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When Democratic Socialist candidates won June 23 primaries in New York, Pennsylvania and Colorado, response from congressional Democratic leadership was somewhat muted. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer cited wins by centrist Democrats in June primaries. House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters that New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani, who backed Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates, needs to make amends with the party. “He’s got work to do in terms of the conversations he’s going to have with members of Congress moving forward,” Jeffries said. DSA members and many political pundits saw something different in the primaries — the first in which four DSA members won Democratic primaries for Congressional seats and dozens of others for local legislative seats: a mandate for change. “The people just spoke,” said Doug Chavez, a Bronx-born political strategist who has worked on campaigns in New York and in Boston. “Voters want ideas. They don’t just want to hear how you’re better than Trump. They want to know how you’re going to help the average voter.” Democrats across the nation are struggling with the question of how to respond to the growing appeal of DSA candidates, who typically run on the Democratic tickets and push platforms that take aim at hedge funds, private equity investors and America’s military aid to Israel — positions that put them at odds with influential donors to the party. While Boston hasn’t seen a DSA-endorsed candidate win since Kendra Lara was elected to the Council in 2021, Somerville and Cambridge have notched wins with a handful of candidates and, in the former, a successful ballot resolution calling on the city to boycott and divest from companies that “engage in business that sustains Israel’s apartheid, genocide and illegal occupation of Palestine.” Bonnie Jin, former co-chair of the Boston chapter of DSA, says that while the organization hasn’t fielded candidate in the Hub since former City Councilor Kendra Lara won a seat in 2022, membership in the chapter — which includes Boston and surrounding communities — has increased from 1,800 members to more than 2,900 over the last year. That increase in membership speaks to a growing discontent with the status quo, according to Jin. “I’m a Gen Z person,” she said. “Our generation is going to be worse off than our parents’ generation. I think we have a different perspective. People know things have to change at a pace that we’re not now seeing.” Voters v. Beacon Hill The neoliberal ideals held by the state’s political leadership are increasingly coming into conflict with a growing progressive leaning among voters. While Gov. Healey and legislative leadership are opposed to rent control, voters polled this year showed support for such measures as high as 62%. Months after Massachusetts voters in 2022 voted 52% in favor of the so-called millionaires tax, Gov. Maura Healey and Beacon Hill lawmakers passed legislation cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations. “Instead of working on affordability for working people, they’ve shifted their emphasis to competitiveness for corporations,” DSA member Harris Gruman said of the Legislature. “The biggest crisis in Massachusetts is wealth inequality. The wealthy are getting wealthier. The rest of us are in crisis. People are struggling to pay rent.” Although Massachusetts is known nationally as a blue state with a Democratic supermajority in the Legislature, an all-Democratic congressional delegation, governor and all-Democratic slate of constitutional officers, progressive change agents face an uphill battle in their quest for reforms here. Key elements of the agenda pushed by the group Progressive Massachusetts have been blocked or stalled by legislative leadership — Corporate Fair Share tax reform legislation; real estate transfer fees; rent stabilization; a moratorium on the construction of new prisons; the Location Shield Act, which would bar companies from selling location data. Blue cities, purple leadership At the local level, political leadership has similarly been resistant to progressive changes. Police in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge and other local municipalities still share information indirectly with federal immigration officials. The Somerville mayor and city council have refused to implement the voters’ ballot resolution to divest from companies that do business with the Israeli military and in Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has opposed abolishing the police department’s controversial gang database, ordered the arrest of Emerson College students protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and reversed course on supporting a voter-backed return to an elected school committee. Wu met with progressive activists at her campaign office July 1 to solicit ideas for priorities for the next three years of her second term in office, a meeting participants said may have been fueled by the progressive wins in New York. Missing from the conversation were criminal justice reform advocates who in recent years have pressed Wu to make reforms to the city’s police department and members of the Better Budget Alliance who have sought more funding for youth jobs and social services. Several attendees told the Flipside Wu may have had a more narrow political agenda for the meeting. “I think it was a meeting that lacked a clear purpose,” said a participant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The only clear ask was to get people involved with Latoya Gale’s campaign against [Sen.] Nick Collins.” Wu’s electoral activity this year seems aimed squarely at expanding her influence in the state Senate, backing Gayle, her former political advisor Daniel Lander and incumbent Mike Rush, a conservative Democrat facing a challenge from progressive Persis Yu. On the House side, Wu is backing incumbent Marjorie Decker against a challenge from labor organizer Evan MacKay, the sole DSA-backed candidate running this year. A seven-member majority on the City Council regularly backs Wu on issues ranging from the city’s budget to the acceptance of federal funding for policing. The mayor’s grip on the city’s power has seemingly stalled many of the progressive changes that she herself backed as a city councilor. “I think many people can see that Boston — the mayor and City Council — are stagnant,” said Fatema Ahmad, who heads the Muslim Justice League. “For people who call themselves progressive, they haven’t been particularly inspiring.” Ahmed, who was arrested during Wu’s 2024 state of the city speech for demonstrating against Israel’s war on Gaza, notes that few elected officials in Massachusetts have made mention of the ongoing genocide there. “There’s this wave across the country of progressive candidates rising specifically because they’re outspoken about what’s happening in Palestine,” she said. “It’s disappointing to see a lack of mention of it here. Our congressional delegation has been more outspoken than local elected officials.” Change on the horizon? On Beacon Hill, progressive legislation often stalls in the House and Senate, where leadership plays an outsized role in determining what moves forward and what doesn’t. The state’s legislature regularly ranks among the least transparent in the nation. “I think for people who are in elected office, and especially in the Legislature, there are social circles and donors who reinforce a constrained sense of what’s possible to accomplish in this state,” said Jin, the former DSA co-chair. But, Jin says, change could come to Massachusetts sooner than people think, given the heightened sense among voters that politics as usual isn’t working for them. “It wasn’t that long ago that Eric Adams was mayor of New York City,” she said. “The winds are blowing in a certain direction nationally, and in Boston. I’m excited to see what’s possible in this moment.”
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