In shocking upset, Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani wins Democratic mayoral primary in NYC; District residents fight back against pretrial detention ahead of Peace DC vote on July 1; Informational picket at Le Diplomate — TONIGHT, June 27, 5:30pm, and Saturday, June 28
This is the weekly newsletter of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America (MDC DSA), which is
produced by local members of the chapter's Publications Working Group. The Weekly Update publishes every
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UP FRONT
In shocking upset, Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani wins Democratic mayoral primary in NYC
Words to do socialism by: “In the face of a skeptical public, Mamdani was even able to communicate democratic socialism as a universal politics rather than a niche identity or a dangerous ideology.” Sunkara in Guardian Opinion
Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman and proud member of Democratic Socialists of America, has emerged victorious in the Democratic primary race for New York City mayor. The race, which was expected to be called next week, was declared on election night. Securing ~44% of first round votes, Mamdani defeated the princeling (disgraced) ex-governor Andrew Cuomo (36%). Although Mamdani will still need to defeat populist vigilante Curtis Sliwa, current Mayor Eric Adams (running as an independent), and perhaps Andrew Cuomo (again), Mamdani’s victory in the primary means the next mayor of New York City is likely to be a socialist and cadre member of the DSA.
The win, which by all accounts was a long shot, shocked and heartened the people of New York and the United States.
Mamdani, who was polling in single digits just months ago, surged into first place with an impressive campaign operation. Mamdani’s marquee policies — a rent freeze, fast and free bus expansion, publicly owned grocery stores, and tax increases on the wealthy — unlocked a groundswell of popular support that was organized into a volunteer army. Each weekend, large teams of canvassers would fan out in the city of New York, through the blistering cold and sweltering heat, to rally the city’s working people to Zohran’s cause (in total, the campaign reported over a million doors knocked, plus tens of thousands of volunteers enlisted). The depth of support behind Zohran also translated into a technical advantage against his opponents — skillfully crafted viral videos and a surge of social media support across Instagram, Tiktok, Twitch, and Twitter helped solidify the campaign’s message across platforms in a spectacular display of narrative control. In addition, the progressive alliance formed behind the Don’t Rank Evil Andrew Cuomo (DREAM) Coalition held together, preventing back-biting and left punching from (most) progressives and left-liberals once it became clear support was coalescing behind Zohran. The support provided by Brad Lander — Zohran’s progressive rival, though the two candidates cross-endorsed one another — also enabled Zohran to relentlessly focus on his message of affordability, starkly contrasting the doom-and-gloom Cuomo campaign, which was predictably filled with bad-faith accusations of antisemitism in response to Zohran’s pro-Palestinian record. Come election day, Zohran outperformed all polls and projections by consolidating support in the city’s core (Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan).
Many are now seeing in Mamdani’s victory a model for urban resistance to Trumpist fascism, and a path for remobilizing the wider working class into a fighting, political force. There will be much analysis over the coming weeks on Mamdani’s victory, but make no mistake, the support of New York City DSA was vital for securing victory. By coming out of the gates swinging from the left, maintaining a focus on material conditions, Mamdani was able to send a clear and confident message to an electorate eager for authenticity. Mamdani didn’t win as a progressive — he won as a socialist.
District residents fight back against pretrial detention ahead of Peace DC vote on July 1
Two weeks ago, the DC Council made the surprise announcement that Brooke Pinto’s Peace DC bill would receive its first vote on Tuesday, June 17. Peace DC is the sequel to Pinto's infamous Secure DC Omnibus from last year. Among many awful elements, the law aims to make pretrial detention permanent in the city, meaning those arrested for specific crimes would be forced to stay in the DC jail up to and through the trial. Given DC jail’s death-trap qualities, this provision would keep people locked in jail for months before their trial even began. Besides the blatantly unconstitutional nature of this law, keeping DC residents locked in jail puts people’s lives, jobs, housing, and more at risk. Sadly, Peace DC passed the first vote with 8 in favor, 2 against, and 2 present. However, the fight is not over.
