Nearly one in six workers is an independent contractor. Learn how you can organize for better conditions.

The post Can freelancers unionize? appeared first on EWOC.

by Sara G.

Do you like libraries, gender-neutral IDs, solidarity with marginalized groups, and defying Greg Abbott? You can get all of these things at once with Austin Public Library’s Enhanced Library Card (ELC). It serves as a normal library card but contains more information including your photo, address, and date of birth. It does NOT contain your citizenship information or gender.  

Austin Public Library has formal agreements with many other city services to allow the use of the card for ID, such as Austin Police Department, some city courts, and community organizations like the YWCA. Area businesses may choose to accept it as well. It is not a state ID, however. You cannot use it to vote. 

Austin has offered Enhanced Library Cards since 2023, but they are more useful than ever as we see an increase in attacks on liberty and personal dignity in Texas. Trans Texans cannot change the gender markers on their state identification, including driver’s licenses and birth certificates. This means that some transgender people are forced to carry identification that does not match their gender presentation, which can cause awkward and sometimes even dangerous interactions with authorities and other members of the community. 

Using an ELC allows transgender people to identify themselves without having to out themselves during mundane community interactions. This is particularly important in light of HB 32 (and its companion bill, SB 7), which has been filed for the Summer 2025 Texas special legislative session. HB 32 and SB 7 would require people to use sex-segregated spaces that match the sex recorded on their original birth certificate. This applies to all sex segregated spaces, including bathrooms, locker rooms, and jail cells that are located in family violence shelters, correctional facilities, public schools and universities, and other government facilities. If this law passes, transgender people will face the lose-lose choice between breaking the law to use bathrooms that match their gender presentation, and risking violence and harassment to use bathrooms that match their birth certificates. In light of the difficult choices transgender people may soon have to make, having an ELC may provide significant safety benefits to transgender people as they move through the public spaces in their communities. 

The ELC also assists residents who have trouble getting a more common ID such as a driver’s license due to lack of mobility or prior documentation. People who are unhoused or returning to the city after incarceration are often caught in a cruel catch-22. They often have no current ID because they had no way to renew it or it was stolen or destroyed by the police. They no longer have current ID, but to get the most common forms of ID, they need to already have a way to prove their identity. They can’t get an ID because they don’t have an ID. The ELC can act as that first form of ID that provides the stepping stone to other documentation. Austin Public Library sends an outreach team with a mobile printer into the communities that most need these IDs to help fill this vital gap.

More usage of the ELC normalizes ELC use for everyone. We encourage everyone to get and use an ELC, even people who are not members of the groups that most need ELCs, because normalizing ELC usage makes it easier for those who vitally need ELCs to use them. If only undocumented residents used ELCs, ELC usage would be a red flag regarding documentation. If we all use ELCs, ELC usage cannot be used to unfairly target one group. Using an ELC is a show of solidarity with the more marginalized members of your community. 

Getting an ELC takes about 15 minutes. You can see the Austin Public Library locations offering an ELC here, as well as the list of materials you need to bring with you. Pledge to get an ELC before August 15th, and you’ll be invited to Austin DSA’s ELC party. Let’s celebrate solidarity together and stick the middle finger to Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton, and the other ghouls running our state.

The post You Should Get an Enhanced Library Card first appeared on Red Fault.

The Mask off Maersk campaign has successfully pressured the company and made it harder for them to deliver arms to Israel. The project can be a blueprint for how to win an arms embargo. 

The post Mask off Maersk Shows How to Win an Arms Embargo appeared first on Democratic Left.

Concerted activity refers to actions taken by one or more workers to improve their wages, hours, or working conditions.

The post What is concerted activity? appeared first on EWOC.

Chaz Howard, Chaplain at University of Pennsylvania, joins the podcast to talk about purpose and vocation, Black Liberation Theology as a needed remedy for American religion, and the necessity of spirituality in our activist work. We also discuss his new book, Uncovering Your Path, which you can purchase here: https://www.charleslattimorehoward.com

DSA member Zohran Mamdani’s victory in NYC’s mayoral Democratic Party primary is a case study in effective coalition-building. How did Zohran accomplish the impossible, going from 2% support in early polling to a decisive victory just 6 months later? Mamdani’s Obama-esque ability to resonate with voters across demographic and political lines played a part, as did the campaign’s strong field and communications operations. But another decisive factor came early in the campaign, at an endorsement forum hosted in February by DC 37, New York City’s largest union of public sector workers. Mamdani was received by the audience with rapturous applause throughout. Zohran’s campaign manager, Elle Bisgaard-Church, cited this forum as the moment she began to believe Zohran could win. “The energy in that room when he was on the stage was absolutely remarkable,” she said in an interview with the New York Times. “I remember sitting in the front row and feeling completely overwhelmed by it. That was a major sign to me of the breadth of this campaign’s resonance.”

