The Danish parliamentarian argues that parts of the economy are already run on democratic lines. DSA can learn from his blueprint for building from these institutions to a more just economy.

The post Democratizing Our Economies: Nordic Socialism by Pelle Dragsted appeared first on Democratic Left.

California DSA (CA DSA) has recently voted in favor of supporting Proposition 50, a proposal to redraw California’s districts that is aimed at creating enduring structural Democrat electoral supremacy in California. We strongly dissent from this endorsement and reject its strategy, lay out a rebuttal to the argument for the endorsement of Prop 50, and, most importantly for DSA members, analyze what this debate reveals about the issues within CA DSA itself.

What Does DSA Stand To Gain from Prop 50?

In a piece laying out the argument for CA DSA’s endorsement of Prop 50, Chris K. relates Prop 50 to Republican gerrymandering efforts in Texas, which he calls a “calculated assault on democracy” and “the Right’s most powerful weapon for locking working people out of politics.” While he claims to have “no illusions about the [Democratic] party establishment and what it wants out of this,” he argues that gerrymandering can be used in California as a counterweight to Republican gerrymandering in Texas and in other red-states. However, this illustrates the defining political error of CA DSA and those within the organization that would back this proposal: mistaking the goals of the Democratic Party for the goals of DSA.

Prop 50 makes perfect sense from the Democrats’ perspective. Of course Democrats want to minimize Republican footholds and shape the American political map in ways that maximize the electoral power of their (shrinking & demoralized) base. To lend our endorsement to a measure designed in their party’s interest, not ours, is to sacrifice our independence and organizing efforts without gaining any leverage.

Indeed, if we truly have “no illusions” about what this is, then we must admit it is very likely that Governor Gavin Newsom is using this redistricting process to engineer mid-layer support for his 2028 presidential campaign. Prop 50 provides him and his allies with another mechanism for consolidating their networks of patronage, rewarding loyalists, disciplining the working class, and structuring the political field to his benefit. Indeed, the CA Dem website itself says that the redistricting is designed to gain Democrats 5 more seats in California, and those seats would be in districts that Newsom helps draw. Why align with that now unless we aim to be junior partners in the Democrat presidential campaign in 2028? But the junior partner strategy has been shown repeatedly to backfire against us, as most recently shown in the Democrat’s refusal to support a DSA-backed candidate in Minneapolis, because we consistently see the Democratic party strike against us as soon as we pose a threat.

In his piece, Chris K. states “this moment gives us a chance to both take a realpolitik move to reduce the GOP advantage from Texas gerrymandering and to agitate and push beyond the rigged two-party system,” but this point raises more unsettling questions than answers. How can we simultaneously be agitating against a rigged two-party system while supporting one of the parties rigging it? Chris also suggests that we demand more fundamental reforms in CA such as proportional representation, which gerrymandering is designed to decrease. Such contradictions between our rhetoric and our endorsements will not be lost on the working class of California, especially those who’ve been desperate for a true left-wing alternative to the business elites managing both major political parties.

But let’s also be clear on what we’re advocating for: if DSA wants to credibly demand an expanded democracy, our demand cannot be for “fair” electoral maps under capitalism, an idea which itself is based on very narrow liberal assumptions of political rights. It must be for a new kind of political system entirely — one in which workers control their workplaces, communities, and governments directly, not one in which capitalists shuffle district lines to their advantage.

How Our Experience in the Central Valley Shapes Our Position

North Central Valley DSA (NCVDSA), a small chapter which organizes in four counties throughout rural California, has experienced steady growth since 2022, which it owes to working class Californians who reject partisan divides in favor of class struggle. The palpable disdain for both Democrats and Republicans can be seen both within and beyond the electoral context, and there is a critical demand among rural Central Valley workers for an alternative to the capitalist two-party duopoly. In 2024, dozens of NCVDSA members participated in the CA DSA ARCH campaign, canvassing voters who spoke of the hardships they’ve faced for generations; astronomical rent increases, abandoned public transportation projects, extreme land subsidence, unbearable drought, unbreathable air. These attacks on Central Californians are bipartisan, conducted by politicians who switch-hit between D and R on a whim. Many NCVDSA ARCHers felt like we were fighting on two fronts: convincing our neighbors that, while not a panacea, some proposed pieces of legislation (e.g. raising the wage) are an important tool to help the working class, while at the same time convincing them that we were not sent by the Democrats, which would have instantly lost us credibility.

