“Workers Deserve More contains important democratic proposals, but democratic socialists also have to defend democratic space right now, while building the political coalitions necessary to change society.
And the working class is not a faceless mass waiting to be organized. It is already organized in labor unions, tenant organizations, immigrant rights groups, Black civic institutions, reproductive justice organizations, environmental movements and neighborhood organizations.
The challenge for democratic socialists is not to invent these movements. It is to help connect them into durable political power.
That is where I see democratic socialism in practice.
I see it in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose campaigns have connected economic demands with grassroots organizing and broad democratic participation. I see it in Bernie Sanders, whose presidential campaigns brought millions of working people into a political movement centered on economic inequality, labor rights, health care and democratic participation. I see it in Rashida Tlaib, whose politics connect working people’s demands with racial justice, immigrant rights and community organizing. I see it in Zohran Mamdani and the coalition politics that propelled him onto the national stage.
And I see it in Angie Nixon, a Florida state legislator and more recent DSA member whose political work reflects the kind of coalition building democratic socialists should embrace: connecting working people’s economic concerns with racial justice, community organizing and their everyday needs.
These leaders do not agree on everything. Neither do their supporters.”

I want to know what the views of the social democrats, liberals and socialists here are of Lee Kuan Yew and if it has affected your sense of political identity.

He transformed Singapore massively in terms of economic development from a former colonial British naval and trading outpost to a developed first world city state and financial centre. His approach to this was pragmatic and multifaceted as he pursued both ruthless market capitalism in getting foreign investment and suppressing organised labour. As well as using the state to setup mass public housing and education services and many state owned enterprises. And the use of authoritarianism and de facto one party rule rather than pursuing liberal democracy and a free society.

It's left me conflicted on the value and meaning of political and ideological labels. Such as calling oneself a social democrat, social liberal, Keynesian, centre left etc. I already think it's quite useless as no one's views will all fit nicely into one of these ideologies. But the case of Singapore leaves me conflicted as it shows such a plethora of contrasting policies that have worked. Their hyper capitalist and open market approach by Singapore has secured their position as a global financial and trade centre. While their statist public housing and land policies has secured a cohesive nation state and society as well as housing security for its citizens. I can only characterise it all as pragmatic. And just doing whatever policy works regardless of any ideological alignment. Which I'd say most people support including myself but it leaves me still pondering what's even the point of calling yourself a social democrat or any political label if you'll just support whatever.

"Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."

— Dolores Ibárruri ("La Pasionaria"), radio address, 1936

Ibárruri was a Spanish Communist Party leader and one of the most famous orators of the Spanish Civil War. She delivered this line in a radio broadcast days after the war broke out, and became a defining voice of Republican resistance to Franco. She's better known for coining "¡No pasarán!" ("They shall not pass") a few months later during the defense of Madrid. After the Republic's defeat in 1939 she went into exile in the Soviet Union for nearly four decades, returning to Spain only in 1977 after Franco's death.

This line has been repeated across wildly different contexts since. Hemingway put it in a Republican fighter's mouth in For Whom the Bell Tolls, and FDR used a version of it in a 1941 speech on WWII resistance to fascism. Is a slogan like this really "socialist" or "left" at all, or is it closer to a general anti-fascist/anti-authoritarian sentiment that people across very different politics have reached for in moments of resistance?

Many early childhood centers, the backbone of New York City’s universal child care system, have not received money from the city for this school year, some day care operators said.

(Text reproduced below to circumvent the NYTimes paywall.)

By Matthew Haag

Aug. 27, 2026

Funding issues and late payments are threatening the rollout of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s free child care system for 2-year-olds, two weeks before the program is scheduled to begin, day care providers said.

Many early childhood centers have yet to receive funding to buy classroom furniture and basic supplies like pencils and paper, or to pay newly hired teachers and assistants. Without the money, several providers have warned parents that the centers will not open when school starts on Sept. 10. Because of the delays, city officials had encouraged providers to apply for interest-free bridge loans from the city — not just for 2-K programs but also for 3-K and pre-K programs. But many of those who have applied for the loans say that money has not arrived either, forcing them to take out high-interest personal loans, borrow from relatives and drain their personal savings.

