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HAPPY SUNDAY, comrades. It’s me, Holly, your OC. I’m going to write up a quick FAQ of some of the questions we’ve been getting this week from new members.

As of 2018, there are more than 3,000 dues-paying members involved with the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists (NYC-DSA). Because it is logistically impossible to fit 3,000 people in any space short of a football stadium, we have had to organize ourselves into more manageable chunks. These branches are primarily geographical, including: Central Brooklyn (CBK), South Brooklyn (SBK), North Brooklyn (NBK), Queens, Lower Manhattan (Low-Man), Bronx and Upper Manhattan (BUM). But CUNY and Labor are also recognized as being their own branches.

FAQ 2: What is a Branch Organizing Committee?

The Organizing Committee is the group of officers elected to manage branchwork for one year. In Central Brooklyn, our OC work includes planning a monthly general meeting for our members which plugs them into the chapter’s broader work but also we also are responsible for assignments such as: building and improving the communication network that organizes our membership, planning branch-level campaigns, events and fundraising projects for the coming year, and overseeing community-level engagement. It is quite a bit of work which requires a great deal of time and commitment on the part of the branch leadership.

Great question, comrade! And might I add, excellent praxis. In Central Brooklyn, we will be hosting a branchwork strategy meeting where your OCs will be asking branch members how they would like to organize themselves into our branch during the coming year. We know that we will need help producing events, so we are hoping that we can build an events-planning committee dedicated to the organizing the work necessary to throw fundraising parties and social outings. But the point of this meeting will be to give our members an opportunity to help each other build out what they told us in our last meeting were their hopes for what a branch could provide for them in the coming year of class struggle.

In the meanwhile, you can always volunteer to assist the Organizing Committee with the planning of the monthly general meeting. These tasks include: new member greeting, member sign-in assistance, preparing and bringing food and potluck supplies, IT support, time-keeping, room setup and cleanup. Contact central.brooklyn@socialists.nyc if you would like to help us with any of that simple day-of stuff. Even low-commitment commitments are valuable to your comrades.

Because NYC-DSA is as vast as the oceans and seas are wet, our membership dedicates their time and energy into diverse but nevertheless interlocking working groups dedicated to different facets of the socialist struggle for human emancipation. This activism includes electoral work organized by the aptly named Electoral Working Group, itself sub-divided by borough. There is also a very active Socialist Feminist Working Group, itself sub-divided into several sub-committees such as the Socialist Feminist Political Education Committee. Whereas your branch provides you as an activist with a socialist homebase, working groups connect your activist labor to the broader struggle.

Current NYC-DSA working groups include:

To learn more about any of these working groups or get involved, visit http://www.socialists.nyc/working-groups/.