Social Democrats, USA
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Social Democrats, USA
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| Chairperson | Patty Friend (CA) |
| Secretary-Treasurer | Richard D'Loss (PA) |
| Vice Chair | Michael Mottern (NY) David Hacker (NY) |
| Honorary Chair | Craig Miller (NJ) |
| Founded | 30 December 1972 |
| Preceded by | Socialist Party of America |
| Headquarters | P.O. Box 16161 Pittsburgh, PA 15242 |
| Newspaper | New America |
| Youth wing | Young Social Democrats |
| Ideology | Social democracy |
| Political position | Center-left to Left-wing |
| International affiliation | Socialist International (1973–2005) |
| Colors | Red |
| Website | |
| http://socialistcurrents.org/ | |
Social Democrats, USA (SDUSA) is an association of U.S. social democrats, that had been called the Socialist Party of America (SP) until the 1972 convention where it changed its name to SDUSA to clarify its objectives.
The Socialist Party had stopped running independent candidates for president of the U.S., and consequently the name "party" had confused the public. Replacing the name "socialist" with "social democrat", SDUSA clarified its vision to Americans who confused socialism with Soviet Communism, which SDUSA opposed. In response, former SPA Co-Chairman Michael Harrington resigned from SDUSA in 1973 and founded the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, which criticized SDUSA's anti-Communism and which welcomed the middle-class movements associated with the unsuccessful presidential campaign of George McGovern. SDUSA members opposed McGovern's politics; a few of them helped to start the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, and such members have been called "Scoop" Jackson Democrats or neoconservatives (or both).
SDUSA's members had been active in the Civil Rights Movement, which had been led since the 1940s by A. Philip Randolph. SDUSA's leaders had organized the 1963 March on Washington, during which Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. Under the leadership of Randolph and Bayard Rustin, SDUSA championed Rustin's emphasis on economic inequality as the most important issue facing African-Americans after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. SDUSA's efforts to reduce economic inequality led to a focus on labor unions and economic policy, and SDUSA members were active in the AFL–CIO confederation as well as in individual unions, especially the American Federation of Teachers.
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