Being forced to support Prop 50 sets back the progress we’ve made throughout California by showing up as an alternative to the capitalist two-party system and developing a level of trust and participation among our working class peers. Rejecting an endorsement of Prop 50 does not mean ignoring the real frustrations people feel about Republican gerrymandering. On the contrary, it is an opportunity to connect those frustrations to a broader critique of capitalist politics. We can explain to workers why both Democrats and Republicans manipulate district lines, why neither party is invested in their empowerment, and why only socialist politics can deliver real democracy. The campaign to support Prop 50 loses sight of our broader political horizons and the opportunities that are truly before us to engage and agitate around a socialist agenda rather than an agenda that aligns neatly with the Democratic leadership.

California DSA’s Fundamental Political Error: Identifying the Democrat’s Goals with DSA’s Goals

CA DSA seems to be operating on the premise that the current primary contradiction in the United States is Trumpism, and the primary task before us as DSA is to stymie Trump. But we cannot absorb such a myopic view of the struggle between capital and the people: Democratic capital cannot save us from Republican capital and we cannot organize the working class through building the personal brand of Gavin Newsom. Our organizing work throughout California’s East Bay and Central Valley regions has made it clear to us that DSA must win the support of the working class regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof.

The mission of DSA as an organization is not to push the Democrats into action to defeat the Republican Party. Our class enemies are just as powerful within the Democratic network as they are within the Republican side – in fact they are often the same people – and losing sight of class contradictions is a huge political error. Our mission is instead to organize the broad working class and win political power on their behalf and with their support. It is not possible to achieve this goal by playing by the partisan rules of today’s political system.

What Would Organizing the Broad Working Class Look Like?

Last year, only 34% of California’s eligible voters voted for the Democratic presidential candidate. If we aim for a strategy that alienates the near supermajority – 66% – of eligible voters who didn’t vote Democrat, then we will forever limit our horizon to being a minor advocacy group in the Democrat orbit. It’s our responsibility as scientific socialists to assess the political terrain objectively, and be ready to make new alliances that upend the existing balance of forces. DSA chapters in California and throughout the country are learning how to organize people who oppose the Democratic Party, and supporting Prop 50 would present a significant setback to this work.

Imagine, instead of endorsing Prop 50, DSA aimed at agitating along class lines, communicating simply and clearly that both Democrats and Republicans are rigging the electoral system and disregarding the working-class. We could point to how working-class communities of color, immigrant neighborhoods, and rural towns alike are carved up by politicians at the peoples’ expense. We could argue that true representation will never be achieved through bourgeois redistricting, but through building worker-power independent of all capitalist parties. We could use this moment not to strengthen the Democrat hegemony in California, but to destabilize it, and to create openings for DSA to present an alternative.

Segments of the working class correctly view the Democrats as failing to fight back against Trump in any meaningful way, but simply fighting Trump to gain electoral ground without actually addressing the demands of the working class. We propose that DSA’s most effective strategy will be to lead with our popular socialist agenda, and explicitly reject Democratic party priorities – such as gerrymandering more seats for Democrats – that do not represent a mass working class constituency.

It’s worth emphasizing that the issues we find with Proposition 50 is not much to do with the principle of using tactics to undermine one’s class enemy. In fact, we recognize that antidemocratic measures are sometimes necessary, especially in revolutionary scenarios! But antidemocratic measures should be targeted squarely at the capital class, not against a broad political/social brand that many of the working class aligns with by normative default. Put simply: if people see DSA associate with a Democrat-coded move to disenfranchise them, they’re likely to write us off as yet another Democrat NGO, even if they would agree with the actual policies we have led with in the past, such as the ever-popular Medicare-for-all. Polarizing your potential base against your policy platform because you can’t see beyond the current identitarian alignment of party politics is a grave political error, and one that we should have learned to stop making long ago.

What this means for California DSA broadly

California DSA’s arguments for the Prop 50 endorsement repeat a common pattern that highlights the dysfunction within the body. It’s hard to find anything but an uncritical acceptance of myopic Democratic partisanship. In the rebuttal to the authors’ earlier piece in California Red, CA DSA leader Fred G. asserts that a position against DSA endorsement of Prop 50 is equivalent to aligning with right-wing billionaires, and that the Republican party is fascist without qualifiers, with all the implications that term carries. This binary style of thinking heightens the polarization of the political choice at hand and makes it seem like there are only two options – either support Democrats or support Republicans – and this rigidity leads to self-marginalization in the long term. The Republican program is highly anti-social and destructive, but if we can’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder with workers who have voted Republican in the past, we are bound to lose. 

