Almost three months before Zohran Mamdani’s earthquake of a victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary this summer, a substitute teacher and long-time union organizer named Alex Brower shocked Milwaukee City Hall by winning a special election for city council as a Democratic Socialist. Brower ran on highly specific local issues — namely, lowering utility bills by challenging the We Energies company in Milwaukee. Attending the biennial Democratic Socialists of America convention in Chicago last weekend, Brower, wearing a brown T-shirt with the words “SOCIALIST PARTY” scrawled in big, unmissable letters, struggled to stop talking about local policymaking when we spoke in one the few quiet corners of the convention center.
Every two years, delegates from each chapter of the organization gather to debate and vote on resolutions on DSA’s priorities and elect a National Political Committee (NPC) to lead them. Brower, a Milwaukee-DSA delegate, laughed off the notion that traditional Democrats can replicate Mamdani’s success — or his own — via savvy social media alone, rather than running on affordability and redistributive policies. “People are very angry with the system right now,” Brower says. “At DSA, we’re leading by saying, ‘OK, here’s a material problem. Here’s how DSA proposes to fix it.’”
This year’s convention comes at a watershed moment for DSA, two months after Mamdani’s victory sent shockwaves across the political establishment — and precisely 10 years after Bernie Sanders did the same when he announced his presidential bid in June 2015, galvanizing a new generation of American leftists. Today, Mamdani can hardly record a man-on-the-street video without being interrupted by fans lining up for photos, while the rest of the Democratic Party holds its lowest approval rating in over 30 years and has been unable to cut through the noise (a livestream from Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in June at one point failed to crack 80 viewers).
The stakes couldn’t be higher for DSA to take advantage of the current political moment. President Donald Trump has wasted no time reshaping the country around corporate interests, signing a sweeping budget bill that threatens to force at least 17 million people off their health insurance while allocating over $170 billion to ICE and border enforcement. The midterms are on the horizon, and regaining control of Congress could be Democrats’ best — perhaps even their last — chance at reining in this unabashedly authoritarian administration.
With the momentum of Mamdani’s victory, the existential threat of the second Trump era, and lingering reminders of where the organization fell short 10 years ago under Sanders’ banner, there was a lot to discuss at the convention last weekend. Among the nearly 2,000 DSA delegates and leaders who convened, many arrived — and left — with disagreements about how best to seize the moment.
But every DSA member I spoke to easily agreed on one thing: It’s their moment to seize.
Numerous delegates identified Brower’s race as an example of what they want to see from the organization nationwide: a pipeline of Democratic Socialists in local government, a bench of candidates who can eventually, successfully run for mayor — or higher. In 2017, 15 DSA members were elected to state or local office, bringing the organization’s total number of elected officials to 35. In 2025, over 250 DSA members hold elected office — 90 percent were elected after 2019, following Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s upset victory the year before. As of this year, a third of Portland, Oregon’s city council consists of DSA members.
Like so many other members, Brower got involved with DSA a decade ago when Sanders entered the national scene. He tells me he knew he’d run for office someday the night Ocasio-Cortez won her primary. Brower may have “some disagreements” with other DSA members or electeds under the DSA banner, but “leaders like AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Bernie, who have identified as Democratic Socialists in Congress, are an inspiration to all kinds of people to run for office.” They’re the reason he and so many of the people gathered in Chicago — with their colorful array of keffiyahs and canvas tote bags, their comfortable shoes and curiously styled mustaches — were there at all.
But there’s a broad range of opinions about some of the Democratic Socialists who Brower name-dropped as role models, and the extent to which the organization should open its tent to as many elected officials and members as possible — or whether it should instead sharpen and potentially narrow its standards for membership.
Kristian Hernandez, who formerly served on the NPC for four years and organizes in North Texas, says the sometimes highly public, highly messy disagreements within her organization don’t alarm her: “It’s like with my family,” she explains. “We’re very, very passionate, we have a lot of political arguments.” Hernandez joined DSA in 2016, organizing for immigrant rights and eventually becoming a delegate for Sanders’ presidential campaign. She was the one to convince large swaths of her initially pro-Hillary Clinton family to vote for Sanders.