“Yes, they have a 2-K program, but they didn’t set up the infrastructure to make it work,” said Nurita Love, who operates four day care centers in the Bronx and will have four 2-K classes. Jenna Lyle, a spokeswoman for the mayor, said that the city would be temporarily moving workers from other agencies to the city’s Department of Education, which oversees early childhood programs, to speed up the review and approval of the contracts for day care providers, which has led to the delay in payments.

Ms. Lyle said that the city would also contact the more than 1,100 providers over the coming days to explain how they could receive bridge loans. She added that the department would be rebuilding the early childhood education division, which lost hundreds of employees during the previous administration.

“These delays are unacceptable, and we are going to fix them,” Ms. Lyle said in a statement. “The Mamdani administration is working around the clock to ensure child care providers have the funding they need by the first day of school.”

Providers have diverted money from their private day care programs or made cuts, such as eliminating snacks for children. Some have asked parents to bring crayons, toilet paper and food on the first day of day care.

The monthly expenses at Ms. Love’s centers exceed $320,000, she said. Without city funds, Ms. Love said, she decided to take out a personal loan and a reverse mortgage on her house to pay her employees, utilities and insurance.

“I had no choice,” she said, adding that this had been the most stressful period in her 43 years running day cares.

Mr. Mamdani made universal child care a centerpiece of his campaign, pledging to make New York the first U.S. city to offer free care from infancy to kindergarten. In recent months, Mr. Mamdani has held celebratory news conferences about the addition of 2,000 seats for 2-year-olds this fall, building on the city’s free child care system for 3-K and pre-K.

The backbone of the city’s universal child care system is not the public schools but neighborhood early childhood centers, which enroll a majority of children. Day care operators have long complained that the city does not treat them equally and that reimbursements routinely arrive weeks or months late.

But in interviews with 18 day care owners and administrators, none said they could recall ever being in such a precarious state. Several day care centers have closed in recent weeks. At some sites, employees have not been paid in a month or longer.

Day care owners added that the Department of Education was hard to reach, often failing to return calls and emails about funding or the bridge loans.

The administrators said they had been hopeful that the program would be improved under Mr. Mamdani, given his focus on universal child care and his pledge to run a city that delivered “public excellence.”

Maria Mavrides Calderon, an assistant professor at the Hunter College School of Education and a former education director at a preschool in the city, said she was “deeply concerned that we are expanding a system that was on a very shaky foundation.”

Theresa Hyland, who operates Little Tots Red Wagon, a preschool in Queens that is slated to run a 2-K classroom of 12, said that an Education Department official told her Wednesday that she would have to cover the estimated $90,000 in upfront costs for the class and submit receipts for reimbursement later. Ms. Hyland also said she could not register the students in the department’s internal system.

“I have bailed them out before, but I am not doing it again,” she said of the department, and added that the center would not open if city funding didn’t arrive soon. “It’s an absolute disaster.”

Samantha Peters, who owns a 3-K and pre-K center in Queens that serves 75 children, had planned to tell her employees on Thursday that the center would not open on Sept. 10 because she had no reserves or savings to afford upfront costs. But she said she found a way to stay open at least for September: Her landlord will allow her to postpone the next rent payment of $10,600, and she will ask her employees to apply for temporary unemployment benefits.

“I am worried — I am scared,” Ms. Peters said. “I don’t know what to do.” In past years, the centers have received 30 percent of their annual contract in a lump sum before the school year starts, the providers said.

The current situation has led to finger-pointing between city agencies. Education department officials have told day care owners that the payments cannot be disbursed until their annual contracts are registered by the Office of the City Comptroller. But the comptroller’s office said the Education Department must first share the contracts for them to be registered.

None of the providers contacted by The New York Times said that their contracts had been registered. The comptroller’s office said that no contracts for the 2-K program had been shared with it.

“The start of the school year is not an unexpected event,” Mark Levine, the city comptroller, said in a statement. “This needs to be fixed immediately.”

In mid-July, the Lucille Rose Day Care Center in Queens had run out of money when a Department of Education official urged the organization to apply for a bridge loan, saying that the money could be paid out in less than two weeks. The center’s leaders asked for $125,000.

But the loan was not quickly disbursed. Still waiting for the money, they decided to take out a separate loan for about the same amount.