DC 37 endorsed and joined the coalition for Zohran, but their support was far from guaranteed. In 2021, the union endorsed New York City’s current mayor Eric Adams, a scandal-ridden establishment politician who looks to face off with Mamdani in November’s general election. DC 37’s historic decision to endorse a ranked slate for mayor, including Zohran Mamdani, was the product of sustained rank-and-file organizing cohered through “DC 37 for Zohran,” a group of Zohran supporters who work for the city. As DSA considers interventions in the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election, the story of “DC 37 for Zohran” contains lessons DSA can take away to successfully build a movement, organization, and consciousness in support of our program at the largest stages of US politics. Delegates to DSA’s 2025 convention who are inspired by this story should vote in support of the two “A DSA Presidential Platform” amendments to ensure our organization helps create rank-and-file formations, like DC 37 for Zohran, that can organize activists and the politically disengaged, moving the labor-liberal Democratic Party establishment towards support for DSA’s slate of candidates and building the durable mass organizations necessary for the long-term political struggle for revolutionary democratic socialism. 

How We Win

Just like the Zohran campaign, DC 37 for Zohran is a coalition in its own right. The group was formed from a cadre of long-time activists in the public sector union movement. I was a member of this initial group. In addition to being city workers, some of us are DSA members, some are members of other socialist organizations, and some are unaffiliated. We share programmatic goals: transforming DC 37 from an ossified, disengaged business union into a democratic, member-driven and politically progressive union. But what really united us was the trust we built through years of organizing together. Activist city workers who formed DC 37 for Zohran struggled together on the shop floor and in our locals. And we had experience organizing city-wide political interventions together, around COVID-19 working conditions, 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, and most recently around Palestinian liberation and the divestment of our pension from Israel. For this campaign, DC 37 for Zohran’s specific goals were to organize public sector workers in support of the Zohran Mamdani campaign, and push DC 37 to endorse Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy and invest media and field resources to support the campaign.

To build public sector union member support, DC 37 for Zohran hosted a public town hall with the campaign. Attendees had the opportunity to hear from Zohran Mamdani and other city workers. They also had the opportunity to ask about issues important to city workers, like underfunding, understaffing, privatization, and threats to retiree healthcare, and push the Zohran campaign to consider these issues seriously. We also organized regular “city worker” canvassing shifts and held regular organizing meetings where supporters could join and “level up” their participation by getting involved in the group’s strategy development, event planning, and execution. These efforts helped cohere a strong, active, and organized city worker support base for Zohran, which extended far beyond the initial reach of the core organizing group. We were creative and organized in building a list of supporters, reaching out to city worker activists organizing in our workplaces and for Palestinian solidarity, coworkers who may have been previously politically inactive, and identifying leads using publicly available data on Zohran campaign contributors. This effective list-work expanded our reach and allowed us to mobilize a large number of supporters and identify new organizing leaders to support the Zohran campaign and our long-term union reform efforts. Our ability to collaborate with the campaign while retaining the political independence to build our own organization and advocate for our own political goals was key to building trust with coworkers and nimbly scaling up our organizing.

One of the first ways we tested the strength of our group was through a campaign calling on the union’s leaders to include Mamdani in the union’s endorsement slate and not to rank Mamdani’s primary competitor, Andrew Cuomo, another scandal-ridden establishment figure in New York. We turned out a sizable contingent to the mayoral forum hosted by DC 37 to demonstrate members’ support for the campaign, and followed that up with countless emails, phone calls, and texts to union leaders asking them to endorse Zohran. This campaign was a success, and DC 37 leadership voted to include Zohran second on their mayoral endorsement slate. While DC 37’s field and media efforts in the primary were focused on the union’s number-one-ranking candidate, Adrienne Adams, Zohran supporters joined DC 37’s field operation and pushed from within to focus the union’s efforts on Zohran, the more exciting and viable candidate (Adams won under 5% of the first-round primary votes). Duncan Freeman wrote in the Chief Leader, “the union showed up for Mamdani in other ways,” adding, “The union’s president, Shaun Francois, who heads Board of Education Employees Local 372, spoke in support of Mamdani at a campaign rally inside of a Brooklyn concert venue in May, and Maf Misbah Uddin, the union’s treasurer, spoke enthusiastically in support of Mamdani… [h]e was also a presence at rallies for the candidate with South Asian labor leaders.” Even the presence of DC 37’s logo on campaign literature helped legitimize Zohran outside the activist left. 

