A former public school teacher and union organizer, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson’s stunning defeat of charter school magnate Paul Vallas is a bellwether of the city’s ascendant progressive, socialist, and working-class movements. Alongside Johnson, the democratic socialist bloc on the Chicago City Council not only protected their five seats but also made new gains: organizer Angela Clay won a runoff race in a Northside ward, each of the original socialist alders are chairs of important city council committees, and Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (the sole socialist on the council just years ago) is Johnson’s floor leader.

These victories come on the heels of another socialist win: in November, community organizer and former Ramirez-Rosa staffer Anthony Joel Quezada became the youngest-ever member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, representing some three hundred thousand people. Quezada, the first openly gay Latino elected from the county’s eighth district, also serves as a cochair on Johnson’s transition team’s subcommittee on human rights, equity, and inclusion.

Over coffee at Kosciuszko Park in the Northside neighborhood of Logan Square, Quezada and I discussed how socialist elected officials like him are thinking about keeping people mobilized during the Johnson administration in the face of business attacks, how the Johnson administration and electeds could foster more bottom-up participation in city governance, and his approach as a pro-worker legislator.