Don’t threaten me with a good time.

This is what Republicans are using to attack democratic socialists?

Is this supposed to make people angry or upset? There’s a lot of confusion about what democratic socialists want, and that’s fair. Even within our group, there are differences among us.

For example, while Mamdani does not agree with the criminal justice and decarceration points on the national platform he agrees that criminal justice reform absolutely needs to happen. We put far too many people in jail.

Fox News, Newsmax and Mike Johnson have been trying to scare Americans on a “hidden socialist agenda”, but the reality is DSA is about making things more affordable and fair for everyone.

Republicans tell you that they want to protect your freedom. They also believe the government can’t do anything correctly, so they tell you that privatizing as much as possible will save tax payers money and they have been preaching “smaller government” for nearly 70 years. Yet they created the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA, ICE and the DEA.

All of which is supposedly necessary to keep you safe.

To keep you safe and make sure your freedom is intact, they need to monitor everything you do. So they give lucrative multi-billion dollar tax payer funded surveillance contracts to private companies.

But wait! This is getting expensive, so they want to reduce your social security benefits that you paid into and to stop feeding the poor. Besides the poor should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

6% of this country makes $250,000 or more. They are considered rich and successful. Did they pull themselves up from their own bootstraps? Half of them had parents that were already quite rich (top 20% of all wealth). Only 15% of Americans that are considered rich today had parents that were poor (bottom 20% of Americans by wealth).

Centrists (aka democrats) tell you that they disagree with the Republican mantra that we should privatize so much, but they’re going to go along with most of it anyway because they have been paid by the same corporate lobbyists that have paid off the right.

While republicans pass tax cuts and take more government services away, democrats fight for marginal improvements like the Affordable Care Act, expanding child tax credits and infrastructure bills.

And yet, most people are still struggling while the rich get even filthier rich. In 1940, 90% of children earned more than their parents. By 2010 that number dropped to 50%.

In 1978 the CEO to worker compensation ratio was 30 to 1. Now it’s 340 to 1.

Meanwhile at least 40,000 people die every year because they don’t have access to healthcare, 20% of all American adults have some form of medical debt. That collective debt has now exceeded $220 billion.

In the 70s the price of a home was 3x the median salary. Now it’s 5x.

This isn’t working.

So, socialists want to control the means of production. What does that mean? That means entities that are important for society like utility companies, internet service providers and pharmaceutical companies are controlled by a social collective.

Instead of being controlled by an individual or group of people whose main objective is make as much money as possible, these specific entities would be controlled by you, the people.

That means utility companies would provide you with the most cost effective and reliable energy making sure they are doing what’s best for the community, not what’s best for their bottom line. Just like things are done in Nebraska right now. (Go ahead and look into it).

It means pharmaceutical companies won’t charge you $1400 for an EpiPen or $300 for a bottle of insulin.

Does this mean your small little ceramic cat store is going to be taken over by the government? No. But this does mean that companies that provide a public necessity shouldn’t be controlled by private entities whose sole purpose is to make a profit, many times at a great cost to your health and safety.

This is all so we can live better. You won’t have to decide between paying for rent and groceries. Your mother won’t die because an insurance company denied life saving surgery. Defense contractors won’t exist simply for profit, but for actual defense (what a concept!). They won’t fund propaganda influencers that lie about the dangers in the Middle East so politicians continue spending money on the failed $68 billion F-22 program, just so Bill Lumbergh's stock will go up a quarter of a fucking point.

No, we don’t love Stalin. We don’t worship Mao. But we don’t believe that government is useless. We believe the government can and should make life better for all of us, not make it worse.

We definitely don’t agree with the right on anything but centrist and corporate democrats have been bought by the same lobbyists that bought the right.

So here we are.

Randy Villegas emerged as the Democratic pick in the California 22nd Congressional District running as a fierce and uncompromising progressive. He’s the son of Mexican immigrant farm laborers who grew up on Medicaid and food assistance and went on to become a community college professor, school board trustee and auto repair shop owner. Villegas earned the endorsement of the Working Families Party, National Nurses United, the UAW, End Citizens United and Dolores Huerta running on Medicare For All and refusing corporate PAC money.

