Organize or Burn: How New York Socialists Fight for Climate Survival

A successful political playbook for fighting climate change and expanding democracy from the New York socialist movement

Climate inaction is already causing widespread suffering and devastation around the world. How can citizens take collective action? Fabian Holt argues that we must go beyond protest and direct action, and turn to the potential of hybrid organizations that bring together social movements and political parties. One such “movement party” with recent political success is the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA), which has become the city’s main organization for movement climate politics, running multi-year climate pressure campaigns and a slate of climate-focused electoral campaigns, as well as spearheading the first Green New Deal legislation in the country, the New York State Build Public Renewables Act of 2023.

Organize or Burn situates the NYC-DSA in the history of the democratic socialist movement in the United States, combining a political history of the insurgent international left with a richly textured local ethnography of the organization’s place in the climate movement and relationship to the Democratic Party. Holt argues that NYC-DSA has developed a distinct approach to political organizing that has broad relevance to citizen climate mobilization. The organizational innovation specifically involves integrating micro-level organizing in individual campaigns and macro-level organization-building, synthesizing approaches from traditions of social movements and electoral campaigns in the US. Ultimately, Holt shows that NYC-DSA can offer powerful lessons in how political collective action can be meaningful in the present moment of political turbulence, from the very concrete perspective of a local movement world. An engaging read for political organizers, scholars, and concerned citizens, Organize or Burn provides new insights and solutions for the climate crisis.