In addition to that section of the working class, there are many who have voted Democratic in the past but have ceased doing so because the Democratic party leadership is increasingly out of step with their own progressive values. At the national level, most Democrats who refused to vote Kamala Harris did so out of a justified anger at the Biden/Harris administration’s support for the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. Aligning ourselves with the Newsom administration means aligning ourselves against the most progressive Democrat voters who have historically constituted much of DSA’s base and have increasingly begun to stray from the party.

The only way to break through the current partisan alignment is to break off the working class element from both parties, and that strategy cannot be taken when we ally with one party against the other.

As DSA SF’s Hazel W recounts in her Reflections on California DSA, CA DSA was born out of a cross-chapter effort during the Prop 15 campaign (taxing commercial real estate to fund public education), with hopes that it would evolve into a lasting infrastructure for coordination, chapter growth, and statewide strategy. California DSA was meant to be broadly representative, but rather than serving as the connective tissue among a statewide web of chapters, it is increasingly disconnected from them. CA DSA’s stated goal of uniting & strengthening California chapters has remained unfulfilled, and Prop 50 represents a further step back. 

With only two chapters – East Bay DSA and DSA-LA – represented on its 2025-2026 State Committee, California DSA is far from representative of California, and is in fact a shell of a body increasingly reflexive to DSA-LA’s politics: according to the records the authors have seen of the ‘24-25 state council, DSA-LA’s delegation constituted close to a majority of the body – 30 DSA-LA delegates vs. 37 non-LA delegates. CA DSA uses a misleading framing of its statewide endorsements, political messaging, and campaigns as broadly representative of California chapters’ politics with little substantive input from inland, rural, or lower-density regions. With less than a week to go until election day, only six California DSA chapters/OCs have taken up the Prop 50 campaign, representing only a quarter of the DSA chapters and OCs in California.

As a general warning sign of the health of the formation, it is unknown to the authors whether California DSA is quorate according to its bylaws, which outline the quorum conditions as: “One or more delegates representing 50% plus one (1) of the local affiliates shall constitute a quorum, provided there be a minimum of one-third (1/3) of the registered delegates present at the meeting.”

Since we know that several California chapters do not participate at all in CA DSA, it is an open question to us whether these CA DSA quorum conditions are being met during deliberation sessions. In order to know the answer, we’d need access to attendance records, but attendance is not recorded (or at least is not made public). As a general rule, delegates change over annually and chapters aren’t required to send delegations, so it is very possible that CA DSA has gone out of quorum in the past. This is not a technical quibble; it is a sign that there is a trend among California chapters to withdraw energy and consent from a state formation that can’t justify its existence.

Hazel W raised alarm bells of dysfunction earlier this year, and the disconnection between the State Committee and individual CA chapters has only deepened, further eroding the legitimacy of the body. The ambition in the founding vision to facilitate skill-shares, seed new chapters, or liaise with YDSA never took root in a meaningful way, and has instead given way to CA DSA leaders deriding the growth of rural California chapters and its cochair attacking comrades as “fascist collaborators” for expressing concerns about Prop 50. None of this helps us with the formation’s stated goals of “unit[ing] and in unity strength[ing] the power and influence of its affiliated locals”.

CA DSA has become an endorsement shop that focuses on high-visibility, low-leverage endorsements, and fails in its attempt to portray itself as representative of a broad consensus among California chapters. If CA DSA can issue endorsements on legislative propositions across the state but overwhelmingly reflects the political views of only a small percentage of the state’s chapters, then what value is the formation really adding to our project?

We call on chapters throughout California to reckon with whether California DSA is representative of their politics. If the State Council cannot be made functional, transparent, and responsive, chapters have a responsibility to intervene, including by pulling delegations. The state body must prove it has the support of California chapters in the form of quorum by publishing its delegation attendance records, and it must cease hollow top-down campaigns in favor of amplifying the work that chapters are already doing.

If California DSA cannot reform, it risks becoming a redundant progressive NGO that insists it speaks for California chapters, while it undermines the work those chapters are doing. We must knit together the work that has actual support at the chapter level, not impose political priorities on chapters with an email list. California DSA must reset, or we’ll continue to waste time and energy on lending symbolic consent for the Democratic party’s priorities.

Image: LA County Sample Ballot for Prop 50 in the 2025 Special Election. (Public domain)

We are excited to announce our endorsement of Ayah Al-Zubi of Boston DSA, running for Cambridge City Council! Despite a narrow loss in her council race in 2023, Ayah has remained a tireless organizer for justice in the Cambridge community. When the city announced the closure of a 58-bed homeless shelter, she worked directly with the impacted residents and empowered them to advocate for their needs at several crucial council meetings.