The pressure from the Anti-Criminalization Coalition, which includes DSA, already succeeded in removing harmful parts of Peace DC. Calls and advocacy already successfully amended Peace DC to prevent the special police on DC’s metro from handing out tickets for fare evasion. Additionally, robbery where no one is injured was removed from the list of crimes that warrant pretrial detention. The Anti-Criminalization Coalition is calling for full removal of pretrial detention by the final vote on July 1. There was basically no interest in removing pretrial detention until the council was flooded with calls, emails, and office visits, so the coalition has momentum.
The final vote on Peace DC is this Tuesday, July 1. District residents are urged to contact their Councilmembers and call them with the script and phone numbers at this link: bit.ly/nopeacedc.
Informational picket at Le Diplomate — TONIGHT, June 27, 5:30pm, and Saturday, June 28
Metro DC DSA’s Labor Working Group is mobilizing community members to come out for pickets at Le Diplomate and other STARR restaurants in support of workers organizing to join UNITE HERE Local 25. In January, supermajorities of workers demanded voluntary recognition at three STARR restaurants, which refused and instead resorted to classic union-busting tactics. UNITE HERE Local 25 is hosting informational pickets at Le Diplomate (1601 14th St NW) tonight, Friday, June 27th, 5 to 7:30pm, and Saturday, June 28th, 11am to 1:30pm. Additionally, the union is calling on the people of DC to boycott STARR and Knightsbridge restaurants; MDC DSA members are encouraged to sign the boycott pledge and share it with friends.
BRIEFS
Coming soon: Apartheid-Free Communities canvass training
Palestine solidarity organizing is strongest when it’s done in coalition — and, as Israeli massacres of aid-seeking Palestinians continue, more urgent than ever. That’s why MDC DSA is working with DC for Palestine to initiate the Apartheid-Free Communities campaign. This project will launch canvasses of businesses and community organizations around the city, asking them to sign an apartheid-free pledge and commit to standing in solidarity with Palestine. The Apartheid-Free Communities campaign is a great way to make Palestine a local issue and get more closely involved with MDC DSA’s Internationalism Working Group and DC for Palestine. Sign up here or email [email protected] to get involved with MDC DSA’s Internationalism Working Group and get updates on for the first DSA-led Apartheid-Free canvassing training.
Join Internationalism Working Group for the sixth and final session of teach-in series about global empire — Anti-Imperialist Summer School Week 6, July 6
Metro DC DSA’s Internationalism Working Group is holding the sixth and final session of its six-week Beyond the Bombs: Anti-Imperialist Summer School teach-in series on Sunday, July 6, with a session titled “The Shifting Global Order”. This session will run from 4 to 6pm, in-person at the Festival Center (1640 Columbia Road NW) and hybrid on Zoom.
In this session, attendees will turn their attention to the major global shifts currently underway — namely, the decline of US hegemony, the rise of new superpowers like China, and the emergence of an increasingly multipolar world order — all of which are taking place amid accelerating political, economic, and ecological crises on numerous fronts. We will critically examine these shifts in detail, and open up space for a nuanced and critical discussion of the opportunities and contradictions that they offer the anti-imperialist left, as well as what our responsibility is as anti-imperialists when it comes to how we should understand and relate to these shifts. Learn more and RSVP here.
Documentary screening and panel with Latinx Therapists Action Network — Saturday, June 28
As the fascist Trump administration continues its bloodthirsty deportation regime, Virginia socialists will be holding a screening of Caged Dreams at Arlington Public Library this Saturday, 1 to 3:30pm. The event will focus on the trauma caused by migrant detention, how it affects us in the long term, and how to incorporate healing justice — not as a tool but as part of the organizing work of the movement. RSVP here.
