We did it. Oh we did it.
We flipped the Senate. Flipped the house. Flipped offices that had not been flipped in a century. Got in socialists across the country. There is so much gratitude to go around, and any list will be inadequate. So here’s a few
The Black organizers in the South, who refused to allow their hometowns to be consigned to Jim Crow 2.0.
The glorious, wrathful movement against data centers. Justin Pearson, who lost by a tragicly slim margin in his gerrymandered-to-hell Tennessee congressional district, is a righteous crusader against the Lords of Tech.
Angie Nixon, who beat back that gerrymandering in Florida, only to be denied the funds she deserved by a craven DNC. May you win in 2028.
Palestine organizers, who would not permit genocide to become acceptable.
Hasan Piker, not that he’ll get any credit. But Hasan, take your flowers.
Aber Kawas! Darializa! My New York queens.
Dr Adam Hamawy, our new New Jersey congressman, who saved kids’ lives in Gaza.
Bernie Sanders, who tended to the near-destroyed tradition of American democratic socialism for decade after lonely decade, only to see it taken up at last by a generation who needed it. Tradition is not the worship of ashes. It is the preservation of fire.
But especially today I want to thank Abdul El-Sayed. The filth thrown at this man, the racism, the anti-Muslim incitement that reminded me of the French proto-fascists of 1936 who cursed their Jewish, social democratic president by hissing “better Hitler than (Leon) Blum.” He shrugged it off like Mohammed Ali, dodging a punch from an pitiful rival. As if it were easy. Though we know it was anything but. Sheer sprezzatura.
Here’s to you, Abdul.
I also want to say something about persistence. Fred took the above photo of me nine years ago, when I had just joined the Democratic Socialists of America. At the time, the New York chapter was too broke to afford printed signs. So I painted them in my living room, on dollar store bedsheets and cardboard salvaged from the trash.
Nine years later, we six of our people in congress. We have the mayor of New York. Socialist mayors in Seattle, Providence, Ann Arbor, DC. Possibly, possibly the mayor of LA. We won at least seventy five ballot measures and races at every level, from the House to the city school board.
We did all of this, together.
Could I have predicted all this when I was scrubbing paint into nylon bedsheets in 2017? No. But Donald Trump had just won, and I knew what I had to do. I credit this sureness to growing up on the left. It gave me something more important than hope, or faith, which was the discipline of collective action. No matter what, you keep swimming against a fascist tide. You take concrete actions. Maybe it’s knocking on doors in un-airconditioned housing projects on the hottest days of the summer. Maybe it’s painting trash cardboard red, so your friends can hold them at a march. But you do. Because by doing, you can remake the world
There is never any guarantee of victory, but unless we struggle, we have only the assurance of defeat.
And sometimes, victory comes.
P.S. DSA is still using my banners.
Let tonight be a lesson.
Fuck nihilism.
When we fight we win.
This piece originally appeared in the Substack InkVault.
