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Atlanta DSA is proud to once again endorse our comrade Gabriel Sanchez for re-election to the Georgia State House, representing District 42.

In 2024, we made history by electing Representative Sanchez, the first Democratic Socialist in Georgia’s State House, on a platform of housing, healthcare, and an economy that works for all of us. Now, he’s running for re-election in 2026 to continue to fight for working families, stand up to fascism, and build a better Georgia for all. Atlanta DSA is thrilled to back our comrade once again.

Gabriel has been an active member of Atlanta DSA since 2019 and has spent years supporting striking workers on picket lines, organizing to Stop Cop City, campaigning for abortion rights, and advocating for a Free Palestine. During his first term, Gabriel continued fighting for working Georgians in the State House with support from a staff made up of DSA members. He introduced bills to raise the minimum wage to $20 and end corporate ownership of Georgia homes, voted to eliminate subminimum wages for disabled workers and against tax cuts for the wealthy, and authored and held a hearing for a bill to end rental price fixing via AI software. Gabriel also brought his many years of experience as a community organizer into his first term. Over the past year, he has hosted in-district mutual aid events in partnership with Atlanta DSA, as well as town halls and meet and greets to speak directly with residents about the pressing issues they’re facing right now. Our chapter is extremely proud of the work Representative Sanchez has done, and we look forward to continuing to build a Georgia for all alongside him.

As a proud Democratic Socialist, Gabriel is refusing money from corporations or their PACs. Just like last time, we’re running a grassroots campaign of, by, and for working people, and we need your help to win this election. Donate now at SanchezForGeorgia.com

In the lead-up to the 2024 election, Atlanta DSA knocked thousands of doors in District 42 to talk directly to voters about Gabriel’s campaign for housing, healthcare, and an economy for all. We’re planning to do the same next year. Sign up now to volunteer with our campaign at atldsa.org/Volunteer4Gabriel and stay tuned for info about a kickoff canvass in the new year. Let’s re-elect Representative Gabriel Sanchez!

The modern figure of the chef did not begin in a luxury dining room. It began in the barracks, in hunger, in political upheaval. Marie-Antoine Carême—the man later called the “King of Chefs and Chef of Kings”—was born in 1784 to an unemployed laborer on the outskirts of Paris. He was one of eight children. His father, overwhelmed by poverty as the French Revolution unfolded, took him in the city at the age of ten with a single instruction: find work and survive.

Carême did. He washed dishes, swept floors, and cooked in exchange for food for his 8 brothers. He was a worker before he was an artist. He lived in the same uncertainty as the masons and stonecutters who built Paris. From them he absorbed a way of seeing structure, symmetry, order. And in the heat of revolutionary France, surrounded by ruins and construction sites, he began shaping pastry as if it were stone—edible monuments that echoed the geometric clarity of the nation’s new architecture.

His pièces montées—towering sculptures of sugar, dough, and caramel—borrowed from the building language that would later inspire Le Corbusier and the architects that remade modern France. Carême believed that architecture and cuisine were parallel disciplines: both required discipline, engineering, creativity, and respect for labor. He designed not only dishes, but the first chef’s jacket—white, double-breasted, practical, proudly worn by cooks to this day. A uniform built for workers.

Nearly a century later, during the upheavals of the 1930s, another chapter of kitchen history unfolded—not in Paris, but in Minneapolis. The Great Depression crushed wages and pushed millions toward starvation. In 1934, as the city’s Teamsters strike escalated, workers built a commissary to feed thousands of strikers, supporters, and families. It was not a restaurant. It was a lifeline: a kitchen to keep people warm, sheltered, nourished, and alive. A place where food was not a commodity but a collective defense. In the middle of police beatings and freezing nights, workers cooked vats of stew, baked bread, treated injuries, and protected each other. The commissary became an engine of solidarity.

This is a pattern in American labor history. When a crisis arrives, kitchens appear. They appear because eating every day is a fundamental human need, and because the ability to feed each other is one of the oldest acts of resistance. The soup lines of the 1930s, the civil rights kitchens of the 1960s, the mutual-aid networks after hurricanes and pandemics—all extend the same lineage that began with Carême the child laborer building pastry monuments for a nation under reconstruction.

And today across Austin, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, New York City, Providence, Boston, Minneapolis and more, volunteer cooks and labor activists assemble meals for the Starbucks strikers.

Dozens of cooks, friends and supporters of the Starbucks workers participated in elaborating meals for the picket lines. Several menus came together based on the proposal of cooking foods from Palestina, South America, Vietnam as well as traditional midwestern comfort food in memory of the 1934 teamsters strike, where the kitchen commissariat started.