Ecosocialists holding happy hour to discuss campaign to fund mass transit — Sunday, June 29
The DSA Green New Deal Working Group, Greater Greater Washington, and Amalgamated Transit Union 689 will be hosting a happy hour on June 29th from 2 – 5pm at metrobar (640 Rhode Island Ave NE) to mark the changeover to Metro's New Bus Network, as well as the launch of the campaign to establish a progressive source of revenue for sustaining WMATA's operations for the next generation: Tax Land, Fund Metro, Build Housing. Comrades will discuss campaign priorities, ways to get involved, upcoming educational talks, and all things public transit.
To learn more, register for the event, and get connected to the campaign, RSVP here.
July Electoral Organizing Trainings — July 26 and 27
Following the April Electoral Organizing trainings, the Electoral Working Group will be hosting another series of two-day trainings. Members do not have to have attended the April training to be able to participate. Day 1 will focus on local elections and poll their strategic importance, while day 2 will focus on preparing members looking to get involved in our endorsed campaigns this fall.
Suzanne Crowell, presente! Founding member of DSA and prominent civil rights activist died June 15
Suzanne Crowell, a formative member of Metro DC DSA, died of esophageal cancer in Brunswick, Maine on June 15, 2025. A lifelong activist, Suzanne was a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and one of a handful of initial members of Friends of SNCC — a northern support group of the militant direct action civil rights organization — while a student at Barnard in the mid-1960s. Acting on her convictions, she took part in SNCC’s Mississippi Freedom Summer Project in 1964 and in the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965. She moved to DC in the late 1960s, when Home Rule was only recently won and Marion Barry was elected mayor. Suzanne was a fixture in local politics for decades — and was particularly engaged in work to preserve rent control and affordable housing, as well as local work in solidarity with South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement. A member of AFSCME, Suzanne was an active unionist and was elected president of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW) DC chapter for several years. She was involved in the Metro Labor Council (DC) and, after retiring, in the Maine AFL-CIO.
Suzanne was a member of the Democratic Socialists Organizing Committee and its successor organization, Democratic Socialists of America. She served as part of Metro DC DSA’s local leadership in different capacities throughout the 1980s and 90s. She was elected to DSA’s National Executive Committee, participated in the work of national DSA’s labor and anti-racism commissions, and served on the editorial board of Democratic Left.
Want to stay current? Weekly Updates, like the one you are reading, are scheduled and emailed on Fridays; current and past Updates are available on our website. Not subscribed? DSA member or not, sign up to get the Update, the go-to source for the DMV left. The MDC Dispatch is the chapter’s new video news series, published on the first and third Sunday of each month. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and submit your Update or Dispatch suggestions or DMV scandal tips to our tip line. The Washington Socialist, published since the 1970s, offers in-depth analytical/opinion articles on a quarterly schedule; the Spring 2025 quarterly issue now leads the queue but the Summer 2025 issue is in editing now. Check out our indexed and searchable archive to see what we write — and what you can write. Anyone, MDC DSA member or not, interested in contributing to the Washington Socialist can email submissions or questions to [email protected].
Members — want to stay updated in our local chapter workspace? MDC DSA members are encouraged to join our all-member Slack for real-time info on working group and campaign events, strategy exchange, and inspiration. Email [email protected] with your most recent DSA dues receipt to get Slack access.
DMV LEFT COMMUNITY BULLETIN
Shabbat Ritual and Action: Stop Starving Gaza | Jewish Voice for Peace
TODAY — June 27 at 6pm, join our JVP comrades in Columbus Circle in downtown DC to observe Shabbat and call on Congress to stop starving Gaza. RSVP here.
Harm Reduction Rocks 2! A Benefit Show for HIPS | July 5th
Live music + good cause: Harm Reduction Rocks 2!, a benefit concert for HIPS, takes place at Pearl Street Warehouse on July 5th. Featuring The Darkest Star, Ammonite, Endlings, and Bloiters. Get tickets here.
