When St. Paul elected their first all female and nearly all women of color City Council last year, there were high hopes this would deliver progressive change at the City Council level. On Wednesday, February 21 those hopes took a heavy blow. Council President Mitra Jalali, widely known as a progressive, refused to bring forth […]

From the ridiculous (Moms for Liberty) to the sublime (Notorious D.O.T.)  The school board beat is not usually this tabloid-worthy, but have you all been following the -ahem- “career” of Bridget Ziegler of Sarasota, Florida? This fine, upstanding lady is married to Christian Ziegler, who was ousted last year as the chair of the Florida […]

It’s time once again for our annual Madison Area Democratic Socialists of America Convention, happening on Saturday, March 23 from 10-5 at the Goodman Community Center. Please RSVP as soon as possible! This year, we’re excited to move back to an in-person convention.

At Convention, members in good standing are invited to take a look back at the past year and make important decisions about the direction of the upcoming year. Here’s what you can expect at the MADSA Convention: getting to know your comrades and team building, political discussion, voting on exec positions, working group charters, chapter campaigns, and a delicious (and free) lunch.

The 2024 About the MADSA Convention Guide has everything you know about Convention, what to submit, what to expect, voting procedures, and more. Please bookmark it.

We’re asking members to submit the following things by March 15th: 

• Nominate yourself or someone else for the executive committee! The executive committee is responsible for day-to-day chapter operations and making decisions between membership meetings.
• Nominate yourself or someone else for the Community Accountability Committee!. The CAC members help with community accountability.
• Working group report and charter. Do you want to recharter your working group? Does your charter need to change? Do you have an idea for a new working group? This year, all Working Group charters will need 5 chapter members to sign on before submission.
• Campaign proposals – What should the chapter work together on? We’ll be collecting campaign proposals and voting on one. If you have a campaign idea, please complete the Strategic Campaigns Proposal Worksheet, linked in the 2024 Convention Guide, and take a look at the slides from the 2/18 Strategic Campaigns Training. All campaign proposals will need at least 5 chapter members to sign on before submission.

More information on all of these items can be found in the 2024 Convention Guide. 

Solidarity,

Madison DSA Convention Committee 

Upcoming Convention Events

DSA Leadership Intensive┃Sat and Sun March 2&3 12-5pm ┃RSVP 
This two-day training, led by DSA’s national Growth and Development Committee (GDC), is meant for chapter leaders (or prospective chapter leaders) of all experience levels to come together, learn from one another, and return to organizing with a greater understanding of what it takes to build DSA into a mass organization of working people across diverse backgrounds. We will cover everything from how to cohere your chapter around shared projects to the basic, day-to-day work of chapter officers.

Executive Committee Q&A ┃Monday March 4 7-8pm ┃Zoom ┃Passcode 371739
Anyone considering a role on the Executive Committee is encouraged to attend.

March General Membership Meeting┃Tuesday March 12 7-8:00pm ┃Social Justice Center & Zoom 
The official Convention Agenda will be presented and discussed, along with other important convention updates.

Convention RSVP Form, Campaign proposals, Working Group submissions and officer nominations DUE ┃ Friday March 15 @ Midnight

Convention Compendium Available ┃ March 16th
A convention guide including campaign proposals, working group submission and officer statements will be shared with all members.

2024 MADSA Convention┃Saturday March 23 10am-5pm ┃Goodman Center Ironworks, Grace Room

We shouldn’t know their name, but after what has transpired, it’s important we remember our dead. Nex Benedict was a 16-year-old nonbinary, genderfluid student at Owasso High School in Oklahoma. On February 7th, while Nex was in the girls bathroom with their friend, three older students came in and beat them up. It was reported that Nex’s head was smashed into the floor multiple times. They could not walk to the nurses office without assistance. No teachers or school staff called an ambulance for them.

According to Sue Benedict, Nex’s mother, “Nex was a straight-A student who enjoyed reading, art, their cat Zeus, creating new recipes, and playing video games like Minecraft.” Nex and their family are a part of the Choctaw Nation and they lived on the Cherokee reservation.

On February 24th, local trans artists and organizers in Greater Portland saw that the Trans Advocacy Coalition of Oklahoma was holding a vigil for Nex Benedict. It was a swift decision to hold space for our grief and rage here in solidarity. Roughly 60 people joined on the very cold Sunday evening with less than 24 hour notice. A testament to the need for community in this difficult time.

