for me the question is, if a rent freeze happens, how is that different than all the other “progressive charities” that do genuinely provide a lot of necessary support for poor people but do not mobilize those people in any way to scale up the project and seize more power?
If there isn’t a coherent political program that each voter gets plugged into and participates in daily/weekly/monthly at least, all you are doing is bribing people to vote for you again the next time. FDR famously said he “saved capitalism” with the new deal, and this is the type of imagery people like AOC have used as well with the green new deal. providing charity is nice and really helps people who need it, and probably gets you reelected next time, but how does that become a greater movement? If the only answer is to have thousands of Mamdanis run for every office and take over, maybe if every major local office is taken and held for the next 15-20 years they can begin to do something, but this isn’t possible or realistic with the timeline of climate change. slowly take over city by city with socialist cities, and then the greater state? through bourgeois electoral cycles?
I’m hoping the DSAers organizing this are actually creating an engaging program that turns at least 10-20% of the workers who vote for Mamdani into political cadre because without that crucial piece this isn’t really political organizing in a revolutionary way, it is just doing populist bourgeois political organizing the way plenty of populist bourgeois politicians have set out to do in the past. Since DSA hasn’t managed to have a membership reflective of average workers, it is obvious they don’t yet have a way to turn this campaign into a political project that average workers will be involved in and dedicate their precious free time to, or else they would already have unleashed it.
DSA, as imperfect and org as it is, did see a large influx of new membership during the Mamdani campaign and following his primary victory. Which is better than nothing, since most active DSA cadre are marxists
Sure but new members joining and continuing to keep DSA majority white, college graduates which little to no average workers feel comfortable being around further entrenches the demographic trends within the organization. Then they join and what political education do they get? If they join the chapter near me they will be around Zionists and white supremacists who think Indigenous people are all dead and prefer to read Emma Goldman and think Stalin was worse than Hitler
Hot take: they’re not, because they’re in the DSA. Would love to be wrong but build within a reactionary white supremacist framework, get what you’d expect.
Yeah because rent freeze is definitely an actual possibility here lmao
https://citylimits.org/second-year-of-the-de-blasio-rent-freeze-a-graphic-history/
https://www.cityandstateny.com/policy/2025/06/court-appeals-upholds-kingstons-rent-control-policies/406184/
for me the question is, if a rent freeze happens, how is that different than all the other “progressive charities” that do genuinely provide a lot of necessary support for poor people but do not mobilize those people in any way to scale up the project and seize more power?
If there isn’t a coherent political program that each voter gets plugged into and participates in daily/weekly/monthly at least, all you are doing is bribing people to vote for you again the next time. FDR famously said he “saved capitalism” with the new deal, and this is the type of imagery people like AOC have used as well with the green new deal. providing charity is nice and really helps people who need it, and probably gets you reelected next time, but how does that become a greater movement? If the only answer is to have thousands of Mamdanis run for every office and take over, maybe if every major local office is taken and held for the next 15-20 years they can begin to do something, but this isn’t possible or realistic with the timeline of climate change. slowly take over city by city with socialist cities, and then the greater state? through bourgeois electoral cycles?
I’m hoping the DSAers organizing this are actually creating an engaging program that turns at least 10-20% of the workers who vote for Mamdani into political cadre because without that crucial piece this isn’t really political organizing in a revolutionary way, it is just doing populist bourgeois political organizing the way plenty of populist bourgeois politicians have set out to do in the past. Since DSA hasn’t managed to have a membership reflective of average workers, it is obvious they don’t yet have a way to turn this campaign into a political project that average workers will be involved in and dedicate their precious free time to, or else they would already have unleashed it.
DSA, as imperfect and org as it is, did see a large influx of new membership during the Mamdani campaign and following his primary victory. Which is better than nothing, since most active DSA cadre are marxists
Sure but new members joining and continuing to keep DSA majority white, college graduates which little to no average workers feel comfortable being around further entrenches the demographic trends within the organization. Then they join and what political education do they get? If they join the chapter near me they will be around Zionists and white supremacists who think Indigenous people are all dead and prefer to read Emma Goldman and think Stalin was worse than Hitler
Hot take: they’re not, because they’re in the DSA. Would love to be wrong but build within a reactionary white supremacist framework, get what you’d expect.