The state of democracy in the United States, as anyone who has taken a glance at the news knows, is not strong. Donald Trump has continuously and brazenly attacked the norms and laws that shape our democratic practices. This erosion started long before him though. Since Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, intellectual and political leaders have noted the decline in civil society and corresponding decline in our democracy. Declining unionization, fewer civic clubs and associations, and a general erosion of collective and communal life has meant that Americans have forgotten how to engage in collective decision-making and action-taking. Once people forget how to practice democracy in their day-to-day lives, it becomes much easier to take democracy away in our politics.

There is a significant group countering this trend, though few of those same intellectuals and political leaders lamenting democracy’s decline have noted it: Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

DSA organizes for a robust socialist vision, and our political agenda tends to get the most attention. But less attention is paid to how we organize: through mass, grassroots, democratic means.

DSA has over 200 chapters and over 85,000 members across the country. Each of these chapters has democratic processes not only for choosing its leaders but for choosing its strategy and priorities. And the organization has built a culture of taking action together. Once we collectively choose a course of action, we put the work in to achieve our goals together through democratic action.

New York City DSA (NYC-DSA), of which I am a cochair, is the biggest example of this model in action. As of the end of October, NYC-DSA had more than 11,300 members, a number that will increase in the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s historic mayoral victory. NYC-DSA played a key role in organizing more than a hundred thousand people who volunteered their time to drive Zohran to victory. This level of volunteer engagement is nearly unprecedented in American politics — and it is what democratic politics is all about.

Zohran’s affordability message and smart, focused communications inspired millions across the country and world. But his organizing operation empowered 100,000 people to go from inspiration to organizing. This is democracy in action. Zohran didn’t simply tell people to vote, he empowered us to organize.

This approach to campaigning was embraced and developed by NYC-DSA, Zohran’s political home and one of his closest organizational allies. Zohran has been a member of NYC-DSA since 2017 and ran for New York State Assembly in 2020 with us. As an active member and then elected official with NYC-DSA, Zohran participated in the organization refining a mass approach to electoral organizing.

Built off the strategy of social movement strategist Marshall Ganz and the mass organizing approach of the 2008 Barack Obama campaign, NYC-DSA has developed an electoral strategy with volunteers as the centerpiece. Dedicated organizers are not only canvassing; they are developing field strategy, crafting communications techniques, driving fundraising plans, and creating policy. Over many election cycles, we have developed hundreds of talented campaigners who formed the foundation of Zohran’s campaign and enabled it to grow to unprecedented heights.

We have taken the same approach to smaller campaigns, like our race to reelect socialist City Council member Alexa Avilés, who represents the 38th District in Brooklyn. In the face of a primary challenge by a centrist candidate who was tapped to run because of Avilés’s pro-worker, anti-genocide record and who received a flood of money from corporate, real estate, and pro-Israel money, NYC-DSA built a massive grassroots campaign of over 700 volunteers — an unprecedented number for a city council primary. We won that race by forty-four points.

The head of a pro-Israel PAC summed up the results of our campaign well in an op-ed for the New York Daily News: “While we have a lot of capital to invest in traditional campaigning, we have little organizational structure. While DSA organizers have spent more than a decade embedding themselves in neighborhoods, parent-teacher organizations, and tenant associations, we have not made the investments.”

Translation: they have the oligarchic power of organized money; we have the democratic power of organized people.

The Mamdani mayoralty that will soon begin in New York City has a big agenda: freezing the rent for over two million rent-stabilized tenants, delivering free universal childcare, and making buses fast and free. NYC-DSA will organize to enact that agenda, and we will do so the same way we’ve organized every other campaign: through grassroots, democratic campaigning. We will talk to massive numbers of average New Yorkers and invite them to get involved in a political system that has long excluded them. They have been shut out of politics; we will bring them back in.

None of this is by accident, of course. Strengthening and expanding democracy is at the heart of the democratic socialist vision. If you’re worried about the assault on democracy that right-wing authoritarians, cynical corporate-backed Democrats, and rapacious billionaires have carried out in this country, look to how socialists are rebuilding our democracy. We just demonstrated how grassroots, democratic organizing can elect a mayor, and we’re about to do a whole lot more.

As Zohran has said, “Politics isn’t something you have, it’s something you do.” We’re doing it.