NEW YORK-On a recent Saturday morning, a youngish group gathered around a table in the sun-dappled garden of a Brooklyn coffee shop. Beneath a bright blue sky they were sipping drinks, chatting-and building socialism.
The "Coffee With Comrades" was hosted by the Democratic Socialists of America. It was yet another in an endless buffet of social events the DSA uses both to attract new members and more closely bind existing ones to the movement.
In Queens, DSAers were playing "socialist softball" at Queensbridge Park. "Bring your own glove if you can-but if you don't have one, we'll encourage folks to share as need be," an invitation advised. Meanwhile, at Forest Park in Woodhaven, other socialists gathered for a "Desi, Afro and Latin" potluck picnic. The previous evening featured a DSA game night in Long Island City.
The socialists, it turns out, are highly social.
In chapters across the country, they enjoy DSA barbecues, beach days, running clubs, happy hours, karaoke, prom nights, transgender rights and bodily autonomy game nights, reading groups, Marxist study circles and more. The DSA is even moving into affairs of the heart with a recent "Socialist Speed Dating" event in New York's Lower East Side. ("In the era of late-stage capitalism, our dating and social lives are more and more controlled by for-profit companies," read a flier.)
"It's a good way to be social," Caroline Hill, a printmaker who had attended the Brooklyn coffee, said of her DSA activism. The 25-year-old estimated about half of her social life was tied to the DSA.
For others, the DSA can become all encompassing, according to David Duhalde, a longtime member and writer. The movement, he argued, has stepped into a gap left by a withering civic society-particularly for a generation yearning for engagement after the isolation of the pandemic.
"It really fulfills a social function that a church would," said Duhalde, who plays pickup basketball with DSA chums, often finds himself at dinner parties with fellow DSA couples and whose phone is populated by various DSA message chains-the DSA Knicks Chat, the Socialist Majority Caucus Chat and others. "It becomes a way for people to hang out."
Social cohesion is its own reward. But it also seems to contribute to the movement's electoral success, as critics like Van Jones, the centrist Democratic analyst, have observed. In June, Jones warned-prophetically-that DSA candidates were poised to unseat more moderates in blue districts. "Why? Because the DSA has patiently built an army of on-the-ground organizers-who go to meetings, help each other, study together and THEN work to turn out voters on Election Day," he wrote on X.
At the recent Long Shadow Coffee meetup in Brooklyn, the talk was less of electioneering than the search for community in what many regarded as a dark era dominated by President Trump and overly large corporations. Attendees ranged from DSA veterans who had become activated during the first Trump administration to recent joiners and a smattering of what one organizer called the "DSA-curious."
Among them was a self-described "tech nomad," with no fixed address, a disenchanted IT worker, and a traveling doctor currently working in West Virginia. People came and went, mixing easily. (They even made room for an uninvited reporter).
The discussion perked up when it turned to strategy games, like Catan, which are particularly popular among millennials. One member recounted an experience with another game, Votes for Women, in which Progress and the Patriarchy teams spar over women's suffrage. (Alas, they reported, the Patriarchy won).
With such explosive growth in recent years-and particularly since last year's election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani-the DSA has tried to become more systematic about holding such events to integrate so many newcomers. The goal is to ensure that those who sign up in a moment of passion don't become mere "paper members," as the DSA refers to them, but active ones.
To that end, the New York City chapter has developed its own onboarding app to help new members immerse themselves in the organization. In Brooklyn, organizers also distributed a disarmingly low-tech "Red Card." Think of a business card featuring six actions to complete in 90 days-from attending a coffee or a branch meeting to canvassing for a candidate and "bringing a friend." For each one completed, the comrade receives a red rose sticker, a socialist motif.
Dione Lomando, who has been organizing DSA coffees since last summer, recalled the winter reading groups that were her social entree to the movement. "Onboarders" and working group leaders are on hand, she explained, so that when new members "plug into a campaign or event, they have a friendly face they recognize from meeting over coffee."
At a happy hour outside of Washington, D.C., leaders of the Montgomery County, Md., branch crowded around two of the longest tables in the bar. Attendees talked about a group dinner at a local Palestinian restaurant and distributing Narcan at Transmission, a staple of the city's underground music scene.
"It was like a fundraiser, but also like 'oh, we're going partying, guys!'" said Yiding Yang, a 25-year-old biotech engineer from New York. Yang, a D.C.-chapter member of six months, has a DSA group hike in the works. He is drawing inspiration from the chapter's past picnics, coming kayak outings on the Potomac and bubble tea and ice cream socials.
No topic is too buzzkill at a DSA get-together, noted Alexander Greene, 20, a college student. Weighty subjects-like abolishing the capitalist wage system-are welcome.
"You never go guns blazing, saying, 'want to nationalize the banks? No. Let's talk about economic theory.... You want to talk about quantitative easing?'" said Greene, a member of the D.C. chapter. But at DSA events you can, he said.
By night's end, stragglers were pondering why Americans were more social in the 20th century. The likely reason, they concluded, was that the country had more unions.
Zach Weinstein, a member of the DSA's East Bay, Calif., chapter and Communist Caucus, recalled how the left was long splintered in the U.S. and lacked a durable organization.
His DSA caucus tends to shun electoral politics and is instead devoted to the spadework of tenant organizing and other grassroots efforts. It can, he said, be a lonely and frustrating undertaking.
"We do find that building a warm social environment is really important for people to be able to keep doing this work," said Weinstein.
The chapter has supported everything from rock climbing and crafting groups to more traditional recreation. "A classic bar hang after a meeting is still a thing," Weinstein reported.
Like others, he had experienced the unspoken warmth of walking into a DSA room and knowing everyone there had a similar political and social bent. Even if they were strangers, they were "comrades"-as Weinstein and other DSAers often address one another.
"You can't be friends with 120,000 people," he explained. "But you can have this sense of solidarity."
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