Why I Joined DSA: From Armchair to Action
By: Detroit Democratic Socialists Of America
Tags: Dsa, Socialism, Detroit, Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialism

by Adi T.

“While this campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not.”

The author

Those were the piercing words I heard in the early months of 2020. After moving to another city for work, I was in the midst of trying to figure my life out again and living alone and isolated. I told myself things had to get better, and I wouldn’t let more days slip away from me.

Even still, I found myself increasingly separated by work, time commitments, and my own ability to be incredibly flaky when it came to trying to rebuild old bridges. Nonetheless, I committed to texting for Bernie, hoping in some way I would reclaim something through the push to get a radically transformative candidate like Bernie across the finish line.

The walls closed in further when the Coronavirus pandemic emerged seemingly out of nowhere and I was cordoned off by virtue of working from home. Though I count my blessings, it became abundantly clear that divisions among those who had safety were incredibly stratified, and arbitrary all the same.

There was no help on the horizon save for Band Aid fixes. Mainstream liberals had gone to wail about Trump, but provided no relief for folks out of work and out of hope. I had been isolated like this before, but seeing a dysfunctional reality, and then being told to clock in for work like nothing happened, all while wondering how long things had been like this even prior to the pandemic led me down a route of fixation — just hoping to get through each day.

I had already been changed by the fires of the 2016 Presidential election. That was the first election I was old enough to vote in, and despite initially starting as a loyal Democrat, I was slowly and surely becoming a socialist of the modern day, radicalized by neoliberalism’s most confusing decisions, educated by podcasts and videos over hard theory, and absolutely unconvinced as to our society’s ability to deliver on any of its promises.

But even though I could do this, independent of any intervention, it doesn’t change the fact that I was only a consumer of content. My early liberalism, informed by my desire to act on the part of the environment, existed purely in a vacuum. It was just an accumulation of ideas in my own head. I would make the same mistake if I assumed being a socialist, in my own head, would be practical in any way.

To put it simply, I realized the socialist movement will need numbers. It will need people. DSA, for all its problems, is still defined by its ability to have accumulated members. Rather than sit from an armchair, it was time for me to stop being so timid, and to start being present and active in an effort. To do something in the present.

I had become comfortable, and I didn’t want to remain so, knowing what it takes for our society to arbitrarily and unjustly decide who stays safe, and who is exposed to a pandemic; knowing who can have access to healthcare and who has to die in pain; knowing that corporations can blot out the sun in the sky if it means they can turn a profit.

I joined DSA, because it was time to work, and time to struggle. I am still not the best at overcoming my own tendencies to choose ease over hard work, but there’s no point feeling guilty when there’s more than enough work for all of us to partake in.

Some day, we will also share in the bounty.