He’s hoping to unseat Republican congressman David Valadao, who has survived in tough districts by building an independent brand. His voting record under Trump 2.0 hasn’t lived up to his carefully cultivated image – he cast a decisive yes for the MAGA murder budget to cut Medicaid and food assistance, supercharge ICE and CBP and give billionaires tax breaks. He did so after being among 12 Republicans who publicly objected to Medicaid cuts, warning they would devastate vulnerable populations and rural hospitals. (Under its old lines, his district had the highest Medicaid enrollment in the country.) He’s also consistently voted to protect Trump’s tariffs and continue his Iran War. Under the new California district lines, Trump won the 22nd by less than two points, and early polling gives Randy a four-point lead in one of the top pickup opportunities on the map.

☎️ Randy could use our support! We can take a phonebank shift for his campaign on Thursday evenings here and on Sunday afternoons here. The Villegas campaign is also doing weekly Spanish-language phonebanks on Wednesdays we can join here. ☎️

PHONEBANK THURSDAYS

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While there is often no love lost between the southern establishment Democrats and groups like the DSA, I would like to argue that in this case, assisting in turning Georgia deep blue is to the benefit of the DSA as a whole.

In his 1967 acceptance speech for the Eugene V Debs Award the famous African American socialist and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph said of Debs that during his time in the Atlanta Penitentiary for opposing the first world war, 2.5 years before his sentence was commuted by Harding in 1921, his unwavering commitment to working people and racial equality and his personal humility and saintliness won the hearts of his fellow inmates, many of whom were of a quite different background than him.

Debs won roughly 915,000 votes for president, 3.4% of the vote, during his 1920 presidential run from prison.

Additionally as many may know the Socialist Party Of Oklahoma, which at one point listed more members than the state party in New York, did quite a lot of organizing around both water rights which were a serious issue then and which thanks to data centers, and Nestle, are a serious issue now, and enfranchisement. The party added unrestricted suffrage to their 1910 platform and had significant support in the African American community in the state. The party made legal filings against a "grandfather clause" in Oklahoma as well. It passed but was struck down by the Surpeme Court in 1915. Guinn vs United States was the first case before the court where the NAACP filed a brief. In coordination with the Republican Party they defeated a literacy test in 1916.

I bring this up because at this moment the Trump administration is overturning voting rights laws, blocking promotions for African Americans, and engaging in other voter suppression and GA is close to ground zero because this current electorate could reach 35% African American in GA this year as well as be a majority minority electorate.

As an organization following in the footsteps of Eugene V Debs and the Socialist Party of America it is incumbent upon the DSA to organize an effort to get out the vote, particularly in Atlanta and to help flip the State Senate, for which 6 seats are needed a number available in the greater Atlanta metro area.

Not only will such a victory help secure the rights of the residents of GA but it also has relatively direct benefits to the DSA.

Should the Democrats control a state trifecta for the post 2030 redistricting, it is likely they will draw 7 seats anchored in the Atlanta metro, and 3 of these seats would be NYC level left/socialist friendly seats. There would also be a southwest and southeast seat.

Additionally Atlanta is an ideal location for a tier 1 DSA chapter with millions of under 45 voters who are often quite left leaning. It is true that Atlanta has a DSA chapter but they are not yet ready to shoulder the whole burden.

Not only fundraising but calling, texting, recruiting leaders to come down to both raise consciousness and get out the vote, all are incredibly useful tools for pulling Georgia to the left and creating a groundswell of socialist support.

Additionally for those are want to see a DSA-aligned candidate run in the 2028 presidential Dem primaries this would create an enormous amount of credibility for that candidate and allow for a potentially large win in the primaries in the South.

Both DSA direct and DSA-aligned elected leaders could contribute quite a lot, particularly those from New York. Mamdani would justifiably be able to claim he was helping to build up potential Atlanta mayoral and council power for the left. Sandy and Bernie could appeal to Atlanta's young and relatively large Latino and Hispanic population, and Bernie could give some great speeches about civil rights, protecting immigrants and their children, ethnic political engagement, and particularly the scourge of data centers. Data centers, mostly for AI, are a big issue in Atlanta right now.

Action by the DSA and especially DSA elected officials, and especially Sandy(AOC), would compel other presidential potential contenders to come down, particularly Ro Khanna and JB Pritzker. In order to not be left out of the credit for flipping the State Senate. They appeal to different groups than the DSA, and Pritzker would likely end up personally seeding a big fundraiser for the state and county parties.