Navigating political disagreements — within either a large family or an organization attempting to build political power across the nation — can be messy: Last summer, NYC-DSA voted to endorse Ocasio-Cortez in her reelection bid. The national DSA, meanwhile, rescinded its endorsement, questioning the congresswoman’s “commitment to the movement for Palestine and our collective socialist project.” Some DSA members regarded Ocasio-Cortez’s support for Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris that year as implicit support for the Biden-Harris administration’s outsized role in funding and arming Israel’s war on Gaza. Other DSA members see Ocasio-Cortez as a reliable ally and partner in governing, and one of a small number of Congress members who publicly call Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide.
At least one proposed resolution at the convention aimed to censure Ocasio-Cortez over certain votes and comments on Israel and Palestine. Last month, Ocasio-Cortez appeared to defend U.S. funding for Israel’s Iron Dome as “defensive” military aid to protect civilians. But critics argue that distinguishing between “defensive” and “offensive” military aid is meaningless, because funding the Iron Dome gives Israel the capacity to carry out its brutal occupation and war on Palestine without repercussions. Nonetheless, that resolution was placed distinctly low on the convention’s deliberation agenda, ensuring no time for delegates to debate or vote on it, and leaving it — along with the rest of the remaining resolutions — to be decided by the NPC.
“We have this phrase in DSA,” Hernandez says, “that we’re somewhat building the plane as we’re flying it. There will be messiness and contradictions.”
Zach Caddy/Courtesy of DSA
Leftists aren’t exactly known for civility in disagreement, though — especially online.
DSA’s internal culture is frequently the object of online jokes about, say, its quirky singles mixers, or its members addressing each other as “comrade” in the year 2025. And a decade since Sanders’ rise also marks a decade since the hotly debated caricature of the white, male “Bernie Bro” as a stand-in for the average DSA member and leftist. In the liberal imagination, the “Bernie Bro” is insensitive toward “social issues” and “identity politics,” blurring these in favor of a materialist, populist economic lens. Of course, many women and marginalized people vocally supported Sanders. And universal health care is more tangibly beneficial to most women’s everyday lives than electing a woman who opposes universal health care. Still, the caricature endured.
Megan Romer, who at the convention was elected to her second term as NPC co-chair after receiving the most first-place votes of any candidate, acknowledges about 70 percent of DSA’s membership is male. But since June, DSA has highlighted the strikingly diverse coalition of voters who backed Mamdani — East and South Asian, Latine, Black, Arab, and Jewish communities and young voters decisively mobilized for him, where Sanders’ presidential campaigns struggled with some of these demographics.
“There are some bro-y dudes around, because there are bro-y dudes around in society, and they also need affordable health care, affordable college,” Genevieve Rand, co-chair of DSA’s Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy Committee and a trans woman, tells me. “But the slander that that’s the only people who are here has been the opposite of my experience.”
On the second day of the convention, I met leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker shortly before his stream that afternoon. Piker attended the convention as a “DSA booster.” We talked for well over an hour about the organization and leftist politics and culture in this political moment. I asked him about the now-10-year-old concept of the “Bernie Bro.”
“I’m the original Bernie Bro,” he jokes. Piker is one of few popular media figures who espouse progressive politics to a massive young male fan base.
“There are definitely white people in DSA and white people do sometimes have blind spots. But people like to hyper-focus on these sorts of things, because as a leftist, as a socialist, the expectations are significantly higher,” Piker says. He points to the dynamics between Democrats and Republicans and the massive gulf between what constitutes “cancelable” offenses on both sides: “The Democrat is expected to operate in a certain way, as opposed to how Republicans can do whatever the fuck they want. A similar dynamic exists between the left and Democrats, where, as a leftist or socialist, you’re expected to behave in certain ways, where things that otherwise wouldn’t be considered problematic can all of a sudden be used against you.” One example: “I got canceled for buying a house,” he says, referring to criticism over the Los Angeles home he shares with his family.
Despite popular portrayals of DSA members as unpleasant “Bernie Bros” who despise each other, many delegates I spoke to say they joined DSA for radical politics, but stayed for community. Among demographics like young men, companionship seems increasingly crucial to staving off right-wing radicalization from the online manosphere. “Solidarity has a similar feeling to the expression of love. It sounds kind of corny, but I feel much less lonely when I’m at a protest or alongside people in political movements,” Piker says. “If you don’t have any sort of love for other people around you, then you’re not going to fight for or defend them.”
