“At the Heart of Democratic Socialism Is the Ethic of Solidarity”
Nikil Saval is a union campaigner, leftist magazine editor, and a democratic socialist who is running for Pennsylvania State House. In an interview with Jacobin, he talks about his history of working on hotel workers’ boycotts and editing n+1, how the Bernie Sanders campaign inspired him to run for office to advance left politics, and building a Pennsylvania and a world for the many, not the few.
Nikil Saval, courtesy of the Nikil Saval campaign.
Nikil Saval is the co-editor of n+1, a community organizer, leader of South Philly’s second ward, and the author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace. The thirty-seven-year-old democratic socialist is running for Pennsylvania State Senate’s first district on a platform of a homes guarantee, workers’ rights, universal family care, criminal justice reform, public education, and a Green New Deal for Pennsylvania.
Saval is campaigning to unseat Larry Farnese, a corporate lawyer who has held the Senate seat since 2009 and was indicted in 2016 for bribing a committeewoman to vote for him. If elected, Saval will be joining a group of newly elected progressive politicians in Pennsylvania, including Larry Krasner and Kendra Brooks, whom his organization, Reclaim Philadelphia, helped elect.
Saval spoke with Jacobin about his campaign and the organizing potential of electoral politics.
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