Ayah is a young Muslim woman and renter with a lived experience that uniquely positions her to understand the struggles of immigrants in Cambridge, young people, renters, and more. She does not accept real estate or corporate money because she believes in people over profit.

Ayah is running on an ambitious platform to support the working class in a variety of areas like housing, transportation, climate, education and childcare, and racial and economic justice.

Ayah’s campaign centers mechanisms such as the Affordable Housing Trust, investing in the Community Land Trust, and retaining the 20% inclusionary zoning requirement to build permanently affordable housing. For transportation, Ayah has a focus on making the #1 bus free, as well as improving access to services for elderly in Cambridge. Finally, Ayah’s campaign is dedicated to making food more accessible especially in light of Daily Table closing to create Cambridge’s first city-run grocery store. Everyone deserves to live in this city with dignity and Ayah will work hard to bring this vision to life.

Support Ayah with a donation!

Who are our other candidates?

DSA’s Nationally-endorsed socialist candidates are running for local office in Washington, Minnesota, Colorado, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts!

Our candidates are incredible fighters for the working class, championing rent stabilization and higher minimum wages, while also protesting ICE’s human rights violations.

This year, we launched a rotating fundraising slate and held phonebanks to foster cross-chapter solidarity. And we’ve raised over $100,000!

Donate to the Slate!

A reflection on Lotta Comunista's organizing and an interview with an activist.

The post Experience of the Italian Internationalists appeared first on Democratic Left.

Building a union means including everybody. Here are tried and trusted tips for reaching out across language and other cultural barriers.

The post Immigrant workers belong in unions appeared first on EWOC.

Like many concerned workers, community advocates, and neighbors, Buffalo DSA Steering Committee is disgusted by the impending delay of SNAP benefits on Nov. 1. 42 million Americans, including an estimated 200,000 Western New Yorkers, will face unprecedented food insecurity.

This is a public health and safety crisis, and an attack on the working class. Wages have stagnated, and workers face unmitigated exploitation and wage theft, yet the cost of living continues to rise unchecked. Capitalists continue to hoard resources, leaving only scraps for poor and working people. The ruling class then spews baseless propaganda that we should blame each other–immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, or other marginalized workers, in particular–thus engulfing our class in an unending culture war.

We are strongest when we stand together against the true enemy–the capitalist class. We must organize and act, together, as a united working class.

What does this mean? We must implement both short- and long-term approaches to this impending, immoral hunger crisis. In the immediate term, the Buffalo DSA Steering Committee commits to both monetary and material contributions to organizations doing critical work on the ground in Western New York. We will also share resource guides with both chapter members in need and the greater community. Finally, we encourage members who are physically and financially able to contribute to mutual aid initiatives that uplift their local neighborhoods. Beyond this, we must harness the energy we have to aid our neighbors in the short term, by committing to long-term struggle against all who continue to oppress us. Community care and nonprofit support are not enough to defeat the depths of this crisis–only a democratic socialist state with a destigmatized social safety net can tackle issues of this magnitude. When we organize toward this aim in our apartment buildings, at work, and beyond, we outnumber the ruling class and their sinister lobbies. We must use mass, collective power to demand our taxes go toward essential services and food for all, instead of war crimes and authoritarian states abroad. Ultimately, the power we harness through organizing for our demands will help us build a truly democratic political apparatus independent of both capitalist parties, leading us to the effective government we deserve.

This multi-front fight does not happen in solitude, nor does it happen overnight. If SNAP benefits are restored at this moment, we still know the Trump administration will find new games to play with our lives again. We must create organizing networks and durable infrastructures of support as the working class. As a democratic socialist member organization, DSA provides this political home for any and all who wish to learn the essential skills we need in the uncertain times ahead.

–

If you need help in the coming days and weeks, see the following pages for a non-exhaustive list of resources.

Buffalo Community Fridges
A local network of community fridges available to take what you need, and leave what you can. Most food items are accepted here, with the exceptions of raw meat, alcohol, and catering trays. All home cooking should be labeled with ingredients and dietary notes, and packaged separately. Note that the 257 East Ferry fridge has recently closed, but all other fridges remain open.