Let’s be crystal clear: DC 37’s support for the Zohran campaign was a victory of rank-and-file organizing. It shows that we can dislodge the power of the Democratic Party’s powerbrokers and start the process of shifting the labor unions and political non-profits towards a more progressive agenda. It shows that, when merged through an exciting popular campaign, base-building and electoral campaigning, areas of work often counterposed on the left, can complement one another and help us accomplish our shorter and longer-term objectives. As we shall see, the long-term success of this work hinges on DSA and the broader left organizing with the political independence necessary to promote its platform and organize its base. This is why the amendment calls for DSA to organize autonomous rank-and-file initiatives, put forward its own presidential platform, establish some standards for a DSA-endorsed candidate’s alignment with our organization and our presidential platform, and ensure DSA’s ability to criticize a campaign’s shortcomings and organize for change within the campaign apparatus.

Looking Forward

Of course, winning the mayoral race is one thing: governing and delivering on campaign promises is another. DC 37 for Zohran finds itself in the peculiar predicament of having successfully campaigned for the election of our next boss. Conversations within the group have already started about how to organize in this brave new world, where a democratic socialist is the mayor of our city. We have begun drafting a platform for the future of city work under Zohran’s administration and plan to host a town hall on this topic. We certainly hope to fight with Zohran on shared priorities, like investing more in staffing and public services for New Yorkers, fighting against outsourcing, and protecting retiree healthcare. However, we will also have to negotiate with the Zohran administration for our next contract, and all the political alignment in the world does not change the fact that every New York City mayor has to choose how to staff their administration and where to invest limited resources. The mayor can try to appoint political allies to key administrative positions, but faces pressure to rely on experts whose leadership abilities come with the status quo political beliefs one obtains after a career going through the city’s revolving door of executives in the private and non profit sectors (one key example: current NYPD police commissioner and billionaire heiress Jessica Tisch, who Zohran is considering retaining for his administration). The mayor can try to raise taxes, but will need political support from the council to do so. Further, while the city’s largest revenue source, property taxes, is controlled locally, much of the city’s additional revenue comes from state and federal sources, putting them out of the mayor’s or the council’s control. 

Here, Zohran’s city worker supporters have no illusions. We do not support Zohran because we believe he will wave a magic wand and solve all our problems, or because he represents a full program for the socialist movement. We support him because we believe he is the candidate most conducive to our organizing goals: building an organized, independent, militant workers’ movement that fights for city workers, the working class New Yorkers we serve, and workers all over the world.  After Mamdani wins the general election in November, we will continue the fight for wages that keep up with inflation, for an end to the wasteful practice of farming out public sector work to private contractors, for fully funded city agencies that are responsive to community needs, and for divesting our pension to end the city’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal project of ethnic cleansing in Palestine.  

On some of these issues, Zohran is a clear ally. For example, he has already expressed an interest in fully funding city agencies and auditing the city’s private contractors. On some issues, like more maximalist DC 37 contract demands or abolitionist demands around the NYPD, the Mamdani administration may side with city leadership in calling for moderation. Ultimately, we will work with the mayor’s office when we can, but against them when we must. This is a key insight: independent rank-and-file organizing can power leftist politicians to victory, but it is the only vehicle to ensure that, after taking power and facing heavy institutional pressures to compromise, politicians continue to support the program of DSA and the worker’s movement, from fast and free buses to divesting city workers’ pension from Israel all the way to a democratic socialist society. The purpose of such independent political entities like DC37 for Zohran is not just to help candidates win campaigns but to keep them politically sharp and honest, as we continue to build consciousness and support for our own political program and organization. 

