Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York, voted in December to become the first recognized union at the coffee giant in the country. Inspired by the victory, workers have launched a national wave of organizing at Starbucks and other coffee chains. Organizing drives have since been announced at more than fifty-five Starbucks locations.

The union push has also spread to Seattle, home to Starbucks’s headquarters and billionaire former CEO Howard Schultz, and also where I serve on the city council as its only elected socialist. As a member of Socialist Alternative and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), my council office stands unequivocally with coffee workers, and we are ready to do whatever we can to support them.

This organizing drive can be a crucial step in rebuilding a fighting labor movement in the United States. It comes in the wake of last fall’s powerful “Striketober” actions, as over a hundred thousand workers went on strike amid this historic crisis of capitalism, marked by low wages, unsafe conditions, and the worst inflation in four decades.