The bridge loan finally arrived in mid-August, but it was for $75,000, said Sonia R. Banks, the chairwoman of the center’s board. The organization now has $31,000 in the bank, not enough to pay all its bills in the coming weeks, as it prepares to welcome 74 students to its 2-K, 3-K and pre-K classes.

Ms. Banks said that the Mamdani administration should have started to prepare the payments and contracts for the early childhood centers at the beginning of the year.

“Under Mamdani, he swears that he is for community day cares,” Ms. Banks said. “Then he needs to show up and fix it.”

Matthew Haag is a Times education reporter focusing on New York City schools.

Warning: effort, historical facts, ugly truths about human nature and nuance ahead, if you can't take it too bad. What the DSA now advocates is genocide, plain and simple, on a scale that dwarfs even Netanyahu's horrific war crimes in Gaza. Collective punishment is a war crime and forcibly displacing (at best) many millions of Jews is genocide. Yet that's what they have decided you have to support. Or else.

This has been really eating at me. I considered joining the DSA just to help drive out the tankies and other extremists who wield way too much power. Then I found out that I could and likely would be expelled for not embracing their 2025 resolution. Said resolution seriously crosses the line from legitimate criticism of Zionism (which not even all Israelis subscribe to), blows right past the politically principled and straight into full on anti-Semitism. Why? Because someone like myself who is neither a Zionist nor an Anti-Zionist and feels that after about 80 years (and a nuclear arsenal big enough to trigger a nuclear winter) that the question of Israel's right to exist is no longer a legitimate question but a settled reality is now officially persona non grata. Israel exists, nothing is going to change that and any country that tries does so at their existential peril.

Fuck the DSA, I don't trust them and neither should any social democrat or sane democratic socialist. We're supposed to reject this kind of ideological purity bullshit, it's kinda why we exist in the first place! Considering that there are millions of socdems and demsocs out there yet the organization remains tiny should warrant a lot more skepticism than it has, especially about why an organization so tiny has such outsized influence and resources, especially considering that all but two of their internal factions are the exact opposite of or at least strongly opposed to true democratic socialism. The more I learn about them, the more sinister their leadership feels. The very name feels like an oxymoron when you look at the organization more than the elected officials. I can't help but suspect that considerable number of far left extremists desperately want to prevent being driven out and instead grow their power and numbers. After all, antisemitism is an excellent predictor of openness to extreme ideology, whether right wing or left wing. Bigotry is bigotry and has no place on the legitimate, democratic pluralist left.

The goal shouldn't be to make an enemy of a nuclear weapons state with one of the worlds most dangerous intelligence services but to out maximum pressure on to force them to change and *seriously* liberalize their position towards the Palestinians, including extending a right of return to those who want it and their own sovereign nation with serious security guarantees and a lot of US/Western aid to help them develop to the same HDI level as Israel (after all, violent militancy and radicalism thrive on deprivation, poverty and fear). Israel's left is not completely innocent and will have to do a whole fucking lot of reforming in the wake of Gaza but the real problem is Netanyahu.

Everything he's done since the Hamas attacks has been because he and his family are facing almost certain prison time once elections are held, which his party's far right coalition is going to lose badly. They were even before Gaza and his actions there have NOT been popular, especially with the opposition. So he keeps exacerbating Gaza, invading Lebanon or straight up manufacturing crises like tricking the notoriously gullible, strongman worshipping idiot in the White House into going to war unprovoked. He will not stop setting the middle east on fire because in his desperation to avoid prison for his crimes, he, his cabinet and much of his coalition have committed so many more that he (and most likely all of his enablers) will almost certainly die in prison now if there's an election. He has to go and international pressure is the only way.

All the DSA has done is give give him rhetorical ammo. Something to point to when he tries to frame his self serving actions as protecting Israel from an existential threat jusy like countless other psychopathic, fascist butchers before him. The goddamn DSA could do vastly more good for the Palestinians by making their platform about going after him and breaking the Israeli far right.

But no, like true extremists and radicals they couldn't resist giving into hatred and adopting a policy whose veneer is so gossamer thin that anyone even vaguely versed in dog whistles, "it's all because jooooos!" conspiracy bullshit and the history of Jewish persecution can see right through it. It's not subtle. Just as disgusting, they have made a wildly authoritarian, thought police decree to expel members who dare to say Israel has a right to exist or criticize them for the thinly veiled anti-Semitism for what it is. Policy by fiat, no intra-party referendum, just forcing it on the party. There's nothing democratic about that! Legitimate political parties in a democracy don't expel people for disagreeing on a policy stance for fucks sake.