Speakers at the Portland vigil included Sampson Spadafore (they/he) and RBoots Shertzer (they/them), lead organizers in the vigil, as well as a local trans and queer youth, and Osgood (they/them), the executive director of Portland Outright. Because of the short notice, members of the Wabanaki Two Spirit Alliance could not be in attendance, however it was an honor to share their words of grief at the event.

After our moment of silence, organizers opened the mic to allow community members to speak. Members of all ages and backgrounds, different experiences, both trans and allied, came to the mic to share about their grief, their fears, their justified rage, and their solidarity. 

The following are some of the words shared by Spadafore, who acted as emcee for the evening.

***

When we lose a trans person somewhere, that loss is felt everywhere. We are here in solidarity with them. We grieve this loss and we share the deep sorrow they are feeling.

Nex suffered a long history of bullying. First, they were bullied for their indigeneity, then for their gender identity. Their death came after the Oklahoma Education Department superintendent Ryan Walters confirmed that Chaya Raichik, otherwise known online as Libs of TikTok, would serve on the state’s Library Media Advisory Committee. For those who may not know, Libs of TikTok is a rightwing account and has gained an extreme rightwing following across multiple platforms. Raichik calls teachers, schools, queer and trans activists, and our supporters “groomers.” Multiple times, when teachers and schools are being put on blast by Libs of TikTok, they receive bomb and death threats. And now this person is to be a Library Media Advisor for the entire state of Oklahoma.

It is clear that there is a direct correlation between the state legislators’ false, inflammatory rhetoric about trans people and physical harm on the streets to our community. We have seen this before. It is a tale as old as this settler colonialist, patriarchal, capitalist hell hole of a country. But our demonization must stop today.

We are here to stand against oppression, to stand up for safety and the ability to thrive for all trans youth everywhere, and to fight for our collective liberation. We use the time honored tradition of marching in the street to pay homage to those who came before us, who are no longer with us, as we come together in solidarity with Nex and their family.

When I say we are fighting for our collective liberation, I do not just mean trans folks, not just white trans folks. I mean all of us who experience oppression under these systems and structures created for and by Rich White Cis Hetero Men. Our Collective Liberation does not happen without the liberation of Two Spirit people. Our Collective Liberation does not happen without the liberation of Black and Brown Queer and Trans people. Our Collective Liberation does not happen without the liberation of Palestine. Our Collective Liberation does not happen without liberation of Queer and Trans Palestinians who are on their land or in the diaspora. Not without all of those oppressed by settler colonialism.

Our liberation does not happen without you.

We all need each other in this fight, because we are all connected. The oppressor will have you thinking that your fight for education, or your fight for reproductive health, or your fight for a livable wage, or your fight for universal health care, or your fight for gender liberation, or your fight for reparations, or your fight for disability justice, or your fight for immigrants, or your fight to end homelessness isn’t tied up together in the same damn knot but it is. 

We need each other and we need each other now!

In the state of Maine and across the U.S., trans people everywhere deserve safety in school, work, and all aspects of life. We deserve dignity and protection from violence. This is a call for our legislators, our city councilors, our teachers, our doctors, our community leaders, to take trans safety seriously. We are under attack and we all must fight back.

There was a recent initiative to make Maine a sanctuary state for trans youth seeking refuge from other states where it’s become hostile or even illegal to transition. Places like Oklahoma. Unfortunately this bill had some flaws, so they decided to vote it down to rewrite and resubmit this bill with stronger, more accurate language. We need to let our Maine legislators know that we want this bill put forward again and that we support its passage. We demand that Maine becomes a safe place for Trans people everywhere!

Maine legislators are currently considering a tribal sovereignty bill, LD 2007, to restore the inherent right of the Wabanaki Nations in Maine to self-govern within their respective territories in accordance with the same federal laws that govern tribal lands elsewhere in the U.S. This Bill addresses long-standing issues with a land claims act passed in 1980 that governs the relationship between the state and the tribes in Maine. The Wabanaki Alliance has created an incredible toolkit for supporting this bill. I am asking everyone here to go to wabanakialliance.com, find out more about the bill LD 2007, and call your representatives. We are here to demand the Wabanaki People in Maine gain their longer overdue tribal sovereignty!

Keep fighting, keep grieving, keep showing up for your community. Love to you all and stay safe.

***

The following are organizations we encourage you to donate to in support of Oklahoma’s Queer and Trans community.