These solidarity kitchens are not charity. They are infrastructure—built by food workers, baristas, cooks, organizers, and community members who understand that the fight for wages, safety, and dignity runs through the stomach as surely as through the picket line.

At this moment, the national Starbucks strike honors that tradition. The young baristas are stepping into the long memory of labor in the United States. They are showing that the struggle for better conditions is never just about pay.

From Antoine Carême shaping pastry like architecture, to the Minneapolis commissary nourishing an entire strike in 1934, to today’s kitchens supporting Starbucks workers—the lesson is the same: food is a collective act of dignity.

Let’s help them win.

Carlos B is a chef and organizer of the Starbucks worker solidarity kitchens.

In 1985, Local 1199 members met in Columbus, Ohio for an organizing conference. The members were mostly healthcare and social service workers from states all across the country, but primarily in Appalachian and East Coast states who would later join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

At the conference, the union provided “1199’s Advice to Rookie Organizers.” This handwritten document included 20 tips for organizers, urging them to stay focused on rank-and-file organizers, empower them to organize for themselves, and honestly facilitate their organizing. In the years since, Jane McAlevey popularized the list in her educational and training materials.

Forty years later, these tips are still useful for staff organizers and rank-and-file organizers alike. Many people new to organizing feel tempted to try and do for others what they can do for themselves or sugarcoat bad news. This list is a helpful corrective and a reminder to be an honest broker with anyone who’s organizing and to step back when necessary.

1199’s Advice to Rookie Organizers

• Get close to the workers. Stay close to the workers.
• Tell workers it’s their union and then behave that way.
• Don’t do for workers what they can do.
• The union is not a fee for service. It is the collective experience of workers in struggle.
• The union’s function is to assist workers in making a positive change in their lives.
• Workers are made of clay, not glass.
• Don’t be afraid to ask workers to build their own union.
• Don’t be afraid to confront them when they don’t.
• Don’t spend your time organizing workers who are already organizing themselves; go to the biggest-worst.
• The working class builds cells for its own defense — identify them and recruit their leaders.
• Anger is there before you are. Channel it, don’t defuse it.
• Channeled anger builds a fighting organization.
• Workers know the risks. Don’t lie to them.
• Every worker is showtime. Communicate excitement, energy, urgency, and confidence.
• There is enough oppression in workers’ lives not to be oppressed by organizers.
• Organizers talk too much. Most of what you say is forgotten.
• Communicate to workers that there is no salvation beyond their own power.
• Workers united can beat the boss. You have to believe that, and so do they.
• Don’t underestimate the workers.
• We lose when we don’t put workers into struggle.

I was about to turn 15 when Donald Trump announced his first presidential campaign. I was a listless high schooler with no ambitions and socialist politics I’d picked up from listening to old protest songs on YouTube. Right up to election day, it felt like a joke. The night he won his election, I walked through the dark in my suburban hometown, watched the same news clips playing on every station, and thought that Bernie Sanders must have been right, and that everything would have to change if we were going to stop this.

I knew things would get worse, but the extent of the crisis has been astonishing. In the ten intervening years we’ve seen millions die from COVID, we’ve watched social protections, abortion rights and public services gutted, and we’ve seen our country carry out the greatest moral crime of the 21st century, the genocide in Gaza.

What I couldn’t have predicted was what would happen to me between 15 and 25. A few weeks after Trump won, I hesitatingly stepped up to the microphone at a hastily organized school walkout, one of the first protests in our town’s history. I started a political sprint that took me into DSA, into the streets during the George Floyd protests, across state lines to canvas for Bernie, and finally, onto the National Political Committee of DSA, the largest socialist organization in modern American history. A lot of the time it felt less like a coherent political trajectory and more like a desperate attempt to keep up with a rapidly disintegrating social order.

In those 10 years we have seen the depths of the crisis in our country, and I turned to socialism as its solution. Since then, I’ve met my closest friends, and I have gained a real sense of purpose in organizing with others for working class liberation.

For the inaugural edition of these hopefully regularly occurring articles from members of the National Political Committee, I wanted to write some advice to the new generation of kids confronting the same thing I saw 10 years ago: a bleak future, a broken country and four years of far-right rule. Some of them will grow up to shoulder their share of the responsibility of the fight to set everyone free. I hope this article can help a few people with advice I wish I had known.

