up being capitalist while Communist. I had this discussion with the Queens Conservative Chairman last year.
Meanwhile, this is not about China, but about how SDA can change our counties while also fighting back against the ignorant narrative that conflates Communism, Socialism, and Anarchism.
SDA is about members learning from the mistakes and successes of the Socialists before them, and then using that experience to better their communities by proposing Socialist solutions.
The Governor of New York
Being part of her community and also the Secretary of Community Board 11, Rosa was contacted about a subject that she cared about: her car insurance.
When the bill was announced, she joined several leaders and ultimately stood next to the Governor in a scrappy Manhattan garage as he approved a bill that affected not only her personally, but also thousands of drivers across New York State.
SDA is about discussing what positive impact we can have in our communities locally. The full press release is here: https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-secures-reforms-lower-auto-insurance-premiums-new-yorkers.
You can reach Rosa at rosa.diaz@activist.socialists.us.
The idea is simply to show that SDA members always manage to lobby for ideas and that we are always next to the highest elected officials, not for a self-serving selfie, but to use our influence to lobby for our community and get those in power to champion our ideas.
Pageantry
Politics has a large element of pageantry and codes, and we Socialists are not anti-pageantry. The Governor with Rosa in a scrappy garage, or Xi Jinping delivering his policies from the lectern of his party, will have repercussions in our communities.
By focusing on “FREEDOM,” “LIBERTY,” and “EMANCIPATION” when analyzing these speeches, we can organize by leveraging our collective thoughts.
Americans, because of ignorance, like to mix Anarchism, Socialism, and Communism into the same bag, warning that it’s all the same thing. They are not, and their differences are quite simple.
These are the 21 Conditions that separate Socialists and Communists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-one_Conditions.
We Socialists voted against them in 1920, and those who voted for them ended up Communists, while those who voted against them remained Socialists.
Like everyone else, Socialists, Communists, and Conservatives organize conventions or congresses, and as is tradition, everything is announced through pageantry. With this pageantry comes the music and the art, which send strong messages to the world.
At the China National People’s Congress, that single meeting serves as both a political and governmental message.
In France, the same takes place, but since it is a democracy that separates the party and the government, the party’s congress pageantry is separate from the solemn governmental pageantry.
(The songs start at 2:07:40 with the French national anthem, the anti-fascist Italian song Bella Ciao, and an a cappella rendition of The Internationale.)
France is a multi-party system, so the party and the government are separated. This is the first entrance of the President of the National Assembly into the Palais Bourbon.
But for us Americans, it’s a mess, yet the same events take place just as they do in China. Because we have decentralized everything, we are all over the place.
As an American Democratic Socialist, I have to confess that I do prefer the energy of the American convention and the power of its songs.
As you can see, the ceremony takes place with the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of this small meeting.
Whereas in China, the decision on mosquito control would be buried in the Central Communist Party meeting, here in the United States it takes place at the local level.
I personally love the mess that is America because it creates opportunities for people to educate themselves about civics, as long as people don’t try to take advantage of the public’s ignorance.
That is why SDA spearheaded the non-partisan Rep My Block project, because for our system to work, we must have a duality of opinion that flows freely to the top.
Without it, we have what we are experiencing now: a violent, vitriolic duopoly.
Socialism is not voyeurism
What do I mean by that? Yes, it's true that you don't have to have an opinion on everything, but you need to show some sign of intelligent life. At SDA, the bar is quite low: "My name is..., I am in this part of the county, and I would love to meet once a month in a salon. I have never participated in a Democratic Party meeting."
As you have realized, signing up for the listserv is quite easy, but if you don't show that you are a human being living in that county, then I will remove you after a certain amount of time.
SDA's goal is not to claim thousands of members so we can be reported on by the media. The reason we don’t care about the attention the media gives us is that, to influence policies, we need to be where those policies are decided: in local Democratic club meetings.
But to take a quick look at the town of Litchfield, these meetings that people laugh about with John Oliver have become the staple of what we, SDA members, organize around.
Every year, these two members sign millions of dollars in contracts for pesticides and services.
These two are not SDA members, but that is what an SDA member does. They sit through those boring meetings. (You don’t have to watch the whole meeting, but somewhere around the 13th minute, you can hear them talking about the lack of interest from the population they serve.)
The reason they are boring is that there is no diversity of thought, but imagine if one member from each of these groups were to show up at that meeting.
