ared Abbott argues that rebuilding a working-class political majority in the U.S. requires more than union organizing or local experiments; it needs a supportive political and legal environment, economic populist candidates, and long-term community engagement. Working-class voters, now increasingly drifting from Democrats—especially non-college-educated and multiracial groups—are crucial for winning national elections and for countering far-right influence in local communities.

Progressives should run candidates who unapologetically challenge corporate power and highlight working-class struggles, as this messaging resonates strongly with these voters. Electing candidates from working-class backgrounds also boosts credibility and advocacy for pro-worker policies. Bold progressive economic platforms—covering wages, labor rights, public investment, and redistribution—are broadly popular among working-class voters, but Democrats often fail to foreground them, allowing conservatives to dominate the economic populist narrative.

Abbott warns against two failed strategies: “Trump Lite” cultural triangulation and passive “rope-a-dope” approaches, emphasizing instead authentic engagement on local terms. Long-term investment in political and civic infrastructure—persistent organizing, local offices, and community services—is critical to rebuild trust in progressive politics. Ultimately, a durable working-class majority depends on combining electoral power, economic populist leadership, and sustained local presence to deliver meaningful material improvements and reshape political expectations.

https://jacobin.com/2025/10/working-class-strategy-dealignment-populism/

Perhaps most consequentially, Israel is now dramatically reducing the amount of aid that it will allow to enter the strip, dropping the total number of permitted daily truckloads from 600 — the amount aid officials say is needed to help alleviate famine — to 300.

Israel claims that this reduced number of trucks will carry only humanitarian aid. But Al Jazeera reported Thursday that many of the shipments have contained commercial products, which are unaffordable for the vast majority of Gazans. Meanwhile, Israel has continued to carry out attacks within Gaza, killing at least nine Palestinians who allegedly got too close to Israeli military facilities in the strip.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/gaza-ceasefire-deal/

Trump-led appropriations bills have also starved maritime capacity. In Trump’s most recent appropriations bill, the Small Shipyard Grant Program, one of the few federal mechanisms for helping grow shipbuilding capacity, received $8.75 million, a record low and less than half of the $21 million it received during the Biden administration.

For shipyards competing against heavily subsidized foreign rivals, these grants often determine whether they can afford to modernize equipment like cranes and welding machines or fall further behind. Demand for the grants has consistently exceeded supply, with applications surpassing available funds by more than five times. Underfunding the program not only reduces its effectiveness but also signals a retreat at a time when foreign shipyards are receiving significant government support.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/10/09/trump-shipbuilding-failure/

«Le fiamme distrussero l’abitazione intera», scrive la premier nella sua autobiografia “Io sono Giorgia”. «No, i danni riguardavano una finestra», dice chi ha comprato l’immobile subito dopo. I ricordi del portinaio: quando arrivarono i vigili del fuoco lo trovarono con una pompa in mano mentre era intento a disperdere il fumo, le fiamme erano divampate solo nella cameretta e rovinato la finestra. Forse una porta.

https://www.editorialedomani.it/fatti/meloni-io-sono-giorgia-incendio-casa-roma-underdog-governo-y8v9ogjo

In Chicago, former Harold Washington ran on a very similar social democratic platform during his 1983 mayoral campaign. Once he assumed office, Chicago’s business elite blocked his attempts to expand public programs and redistribute wealth. He eventually compromised with capital in hopes that maintaining investment in the city would generate a large enough tax base to fund a robust social safety net.

Young argues that progressive parliamentary politics cannot meet the challenge of capital strikes without the support of a militant working-class movement on the ground. For Mamdani to implement even part of his agenda, the Left will need to mobilize ordinary New Yorkers on a mass scale. As a member of NYC-DSA himself, Mamdani has a background in democratic movement politics, and members of DSA and the broader left helped propel his campaign to victory over Cuomo. He may be able to lean on these organizations for political capital — for instance, to build and mobilize support across the city for his agenda in the face of opposition by “moderate” local and state lawmakers.

Bernie Sanders, as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, was essentially forced to construct a “parallel city government” to counteract a hostile city council’s attempts to undermine his ability to govern. Mamdani and his supporters should take lessons from Sanders’s mayoralty to heart; a recent rally in Brooklyn with Sanders suggests that the would-be mayor is doing so.