Looking to 2028, it is worth asking: what coalition could potential presidential nominees – AOC, Shawn Fain, Sara Nelson, or Rashida Tlaib – build around themselves? What coalition does DSA want to build in the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential elections, and how can we help cohere that coalition? As we answer these questions, DC 37 for Zohran is a model we can take inspiration from. It shows us that through the rank-and-file organization DSA helps cohere, we can organize activists and the politically disengaged to move the labor-liberal coalition towards our goals. Most importantly, it shows us that we can use these campaigns to raise consciousness, grow our lists, and build durable mass organizations for the political battles that occur after every election, win or lose. Delegates to DSA’s 2025 convention who resonate with this vision should vote in support of the “A DSA Presidential Platform” amendments and ensure our organization helps create these powerful rank-and-file formations.

Image: Zohran Mamdani speaking at a New York City DSA fundraiser in 2023. Photo by Alexandra Chan.

Another convention season is here, and yet, the demand for a hybrid convention— a key focus for the Disability Working Group (DWG)— has failed to meet the requirements for  consideration by the convention committee. As a candidate for the National Political Committee, I included this sentence in my responses to the requisite questionnaire: “In DWG, we confront DSA’s institutional ableism, from inaccessible events to token accommodations.” This is something that every disabled organizer in DSA confronts every day. This institutional form of ableism can range from having to remind staff two conventions in a row to book more accessible rooms for the DSA block, to dealing with statements like “We don’t know where the accessible entrances are; this has never been an issue before.” Frustrations among members of our community have been mounting over the years. Frustrations that can cause more alienation, and fellow disabled comrades leaving the organization at a critical juncture. My comrades in the DWG have asked me why this consistently happens to us. I have to admit that I did not have a good answer.  This piece is my attempt to give voice to my own frustrations and theirs.

A focus on disability and accessibility is critical to developing a DSA that’s growing in strength and one that’s effective in winning broader demands. Without us, there is no revolutionary horizon to be achieved. 

A History of the Disability Working Group

In 2019, there was a mass resignation of the Steering Committee of the Disability Working Group. The text of their resignation can be found here and is worth reading in its entirety. However, unmentioned in this text is that prominent leftist writer and co-host of the popular podcast Chapo Trap House Amber A’Lee Frost was a key player in the harassment that the DWG Steering Committee faced. Given Amber’s turn towards advocating for an “anti-woke” left and masculine working class fetishism, it’s hard not to see the historic parallels in how attacks on disabled people are often harbingers of latent right-wing tendencies. Years later, and ableist slurs and ableist rhetoric has once again proliferated in the broader society. 

I strongly believe that the DWG went dormant for a time after this due to a lack of people willing to subject themselves to the ableism that the previous group experienced. At the end of the 2019 convention, an anti-identity politics caucus formed, announcing their formation with the ableist article “Let Them Clap,” published in Class Unity. Thankfully, like many things founded in opposition to other people’s existence and rights, this caucus has since split from DSA to focus on a podcast. Many of its former members are still active in DSA, however, and while they may no longer be part of a caucus that openly presents such divisiveness, I’m sure their influence is still playing a part in DSA’s orientation towards disability justice.

In 2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the national convention was held online. Advocates of a hybrid convention or an online convention finally had proof that it was feasible. However, a group of delegates dropped a harassment complaint against a slate of NPC candidates in the middle of the convention and exacerbated the vicious interpersonal conduct that sometimes plagues DSA’s organizational culture. This incident and the online fallout thereafter are now used by a significant section of our membership to argue that we need an in-person-only convention. But the logic of this argument is one that chooses to accommodate toxic behavior and papers over the serious issues at the expense of people with accessibility needs. To put it bluntly, this line of reasoning is more invested in prioritizing avoiding holding bad-faith actors accountable rather than making convention a more welcoming space for disabled comrades, a significant part of our socialist base. The 2023 National Convention had uneven adherence to supporting disabled members. Masking and vaccination were mandatory. Yet,the Disability Working Group worked on several resolutions, including the first hybrid convention resolution, but it did not meet the requirements to be considered. Many disabled delegates also experienced in-person ableism, such as a quiet room that was too close to the convention hall  for those experiencing sensory overload. A delegate was left in tears after a request for the chair to ask other delegates to stop clapping and yelling was denied. In the aftermath of the 2023 convention, the bulk of the Disability Working Group has left DSA yet again.

