Thousands of Americans Have Become Socialists Since March

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Midwest DSA chapters, too, have seen growing interest in their work. Membership in the Twin Cities DSA has ticked upward since late February by some 200 members, said the group’s 29-year-old co-chair Rita Allen. The chapter saw a blitz of new members with Bernie fever in the run-up to Super Tuesday. After Joe Biden regained his lead in the primary, even more people joined the chapter as a way to keep pushing for Medicare for All and other Sanders-backed legislation. Within weeks, the state shutdowns started happening.

“Anyone who lives with a little precarity in their life … could see that the overall response to the pandemic was completely insufficient,” Allen told me. “We seized on that moment.”

The Twin Cities DSA began calling for an eviction moratorium, for the cancellation of rents and mortgages, and for the state health-insurance provider to extend its open-enrollment period. At the onset of the pandemic, the group began organizing neighborhood grocery runs and created a “solidarity fund” to raise and distribute cash—nearly $25,000—to needy community members.

The DSA is interested in recruiting higher-income workers on the front lines of the crisis, too. Through word of mouth, the Twin Cities chapter has reached out to health-care employees who feel like their workplace conditions are unsafe. Bridget Gavin, a 38-year-old Minneapolis nurse, told me that she was alarmed and frustrated by the lack of N95 masks and other personal protective equipment at the hospital where she works. A Sanders supporter in the primary, Gavin was approached in mid-April by a handful of other nurses recruiting for the DSA, and she agreed to join the organization. “I feel supported and heard and challenged in a good way,” Gavin told me.

If the DSA is smart, it will channel members’ energy and outrage into electing political candidates and campaigning for its pet legislative reforms, including the Green New Deal, high-quality affordable child care, and universal health-care coverage, says David Meyer, a sociology professor at UC Irvine who studies social movements and public policy. The U.S. government is “going to be spending shitloads of money” to get the country going again, Meyer told me. The next few weeks and months offer a chance for leftist reform groups like the DSA “to get in and decide where that goes and to make claims.”

Read: What do progressives do now?

The DSA has faced and will continue to face obstacles in pushing for reforms, given the organization’s tiny size—it’s way smaller than the major political parties—and the anti-socialist attitudes that are still prevalent in America. But the group has been propagating these ideas for decades, “making it well positioned to capitalize” on the societal upheaval happening now, Meyer said.

Since joining DSA in late March, Harms has been making 40 calls a week to other laid-off or essential workers, encouraging them to sign petitions, attend DSA meetings, and join Denver’s rent-cancellation campaign. Harms is heading back to work at the board-game shop this week, now that Colorado is reopening. But when I asked whether their DSA work will continue, Harms answered with an immediate and definitive yes.

“We’re going to see real change after this,” Harms said. “People won’t forget what this was like—to not have income and not have a job and still be expected to pay all these different bills.”

Elaine Godfrey is an assistant editor at The Atlantic.