Janeese Lewis George just made history. On June 16, the Ward 4 councilmember and democratic socialist won the Democratic primary for mayor of Washington, DC — decisively enough to end the race before all the votes were even counted and by the widest margin the city has seen in two decades. In the overwhelmingly Democratic city, that victory all but guarantees she’ll be the next mayor, and the first with an explicitly socialist politics to lead the nation’s capital.

She takes office, if elected, at an extraordinary moment: a city with federal troops in its streets, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents seizing residents off the sidewalk, and a president who has openly threatened to move against home rule itself if she won. Lewis George built her campaign on refusing to make peace with any of it — vowing to fight where her predecessor, Muriel Bowser, chose accommodation.

For Jacobin Radio’s podcast The Dig, host Daniel Denvir sat down with Lewis George shortly before the primary to talk about how growing up in a rapidly gentrifying DC — as the daughter of a postal worker in a family displaced by the loss of tenant protections — shaped her politics, and about what a mayor with no real power over her own National Guard can actually do to defend a city under siege. You can listen to the episode (which also features conversations with a number of other left-progressive electoral challengers) here.