“OK! If you’re monogamous, come on this side of the room. If you’re figuring it out, stay in the center. And if you’re polyamorous, then all the way on this side.”
On the night before Valentine’s Day, comedian Naomi Karavani was on stage corralling the packed crowd at “Thots & Trots,” a “socialist singles mixer” hosted by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.
The sold-out event was held at Silo, an airplane hangar-sized music venue in industrial Bushwick, with more than 300 registered attendees mingling to talk politics and love.
“ If you have a pet, over here,” Karavani announced, directing traffic. “The polyamorous people do not have pets. You guys can't afford pets. You're spending all the money on your girlfriends.”
A participant at "Thots & Trots" on Thursday night showed off their sweatshirt.
“Thots & Trots” is the tongue-in-cheek name that steering committee of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America, or NYC-DSA, came up with for the event. A "thot" is ”someone who enjoys having a good time,” explained fundraising co-chair Abby Beauregard, and a “Trot” is a follower of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary and exiled Soviet politician whose writings on socialism remain influential today.
“I was like ‘Thots & Trots,’ great name, let’s go,” Beauregard said at the event while dressed in bright Valentine’s red. “I’m sure no one on Twitter will be mad.”
In fact, the event announcement led to days of discourse online. Some people found the term “thot” reductionist toward women, while others debated the Zionist or not-Zionist political leanings of the venue’s Jewish owners.
But that squabbling was nowhere to be found at the singles event, where participants in colored glow-stick bracelets – green for those seeking femme-presenting people, red for those seeking masc-presenting people or purple for anyone flexible in their preferences – sipped drinks while looking for love.
Anders Lee co-hosted the evening.
“It feels like a really creative way to put people in a room together that want to make the world a better place,” said Hope Woodard, 28, who had previously discussed the event on her popular TikTok account. “It’s lighthearted, and I think a lot of times socialists have a hard time being lighthearted.”
“It’s because we’re looking at the world for what it is and interacting with the darkness of the world,” Woodard said. “It’s hard sometimes to celebrate when you’re so aware of everything that’s going wrong.”
Alan Dang, 27, described chatting up a young woman and trying to convince her to vote in NYC instead of remaining registered in her home state of Texas.
“My theory of change is you have to get to work at a small, local level,” Dang said. “So when people are like ‘Oh, I have to hold on to my swing-state registration and vote every four years,’ I just don’t think that’s a reasonable way to enact real change.”
William Spath made and brought 10 of these stickers.
Asked whether the voter registration discussion had been sexy, Dang replied that it was.
William Spath was sporting a hand-drawn nametag over his heart, in the style of a classic schoolyard valentine. It read: “Will you free my Palestine?”
He made and brought 10 of the stickers, and gave them all away within the first half hour.
“I did not doodle enough of them,” Spath said. “I should have done more.”
Michael Brennan, who has been a DSA-NYC member since 2017, was also at the event. Brennan, who uses they/them pronouns, said that they had been involved in the group’s eco-socialist organizing around creating a publicly owned electric utility and had led reading groups on animal liberation and reparations.
Brennan said they could be open to dating someone with different political views, if that person had strong core values like caring about their family, or a “radical honesty” streak. Someone thoughtful, concerned about the world, empathetic.
“Political alignment, to me, is like a signal for personal alignment,” Brennan said. “I’d be open to working through that with them — I would say they’re running uphill though.”
Organizers of the event provided another conversation-starter in the form of a scavenger hunt: one point for finding someone at the mixer who was a DJ or had a cat; three points for a vegan; 10 points for someone who'd participated in a strike.
More than 300 people showed up Thursday night to "Thots and Trots," the socialist mixer at Silo.
Isaac Anderson was handing out single red roses, thorns included, to everyone he spoke with, including the bartender.
“They’re socialist roses,” Anderson said. “They came from the Park Slope Food Co-op.”
Red was a popular color throughout the event, both for its Valentine’s Day connotations and its communist ones, Anderson said.
“In the DSA, a red flag means something totally different,” he said, referring to the party’s red banner.
Celina Siegel, 29, said that chatting up singles at the mixer felt “emotionally identical” to a recent experience of apartment hunting.
“You kind of run through the checklist when you meet someone,” Siegel said. “I think when I fall in love again, it’s going to be a surprise – probably someone I know, who I didn’t run through the checklist with.”
Beauregard, the NYC-DSA fundraising co-chair who helped organize the event, recused herself from participating, though she is single. She lamented that the dating app Hinge doesn’t have a “leftist” option in its political alignment section.
“You have to go with ‘liberal’ and hope for the best,” Beauregard said. “I think it’s important for us to have explicitly leftist dating spaces, because I want to sleep with someone who shares my values.”
“I have been in relationships with comrades, and they’re thoughtful and kind,” Beauregard said. “I would much rather date someone who I know shares my values than some random man or woman that I found on the internet.”
Correction: This story previously misstated Abby Beauregard's title in NYC-DSA.
