At a rally last night in Queens, New York, with Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani addressed a crowd of 13,000: “For too long, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it.”
Grassroots worker organization and mobilization is essential to the success of any socialist electoral project. But socialists in executive office can’t neglect other elements, like maintaining wide popular support and alliances within the state.
Every time we want to change society to benefit average people, we have to deal with ultrawealthy crybabies. We’re held hostage by those who already have it all. It doesn’t have to be like this.
Zohran Mamdani’s stunning upset over Andrew Cuomo reveals how the Democratic Party’s hollowness and passivity cuts both ways — first enabling Cuomo’s absurd candidacy, then failing to insulate him from a left-wing challenger.
Elon Musk is poised to become the world’s first trillionaire. Still, liberals are hand-wringing about the potential pitfalls of wealth redistribution. In truth, we should have stopped the rise of the economic superelite long ago. Better late than never.
Yet another study confirms what we already know: economic populism is the only way for Democrats to win working-class voters.
Centrist Democrats like Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom seem to think the best way to disparage Donald Trump is to highlight his departures from free-market orthodoxy. Good luck with that.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand attacked Zohran Mamdani this week with Islamophobic falsehoods, later partially walking back the comments. It’s of a piece with Gillibrand’s indifference to the genocidal Israeli war that is increasingly outraging New Yorkers.
Since 2016, under the influence of Bernie Sanders and NYC-DSA, the socialist base in Queens, New York has transformed from an eclectic mixture of progressive voters into a multiracial movement of the working class.
What does democratic socialism mean to Omar Fateh, Minneapolis mayoral candidate? “It’s pretty clear cut: you want to take care of everyone.”
Last month, socialist NY Assembly member Zohran Mamdani organized a public iftar in his district in Astoria, Queens, calling for a cease-fire in Gaza — a modest attempt to build international solidarity at the most local political level.
The Democratic Socialists of America’s recent convention in Chicago reflected the challenges of strengthening and expanding a socialist movement rooted in the working class that can effectively fight the genocide in Gaza.
The New York City Democratic Socialists of America has built an electoral powerhouse with no paid staff and just a few years of political experience. Here’s how they pulled it off.
Despite her anti-Trump posturing, New York governor Kathy Hochul is hardly a paragon of progressivism. But winning her over on at least some key issues is crucial for a socialist mayoralty’s success. Does the Left have any leverage over Hochul?
In New York State, nonprofits complicit in Israel’s illegal settlements rake in tens of millions of dollars in tax-exempt donations per year. Socialist lawmakers are fighting to change that — and loosen the Israel lobby’s stranglehold on US politics.
After World War I, city hall Socialists around Italy built an impressive array of welfare programs, schools, and libraries. The Fascist backlash soon showed the limits of their strength and the impossibility of relying on urban citadels of power alone.
In parts of Queens, socialists hold office at the local, state, and federal levels. Those victories are no accident: they’re the fruit of years of local organizing in a borough known for being anything but flashy.
Bill Clinton’s last-minute endorsement of Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s mayoral race is all too fitting: both men represent the corporate Democratic establishment, opposed by socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani, that has abandoned the working class.
Though the issue has been put on the back burner in recent years, the influence of big money is still wreaking havoc on US politics. Zohran Mamdani’s grassroots-powered, publicly funded campaign for New York City mayor suggests a way out of this morass.