Firefly7 [any]

That’s the Knight from Deltarune

You have to let go of all of your fear of directly messaging ten different people with “I’m excited to see you at the meeting this evening!” or similar

In case you want to chat more in-depth, feel free to DM for my Signal! I’m still very inexperienced of course but it still may be helpful

I initially got people interested in helping me run/advertise a reading group by directly pitching them on forming a transfeminist organization together, inside a casual trans hangout club at a local university, that I was already a repeat attendee of. In our organization’s first meeting we united on forming a reading group.

In this hangout club we also announced the existence of the reading group and a time/location, once we’d figured that out.

Beyond that and the posters, word-of-mouth was a big thing. Just directly inviting friends we had in the city to come attend.

Your process may be different because there’s less casual hangout space infrastructure for socialists compared to trans people. I’ve also recently had success pitching people on the reading group at DSA events, so your local left-wing party might have some people you can get interested if you can find ways to hang out with them.

I’m someone who has only started 1 book club, and did so about a month ago. So far it’s had about 8-11 people at each meeting. What worked for me:

• Have it be a book people want to read!
• We started with a group of about 4 people, and we advertised via word-of-mouth, posters around key spots in the city, and announcements within a relevant casual hangout space. Putting up 60 posters got us 3 attendees, who were enthusiastic to be there, compared to other methods which still got people but less talkative/enthusiastic ones. I’ll note that postering is much faster with a friend/comrade and a packing tape dispenser.
• The location was in a reservable library room with a big TV for displaying questions and comfy chairs. I also made sure to bring snacks and masks. Make it easy for people to use them- unopened snack boxes might go untouched, and people might need to be prodded into wearing masks.
• We have a weekly consistent schedule right after our organization’s regular meeting. Makes it super easy for org members to attend and also makes the reading club work as a way of introducing people to the organization.
• I come up with reading questions before the book club with another org member, it takes about 30 minutes for us to talk about the reading and generate a good set of questions.
• After it’s over many of us will head to a restaurant together. This makes for great socializing time and also lets us discuss book concepts in some more detail.
• facilitating the book club itself, once everyone has gathered, is a fairly low-lift task that can gain someone’s confidence in running meetings.

looks at you pointedly. I know what tumblr post you took this from

Not a DSA member but afaik: the NPC moved a bit further left, there’s now a slim majority of ML/trot/maoist/anarchist, with a few members in between the left and right wings as well. Beforehand the right and center held an outright majority on the NPC and the left passing anything required someone from the Bread and Roses center caucus to chip in. As other comments mentioned, an antizionist resolution made it through. AOC censure resolution didn’t get to be voted on in time, but I think it’s fairly likely given the new NPC composition.