Trans Advocacy Coalition of Oklahoma, Freedom Oklahoma, Oklahomans for Equality, and The Rainbow Youth Project.

The post Mainers hold Vigil for Nex Benedict, deceased trans teen from Oklahoma appeared first on Pine & Roses.

Once again, we find ourselves in an election season, and once again, our Electoral Working Group has sprung into action to weigh in. 

We’re tasked collectively to grapple with the political realities of San Diego. We’ve seen a slow shift from a primarily Republican-run city to a primarily centrist Democrat-run city. Many of the races are handpicked (or uncontested) by a Democratic establishment that favors a status quo that has long stopped working for San Diegans. But, we do see some bright spots and opportunities worth highlighting.

The candidates named in the guide are simply recommendations. They are not socialists, but there are planks of their platform we believe will materially benefit the working class—especially in comparison to other […]

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DSA San Diego sadly shares the news of the passing of Herbert Shore, one of the co-founders of our chapter and a former member of DSA’s National Political Committee. Herb was 83 and is survived by his wife, Virginia Franco.

Herb and Virginia were members of Students for a Democratic Society and subsequently the New American Movement, which in turn merged with the Democratic […]

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For City Council…

This election season, Champlain Valley DSA has focused on our two endorsed City Council campaigns: Marek Broderick for Burlington’s Ward 8 and Nick Brownell for Winooski.

As CVDSA members, Marek and Nick have attended countless rallies, pickets, meetings, and canvasses. We know the depth of their commitment to socialist politics and have the utmost confidence that, as elected officials, they will always put workers and tenants first. If either appears on your ballot, please support them.

CVDSA members vote on the chapter’s endorsements based on candidates’ answers to our Electoral Working Group’s questionnaire. We have not endorsed any other candidates for the March election. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be leaving the rest of our ballots blank.

Seven of Burlington’s eight wards host competitive races for City Council. The Vermont Progressive Party, which CVDSA has traditionally supported electorally, has a candidate running in every part of the city (if we include a Prog-endorsed independent in Ward 5). Our own Marek Broderick is one of them.

With the rest, we don’t always see eye-to-eye. This year, several of the candidates’ policy platforms center not merely a strategic retreat from the Progs’ circa-2020 emphasis on the failures and injustices of city policing but, more troublingly, a full about-face, with prominent assertions that public safety demands robustly funded and fully staffed local law enforcement.

In some cases, too, the Progs appear to have capitulated to conservative calls to solve Burlington’s crisis of affordability by slashing property taxes for qualifying homeowners, even as badly needed public services grow more expensive. Broad proposals to sensitize municipal property taxes to income fundamentally represent rejections of the concept of a wealth tax, which leftists tend to favor (and generally wish to expand) in other contexts. All but the very narrowest of such plans would serve to shift the city’s tax burden away from relatively high-wealth retirees – who, in a town where houses don’t come cheap, inevitably comprise the bulk of “low-income” homeowners – and onto working Burlingtonians.

But there are bright spots, as well, among 2024’s batch of Progs, which includes just one incumbent (the redoubtable Gene Bergman). Going against a longtime tendency within the party toward a “small is beautiful” politics, all of them have evinced a commitment to expanding Burlington’s housing stock significantly by allowing denser residential and mixed-use construction. Several of them also have bold, detailed plans for municipal decarbonization.

And the Democrats are worse than ever. For City Council, we recommend Carter Neubieser in Ward 1, Gene Bergman in Ward 2, Joe Kane in Ward 3, Dan Castrigano in Ward 4, Lena Greenberg in Ward 5, Will Anderson in Ward 6, and Lee Morrigan in Ward 7. Most of all, we again urge you to vote for CVDSA’s Marek Broderick in Ward 8.

Winooski, meanwhile, holds nonpartisan elections, but the Progs have endorsed not only Nick Brownell but also incumbent Aurora Hurd for the two open seats on the at-large council. Alongside Nick Brownell, our own enthusiastically endorsed candidate, we recommend Aurora Hurd in Winooski.

For Mayor…

While Winooski doesn’t have a competitive race for mayor (or water commissioner or school trustee, for that matter), the top of Burlington’s ballot, of course, features a four-way contest to replace Democrat Miro Weinberger. Practically, it is a two-person race between State Rep. Emma Mulvaney-Stanak and South District Councilor Joan Shannon.

