(A note from Troy DSA: Joining the Troy Partnership for Black Lives, we have signed onto this letter expressing our collective outrage at Troy Police killing a community member in a car crash last week and TPD’s ongoing history of reckless, dangerous behavior—this is police violence. The full text of the statement is included below.)

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We, the Troy Partnership for Black Lives, join our community in outrage to learn that another life has been lost due to the reckless driving of a Troy Police officer. Our deepest condolences and support go out to his family, friends, colleagues, and community. When will this City hold the Troy Police Department accountable for the violence they perpetuate on the very community they are supposed to protect and serve?   

Troy is not any different than Memphis or Atlanta where police officers have murdered Black and Brown people. On Wednesday, February 22nd just before 1:00 a.m., a Troy Police officer crashed into the car of a valued community member and father of newborn twins. The Troy Police Department has a history of failing to respect the lives of our community and neighbors, especially the lives of Black and Brown community members. This murder indicates that the Troy Police Department has not changed the practices and culture that have led to the loss of life in the past. Just like other times when Troy police have violated the rights and the lives of our community members, the first response of city and police officials is denial of responsibility, often including false information, before a thorough investigation can be completed. This was the response that began the cover-up of the police murder of Edson Thevenin in 2016 by the Troy Police, Rensselaer County DA, the Troy City Council, and Mayor Madden. 

The Troy Police officer was reportedly traveling at high speed through a dangerous intersection. Regardless of the outcome of the investigation, the officer acted with depraved indifference because his job as an officer and his responsibility as a human being was to do whatever was necessary in order not to harm or kill anyone with the lethal weapon of his car. The severity of the crash shows the sheer negligence of the officer, who drove with absolutely no concern for the safety of residents or the laws of New York State for emergency personnel. Unfortunately, this is not isolated behavior on the part of the TPD. 

Troy PD has a history of reckless accidents:

• February 22, 2023 – Hoosick and 15th St – TPD killed a local father and respected worker
• February 2023 – TPD entered an intersection speeding without a siren or slowing and nearly hit a car with a mother and her infant
• October 2021 – Middleburg St and 6th Ave – TPD ran a red light and totaled a car in the intersection
• June 2021 – 5th Avenue in Lansingburgh – TPD ran a red light and totaled a car in the intersection, but ticketed the driver for failure to yield
• January 2020 – TPD ran a red light totaling a work van in an intersection that sent the small business owner and father to Albany Medical Center with serious expenses, missed work, and a ticket for failing to yield to an officer despite video surveillance showing that TPD failed to slow while approaching a blind intersection
• July 2009 – a 5-year-old boy was killed by a TPD officer driving an unmarked SUV in South Troy 

Long-standing community demands for deep changes in Troy policing policy and practices have been ignored by Mayor Madden, the Troy City Council, Troy Police, and the Rensselaer County DA for years. Troy needs accountability and transparency led by those who are directly impacted by police violence and negligence. This includes: 

• an end to over-policing of Black and Brown communities, 
• an end to harassment of Black and Brown youth, 
• community-based alternatives to law enforcement in response to mental health and other crises, 
• investments in resources for our communities instead of more investment in police – for example, getting the lead out of the water of all Troy households while prioritizing the most vulnerable households.

Instead of listening to the voices of community leaders, the city has offered us public relations campaigns to protect the Troy Police and City rather than the lives in our community. Just this month, the New York Civil Liberties Union won a lawsuit against the Troy Police Department for refusing to provide police officers’ disciplinary records as required by a recent reform to New York State law. 

We do not want a kinder, gentler face on police violence. We do not want our taxes to fund TPD’s $19.5 million dollar budget. We want our children and families to be safe and community well-being to be prioritized by the entire city. We want Black Life to matter by divesting from police and investing in the support systems the community actually needs. 

