Author’s Note: This article was written and initially posted to slack prior to the vote for endorsement in the Mayoral election, however due to the author’s laziness it was not finished in time for the prior newsletter. Because the thrust of the article is caution against the socialist electoral project taking executive offices, rather than taking aim against Senator Fateh’s campaign, I have decided to move forward with publishing it. All strength to our endorsed mayoral champion.
On May 15th, 2023 Brandon Johnson, former Chicago Teachers Union staff organizer, endorsed by Our Revolution, Senator Warren (MA), and Senator Sanders (VT), ascended to the Chicago mayorship and quickly became a progressive darling the nation over. In his campaign, Mayor Johnson hammered home the need for alternatives to police in crime prevention, reversing decades of austerity in Chicago’s schools, and proposed a slew of new taxes to raise $1 billion in revenue. During his runoff election against Paul Vellas, Johnson’s campaign was outraised at a ratio of 2:1. Nevertheless he won with 57% of the vote.
As of the writing of this article, Johnson’s approval rating has dropped to 6.6%. In the less than two years since his election, Johnson has tarnished any progressive agenda he has put forward. He forced a measure which would increase transfer taxes on real estate sales over $1 million and use the proceeds for homeless services onto the ballot. It was voted down by 58% in the next municipal election. Last year Johnson ousted the charter school-favoring head of Chicago Public schools Pedro Martinez, but caused an unnecessary scandal by first asking Martinez privately to resign, telling the public he had done no such thing, and then backtracking after Martinez provided evidence to the contrary. In response 41 of the 50 Chicago aldermen signed an open letter criticizing the mayor; notably, many of Johnson’s key allies on the council were signers to the letter.
After sacking Martinez, Johnson appointed progressive Reverend Mitchell Johnson as interim head of CPS. Immediately after the Reverend’s appointment, it came to light that the good minister had defended the Palestinian resistance after October 7th and was a staunch critic of Zionist aggressions. This prompted immediate criticism from the Illinois Governor and elected officials at every level of Chicago politics. Mayor Johnson left the Reverend Johnson out to dry and asked for his resignation within days.
Time after time, Mayor Johnson tried and failed to pass a meaningfully progressive agenda in the city of Chicago. Despite taking the mayorship in a “strong” mayor town, and having the backing of many Chicago councillors, the strongest unions in the city, and the progressive movement as a whole, Johnson has been unable to confront capital and win. In failing again and again he threatens to undo years of base and movement building in Chicago, dragging others down with him. However, I don’t bring up Johnson to paint him as a singularly inept figure. Rather, his inability to overcome the entrenched status quo–despite having power in the form of city mayorship–is downstream of the failure of the broader Left to build enough muscle in Chicago and the mundane budgetary and political constraints faced by any mayor. At the end of the day, Johnson is not a radical socialist, willing to break the rules to enact permanent and lasting change, nor does he have the movement behind him to force capital to accede to those same changes.
My worry is that our TCDSA chapter is on this same path with Senator Omar Fateh’s bid for mayorship of Minneapolis.
I have no bones to pick with Senator Fateh, his policies, his person, or his historical relationship with the chapter. I have been told by other MUG caucus members that he’s a reliable comrade who’s been willing to help and speak with YDSA at the drop of a hat. In this article I am not criticizing Senator Fateh, but rather the idea that now is the time to grasp executive power.
Even if Fateh is elected with a sympathetic city council, a single city cannot challenge capitalism and withstand the reaction of capital and the Democrat Party. Fateh – and socialism – will be blamed for every flaw of the status quo and the disorder caused by capital flight, capital strikes, and sabotage from both parties at every level of government. As a chapter and mayor, we will not have room to maneuver and act unconstrained, but will be bound in the same ways that Johnson in Chicago is bound.
In the best case scenario we are able to be the decisive force in electing Fateh to the mayorship, while at the same time keeping all of our endorsed city councillors, and adding Stevenson to the mix. In this scenario, there is a council coalition of DSA socialists and progressive liberals that is able to reach a majority vote. In the best case scenario, Fateh, Wonsley, and Stevenson all run agitational campaigns that condemn the present order of state and private power, and in doing so are able to effectively recruit more members to our chapter, giving us some extra muscle going into 2026.
After the beginning of this scenario is what I want to focus on. My analysis relies on two assumptions, the first is a hypothesis, but, the second I am rock solid in believing.
My major points of concern are:
- We have the power to prove the decisive factor to electing a candidate.
- We do not have the power to back them up once in office in any meaningful way.
I trust my comrades in the electoral committee to accurately assess the first assumption.
On the second assumption, I want to take a lay of the land, an assessment of what the power of the chapter is right now, and a brief vision of the future.
