A hundred years ago, Pennsylvania was crawling with socialists. Not just in big cities, but in coal towns, mill towns, and small boroughs that look a lot like today’s inner suburbs. Socialists ran city halls, sat in the state legislature, and focused on the basics: public ownership, decent services, and making life better for poor and working people.

Some of the most well-known sewer socialists came straight out of those towns. Emil Seidel, the first socialist mayor of Milwaukee, was born in Ashland, a coal town in northeastern Pennsylvania, and was a craftsman. Reading’s socialist mayor, John Henry Stump, was a cigar factory worker and union organizer. Not career politicians, early socialists were workers who believed the government should work for the people who keep our communities moving.

​​Fast-forward to today. Pennsylvania now has more than a dozen socialist elected officials, from Pittsburgh to the Lehigh Valley to Philadelphia. In November, Philly Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) endorsee David McMahon joined their ranks when he was sworn in as an at-large councilmember in Norristown, a working-class suburb just outside Philadelphia.