It’s an easy choice – not because one candidate is very good, but because the other is very, very bad. The post-2020 forces of reaction that have made municipal politics crueler, stupider, and more paranoid in liberal cities across America have found their local culmination in Shannon’s nomination by the Burlington Democrats, who chose her over a relatively moderate Karen Paul, the wealthy South End’s other representative on City Council.

Shannon has spent decades as the right flank of Burlington’s right-wing party. Having avoided the momentary lapse of judgment that led most of her Democratic colleagues to join the Progs in a call for racial justice four years ago, she now stands to benefit. Her coalition of angry homeowners knows that only an increase in state violence and incarceration can wipe away the recent unsightliness in our downtown, and they may soon have their chance.

Hoping to win over Burlington’s political center, Mulvaney-Stanak has taken care not to distinguish herself too dramatically from her opponent. Joan leads by talking about “public safety”; for Emma, the main subject is “community safety.” On other issues, Mulvaney-Stanak’s platform trafficks in assurances that she will “convene stakeholders and experts” to develop appropriate policies, instead of articulating concrete ideas that could be debated seriously.

If Mulvaney-Stanak wins, her defensive posture may persist for the duration of her mayoralty. Still, she is a Prog. She may not have a forward-looking vision of her own for Burlington (let alone a radical one), but if a left-leaning City Council seeks to implement one, she probably won’t veto it. Joan Shannon would.

The stakes are too high for a protest vote, and neither of the two non-competitive independents is a lefty in any case. For Mayor of Burlington, we recommend Emma Mulvaney-Stanak.

Other races and ballot questions…

For Burlington School Commissioner, only Ward 7 features a competitive race. We recommend Monika Ivancic over anti-trans activist William Oetjen.

Ward 7 also has the only competitive race for Inspector of Election. Regrettably, we haven’t learned enough about Linda Belisle or Larry Holt to offer a recommendation. Holt is the incumbent, but Belisle has also served as an inspector in Ward 4.

Ward 8 doesn’t have a candidate for Inspector of Election; we recommend that you write in Jack Sparr. Trust us on this one.

The rest of Burlington’s ballot is conspicuous for what it doesn’t contain. As recently as January, we expected a chance to vote on a new police oversight proposal – a legislatively referred charter change that would have strengthened the city’s existing Police Commission, rather than creating a wholly new disciplinary entity as last year’s somewhat more daring citizens’ initiative sought to do – but City Council decided at the last minute that it wasn’t ready for primetime. In a rare and especially shameful move, the Council also shot down an advisory question that would’ve allowed Burlingtonians to declare their collective opposition to Israeli apartheid, even though residents had gathered more than 1,700 signatures from voters in support of the measure.

Without any popular causes to rally Progressives to the polls, the Democrats may benefit from depressed turnout. We hope voters won’t reward them for their bad behavior.

What remains on the ballot is a trio of articles containing a school budget, a public safety tax rate increase, and a proposal to increase the bonding authority of the Burlington Electric Department.

We recommend a yes on Question 1. Last year, Burlingtonians approved the construction of a new high school, and now it’s time to start paying for it. People may not like it – especially at the very moment when Vermonters have to fill in the gap left by the end of the federal COVID-19 dollars that temporarily propped up our state education fund – but that’s how it works.

We recommend a no on Question 2. Because the police and fire tax pays only for a fraction of our police and fire budgets (with most of the rest coming out of the city’s general fund), a rate increase could, theoretically, serve as a politically expedient way to expand Burlington’s overall resources, since voters already rejected an increase to the general city rate two years ago. In reality, the money will go to Chief Murad’s typically dysfunctional, sometimes barbarous, and (thanks in part to City Council) always unaccountable Burlington Police Department, which already spends more than it ever has before. With a few extra million, they’ll still probably claim to have been defunded when residents call for help.

We recommend a yes on Question 3. We want our municipal electric utility to have access to the capital it needs to make good investments. BED hasn’t yet put forward a plan for any major new projects; a separate nonprofit will issue debt to pay for the controversial “district energy” pipeline from the McNeil plant, irrespective of BED’s bonding authority. In the immediate term, approving this ballot question will serve to improve BED’s credit rating.

Winooski’s ballot questions don’t offer much to get excited (or upset) about, either. Due to procedural missteps by the city, a second vote on Just Cause Eviction, which voters approved last year, still needs to happen before it can progress to the state legislature, but the responsibility for correcting 2023’s administrative error lies in the hands of the same people who committed it in the first place, and apparently, it’ll have to wait.

