Frances Gill, a member of DSA-Los Angeles and a resident physician in psychiatry at LAC+USC Medical Center, looked into a camera and said what she meant. "The most important thing we can do is take that empire down from within."
She wasn't being metaphorical. Neither were the other three.
A video compiled by Canary Mission — the organization that documents individuals and groups promoting hatred of the United States and Israel — captured four Democratic Socialists of America members from four different city chapters laying out, in plain English, their goal of destroying the country they live in. Not reforming it. Not improving it. Destroying it. Sen. Ted Cruz shared the footage on July 9 with five words: "This is today's Democrat party."4
Hazel Williams of DSA-San Francisco put it in revolutionary terms. "U.S. imperialism is not a thing that can be reformed away," she said. "It has to be overthrown through revolutionary struggle." Not voted away. Not protested. Overthrown.
Amy Wilhelm of DSA-Seattle was even more direct about the assignment. "Our role, ultimately, is to facilitate our own empire's failure in ways that we can," she said. "Ultimately, to overthrow our own empire." That's a sitting member of a political organization that endorses candidates for public office in American elections, explaining that the point of those elections is to accelerate the country's collapse.
Sarah Anastasia Milner of DSA-Portland, who serves on the DSA's National Political Committee for the 2025-2027 term, described the mechanics. The plan, she said, is to "build a mass movement that can use the leverage of workers to hit the kill switch on American imperialism here within the American empire." This isn't a fringe blogger. This is a member of the organization's national governing body describing — on video — how to use labor organizing as a weapon against the country.
Four chapters. Four members. Four statements. San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland. The geographic spread alone tells you this isn't one rogue local chapter going off-script. This is the script.
The DSA doesn't operate in a vacuum. Its endorsed candidates run and win Democratic primaries. Its members hold elected office. Its platform feeds directly into the progressive wing that sets the energy and agenda for the broader party. And when four of its members openly state that their goal is to overthrow the United States, the response from mainstream Democratic leadership has been silence.
No condemnation from party leadership. No statement distancing the Democratic Party from an organization whose members describe their mission as facilitating America's failure. No press conference. No strongly worded tweet. The same party apparatus that can mobilize a response to a Republican congressman's typo within fifteen minutes has found nothing to say about four people on camera calling for the end of the republic.
The DSA's defenders will say these are just activists expressing political opinions, that "overthrow" is rhetorical, that democratic socialism is a legitimate political tradition with roots in European social democracy. Fine. But European social democrats don't talk about hitting "kill switches" on their own countries. They don't describe their role as facilitating their own empire's failure. And they don't use the word "overthrow" as a policy objective.
Williams said it can't be reformed away. Wilhelm said the goal is to facilitate failure. Gill said to take it down from within. Milner described the kill switch.
The only people pretending they didn't mean it are the ones who benefit from the ambiguity.