1. You can fight back

Few emotions could be more understandable , in the present moment, than apathy. When I think about unsuccessful campaigns I participated in — how hard I worked, only to end up back exactly where I started — I feel that myself. But the recent past is replete not only with examples of the horrible collapse of the institutions that are supposed to protect us. It also shows that, through collective organizing, it is actually possible to delay, confront and even defeat the most aggressive administration policies.

In the first Trump term, there were enormous protests. The most effective mobilized the power of labor and the threat of concrete disruptions to sway public opinion and threaten the basic functions of the administration.

When Trump was first elected, socialism had barely begun to reemerge in popular consciousness. In the years since, we have elected hundreds of socialists, helped organize major strikes and reform victories in unions, coordinated massive protests and passed ballot initiatives from ceasefire and divestment resolutions to far-reaching tenant protections.

Building a movement powerful enough to defeat Trump, and Trumpism, will require convincing millions of people. It will take a force more powerful than the feckless Democrats who cave to him at every turn. But doing this is actually possible. From the success of tenants in Tacoma to dockworkers in Italy, socialists can win by looking to mass organizing as a path forward for our embattled class.

2. Make a life for yourself

If you are a young organizer who is anything like I was at 17, you are probably throwing yourself into political work. It might take up huge amounts of your time and your energy. You probably feel frustrated seeing friends or family who seem to not care as much and who ask why you can’t simply relax a bit,

There are few things more admirable than being young and committing yourself to fighting for a better world. But comrades should try to remember something I had to learn the hard way: political organizing takes decades of work, and if you don’t ground yourself in things you actually enjoy, you will be a less effective organizer and, eventually, a burnt out one.

Young organizers should make and keep friends outside of our organizing lives. We should keep up with outside interests and hobbies. YDSA members should actually engage with the parties, social life, and adventures your college and city afford you. You should do this because these are things all young people do, but also because there are major political benefits. For my first seven years of organizing, I never thought much about having fun. When I came out and transitioned, I started relaxing for the first time, finding time for friends, for my girlfriend, and for catching up on the things I had lost to dysphoria and responsibility. To my surprise, I found all of this made me a better organizer. It was easier to talk to comrades, easier to talk to my coworkers, easier to understand voters at the doors, easier to think clearly in meetings. During hard political fights, I had people I could confide in. During thrilling successes, I had people I could celebrate with. When I needed a break, I could take one.

A sturdy social life is one of the foundations of a strong commitment to socialism. DSA and organizing can be part of this — even a life-changing part — but it can’t be everything. Take your youth to become the sort of person who can organize for the rest of your life.

3. Learn about how the world works

Everyone who has organized in left spaces has confronted the sometimes obtuse and often unhelpful jargon of political theory. It’s almost a running joke how much some people can read without taking action. You probably know a person who can quote Lenin from memory, or argue in a political Discord server for hours, but has never walked a picket line or organized a single meeting. Studying theory can get a bad reputation. It’s understandable why.

But theory can also provide a roadmap to understand the problems of everyday life. When I was 17, I bought a copy of Marx’s Communist Manifesto and The 18th Braumaire. I would read it between classes, marking up the pages with a pen, trying to parse the words I hadn’t heard of and the references to politicians I didn’t know. As I pieced together what these 175 year old pamphlets were about, I realized that the world they described sounded a great deal like the one I lived in. The small, rich ruling class Marx decried was the same one I saw bribing politicians and waging useless wars. The poor workers he described didn’t seem to me like 1800s factory hands on the cover of the book. They sounded like my friend’s parents, who had to sell their homes and move to cheaper towns when the market collapsed. They were like the desperate beggars I saw on the streets of Portland. They were my teachers, my classmates. As I grew up, this they, Marx’s proletariat, became we. I took a job and started working to make ends meet.

The great theoretical works of the last 200 years have their place for a reason. They aren’t dusty academic tomes. Reading them, you’ll find them alive with dangerous ideas, dangerous history, dangerous lessons that ordinary people like us are expected not to learn. The writing of two centuries of socialists isn’t opaque theory. It’s a road map for ordinary people to take power. These books and ideas can help you understand the world.

4. Read and learn widely

Theory alone, for all its value, won’t teach you all you need to know about the world.

Our political system is designed to deprive working people of a good education. Despite the hard work of teachers, the average worker is not empowered to learn much about politics, science, history or literature. Just like a strong social life can make you a better organizer, a strong grounding in the wider world can make you a better thinker and comrade. To be a really effective organizer, you need to try to understand people. Socialists should seek to have a basic grasp of culture and philosophy. Young radicals should try to watch great movies and read great books, to visit art museums and go to concerts and to write their own stories and poems. It’s not possible to fight for a better word without trying to really love the beautiful parts of the world we live in right now.