This history is only a fraction of the issues that affect the wider organization. I have not spoken of the personal incidents that occur throughout chapters because I can’t possibly know them all, but I do know that they occur with alarming frequency. This has led to an organization that is less reflective of the working class that we claim to represent—in just one of many ways it fails to do so. According to the Centers for Disease Control, at least 1 in 4 people in the U.S. have a disability. About 78 percent of all disabled adults participate in the country’s labor force, with nearly 27 percent, twice the rate of able adults, languishing in poverty. If anything, as much as the DSA has become the leading socialist organization in the U.S., it’s regressed terribly when it comes to issues of basic accessibility and respect for its disabled members. 

The Dilemma of Disability Rights Persists

In 2025, the issues of accessibility and ableism persist. Currently, the major focus of opposition to disability justice has to do with masking, transmissible infections, and the cost of accessibility. For many, masking after the initial outbreak became a way of life, and I currently mask on public transit and in enclosed spaces. Members of the DWG have asked me to push for more chapters to have mandatory masking policies, and I have tried advocating for that in various DSA spaces, such as in online discords and the DSA national forums. The opposition to this has crystallized in the optional masking policy adopted by the NPC for the 2025 convention. As a member of the Accessibility Committee for convention, I had pushed for stronger standards, but the committee deadlocked on the final vote and then never met again. Already, some delegates who were democratically elected to their seats have dropped out from attending because of this failure to protect their health. The organization makes explicit institutional commitments to fighting racism, transphobia, and homophobia, yet when it comes to disability, we remain stuck debating whether inclusion is worth the effort. I am not raising this point to pit race, transness, or disability justice against one another, as I know this is not a zero-sum game. I am pointing out that DSA can successfully welcome people into our organization and make them a priority, but it selectively chooses when to do so, and oftentimes, falls short on such commitments.

Many DSA members who are able-bodied perpetuate the ableism present in our society, and many of the arguments that they make are the same arguments that disabled people encounter in their day-to-day life as to why society cannot adjust or accommodate us. Members, including those in the top-most positions of leadership, couch these arguments in concerns about cost but have no problem booking convention at an expensive complex or asking delegates to pay their way to and from convention, even with the cost of living increasing exponentially every year, which also deeply impacts many of us who are disabled and living precarious lives financially. I find it incoherent to say that the cost of a hybrid convention would be somehow more than the cost being passed on to individual delegates in order for us to have our face-to-face time.

Setting aside convention, far too many chapters continue to have events at inaccessible locations and fail to prepare for the possibility of having a disabled member participate fully in chapter activities that some others may take for granted. Every chapter and every working group actively asks members to use pronouns. Why can’t this same level of effort be made for disabled people who are part of a working class feeling squeezed in a neoliberal ableist America? Instead, the issues and concerns of disabled people in the organization are dismissed, and members of the community are made to feel like a burden instead of comrades in this common struggle against oppression and class exploitation. 

I want to think the best of my more able-bodied comrades (although that line between abled and disabled are always blurring), and, while I don’t think any of this is based in explicit forms of eugenics, I do think, like the rest of able-bodied society, there is some kind of squeamishness about what disabled people represent: an otherness that goes unspoken but nonetheless screams with visibility. At some point in their lives, all able-bodied people will need the accommodations that disabled people so fiercely advocate for. Maybe this possibility, this equalization by time and the stress of capitalist life, makes some deeply uncomfortable in ways that they can’t express or don’t know how to. Either way, we are all left with an organization that is weaker for it, with fewer and fewer disabled members who are willing to endure this implicit hostility. We are left with disabled comrades leaving the organization, oftentimes alienated by politics overall, disenchanted and ever more isolated. We are left with policy demands that do not in fact, take seriously accommodations and health issues that all people, abled and disabled alike, shall face, like having facilities that are well ventilated and a healthcare system that cares about our basic health. Such things should be the bedrock of a socialist agenda and yet, such ideas are barely mentioned, along with those of us who need these policies the most. 

The eternal question is always: What is to be done? I don’t know the specific answer to that. I do know that I cannot guilt my comrades into doing better. I cannot simply ask nicely, for I have done that repeatedly and gotten nowhere. I can organize a resolution or proposal that doesn’t gather enough signatures. I can buy my chapter portable wheelchair ramps which will then get lost in the shuffle. As a leader in the National Disability Working Group and DSA, I choose to stay, but I feel it keenly every time a comrade chooses not to. I constantly ask myself: Is there more I could have done? Could I have supported them more? Could I have talked to their chapter leaders? But ultimately if the organization as a whole is unwilling to act, even my substantial efforts won’t be enough. We are all members of DSA because we recognize the limits of the individual. I recognize my limits more and more, and I am proactive about asking my comrades to respect and accommodate them. I wish that the organization would reciprocate and recognize its responsibility in managing and choosing its own limits rather than reinforcing an individualist and anti-socialist culture when it comes to accessibility and inclusion for members of our community, whose lives are often at the frontlines of capitalist decay and class war

