How to Get Involved in NYC Local Politics

I love local politics for its accessibility: you can actually meet many of your representatives, neighbors, and community advocates, and work to make a difference around you. Since I often get asked “what does getting involved in local politics actually look like?” I wanted to put together a beginner-friendly starter guide for New York City, ranked roughly by level of effort.

Low effort

• Find good news organizations! If you’re mostly getting news from New York Times headlines and memes sent on social media, you’re likely missing a lot. Sachi at NYC Politics 101 has a great list as a starting point.

• Vote! As my friend Daniel eloquently writes, it is not particularly effective in a vacuum, but it’s the basis of democracy and so can’t be skipped. Also, your voting record (but not who you vote for) is public, and you’ll lose credibility if it’s blank.

• Know your representatives, and subscribe to their updates. Most have active social media accounts, which are a great way to hear from them and learn about their work, as well as websites with subscribe forms. Some send regular paper mail updates, but city-wide ones like Mayor and Comptroller likely will not.

• Find organizations that represent causes that you care about, and join them and subscribe to their updates. You’ll feel less alone and more educated about what’s going on.

Medium effort

• For the organizations you joined above, attend their events and follow their recommendations for testifying in favor of issues. Many elected representatives want to improve the city, but perceive that there isn’t popular support for their decisions. However, even a room of 20 people is enough for politicians to get excited and feel comfortable backing a controversial decision.

• Join your community board or attend its meetings. Every part of the city is represented by a board, and meetings are open to the public.

• Join your local political club or attend its meetings. Not every part of the city has a club, and it can be annoyingly tricky to find yours, but if there is one in your area, your representatives will most likely make frequent appearances there.

• Volunteer for a political campaign! Almost all candidates will have volunteer links on their websites, our you can reach out to them on social media. Volunteering will look like petitioning (getting signatures from neighbors) as well as outreach and event help.

• Take a civics class! For example, check out Maximum New York.

High effort

• Host a political fundraiser. Candidates need money, and in NYC contributions are matched 8x by the city, meaning a $25 contribution can be $225 to the candidate! Candidates will likely be willing to give your event at least an hour of their time and talk to everyone individually; the hard part is mostly getting a big enough group together (and finding a space).

• Become an officer or hold a leadership position in a group you care about. You’ll plan events and get people excited about a cause, and hopefully make some good connections along the way!

• Run for office! While this might sound daunting, it’s actually more accessible than you might think—as long as you can get the right amount of signatures. That number is on the order of 50 for local political party representative, to 450 for councilmember.