Following New York’s June 23 primary, socialist consciousness is unmistakably rising in the heart of global capitalism. Several openly socialist candidates swept Democratic primaries, alarming establishment figures, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called the victories “dangerous” and vowed to fight “socialists” and “Marxists” in the midterms.
This victory doesn’t belong to the Democratic Party but to the people, driven by three years of Palestine solidarity organizing, street mobilizations, neighborhood organizing and canvassing, and campus encampments, which shifted mass consciousness and fueled campaigns championing popular demands: “End all US aid to Israel,” “Ceasefire now,” and “Abolish ICE.”
Socialist sentiment has been building across prior movements; Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Bernie Sanders’ campaigns, and the 2020 uprisings all produced this resurgence, bridging a two-decade generational gap in the socialist movement. Polling from the Cato Institute and Fox News shows millions of young Americans, Democratic voters, and Black voters in particular favor moving beyond capitalism.
Key races confirmed that Mamdani’s 2025 victory, against all odds and the whole establishment, was not a fluke. It has inspired a wave of candidacies that reflect the growing opposition to the billionaire class and the hunger for social change. In NY-7, DSA’s Claire Valdez, running on a pro-Palestine platform as an open democratic socialist, won a clear victory against a status quo Democratic candidate, backed by the city’s traditional power brokers. In NY-10, Mamdani-backed Brad Lander defeated AIPAC-funded Dan Goldman by 30 points, running on Palestinian state recognition and an Israel arms embargo, showing Jewish voters’ increasing rejection of AIPAC’s status quo.
In NY-13, DSA’s Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Dominican-American activist and Columbia encampment leader, defeated AIPAC-funded, incumbent Adriano Espaillat despite vicious racist innuendo questioning her heritage and using “Haitian” as a slur, mirroring ultra-right birtherism. Still, Avila Chevalier won by thousands, overcoming an 8-point polling deficit with nonstop campaigning and organizing. She is now poised to become Congress’s most left-wing member, a product of the Palestine movement, having attended the October 8, 2023 protest that even some DSA leaders then distanced themselves from.
Mamdani has faced internal criticism for only backing some insurgent left-wing candidates, while opposing primary challenges of leading establishment Democrats. For instance, there was no DSA-backed campaign challenging House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo posted “Chi would have won.” Ossé’s bid against Jeffries was discouraged by Mamdani and AOC in November; DSA voted against endorsing Ossé 626-555.
Likewise, Mamdani decided not to back a challenge to Ritchie Torres, a vocal Israel defender who has received huge sums from AIPAC. He won NY-15 with just 23,000 votes in a district of 750,000, capitalizing on historically low turnout in the poorest U.S. congressional district. Yet polling shows his lead vanishes when voters learned of his record: support for war on Iran, AIPAC funding, and failure to fight for Medicare for All. The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is running Andre Easton, a Bronx teacher, against Torres as an independent this November. Since October, PSL has built ground-level organizing in the Bronx and found deep openness to socialist solutions, not apathy.
Socialism can’t be enacted by simply winning elected office under capitalism. Socialism means working people hold political and economic power and use the resources we collectively create to meet the needs of the people and the planet. So long as we have a capitalist economy continuously reproducing a split between haves and have-nots, with a tiny few hoarding the wealth, the fundamental problems of our society cannot be solved.
The PSL has been running independent campaigns in California, New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Florida with this socialist program, while fighting for each and every reform that can improve workers’ conditions in the here and now. We believe the working class needs independent political organization, separate from and opposed to the Democratic Party, which is fundamentally a party of big business and Empire.
The DSA’s electoral campaigns have served as an organized expression of the changing mood and mass consciousness in society, and among young people in particular. Translating that mood into impressive electoral wins is just one step; it can be organized into a mass labor union revival, into the grassroots defense of immigrant communities, and into a renewed movement to confront Trump’s deadly wars. Ultimately, through mass organizing on every level, we can rebuild a truly independent socialist movement — with its own infrastructure and institutions in all spheres of life — to fundamentally reorganize society in the interests of the many, not the few.
While there are particularities to the New York City electoral landscape, we reject the notion that the broad socialist and anti-war message does not speak for broad sections of the country. In neighborhoods and workplaces nationwide, we have found slogans like Chevalier’s “Babies Not Bombs” theme to be immensely popular. It’s not only New York that is open to the socialist message. It’s everywhere.
Featured image: via Darializa for Congress