• Locations:
• Buffalo Love Fridge (45 Jewett Ave)
• Big Herk (167 Herkimer Street)
• Merriweather Library (1324 Jefferson Ave, limited to operating hours)
• Delevan Grider Fridge (877 E. Delevan Ave, limited to operating hours)
• Groundwork Market Garden Fridge (1698 Genesee St.)
• Gloria J. Parks Fridge (3242 Main St.; near UB South)
• Resource Council of WNY (347 E. Ferry)
• ACME Fridge (1848 Clinton St)
• NY4BDMA Fridge (637 Walden Ave)

WSCS Provisions 139 Pantry | 44 Breckenridge, 14213 (entrance faces Niagara St.)
Near West Side/Grant-Lafayette/Black Rock areas. Open Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. This pantry is not able to accept fridge or frozen foods from non-commercial sources.

Milligan’s Food Pantry | 4th floor, Campbell Student Union (Buff State) Resource for Buff State students in need of food. Open Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Student ID required.

Town Square Food Pantry | 2710 N. Forest Rd (Amherst/Getzville/Williamsville) Pantry near UB North, in the close vicinity of student housing.

Seneca Babcock Food Pantry | 1168 Seneca St. | 716-822-5094
Near South Buffalo/Babcock/Larkin areas.

Buffalo Urban League Pantry | 86 Pine St. | 716-854-7625
Inside the Clemmon H Hodges Community Center. Near Perry/Old First Ward/Downtown areas.

Buffalo River Food Pantry | 62 Republic St. | 716-856-8613
Inside Old First Ward Community Center. Near Old First Ward/Perry/Downtown areas.

Belle Center Food Pantry | 104 Maryland St. | 716-845-0485
Near Lower West Side/Hispanic Heritage District/Allentown areas.

FeedMoreWNY
A county-wide food nonprofit that offers pantry options, including a mobile food pantry, or meal delivery for those with mobility limitations.

Emergent needs? Contact Erie County DSS at 716-858-7239, or dial 2-1-1. Tell the operators you are looking for a pantry, meal delivery, or groceries today; you will then be referred accordingly.

DSA is proud to endorse Danny Nowell, running for Carrboro Town Council.

Danny is an incumbent seeking re-election to continue leading the region by example. During his first term, council convened a Community Safety Task Force, began revising their Land Use Ordinance, and brought a suit against Duke Energy for its role in climate deception.

Danny is hoping to continue increasing housing supply, improving connectivity, and re-imagining public safety.

Danny is a member of the NC Triangle Democratic Socialists of America.

Who are our other candidates?

DSA’s Nationally-endorsed socialist candidates are running for local office in Washington, Minnesota, Colorado, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts!

Our candidates are incredible fighters for the working class, championing rent stabilization and higher minimum wages, while also protesting ICE’s human rights violations.

This year, we launched a rotating fundraising slate and held phonebanks to foster cross-chapter solidarity. And we’ve raised over $100,000!

Donate to the Slate!

As this dreadful police state bears down on us, there are still faint glimmers of hope. One of the most promising is the Democratic primary win for New York City’s mayoral race by long-time DSA member Zohran Mamdani. This victory, somewhat surprising given his low polling early in the race, has put explicit democratic socialist executive power on the table for the first time in decades, in a central hub of Wall Street capital and a center for international finance. Simultaneously, massive crowds have rallied  behind Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, demanding a future worth living in. As Bernie’s clear protege, it is quite possible that AOC will run for president in 2028, inspiring millions who view her as the last best chance for social progress in America. Now, DSA’s task is to make sure that this popular energy is channeled into a lasting political project—not crushed or coopted as it was in 2020 and 2024 for a decrepit Democratic establishment.

At our recent 2025 convention, DSA passed two separate resolutions that commit the organization to  exploring a run for president in 2028. It also committed us to the task of building an independent socialist party. If we want to make these dreams a reality, however, we have two strategic imperatives: first, we need to draft a democratic socialist presidential platform –  DSA’s vision for how to use the presidency to fight for socialism in our lifetime. Second, we must begin our intervention in the 2028 presidential primary by running our own candidate, a bold DSA cadre candidate, even if that candidate eventually drops out and backs a figure like AOC for the general. 

Are we up to the task? Have faith, comrades! It’s reasonable to feel small next to the scale of the problems that haunt us. Yet in DSA, we have real strengths that we can continue to develop: vision, commitment, and continuity. When elections end and the cameras leave, we are the ones who keep the struggle alive, who stay rooted in our communities and refuse to bow down to Democratic elites. They may have the name recognition, but we have a lasting organization that can inspire a new kind of mass movement and hopefully, a broader national presidential agenda to go along with that sense of commitment.

