Aparna Raj Demands Housing Justice in DC
From rent strikes to the fight for DC statehood, Aparna Raj is bringing a movement‑driven socialist politics to a city council race defined by displacement and inequality.
DSA member Aparna Raj is running for DC Council on a social-housing agenda shaped by years of tenant organizing. (Aparna for DC / CC BY 4.0)
Despite being the nation’s capital, with over seven hundred thousand residents, Washington, DC, is governed without full democratic rights. In recent years, the Trump administration has treated the district as a staging ground for immigration raids and militarized policing.
Into that landscape steps Aparna Raj, a tenant organizer and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member running for the Ward 1 council seat on an unapologetic housing‑justice platform. With the primary approaching on Tuesday, June 16, Raj is making the case that a socialist on the council can help transform not just policy but political possibility, building an inside‑outside strategy that links tenant power, labor power, and electoral power in a city where all three have been systematically constrained.
This conversation between Daniel Denvir and Aparna Raj was recorded for the Jacobin Radio podcast The Dig.
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