The Spectacle Approach

Mass politics is a spectacle

Two years ago I wrote Towards a Mass (Block) Party laying out a new model of member engagement and detailing steps which I felt were important to grow NYC-DSA. A primary focus of the essay was improving the accessibility of the organization by lowering the ‘cost of participation via a streamlined member experience’ and more social events - labeled the ‘Social Approach’. This is easy to devalue, but it's in line with historic practices of many effective parties and similar organizations ranging from the SPD in Germany to Tammany Hall’s progressive era.

At the time of that article NYC-DSA was still recovering from the damage done by the COVID pandemic, and there were reasons for concern about the health of the organization. The worst of our Biden-era shrinkage had abated, but it had long-term consequences for leadership development and there was a growing perception of a vacuum at the heart of the chapter. There was genuinely *nothing to do* following the 2022 primary season, and our spring 2023 Tax The Rich Campaign was unable to mobilize the chapter like its 2021 predecessor campaign did. There was also a pervasive sense among members that all the chapter did was electoral - and that they were only valued as door knockers. Statistical and anecdotal data about the health of DSA chapters reveals that NYC was not alone in this, and that it posed a real risk.

I’m happy to say that we have since righted the ship - on a given week NYC-DSA is so active that it's difficult to communicate what events are formal or even informal priorities. We now have several long standing social clubs, including running, soccer, game night and self defense. Adopting a Social Approach is not solely responsible for this, we’ve seen several areas grow significantly including our revamped Labor Working Group, but the combined result has been improved member experience and retention. Our 2024 member growth numbers reflect this - we had the highest percentage growth of any chapter over 1000 members in the country at 12.41%, making us responsible for 30% of DSAs national growth that year. Interestingly the data shows our ‘Trump Bump’ was about average among chapters, though above average for a large chapter, and that the reason our year over year growth was so high was because we didn’t shrink prior to November, a strong indicator of health.

NYC-DSA Membership Trend Line

Distinct from our expanded clubs and regular branch and working group meetups, the chapter has also seen a rise in high profile cultural events. This includes but is not limited to cohosting a premier of the film Union at IFC center, a panel featuring esteemed Palestinian scholar Rashid Khalidi which packed a 300+ person space, similarly packed 101 events, election watch parties held across the city and our ‘Thots and Trots’ valentine's day mixer. Many of these have provably contributed to recruitment and list building and the mixer is especially notable for the attention it received, even garnering local press.

My feeling is that these events, and the attention they have received, has cemented a sense of there being a local, vibrant socialist culture. This has dovetailed with anti-Trump sentiment swelling our ranks and the rising star of our endorse State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s increasingly strong mayoral campaign. A great illustration of this was the recent large Zohran fundraiser, which was not organized by DSA directly but whose organizers included several DSA members. The fundraiser drew in a number of Bernie era left guests who have not been engaged in DSA spaces for several years - including socialist podcasters Chapo Trap House. It also raised tens of thousands of dollars for Zohran, which could translate to over six figures with matching funds.

I would call this phenomena the ‘Spectacle Approach’ - similar to the Social Approach but different in key aspects. While these events only contribute to a one-off engagement, in contrast to the recurring nature of other socials - they leave a larger impression which can foster a sense of association or approval with DSA. I have met a half dozen people in the past 3 months, members and non-members, who brought up the Khalidi forum as a notable event they attended which connected them to NYC-DSA. While the Social Approach is formulated to develop community, especially internally, the Spectacle Approach serves to develop culture and foster a local scene.

A holistic strategy for membership growth in a chapter as large as NYC-DSA requires multiple approaches designed to appeal to different demographics of potential members. My recommendation is that the chapter continues to pursue both the Social and Spectacle approaches - which I feel will grow our membership overall as well as improve retention and satisfaction, which are key to long term health during high growth periods. The goal should be to maximize our reach in terms of the number of people engaged given our currently available resources in the form of manpower, knowhow, etc. To this end, I believe the following areas are the most likely to pay off:

1. Proliferate Clubs

Clubs, usually oriented around sports or hobbies, have proven to be effective tools for building the chapter. They have the advantage of focusing on repeating events, which enables long-term relationship building, and appealing to a wide audience.

Several NYC-DSA clubs have a reach in the hundreds, including the Socialist Soccer League, Reading Groups and Run Club. Incredibly our oldest club, Sing in Solidarity, now operates completely independently while still being part of the chpater. We’ve begun to see a steady stream of organizers emerge from these clubs, and they are especially valuable during the ‘off season’ after the legislative period in Albany is over and primaries are finished.

2. Keep The Drinks Flowing

Many people entering socialist politics are looking to make connections, which can sometimes be difficult to do given the massive size of NYC-DSA. The most effective ‘onboarding’ experience possible is just meeting someone at a bar or coffee shop for drinks. Regularly scheduled parties and coffee with comrades thus provide an effective entrypoint into the organization, and if enough are happening it adds to the visibility of the organization and thus the sense of a viable ‘scene’.

3. Embrace Academia & Culture

Academia and culture are two sectors which have seen the most deterioration in the last two decades, and are also currently major targets of the Trump Administration. This is unfortunate, it has helped contribute to an increasingly incurious and decreasingly literate social body, which is not to our advantage. In order to fix issues, people need to understand the underlying +problems - and as believers in working class power we want to as much as possible encourage the education and empowerment of the working class. It is not a coincidence that DSA’s most dramatic demographic imbalance is educational attainment rather than race or gender.

While recent years have had a negative impact on people’s attention spans, they still want to learn - high profile events catered to the moment can draw large crowds. The Khalidi panel remains one of the most successful events we’ve done, and it may be possible to recreate that success on an even bigger scale. There are hundreds of intelligent, socialist friendly professors across the country and drawing on their expertise could uplift our capabilities of rapidly responding to the escalating crises under capitalism by enabling us to seize the narrative before it can be co-opted by beltway ghouls. Socialism is a movement that appeals to people's better instincts, and it is important to the long term viability of this movement that it serves to uplift its participants. A culture of accessible socialist education, made as widespread and as visible as possible with high quality presenters, will go a long way to building a more robust cadre.

Similarly many authors, directors and performers have socialist leanings - and with the recent collapse of the legitimacy of the Democratic party are increasingly interested in working with us. We should be building out our network whenever possible to coordinate literature reviews, movie premieres and other notable events. This also should not be limited to just nonfiction - fiction is an important tool for education in its own right. Furthermore, times are increasingly tough for artists and it would be to our mutual benefit if participation in the socialist movement functioned as a boon to our creative comrades in this way.

4. Mass Calls, Town Halls and Rallies

While many people have correctly identified America’s loneliness epidemic as a major obstacle for leftist organizing, too many conclude that the solution is just ‘community building’ in the abstract. This is positive for people involved, but developing a series of isolated communities does not make a movement. The Spectacle and Social approaches work primarily because they are contributing to a viable, mass member political organization. They are reinforced by, and in turn reinforce, our existing political project - the organizing required to achieve mass politics necessitates stronger communities.

Given this - mass calls and rallies, such Bernie's recent countrywide tour are important tools. Seeing a large amount of people devoted to a common cause, ideally in person but even just on a zoom call, is inspiring and in its own way incredibly fun. As much as possible we should be leveraging our electeds to lead and promote these events - both as a way to build our organization and to raise their profile. While we have been good about getting them to speak at protests - its clear that rallies and town halls draw larger crowds beyond the base of DSA or coalition partners. Mass politics is in itself a spectacle, one that people desire now more than ever - it’s time to go big.