Signed,

Troy for Black Lives
Democratic Socialists of America, Troy Chapter
Community Rising Project
Equality For Troy
Members of Ad Hoc Troy
Troy Area Labor Council AFL-CIO

Boise DSA endorses Railroad Workers United Open Letter to Congress and the President with demands that include Public Ownership of the Railroads & Universal Paid Family. To learn more about our perspective on Congress pushing through a tentative agreement that a majority of rank-and-file union members have declared completely unsatisfactory, read - Rail Workers Strike: Too Little, Too Late

Portland DSA Labor Working Group

Once in 2021 and again 2022, Portland DSA received political donations of $10,000 from the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals. We want to express our deepest gratitude to OFNHP for trusting us to carry out our shared political goals, and we are honored to have worked in solidarity with OFNHP to fight the profit-seeking medical system. Health care workers take on some of the most unforgiving working conditions in order to fulfill some of the most essential roles in our society. Their dedication to preserving the dignity of that work through threatening a strike is an inspiration to us all. We want to explain what their donations mean to our organization and the socialist movement.

As socialists, we understand that there are fundamentally two competing sides: the working class and the ruling class. The working class is composed of most people you’ll ever meet – everyone who is forced to get a job to survive, or depend on someone who can. The ruling class is a tiny group of obscenely rich people who get to own and control resources and profit from our labor.

Union members understand this conflict intuitively. Although all working class people suffer under capitalism, few are organized enough to fight back and win. But through collective action, working class people can wield power. When we refuse to go along with management’s nonsense, when we stick together and demand respect, when we withhold our labor and go on strike – suddenly we aren’t at the mercy of the millionaires and billionaires. For a moment, we call the shots.

That’s why Portland DSA members are fully committed to building a strong labor movement – not just as fans on the sidelines, but as union members ourselves and on solidarity committees to rally the community.

But working class people don’t just want a decent pay raise or a longer break here and there. We’re tired of this whole inhumane system. We want a world where no one has to worry about going broke when they visit the doctor, or ruining their health in an unsafe and grueling job, or losing their home because they missed a payment, or staying in an abusive relationship because they have no safety net, or getting hurt in an environmental disaster created by corporate crime, or watching their neighborhoods and schools decay as legislators starve public services of funds.

For major, lasting transformation, we need an even greater level of power that reaches beyond a single workplace or a single union. We need political organizations that are loyal to working class interests and independent of our employers’, that can harness shop-floor power on behalf of people everywhere, and that can wage battles outside the workplace in public arenas. That is our mission as DSA.

Last year we used the donation from OFNHP to send DSA members in unions – many of whom joined DSA after meeting us on their own picket lines – to the Labor Notes conference in Chicago. There they met other like-minded rank-and-file organizers from around the world and shared notes on how to energize and democratize the labor movement. Going forward, we will be thrilled to use that money to expand the scope of our efforts, particularly on selecting and running our own candidates for public office who champion class struggle politics.

For years we have brought the power of the community to countless unions in their workplace struggles: nurses at Providence, healthcare workers at Kaiser, Starbucks baristas, City of Portland workers, Portland Community College faculty and staff, New Seasons workers, Burgerville workers, and many others. We will offer our support to any workers that are organizing for justice and a better life. And we hope you will join us in a shared mission to not just change our workplaces, but change the world.

Abortion providers across the country are bracing this week for a decision expected soon out of a Texas federal court which will immediately block access nationwide to one of the two medications commonly used for medication abortions. As the anti-abortion lobby and their allies in the United States government attempt to deal yet another blow to this fundamental human right, organizers here in New York state are continuing the struggle to ensure abortions remain safe and accessible for all. On tonight’s show, we are live with Nix from Reproductive Justice Collective and Marian from NYC-DSA’s Socialist Feminist working group to discuss the upcoming decision and what it means for abortion providers and patients. We’ll also hear about their efforts to ensure abortion access in NY state and how you can get involved with this crucial struggle.