Join your local advisory board
For example, this is the ANC town hall in Washington, D.C., where ANC members discuss the 2026 D.C. budget:
The reason I picked the Washington, D.C. ANC is that petitioning has started for anyone who wants to become a candidate and will end on August 5, 2026 : https://oanc.dc.gov/landing-page/ancs-ward.
You have until August 5th By mail or in person:
D.C. Board of Elections
1015 Half Street, SE, Suite 750
Washington, DC 20003-4733
https://oanc.dc.gov/release/anc-nomination-petitions-available-july-6-aug-5-2026
That is it. SDA membership is simply about organizing the Socialist point of view on all those topics that affect our daily lives.
It is true that at the beginning of the 20th century, Socialist leaders organized events because the government did not organize them. But as we got more and more rights in a liberal and democratic society, the need for our leadership to organize for the membership to replace the services offered by the government became less and less pressing.
The French Dual Language Schools
Just like Rosa today, 20 years ago I was a member of my Community Board, and I was a co-founder of a small non-profit that aimed to bring a real dual-language educational curriculum to replace the racist English as a Second Language one.
About five years ago, the New York Times Serial podcast production researched the non-profit and the work it did on race relations: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-parents-serial.html.
Many of the points that were brought up in the podcast were discussed when we started the non-profit.
We met once a month in a bar for two hours, but we were also part of our local Community Boards.
Over the years, local politicians embraced the project, not only in New York City but around the country.
The French Socialist branch in the United States, working with other Socialist members from other countries, expanded the project.
In this video, the champion opening a dual-language school knew me not as the co-founder of the organization that opened the dual-language school, but as the housing anti-corruption champion.
You can hear the resignation in his voice. SDA did not exist then, but had it existed, he would not have been so dismissive of another citizen’s problem because he would have known that SDA is a very serious organization.
I know this politician was lying through his teeth about talking to me about it.
That is the power of our Socialist organization.
Being a member simply says, “I share those beliefs,” and deal with it.
Everything SDA touches has the potential to become national and international because Socialists will always copy good ideas.
As the leader of the movement, I have to aggressively stake our place in this society.
Email Sent to Every Democratic and Republican Chair
Now that I have built the materials and the tools to ensure SDA’s exponential growth can be organized, I have sent every Democratic and Republican Party chair a warning letter to introduce myself and SDA.
My job is to open the door and hold it open for as long as I can, but it is up to each SDA member to walk through it.
112 Years Ago Today
One hundred and twelve years ago today, on July 31, 1914, the founder of the Socialist Party was the last and only voice to rally the Second International (or the Socialist International) against what would become known as World War I, just as Germany decreed the general mobilization.
After the killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28 by a fluke of history, when his car took a wrong turn and stalled in front of the nationalist assassin, the killing of Socialist Jean Jaurès in Paris on July 31 by a French nationalist silenced the last organizer capable of organizing a general strike against the war.
Germany invaded Belgium, a neutral country, on August 4, 1914, and the rest is history.
Could Jaurès and the Socialists have prevented World War I through a general strike?
We'll never know, but we'll continue fighting for peace. However, Socialism is not about simply being anti-war, despite the false message promoted by Communist Maoist Medea Benjamin, who harasses every member of Congress with Code Pink and is always in the news with her LaRouche allies.
Just as soccer keeps the world together, "The Internationale" keeps the left together.
Back to FIFA
FIFA’s proposal to go public requires us to understand how each of the topics above fits together: why Mao organized the Chinese Revolution but gave a star to those like Gianni Infantino by keeping an eye on the National Bourgeoisie; the concept of luck and World War I, where some people gave up their seats at a café terrace and the opportunity presented itself to start the bloodiest war in history; and a sport meant to bring us together despite conflicts (Iran being bombarded by the United States while its team was trying to play on the East Coast), people coming together at the local level to build a soccer field, cities like Chicago refusing to host games in protest of FIFA’s rules, and the State of New Jersey over-planning for promises that never materialize.
If you want to start the FIFA discussion, join the listserv at https://www.mobilize.us/socialists/event/1001241.
Socialism Monthly On-Boarding
I have split the on-boarding sessions between the first and third Wednesdays of the month:
First Wednesday – 7:30 PM Pacific: https://www.mobilize.us/socialists/event/773488
Third Wednesday – 7:30 PM Eastern: https://www.mobilize.us/socialists/event/897754
Welcome dear Comrade!
In solidarity,
Hasta la victoria, ¡siempre!
Theo
Corresponding county listserve? I hope I have, I’m new