DSA Adds Chapters From Kentucky to California as Its House Ranks Grow

Card photograph: ARCHIVE. Young Democratic Socialist supporters in Burlington, Vermont, October 18, 2021. Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0. Cropped for the card. License. Adaptation shared under the same license. Source photograph.

Democratic Socialists of America reported new organizing committees in Madison County, Kentucky, California’s Central Valley and Greater Mankato, Minnesota, days before five of its endorsed candidates won House seats. Its November 1 chapter report also listed new student chapters at George Mason University and Portland State University.

The congressional breakthrough, reported by NPR on election night, gives the organization a larger national platform. Its municipal campaigns and ballot measures show a wider geography than the five House races alone.

DSA said national membership had passed 130,000. That is the organization’s membership figure, not a count of active workplace or tenant organizers. The local report described a more concrete expansion of capacity: Los Angeles DSA was hiring its first paid staff director.

Campaigns that do not end at the polls

ARCHIVE. Zohran Mamdani speaks at a DSA 101 meeting at Church of the Village in New York, November 11, 2024. Bingjiefu He. CC BY-SA 4.0. License. Source photograph.

Independent reporting supplies a closer view of that growth. In an October 8 dispatch from Austin, AP described a chapter meeting combining immigration-enforcement observation training, Starbucks boycott organizing and a council campaign. About 700 people had joined the chapter over the preceding year, increasing its membership by more than half. The meeting put electoral work beside labor solidarity and practical training rather than asking members to choose just one.

In Atlanta, DSA’s chapter report said DSA council member Kelsea Bond secured a resolution supporting Starbucks Workers United’s boycott and pledging no council spending at the company until a union contract. In Philadelphia, DSA had already endorsed AFSCME organizer Will Gross and candidates Shawn Moss and Vik Patel for the 2027 city council cycle.

These activities use different kinds of organization. A boycott resolution makes municipal purchasing part of a labor dispute. A council slate requires candidates, volunteers and decisions about where to concentrate work. A paid staff role can provide continuity, but it also makes member oversight of priorities and resources more important.

AP reported that Austin members had knocked on roughly 7,000 doors for council candidate Misael Ramos. He described using city land for affordable housing and shifting police funding toward mental-health responders, translating the organization’s larger goals into proposals within a city government’s reach.

Preparing the next local campaigns

The union canvassing mounted during the midterms pursued another route into local political work. In both cases, organizations combined electoral activity with workplaces and neighborhoods in which members would remain after the vote.

The Philadelphia endorsements already extend that work into 2027. In Atlanta, the immediate commitment is to withhold council spending from Starbucks until a union contract. Those are continuing campaigns with named targets, beyond the attention won by DSA’s new congressional members.