Why I Joined DSA: I no longer felt it was all my fault
By: Detroit Democratic Socialists Of America
Tags: Dsa, Socialism, Detroit, Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialism

by Courtney Smith

https://www.metrodetroitdsa.com/bernies_bday

The author with Bernie Sanders.

I had just finished running a lap around the lake, sweat dripping down my forehead and my breath still trying to catch up with me, when I got the email from HR requesting more information about my assault charge.

HR wanted information because I was about to be promoted at my job, an after-school program teaching elementary students how to read, write and perform poetry. I had been there for three years and would finally be getting the pay and title I deserved. I had to fill out paperwork, where I disclosed that I had a previous assault charge from six years ago.

The charge had been expunged from my record, but I felt that it would be better to be honest. It was way in my past life when I was consumed by drugs and alcohol and filled with a rage that I had yet to understand. I was then three years sober and had gone through intensive treatment and therapy, so I thought I had reached the point where my past was no longer invading my present. Until now.

After going back and forth with HR, sending the necessary paperwork, references, and letters from teachers, parents, and students I had worked with, they decided that I was no longer employable because it hadn’t been long enough for me to be rehabilitated.

At a stroke of a keyboard, I was fired. Just like that. Through email. No phone call, no deliberation, and because I was an at-will employee, there was no recourse. The person on the other end held way too much power in their hands and didn’t care one bit how their action would completely shatter my world.

I was devastated. Not only did I lose my source of income that kept a roof over my son’s head and my own, but I also lost my career plan. I was going to school to become a teacher and work in that district, and now I was faced with the very real possibility that I wouldn’t even be able to get a job there. I felt so ashamed about my past and the decisions I had made in my younger years. I felt that I would never be able to escape my past no matter how hard I worked or how much I changed. It wouldn’t matter. There would always be this invisible barrier keeping me stuck in the cycle of poverty.

My sadness soon turned to an underbelly of rage that felt all too familiar. It was the same rage I had felt my entire life that made me consume drugs and alcohol to my own detriment and lash out at anyone who got in my way of self-destruction. Only this time the rage wasn’t directed towards myself or those around me. It was rightly directed towards the system that had held generations of my family trapped in the trauma and violence of poverty. Here I was doing all of the things I was told were necessary to ensure I would be able to live a good life. I had pulled myself up by my bootstraps (or the Obama variety of pulling my pants up) and I worked hard for little pay with the hope that it would one day pay off. Only for these people to tell me that it wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t enough.

A couple of months later Bernie Sanders announced that he was running for president. I decided to go to his rally in Ames, Iowa with the hopes of learning more about this guy that I had heard so much about but knew so little. He went on about the 1% and the MILLIONAYUHS and BILLIONAYUHS not paying their fair share in taxes. I didn’t know how any of this had anything to do with me, so I tuned out at a certain point. Until he started rattling off all his policy proposals beginning from birth on to retirement age.

Bernie talked about paid maternity and paternity leave, universal childcare, fully funding education and free college, universal healthcare, eliminating “right-to-work” and “at-will” employment laws, strengthening unions, expanding voting rights, banning the box, raising the minimum wage, affordable housing…. The list goes on! Every single one of these policies I knew on a visceral level would improve my life and the life of everyone I knew and loved.

I could have free child care for my son and not have to pay a third of my income towards it. I wouldn’t have to worry about running out of financial aid and weighing the pros and cons of taking on more student loan debt. I would have been able to keep the job that I loved, with Bernie’s “ban the box” criminal justice proposal and eliminating “at-will employment.” I wouldn’t have had to work two to three jobs just to make ends meet if the minimum wage was raised and housing was affordable.

I’ve spent my whole life navigating these complicated, messy, injustice systems and I was “All my life I’ve had to fight” Sophia from the Color Purple, kind of TIRED!!! Bernie wasn’t at the podium spouting off platitudes and talking about hope and change with no real plan on how to get there. He was talking about real shit that actually impacted people and would radically change America!

I crumbled to the floor during that rally and I bawled. An older woman who had been standing near me during the rally, who I didn’t know from Adam and Eve, bent down to the floor with me and just held me while I cried. Without having to say a word I knew that she recognized my pain because she had lived through it herself. We sat there embracing each other, for what seemed to be forever but was only a minute. And that minute was all it took to set a fire inside of me.

For the first time in my life, I felt the veil of shame had been lifted. I no longer felt alone and that it was all my fault for the things I had gone through in my life. I felt relief that there was finally an opening, a way out. And it didn’t consist of me grinding hard my entire life, foregoing sleep, time with loved ones, and enjoying life until I reach “financial freedom.” It was coming together with millions of other people to fight for a better world that we all deserved. I gathered my strength and walked over to the first organizer I could find and signed up for my first canvassing shift.

I resolved to dedicate my life to fight for this vision of a better world and I joined the Bernie Sanders campaign as a field organizer. However, tragedy struck after only working on the campaign for one week when I lost my brother to his battle with mental illness and he completed suicide. He battled with schizophrenia most of his adult life and used drugs and alcohol to cope with it. Instead of receiving the help he needed, he was criminalized for it. Pushed further and further to the fringes of society. Bernie was the only politician I had ever heard actually make suicide a political issue by calling it “deaths of despair.”

I was devastated, to say the least. I still believe that if Bernie and his vision for a better world came to pass in 2016, my brother might still be here. Or at least he would have had a fighting chance. I carried his memory with me with every person I encountered, hoping to reach someone who may be on the edge and to tell them that it isn’t their fault, it shouldn’t be this way and we need them to fight to make it better.

I put it all on the line and gave it everything I had. Iowa is the first state to vote in the primaries so everyone was used to candidates setting up shop every four years to get their votes. It was like pulling teeth trying to get people out to volunteer. I didn’t let that deter me, though, and continued to talk to everyone I knew and everyone I didn’t about Bernie Sanders and our vision for a better world. I organized Black working people in my hometown and in the end, we won the state of Iowa by 6,000 votes.

I decided to continue the fight and travel with the campaign, moving on to Detroit, where I spent a month organizing. I was amazed at the militancy of Detroit DSA. I would make one phone call requesting phone bankers and would easily get 20 people on board to make calls. I went to a DSA meeting where I was met with over 200 DSA’ers who were ready to canvass for Bernie. It was like a tiny but mighty army! In the short amount of time I spent in Detroit, I felt that I had found my home. It was a place where capitalism had already failed and everyone knew how hard it was to just survive. The capacity for comradery and solidarity inspired me!

I decided to pack up my life and leave everything I knew behind to take up the fight here in Michigan with Detroit DSA. I became a card-carrying member of DSA in May 2020 and joined the ranks of 85k members nationwide.

After Bernie dropped out, the pandemic ravaged our lives, and the uprisings revealed all the ways in which the system has failed all of us — I felt some consolation knowing that DSA was still marching onwards, dedicated to fighting for a better world for all working people. And I finally felt like I was enough, just where I was, and I could breathe a little easier knowing that I’m not in this fight alone.

Join us in the fight! I can’t wait to meet you, comrade.