Ten years ago, while socialist Bernie Sanders was making his historic run for the Democratic presidential nomination that drew millions of supporters and promised a “political revolution” to live long past his campaign, I was part of a small revolutionary organization that pooh-poohed him as a faux renegade.

The socialist left at the time had been largely marginal to the American political landscape. This was not only because so few socialists sat in political offices. Organized socialists were unable to insert our ideas, strategies, or demands beyond small meetings and study groups, only occasionally influencing national discourse by being part of movements that showed themselves on the street in mass numbers. But movements naturally ebb and flow, and in their absence, much of the Left would retreat back into itself time and again.

In 2016, Bernie Sanders showed that socialists could be relevant to mainstream discourse, could move the needle on major policy issues, and could do so on the basis of a class politics that resonates widely and deeply around the country. Though he didn’t win that primary nor the following one in 2020, Bernie’s runs transformed the mainstream political landscape and, along with it, the organized left.

The section of the Left that threw itself in with Bernie’s campaigns — most significantly, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) — grew exponentially in both numbers and influence and developed a deep well of experience and savvy. The section of the Left that scorned his campaigns in favor of independence from the Democratic Party and time-honored revolutionary principles stagnated or fell apart, leaving DSA and electoral projects at the forefront of an ascendant movement.

The Left was thus reorganized to take the lead from Bernie’s “political revolution,” where electoralism was one important piece of a broad strategy to contend for power and build a mass politics. Ten years on, that political revolution continues to grow, while the approach of smaller socialist sects that had characterized so much of the pre-2016 left has receded into the background. We need not return to the path of permanent outsiders ever again.

With DSA a powerful political force in the country and democratic socialist elected officials making concrete strides forward for working people, the intraleft debates that surfaced in 2016 are largely settled. They offer important lessons about the pitfalls of a sectarian approach that places organizational identity above building the biggest and most powerful left and holds rigidly onto traditional principles above shifting political realities.

Article posted 11 days ago.

"Pastoral colonialism" is being utilized to expel Palestinians.

Deliberately using sheep to expel Palestinians from the West Bank in order to create easier settlement for the colonialists.

"Israeli sheep farms have taken over huge swathes of land: an estimated 20% of the West Bank. Some 200 sheep farms have popped up in recent years. Settlers even push sheep into Palestinian homes." Having animal farms makes it easier to control large swaths of land in the West Bank for the zionists.

Other news mentioned in the article from Nov. 27, 2025 also mentions a case where two Palestinians were executed after they surrendered to the Israeli colonialists. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-soldiers-execute-palestinian-men-surrender-west-bank-jenin-video-btselem/

The One Democratic State Initiative is a Palestinian political organization working to revive the historical Palestinian vision for liberation —a single Palestinian state, for all of its citizens— and to mobilize individuals, entities and political parties, in Palestine and abroad, behind it.

Hasnieh Al-Natsheh and Alain Alameddine, two of its coordinators, are ready to answer your questions up until midnight, Occupied Palestine time. They'll make sure to answer any remaining questions tomorrow. Check out our website and ask away!

As much as US Democratic Socialism is focused on the fucked domestic situation, it seems like the problem of international imperialism is the corpse under the floorboards of US leftism, and I've been online enough listening to more revolutionary strains to know we ignore the terrible beating of its tell-tale heart; and to our peril,

I'm not just talking about Palestine, I'm talking about the larger issues that keep getting brought up about the supply chain and the various Horrors therein and how the US encourages the horrors to keep cheap materials flowing to capital.

In particular, the argument that domestic improvements without revolution would just lead to more abuse of the global south by megacorps because Line Must Go Up, and then the imperial boomerang comes back and starts this all over, haunts me.

Ditto to the idea that I've seen that folks like Zohran and AOC will inevitably be corrupted by the system no matter what they, or what even the activists in the DSA, do to push back, which I hear haunting me every time they get super loud over a (Usually urging us to ditch any ideas of electoral power for only external structures) and my memory of the history of how activist movements in my lifetime (I was born in 1992) have constantly been crushed and failed to change anything beyond cultural issues for the better at-scale and how the Dems fucking us and subverting people who go against them has been a huge part of that.

And, while I'm critical of large portions of folks with revolutionary tendencies (But not all) for not caring for/actively negating those who need help now in favor of a generational hail-mary of a project*, I don't think the problems they bring up are easily dismissable, because I'm someone with a working conscience who doesn't want to e one of those assholes who anonymize the people of the Global South, and I know enough about post World War II history to see where they're coming from.

So I want to know, what's the specifically DemSoc solutions to the problems that keep getting brought up, both in larger theory and in practical policies to fight for and structures of power to build, that don't say full violent overthrow is the only way?

Or at least show how utilizing state power to; say; unfuck SSI or give medicare for all doesn't necessarily lead to the further destruction of the Global South as corpos try to find a way to make up the "lost" profits?

*And also for them treating people with scrupulosity issues like myself online like Democrats treat small donors, but that's its own ramble.

I'm so glad the Dems decided not to run any candidate in Nebraska & let instead a Left-Populist Independent with a spine like Dan Osborn kick Pete Ricketts' ass 😭😭