I joined DSA in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election in 2016, like many other people trying to find a place to put their energy and focus. I wasn’t a super active member early on, in part because I was so used to the UNITE HERE New Haven organizing culture. If you don’t attend a meeting, you’re getting phone calls. And if you don’t pick up the phone, your door is getting knocked on, and you’re gonna have a conversation about how you’re prioritizing your life and what you’re putting first. NYC-DSA doesn’t work that way. So when I joined and skipped my second branch meeting, I was disappointed when no one came knocking on my door saying, “Where are you, Andrew?”
I was something more than a paper member but not somebody who was on any organizing committees or deeply involved in any working group stuff. It was in 2018 that I started canvassing. I actually started with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, mostly in Elmhurst, Queens. I was there on primary night in her Elmhurst office when she won. I looked back years later at photos, and I was like, “Oh, there’s Jabari Brisport in that photo,” and there’s all these other people I’d come to know later on. And then, there was Julia Salazar‘s campaign later that year. But this was always something I did on the side here and there. About a year later I was between jobs. I had left a job thinking another one was lined up and it fell through. I was unemployed, and I really wanted to do the kinds of things I’d seen happening and had only dipped my toes in with the New York City DSA electoral project.
At the time, there was a buzz around New York City politics at the time — the defeat of the Independent Democratic Caucus, the challenge that Cynthia Nixon gave to Andrew Cuomo. It felt like things were in motion in a real way for the first time in a long time in New York City and New York State. So when I was unemployed in summer 2019, I was looking to work in politics and kind of…
Auteur: Andrew Epstein