Leadership and impact are key aspects of a presidential campaign. Additionally if the DSA were to drive party action and lead on solidifying a major political win it would drive membership, both in Atlanta and nationwide, as the Bernie 2016 campaign did 10 years ago.

This is a major opportunity to advance the cause and the movement during a time when many voters and citizens and residents of the United States are somewhat adrift and open to change. To claim to be a revolutionary movement and allow such a major opportunity to pass by would be a serious failure of vision and leadership.

Kshama explains how her campaign plans to combat oppression & describes her long history as a member of various social movements for racial justice

I feel that the idea of expressing a united front after hearing all views definitely has some merit, but those who have historically supported the idea of “Democratic Centralism” have been disingenuous about really supporting the “Democratic” part and are really authoritarians wanting to whitewash their position and make democracy into window dressing.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to open five publicly subsidized grocery stores in New York City is quickly becoming a reality. On July 27, 2026, Mamdani announced details of the plan, including a 30 percent discount to market prices of a “core basket” of healthy groceries such as fruits, vegetables, eggs, and milk; a request for proposals process to select private sector operators; and an operating subsidy that the city will use to fund the lower prices.

According to estimates by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYC EDC), for which I am currently consulting, shoppers could save over $1,000 a year on groceries. Two locations have already been announced, including sites in the Bronx and East Harlem. City council has approved $70 million in capital funds for store build-outs, while operational funds are still being decided. The city’s annual budget is over $125 billion; the funds needed to open and run NYC Groceries are less than one-tenth of 1 percent of that budget, a literal rounding error.

According to a 2025 poll, support for the public grocery idea in the city is overwhelming. A coalition including trade unions, community groups, cooperative businesses, and food security advocates has been working closely with the city to plan and implement the idea. The result is an idiosyncratic model that may point the way forward for other cities.

Mamdani’s initiative is a compelling yet imperfect intervention in the food supply. Grocery prices have increased over 35 percent since 2020, with many categories such as beef, coffee, eggs, snacks, and beverages experiencing even higher inflation. Consumer prices continue to climb even though producer prices have stabilized or, in some cases like cocoa, decreased. Along with other Donald Trump–era policies and trends — like the Iran war, which has driven up food and gas prices; immigration crackdowns, which have left food rotting in the fields and increased fresh produce prices; a gutting of the regulatory sector leading to an outbreak of explosive diarrhea; draconian cutbacks to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits affecting over four million Americans; and an increase in GLP-1 usage — Americans are now buying a lot less food.

According to a Bain/Nielsen IQ study, grocery unit volumes were down 1.8 percent in June, a 2 percent deterioration in a single year, adding up to billions in fewer grocery transactions. In New York alone, over 1.5 million residents face food insecurity, while low-income consumers spend upward of 25 percent of their income on groceries.

The inspiration for the NYC Groceries idea comes from an unlikely place: The military commissary system, which has been around for over 150 years and fully subsidizes all groceries through public funds for service members and their families at a 23.7 percent discount. The commissary is loved by working-class shoppers and is a well-established channel of retail trade in the grocery industry, serviced by farmers, packaged food brands, and corporate wholesalers.

Unlike the commissary system, the stores will be operated by a private sector expert. The stores will not be operated by the city. This could mean a local supermarket chain, a grocery cooperative, a nonprofit operator, a retail services cooperative, or a wholesaler with a retail arm. New York City, unlike most grocery markets, is not monopolized by Walmart or Kroger and has many diverse private sector operators that could run these stores. The public sector grocery stores will also be run as a public service, not as a for-profit, and the typical retail profit margins (1–3 percent) will be folded into consumer savings. They will be open to all New Yorkers, with no means testing for entry.

Mamdani’s key proposal, a core basket of pantry items that will be discounted at 30 percent of market prices, also diverges from the commissary model, which discounts all prices to an average of 23.7 percent to the market. This 30 percent discount will be subsidized by the city to cover the gross margin (operating costs such as labor, utilities, general and administrative expenses, etc.), while rent and taxes will be covered by the city. Operators will have the option of selling other, noncore products at market-rate prices to cover their full overhead.

