r/DemocraticSocialism

I went from voting for Trump in 2016 (Age 19) and now I’m an Orthodox Marxist in 2026 (Age 29). It’s been a liberating journey to say the least. I credit my boyfriend for helping me fully undoctrinate myself. I grew up going to Catholic School, around all religious and conservative people so I don’t really blame myself and I was “so damn young”. It’s crazy because when you grow up in that environment, you don’t even realize that those people are actually religious and conservative if that makes sense, they’re just people. I always hated racism. I would scream at my dad(he actually always voted Democrat until Trump) when he used the N-word in our home and I’d drive away in my car for a while. It’s crazy how so many racists voted for Obama lol. I feel like I really only voted for Trump and was on that bandwagon for a bit was to hide the fact that I was gay until I came out at 22. I’m sure that I’m not alone. I would love to hear some of your stories about your political awakening journey and transformation throughout the years. i’m proud of myself looking back over the past 10 years of how much I’ve evolved each year in every aspect of my life.

Bowdoin College is subjecting me (a founding leader of Bowdoin Socialists, an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, and anti-Zionist student coalition) to a growing set of charges — including some tied to conduct while I was on medical leave — after I replied "RIP to bro 😿" to a campus email advertising a vigil for Charlie Kirk in September 2025. A fellow student reported the comment as a "direct threat to [their] life."

On February 12, 2026, Bowdoin Socialists published a compilation: "Bowdoin College's Jeffrey Epstein Connections," drawing on the January 2026 DOJ file release, the FCA's 2023 Decision Notice, and the Upper Tribunal's 2025 ruling in Staley v. FCA. One day later, Bowdoin's Director of Student Activities sent a written directive ordering Bowdoin Socialists to cease all online and offline activity on the grounds that we hadn't formally registered. However, student media are "editorially independent of the College and its administration" and the College "has no control over or input on the content of such publications and programming." When I questioned this on February 17, the Director simply replied that he was "passing this along to the Office of the Dean of Students for follow up."

On March 12, 2026, FIRE sent its first public letter to Bowdoin, calling the social media ban on Bowdoin Socialists a violation of our speech rights (at a private college).

On May 15, 2026, FIRE sent a second public letter condemning the ongoing investigations against me personally and demanding all charges be dropped. FIRE assigned a deadline of May 26 to respond.

Despite the ongoing pressure, Bowdoin Socialists is continuing to build out its speaker series for the coming academic year. We have announced two inaugural speakers and are currently in talks with a third:

Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University and one of the world's foremost scholars on colonialism and political violence. His books include Citizen and Subject, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Neither Settler nor Native, and, most recently, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State. Professor Mamdani is also the father of Zohran Mamdani '14, the Mayor of New York City, who founded Bowdoin's SJP chapter.

Anthony Fantano is widely recognized as the most influential music critic of his generation. In 2007, he joined WNPR and launched The Needle Drop as a music review blog before moving to YouTube in 2009. The channel has since accumulated approximately 1.2 billion views. The New York Times has called him "the only music critic who matters (if you're under 25)."

Hasan Piker is a leftist political commentator and one of the most-watched livestreamers in the United States. Bowdoin Socialists is currently in talks with Piker about an in-person event at the college.

Having democratic socialists running under the dominant party means no lawsuits regarding ballot access

It means that every dollar you receive can be spent on your race not wasting your time with running as a 3rd party/independent candidate

Not to mention if you win the primary in a red or blue state you are absolutely guaranteed to win the general election

Having DSA endorsed candidates running in Republican primaries is going to help bring socialism to red states

Having DSA endorsed candidates win Republican primaries will mean zero worries about gerrymandering because the gerrymandering would have benefited democratic socialists running under the R banner anyways

As you all probably know, we have seen democratic socialists win elections for various executive offices, most famously Zohran Mamdani in New York City, and there has been intense discussion on the prospect of a democratic socialist running for president in 2028.

However, I would like to say that jumping straight to winning executive offices is not a very good strategy. People in chief executive positions, such as presidents or mayors, can only do so much on their own, they would need their legislature, such as a city council or Congress, to back many if not most of their proposals if they want them to get enacted.

We have already seen this become a problem for Mamdani. He is certainly a well-intentioned person and is likely a genuine socialist, but he doesn't have many socialist allies in other positions of power (DSA only has 4 out of the 51 seats in City Council!). As a result, we have already seen him pre-emptively compromise on many of his positions to try to get at least some of his agenda passed. For example, his preliminary FY 2027 budget back in February gave less funding to parks and libraries than promised while increasing funding to the police department. While it does seem now that his recently-proposed executive budget does slightly decrease police funding now (from $12.6 billion to $12.4 billion), it still slightly cuts funding to libraries (from $658 million to $655 million; when only including operating expenses, it's from $531 million to $526 million, which is about 0.42% of the budget, below the 0.5% he pledged) and parks (stays at around $1.38 billion; when only including operating expenses, it drops from $725 million to $685 million, or about 0.55% of the budget, way below the 1.0% he pledged). In addition, he endorsed establishment Democrat Kathy Hochul for governor and endorsed Brad Lander over the DSA candidate, Alexa Avilés, in New York's 10th congressional district, leading to the latter dropping out.

While I am under no illusions that the owning class would just tolerate socialism (i.e. workers' ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange) being enacted even if it did peacefully win elections in both legislative and executive offices, we have clearly nonetheless seen that Mamdani has needed to compromise on even many of his basic social-democratic reforms.

None of this is a moral condemnation of Mamdani, don't get me wrong, he probably is trying to do what he can in a hostile political environment. I am simply illustrating this to show how winning executive offices without having much power elsewhere is a bad idea. A similar situation is true for the presidential election. While a democratic socialist winning the presidency would be nice, they would be unable to do much of what they want if Congress was still controlled by capitalists (which it likely would be in 2028; there are literally only two DSA members in Congress right now), though the President does have many powers on their own.

This isn't to say running for executive offices is totally useless. They do come with some powers of their own, but I think there needs to be greater focus towards winning legislatures if we want greater reforms to be done. Currently, the DSA does not have a majority in any city council; we will need to change that if we want any mayor we elect to be able to fulfill any of their promises.

[P.S. I would also like to add as a final note: don't focus exclusively on electoral politics either. Electoral politics is one part of the puzzle here. Your activism should not just be voting in an election every few years and moving on.]