Cuba, Trump and American socialists: Exclusive interview

In his recent onslaught on all things democratic at the UN General Assembly on 22nd September 2026, President Trump attacked the Democratic Socialists of America, claiming that the Cuban government had cultivated ties to them over decades.

This prompted us to recall that Megan Romer, the co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, spoke earlier in the year to Douglas Chalmers about the fortunes of the DSA, and its relationship with the radical tradition in the US, and with Cuba, and former communists such as Angela Davis.

It is also timely to point out that those involved with the Party of the European Left (which includes Democratic Left Scotland) have the opportunity to meet online with young DSA members on 29 September (registration required).

Megan Romer (pictured) described the story of the DSA as a success in difficult circumstances over the last ten years - growing from an organisation of around 5,000 ‘mostly academics and former or current union activists’ into an organisation of over 103,000 today. The average age ten years ago had been 67 - whereas now it was 27 - active in just over 200 ‘chapters’ together with 42 organising committees working towards ‘chapter’ status.

Megan argued that the lineage, far from being a Cuban or external construct, could be traced all the way back to Eugene Debs and the American Socialist Party ‘ but of course, on the left, everybody splits and comes back, and splits and comes back…’.

In the 1980s there had been two groups - one mostly working in the organised labour movement, on the left of the Trade Unions, and the other mostly coming back out of the anti-Vietnam war movement. Their merging together formed the modern incarnation of the DSA.

Megan felt that it had been the prominence of congressman Bernie Sanders in recent years who really helped elevate their organisation. In some ways Sanders reminded her of Jeremy Corbyn: ‘he has some charisma, but in general he’s just a truth teller - saying it like it is, which Americans like’.

Ironically, it also helped in Megan’s view that, when Americans googled ‘Democratic Socialist’, theirs was the first organisation which was normally found on the web.  She felt that ‘in a culture built upon lies, upon lies upon lies’, Sanders views resonated with people, although as an independent he has never actually been a member of the DSA.

Transforming the original DSA was not particularly easy, she insisted. ‘We kind of crammed all these people into a trench coat that was made for one. Some said, ‘you know, it’s meant to be an academic book club’ and we said ’no - we’re going to be an activist organisation’.

She feels that they are still working on making the structure fit for so many people, and helping them to do things democratically - ‘It’s not so simple to develop that democratic culture because so few Americans are able to exercise democracy in the US, because there are so few real democratic institutions. Most Americans have never really grown up in any sort of meaningful democratic culture - our trade union membership rates are so low in this generation, and even the unions that we have, it’s not that all of them are fully democratic’.

She thought that in general the election to Mayor of New York of Zohran Mamdani - a member of the DSA - had been a tremendous boost to their organisation. ‘He’s a charismatic answer to the alienation that many Americans are facing day to day’. Currently two sitting members of the US house are publicly identified as DSA members - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib - although another three or four progressive law makers are also seen as ‘allies’ by the DSA.

Several other DSA affiliated congressional candidates were successful in the 2026 primaries, - despite big business throwing massive amounts of money against their campaigns. However, whether they are elected will depend on the November general election.

‘So, in terms of membership, you can have people who are associated with the Democrats that can be members of the DSA . The Democratic Party doesn't function like a normal party. You can't join it and do anything inside it. You're hand selected by people who are already in power to take maybe a seat on a state board or something like that. It's appalling actually how difficult it is to do anything progressive.

'We also have this incredibly complex landscape of election law. Different states run it differently, there’s a situation where different municipalities within different states will run their elections differently. It's very bizarre, so part of my job is trying to make sense of the American political landscape and where there are vulnerable spots identify where we can try to throw in a little extra muscle’.

Where the DSA still had difficult issues in growing was within the black community however: ‘DSA is disproportionately white. Overall, although I think we're more Asian than the population at large, we’re less black than the population at large. And there are a bunch of reasons for that. America just remains so segregated.  Folks don't necessary feel safe or comfortable in the same room -  you know, black folks do not feel safe or comfortable in rooms full of white people. And of course you cannot blame them. I’d say we were probably around 90 percent white, although our elected officers are much more diverse - but we haven’t yet reflected that in our membership in general.

One of my black colleagues put it to me this way -  ‘a big thing is that the FBI murdered a lot of black radicals. And so, even younger people who feel like a black radical often do not become one because they don't want to get murdered. So it's a very different situation than a middle-class white kid.

'A white kid with middle-class or wealthy parents? What's the FBI gonna do to them really? You know? They can just go back and live with mom. It's fine.

'But black people don't have the generational wealth. They don't have the safety nets. They don't feel safe. They're targeted by police, you know, just all of these things. So, yes, it's a challenge from both directions for us to really work on making sure that those schools of thought are incorporated into our work, but also for folks to feel like they can even organise it at all.

'Some things have changed a little bit since the George Floyd uprising. It feels like that has sort of sparked a new era of black radicalism which was really kind of hanging on by a thread. because they literally killed so many of the leaders, you know, and it really just drove things underground.

'So today you're getting more younger people, more into the idea of radical change. And of being willing to be open about it – which can only be a good thing.’

On links with Cuba and the communist tradition in the US, Megan mentioned that she felt that Angela Davis was still seen as an icon of the movement on the left, and her book Are Prisons Obsolete? was standard reading in many of the DSA chapters. Like the late Pete Seeger and others who moved from the CPUSA through the committees of correspondence those from that tradition - although they perhaps only numbered in the hundreds now, were recognised as part of the radical US tradition.

She admired the Cuban tradition: ‘the Cubans in Cuba are the same as the Cubans in Miami, and, you know, I've been to Cuba several times. When I have, I've made a point of kind of getting away from the group and talking to as many regular people as I can. And they certainly have criticisms of the government, like everybody does everywhere, of every government, but they are very protective of their revolution.

'You know, being critical of the government is not the same as being critical of the revolution, and they don't want the United States. They don't want what it was before. And people are at varying levels of being critical of the government - the same way they are everywhere and - you know what people's gripes are towards authority - it’s universal.

'As for the future with Trump and Rubio, it's who knows? But I think in general, if he tried to invade Cuba. It would not go as well for him as he thinks it would. I think I think you'd see real resistance from the Cuban people. But nobody wants them to have to do that. I don't want them to have to do that'.

Published 25 September 2026

Megan Romer spoke to Doug Chalmers at April’s Congress of the European Left Party, which Doug attended as a representative of Democratic Left Scotland. Founded in 2004, the Party of the European Left consists of 22 member parties, ranging from the PCF, die Linke, Syriza, Izquierda Unida, United Left of Catalonia, the PCE, and communist or former communist parties from many other European countries. It also has ten partner associations or parties, including Democratic Left Scotland and - also from Scotland - Socialists for Independence, and finally also seven observer parties, such as AKEL from Cyprus.