Peter Dreier

Peter Dreier

Peter Dreieris a professor of politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program, at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

He is a member of Los Angeles Democratic Socialists of America and coeditor, with Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin, of We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism American Style, forthcoming, New Press, January 2020.

Education

Ph.D, University of Chicago, 1977.

Leaving DSA

November 9, 2023 Twenty-four longtime members of the Democratic Socialists of America published an open letter in The New Republic to explain why they’re leaving the organization.

Our hopes for a better world—more egalitarian, more just, more humane—once found expression in the Democratic Socialists of America.

Many of us have been members of DSA since its founding in 1982—some of us in leadership positions—as well as activists in the organizations and movements from which DSA emerged...

We were elated by the explosive growth of DSA that began in 2016, followed by the election of more than 100 DSA members to elective office. In such figures as Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush, Summer Lee, and Greg Casar, we cheered a new generation of progressive political leadership in the United States. It seemed that we could finally join other nations in having a meaningful democratic socialist presence in our political mainstream.

In recent years, however, we have been deeply troubled by the emergence of isolating, purist, and self-destructive tendencies inside DSA that have undermined its promise. The very strength of the regenerated DSA is in its electoral work and its high-profile, politically astute elected officials, and yet they came under attack from within. Ocasio-Cortez was condemned for stating that Israel had a right to exist, and Bowman was subjected to a vicious campaign for his expulsion from DSA because of his refusal to endorse the boycott, divestment, and sanctions, or BDS, movement, as well as for his connections with Jewish peace organizations in the U.S. and Israel.

The campaigns against DSA members of Congress garnered high-profile, public attention, but they were only the tip of the iceberg. There were several attacks on DSA-member and DSA-endorsed state and local officials. Purist litmus tests were increasingly imposed on candidates for elected office as the price of DSA endorsements.

In our judgment, a moment of truth has arrived. The events of the last weeks in Israel and Palestine, and the responses of national DSA and many of its local chapters, bring us to the painful conclusion that today’s DSA has driven itself beyond redemption....

We are beginning discussions amongst ourselves, to which we will invite other signatories to this letter, on how to keep the true vision of democratic socialism alive and how we can work together to develop an organizational framework that supports our educational and political work.

Leo Casey, Harold Meyerson, Richard Healey, Peter Dreier, Ruth Jordan, Mark Levinson, Nathan Newman, Maurice Isserman, Ingrid Goldstrom, Larry Mishel, David Kusnet, Aaron Greenberg, Randall Brink, Janette Brink, Jules Bernstein, Jeff Isaac, Tom Canel, James Berger, Robert Feldman, Jennifer Klein, Ed Collins, Raymond Barglow, John Zuraw, Bill Mosley.

Fight for Racial and Economic Justice

The Fight for Racial and Economic Justice: A Virtual Discussion with Darrick Hamilton, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Symone Baptiste, Olufẹemi Taiwo, and Bianca Cunningham. Wednesday, December 16th at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT.

Edited by Kate Aronoff, Peter Dreier and Michael Kazin.

Democratic Socialists of America Urban and Community Commission

In 1982 the Democratic Socialists of America Urban and Community Commission, was co-chaired by:

• Peter Dreier Dept of Sociology, Tufts University, Massachusetts
• Randy Cunningham Ohio

DSA Conference delegate

In 1983 Peter Dreier, Dept. of Sociology, Tufts University was a Boston, Massachusetts delegate to the Democratic Socialists of America conference in New York City, October 14-16, 1983

DSA activist

John Atlas and Peter Dreier were active Democratic Socialists of America membersin New Jersey in the mid-1980s.

In 1994 Peter Dreier was a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. At the time he was teaching at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

Working for Ray Flynn

When Democratic Socialists of America leader Michael Harrington was dying of cancer, in the late 1980s, he came to Boston to give a speech at an anti-poverty organization. DSA member Peter Dreier asked then Mayor Ray Flynn [whom he worked for at the time and had previously introduced to Harrington] if he wanted to go to hear him speak because he probably wouldn’t be alive for very much longer, and if he wanted to get together with him afterwards.