Starting at the top, 2024’s Winooski articles ask voters to approve the municipal budget, to approve the spending of city revenue derived from sources other than property taxes, to approve the spending of leftover funds from an old water infrastructure bond, to authorize a new $4.6 million bond to help reconstruct the Burlington-Winooski Bridge, and (this time on behalf of the Champlain Water District) to approve the spending of leftover funds from yet another old water infrastructure bond.

In other words, should Winooski residents allow their city government to continue to perform normal governmental functions? We recommend voting yes on all articles in Winooski.

Advocates for pedestrians and cyclists have rightly called the proposed design for the new Burlington-Winooski Bridge outdated and car-centric, and Winooski officials continue to hold out hope that additional contributions from state or federal sources will reduce the city’s prospective share of the project’s final cost. Approving Article 7 won’t foreclose these discussions. Ultimately, the century-old bridge must go.

On a separate ballot, Vermonters can vote in the Democrats’ presidential primary. We’d advise voting symbolically for a left-wing challenger if Biden faced one, but we don’t think Cenk Uygur or the defunct campaign of Marianne Williamson counts. CVDSA offers no recommendation. While Burlingtonians receive municipal ballots automatically by mail, they must request presidential primary ballots online or in person.

Town Meeting Day is March 5. Vermont offers same-day voting registration. Click for information about voting in Burlington or Winooski.

The post Resolution: For an Anti-Zionist Salt Lake DSA first appeared on Salt Lake DSA.

“There was this desire to demand respect from our employers and see our work recognized as the labor that it is.”

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Interview with Portland City Councilor Kate Sykes

Kate Sykes was elected to the Portland City Council last November representing District 5. She is the former co-chair of the Maine Democratic Socialists of America and was a key organizer in the victorious People First Portland city-wide ballot initiatives in 2020 that raised the minimum wage, strengthened renters’ rights, and mandated green building codes. She sat down with Pine and Roses’ Todd Chretien to talk about where she came from and where she sees the city going. 

Chretien: You’re a Mainer, correct? Tell us a little about your roots. 

Sykes: I grew up in a small town in Maine named Harrison, about an hour west of here. Both of my parents were public school teachers so I grew up with a really strong sense of public service. My dad also served in the legislature for several terms and was a town councilor in Harrison until just last year. So it’s in my blood. My childhood was seeing all the mills close and good working-class jobs disappear. I went off to college and pretty quickly realized I wasn’t going to find the type of opportunities in my home town I could elsewhere so I went off to the west coast and lived in Seattle for about fifteen years. I worked in the medical education field where I saw first hand—in an underserved family medicine program I worked in—the disparities in health outcomes among different populations, indigenous populations, migrant populations, inner-city populations. That really opened my eyes to the problems and to the need for Medicare for All. 

Chretien: Let’s fast forward to 2015, 2016. There was a certain person running for president, there was a great awakening, everyone was looking at the election, and you came back to Maine…

Sykes: I was in Burlington, Vermont. 

Chretien: Burlington! So said person might have been there as well. So what happened at that time that transformed you from someone who was aware of the issues into somebody who got right into the middle of organizing? 

Sykes: It was Bernie. Absolutely. I actually saw him speak in a church in Burlington then. Didn’t know who he was at the time. I remember walking out of that church and turning to a woman who was about my age and saying, “Who is that guy? He’s amazing.” And she said, “Well, he’s Bernie and we love him.” [both laugh] That was the moment that I really understood that running for office, being in that legislative position could change the world. I moved back to Maine about a year later and got involved with DSA here. The chapter was just starting to grow rapidly, so that was a direct segue from Bernie’s campaign. 

Chretien: If I remember correctly, in 2015, DSA had a membership of something like 10,000 people and by the end of 2017 it had cracked 60,000. So you weren’t alone! Tell me a bit about the formation of the Maine chapter at that time. 

Sykes: The chapter at the time was a lot of labor organizers, older members in their sixties and seventies, including some members who were there at the organization’s foundation. It was great. I felt like I got a bunch of grandfathers all at once. Or uncles or something. 