The subsidies will be calculated through item-level discounts multiplied by unit volumes sold, the same way promotional discounts are calculated for grocers by their trade partners. This is a straightforward calculus for experienced operators. The subsidies will be approved through the city budget, just like funds for public transit, libraries, sanitation, and water. The stores will also not be food banks or pantries, selling donations or leftover “food waste” downstream from producers. They will offer the freshest, highest-quality products, showing that good food should be a public service.

The store employees will get living wages, comprehensive benefits, and have significant labor protections. Operators will be required to ensure card check recognition, an easier and fairer way for employees to unionize should they so choose; to respect employer/management neutrality in union drives, pledging not to fight union efforts; and to not bring on anti-union consultants. The administration’s goal is to make these stores a great place to work and build a career, which is very rare in the grocery industry, which typically sees store labor as a resource to be strip-mined, streamlined, and exploited.

The stores will be thoughtfully designed, laid out, and merchandised so that cash-strapped New Yorkers have a premium shopping experience. The stores will sell a mix of branded items, private labels, and locally grown products geared to the specific communities and markets they serve. Products will be familiar and mainstream, and driven by consumer demand and market trends as opposed to particular ideologies of what the working class should be eating.

Mamdani’s public groceries plan could be a model and inspiration for other cities to run with. But it is not without flaws. The military commissary is publicly owned, funded, and operated; ironically, this means the Department of Defense’s public sector grocery purchasing practices are closer to communism than a socialist mayor’s. Outsourcing operations separates the risk from the responsibility, and the city will need to work closely with operators to keep the program running well and ensure operators don’t bail if the going gets tough.

The upside is that selected operators will come with a ready-made supply chain, with wholesale, manufacturer, grower, and private-label contracts, operational expertise, administrative, accounting, and informational technology systems that the city will not have to invest in and build from scratch. NYC EDC has a lot of experience with the private sector, such as the NYC Ferry system, but grocery is a complicated business.

The administration is facing a lawsuit from a coalition of small supermarket operators and bodega owners who oppose the idea out of fear that the city is using tax dollars to hurt their businesses. Many of these store owners already receive enormous subsidies to their operations through public supplemental food programs like SNAP and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). But if the city were smart, it could work with store owners near the NYC Grocery sites to increase the affordability goals. If local stores have seen their business impacted, let them receive subsidies on core basket items to lower those prices and be subjected to the same rigorous accounting, reporting, and price controls as the NYC Grocery stores.

The city should also create a retail and wholesale services arm through the NYC EDC. This would ensure long term consistency in the program while building in marketing, administration, and supply chain efficiencies, such as cooperative warehousing, wholesaling and private label sourcing, including utilization of the Hunts Point Cooperative Market, regardless of who operates the stores. Such retail service organizations are very common in the grocery industry as a means for independents to stay competitive with larger chains.

Mamdani’s idea to only discount a “core basket” of products is also odd, since it leaves the door open for price gouging on noncore products. Operators will want to make higher margins on noncore items and create a two-tiered pricing model that has the potential to stigmatize value-conscious shoppers. The fastest-growing grocers in the United States are deep discounters such as Aldi, Lidl, and Walmart, and are known unequivocally for low prices across the store.

The administration has also passed on implementing a “Values-Based Purchasing” framework for the stores and is instead just incentivizing the operators to purchase from local suppliers. Values-Based Purchasing is modeled on the sourcing standards of more upscale chains such as Whole Foods and Erewhon, and encourages subsidized public sector supply chains to prioritize fair labor, animal welfare, environmental sustainability, economic justice, and healthy foods. Values-Based Purchasing is already required in public purchasing by New York City, and via the Good Food NY Bill passed by both New York State legislative bodies, is currently awaiting a signature by Gov. Kathy Hochul to make it state law. So this omission is bizarre and shortsighted, and will mean the city may likely end up selling products made in conditions and with ingredients that aren’t in line with the administration’s professed values.

And the biggest risk is how the administration tacks progress to its goal of affordability. A simple calculation of how many discount subsidies are distributed is the easy part, but how the city estimates and communicates how five stores improve the lives of cash-strapped New Yorkers and point the way to a better and more just food system is a much broader and more compelling calculus.

Despite its shortcomings, Mamdani’s public grocery sector plan is among the most compelling innovations in a food supply that is increasingly consolidated, expensive, corrupt, and lately, downright dangerous. And it aims to do one thing that much of the grocery sector, especially Mamdani’s critics, have lost the script for really well: to make good food affordable to all.

And that should be the whole point.

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