5. Organize

If I could impart a single lesson to every teenager standing in the place I stood in 10 years ago, it would be this: nothing is more paralyzing than standing alone. Nothing is more powerful than fighting together.

Playing my small part in building up working class power in my school, city, and workplace, has given me incredible opportunities. The work my friends and comrades have done has improved the lives of real people. It has even improved my own life, helping me to win higher wages and fairer treatment at my job.

Being a socialist on my own was a very lonely feeling. By joining and helping to build an organization of like-minded comrades, I found a place to work alongside other people like me, who helped me fight for my ideas in the real world. Over time, I had the chance to not only fight, but to win real victories, and take on real responsibilities.

The socialist movement is one of the only places someone like me, a working class trans woman, could get the chance to be a leader. By organizing to build unions, elect socialists, and mobilize protests, you build the lasting structures that can put our theory into practice and bring people into power.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass.

Electoralism is a strategy of electing politicians with the goal of creating political change. From a young age, many of us are indoctrinated to believe voting has great power;our childhoods are filled with lessons and stories about how voting is the way democracy is preserved and political change happens, backed by a sanitized lie that the Civil Rights Movement achieved its ends through the vote and not human struggle itself. Elections have very rarely achieved any meaningful changes for the working class or done any lasting damage to the capitalist system. As Lenin argued in The State and Revolution, “to decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to misrepresent the people in parliament is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism.” Politicians will always be more loyal to preserving the system that safeguards capital rather than liberating the masses, precisely because of their relation to the electoral system of the state, even with professed socialist politics.

We have pursued a heavily electoral strategy in recent years of the Massachusetts socialist movement. Even recent debates have centered on methods of electoralism, rather than the question of its strategic value. There may be times where engaging in electoralism is strategic, even Lenin in Left-Wing Communism agrees that action by the masses, a big strike, for instance, is more important than parliamentary activity at all times. In order to combat the inevitable results of electoralism’s demobilization of mass movements, as well as its ineffectiveness in developing organizers, we need a break from electoral strategy itself in 2026.

Electoralism as a Way to Demobilize Mass Movements

Electoralism can’t have real revolutionary power if it is so encouraged and permitted by the state; this holds true in Massachusetts today, as in any other epoch where the state has used electoralism as a valve for discontent to be exhausted. As socialists, we strive to agitate workers and tenants to lose their own fear and come together in mass movements. When mass movements erupt into disruptions of the current system, politicians lockstep to stop those movements. That’s shown again and again, even in the annals of sports labor, as during the 2020 uprising. When NBA players began mobilizing to strike in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, Barack Obama called Lebron James and National Basketball Players’ Association (NBPA) President Chris Paul, urging them to cancel the strike in favor of pushing voter turnout: “in one fell swoop, electoralism had shut down mass mobilization.”

Instead of instilling what Asad Haider called a “class hatred” characterized by a “consistent antagonism to the system,” elections serve as a way to make the masses feel as though they have power over the current system.Obama’s response to the NBA strike how politicians can use elections to redirect the energy of a mass movement from escalating towards revolutionary class struggle to largely meaningless civic performance, but liberal politicians are not the only figures guilty. The Communist Party, USA largely sacrificed its Black-led base-building and organizing infrastructure in Alabama for a Popular Front motioned from above, with no input from members. As Fanon wrote in Wretched of the Earth, “the leader pacifies the people.” Elections allow people to voice their anger about the oppressive system, but they do not bring together the working class in a way that can sustain active, militant mass movements.

The question of the ballot line distracts from the reality that dedicating resources to the strategy itself means losing ground. The Democratic and Republican Parties drone strike civilians overseas, expand the militarization of the police, deport immigrants, and engage in union-busting practices, co-opting left-wing dissent, while smaller third-party candidates either have no chance of winning an election or have no real means to enact the changes they promised once elected.

Rosa Luxemburg remains correct. We can talk about Socialists in Office all day, but to Luxemburg, a socialist in office can either work in opposition to the bourgeois government, which means they would not be an active member of the government and be removed from office, or they can carry out the duties necessary for the government to remain operational, which means they would not be a socialist.

The Ineffectiveness of Electoral Politics in Developing Organizers

Beyond the ineffectiveness of electoralism to achieve any meaningful change in and of itself, elections don’t raise class consciousness or increase revolutionary skill. Voting is not a form of class struggle, so participation in voting does not either. As McNally and Post argued: ”Not only do the people you ‘organize’ electorally remain isolated and passive, rather than active participants in their own liberation, but election campaigns that focus on winning must appeal to voters’ existing consciousness.”

