Socialist Growth and Governance
SMC Editorial Board Note: This piece is not an official caucus statement, but the opinion of the author. It is part of a larger series of articles examining the impact of Zohran Mamdani’s historic mayoral campaign and administration upon DSA and the American Left in advance of the 100th day of Zohran’s administration.
Zohran’s historic campaign and victory has given DSA and the broader left an incredible boost in power and excitement. Since Zohran’s inauguration, NYC-DSA has surpassed 14,000 members while the organization as a whole has grown to over 100,000 members. As of March 1, almost every major chapter in DSA has more members than they did in December 2021. My chapter, DSA-LA, has surpassed 5,000 members and is well on our way to reach 6,000 by 2027.
Chapters must seize the moment given to us by the Zohran campaign to reach higher and bigger than we ever have before. Our reach is largely scaled by our ambition, and we cannot be overly fearful in advance of 2028. However, growth itself is not motivation enough. We are growing to reorder society for the working-class and the best way we can do that now is prove that socialist governance can be strong and successful.
On December 14, 2025 in Los Angeles, SMC member and newly elected co-chair of DSA-LA, Leslie Chang, suggested to the incoming Steering Committee that the chapter should make the first DSA-LA general meeting of the year, its biggest yet. She floated an attendance goal of 400 members, which meant we needed to shoot for around 800 RSVPs, twice our attendance goal.
Certain members met this idea with skepticism. Others doubted the interest of that many people for a meeting or said they had no idea where we could find a venue to hold that many members. Despite that, the excitement over the meeting only continued to grow. Five days before the meeting we already met our goal of 800 RSVPs, meaning we were on track to surpass the attendance of the post-Zohran November 2025 chapter meeting. Four days before, we sailed past 1,000 RSVPS. The day of the meeting, we topped out at almost 1,300 RSVPs, and had almost 800 attendees.
On January 1st in New York City, Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor in a historic moment for DSA and the left as a whole. These two events are inextricably linked—almost 800 people would not have met in Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown for a DSA meeting if Zohran had not won. The “Zohmentum” that has infused DSA since Zohran declared has bolstered the organization nationally and carried us to new heights in membership, prominence, and power.
“Only through strong socialist governance can we sustain the growth of the organization and movement. ”
This is why Leslie proposed having DSA-LA’s largest chapter meeting ever. This is why we kept organizing to ensure that the meeting would be even larger and larger. In her opening statement, Leslie emphasized that “organized people taking collective action gets results.” At the meeting, DSA-LA volunteers directly asked every attendee to sign up to canvass for DSA-LA’s six endorsed candidates and invited them to an open house after the meeting so they could directly hear from each WG and plug into work that way.
DSA-LA-endorsed Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez speaking at the DSA-LA January Chapter Meeting.
It is our task as DSA to seize the current moment and the excitement around Zohran and democratic socialism and direct it to things that concretely build working-class power. We have to prove that we can not only win, but govern, that the hope and promise of the Zohran campaign is not just ephemeral hype. Only through strong socialist governance can we sustain the growth of the organization and movement.
Governance is the Prize
DSA-LA-endorsed candidate for LA City Council District 9, Estuardo Mazariegos (whose WG I serve as co-chair of) proudly declared at a Halloween fundraiser for DSA-LA:
“Our time is now. Governance is the prize. Our ideology, our beliefs, our values, deserve the driver’s seat.”
The moment for democratic socialism and politics that center working people is now. The combination of Zohran’s victory and Trump’s fascist administration has galvanized the US populace in ways we have not seen for years. DSA should seize that as much as possible and seek to govern, to win power for and with working people.
To do this, we also need to prove to working people that governance can work for them. For too long, the neoliberal state has enriched corporate and oligarch interests off the backs of the working class. Trump has ratcheted that hostility to 100 and has proved how dangerous the state can be in the wrong hands. To offer an alternative (a socialist alternative, if you will) to both, we need to prove that the socialist state will not only help working people, but uplift and center them.
