No socialists or independents were elected in the 2019 general election, but work of the Athens Revolutionary Socialists isn’t over as the group continues its activism.
Ellie Hamrick, who ran as a socialist for Athens City Council and is a longtime member of ARS, has recently been spending time with the group assessing the election.
Hamrick said ARS considered the election to be a learning and training experience.
“We want to figure out what political lessons can be drawn from both the successes and failures of our city council runs, because if you don't take the time to do that, to analyze and assess collectively, you're not getting the most out of ... all the work we put into these city council campaigns,” Hamrick said. “We want to kind of figure out what we did well, what we could have done differently.”
Despite no socialists or independents being elected, Hamrick still believes ARS accomplished a lot by campaigning and has also grown in size as an organization in the last few months.
“I'm really proud of what ARS was able to accomplish through the campaign, as well as our other supporters,” Hamrick said. “I think that we were able to introduce some really important debates to this election cycle that otherwise I don't think would have been addressed or would not have figured so centrally in the election cycle.”
Hamrick said ARS was previously a part of the International Socialist Organization, or ISO. In February, the national organization collapsed. The local group has been in the process of refounding itself as a group, all while running political campaigns in addition to its activism work.
Hamrick said the refounding process goes beyond just a change in organization names.
“Now we're (an) independent local collective, but also reexamining all of our political principles, assumptions, coming to consensus on shared values and theories, positions on the left, having debates, figuring out a new model of organization (and) building new connections with other activists across the country,” Hamrick said. “That's been a lot of hard work and we've been trying to do that at the same time, as we've also been running two city council campaigns and plenty of other activist work during those intervening months as well.”
Despite running a campaign in the most recent election, campaigns are not something the group is completely set on doing.
“I think the electoral campaign was kind of like an outlier in what we decided to do. I think initially it was kind of like a wild idea, and then all of a sudden it kind of turned into a concrete campaign that was actually running and doing well,” Kaelyn Ferris, a third-year graduate student in the physics & astronomy department and ARS member, said. “We’re trying to spend a lot of time figuring out ‘do we want to do this again or do we want to explore different ways of political action.’ ”
Outside of election work and reflection, the group is working internally to figure out where it stands as a whole.
“Since the election, we’ve been trying to put a lot more focus on internal political education as a broader part of us kind of figuring ourselves out,” Jana Mohr, a sophomore studying adolescent to young adult integrated science and ARS member, said.
Although there are different degrees of leftism in the group, the group foundationally is first and foremost a revolutionary socialist group.
Maggie Allen, a freshman studying environmental studies and ARS member, said the group does a lot of organizing and responding to events that happen in the community. Different areas of involvement depend on internal decision making.
The group finds areas and issues to plug into and then internally decides what the group as a whole wants to do, Ferris said.
Looking toward current and future activism and involvement, the group is considering its options. ARS is exploring tenant organizing and possible involvement with the upcoming women's march in January.
ARS meetings are open to the public. The group meets on Wednesdays from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in Bentley 205.