Other strategies do not rely on activating existing consciousness, mobilizing over organizing, but rather on actual change from within. Elections de-emphasize the ability of people to liberate themselves by positing an outside savior as the key actor in political struggle.

Part of this urge to seek an outside savior comes from fear. In his work on death denial and the phenomenon of transference, Ernest Becker argues that individuals who have intense fear or denial of death will often seek out some kind of savior. In the case of revolutionary struggle, those who are afraid of their own or the revolution’s death will seek some figure that provides a sense of immortality. This is a means to avoid the weight of our responsibility as individuals to the revolutionary project, which includes the collective and one another, to the masses themselves as the ones actually capable of leading us to liberation. It’s much easier to think we can find the perfect champion whom we cheer on like any other celebrity. A core tenet of socialism is the belief in the liberatory power of the working class, not individual celebrities or champions. We should not let our fears override that belief.

Fear may be an unconscious undercurrent, but socialists offer many arguments for why electoral strategies advance the socialist struggle. When organizers prioritize electoral campaigns, they often justify the strategic move with the claim that elections bring visibility to the organization and new members into the movement. When we conflate electing a champion with bringing new members into an organization, socialist organizations take a more evangelical posturing – telling others the “good news” of the politician bringing socialism to the people at the low price of one vote – towards the working class than one that seeks to unlock workers’ and tenants’ own power to shape historical forces. People must rely on the second coming of their god for salvation. We know that there is no second coming of anything that will save us. There’s no reason for us to focus exclusively on “raising awareness” or “spreading the good news of communism” when we can engage directly as political actors in class struggles and mass movements themselves.

Rather than build an international workers’ movement, electoralist strategies at the expense of others often lead to socialists supporting reactionary leaders and forging cross-class alliances that diminish important principles. The Communist Party, USA’s abandonment of base-building in Alabama for the Popular Front is one example; During the 1960s, the Iraqi Communist Party sacrificed any principle “in order to forge a relationship with those in power.” After the 1958 revolution, the communists in Iraq united with Kassem, the military leader, and with the national bourgeoisie. This proved disastrous for the Iraqi Communist Party when the Ba’athist government turned against the communists resulting in much of the party’s central committee members exiled, imprisoned or executed.

The Iraqi Communist Party’s great weakness lay in its politics rather than its organization. Rather than forge ahead and offer independent leadership to the workers’ movement, the party retreated and refused to challenge the Free Officers’ leader Abd’al-Karim Qassem for power. By aligning with the government and the bourgeoisie, the party saw the tragic destruction of their movement which allowed for the rise of the Ba’athist Party. In the best of circumstances, bourgeois politicians and leaders will pacify and demobilize mass movements, and in the worst of circumstances, bourgeois politicians and leaders will violently repress and purge those mass movements.

DSA’s Electoral Priorities

The role of socialists in bourgeois society is to form an opposition party. Without insurgent mobilizations that advance working class power to produce political disruptions, which undergird the opposition to the system, engaging in electoralism within the capitalist state will result in a weakening of the socialist left. As a socialist organization, DSA should prioritize actions that have the potential to undermine social divisions among working people and build antiracist and feminist class solidarity. Actions that involve confrontational action have the most power to radically transform working class people to build unity across social differences.

Rather than prioritize electoral campaigns, DSA chapters should imagine ways for the working class to engage in their own liberation: union organizing for both tenants and workers, mutual aid network-building in our neighborhood groups, and anti-ICE response.

Boston DSA joined the Homes For All coalition for a campaign to get rent control on the ballot in 2026, since rent control would be a massive victory for renters across the state, unlocking room for successive victories. There are even more direct examples of such power from below: Mattapan tenants won rent control for 347 buildings after an aggressive 6-year long fight. Without waiting for legislative solutions, these tenants succeeded in making their homes permanently affordable. We could do that for other neighborhoods and in other buildings. We don’t have to beg the Massachusetts legislation to protect us from price-gouging landlords. We can take matters into our own hands and win.

By forming mutual aid networks, people do not need to beg for assistance from an uncaring government. When the government shutdown ended SNAP victims, neighborhoods across Boston sprang into action. Residents expanded food pantries, created meal trains, and coordinated food deliveries. Even after SNAP benefits have been reinstated, those networks remain. The foundation and structure created to respond to crises can be supported by neighborhood groups, the anchoring and most local formation of the DSA chapter. In neighborhood groups and other spaces, we can mobilize residents, distribute food and necessary supplies to support people facing food insecurity. Mutual aid groups like Food Not Bombs or Warm Up Boston have long been supporting our unhoused neighbors; participation and initiative like theirs can be pioneered in order to build the infrastructure of organization needed for mass disruption. As we escalate and build towards mass disruptions, we need to have infrastructure to support workers and tenants on the front lines of militant union action like striking. Strong mutual aid networks allow workers to stay on strike for as long as it takes for corporations to come to the bargaining table and meet their demands.

