Prelude to a Rural Organizing Committee Application

Humboldt DSA members Justin M and Sam S get the message out at Eureka's Friday Night Market. They report a very positive reception.

The first thing was the visceral body-memory of what it felt like the first time this president roiled the nation. The repulsion. The dread. The fear.

I don't want to go through this again, every cell of me said last autumn, as I imagined 2025 and beyond. The temptation to pull up the covers and hide, or stay frozen, doomscrolling, was familiar and strong.

Then I remembered how horrible I felt when I could do pretty much nothing but doomscroll, due to how very sick I was during much of Trump’s first term. I knew nothing would feel worse than doing nothing at all. Better frontline than sideline. 

Good medicine and care had been making me stronger since then. Perhaps I could blow the dust off my at-large DSA membership and do something useful with that?

In Search of a Real Socialist Organizer

So I started looking around, figuring I would just pitch in wherever Real Socialist Organizers had already decided to respond. I combed through national DSA's website and started slogging through a few of the (many) emails I'd previously ignored. The more I read, the more evident it was that working class-focused DSA chapters were core units of necessary political power.

Only problem was, the closest DSA chapter was...five hours away? Gulp.

Surely somebody more capable was forming a chapter nearer to here? I showed up at a few virtual gatherings of California DSA and the national organization to find who they might be. By happenstance, on one of the California DSA zooms I saw someone identify themself as local to my area. I reached out. We connected. We knew some of the same people from the Bernie campaigns. I learned there had been previous efforts to get DSAers organized locally. So I dug out some old contacts, begged for a few more, and started making calls.

I called people I knew who might have a connection to those prior efforts, or might fancy a new one. I asked who else might be interested. I called, messaged, read, asked questions, and tried to take it all in. Doomscrolling would start to seize me again. Then I’d stop and make some more calls.  

Through weeks of this, I kept looking for the Real Socialist Organizer who would SURELY materialize with a poof to assure me that they—competent, valorous, and presumably abled—were already ON IT, making a DSA chapter magically appear.

Meanwhile, as the president's malice befell the world again, something weird was happening. In between doomscrolling relapses, my conversations with all these other people who cared about working class power the way I did prompted a feeling I'd nearly forgotten. In spite of the onslaught of devastating news, I was feeling actually...hopeful? 

Eventually, I had to face facts. The local Real Socialist Organizer I sought was not going to materialize at my convenience. Improbably—absurdly even—it was going to have to be mostly-housebound, introverted, middle-aged, cranky, chronically ill, disabled me. Not because I was an ideal person for the job nor particularly wanted it, but because sometimes, I could do some part of this work somewhat competently, and it so very much needed to get done. I was the organizer now. 

All Hail the Real Socialist Organizers

All those calls and messages brought me into contact with actual Real Socialist Organizers who lived far away. Each time I found one, I begged them for help. No dignity here! This is fascism, not a drill.

They said, absolutely! We'll help! Because, after all, that's what a Real Socialist Organizer does. They get people doing socialist organizing -- that's the whole point! California DSA leaders were particularly gracious and helpful, and as I got better plugged in I found folks at the national org were, too. 

Next thing I knew, DSAers and DSA friends were regularly meeting locally, because I, of all people, invited them to! We were quiet and loud, new to politics and multiply burned out, young and not-at-all young. Everybody brought something different to the room, and it felt fresh, somewhat scary, invigorating, comradely and rich. I managed to revive a few useful skills from my pre-sick political life and started sharing them where I could. I drafted agendas, cooked meals, got others doing both, and kept making calls. Little by little, others stepped up and together, as a group, we started to bloom.

Not a Glide Path

As we get to know each other, we identify our shared political dreams, what we are into, and what we aren't. We keep gathering and a sense of coherence slowly emerges, keeps emerging. We start out a hodge-podge of isolated, worried, interested, idealistic folks, and gradually become comrades. When it felt like we had enough of this groupness together, we applied to be a DSA Pre-Organizing Committee.

Do we know what we're doing? Sometimes! A little! We are learning. We've had challenges around matching our skills and experience to the very big lift of building local working class power. Five of us spent a weekend in a DSA leadership training and came out with renewed cohesion and resolve. Now we're an interim steering committee! So much to learn, connections to make, campaigns to lead. 

Sometimes it seems harder than it should be to figure out the obvious things we need for this process. Like, where is the universal, easy-to-read introductory DSA literature for tabling, flyering, and working the ever-growing protest crowds, which could make it so much easier for a new DSA group like ours to rapidly grow? We had to look high and low to find materials to adapt for our purposes, hindered by the fact our local members aren't very experienced creating such lit. Meanwhile, in California, 28% of adults struggle to read English at the most basic level. This is the working class we all say we care about, and people marginalized in this way need power -- and accessible materials -- even more than those of us who take reading for granted.  

The deadliest places in California

The deadliest places in California for people aged 15-44 are all up here in the fabulously gorgeous rural north, and none have DSA chapters. "Deaths of despair" here are commonplace. According to a December 2024 state Legislative Analyst's Office report, "The counties with the highest young adult death rates are all in the rural northern part of the state." The untimely deaths correlate to our widespread poverty and have been on the rise, particularly for people of color and for men. We are lucky to have many strong Native Tribes in the region, but life can be exceedingly difficult because of the genocides and ongoing trauma brought by settler colonialism, and hard for other working class folks too in the wake of the collapse of multiple extractive industries. Yet Shasta is currently the only county in this region with a DSA Organizing Committee (shout-out and huge props to them!).

Many of our communities have either no broadband Internet, or its availability is very uneven. On-camera zoom meetings can only get us so far (not to mention spotty public transit and our landslide-prone rural roads). Where is the network of other DSA organizers who are also overcoming these things? How can we easily find, get to know and support each other?

So many rural people share our socialist values but don't come with a background (or interest) in dense political theory and jargon. Some are too busy cobbling together a living, caregiving and generally staying alive, to be interested in fractious online DSA spaces. Meanwhile, we are constantly weathering climate and economic disasters together. The same face-to-face community relationships that hold small places tightly together through thick and thin are also essential to the power-building work socialists believe in. Marginalized rural peoples' shared connections are as valuable as any other kind. Calloused hands hold precious keys to our collective freedom.

I find myself wondering what we can do to keep every new and aspiring DSA organizer and group from having to navigate daunting challenges in isolation. It would be great to have a DSA Rural Network and Skill-Share!

Coming Together

In spite of the challenges, earlier this month nine members joined together to submit an Organizing Committee Application for Humboldt DSA! We know it's a humble start but we're proud of it, because every single name on that application reflects trust we've earned with and extended to each other amid frightening times.

Now, just a few months after I first paused my doomscrolling habit, a whole room full of determined Real Socialist Organizers gather regularly here. We draw on the moral and practical support of our comrades afar. Our movement is only beginning. Our solidarity is strong and is deepening. Onward we grow.