Rallying the Masses

This isn’t about winning the first time we run our own independent candidate for the highest elected office in the country. It’s about preparing the US working class for a revolutionary conquest of state power. The crucial reality is that the U.S. Constitution is already dead under Trump’s autocracy, which itself is a result of decades of creeping oligarchy. With the extreme disparities in Senate representation, the hideous influence of money in politics, and all the chaos and confusion ahead, it’s very unlikely that we’ll ever win a clean trifecta of the presidency, House, and Senate. Even Lincoln wasn’t that lucky when his insurgent Republican Party first took the presidency in 1860.

Rather, we’ll sweep to power using presidential politics to help trigger an avalanche of working class struggle, and rip up the old rulebook. It’s about using electoral campaigns for political office to attract support and to agitate the working class. Alongside the electoral realm, we will use every other tool available: strikes, demonstrations, mutual aid associations, and so on. Our “organizer in chief” presidential campaign will also encourage socialists to build up their own media, like the mass livestreams that Bernie Sanders pioneered or Zohran Mamdani’s masterful TikTok videos. We can be certain the cable news pundits won’t be kind to us, and it’s high time we found ways to counter their propaganda, and to cultivate peoples’ questioning of the status quo into something more enduring and focused!

Imagine our candidates throwing down on the picket line with striking workers; holding listening sessions outside VA hospitals and rail yards, organizing militant public health initiatives to subvert abortion bans and defend transgender care. Wherever we find organic working class leaders, we funnel them right into the pipeline to our People’s Cabinet. In our movement, today’s train conductor is tomorrow’s presidential nominee! The presidential election is just an audition for power—a way to build the muscle, the vision, and the network that the working class needs to actually govern when the time comes.

A Platform of Revolution

Before we even begin to select a potential candidate, we would need to determine what we’re running them for. Steps and patience are still necessary. We start by drafting a “Democratic Socialist Presidential Platform”: a prepared list of tasks that we would initiate on day one of a socialist presidency. Through rapid executive action, our intent would be to mobilize the working class to dismantle the capitalist state as it currently exists and win peace, homes, and healthcare for all.

Our agitation around this document would be more than a protest campaign. It’s a platform campaign spanning countless election cycles, not just one, in a nationwide struggle for power. Instead of beginning with a personality, we can start by revisiting DSA’s existing program, refining it together through democratic deliberation. The following could be inspiring commitments for our platform:

• Appoint a People’s Cabinet of working class organizers, prepared to take power as a revolutionary workers’ government. Such organizers would be recruited from across the country.
• Redeploy federal resources toward massive climate resiliency projects, housing, and healthcare for all, regardless of locality
• Cut all federal support for genocide and the Israeli war machine, instead supporting Palestine’s freedom
• Arrest all war criminals and genocide collaborators in the US for prosecution in international courts. 
• Arrest all collaborators in Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile network.
• Recognize the self-determination of all colonized and indigenous nations fighting global capitalism and U.S. imperialism
• Declare a public health emergency to restore abortion rights and gender-affirming care nationwide, deploying federal resources to ensure universal access.
• Nationalize public infrastructure, from railways to energy grids, under democratic control
• Welcome climate refugees and declare universal amnesty for immigrants 
• Liberate political prisoners from both federal and state incarceration
• Reorganize the armed forces into a democratic people’s army
• Convene a Popular Assembly, elected by nationwide proportional representation, to rewrite the US Constitution and declare a democratic socialist republic

The agenda will lead, not a personality. Our socialist vision will be spearheaded by charismatic people with a strong sense of responsibility to the movement, ready to build a permanent constituency for socialism. As we boldly articulate DSA’s vision for the country and the world, we will become infinitely more powerful.

The DSA Presidential Convention

With a platform agreed upon, we’ll be ready for the next step of nominating our ticket. Those who will be responsible for using electoral politics to spread our socialist movement across the country won’t be nominated through a backroom negotiation. Instead, we can hold a DSA presidential nominating convention. Anyone would be free to run for the nomination, as long as they pledge to implement the DSA Presidential Platform. DSA could develop democratic procedures for selecting a nominee and hold livestreamed in-person debates for all declared candidates to earn the DSA endorsement and full backing. Such debates will encourage healthy discourse in our organization and push all of us forward politically 

But how do we find good candidates? We can do this by thinking outside the box! We don’t necessarily need a governor, a member of Congress, or even an existing DSA elected. It would be amazing to win over a national politician like Rashida Tlaib or Cori Bush, but we could also pick a DSA chapter leader, a national co-chair, or a rank and file union activist. We could draft a local elected like Richie Floyd, a socialist schoolteacher like Jeremy Gong, or even a plain-spoken left wing academic like Matt Karp. The nomination process will give us ample opportunity to observe the candidates in action, picking one who is up to the task of building a socialist constituency.