We can take back our streets and our cities from ICE and police forces. Rather than appeal to politicians who will offer little more than empty platitudes since they work for and maintain this system that abducts our neighbors, we can form ICE watch hubs, supporting and expanding the LUCE networks, while developing patrol systems as organizers have in Los Angeles and Metro DC in response to federal occupation. Chicago, New York City, and Raleigh have all had success in chasing ICE out of their cities. This is only possible by training members in de-arresting techniques and direct action skills. Organizers in Minnesota rally outside of hotels where ICE agents are hosted, which not only demoralizes the ICE agents, but also disrupts the hotel business. These are the type of actions that hurt capitalists the most, which our chapter and others should prioritize.

As the Greek poet Archilochus said, we don’t rise to the level of our expectations; we fall to the level of our training.

If we are rallying behind someone we believe may look favorably on our demands rather than fighting for those demands ourselves, we are not training ourselves for revolution. Any reforms that the government offers, the workers can win through unions and militant campaigns. When the workers win reforms through revolutionary class struggle, they have the training necessary to be part of a mass movement that can fight for and win a socialist future. The purpose of a socialist organization should be to build a mass movement of revolutionaries who have been radicalized through class struggle. A revolution requires revolutionaries.

Jackie Wilson is a Boston DSA member and a contributing writer to Working Mass.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass.

Reflecting back on the 2025 election season, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has major accomplishments for which to be proud.

In a year without federal elections, DSA nonetheless captured lightning in a bottle and secured Zohran Mamdani the Democratic nomination and ultimately the mayoralty in New York City. Locally, meanwhile, Boston DSA nominated four candidates, supporting Willie Burnley, Jr. for Mayor of Somerville, Marcos Candido for Lowell City Council, and Ayah al-Zubi (first) and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler (second) for Cambridge City Council.

Both Cambridge City Council candidates were victorious; Candido lost an extremely close race by fewer than forty votes with 49% of the vote; Burnley captured around 45% of the vote. In New York City, Mamdani swept to victory with more votes than any mayoral candidate in decades, a victory already swelling DSA’s ranks by the thousands. Membership has already surpassed 90,000 in good standing — the highest-ever.

All four candidates endorsed by Boston DSA are DSA members – as is Mamdani. This is something that, in 2025, practically goes without saying. However, it was not always the case that DSA endorsees were consistently members of the organization or that a non-socialist candidate was essentially an endorsement non-starter.

What Does It Mean To Be a Socialist Candidate in 2026?

We have learned from experience that endorsement of candidates who do not organize within our fold leads to a situation where DSA is easily cast aside once elected, placing DSA in the unenviable position of no ability to influence decisions made by candidates whose political failures we are nonetheless tied to upon endorsement.

The consensus view that DSA candidates ought to be avowed socialists (and nearly always members) emerged out of bitter disappointments felt by comrades across DSA’s internal political spectrum, but also from years of internal deliberations and debate.

Now, it is my hope that a similar inflection point is at hand on how DSA ought to select its candidates and how we should relate to candidates – and officials, upon their election. While some of the results of the 2025 DSA Convention suggest the partyist wing of DSA holds a bare majority, the organization is clearly not yet to the point of consensus around how we collectively address and support our candidates.

Instead, we must contend that disputes around our relationship to elected officials remain some of DSA’s most hotly contested debates.

All factions of DSA proclaim the need to “build power,” none more than would-be DSA office-holders. However, there are dueling perceptions of what this phrase means. For some, it means increasing the number of elected officials who are sympathetic to democratic socialist ideals: candidates who may or may not be DSA members, may or may not receive our endorsement, but who will work with DSA on certain priorities. Certainly, this approach would result in more boxes we could tick when tallying up the numbers of DSA endorsees in office.

However, this vision-of elected officials as allies of DSA and the socialist movement rather than as representatives thereof must be cast aside if DSA is serious about its aspirations to function as a political party. Raising the bar for endorsement to being a member of DSA is insufficient when the organization and wider movement need a broader paradigm shift; paying a few dozen dollars a year to the organization is important, but far more important is a willingness to represent our platform and organization while in office.