I leave with my most recent encounter with how the organization erases disability from within our ranks. While in the process of writing this piece, I filled out my delegate registration form, which asked a variety of demographic questions, but did not include a general question displaying a similar interest in gathering the demographic data related to disability. The only question regarding whether or not our members are disabled and what disabilities they may have was what accommodations they need. Based on past experience, I am not hopeful that these accommodations will be present. This theater of inclusion will play out every convention and in every chapter until it matters to DSA. It’s only a question of how many disabled members we’ll lose before DSA starts to care, and maybe then, for the broader movement, it might be too late.

Image: Handicap parking spots in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 29, 2024. Photo by Tony Webster. Photo distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

GNDCC Committee Updates

DSA Convention season in full swing. In our Campaign Huddles, we strategized for the next two years and outlined why Organizing for a Green New Deal under Trump 2.0 is crucial for DSA in Democratic Left. Read our resolution that would mandate us to focused on Buiding for Power for two more years.

Missed our mass call with socialist electeds, ecosocialist leaders, and campaign organizers? Watch a recording on why the Fight for a Socialist Green New Deal continues, featuring Thea Riofrancos, Ashik Siddique, Sarahana Shrestha, Kelsea Bond, Alex Brower, Michael B, and Sam Z.

Building for Power campaign updates

New Campaigns

We welcomed a new B4P campaign into our universe: Houston DSA launched Our Vote, Our METRO, pressuring Mayor Whitmore to deliver transit improvements voters already approved. The revitalized ecosocialist working group is mobilizing for 2026 METRO budget hearings, driving turnout and shaping the narrative.

Keeping the Pressure On

In New York, Sarahana Shrestha’s Public Renewables Transparency Act passed unanimously in the State Assembly, ensuring democratic oversight of NYPA’s renewables expansion. The push continues for 15 GW of public renewables by 2030—creating 25,000 union jobs, cutting bills, and retiring peaker plants.

If you missed it, check out our latest Campaign Q&A: Building Public Renewables in New York. The Build Public Renewables Act provides a model for a successful chapter campaign within the Building for Power framework, and the fight continues to see it fully implemented. This interview is brimming with insights for chapters running their own strategic campaigns.

The summer months are great for canvassing: We Power DC hosted their first canvasses for their public power pledge, while the canvassing pros in Milwaukee continue their weekly efforts to gather signatures to replace WE Energies.

Louisville DSA’s Get on the Bus campaign to fund TARC continues gaining momentum, with nearly 1,200 signatures on their demand letter and support from 31 organizations—including 9 unions/labor councils. This summer they delivered over 300 postcards to city council and launched a street team wheatpasting bold “Let TARC Grow” posters across the city, taking inspiration from Metro DC’s B4P campaigns model.

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If you’re at the 2025 DSA convention, stop by our table and say hi! We will be there championing the  power of organizing at the intersection of climate, labor, and public goods. As more chapters take on strategic, place-based campaigns, we’re building toward a future where ecosocialism is not just a vision—but a material force in the everyday lives of working-class people. See you in Chicago!

The post 2025 April-June Recap appeared first on Building for Power.

Note: posts by individual GMDSA members do not necessarily reflect the views of the broader membership or of its leadership and should not be regarded as official statements by the chapter.

GMDSA Electoral Committee Chair Adam Franz delivered the following speech at our chapter’s summer barbecue on July 22.

It’s great to see so many people here today, and I thank you all for coming to support our chapter’s delegation to Chicago for the national convention.

I am going into my fifth year as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, and many of the people here have been in the organization longer than I have. In my time in this org, and in all of our lifetimes, “socialism” and the left have been mostly an experience of defeat. The rollback of the New Deal in favor of neoliberalism, the defeat of the labor movement, the rise of the new right, Bernie’s two defeats, and a second Trump administration. Often, socialists have looked to small wins, like mutual aid, or the lack of a defeat, as a victory.

