Four years ago, after Rahm Emanuel won reelection to a second term as Chicago mayor, I wrote that despite the losses of that election cycle, the city’s working-class organizing had “laid the infrastructure for a new independent politics in the longer term.” Which sounds like the kind of thing leftists tell themselves to feel better after getting our asses kicked yet again: with tangible victories scarce, we can always claim vague, empirically unverifiable ones about “building momentum” or “sending a message.”

But left victories in Tuesday’s Chicago elections are tangible and undeniable. Few could have imagined such an unquestionably positive night for leftist candidates.

The socialist left and the progressive labor-community movement of which it is a part are well positioned to continue advancing working-class demands in the years to come, through electoral candidates and militant community and labor organizing, and in opposition to the vicious austerity politics that has dominated the city over the last few decades.