The state of democracy in the United States, as anyone who has taken a glance at the news knows, is not strong. Donald Trump has continuously and brazenly attacked the norms and laws that shape our democratic practices. This erosion started long before him though. Since Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, intellectual and political leaders have noted the decline in civil society and corresponding decline in our democracy. Declining unionization, fewer civic clubs and associations, and a general erosion of collective and communal life has meant that Americans have forgotten how to engage in collective decision-making and action-taking. Once people forget how to practice democracy in their day-to-day lives, it becomes much easier to take democracy away in our politics.
There is a significant group countering this trend, though few of those same intellectuals and political leaders lamenting democracy’s decline have noted it: Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
DSA organizes for a robust socialist vision, and our political agenda tends to get the most attention. But less attention is paid to how we organize: through mass, grassroots, democratic means.
DSA has over 200 chapters and over 85,000 members across the country. Each of these chapters has democratic processes not only for choosing its leaders but for choosing its strategy and priorities. And the organization has built a culture of taking action together. Once we collectively choose a course of action, we put the work in to achieve our goals together through democratic action.
DSA organizes through mass, grassroots, democratic means.
New York City DSA (NYC-DSA), of which I am a cochair, is the biggest example of this model in action. As of the end of October, NYC-DSA had more than 11,300 members, a number that will increase in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s historic mayoral victory. NYC-DSA played a key role in organizing more than a hundred thousand people who volunteered their time to drive Zohran to…
Auteur: Grace Mausser