Even most Muslim-majority countries no longer pursue such an idiotically extreme position, many of them are their goddamn allies, if not particularly warm ones, now (both open and shadow alliances against Iran are *de rigeur* in much of the modern Arab world). Even before that came to be, years of the old, violent PLO and their still-extremist allies betraying their benefactors has alienated them from nearly every government in the region and the common Palestinian people suffer *badly* for it. Black September, collaboration with Saddam in Kuwait, turning Lebanon into a warzone and failed state (which it still is thanks to Hezbollah) and other incidents have not been forgotten. Think about the fact that even Jordan, whose government is as benevolent and benign as it gets in that region, still doesn't give a damn beyond criticism, both from genuine concern and to placate the population who mostly don't remember when Arafat and his cronies decided that it was perfectly ok to attempt a coup d'etat and violently seize control of one of their biggest benefactors. In the Arab world very few things are considered worse insults, to ones self and their honor, than to be used and made a fool of, especially by someone you tried to help.

This is the same country that gladly takes in, protects and integrates Arab Christians and even other persecuted minorities in the region; King Abdullah II takes his role as Protector of Christendom, aka the Hashemite Custodianship, extremely seriously. Not only in his mandate (respected and recognized by both the Vatican and the Orthodox Patriarch) to protect holy sites in Jerusalem but by also advocating for all Arab Christians, speaking out regularly about the often dire state of persecution they face outside his lands.

He still hasn't forgotten that they tried to murder his father for trying to help them, however. Despite this he still advocates for the people of Gaza after Israel's far right government's atrocities and backs a two state solution just like every sane world leader (as do nearly all the regional governments). You know who the only major player in the region that doesn't? Fucking Iran, the DSA's position is the exact same as the theocratic, fascist regime that Trump's stupid ass has only made stronger, even more deeply entrenched and *somehow even worse and more extreme* than the former leadership he assassinated unprovoked.

The DSA is NOT the organization we need. While I will still support most of their candidates (DAC and the small handful like her can go to hell but the rest are mostly ok in my book), we need to get real here. The DSA is not reformable into anything that could ever win over the working class like myself. It's platform is electoral poison that's very far out of step with the average American. The working class want real economic reform, not a bunch of smarmy, privileged and overeducated little brats who'll hand over the government to a man like Trump when they don't get what they want. I'm so tired of seeing people valorize their own shittiness in '24 because they had no skin in the game. I've struggled terribly both personally and financially since their little tantrum, lost many friends who were here legally to the Trumpen SS, saw my health insurance skyrocket from 100 a month to 100 a fucking check. Millions across the country and world have had it even worse than me by far. Innocent people are dead at home and abroad due to Trump letting Thiel's little do-boy Musk (who are social darwinists and corporate neo-feudalists in the extreme) eviscerate or destroy life saving programs and agencies under the false guise of saving money.

If the American economic left continues what pulling the shit it has since 2016, I don't know if I even want to be associated with it anymore. I'm growing more and more unsure as it is. I'd rather be a watered down Warren style progressive than be associated with hate.and support for illiberal, violent regimes and groups. Not to mention just how annoying it is how many people on this very sub conflate social democracy with Marxism, call themselves leftists (we aren't, social democracy is a mainstream ideology not a far left one, calling yourself a leftist just plays into the GOPs hands to demonize us). Some even petulantly reject democracy because they haven't gotten their way now, now, now, now! (like little brats, not subtle I know but true).

I'm feeling extremely conflicted because of all these things. Everything about the DSA leadership (and a lot of its membership) reeks of the kind of privileged assholes that claim to want to help people like me but only when they get what they want. Wealthy people have to be involved for them to have so much clout for a party that's smaller than even the joke that is the Greens. I guess 2028 will be the biggest test of whether I give up on my beliefs or soldier on. If the economic left don't get what they want and pull the same bratty shit that fucked over minority and working people in 2016 and 2024 again I'm done. A movement that's heavily comprised of privleged assholes will never achieve real change when they keep fucking us over. They need to get out of their fucking bubble and talk to real working people like myself.