 

Visit https://reprojusticecolumbia.org/abortion-pills to learn more about the campaign to ensure access to abortion on college campuses, then text NYCREPRO to 50409 to ask your elected officials to sign on the New York state legislation. Follow @NYCSocFem on Twitter for updates on NYC-DSA's Socialist Feminist Working Group. 

Portland DSA Labor Working Group

Once in 2021 and again 2022, Portland DSA received political donations of $10,000 from the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals. We want to express our deepest gratitude to OFNHP for trusting us to carry out our shared political goals, and we are honored to have worked in solidarity with OFNHP to fight the profit-seeking medical system. Health care workers take on some of the most unforgiving working conditions in order to fulfill some of the most essential roles in our society. Their dedication to preserving the dignity of that work through threatening a strike is an inspiration to us all. We want to explain what their donations mean to our organization and the socialist movement.

As socialists, we understand that there are fundamentally two competing sides: the working class and the ruling class. The working class is composed of most people you’ll ever meet – everyone who is forced to get a job to survive, or depend on someone who can. The ruling class is a tiny group of obscenely rich people who get to own and control resources and profit from our labor.

Union members understand this conflict intuitively. Although all working class people suffer under capitalism, few are organized enough to fight back and win. But through collective action, working class people can wield power. When we refuse to go along with management’s nonsense, when we stick together and demand respect, when we withhold our labor and go on strike – suddenly we aren’t at the mercy of the millionaires and billionaires. For a moment, we call the shots.

That’s why Portland DSA members are fully committed to building a strong labor movement – not just as fans on the sidelines, but as union members ourselves and on solidarity committees to rally the community.

But working class people don’t just want a decent pay raise or a longer break here and there. We’re tired of this whole inhumane system. We want a world where no one has to worry about going broke when they visit the doctor, or ruining their health in an unsafe and grueling job, or losing their home because they missed a payment, or staying in an abusive relationship because they have no safety net, or getting hurt in an environmental disaster created by corporate crime, or watching their neighborhoods and schools decay as legislators starve public services of funds.

For major, lasting transformation, we need an even greater level of power that reaches beyond a single workplace or a single union. We need political organizations that are loyal to working class interests and independent of our employers’, that can harness shop-floor power on behalf of people everywhere, and that can wage battles outside the workplace in public arenas. That is our mission as DSA.

Last year we used the donation from OFNHP to send DSA members in unions – many of whom joined DSA after meeting us on their own picket lines – to the Labor Notes conference in Chicago. There they met other like-minded rank-and-file organizers from around the world and shared notes on how to energize and democratize the labor movement. Going forward, we will be thrilled to use that money to expand the scope of our efforts, particularly on selecting and running our own candidates for public office who champion class struggle politics.

For years we have brought the power of the community to countless unions in their workplace struggles: nurses at Providence, healthcare workers at Kaiser, Starbucks baristas, City of Portland workers, Portland Community College faculty and staff, New Seasons workers, Burgerville workers, and many others. We will offer our support to any workers that are organizing for justice and a better life. And we hope you will join us in a shared mission to not just change our workplaces, but change the world.

How do you build a $90 million police training complex and bulldoze 85 acres of vulnerable forest in Atlanta? By using Connecticut logistics, investments, and insurance. 

The fight to Stop Cop City, now an international struggle over the sanctity of the Georgia metropolis’ Weelaunee Forest, came to Connecticut last week for the National Week of Action. The Ecosocialist Working Group started building a statewide coalition with Worker’s Voice and 350 CT last summer, which has gained significant momentum since the police killing of the Forest Defender known as Tortuguita on January 18th. After flyering and convening with other coalition members on Zoom, Ecosocialist activists picketed at AXA XL Headquarters in Stamford and Atlas Technical Consultants in East Hartford. These events are part of a coordinated effort to target the police industrial complex supply chain and jam the flow of carceral capital. Though we may be miles away from the site of struggle, these efforts extend the reach of local Atlanta organizers like so many satellites sharing a political message. And that message could not be any more dire.