Then, we could bring in other figures to boost the ticket. Imagine Zohran Mamdani, running for Congress on a nationwide slate of democratic socialist firebrands. These candidates will be backed by the strong campaigns that are necessary to win, build DSA and spread consciousness about our program. Downballot campaigns will get a boost when the presidential candidate barnstorms their district to help get their name out, and local elected officials will in turn have a part to play in boosting the presidential ticket. 

Running for a collective presidency would give us incredible resilience. If we spread name recognition across the movement, we can avoid getting trapped with a single perennial candidate like Bernie, Corbyn, or Melénchon. Instead, we can learn from figures like former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and his successor Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico, who have used their groundbreaking electoral campaigns to build up permanent institutions like Morena, a mass party of the Mexican left. Bernie and AOC seem to be building support for their progressive vision through their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, but their distance from DSA limits their ability to cohere an organized mass base for their political program. Their instinct has always been to center their personalities instead of trying to create a new voter identity or a partylike organization.

If we nominate our candidates early—perhaps in 2026—we’ll have plenty of time to start forging a socialist voter identity as 2028 approaches. We can begin by running in the national Democratic primary with a stridently independent campaign, making it clear that we will never endorse the establishment if they steal the nomination or continue to ignore working class grievances. Our candidate’s orientation would still be to antagonize masses of typical voters, including the many Democratic party voters who have become increasingly frustrated with the party, and to offer them a true alternative to the GOP. If the time seems ideal, we can continue to the general election as an independent, on a third-party ballot line, or perhaps even as a write-in candidate, taking with us support from inside the primary. Every step of the way, we will assess support for socialism and continue the long overdue process of cultivating a pro-socialist constituency.

If AOC enters the primary, many comrades will feel that the only responsible choice is to rally behind her immediately. For many Americans, she is the most familiar figure to emerge from Bernie Sanders’ movement, their entry point to “democratic socialism.” Yet there is a hard truth that DSA sometimes struggles to address: AOC’s approach is rarely insurgent and has in fact become increasingly conciliatory in recent years. In 2024, she went so far as to go on the DNC stage and claim with a straight face that Kamala Harris“[works] tirelessly for a ceasefire in Gaza”—all while Harris groveled to Biden’s killing spree and promised the “most lethal” military in the world. More recently, AOC voted against a measure to slash funding for Israel’s Iron Dome, followed by reasoning that itself sounded contorted and unclear.

AOC’s strategy is compromised by her commitment, however well-intentioned in some circumstances, to staying in the good graces of a party leadership that is utterly hostile to progress and its own voter base. That is not a personal attack, but a political reality with consequences. If DSA plays “follow the leader” and tails a left-Democratic presidential candidate, we will forfeit any ability to push beyond the limits they accept. We should never forget what happened in 2020: when Bernie Sanders capitulated to Biden early on in the name of “party unity,” his massive volunteer army was left in despair and disunity. When summer came, millions rose up in the George Floyd rebellion, but they had no real political leadership—no defiant presidential agitator who could guide their righteous fury into a permanent resistance. That tragedy could repeat itself in 2028 if AOC surrenders to the establishment, all while ICE tramples more families into the ground. 

We can welcome AOC into the field. We may even consider forming a united front of some kind with her as the primaries unfold—if she makes significant concessions to the DSA platform, and we retain our own independent voice. Even from a position of “critical support for AOC,” we could continue to build a constituency around DSA’s unique vision and stay completely hostile to establishment Democrats. If she drops out and endorses an establishment primary winner, we must not follow her. A revolutionary campaign must be prepared to go much further than AOC will, because the US working class deserves more than a fleeting populist resistance: it demands an enduring socialist opposition. 

With a boldly independent socialist campaign, we will answer working people’s hunger for a real alternative. We’ll be putting forward our own agenda, unfiltered by the expectations of the Democratic party establishment. This strengthens our leverage and puts pressure on the entire political system. Ironically, this may even bolster AOC’s position within her party by showing the establishment that there’s a far more dangerous option than her. In the short term, that too would be in our favor, with AOC forced to concede to some of our more liberatory demands, all the while we carry on developing our independent sources of power, electoral or otherwise. DSA’s strength lies not in our proximity to progressive celebrities, but in our capacity to organize working-class people around a shared vision for a better society. All strategies, including the electoral, proceed over from this principle. 

