By Casey Westerman

The winners may write history, as the saying goes, but as the years go by, historians will write and rewrite based on what’s been preserved in archives. Memories fade, members drift away, and for future chroniclers, the best source of information about the history of any organization is that organization’s archives. Any group interested in preserving its own past should take care to preserve its archives.

By Maurice Isserman

Michael Harrington       Photo Credit: Gretchen Dohart

If there is a heaven, and it reserves a place for virtuous skeptics, I imagine the late Michael Harrington looking down with celestial satisfaction at the recent growth of Democratic Socialists of America, having played such an essential role in its founding 35 years before.

 By John L. Elwell

Imagine a time when the United States of America was reeling from a race riot with a social activist having been murdered in a southern town. Imagine a time when poor and middle class youth of the nation were fighting overseas in a seemingly endless war that elites had declared.  Imagine a time when a presidential candidate would exploit fear and hatred in order to win votes. And finally, imagine a time when another presidential candidate would try to unite us all against those who would oppose progress. It would be all too easy to assume that you’re imagining the current state of the United States in 2017, but if you know our history, then you know this is an all too familiar feeling. It was nearly the same context into which Michael Harrington, a founder of DSOC and eventually of DSA, would publish Toward a Democratic Left in 1968. 

Julian Bond/Wikimedia

In a companion feature to its obituary, The Washington Post on Monday August 17, shared a story from Pamela Horowtiz, Julian Bond's widow. As she was leaving the intensive care unit where her husband had died, a nurse stopped to offer condolences, the first person to extend sympathy:

“She told me, ‘I want you to know it was a privilege to take care of him,’ ” recalls Horowitz, voice wavering. “She said, ‘As a gay American, I thought he was a hero.’ And for her to say that, for her to be the last person who was with him, I thought it was a nice way to end."

For many of us in the struggles for social justice, Julian Bond was a hero and a role model.

Harrington speaking at a DSOC event (Gretchen Donart)

We continue our recognition of Michael Harrington’s contributions with recollections from several of our comrades who worked with him.

By Jack Clark

A mistake I'm glad I made led directly to my getting to know Mike Harrington well.

In 1969, I joined the University of Massachusetts chapter of the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL), the youth group of the Socialist Party (SP) which Mike chaired. YPSL opposed the self-defeating antics of some elements of the student left. My mistake consisted in thinking that YPSL shared basic goals of the student left, such as ending the war in Vietnam. Soon enough I was caught up in a faction fight within YPSL and the SP over the war and a range of related issues. Mike was the leader of our faction, the Coalition Caucus in the SP. By late 1972 I had moved to New York City to become organizer for the Coalition Caucus. I threw myself into the Labor for McGovern campaign, organized other young socialists to join picket lines for UFW boycotts and organized to maximize our caucus’s strength at the Dec. 1972 SP convention.