Cop City represents a perfect storm of police violence and environmental destruction. It is an attempt to revitalize a former prison farm used to incarcerate Atlanta’s petty criminals into a 21st-century training ground for urban police tactics. The proposed design includes replica city blocks so that police can practice suppressing mass movements and was planned as a direct response to the 2020 uprisings in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and Rayshard Brooks. Up to 400 acres of forest containing old-growth trees adjacent to the majority of Black and low-income neighborhoods of south Atlanta are at risk of destruction to make way for Cop City and movie studios. Anarchists and environmental activists began occupying the forest and living full-time in tree forts over a year ago. In more recent events following the city’s sustained protest against this violent new institution, the police murdered Tortuguita. They arrested many others with outsized charges of domestic terrorism as they swept out the encampments.

The CT DSA Ecosocialist Working Group sees this conflict as part of the battlefield in the mass struggle against climate change and environmental racism. Such a struggle is grounded in the abolition of policing and the privatization of land. By liberating land from the capitalists who own it and the police who secure it, we can bring about democratic solutions to climate change. 

Our working group will participate in events to be announced during the month of March, including a fundraiser for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. DSA members can join Connecticut’s Forest Defenders support coalition by emailing StopCopCityCT [at] gmail.com. We will also plan EcoSocialist meetings to discuss the Justice for Our Streets project to find an equitable solution to flooding in Stratford and Bridgeport and to determine the future trajectory of this recently revitalized working group. Reach out to Fiona McElroy on Mattermost to get involved!

Contact (Link contact form) Fiona McElroy to get involved with CT DSA and any of our Ecosocialism Working Group campaigns. 

Welcome back comrades! In this segment, Ralph & Nicole-Ann kick off a new season for Heart of a Heartless World, catching up after a long hiatus and giving a preview of what is to come this year. It's a good dose of solidarity, spirituality, and of course, socialism – all the things that give us a little hope for the world.

Member Bruce Nissen shares a story about repairing his air fryer, and what it can teach us about capitalism and global exploitation.

The other day our air fryer had a minor breakdown. The drawer that you pull out of the main body to put in food was becoming loose and a machine screw was missing. Here’s what the entire thing, drawer and the container pan that holds it, looks like:

If you look at this closely, you can see that it is an inner drawer where you place the food, and an outside container that holds it. The problem was the outer container. Here’s a picture without the inner drawer in it:

If you look carefully at this outside container pan (taken after I fixed it), you can see two screws which attach the outside cover and the inner pan. At the time, one of these two screws was missing. At first, I thought I would just find a similar size screw, screw it in, and be done. However, when I did that, the screw didn’t engage with anything; you could turn it clockwise forever freely and nothing was happening. The screw would fall right back out.

I could hear something rattling around inside the front cover and soon realized that these screws connected with nuts that were inside the cover. One of the nuts had come loose, the screw had fallen out and was lost, while the nut was still trapped inside the cover. My only hope of fixing it would require me to disassemble the cover itself.

If you look carefully at the last picture, you can also see two much smaller screws that are helping to hold the two pieces of the front cover together. I removed those two screws — not enough. Then I found two more identical screws down at the bottom and removed them. Still not enough. Then I noticed 6 extremely tiny screws (3 on each side) that also connected the two parts of the outer cover. I took them out and finally was able to separate the two parts of the outer cover. Sure enough, a loose nut was rattling around in the cavity between the outer and inner walls of the front cover.

As I was going through this elaborate job of removing layer after layer of screws just to get to the inside of the front cover, I was thinking to myself, “What’s with this? Why this elaborate and intricate assembly of parts? It’s ridiculous. Why would they design something like this?” I was also thinking was that it was a good thing I did not do this kind of work for a living — I was thorough but way too slow to ever last as an employee. Any repair company would require much faster work so they could get me on to the next profitable job. It reminded me of my dad who lost several jobs as a welder because he did a thorough quality job of welding but not rapidly enough to suit the employer’s speed requirements.