Chretien: I think we’re old enough to call them fathers! [both laugh]

Sykes: That was really fun for me because it was a bunch of young people, older people, people from different walks of life, for instance, a lot of people in health care were interested in Medicare for All. Workers from everywhere. It was an eclectic bunch. A hopeful bunch. A lot of defectors from the Democratic Party who were disenchanted with the politics of that moment. We didn’t even have a meeting space for a while and then we were able to get a meeting space in City Hall. That was quite an experience to be able to meet in the State of Maine room on a monthly basis. You know, that old, regal looking place. It made you kind of feel like you were part of the government. That was really inspiring. I think it was a genius move, I think it was Barney McClelland’s idea to meet there. 

Chretien: At the same time as feeling like part of the government, we had a problem, Trump was running the country! And we definitely didn’t want to be a part of that government! It was a very defensive period, but it ended spectacularly with the pandemic. And with the upsurge against Trump, DSA locally decided to leverage that huge anger against Trump. What did DSA do? And how did those actions transition to a political strategy for the 2020 election? 

Sykes: In the very first weeks of the pandemic, DSA organized a mutual aid brigaid. We organized direct aid, on-the-street outreach to people. We were giving people gift cards to Hannaford, cash, anything they needed. I remember picking up a bunch of cleaning supplies, anything to help people survive because there wasn’t any aid, people just lost their jobs, they were terrified. 

Chretien: Just to say, it’s almost impossible to remember, even though it was only a few years ago, but unemployment went to 20 percent within six weeks. 

Sykes: Right. That was underscored for me because I was doing a lot of mutual aid work in Sagamore Village which was the same place I was canvassing for Bernie so I was talking with some of the same people. They recognized me too. That felt good to connect those two things so people would understand that this is what socialism means. This is how we operate. 

Chretien: The pandemic provoked a crisis in the Trump administration—and eventually cost him the election—but rather than just being spectators, what did DSA do locally? 

Sykes: It was terrible that Trump was in office, but everyone was up in arms. We knew we would have a massive turnout of progressive, anti-Trump voters here in Portland. So we thought about strategically running a slate of ballot initiatives. We had discussed one-off ballot initiatives before, but running a slate of them could produce exponential gains. At the Maine DSA convention that year, we got together and brainstormed a bunch of things and then took those to a committee session and whittled those down to five. We decided to call the whole campaign People First Portland. We then formed individual committees to deal with each of the ballot initiatives, including ordinance language, hiring a lawyer, talking to experts in the field. In particular, we had to talk to a lot of experts about solar power and fossil fuel bans, and developers, for the Green New Deal building code initiative. Former Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling was really helpful in the logistics of all this, he understood how to write legislation, he’d been in the legislature in Augusta. He knew everyone. 

Chretien: Probably the best known initiatives outside of Portland was raising the minimum wage and renter’s rights. Can you describe the wage increase and explain the renters’ protection measures? And, has there been any opposition to those reforms? [both laugh]

Sykes: It was the Fight for Fifteen at the time, which now sounds so silly because it really should be the Fight for Twenty-five. The idea was to raise the wage to $15 and to include an evergreen clause in it so that it would never fall behind again. The opposition was called…I don’t remember…. “We Can’t Drive Fifty-five,” or whatever it was.

Chretien: With the clause for time-and-a-half pay for essential workers during any state of emergency declaration, the wage could get as high as $22 per hour, so I think it was “We Can’t Do Twenty-Two!” [both laugh] 

Sykes: Yes, right. That was the Chamber’s work. We had a ton of opposition from them and, of course, the Southern Maine Landlord Association opposed rent control. We’ve had challenges at the ballot box a couple times over the years, but we’ve been able to fight them back. Those two ordinances are solid. I think Portland likes its rent control. 

Chretien: Absolutely. In the midst of all that, I had forgotten that you ran for District 5 in 2020 and narrowly lost. But, as I understand it, you didn’t have a concrete plan to run again in 2024. What led you to jump in? 

Sykes: I had done some work on the Portland Charter Commission in 2021-2022, including helping elect some of the commissioners and some policy work, so I followed it all really closely. I have so much admiration for Commission Chair Michael Kebede, and the way he was able to bring people together around those issues and shepard the Commission through a lot of really tough work. And I happened to see him out at an event and our talk turned to the upcoming election and he asked if I was going to run again. I honestly hadn’t given it much thought but in that moment, I realized I had it in me. I thought, “Gosh, Michael Kebede just asked me if I was going to run, and I think I’m going to run!”

Chretien: Your campaign was just one of the things happening in 2023. Unfortunately, we lost Maine Public Power because CMP outspent the campaign twenty to one. But your campaign succeeded. Can you explain the most important elements that went into your victory? 