But this is only half the battle. Because of the threat of capital strikes as well as the influence of corporate lobbies and the large donors who fund most political campaigns, political and economic elites only begin to accept significant popular reforms when discontent with the status quo reaches a critical level. Socialist organizers and politicians can help channel discontent into tangible demands, like those in Mamdani’s platform, and as mayor, Mamdani can use his institutional platform to give these demands greater political legitimacy.

Grassroots organizations like DSA can, in turn, give him leverage in negotiations with the state legislature and the governor through strategic demonstrations, legislative pressure campaigns, and primary challenges against intransigent lawmakers. This dynamic can create a mutually reinforcing relationship between Mamdani’s office and his grassroots supporters.

Organized labor can also play a critical role in creating bottom-up pressure, despite the preemptions of post-Taft-Hartley American labor law. While unions are legally barred from engaging in strike activity as political advocacy, it hasn’t stopped labor from using its collective power to push for political change. Cross-union coalitions like Labor for Palestine, for example, are currently mobilizing members to pressure their unions to divest their pension funds from Israeli apartheid. And networks of union members can organize and participate in mass demonstrations in support of progressive policy issues — just last year, UAW Labor for Palestine members participated in mass protests against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress.

Unions also often mobilize their members to pack city council meetings as a pressure tactic to win stronger statutory protections for workers’ rights.

https://jacobin.com/2025/10/mamdani-nyc-mayor-labor-dsa/

- residents are distributing “Know Your Rights” information and our regional ICE-sighting hotline number through door-to-door canvassing
- Our Northwest Side Rapid Response group, a coalition of neighborhood-based organizations, elected officials, and area residents, has formed patrols and teams that monitor and respond to immigration enforcement activity in our neighborhoods
- responding to ICE presence in their neighborhoods, protecting immigrant day laborers and street-food vendors, supporting families impacted by deportation, and creating community alert systems for ICE sightings. When immigration agents started operating near our schools, hundreds of volunteers stepped in to accompany families during student drop-off and dismissal. Recently our groups have created whistle kits to provide to community members so that they can alert their neighbors when they spot ICE.
- Mayor Johnson created the Office of Immigrant, Migrant, and Refugee Rights to coordinate citywide support for immigrant and asylum-seeking families and expand access to legal aid, housing, and health care. Recently he signed a series of executive orders to strengthen Chicago’s sanctuary protections and push back against federal immigration overreach and the deployment of the National Guard. One of these executive orders is the new “ICE Free Zone” order, expanding on the “Protecting Chicago” citywide campaign. The order establishes mechanisms to prevent federal immigration agents from using any city-owned property for their operations, a response to recent incidents where ICE agents used Chicago Public Schools parking lots and other city facilities as staging areas.

https://jacobin.com/2025/10/chicago-ice-response-trump-authoritarianism/

1. Strong economic populism has broad and deep support. Economic populist messaging yielded net support of +45 points (defined as the percentage of respondents who support minus those who oppose).
2. The Democratic Party’s brand is a major liability. In head-to-head tests, Democratic candidates underperformed their independent counterparts by more than 8 points, even when delivering the exact same economic populist message.
3. Voter disillusionment with Democrats is more about failure and less about ideological extremism. Across Democrats, independents, and Republicans, many described the party as corrupt, out of touch, unwilling to fight for working people, and not a party for working people. While some of these critiques bled into broader claims that Democrats are focused on the wrong priorities, only small minorities cited “wokeness” or extremism (3% of Democrats, 11% of independents, and 19% of Republicans).
4. The most popular economic policies are bold, tangible, and grounded in fairness — and can unite voters across class and partisan lines. Across twenty-five ranked proposals, policies that reduced costs, curbed corporate abuse, and held elites accountable (capping drug prices, taxing the wealthy, and even enacting a federal jobs guarantee) consistently performed best
5. Even an unfamiliar, ambitious proposal to ban mass layoffs by federal contractors enjoys strong support.
6. Independent populist politics may offer a credible path forward. Across the four Rust Belt states we surveyed, 57% of respondents supported the creation of a new Independent Workers Political Association (IWPA), with especially strong enthusiasm among noncollege voters, renters, voters of color, and the economically insecure. The idea of an IWPA drew significant support from Republicans and independents as well — suggesting a realignment opportunity grounded in economic populism.

https://jacobin.com/2025/10/economic-populism-rust-belt-report/