I put the nut back into its designated cubbyhole, reattached the six tiny screws, put in the four screws, and finally inserted a suitable size/length/thread screw to replace the missing one. It engaged with the reinserted nut and screwed in tight. I was done! Repair completed! I felt proud of myself but noted that it had taken close to two hours to do the job, most of it sifting through my mason jar of random screws accumulated through the years to find the exact right size and length and thread of screw. Job done well but not efficiently.

I was still puzzling why the construction of the container pan and its outside front cover had been so complicated. It reminded me of an experience back in the mid-1970s when I was trying to help the United Electrical Workers Union (UE) organize shops in New Jersey. I applied for jobs at numerous places, both UE-represented shops and unorganized shops they hoped to organize in the future. I was first hired at a non-union shop at minimum wage. I was what later became known as a “salt” — someone taking a job in a nonunion workplace to aid a union in beginning an organizing drive.

The shop assembled electronic parts for some final product that I’ve long since forgotten about. Our job was to sit all day assembling an intricate array of circuit boards, washers, wires, nuts, etc. It was not an assembly line — each person individually did each product (or component) according to a choreographed routine. Over and over. Over and over. I especially remember that some wire posts required two washers, some required one, and some none. It was all very confusing, and I made repeated mistakes at this allegedly unskilled minimum wage job.

The job was abysmal. Almost all the workers were Black or Hispanic or Asian. A majority were women. The foremen were white men. I lasted at that job approximately one week because a UE-represented union shop called and offered me a job at double the wages and a much more relaxed atmosphere. I jumped at that offer and thus began my career in union activities.

At the time of my one-week job, companies doing that kind of minimum-wage work were going out of business because their work was being outsourced to China or Mexico or Central American countries. They had only survived in business because they offered extremely cheap labor, but even cheaper labor was becoming available elsewhere in the world.

This repair job led to a Eureka! moment when I realized that the air fryer’s front cover is designed to require manually tightening numerous screws because labor is so cheap (in some parts of the world) that it is economical to require more repetitive manual labor than it is to expend any more money on better design or different materials. If work was paid decently around the world, these products would be designed very differently. I looked to see where my air fryer had been assembled and sure enough, there it was: designed in California and built in China.

If you repair a household appliance with an enquiring and analytical mindset, there’s a lot to ponder. You might develop insights into the structure of worldwide capitalism and the exploitative conditions under which many of our consumer products are produced. Ditto for how our capitalist consumer culture discards people like my father who did high quality work but not at a fast assembly line pace. Our mass production worldwide economic system fails some segments of humanity even as it provides ever-higher levels of mass consumption for growing numbers. As Karl Marx noted, capitalism is a progressive force compared to earlier economic systems, but it is an exploitative system at its core and should be replaced by a more humane system that is centered on people, not private profit. Who would have thought that repairing a household appliance could illustrate all this? For me, it did!

By Juan Gonzalez Valdivieso

The Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), the graduate worker union at the University of Michigan, is currently in the process of bargaining with the university to obtain a new contract for the upcoming three-year contract cycle. Despite months of ongoing negotiations, the university has left the union with little if anything to work with thus far. It wasn’t until earlier this year that their Human Resources (HR) representatives agreed to allow open bargaining, a process by which all graduate workers — as well as invited guests affected by the negotiation process — are allowed to attend bargaining sessions in-person/virtually alongside the union negotiators themselves. This is a substantial win for GEO, as open bargaining allows for a comprehensive viewing of the negotiation process, giving grad workers and other stakeholders the chance to see their futures deliberated on first-hand. However, with this victory coming in the middle of January, little time remains to conduct actual bargaining, as the deadline to finalize a contract with HR is March 1. What’s more, the union’s demands have been almost entirely rejected by the university, with its central editorial mouthpiece, The Michigan Daily, even referring to them as “unreasonable and extravagant”. Under such circumstances, it has become paramount to clarify and emphasize one outstanding point: GEO’s current contract campaign — and by extension, its rich history of labor organizing — is not just about the betterment of graduate worker life; it is a fight for the rights and dignity of our university and city-wide communities at large.

