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This photo taken with a smartphone shows two members of the Democratic Socialists of America, Mark Ramirez and Clarisse Manuel, during a day of canvassing Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026, in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n
Jesse Bedayn\/AP Photo\/Jesse Bedayn<\/p>\n
This photo taken with a smartphone shows two members of the Democratic Socialists of America, Mark Ramirez and Clarisse Manuel, during a day of canvassing Saturday, Sept. 26, 2026, in Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n
Jesse Bedayn\/AP Photo\/Jesse Bedayn<\/p>\n
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) \u2014 When the socialists filed into the pews of a church sanctuary in Texas, there were far more than would have attended just two years ago.<\/p>\n
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But that was before members of the Democratic Socialists of America were winning congressional primaries, and the acronym \u201cDSA\u201d became a fixture on television news chyrons. And before Democrats began arguing about whether to court or rebuke this movement, and President Donald Trump started to complain about the threat of \u201cgodless communists.”<\/p>\n
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For many across the country, it all seemed to happen rather quickly, a political movement fresh off the bench that would, depending on who was asked, either uplift the working class or usher in Stalinism.<\/p>\n
But for some in that church, none of this was quite so surprising. The Austin DSA, like many of the 250 chapters spanning the country, has spent years marshaling its members’ earnestness, and their willingness to volunteer dozens or hundreds of hours, into a local movement with an eye toward national power.<\/p>\n
They say that achieving their more distant goals \u2014 like abolishing prisons and achieving universal health care \u2014 starts with street protests and electing city council members. Although the progressive city of Austin was already fertile soil for a socialist chapter, the group’s recent growth has mirrored a broader expansion as nationwide DSA membership more than doubled to 126,000 in the past two years.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe put in our sweat equity, we\u2019ve put in time, we have put in dollars,\u201d said Nathan Fernandes, speaking to the group gathered in the cavernous church. \u201cWe make the DSA difference ourselves because special interests can buy elections, but people can\u2019t buy what we have.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Starbucks boycott was on the menu<\/p>\n
The evening meeting started with detailed training on how to observe and take video of immigration enforcement \u2014 \u201cfilm horizontally” \u2014 and a presentation on getting the word out about a boycott of Starbucks to support the baristas’ contract negotiations.<\/p>\n
Then spoke Misael Ramos, a DSA member and candidate for Austin City Council, who was followed by an announcement that the chapter had knocked on roughly 7,000 doors for his campaign. Another canvass was around the corner.<\/p>\n
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When that day arrived, two newer DSA members, Mark Ramirez and Clarisse Manuel, showed up to learn that their candidate, Ramos, had been arrested that morning for participating in a protest over the shooting of a Venezuelan man by a federal immigration agent. Ramos is fighting the misdemeanor charge.<\/p>\n
In recent years, Ramirez, a 28-year-old software engineer, had felt frustrated by the ills of the world, particularly immigration crackdowns but also homelessness, the war in Gaza, medical debt in America, and the list went on. Doomscrolling into a depression felt inadequate.<\/p>\n
The Democratic Party was \u201ccaptured by corporate interests,\u201d said Ramirez, sitting at a picnic table, but the DSA offered something beyond handwringing. It tracked ICE raids, mounted a campaign to remove automated license plate readers in Austin, organized with labor unions and its members routinely donated their time and money to make hundreds of sandwiches for people in need.<\/p>\n
\u201cHealthcare, food and housing are things that everybody needs, and we have millions of times the productive force to meet all of those people\u2019s needs,\u201d Ramirez said. But as a society, “we choose not to.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The DSA chapter’s gumption offered an antidote for Ramirez, who was one of roughly 700 people who signed on in the last year, growing their ranks by more than half.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is on me, and I think it\u2019s on everybody, to resist,” he said. Manuel, 25, said members are showing what \u201ccan be achieved if we have a mass movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Socialism finds significant support among Democrats<\/p>\n
Back in the church sanctuary, Ramos revved up the audience.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIf you believe housing is a human right, say \u2018Yeah!\u2019\u201d he shouted. \u201cIf you believe in a free Palestine and abolishing ICE, say \u2018Hell yeah!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
An AP-NORC poll conducted in September found that about one-quarter of U.S. adults consider themselves a supporter of democratic socialism, which is similar to how many say they back President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.<\/p>\n
Democrats have warmed to the concept of socialism over the past 15 years, according to polling from Gallup. About two-thirds of them had a positive view of socialism in an August poll, up from 50% in 2010. Over the same period, Democrats have soured on capitalism. Only about one-third of them had a positive view of capitalism this year, down from about half in 2010.<\/p>\n
Although Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has long identified as a democratic socialist, the DSA movement shifted up a gear after the election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor a year ago. Months later, more such candidates won Democratic congressional primaries in New York, Pennsylvania and Colorado.<\/p>\n
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Sitting at a folding table in a nearby communal room after his speech, Ramos said he tries to bring lofty and longer-term goals \u2014 housing for everyone, defunding the police \u2014 down to earth while running for office. For example, he talks about using city land for affordable housing or diverting police funding to mental health responders.<\/p>\n
It’s one way that Ramos tries to cut through the tumult over DSA’s national platform, which includes doing away with the Senate, drafting a new constitution, taking steps toward abolishing police and prisons and, in the long run, \u201cbuilding a new society from the ground up” to create a \u201creal democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Republicans are quick to brand the movement as communism<\/p>\n
Such goals have caused consternation in both parties. Republicans are dubbing the midterms as a choice between \u201ccommon sense and communism,\u201d while Democrats fret over voters recoiling from more radical ideas.<\/p>\n
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Meira \u201cGumbo\u201d Vedros, co-chair of the Austin DSA chapter, tempered the idealism in an interview.<\/p>\n
“Abolish is not \u2018get rid of this and start from scratch,\u2019\u201d said Vedros, 29. And it’s \u201cnot saying that we have the answers, but saying, \u2018Hey, we know this is in the way of the working class having a better life, and we can find the answers together.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Not all DSA candidates subscribe to the entirety of the platform. And the contours of a socialist future are fuzzy, changing depending on who is asked. Debate continues among the members, facilitated by DSA chapters’ own form of direct democracy, where everyone has a vote.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMyself and most of the people I organize with don\u2019t often think that we will live to see the fruits of our labor,\u201d Vedros said, \u201cand we don\u2019t have a perfect idea of what an ideal society looks like. But we can \u2018rehearse\u2019 what we think would be better right now, and rehearse a better world by being better to each other.”<\/p>\n
As the church meeting ended, those gathered stood and sang together over a twangy rendition of \u201cSolidarity Forever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This photo taken with a smartphone shows two members of the Democratic Socialists of America, Mark Ramirez and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,74975,157385,158035,145,157386,133362,157387,23681,59373,59370,59371,61262,11259],"class_list":["post-463331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-clarisse-manuel","tag-democratic-socialists-america-dsa","tag-donald-trump","tag-mark-ramirez","tag-misael-ramos","tag-nathan-fernandes","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30109-ap-texas-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}