On these warm late-summer evenings I like to walk around my neighborhood in Los Angeles. Built in the 1920s for public-sector workers, its homes are modest but their architecture is comprised of eclectic, one-story stucco bungalows fitted with fantasy turrets or festooned with candy-striped awnings. Their strongest commonality is the wavering blue light that seeps through the blinds and drapes: everyone’s inside watching television.

This is disconcerting to me. Usually I’ve spent all day writing for the Web about capitalism, socialism, and class struggle, attempting to convince readers that the current economic and political system is not the final stage of human society, and that we can have security and freedom for all if we build a mass movement to change it. Often I close my laptop feeling accomplished, and then I go for a walk and am overcome with awareness of the limitations of our project.

Socialists have footholds on the internet, but we have essentially none in television. Lately I’ve grown more convinced that to complement everything else we do, we should try to change that.