Ray Flynn said, “I got a better idea. Let’s proclaim Michael Harrington Day, and give him a key to the city.” Wrote Dreier, "how many big city mayors will make a day for a leading socialist? Ray did that because he was so taken with Mike. In fact, lots of times when Flynn would ask me about different issues he would say, “What would your friend Mike do about this?"

Campaign for America's Future

In 1996 Peter Dreier, Occidental College was one of the original 130 founders of Campaign for America's Future.

History

The Progressive Los Angeles Network (PLAN) was formally launched in December 1999. PLAN was founded and built on the success of the 1998 Progressive L.A. Conference which was co-sponsored by a number of local and national institutions and organizations including Occidental College, The Nation Institute, Liberty Hill Foundation, LA Weekly and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. The Progressive LA Conference "was an overwhelming success and gave participants a sense that the growth of a wide variety of progressive social movements had reached an important threshold. As a result, attendees and others within the progressive movement in Los Angeles expressed a desire to participate in further discussion about how to develop a common agenda that is community based, inclusive and brings together the wealth of experience and knowledge of organizers, activists, and researchers".

In 1999, the organizers of the 1998 Conference consulted dozens of grassroots, community, labor, and environmental leaders about how to capitalize on the conference's momentum. Participants decided to develop a community-driven network that could develop a public policy agenda and action plan for Los Angeles, using the resources and knowledge of public policy experts and the experience and leadership of influential activists and organizers in Los Angeles. This network became PLAN.

While PLAN evolved into less of a formal network over the years, the network members and task forces that came out of the PLAN process remained active players in areas of "social and economic justice, livability and democracy in L.A." Most recently, four PLAN members, Bob Gottlieb, Mark Vallianatos, Regina Freer, and Peter Dreier published a book outlining the history of the progressive movement in Los Angeles and the evolution of PLAN. In addition, PLAN participated in the development of the document "Planning for a Livable City."

Socialists organize to "challenge for power" in Los Angeles

On March 11, 1998, Los Angeles Democratic Socialists of America leader Steve Tarzynski wrote an email to another Los Angeles DSA leader Harold Meyerson.

Tarzynski listed 25 people he thought should be on an "A-list" of "25 or so leaders/activists/intellectuals and/or "eminent persons" who would gather periodically to theorize/strategize about how to rebuild a progressive movement in our metropolitan area that could challenge for power."

Tarzynski listed himself, Harold Meyerson, Karen Bass, Sylvia Castillo, Gary Phillips, Joe Hicks, Richard Rothstein, Steve Cancian, Larry Frank, Torie Osborn, Rudy Acuna, Aris Anagnos, Abby Arnold, Carl Boggs, Blase Bonpane, Rick Brown, Stanley Sheinbaum, Alice Callahan, Jim Conn, Peter Dreier, Maria Elena Durazo, Miguel Contreras, Mike Davis, Bill Gallegos, Bob Gottlieb, Kent Wong, Russell Jacoby, Bong Hwan Kim, Paula Litt (and Barry Litt, with a question mark), Peter Olney, Derek Shearer, Clancy Sigal and Anthony Thigpenn.

Included in a suggested elected officials sub-group were Mark Ridley-Thomas, Gloria Romero, Jackie Goldberg, Gil Cedillo, Tom Hayden, Antonio Villaraigosa, Paul Rosenstein and Congressmen Xavier Becerra, Henry Waxman and Maxine Waters.

Tarzynski went on to write "I think we should limit the group to 25 max, otherwise group dynamics begins to break down....As i said, I would like this to take place in a nice place with good food and drink...it should properly be an all day event."

The Next Agenda Conference

Progressive LA: The Next Agenda Conference was held On October 20, 2001 in Los Angeles at the California Science Center.

The Progressive Los Angeles Network (PLAN) and the Institute for America’s Future "will co-sponsor an important conference -- the Next Agenda Conference -- designed to celebrate recent victories, build upon Los Angeles’ progressive momentum, and link local issues with a national progressive agenda. The conference will also help solidify a more strategic and integrated progressive movement in Los Angeles".

