
I’m Running for NBK OC!
Hey, I’m Justin Charles and I’m running for the organizing committee of the North Brooklyn DSA Branch. You’ll see my candidate statement when those are released and some of that is here. However, we only had 2,000 characters to use there and I wanted to talk a bit more about who I am, why I’m running, and what I hope to work on with you all if elected.
About Me
To briefly give a bit of bio, I’m a black, cis, straight male web developer & adjunct at Parsons, where I teach design history & theory. I’m a member of The New School adjunct faculty union, ACT-UAW 7902. I’m a Parsons MFA Design & Technology alum, where I served as Student Council Co-Chair, President of dorkShop (a student organization for teaching tech and non-tech skills), and Co-Chair of my class’s Thesis Exhibition and Symposium.
Like many of my new comrades, I come to socialism and DSA by way of the Trump bump. After the ’16 election I was forced to unflinchingly ask myself what kind of world I want, whether or not the status quo leads toward it, and what I was willing to do. My answers are simple. I want a world in which every human being has the freedom to reach their potential. So long as a ruling class controls wealth and not the people who produce it, that universal freedom is unattainable. As a result, I have to help dismantle the system which necessitates that: Capitalism.
Since joining DSA in January, I’ve worked on the Electoral Working Group’s Candidate Recruitment Committee, helping select our two endorsed city council candidates, Khader El-Yateem and Jabari Brisport. I’m on the interim OC for the Media Working Group, where I’ve built web projects for campaigns and coordinated other web devs & designers. I’m on the interim organizing committee of the new Tech Action Working Group, seeking to organize workers in New York’s tech industry and develop a socialist perspective on technology. I’ve assisted w/ the B&H Campaign w/ constituent outreach to District 34 Councilman Reynoso. I was an alternate delegate to the City Convention in May and I’ll be in Chicago next month for the National Convention as an alternate delegate again.
Should I be elected to the NBK OC, I will not seek election in the fall for Media Working Group organizing committee and will step down from the Tech Action Working Group interim organizing committee in order to focus on North Brooklyn.
Goals for Organizing Committee
In my candidate statement I mention three things I want to do as a member of the new OC:
- Formalize onboarding in cooperation w/ Mobilizers to get new members meaningfully active within a week of their first meeting.
- Set roots for NBK DSA in our communities & base-build through existing networks & organizations, finding leverage points at which to assert ourselves locally.
- Prioritize recruitment & development of members of color.
Let me talk a bit more about these.
Onboarding
It’s good that we try to have greeters at the door to say hello to people as they come in. It’s good that we have electronic sign-in to get people into our lists immediately. It’s good that we encourage people to come to the bar and get to know us. None of that is enough to keep us growing and developing engaged members.
We should have a greeting crew who’s task is to identify first-timers and make sure they receive follow-up within a few days to help direct them toward a next action within a week. Sign-in forms need to flag these people and make them known to the Mobilizers and other people invested in membership development. Getting people into the social life of the organization needs to go beyond the bar and move to sharing our experience with how we got involved and holding their hand until they’re able to without help.
As Michael Grochowski says in his NBK OC platform statement (also, vote for Michael, he’s great!), DSA Momentum supports Spring Platform and its Mobilizers Priorities Resolution and DSA Praxis also strongly supports mobilizers. We should absolutely do the same in North Brooklyn. We should also adopt the proposals put forth in this onboarding document by Adam Leeds (DSA Boston), which has informed much of what I’ve written above.
Another aspect of onboarding that we should develop is political education. More and more fresh members may not have ever read any Marx. Don’t freak out, this is a good thing. If we’re going to win, we need to bring in a wider pool of people and they all won’t necessarily be up on the theory. That said, they made it to a meeting for a socialist organization in the first place. It’s incumbent upon us to seize on that curiosity and open-mindedness with introductory literature. Other types of organizations I’ve been a part of have had new member packets or pamphlets that describe the organization, what it does, and how to get started. There’s already discussion of this in the Media Working Group but I’d like to make a push for piloting this kind of program in North Brooklyn. That can serve as a first step toward getting members into a larger political education program within the branch. I have experience developing curricula and would be eager to play a key role in making this a success.
Base-Building and Community Roots
This is not going to be easy and there aren’t any shortcuts. We have to establish trust within our communities, particularly to poor, working class, and marginalized populations within our communities. I think we establish trust by showing up for others and asking how we can help. We’ve done this with the B&H workers in that campaign and since one of the warehouses slated to close is in our turf I’d say we should do even more with them.
I admire DSA Praxis and their base-building platform plank and it’s support for national helping locals get going but we can also begin the work of area needs assessment, clarifying existing community ties held by our membership, and power-mapping.
Michael Grochowski brings up the formation of a solidarity network, which I think is really promising and would overlap with much of what our chapter working groups already engage in (immigration justice, housing, labor solidarity). I think whatever we do regarding engaging our North Brooklyn community entails gaining a more solid understanding of the demographic and socioeconomic makeup of North Brooklyn. Some other ideas I’ve considered are community boards and local faith communities. There are likely other communities to plug into that I haven’t thought of and I look forward to mapping those with you all.
A More Representative Organization
One reason why I’m running for organizing committee is because I’m a black man with parents who told me I need to put myself in leadership roles in white spaces because a) I have what it takes to lead and b) other black men and women need to see that. All people of color need to see that. White people do too.
I don’t abide the centrist attempts to erase people of color and women on the left but I also have eyes. NYC DSA is very white, and very male. So at the first NBK meeting I stood with the notes from my breakout group and announced our proposal about OC composition quotas. To be fair, the language wasn’t nailed down since we didn’t have a ton of time but the spirit of it came through and now 50% +1 cannot be cisgender white men.
I think it’s important that as organizers we are always looking for our replacements and fostering their development. I think it’s equally important that I, as a black man, look for other black faces in the room at a DSA meeting, connect, and encourage them to not only stay but to develop into a leader within the organization. As I see it, it is the job of every member of this branch to encourage members of marginalized communities to become the best contributor to this branch that they can be.
As a person of color, I stand in solidarity with other people of color and all those who face oppression and marginalization. I have faith that my white brothers and sisters do too. As we try to build this branch in a heavily Latino community, we need to not only recruit from the Latino North Brooklyn community but also prioritize developing these new members as leaders in the branch. As we build capacity in the branch, hopefully we can branch out even further in addressing the specific demographics of North Brooklyn.