The Hard Road Ahead

As our new National Political Committee builds on our commitment to building a socialist party, it should begin planning for a groundbreaking presidential campaign to fight for “socialism in our lifetime.” Across the country, DSA members increasingly understand that contesting the presidency is vital to our success as a movement. The greatest challenge ahead is making sure our presidential intervention is bold, inspiring, and courageously independent.

If DSA can come together around this vision, we will be taking a considerable leap of faith. It requires confidence in socialism as a movement, as an organization, as a concrete project worth fighting for. Is it actually possible for socialists to rise to power in the United States? If we don’t start to believe it ourselves, no one else ever will. 

If there’s one thing we can draw hope from, it’s the fact that all the old release valves are breaking apart. The Democratic Party has never been weaker and more decrepit. If we seize this moment with unrelenting ferocity, we can emerge with the independent movement of our dreams. The key to all of it is developing our vision through a presidential platform, and then running a candidate who is willing to speak to it. It is a message of confidence to the entire world that we can achieve socialism in our lifetime, in the United States: the center of global capitalism and empire.

Our time will come. Our time is now. 

Image: Photo of the Oval Office during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s time as U.S. President. (Public Domain)

COLUMBUS — The Columbus chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) issues the following recommendations to residents of Columbus.

1. In For Issue 1, YES.
2. In For Columbus School Board, vote MOUNIR LYNCH.
3. In For Columbus City Council, district 7, vote JESSE VOGEL.

A detailed rationale for each recommendation follows.

Disclaimer: No recommendations made here are endorsements. These recommendations are tactical considerations meant to minimize the harm likely to occur to the working class here and abroad as a result of this election.

Do you lament the lack of socialist, abolitionist, anti-ICE and pro-BDS candidates running for office? You can be a part of changing that, whether by running for office yourself or helping us to discover and cultivate future socialists-in-office. To advance the democratic socialist movement in Central Ohio, join DSA today: www.columbusdsa.org/join/.

Endorsement for Columbus School Board

Mounir Lynch

Columbus DSA is proud to endorse Mounir Lynch for Columbus School Board. Lynch sought our chapter’s endorsement and was thereafter endorsed by a democratic vote of the chapter. From our conversations with him, Lynch has demonstrated that he shares our ideals. He will seek to prioritize community voices, students, families, educators, and neighbors in shaping schools with transparent processes and district-wide advisory boards that will meet at convenient times and locations.  He wants to make teachers and staff “partners” with the board and will work to direct resources where they’re most needed. He wants to end the inequality in funding to schools and will work to provide all students with a world-class education. Lynch will fight for better pay, not only for teachers, but for all staff, including school bus drivers, cafeteria workers, aides and other support staff. Furthermore, Lynch has and will continue to speak out against developers who steal from our schools through tax abatements, and against the privatization of education. As he has said, “Our public schools belong to all of us.” We support Lynch’s vision for safe, inclusive schools where all students and workers are valued and respected.

Recommendation for Columbus City Council, district 7

Jesse Vogel

Columbus’s City Council has been bought and paid for by the local Democratic Party for decades. The local party has opposed efforts to make the process of electing councilmembers more democratic and has insisted on appointing or endorsing their own chosen candidates to maintain their hold on power in Columbus. (Our chapter’s Democracy in Columbus Priority Campaign seeks to change this.) Jesse Vogel’s campaign is part of the struggle against the established Democratic Party’s stranglehold on power in this city. Vogel’s vision is positive and certainly superior to the vision offered by the local Democratic Party leaders and his opponent, Tiara Ross. Vogel has not sought our chapter’s endorsement, and we are not granting it. But we do acknowledge that he is far superior to his Democratic Party endorsed opponent, and as a result, we recommend that our members vote for Jesse Vogel for city council. 

Recommend “Yes” vote for Issue 1

We recommend a Yes vote on Issue 1, a .05-mill increase of an existing levy over ten years to fund the Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health (ADAMH) Board. This increase will strengthen key services available to all, with a particular focus on helping the uninsured and underinsured with mental health and addiction crises and recovery services. Key recipients of the levy dollars are the new Franklin County Crises Core Center for adults, Youth Prevention services, Treatment Access, Recovery and Support Services, Housing Programs, Family & Caregiver Support, and other Specialized Services for mental health and addiction issues.

No recommendation for other Issues

We cannot, in good conscience, recommend any other issues, due to lack of specific information from the City as to how funds, coming from the largest request for bond packages ever, will benefit the average citizens of Columbus.