Let’s start politically. On the federal level, we have a redux of the Trump regime, this time with a more entrenched coterie of “civic” nationalists and right wing blood sucking tech sector moguls compromising the two wings of the inner circle. Already on the chopping block is federal aid for ailing cities, money for bootstrapping new social programs, and Justice Department investigations into corrupt police departments. There will not be increased federal funding for social programs, homeless outreach, or construction of public housing. Much more likely will be petty retaliation against the city which sparked a wave of riots that destabilized the 1st Trump administration and threw the state off balance. The Democrats will actively work against Mayor Fateh as well, as we’ve seen with other national and local examples. Representatives Cori Bush (MS) and Jamaal Bowman (NY) were both ousted in bitter primary fights by a Democrat establishment loath to allow the left any foothold. Colorado lost both of their DSA state house representatives to establishment backed Democrat candidates, Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib had to fight off a deep pocketed primary opponent, and Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in New York City is currently clawing against a Zionist backed lobby and former Governor Cuomo for their mayorship. The DFL will not be coming to help either, we’ve seen DFL candidates instigate supporters to physically threaten our own candidate, Aisha Chughtai, and her supporters at the Minneapolis Ward 10 convention, and Governor Walz has already clashed directly with Senator Fateh, vetoing Fateh’s legislation targeting Uber/Lyft, and going one step further to preempt Minneapolis’ attempt to reign in the ride share companies. In the wake of a self-inflicted electoral loss on the national scale the Democrat party is attempting to shed and shred its left wing.
Economically Minneapolis will, like every other city in the country, face budget challenges due to the collapse of downtown real estate and federal funding cuts.. City revenue projections are dour for the coming years, commercial property taxes are projected to fall significantly and precipitously, hurried along by the pivot of work from home, corporate layoffs and downsizings, the attendant rise in commercial rental vacancies, and the following drop in commercial property assessments. The looming commercial rent crisis is bad enough the city of Minneapolis is currently exploring significant tax breaks for commercial to residential building conversions, in an attempt to staunch the bleeding out of tax revenue. Add to that the mayor’s forking over a sweetheart contract to the police union, locking in millions of dollars of city money to be paid to cops idling their SUVs while they play CandyCrush. The next mayor will have to contend with a tight budget and have to decide which taxes to raise or which services to cut to avoid municipal bankruptcy. In Fateh’s endorsement questionnaire, he answered that he would not seek to cut the police budget, instead he would shunt other, less violent modes of emergency responders under the cop budget. Ultimately he will be working within the bounds of the municipal budget and what the legal order says is possible to do with tax dollars, not radically break with the status quo.
Raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations provides an easy but illusory answer. In the age of the fiber optic cable, interstate highway system, and exurban tract house, it has never been easier for capital flight to take wing. In Seattle several years ago DSA and SAlt attempted to pass a tax to target Amazon and Microsoft HQs. Who would we target in Minneapolis? General Mills and 3M headquarter in the suburbs. Target has offices downtown and a secondary HQ in Coon Rapids that already has a scheduled expansion. Commercial vacancies are growing regionally; what’s to stop a targeted corporation from moving their office a matter of miles into Edina or St Louis Park? What about a progressive property tax or income tax to make up the shortfall? What’s to stop enough, not all, but enough of the local Minneapolis gentry from packing their bags, selling their Lake of the Isles adjacent house and moving to far flung … Minnetonka? Edina? Wayzata? The borders of the city are very porous and quite small; it’s very easy to imagine capital flight in response to mild reform and taxation.
In Johnson’s case, he at least has the backing of CTU, Chicago’s most powerful union. Do we have something similar in Minneapolis? MFT is admirable, but Fateh isn’t one of them in the way Johnson is one of CTU. The building trade unions are a key component of physically building a better Minneapolis, but they are already falling in line behind Frey. Unions in this town couldn’t pull their heads out of their asses enough to organize a compression strike in 2024 and don’t have the socialist inoculation to stand steadfastly behind calls for ceasefire in Gaza. The Union Working Group project of the labor branch is still in the process of tilling the soil and planting seeds, we don’t have the organization and cohesion in any union to bring it out in the streets in support of a socialist mayor facing backlash. In five years I hope to have fruit to bear before the chapter, but in this next year we have no leverage there.
Imagine these factors coming to a head in 2026, under a Fateh mayorship. With tight fiscal budgets and a sluggish economy, where are we going to find money for funding a radical change in the city, without causing capital flight? Where are we going to find the resolve to withstand constant and repeated criticism? Imagine the furor caused by our statements in the wake of October 7th but every week for 4 years, directed at our chapter, mayor, and council members over every single issue. When MPS is unable to, once again, adequately upgrade its HVAC systems to handle warming summers, who are parents going to blame? When city workers demand justly deserved raises to deal with spikes in inflation, but the police contract has erased any gains made in revenue raising, who is going to take the blame? Do we have the power to restrain Target if they threaten to move their HQ outside of the city in response to a targeted tax? Do we have the power to restrain enough of the city council in response to Target’s threats?
Moreover, when (not if) Minneapolis police kill another black person, who will people remember as the Mayor who was unable, seemingly unwilling, to restrain the police under his nominal control. How on Earth do we explain to workers that Fateh does run the police department and would not commit to cutting police funding, but he and socialism should not be associated with the murder? Who will be held accountable for the everyday miseries of the status quo and capitalism more broadly?
What happens when we get a socialist elected to executive office, where the ability to be oppositional becomes a knife’-edge-wide path to be balanced across, where everything wrong in the city is their fault, and people’s lives don’t get better? I am doubtful we as a chapter have the power or willingness to break through the status quo and create a positive legacy to a socialist mayorship.
By Austin B