How to Use Elected Office to Build Socialism
In recent years, Democratic Socialists of America members elected to all levels of government have been faced with a new challenge: what to do with their office. Three staffers for New York State assembly member Phara Souffrant Forrest discuss how to organize for socialism from a state capital.
New York State Capitol in Albany, New York. (Matt H. Wade / Wikimedia Commons)
Last summer, nurse and democratic socialist Phara Souffrant Forrest was elected to the New York State Assembly with a slate of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)–backed candidates. She’s been busy since then, playing a key role in winning $4.3 billion in new taxes on the rich to fund New York public schools, a rent relief program, and an excluded workers fund, which provides benefits to workers ineligible for federal benefits, often due to immigration status. In Brooklyn, her office has pioneered innovative forms of in-district socialist organizing, such as using constituent services to organize working people around housing and unemployment issues.
Jacobin’s Oren Schweitzer sat down with Aaina Amin, Justin Freeman, and Tascha Van Auken, three staffers in Souffrant Forrest’s state assembly office, to discuss what it looks like to carry out socialist organizing from Albany.
Oren Schweitzer
How do you view the role of elections in fighting for socialism and how do you think Phara’s campaign contributed to this?
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