What Are We Building in 2026?

For the partyist wing of DSA to make the case that we collectively should make decisions and priorities based on a vision of elected officials as representatives of our organization, the first priority is illustrating the importance of the organization: the party. That means defining what exactly a party is. The United States does not have political parties in the classical sense of the term- rather, it has ballot lines, and undemocratic organizations which are vaguely affiliated with those ballot lines but in most cases do not directly determine who runs on them. The Democratic “Party” is at the center of a much larger financing, influence, turnout, and policy network that exerts real control over politicians. But it is voter registration or even self-identification that makes the average “Democrat,” not participation or identification with the labyrinthine workings of the organization itself.

When we speak of a party, we mean a democratic mass-membership organization which has its own independent political program. Indeed, these principles were codified as the basis of DSA’s structure at the 2025 National Convention with the passage of a resolution entitled “Principles for Party Building.”

Our ability to implement our goals and to agitate workers toward the socialist party is compromised when we lend our full support to candidates who have not committed to a socialist program, and who see DSA not as their party but as merely one member of a coalition which supports them – a coalition which includes liberal and bourgeois-progressive forces. That is not to say that DSA members running for office should not seek out any external sources of support – it’s difficult for any of our candidates to win if they aren’t at least winning over Warren Democrats – but if DSA is seen not a party to be built, but an interest group to be placated, there is little incentive in building the organization or in agitating for its long-term program.

Building power must not just mean electing DSA endorsees, or even DSA members, to elected office. Building power means electing candidates who will legislate according to the platform of, be accountable to, and ultimately be elected on behalf of DSA.

DSA enters 2026 with the most members we have ever had, fresh off our highest-profile victory ever. Whether or not one believes electoralism ought to be the primary focus of DSA, there can be little doubt engagement in elections has been the primary driver of membership growth. DSA should run focused campaigns at the federal, state, and municipal level. These candidates must be willing to put forward an oppositional, independent, and socialist political vision on the campaign trail and, should they win, from the halls of power, adhering to the DSA platform at all stages.

Otherwise, while we may help to build a progressive mandate, we cannot help but fail to build the Party.

Dalton Galloway is a member of Boston DSA and contributing writer to Working Mass.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not represent the official position of Working Mass.

The 2025 election cycle has left Boston Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) stronger and better positioned for the future; As far as I see it, this is a fact. Members across the region have pounded the pavement to spread the message of our endorsed candidates, leading to victories or strong showings in every race we ran this cycle.

In the process, too, Boston DSA, and all the zip codes it entails, has built up chapter capacity in meaningful ways and set the stage for even greater future success.

In Somerville

Coming into 2025, Somerville DSA was a growing section of the chapter that had existed in a substantive sense for many years—my first ever interface with the chapter was, after all, the 2021 “Somerville for All” slate. But Somerville DSA itself – the Somerville “neighborhood group,” still felt nascent. Earlier this year, Somerville created its own leadership structure and self-organized out of the neighborhood group model of ad hoc initiatives and towards a branch with organizing campaigns and political decision-making.

One decision that Somerville DSA made as a body following the chapter endorsement of Willie Burnley, Jr. for Mayor was to establish a member-led apparatus to elect Burnley. The campaign was selected as the sole external priority of the branch, aimed at creating new member leaders from the campaign’s many tasks. Membership elected three campaign stewards to bottomline the campaign and mobilize new members to campaign events. Those stewards, in collaboration with the Electoral Working Group and Burnley’s campaign, created the campaign’s field operation. What began as weekend canvasses only eventually expanded into Willie Wednesdays, then regular phone banks, volunteer recruitment calls, and beyond.

An essential element of this process was new member leadership. Instead of relying on only activating the same core of members, Somerville intentionally worked to organize new leaders from members recently entering the organization or buried in its paper membership. The Somerville DSA campaign stewards themselves were a mix of longtime members and former chapter and working group leadership, alongside newer self-motivated members. As Willie’s campaign worked to expand capacity, they brought in experienced electoral organizers with DSA connections and focused on greatly expanding their roster of field leads, recruiting nearly 20 highly motivated and reliable volunteers to bottom line canvassing shifts.

This diffuse structure of campaigning is exactly what powered Mamdani’s victory, and while Somerville did not see that level of success, It was not because of a weak field operation down the stretch. Rather, the lesson here is the exact same one from last year’s campaign to elect Evan Mackay to the state house: that our campaigns should be operating at the necessary scale by the summer, or rather as early as possible. The expansion of capacity on Evan’s and Willie’s campaigns was substantial but too late to swing the ultimate result.