ESSENTIAL PERSPECTIVES
ESSENTIAL PERSPECTIVES are articles and opinion pieces of interest to DMV leftists but not, generally, appearing
in local media. They should have links without paywalls. Readers are invited to submit candidates at our tip
line.
How Far the Fascist Analogy Works: “The huge difference that remains and separates Hitler’s Nazism from anything happening today is the 1929 collapse of global capitalism. That brought fascism to power in Germany. The 1930s Depression then shaped German fascism’s evolution in the 6 years before war subordinated everything to its imperatives after 1939. Defeat in war ended German fascism in 1944. The currently intertwined declines of the post-1945 American empire and US capitalism provide a different context for Trumpism — so far — than what the Great Depression provided for Nazism. … What matters most now is how US capitalism continues to decline [due to Trump’s intervention]. That will be overdetermined especially by its own accumulated contradictions, the fading of its empire amid endless wars, and the competition from China and the BRICS alliance. The left will need to watch carefully to see if elements emerge that could bring a fascism fully into power.” Richard Wolff in the LA Progressive
The abandoned working class: “Democrats don’t know which end is up”: Columnist Thomas Edsall gathers views of a disturbing change in US political party trends: “The underlying truth, [one researcher] continued, “is that the major parties in the U.S. today are not primarily organized around a social-class cleavage.” This evolution of the two parties has been slow but steady over the past three decades, first emerging in the early 1990s as education polarization drove those with college degrees to the left while working-class voters without degrees moved right. Another researcher consulted says “While the voters in more advantaged economic classes who have increased their support for the Democratic Party are, on average, more educated and reside in larger metropolitan areas, this polarization of the affluent is spread across all races and ethnicities and is not only relegated to college-educated voters. …the Democratic voting coalition of the 2010s has taken the form of a ‘U-shape’ by income, a departure from the past,” adding that “it is increasingly the case that the income groups that most prefer Democratic candidates are the lowest- and highest-income categories.” The changing demographics of the Democratic Party, the same researcher argues, “may make it more difficult to execute an economically redistributive agenda — in an era of rising inequality — since it would have to redistribute away from voters in its own coalition.” Edsall in the New York Times … and a wonky bonus from Edsall’s sources, showing how the Democratic vision shifted: “less-educated individuals prefer “predistribution” (e.g., labor market interventions such as the minimum wage, unions, protectionism, trade policies, and public employment) and well-educated individuals prefer “redistribution” (tax and transfer spending)” – predistribution is a highly visible and cohesive policy array where redistribution is erratically imposed and less visible to modest-information voters.
Union Leaders’ Exit From DNC Exposes ‘Mind-Boggling’ Tensions Inside Democratic Party: Lee Saunders and Randi Weingarten say party not standing up for working people amid ‘existential battle’ under Trump. “As the Democratic party fights to rebuild from a devastating election defeat, the abrupt exit of the presidents of two of the nation’s largest labor unions from its top leadership board has exposed simmering tensions over the party’s direction. Randi Weingarten (AFT) and Lee Saunders (AFSCME) quit the Democratic National Committee, saying it isn’t doing enough to ‘open the gates’ and win back the support of working-class voters.” Steven Greenhouse in The Guardian, via Portside
The DC Scene report: for something a little lighter, see this report on the local DIY anti-capitalist scene from local alt-pop collective Aunt Katrina. DC’s creative enclaves are frequently the strongest wells of anti-capitalism in the city.
This is the weekly newsletter of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America (MDC DSA), which is produced by
local members of the chapter's Publications working group. The Weekly Update publishes every Friday at
9am.
Paid for by Metro DC DSA (mdcdsa.org). Not authorized by any candidate or committee.
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The flame of thought, the magnificence of art, the wonder of discovery, and the audacity of invention
all belong to revolutionary periods when humanity, tired of its chains, shatters them and stops inebriated to
breathe the breeze of a vast and free horizon. - Virgilia D'Andrea
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