But the methods of how best to fight for each other, how best to win for each other, are hotly contested across DSA. The American left has something of a reputation for struggling to organize internally, for being quick to cannibalize each other over what might seem like small disagreements. But some DSA leaders, like Colleen Johnston, an outgoing NPC member, think these narratives can be overblown: “I think there’s interest in portraying us that way, as always fighting, because then they don’t have to talk about all the ways we’re building power, our policies, our effective campaigns across the country.”
To Ashik Siddique, now serving his third term as co-chair of the NPC, “the important thing is we have strong discussions. DSA is a democracy, in a country where formal democracy is not very strong. In DSA, we vote on our positions, then move forward. Even when it feels messy, we get to a point where we have consensus.”
Zach Caddy/Courtesy of DSA
“Messy” is one word to describe certain scenes amid three days of hours-long, nonstop debate about DSA’s future. Rose decor — balloons, hats, flyers, art — was everywhere in the convention hall, sprawled across walls, on tables, alongside snack spreads that included everything from granola bars and water bottles to Altoids and Zyns. And roses, which feature prominently in DSA’s logo, come with thorns; they’re a package deal.
Early Friday, Tlaib walked onstage to a standing ovation and thunderous applause to deliver her keynote address. If DSA members hold mixed opinions about some Democratic Socialist politicians, their adoration for the first Palestinian-American member of Congress seemed universal. Much of Tlaib’s speech condemned Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza and Congress’ seemingly unconditional support for the war. She struggled to speak through tears as she questioned whether her own colleagues would be able to so easily “press the ‘yes’ button” to send more weapons to Israel if they saw Palestinian children — Palestinian people — as human beings.
With each “free Palestine” she uttered, the room erupted in cheers so deafening you could barely hear her next words. Then came Tlaib’s remarks that have since been clipped in numerous viral social media posts, appearing to reference her fellow-“Squad” member Ocasio-Cortez’s Iron Dome comments: “I say this honestly with love: I don’t care what you label or call it. A weapon is a weapon. You support the funding of genocide or you don’t.” Tlaib’s remarks electrified the convention hall as she railed against her “warmonger” colleagues, against imperialism and capitalism: “The violence against our people doesn’t have to come in the form of a bomb or a gun. The systems and structures around us kill our neighbors. It’s the same effect.” She urged DSA to “cultivate this people-power into a force that can fight fascism and win a united front in order to beat fascism.”
“This is our duty. This is our responsibility. This is our moment,” she said. “You don’t need to tell me that the Democratic Party establishment has completely failed to present meaningful resistance to this billionaire class, to Trump and fascism.” Across the U.S., working-class people “know they have been let down. They’re looking for a new home. They want to envision alternatives, and we have it.”
Tlaib’s remarks united the room. You would hardly guess that, within an hour, the same convention hall would become a site of intense, sometimes vitriolic arguments.
Thanks in part to Mamdani, this year’s convention came amid the most national attention the organization has had on it since Sanders’ rise almost a decade ago. With that momentum, some factions of DSA want the organization to focus on external organizing, expansion, and growth, bringing in as many new people as possible. Other factions see this as a key moment for moral clarity, for setting clear internal standards of conduct and ensuring that members and electeds are unwavering against genocide and fascism.
Romer doesn’t see internal and external organizing as mutually exclusive: “I see it as a ‘yes, and’ rather than ‘either-or,’” she says. Queens DSA’s Aaron Fernando agrees, but he questions some DSA leaders’ priorities based on the convention agenda, including which resolutions were debated and voted on and which were buried. For instance, he hoped the convention would focus more on setting priorities for DSA’s resistance to the new Trump administration, like strategizing on how to fight for trans people, rather than internal conflicts. “I think we went in the wrong direction this convention,” he says. “Instead of focusing on more outward-facing mass politics, we stagnated on personal beefs and factionalism within DSA. That sort of agenda is not good for a national organization.”
Some resolutions were uncontroversial: On Saturday, delegates passed one for DSA to run a presidential candidate in 2028, likely under the Democratic Party ballot line, similar to Sanders in 2016 and 2020. An amendment to specify that the candidate would run under a third party failed. Rand told me she’s particularly excited about this resolution: “What Bernie Sanders showed even though he didn’t win is that a socialist can win the highest office in America,” she says.