Speakers included Peter Dreier , Occidental College

Progressive Los Angeles Network

Circa 2002 , Peter Dreier, Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, PLAN Co-Chair , served on the Advisory board of the Democratic Socialists of America dominated Progressive Los Angeles Network.

Villaraigosa "talent pool"

According to Harold Meyerson of the LA Weekly, newly elected Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa can call on a "locally based progressive talent pool" that includes such policy activists as Occidental government professor Peter Dreier and nonprofit housing advocate Jan Breidenbach (in housing), Roxana Tynan of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (in development), Larry Frank of UCLA’s Labor Center (in work-related issues), and the Liberty Hill Foundation’s Torie Osborn (for general administrative genius).

Democratic Socialists of America conference

An "insurgent" Hilda Solis was a keynote speaker at the 2005 Democratic Socialists of America national conference "Twenty-First Century Socialism" in Los Angeles, with DSA leaders Peter Dreier and Harold Meyerson.

Saturday evening delegates recognized the contributions of DSA vice chair and Washington Post]columnist Harold Meyerson, Occidental College sociologist and longtime DSAer Peter Dreier and insurgent California Congress member Hilda Solis (D) who in turn provided in-depth perspectives of the political scene.

Other speakers included ACORN chief organizer Wade Rathke, Kent Wong of the UCLA Labor Center and Roxana Tynan of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy.

Progressives for Obama

In 2009 Peter Dreier was listedas a signer of the Progressives for Obama website-Occidental College.

Liberty Hill Foundation

As at 2009, Peter Dreier was a member of the Advisory Board of the Liberty Hill Foundation, a Los Angeles based organization seeking to advance movements for social change through a combination of grants, leadership training and alliance-building.

Social Policy

The Editorial Advisory Group of the magazine Social Policy includes;

Noam Chomsky, Janice Fine, S. M. Miller, Peter Olney, Frances Fox Piven, Heather Booth, Peter Dreier, Maya Wiley, Robert Fisher, Ashutosh Saxena, Ken Grossinger

Cry Wolf Project

The Cry Wolf Project was established in 2010 to counter conservative attempts to stop or discredit "progressive" policy options.

Cry Wolf Project Coordinators

• Peter Dreier, E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, Director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program, Occidental College
• Donald Cohen, Executive Director, Center on Policy Initiatives
• Nelson Lichtenstein, Professor of History at UC Santa Barbara and Director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy

Project Advisory Board

• Robert Kuttner, Co-founder & Co-editor, American Prospect
• Gerald Markowitz, PhD, John Jay College, CUNY
• David Rosner, PhD; Co-Director, Center for the History & Ethics of Public Health
• Alice O’Connor, PhD, UC Santa Barbara
• Janice Fine, PhD, Rutgers University
• Andrea M. Hricko, MPH; Southern CA Environmental Health Sciences Center
• Jennifer Klein PhD, Yale University
• Meg Jacobs PhD, MIT
• William Forbath JD, PhD, University of Texas Law School
• Tom Sugrue PhD, University of Pennsylvania
• Lizabeth Cohen PhD, Harvard University

Stand with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

We Stand with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a 2018 letter signed by several Democratic Socialists of America members mainly from the DSA North Star in response to attacks on Ocasio-Cortez over remarks she made on Palestine.

A recent petition circulated by some DSA members criticizes Ocasio-Cortez for supporting a two state solution to the Palestine-Israel question and not aligning with a long list of demands regarding Palestine and Israel. Should Ocasio-Cortez fail to agree with this list of demands, the petitioners are calling for DSA to revoke her endorsement. These attacks on Ocasio-Cortez have come despite the fact that she has staked out positions which will make her one of the strongest advocates of Palestinian rights and self-determination in Congress.

We stand with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The position she has taken on Israel and Palestine are principled stances, worthy of a democratic socialist, in its recognition of both Palestinian humanity and rights and Israeli humanity and rights. On this issue, as many, she will be a voice for the voiceless in Congress.

Signatures included Peter Dreier.

DSA North Star

In 2018 Peter Dreier was an original signatory of the DSA North Star founding principles statement.

References

Template:Reflist Template:Campaign for America's Future co-founders