Willie, and thus DSA, lost ultimately because the expansion of capacity didn’t happen quickly enough. But in the process of running this campaign, Somerville DSA spent the better part of a year organizing in the community, developing leaders, growing the local membership, and spreading class consciousness in Somerville through organizing conversations. Somerville DSA’s leadership is now entirely composed of new members, most of whom were brought into organization through campaign tasks, but have now transitioned into organizers in other parts of their lives. Members canvassed relentlessly across the city with volunteer turnout driven by a concerted effort to make recruitment calls, both through chapter-owned lists on “Turnout Tuesdays” and with campaign lists on a regular basis. Many of the members who a year ago had barely interacted with the chapter or not even joined yet became involved with DSA through Willie’s campaign and have become effective local leaders in their own right.

In Lowell

Marcos Candido’s campaign for Lowell City Council was a vehicle for the rejuvenation of Merrimack Valley DSA. What had been a largely overshadowed section of the chapter pulled itself together in the name of electing Marcos, who cut his teeth organizing a union with his coworkers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), who campaigned on a relentless door-knocking operation kickstarted weeks before the preliminary after a crucial Boston DSA endorsement. He lost by 39 votes. It was another eerie reminder of Evan’s race, in which the incumbent won out by 41 votes. The democratic socialist project was two votes, far slimmer than even a field margin, from the capture of key seats.

The campaign leaves behind a window of opportunity to solidify and grow a democratic socialist presence in the Merrimack Valley. Comrades were inspired by Marcos’s energy and connection to the labor movement, which has connected more members from electoral to labor work. Further, already, the neighborhood group has organized beyond the campaign; in November 2025, Merrimack Valley DSA co-hosted an organizing training for local tenants with the Emergency Tenant Organizing Committee (ETOC) of Boston DSA’s Housing Working Group.

The expansion of Merrimack Valley DSA, which can and should be a key hub of organizing in 2026 with the rent control ballot question on the horizon, should be a priority for local members and chapter leadership.

In Cambridge

Former Harvard student organizer Ayah Al-Zubi’s campaign was also incredibly strong at identifying motivated and diligent members and turning them into loyal volunteers and leaders. The campaign utilized a number of levers, including connections to outside organizations like IfNotNow and Cambridge for Palestine, to drive volunteer turnout and mobilize over 120 unique canvassers. Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler’s campaign mobilized about half that much, facing obstacles including a clear gap in enthusiasm between an incumbent campaign and a challenger campaign, as well as, of course, the chapter’s vote to essentially deprioritize his reelection. Jivan, to his credit, more than made up for the difficulties in recruiting volunteers by knocking nearly half the campaign’s doors himself. But both campaigns were ultimately able to ride the power of the chapter’s organizing to resounding wins.

Cambridge’s election system is peculiar. Campaigns can make it into office on much smaller-scale operations. With that in mind, we should take to heart the magnitude of our victories there and stay hungry for more.

There are certainly ways to improve our operation. For one, we should have unity in our campaigns from the jump. Factional sentiments and tensions should be smoothed over internally and resolved before launching campaigns. Cambridge DSA was fortunate to see both candidates win, but ranked endorsements like what was passed at the August general meeting muddy the chapter’s communications both internally and externally. I believe that there exists within our chapter a shared commitment to resolving internal tensions and creating a better environment for more victories going forward.

Every Conversation, A Seed for Class Consciousness

More than anything else, the lesson we should all glean from this election cycle is that canvassing works. DSA campaigns are powered first and foremost by rank-and-file DSA members who believe in the socialist project and what our candidates stand for and represent–they, meaning you, are the front lines of our movement. Every canvass is an organizing moment that builds capacity, leadership skills, and community. And every canvass, furthermore, whether it’s for an endorsed candidate, a ballot question, or a project like Safe Communities, is an opportunity to talk about DSA. Even beyond that, every conversation plants a seed for class consciousness in the head of every worker, tenant, and future DSA member in the region. Our campaigns, even in loss, can and have made our chapter and our movement stronger.

So to comrades in Waltham, or Quincy, or Framingham, or anywhere outside of Camberville, who don’t see a strong DSA presence on their ballots, and who see winning campaigns electoral or otherwise as too much of an uphill battle to take on, shake off your worries and take as many opportunities to organize as you can get. As long as you are there, DSA is too.

The time to build up chapter presence in your backyard is not in a couple months or years – it is now. DSA victories are not just dominating national headlines. They are in your area code, and you yourself can bring them into your community.

Ric Blair is a member of Boston DSA and contributing writer to Working Mass.