Other resolutions were more contentious. A resolution known as “1m1v,” or One Member One Vote, for instance, swallowed up a large chunk of deliberation on Friday afternoon. Under 1m1v, each dues-paying DSA member would get to vote on national candidate endorsements. Proponents argue it embodies direct democracy, mimicking labor unions and other international leftist parties, and allows rank-and-file members to both feel and be part of the national organization. Opponents worry about less active and less informed members potentially sabotaging the organization.
Floor debate over 1m1v devolved, at times, into enough of a mess to spark semi-viral social media outrage. One delegate who supported the resolution drew comparisons between those who opposed it and those who opposed Reconstruction and civil rights. These comments were met with a wave of boos, shocked gasps, and jeers. Some DSA members took to social media to complain about being compared to slaveowners for disagreeing with their “comrades.”
The resolution decisively failed.
The most heated debate surrounded the “For a Fighting Anti-Zionist DSA” resolution, which restates DSA’s commitments to Palestinian liberation and against any material support for Israel — and establishes a red-line for members, candidates, and elected officials, opening the door for expulsion or required political education for those in violation. To some delegates, the resolution read as a proxy for resolutions to expel Ocasio-Cortez and Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman over statements or votes regarding Israel. These opponents argued the resolution is redundant given DSA’s existing positions on Palestine, and that it’s a vehicle to punish and expel members or electeds, including those who have since changed their positions. Supporters of the resolution deny that it would be applied retroactively or in bad-faith.
The resolution decisively passed on Sunday afternoon to “Free Palestine” chants across the convention hall.
Seemingly less controversial resolutions on the national organization’s budget and stipends for its political leadership sparked less heated debate. But some delegates told me these resolutions emerged from simmering tensions between certain factions of DSA.
In 2023, at the onset of Israel’s war on Gaza and explosive political debates across the U.S., DSA carried out layoffs. Romer says that at the time, the organization was $1 million in debt. “That’s the worst feeling you have as a socialist,” she says of the situation. But on the condition of anonymity, some delegates disputed this version of events, claiming the organization’s finances were never that dire, that DSA’s membership base is full of skilled fundraisers who could easily have raised the necessary funding to keep staffers employed, and that some members of DSA leadership actively want to divest from staffers to consolidate more organizational power for themselves. Some of these allegations have been made quite publicly, and the staff union filed a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board last January. Romer maintains that the 2023 layoffs were necessary due to budget constraints.
It’s difficult if not impossible to break down the range of factions and tensions within DSA without getting too in the weeds. Fernando, who represents one of the organization’s two major factions, sees DSA’s goal as “bringing in as many people as possible” and winning elections everywhere, and regards Mamdani’s coalition-building, grassroots field operations and victory as an inspiration. Romer, who aligns with DSA’s other major faction, agrees on the importance of winning elections, but also stresses the importance of “agitation,” praising Mamdani’s past activism in the form of hunger strikes for Palestine and in solidarity with taxi drivers as an inspiration. Mamdani — like Tlaib — is a unifying name across all caucuses.
NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo, who joined DSA a decade ago around when Sanders first ran for president, has attended four DSA conventions. “Over time, I’ve seen disagreement handled better, with far less personal, healthier conversations,” he says. “When we first started having these bigger disagreements after the Bernie surge, when so many people with sometimes very different politics joined, disagreements were treated much more personally. Now, I think we’ve matured as an organization, where we don’t let disagreements destabilize us.”
Zach Caddy/Courtesy of DSA
When Mamdani first launched his mayoral campaign at the end of October, he was a state Assembly member with minimal name recognition. By June, posters of his face were plastered across the city; you couldn’t walk a block without seeing his smile in the window of nearly every coffee shop, bodega, halal cart, or apartment. Much as some Democratic strategists would like to attribute his surge in popularity solely to charisma and engaging social media, just as well known as his name are the tenets of his platform: free buses, freezing the rent, and universal child care. And what his opponents repeatedly tried to nail him with as a liability — his unwavering support for Palestine and strong criticisms of Israel — has instead proven a strength.
