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Students Say 'Young Democratic Socialists Of America' Not Socialist Enough A student at Virginia Commonwealth University is running for Co-Chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America on the platform that the organization is not socialist enough.
The YDSA National Coordinating Committee has two “Co-Chairs” and four “at -large” members, all of whom are elected annually at the organization’s Summer Convention. The Committee oversees “activities, fundraising, publications, education, general political direction, and coalition work” of YDSA chapters nationwide. Carter’s Twitter bio notes that he is currently the vice chair of the VCU YDSA chapter, and also declares that “RVA POLICE MURDERED #MarcusPeters.” The VCU student launched a website that further explains who he is and the future he sees for the YDSA organization at a national level, asserting that:
Carter’s platform focuses on racial justice, classism, inclusivity, accessibility, and accountability, with an overarching emphasis on the need to “make a positive material change in the lives of poor and marginalized people” so that they can “participate in the revolution.”
Accusing YDSA of paying “lipservice [sic] to racial justice,” Carter that while “capitalism creates racism and cannot function without it,” destroying capitalism will not eradicate racism, because racism “will continue to propagate itself, and by proxy, capitalism.”
He also claims that YDSA is guilty of the very “classism” that it purports to fight, claiming that socialist “meme culture” tends to appeal to “a certain demographic of middle class and higher white men.”
On the “About” page of his website, Carter notes that in just the first semester of the YDSA at VCU chapter’s existence, he was involved in campaigns opposing VCU’s Master Plan, which he claims is about “gentrifying he [sic] entirety of Richmond’s Broad Street,” and supporting the Adjuncts for Fair Pay movement, “in which professors fight working conditions and pay so inadequate some professors are homeless.” He also notes that he coordinated a protest against “the tuition hike passed to pay for VCU’s real estate acquisitions” and “began work on his campus with William and Mary’s initiative to eliminate prison slave labor in Virginia.” Campus Reform reached out to Carter, who declined to comment. YDSA has not yet provided a response.
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