Among the many tragedies that COVID has wrought on the world is the sudden halt of grassroots, volunteer organizing amassed around the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign. Tens of thousands of people descended on Iowa, New Hampshire, California, and Nevada to deliver significant primary victories for the senator, and many more were preparing for a protracted fight through the convention. But overnight, most political organizing was relegated to Zoom calls or phone banking.

Of course, this didn’t mean an end to political organizing. Calling voters and conference calls both had pre-COVID lives. But, more importantly, another wave of democratic socialists won seats across all levels of government, workers pushed for strikes, and the movement for Medicare for All has continued growing. The pandemic also didn’t stand in the way of protesters pouring into the streets last summer in response to George Floyd’s murder.

But after a year of lockdown and with the prospects of life after COVID around the corner, it’s worth reflecting on what effective online political organizing is. The Left, while stronger than it has been in half a century, is still remarkably weak. And building our power will require a great deal more outreach and institutional construction. For as interconnected as we all are online, our relegation to and reliance on this realm is wracked with problems; we’re simultaneously prone to the worst of “cancel culture,” decisions that should be democratic being sequestered to Slack channels or direct messages, and our message only reaching the feeds of the already convinced.