Almost a decade ago, Quinnipiac University polling showed Democratic voters sympathized with Israelis more than Palestinians by a 13-point margin; new polling from July reveals a 56-point swing, with Democrats now sympathizing more with Palestinians by a net 43 points. CNN polling expert Harry Enten called this a “sea change,” the scale of which he “rarely” sees in politics. In January, polling showed among the nearly 20 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 but didn’t vote in 2024, a third cited Harris’ sustained support for Israel.
“Voters like to see anyone standing their ground on Palestine. I think that’s increased a lot of people’s confidence [that] Zohran is actually going to deliver on his platform — they thought, ‘Oh, you can’t really deliver,’” Siddique said. “But because he stood his ground on Palestine, or people see him challenging ICE very directly — people trust fighters.”
DSA leaders, who have long held support for Palestine as the moral position, are navigating a new paradigm in which support for Palestine is also the politically smart one. We’re rapidly approaching the 2026 midterms, and as mainstream Democrats resist their own base by unconditionally, materially backing Israel, DSA members believe they can fill this vacuum in leadership.
Olivia Katbi, co-chair of Portland-DSA, says her chapter’s organizing has focused largely on Palestine and overseeing successful local boycott, divest, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel in recent years. “The Democratic Party is a capitalist, racist, pro-genocide party, and DSA is offering an actual alternative to that,” she says. Batul Hassan, an NYC-DSA steering committee member whose organizing has focused on pro-Palestine initiatives, echoed Katbi: “A lot of the member growth that we’ve had, the mass turnout for Zohran, who is very morally consistent on his position on Palestine, is because of that — because we’re member-driven, not beholden to pro-genocide billionaires.”
DSA members are determined to ensure Mamdani’s victory on these principles, on an unrepentantly socialist and pro-Palestine platform, wasn’t just a flash in the pan. In November, NYC-DSA member Claire Valdez won her seat in the state Assembly after crushing the Democratic incumbent Juan Ardila by 48 points in the primary. “Right now, the Democratic establishment is unwilling or incapable of meeting the moment, fighting Trump’s fascist administration, the genocide and famine in Gaza — there’s a vast gulf between what the Democratic base wants and how we’re being represented,” Valdez tells me. She believes Democratic Socialists are poised to make waves in 2026: “People are hungry for an alternative. You saw that with my campaign, you saw that with Zohran’s.”
In addition to Valdez, and Brower in Milwaukee, candidates like Atlanta city council candidate Kelsea Bond and Jersey City council candidate Jake Ephros also attended the convention. Ephros says he “wouldn’t be running without my local DSA chapter,” with which he organized for over five years before running for office this year.
NYC-DSA co-chairs Grace Mausser and Gordillo, alongside Siddique, hosted a workshop on strategies to run and win on a campaign like Mamdani’s on the convention’s final day. Mausser emphasized the importance of partnership and patience when working with candidates: “We knew when we endorsed Zohran there were going to be tensions and contradictions in electing a socialist mayor,” she says. “But we can’t let those tensions hold us back from taking power. The left has done that for far too long.” With Mamdani, Mausser says NYC-DSA is “building a new model of partnership,” navigating disagreements “while still prioritizing collaboration and a fruitful governing relationship.”
Today, “everyone in New York City knows who Zohran is — a socialist — because he identifies as a socialist, and it wasn’t a liability but a strength for him,” Gordillo said. Across all chapters, every DSA member and leader I spoke to said some version of the same thing: They believe, today, socialism is popular, socialism can win, and socialism can thrive in all the spaces where the Democratic Party is stagnating. As Hernandez puts it: “It’s not just about saying Democrats are bad, but also giving people something positive to vote for.”
Gordillo says the chapter’s membership has almost doubled since Mamdani’s victory, which positions him to be the highest-ranking socialist in office in U.S. history. Delegates from chapters across the country say they’ve seen surges in interest, too. “Zohran showed that a mass coalition can be led by a socialist. We saw him bring along supporters who are more moderate or considered liberals, to build a large tent that was actually led by a working-class, socialist agenda,” Gordillo says. “Biden was not able to do that. Kamala Harris also failed — that’s because they were constantly trying to compromise with the billionaire class.” He believes Mamdani models the way forward.
“I think we need to let a million Zohrans bloom, and there’s Zohrans everywhere for those with eyes that see,” Piker says. “There have been far worse circumstances where people have been able to successfully organize and make changes that have improved humanity. I think that’s what can happen right now.”
