Playing To Win
A Democratic Left Interview with DSA National Director Horace Small

DL editorial committee member Charity Crouse, editor of Streetwise, NPC member, and co-chair of DSA’s Queer Commission, recently interviewed DSA national director Horace Small. Horace has been on the job since late June 1999. He has brought energy and enthusiasm to the job, and has inspired many DSAers around the country.

DL: What qualifies you to lead DSA?

HS: For me social change is not a job, it’s a lifestyle, and I’ve been doing it since I was 14 when I co-founded Students Against the War, a Philadelphia high-school group and one of the biggest high school anti-war organizations in the nation. My whole adult life since then has been devoted to organizing — issues organizing, community organizing, labor organizing. I’ve won campaigns: beat the NRA with an assault weapons ban in Philadelphia, and I was a leader in the campaign for the first mortgage assistance bill in this country. I know what it takes to get people fired up and mobilized. I know how to bring diverse communities together. I know how to make things happen.

DL: How did you come to identify as a socialist?

HS: As Organizing Director for the Philadelphia Unemployment Project (PUP) from the late 70’s to mid-80’s many of the campaigns we focused on always tried to move legislation, to make real lasting change. It doesn’t take long to sit in public meetings with corporate heads and find out that they have no soul and no compassion for working-class people, for poor people, when all we’re trying to do is fight for decency and simple human justice.

DL: What hooked you into DSA?

HS: What always appealed to me about DSA was the fact that they talked about an egalitarian society, giving people ownership, workers’ control, and a sense of democracy. I jumped into that like a fish into water. One of my dearest friends has been for the better part of 20 years Stan Shapiro [of Greater Philadelphia DSA]. Stan would always give me info on DSA when I was frustrated with general politics, or material on Mike Harrington, or give me some position papers that had been written. I came to DSA from a very deep sense of right and wrong, and Stan Shapiro helped educate me.

DL: What are some of the challenges facing DSA?

HS: Unfortunately, one of the challenges we have as an organization is that we are racially and ‘genderedly’ challenged. We have not figured out how to talk to people that don’t look like us. We have not made the kind of inroads we need to make in black and Latino communities, Asian communities, and gay communities.
The challenge for us is to develop clear and specific plans, ideas and programs that appeal to them. We are working to create those programs. Our commissions have been empowered to do things and go out and publicly develop ideas and programs to reach out to these particular communities.

I also think that we have not marketed ourselves well enough to be able to talk effectively to mainstream America about cooperative economics, about worker ownership and control. Americans will buy into it, poor working people will buy into it if they can be reached. Another challenge for us is developing the next generation of organizers, so that the struggle can continue. We’re trying to do that with the Michael Harrington Institute.

DL: What do you envision for the Harrington Institute?

HS: Through the Harrington Institute we will begin to start training many of the Left’s activists and grassroots leaders in various specific technical skills that will give people the opportunity to do what Stan Shapiro did many years ago — introduce individuals to DSA and its ideas, and show how very open and comfortable DSAers are to work with.

DL: What type of leadership role can DSA play in rebuilding the left?

HS: The Left’s been sick and if we’re really going to work for justice then it’s incumbent upon us to find out how to make it well. Leadership is giving people the skills that they need to stand up for themselves. We need to be able to lead and influence discussion on issues that affect Americans. We need to be able to say what our position on rebuilding urban America is. We need to be able to articulate what our position is in rebuilding the educational system in this country. We have to be able to start doing more media work, spending more time marketing ourselves.

DL: What place do locals have in DSA’s strategic plan?

HS: We are not a national organization unless we take care of our locals. Until they rebuild we can never really be effective. I have the sense that we still want to be an activist organization — that’s where our power comes from and where our members live. We need to help them identify their problems, help with planning, identify fundraising needs and provide them with the leadership they need to go forward.

I meet regionally with heads of locals so we can develop strategies that are relevant to particular locals. We have to be looked upon as able partners to local progressive organizations looking to create change to build a network of workable coalitions.

DL: What does it take to make coalitions work?

HS: For organizations to successfully work in coalition, there has to be some real clarity as to what each organization is willing to do. You also need to recognize that you’re not going to agree on everything and everybody does this for whatever particular institutional or self-interest they have. There are some people within coalitions with absolutely no problem staring down the police, and you’ll have some people who have a lot of problems with that. So, before coalitions are formed there have to be some things that are understood ahead of time.

DL: How do we engage more young people in DSA?

HS: Reaching out to young people is DSA’s highest priority. I think that right now the youth section, YDS, is being building on our very early, credible role promoting a global trade/fairness agenda, and playing a key part in the worldwide challenge to corporate power.

We also have to start organizing young people beyond college campuses, and figure out how to get past the class stuff between the working kids and the college kids. I want to make sure that we hire an organizer to work with young people who work in the retail chair store down the street, who don’t have a college degree, who may not have finished high school, and who hang out in the malls.

DL: How do we recruit more members into our organization?

HS: Recognize that people get involved in organizations for one reason and one reason only: self-interest. There’s this fallacy that if our positions are correct people are just going to flock in from all over the place. It doesn’t happen like that. People become members of an organization either because you provide them with a service, they think that you organization can have some ultimate impact on the political process. In that sense DSA is a long-term investment. But DSAers have to get in people’s faces, go out and table, speak as out-of-the closet democratic socialists. If we’re serious about upping DSA membership levels, we have to recruit new blood, and reactivate our large retiree contingent — while simultaneously addressing the socialist baby boom so that our 30s/40s DSA age cohort can find a way to be active while providing childcare and juggling work. I hope that we mobilize effective members that can move an agenda forward, who can do things with skill and aren’t afraid to lose and take risks.

DL: What do you see as DSA’s long-term goal?

HS: Comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable, learn something in the process and have a little socialist fun.