Talks of union contracts often begin with mentions of pay and working conditions. GEO’s campaign is no different in this regard. According to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, a living wage in Ann Arbor amounts to an annual salary of approximately $38,537. As it stands, graduate workers at the university earn approximately $24,053 annually for their labor, meaning that a $14,484 gap exists between the compensation graduate workers are currently receiving and that which they require to survive. Perhaps this is why 1 out of every 10 graduate workers at the university worry about having enough food to eat and another 1 out of every 6 would not be able to incur a spontaneous $500 emergency expense. The same is true for working conditions. GEO is currently demanding a discussion section class size cap of 18, as larger class sizes mean burdensome workloads for graduate workers and lackluster educational experiences for students as a result. Moreover, a lack of agency pertaining to COVID policies has left many grad students — especially those with disabilities and/or immunodeficiency disorders — without recourse in the event of a nearby contamination, as the university does not currently grant Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) the ability to require masking nor pivot to a virtual modality if need be.

However, it is when one moves beyond these two areas of demands that GEO’s contract campaign truly begins to encapsulate the university and broader Ann Arbor communities. As a union that engages in “bargaining for the common good”, GEO stands out as an organization that uses the contract negotiation process to its advantage, leveraging worker-specific demands alongside asks that speak to the needs of its surrounding communities. Examples of this dynamic abound, but two outstanding manifestations are its calls for paid positions to establish a Disability Culture Center as well as a community-based, unarmed non-police emergency response team. In solidarity with disabled university community members — and in support of Central Student Government’s (CSG) campaign to establish a Disability Culture Center — GEO has decided to take the conversation of on-campus disability justice a step further by proposing paid positions for those spearheading these efforts. Similarly, the union acknowledges the inherent danger posed to BIPOC students, faculty, and staff by a robust police presence and law enforcement-based response to on-campus emergencies. As such, they’ve reiterated the vision put forth by the Coalition for Re-envisioning Our Safety (CROS) and demanded that the university contribute funds of its own to finance this community-centered approach to public safety across Washtenaw County. Beyond these asks, GEO has also championed trans-inclusive/gender-affirming healthcare, parent/caregiver accommodations, and harassment/discrimination protections with their demands.

This isn’t a new course of action for the union, either. GEO has a rich history of pushing the envelope when it comes to individual and community-level changemaking. Officially certified in 1974, GEO was one of the first unions to represent graduate student workers in the country. In the mid-1980s, the union won a formal recognition of Affirmative Action from the university alongside tuition waivers for Teaching Assistants (TAs). The 1990s and 2000s similarly featured victories in International GSI compensation and trans-inclusive health benefits, respectively. Since then, GEO has worked to fortify the university’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives and has maintained an unwavering commitment to organizing efforts and collective power building, even as conservative state-level decision making — such as the “Right to Work” legislation approved by Republicans in 2012 — seeks to hinder their progress.

So where does this leave us? Well, it leaves us with a comprehensive contract campaign — formulated by hundreds of grad workers over an extended period of time — chalk full of reasonable and necessary demands that improve the lives of graduate workers as well as those of our university and Ann Arbor communities. As we close out the month of February and approach March 1, we cannot forget that the success of this campaign relies not just on the efforts of the union, but on the solidarity of every university community member and ally, working alongside GEO to make these demands a reality.

To show your support, sign the “I Stand With U-M Grad Workers” letter and remain up to date on campaign happenings via GEO’s social media platforms which can be found @geo3550.

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GEO is Fighting for You was originally published in The Michigan Specter on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Member J. Cooke shares their thoughts on the Florida Democratic Party’s Chair vote.

