Whenever the far-right gains political traction in America, it’s usually at least partly due to an unglamorous, relatively inexpensive tactic: running for school board. Throwing their energy into local school politics has often allowed conservatives to stoke panic on hot-button wedge issues — most recently, “critical race theory” and trans acceptance — which can have tremendous emotional power. But socialists have been fighting the Right on this terrain — and winning.

Last summer at its annual convention, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) passed a resolution encouraging local chapters to run candidates for school boards. The group’s focus has already drawn right-wing ire, with a story last month in the New York Post alleging that “DSA educators spread far left ‘poison’ in America’s schools.” That sterling work of journalism was based on “DSA’s Long March Through Our K-12 Institutions,” a lengthy report from a conservative group called Parents Defending Education. These are hostile framings, to be sure, but the reason DSA is drawing such attacks is that for socialists, this strategy makes so much sense.

In a way, last summer’s convention resolution was less an expression of a new strategy than an intention to expand and deepen work that is already happening in DSA chapters. In Los Angeles, DSA holds several seats, with more campaigns underway. More surprisingly, in 2021, DSA won a seat in Suffolk County, Long Island, where Donald Trump prevailed in 2020 by a couple hundred votes and where Republicans made huge gains in the last local election. Over the past six years, DSA members have also been elected in East Bay (California), Denver, Jefferson County (Kentucky), Las Vegas, Syracuse, Parkland (Pennsylvania), Austin, Pasadena (Texas), Milwaukee, and elsewhere.