Zohran, once again, provides a model. While many of Zohran’s critics and opponents attacked him during the election for being just another socialist ideologue (and some continuetodoso, even to the extent of denying statistics themselves), Zohran himself has maintained a near-relentless focus on delivering good governance.
For example, in the face of an impending budget crisis, Zohran has moved to save taxpayer dollars by removing consultants and contractors from city services when public capacity exists instead. While there is an ideological base for this—socialists, generally, do not like McKinsey—the core of it is to remove the unnecessary and inefficient redundancies created by the neoliberal state’s reliance on exporting public capacity to services. “Socialist ideology” thus proves itself to be good governance.
Municipal finances are also a crisis in Los Angeles, where the budget is proposed by the mayor. Last year, Mayor Karen Bass’s budget identified a shortfall of nearly $1 billion. Instead of removing private consultants and outside contractors or reducing LAPD funding, Bass’s budget proposed 1,600 layoffs. Even Bass’s conservative allies on City Council were appalled by her numbers and Bass’s failed appeal to the state for a bailout did little to assuage anxiety.
As a resident of LA, I have already experienced the hit to city services caused by the budget shortfall. This was exacerbated by my recent move, as I no longer live in a city council district represented by one of our SiOs, who have been at the forefrontof fighting to provideservices for their constituents. The streets aren’t lit at night. Sidewalks are not fixed. Trees are not planted. Since July 2025, LA City has not repaved a single street.
In the most exploited areas of the city, like City Council District 9, where Estuardo is running to represent, the problems are even harder felt. In the hundreds of doors I have knocked for DSA and Estuardo in CD9, I could count on one hand the number of times city services have not been mentioned. It should be no surprise then that one of Estuardo’s most prominent policy platforms, and one of his most resonant with voters, is his Good Government platform. Estuardo, like every democratic socialist must, understands that the city must work for working people and advocating for it to do so should be the root of socialist politics in LA.
Rejecting “LA’s Zohran”
Similarities may exist in the fight for socialist governance in LA and NYC; however, they are not the same. The mayor of NYC is in a far stronger position vis a vis City Council than in LA and NYC has to rely far more on the state (as the city can’t raise its own taxes).
DSA-LA and NYC-DSA are also in very different positions. To avoid the obvious difference for a moment, NYC-DSA is over double the size of DSA-LA. DSA-LA has also historically avoided interventions at the state level and largely shied away from contesting for power in the many municipalities outside LA City (Burbank being practically the sole exception), meaning we have zero SiOs in the state legislature and very few outside LA City. This has limited DSA-LA’s power to influence policy at the state level, but that’s a separate article.
These factors mean that the interventions DSA-LA can and should make in this moment are very different. Whereas NYC-DSA has a mayor to agitate at the city level and a rapidly-expanding slate of legislators to push their own agenda, DSA-LA is forced into a purely responsive approach to the mayor’s budget and statewide legislative pushes, like taxing the rich. We are not leading these efforts, nor could we in most cases.
Thus, if DSA-LA and other chapters across the country want to carry the “Zohmentum” forward, they have to actually learn from Zohran and adapt his model to local conditions. There will always be opportunists who attempt to imitate Zohran’s policies, platform, or style but those that fail to ground that imitation in a real movement and the socio-political conditions of their locale will fail.
I would go further and argue that DSA-LA is not in a position to have our “Zohran” and imitation at the cost of more thoughtful intervention in our present political moment promises nothing but wasted effort. What DSA-LA can do is use our current slate of SiOs and candidates to politicize the delivery of public services and deliver on the socialist governance that working people deserve. DSA-LA’s goal to “Shake Up City Hall” is not just for insurgent candidates, we must also point to how our own SiOs have revolutionized and reformed governance.
As we look to 2028, where we have to push beyond the limits of LA City into the state legislature, the halls of Congress, and even the White House, we must set our theory of governance apart from neoliberalism and fascism. We must prove that socialists can win, govern, and deliver on real progress for working people.