In recent days, I have seen fellow union members declare that they can't vote for Zohran Mamdani for mayor because he is a democratic socialist.
As educators, we strive to be knowledgeable about the issues on which we pronounce. In this spirit, let me share my perspective on this question.
If Mamdani is elected mayor, as it now looks he will be, he will not be the first democratic socialist elected as the mayor of New York City.
New York City's first Black mayor, David Dinkins, was also a democratic socialist. Ruth Messinger, who was the Democratic candidate for mayor in 1997, was a democratic socialist. And New York City's greatest mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, who was elected to Congress on the Socialist Party line before he was elected mayor, was a democratic socialist.
That is only the beginning of the story.
The founders and generations of leaders of our union, the United Federation of Teachers, were almost universally democratic socialists.
Henry Linville, Abe Lefkowitz, Henrietta Rodman, Leonora O'Reilly, John Dewey, Layle Lane, Si Beagle, Florence Gitlin, Rebecca Simonson, Dave Wittes, Ben Mazen, Charlie Cogen, Dave Selden, Ely Trachtenberg, George Altomare, Al Shanker, and Sandy Feldman were all democratic socialists.
Every right and every benefit you enjoy as a union member you have because these democratic socialists fought for them and built the UFT into a powerful union.
The best friends our union ever had -- Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King -- were democratic socialists.
"Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism," King would tell the Negro American Labor Council in 1961, "but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.” The "Beloved Community" which King frequently espoused was based on the principles of democratic socialism.
Like trade unionists, democratic socialists believe in the principle of solidarity -- all for one, and one for all -- and in promoting the common good.
Democratic socialists extend the democratic principles we accept as foundational in government -- liberty, equality, justice -- to all spheres of society, especially the economy.
A strong and robust public sphere -- public education, public health, public libraries, public transportation, public housing, public safety -- are especially important to democratic socialists, because they are the means by which our society provides economic opportunity and security for all.
Public education is our society's primary vehicle for education into democratic citizenship. That is why teacher unionists always find democratic socialists at our side when we defend public education.
What is more, the social welfare safety net programs we enjoy today -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, to name just the better known -- started out as ideas of democratic socialists, and then were taken up by the New Deal and the Great Society. Without democratic socialists, they may never have come into existence.
If you think that socialism is an evil, then it is time to stop cashing your Social Security check and using Medicare as your health insurance.
I call myself a democratic socialist as well as a teacher unionist, in the tradition of men and women who were both.
John Dewey, Layle Lane, and Florence Gitlin are my beacons.
For those not familiar with the latter two of this troika, let me briefly fill you in. Like me, Lane was a high school Social Studies teacher; an African American, she was a leader in the NYC Teachers Union, the Teachers Guild, and the AFT, and a close friend and ally of A. Philip Randolph. It was her leadership that made the AFT the only educational organization and union to file an amicus brief in the Brown v. Board of Education case, and to be the first AFL union to expel segregated locals. Gitlin was a middle school Math teacher and union activist in NYC who during the 1930s travelled a number of times to Germany to aid the underground anti-fascist resistance; when her contacts were discovered and arrested, she was tried in abstentia by the Nazis.) I am proud to claim them as my models.
There are attempts to smear Mamdani and authentic democratic socialists as authoritarian, as Communist. But we call ourselves DEMOCRATIC socialists for a reason: we believe in democracy as a means and an end, and see democratic socialism as the full flowering of democracy.
We are the first to oppose authoritarian regimes which claim to be socialist.
The history of democratic socialist parties around the world -- such as the Scandinavian social democratic parties in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, UK's Labour, Canada's New Democrats, France's Socialists, Germany's Social Democrats, Greece's Syriza, Italy's Democratic Party, Brazil's Workers Party, and Mexico's Morena -- bear this out. There is certainly an authoritarian threat in our moment, but it comes from Washington DC, in the form of Trump and MAGA, and not from democratic socialists.
Mamdani's program is in the tradition of democratic socialism, centered on making the City an affordable place for working people, including educators. It is remarkable to me how the quite modest and sensible proposals of Mamdani are being talked about in apocalyptic terms.
New York City had had some form of rent regulation for over a century now, with rents for the entire city frozen during WW II. As recently as the Di Blasio administration, rents were frozen in three years -- 2015, 2016 and 2020. But Mamdani's proposal to freeze the rent in "rent stabilized" apartments -- about 4 in 10 NYC rentals -- is greeted as if it would be the economic end of times.
Those who have had no problems with three decades of Staten Islanders riding for free on the Staten Island Ferry are suddenly in a complete and utter panic about extending that same privilege to working people riding NYC buses in the other four boroughs. (It is pretty hard to find an explanation for this other than it has something to do with whom will be riding for free.)
Those who have an abundance of quality food choices in their community are shouting "horror, horror" at the idea that five public grocery stores, one in each borough, would be established in communities which are "food deserts," working class and poor neighborhoods with limited access to affordable, nutritious food like fresh produce, usually because there are no nearby grocery stores. The idea that government should intervene in the economy to address manifest market failures may be a staple in economics courses, but it is viewed as heresy among some Mamdani critics.
We are educators: we must be smarter than to fall for these attacks on democratic socialism.
That's my two cents, folks.
Leo Casey is a teacher unionist who was a member of NAM’s National Committee; he served as the National Field Director of DSA and a member of its National Political Committee at its founding.