Sykes: First was Clean Elections funding. That gave me the resources I needed to run. Second, I used those resources to hire an agency to help me run, Movement Building Maine. It’s patterned off the Rhode Island Political Coop. They only work with progressives, they have a platform you have to sign on to; you can be to the left of that platform but not to the right. They provided resources I didn’t have the first time and couldn’t have mustered the second time without them. Things like trying to calculate how many votes you’re going to need to win, calling volunteers to show up for events, how many doors do you need to knock to get to your win number. Just having someone to check in once a week to ask how doors went, or to point out that I didn’t do as many as I’d done the week before and tell me to step it up! 

Chretien: Speaking of doors. How many doors did you knock on? 

Sykes: A lot! I honestly can’t remember.

Chretien: It was more than twenty. [both laugh] More than a thousand? 

Sykes: I was out every day from 2 or 3 in the afternoon until after dark. Every day for four months.

Chretien: So a lot of elbow grease!

Sykes: Yes. I bought myself a new pair of sneakers afterwards. 

Chretien: Some people say that when you run for election, you have to run to the center. You have to run away from your background. You have to be moderate, cut out your leftwing allies because they will embarrass you. What was your experience running as a socialist? 

Sykes: There’s a lot of great tips on a website called LocalProgress.org about messaging. It talks about raising socialist issues but not using the word socialism. Being able to meet working class people where they’re at — like the cost of health care, the lack of childcare, the fact that wages haven’t kept up. Just being able to have economically informed conversations with people the way that Bernie did. It goes right back to that. To be able to talk to people about their economic woes as a family. A lot of people do want to talk about big national issues but there’s enough going on right here in Portland. You don’t have to start with Trump. You don’t have to start with the buzzwords that immediately make people slam the door in your face or want to hug you. 

Chretien: Now that you’re into your second month as a city councilor, can you give us something that you think Portland is doing well? 

Sykes: Well, even though I was one of its biggest critics, I think our Homeless Services Center is doing an incredible job. I was really against the sweeps that happened throughout the summer and into the fall and winter and I still think that’s a really violent way to go about convincing people that you have a great homeless shelter. But now that the services are starting to ramp up and the HSC is starting to improve, I think we’re knocking it out of the park. It’s in my district, and that makes me really happy. We have a great team of staff running the shelter and a lot of community partners who care. People in Portland really care about social issues. And it’s the government doing this, right? That’s as socialist as it gets. It’s us doing it. It’s not a non-profit. It’s the City. 

Chretien: At the same time, everyone admits that we’re facing a severe housing shortage, not just in Portland, but in all of Maine. I think Gov. Mills’ new report says that the state needs around 80,000 new housing units. If I remember, we built 400 last year. 

Sykes: Social Housing is the program I think we need to launch here. It’s a form of public housing that is mixed income, permanently affordable, developed and maintained by the public. True public housing is something we haven’t had in this country since Eisenhower. Many don’t understand what it is but it’s starting to enter the consciousness again and it’s starting to work in places that are adopting it. I think social housing is the missing leg of what should be a stable, three-legged stool. Right now we have market-built housing, we have the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program that’s usually built by non-profits, like Community Housing of Maine and AVESTA. The third thing we need is public housing. And if we have that, I believe we can meet the goal of 9,000 units in Portland, but without it, our housing stock will continue to age, and we’ll never catch up. I’m advocating for a municipal social housing developer to be stood up here in Portland. We have to do a lot of education because when people hear “public housing” they think of low-income, racially-segregated housing. They think of how public housing was a failure for so long. But if you look at social housing in other places, for instance in Vienna, it’s mixed income, it’s beautiful, people are proud to live there, and it’s working-class housing. We can do that here in Portland.

Chretien: Last question. How do you keep your eye on the ball of critical priorities like social housing while the world is burning down around us? You supported the city council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, for example. How do you understand your role as a local elected official? 

Sykes: As socialists, we understand that it’s all connected, right? National problems need to be addressed locally, and international problems are our problems, too. Cities have always been the crucible of Socialist reforms. The urban programs that socialists put forward in the 19th and 20th centuries for better working conditions, clean drinking water, better lives for working class people, they all look remarkably similar, from North America to Europe and around the globe. That’s not a coincidence. Ours is and always has been an international movement, and Socialists can walk and chew gum. 

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