Zohran’s win changes all of that. Since 2020, socialists have been told, and in many cases accepted, a narrative that our beliefs are unpopular, that a majority of the American people are not with us. When the New York assemblymember, a cadre DSA member, announced his campaign last fall, he was a joke. Polling at just 1%, his platform read to the mainstream media like an ultra-left Twitter bio. Free buses? Rent freeze? Publicly owned grocery stores? No, these were not the talking points they had decided the election would be about. A moral panic about crime, a debate between different forms of centrism—that was what the mayoral election would be about. Zohran’s message would not breach the borders of the already existing base of democratic socialism in New York.

New York City DSA did not, however, just play to its base. After Trump’s victory, Zohran took to the street, talking to voters in neighborhoods that swung hard against Harris in November. He found that voters were motivated by a sense that the country was not working for ordinary people, and that even the lives they had been living four years before were no longer affordable to them. Now, price caps on rent and free, universal public services don’t sound so radical. They sound like the kind of materialist demands that the socialist left has that connect with working class voters.

Zohran’s message took off, propelling him into second place against disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo. And the more voters saw of Zohran, the more they liked him. The socialist assemblymember seemed like the first politician in a long time that genuinely cared about the struggles of the working class, and had solutions for them. Zohran did not just win the primary by 12 percent; he won neighborhoods nobody expected, and even in the neighborhoods where he lost, he far exceeded expectations, like in the more conservative Staten Island, where he landed only 9% below Cuomo. 

If Zohran wins in November, DSA will be in a position to be governing America’s biggest city. Like Bernie 40 years ago in Burlington, we have the opportunity to demonstrate that socialist government is good government. That public ownership is more efficient than private dictatorship. We can realize the slogan that Lenin beautifully gifted us a century ago: “Bolshevism equals soviet power plus electrification.” Socialists recognize that we must radically transform the state to empower ordinary people and deliver a better form of administration of government services that puts to bed the notion that socialism means ineffective government.

The easy thing to do, and you already see this in Democrats’ chosen media outlets like CNN and the New York Crimes, is to say, “This is a New York phenomenon, it can’t be repeated in cities and towns across America. Small-town America doesn’t have the media presence,  the right demographics, whatever, to allow such a victory in Anywhere, USA.” 

The truth is, New York is not an easy place to win elections for the left. It’s a city with a media ecosystem run by billionaires like Rupert Murdoch, where politics is driven by machines hostile to the left, and where the ultra-wealthy have seemingly unlimited resources to defeat insurgents like us. NYC-DSA won not because of these conditions, but in spite of them. It totally transformed the terrain on which the election was fought, because it had built up its own working-class institutions that could compete with the capitalist class on its terms, not those set by the 1%. The chapter has methodically built up its presence around the city. Zohran could capitalize on 50 thousand volunteers, knocking on doors in every borough and neighborhood to spread the message, leading to record-breaking turnout. 

The task for us is to bring the momentum to Vermont. Our chapter clearly is not as big as NYC-DSA, which has over 10,000 members. Yet we have the potential to be just as organized and mobilized. 

Working Vermonters are sick of the Democratic Party. Democrats have no answers for working people to address their concerns of an unaffordable state and out-of-control housing crisis. We do. The question is, will Vermont continue to slide back into the Republican camp, or will Vermont follow the “Zohmentum” and elect socialists in 2026?

Clearly, we have our work cut out for us. The Electoral Committee has set a goal to run four candidates for the legislature next year, in winnable seats where we can build a strong presence under the golden dome, and in hopes of building our presence statewide for future campaigns. We do this because we believe that our politics are popular and we can win. It is also because we believe that running for office is not an opportunity to rabble-rouse and talk down to the masses, but to govern as socialists. 

To do this, we need candidates. If you have ever thought to yourself, “I wish someone would do something about these problems,” that person is you! If you are interested in running for office, for the state house or selectboard or city council, come find me or another organizer today. There is a place for everybody to play.

If we are going to win, we need a chapter with a fighting capacity. We need to rely on an army of volunteers, like Zohran did. If you haven’t yet, join DSA today! While the capitalist class relies on their money, there are more of us than there are of them. Build the movement, build a fighting DSA, because I believe that we will win in 2026. 

And if you want to build on this major win, sign up to get involved with the Electoral Committee.  The next meeting is July 20 at 6.

Every month we meet to discuss books with powerful socialist and progressive messages. After each book we finish, we vote on our next book. To cast your vote or join our upcoming meeting, be sure to check the events calendar and connect with us on Slack. The candidates for our next book include: Upcoming Our [...]

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