I get excited about meetings.
I know how that sounds. For most people, meetings are boring, bureaucratic, or something they endure for a paycheck. But for me — someone who’s been homeless twice, who worked for years as a cook, who is black and came up through this system with more than a few scars — meetings are sacred.
Why? Because for most of my life, the rooms where decisions were made didn’t have people like me in them.
When I was in the shelter, sleeping on floors, or scrounging for meals people were still meeting. They were drafting policies, balancing budgets, making decisions that would ripple through my life without ever seeing my face. Those decisions did affect me: they shaped where I could live, whether I could access care, what kind of job I could get, and how safe my friends and I would be.
For the most part, no one in those rooms ever asked someone like me what I thought.
So when I walk into a meeting now, I feel something. Something heavy and electric. Because for once in my life, I have a seat at the table. I have a vote. I have a voice.
And I use it.
What we deserve
I joined DSA after the death of my best friend, Ryan Chafin. He wasn’t a politician or a preacher. He was a social worker who gave everything he had to homeless youth. He believed in people, even when the world didn’t. Ryan’s death — caused by senseless gun violence — left a wound in me I still carry.
But it also lit a fire. I couldn’t just mourn him. I had to move. So I started organizing and I kept organizing.
I became a leader in my DSA chapter in Central Indiana. Not because I had the most experience. Not because I had some perfect pedigree. But because I showed up and kept showing up. I listened. I learned. I got sharper. I grew into leadership because I believed working people like me deserved to be more than symbols: we deserved to make decisions.
I didn’t just organize with DSA. I organize at work, too. I’m a union steward and Vice President of Unite-Here Local 23’s Indianapolis chapter. That’s not something I ever imagined I’d write next to my name. But it’s real and it means something.
Working-class people aren’t just victims of this system – we’re the only ones who can change it.
Some people think organizing is just marches and speeches. Those of us who’ve done the work know the truth. It’s meetings. It’s structure. It’s follow-up. It’s spreadsheets. It’s long calls and second drafts. It’s pulling up a folding chair after work and hashing out how to win.
For someone like me — an introvert by nature — that wasn’t always easy, but I came to see those spaces as holy. Because what is a meeting, if not a rehearsal for democracy?
What is a meeting, if not a space where the people — all people — get to say: “This is what I need. This is what we deserve.”
Stand up
DSA did not give me charity or pity, but power.
DSA gave me a reason to stand up. A movement to join. A caucus — Bread & Roses — that believes in doing the hard and often boring work of real organizing. We don’t chase slogans or scenes. We build structure. We train leaders. We knock doors. We pass resolutions. We run candidates. We show up at 7 PM on a Tuesday, even when we’re exhausted, because working-class power doesn’t build itself.
Bread & Roses is about strategy, discipline, and clarity. We believe the socialist movement has to be rooted in the working class — not just in theory, but in practice. That means organizing unions, running strike-ready campaigns, fighting for political independence, and building durable institutions that can outlast any moment, trend, or crisis.
We’re not here to make noise. We’re here to win. I stay with Bread & Roses because I’ve seen what happens when working people finally get the tools, training, and political home they deserve.
We need more people in the room. Not more consultants or professionals. Not more careerists. We need more cooks, cashiers, ex-prisoners, and more people who’ve been kicked out, counted out, and forgotten. We need people like you.
If you’ve ever felt like your life was shaped by decisions made in rooms you were never allowed into, come join us. You deserve to be there. You deserve a say in the world we build.
