July 4, 2025

How Mamdani connects climate policy to his affordability agenda as he runs for New York mayor
“Climate and quality of life are not two separate concerns,” Mamdani told the Nation in April. “They are, in fact, one and the same.” This account from The Guardian after his primary victory updates and enriches the strategy.

Anatomy of Mamdani’s ubiquitous primary campaign poster: Chapter member Tyler Evans on his Zohran Mamdani poster design; “I’m passionate about all things creative, all things political, and how to make those intersect to better our country and enact real, progressive change for the working class,” his website asserts. “I firmly believe that design is a crucial medium for the political space in order to effectively and simply get ideas out into the world.” The collaboratively created poster, with its hues from New Yorkers’ familiar but distinctive surroundings, was seen everywhere. A full account from Fast Company

Tech visionaries imagine a polity after humans. It includes them, but probably not the rest of us.
Jeer Heer of The Nation recounts and analyzes a podcast dialogue between tech billionaire Peter Thiel and the NYT conservative columnist Ross Douthat. “Listening to Peter Thiel,” Heer says, “it is hard to escape the conclusion that he and his fellow billionaires are sick of the human species. They want to escape the inferior beings that surround them. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg has radically cut back his philanthropy, preferring to give his money to STEM research rather than helping poor people.” Heer’s account (and Thiel’s frankly frightening wanderings) raise themes present in the (popular in the tech sector) philosophies of Longtermism and Effective Altruism that suggest resources should be withdrawn from today’s oppressed and unequal in order to benefit future generations (and avoid human extinction). For a deep dive into the background of these Valley Brain fads, see Adam Becker’s new book, More Everything Forever.

Third Red Scare, same as the first
“There is of a course a limit to parallels between two historical moments; still, it is illuminating to view the current suppression as part of an authoritarian genealogy stretching back more than a century. The U.S. government piloted modern enforcement strategies like surveillance, infiltration, deportation, imprisonment, and execution on anarchists and radical unionists at the turn of the twentieth century. These methods were further developed during the mid-century Second Red and Lavender Scares, and were later used to brutally suppress the Black Power and anti-war movements in the 1960s, as well as against environmentalists during the 2000s Green Scare.” From Protean, TX our comrade Dan Singer’s “5 Lefty Links”

More on surveillance, there and here: Looking over your shoulder at who might be looking over your shoulder? How does our surveillance state compare with, say, China’s? What can we expect? Two views: Julia Angwin ‘This Is What We Were Always Scared of’: DOGE Is Building a Surveillance State and Megan Stack “Can We See Our Future In China’s Cameras?”

Local chapter-supported fight makes international news: Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition, with organizing efforts from MDC DSA members Alexa Sloan and Rabitah Moses, exemplifies how, “In the absence of federal oversight, Black communities band together to stave off development on historic resting places. … ‘A dog cemetery would not be treated like this.’” From the Guardian

It has been a little more than a year now since the Key Bridge collapsed, yet in this time of short memories and rapidly unfolding disasters, it has receded from memory. An article by Wanda Hernandes in NACLA Reports, “Monuments of Mourning: Remembering the Victims of the Key Bridge Collapse,” reminds us of the cost to the families of the six workers killed that day; six immigrant workers to be precise. And she reminds us that over time, the economic cost of that disaster has overshadowed the human cost; that to talk of a “disaster” hides the corporate malfeasance that contributed to the accident. 

An ongoing fight that we ought not forget is the solidarity movement for Palestine and the resilience of the student movement in Maryland. In Baltimore, Towson, Morgan State, College Park and elsewhere, solidarity continues. Jaisal Noor interviews a number of students in the Real News Network’s “To Maryland College Students, Speaking Out About Gaza Means More Than Any Potential Discipline.” 

So too, organizing to raise the minimum wage continues in DC — especially for tipped workers — and throughout our region. This struggle is one not only local but national as Ella Tummel reports in her American Prospect article, “Fighting for a Federal $20 Minimum Wage, With or Without Congress.” (and for the latest in DC, see our leader in UP FRONT above)