As the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) chair race came to a conclusion yesterday, I was reminded of a story from the United Kingdom. Before she passed, the right wing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was asked what she thought her greatest achievement was. Her response was a bit of a surprise at the time. “Tony Blair and New Labour.” Thatcher said. “We forced our opponents to change their minds.” Thatcher was referring to Tony Blair and the Labour Party’s anti-working class positions and abandonment of left wing economics that betrayed the values of previous Labour leaders and governments.

Former Florida Agricultural Commissioner Nikki Fried was narrowly elected chair of the FDP with 52% of the (convoluted and not exactly democratic) delegate vote. Before becoming Agricultural Commissioner, Fried worked as a corporate lobbyist in Tallahassee for a variety of odious special interests, including a tobacco company, Duke Energy, and Rick Scott’s former company HCA that committed the largest Medicaid fraud in history and is still being accused of doing so by its workers. She ran in the Democratic gubernatorial primary last year, finishing in a distant second place to former Republican governor Charlie Crist. Her campaign stirred controversy when a prominent staffer hurled personal insults at a progressive state representative. Her opponents in the chair race criticized her for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, her lack of support for the $15 minimum wage ballot initiative in 2020; her refusal to support Democratic candidates because she was friendly with their Republican opponent; and her political consultant’s ungodly amounts of money spent trying to unseat a progressive Tallahassee’s City Commissioner. The list of criticisms goes on (and boy does it go on! I haven’t even mentioned her alleged “friendship” with Matt Gaetz or her recent campaigning for Republicans), but I think you get the point.

Maybe more importantly is what her supporters say about her, and a tweet by former gubernatorial candidate Philip Levine presents a prime example:

“I support @NikkiFried. She believes in the American dream of responsible capitalism w/ a strong economy, smart border control, strengthening professional policing, parents having a say in their children’s education and fights for an FDP that is based on unification not division!”

Border control? Policing? These talking points are nearly identical to a GOP platform. Parental control of education is literally the exact justification Ron DeSantis is using for his book bans and attack on public education. One can only wonder how a voter who hears this is supposed to be able to distinguish it from the Republican platform.

None of this, however, means that her main opponent was an ideal option either. Annette Taddeo appeared to be running away with the race until Fried swooped in at the last moment. Taddeo has been a fixture in FDP politics for over a decade, having run unsuccessfully for Florida’s 18th, 26th, and 27th congressional districts, Miami-Dade County Commission, Lieutenant Governor, and Governor. Her only elected office was a five year stint in the State Senate. Taddeo was endorsed by some well-known progressive activists and elected officials and did at least support some progressive policies like the $15 minimum wage, but she has a history of fighting her left flank as viciously as anyone. In interviews, she blamed socialism for her party’s misfortunes (you know, the ideology that Pew found a majority of Democratic voters view favorably), despite every party leader constantly condemning it. While chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic party, Taddeo did make strides at ensuring someone actually ran for office as a Democrat. She had an organizing campaign as well, showing that she does have an idea about what needs to be done, and is willing to bring a message to voters instead of just shaming them for not voting. While it’s safe to say that Taddeo wouldn’t exactly have been a working class champion either, she just may have been a little more promising than Fried.

Large majorities of Democratic voters favor policies like Medicare for all (88%), free college (85%), and The Green New Deal (82%), yet it appears they will be left without a party in Florida that represents them yet again. Florida Democrats have insisted on repeatedly running to the right, and this time is no different. We’re less than four months removed from an election in which 20% of the Democratic base in Florida decided it wasn’t worth their time to cast a ballot despite the fact that right wing authoritarianism is on the rise. If you’re hoping to cajole those people back into action, or if you’re part of the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters that supports a progressive vision for the future, then the FDP Chair race, and ultimately Fried’s victory, may not exactly lift your spirits. But if you’re Ron DeSantis watching your opponents choose the most right leaning path forward, then you may look back on this moment and realize that it is your greatest achievement.