If this is a difficult time for you or someone you know
Let me speak a clear word straight to your heart:
There is no trouble stronger than the love of the Spirit.
There is no illness, no broken relationship.
No financial setback, no personal hurt
That the love of the Spirit cannot heal.
Not even death can overcome it.
That love is for you.
It may come to you as you read these words
Or it may take time, but it will come to you.
The assurance, the comfort,
The renewal of a love that will embrace you
And hold you and abide with you,
Until the light returns and departs no more.
Zohran Mamdani’s election in New York City is not simply a local upset. It is a breach in the ideological dam that has kept American politics safely contained for generations.
This victory is historic not because one office suddenly overturns entrenched power, but because it demonstrates that such power can be overturned at all.
For decades, political life in the United States has functioned as a managed marketplace in which both parties advertise different brands, yet deliver the same fundamental product: deference to private wealth, hostility to social investment, and a belief that the public should expect very little from its government beyond punishment and surveillance.
Tonight, that spell cracked.
Mamdani won not by courting the wealthy, not by flattering real-estate interests, not by running a campaign tailored to the comfort of cable-news pundits.
He won by naming the obvious: that the city belongs to its people, not to absentee landlords; that housing, transit, childcare, food, and dignity are fundamental rights, not privileges; that a budget is a statement of who matters in society – and it’s long past time a city as wealthy as New York put working people first instead of billionaires and real-estate developers.
The bipartisan establishment will attempt to minimize this moment. They will continue to fund hysterical hit pieces designed to make people afraid of those challenging their rule. But their real fear is that this victory might prove contagious.
If New Yorkers can elect someone who openly challenges concentrated power, asks the wealthy to pay their share, and speaks in plain moral terms about economic justice, then perhaps Chicago can. Perhaps Los Angeles can. Perhaps Cleveland, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Kansas City.
The danger, from the perspective of those who currently command the political economy, is that people elsewhere may decide to stop begging for crumbs and begin organizing for a real seat at the table.
Power relies on a population convinced of its own helplessness. The most consistent project of elite politics is to cultivate resignation: nothing can change, no one like you can win, best not to try. When that illusion breaks, even in a single city, it sends tremors outward.
Across the country, millions watching tonight saw something rare in American politics: proof that a campaign rooted in solidarity can beat one rooted in capital.
They saw a future in which the public is not a spectator to its own dispossession.
They saw permission to believe in their own power.
They saw that politics need not be reduced to a stage-managed rivalry between corporations wearing different campaign colors.
As someone who saw this possibility in the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders, who saw our movement defeated by this same bipartisan establishment, tonight gives me a renewed faith in America's capacity to fight back against oligarchy.
Zohran’s win feels like the beginning of the first meaningful challenge to the neoliberal consensus in a generation.
And that is why this victory matters. Not because one candidate triumphed, but because a barrier was crossed.
The belief that the public must endure austerity while wealth accumulates above it has lost its inevitability.
The idea that the mass media can manufacture consent for a Wall Street-approved candidate every time has shattered. The attacks on Mamdani were relentless these past few months. But their hollow and desperate efforts failed. The majority didn't buy it and they went to the polls to send Cuomo packing.
For the first time in a long time, the message is simple and electrifying:
The people can win. And if they can win here, they can win anywhere.
Zohran Mamdani won a majority – the first candidate to win more than one million votes since 1969. He did so despite an unrelenting racist smear campaign, vast sums spent by billionaires, and threats from Trump to strangle New York.
You’re seeing, in part, the political consequences of the Iraq war, the financial crash, and Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. All helped forge new politicised generations. And the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign reforged the U.S. left – which made Mamdani possible.
That Mamdani owes his victory to a broken economic system is undeniable. But fury at Israel’s genocide played a key role in him securing the Democratic nomination. The dramatic political consequences of the genocide have only just begun to be felt
.
In his victory speech, Mamdani quoted Eugene Debs, the U.S. socialist pioneer, because he firmly places himself in that historic tradition of the left.
He addressed Jewish people, Muslims, trans people – because the left is the antidote to a right embracing racism and hate. In an age of Islamophobia – which is mainstream, acceptable, respectable, normalised – for a Muslim candidate to triumph in New York matters. That an unapologetically socialist Muslim opposed to racism and bigotry in all its forms triumphed matters even more.
Donald Trump and the Democratic establishment want Mamdani to fail, and will do all they can to achieve their goal. How the huge numbers inspired by Mamdani’s campaign are mobilised will matter a lot in the coming fight. But we saw how Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign re-energised the U.S. left. Mamdani’s campaign will have an even bigger impact. So many leftist politicians and campaigns are going to emerge all over the U.S. because of his triumph.
In an age of darkness, Mamdani’s campaign offers hope.
The socialist left has now triumphed in New York. In New York!
Let’s hope that’s the beginning of the socialist left triumphing everywhere – and driving back the forces of fascism.
I’m levitating. This is such an incredible proof of concept of how to fight fascism. You know, Zohran, immediately after Trump’s election, went out and talked to Trump voters, people who had never voted for Trump before, Black and Brown people in working-class neighborhoods, didn’t vilify them, just listened to them.
I talked to Zohran for the first time a week after Trump’s election. And what he said to me was everything is broken for people. Like, the elevator in their public housing hasn’t been fixed for 10 months. Nothing is working. So it’s so easy for someone like Trump to come along and be like, “Blame the immigrant. Blame the unhoused person.” And his entire campaign was about proving that if you actually meet people’s real needs and raise the floor and say, “Okay, let’s freeze the rent. Let’s have free and fast buses. Let’s have universal child care. Let’s address that sense of scarcity and insecurity at its root,” that it can pull people back from the fascist abyss. And he won tonight. He proved that that is – that works. That message works.
This movement, this is anti-fascism, and it is also the antithesis of fascism, because fascists want everybody to be the same. They celebrate conformity, uniformity, sameness, hierarchy. Look in – New York is the most unruly city. The entire campaign was a love letter to the diversity, linguistic, faith, cultural diversity of the city, at a time when the Republicans never stop pouring hate onto cities and make people afraid of each other, right?
Since young men across the U.S. shifted right in the 2024 elections, with former Vice President Kamala Harris losing to President Donald Trump among men ages 18-29, the Democratic Party has searched for ways to win back the voting bloc – and on Tuesday night, progressives urged leaders to simply look to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s resounding success.
Exit polls showed Mamdani, a progressive state Assembly member who remained laser-focused on making the city more affordable for working people during his campaign, winning the support of 68% of male voters ages 18-29, while Cuomo won just 26% of them – a margin of 42 points.
The democratic socialist’s support among men under the age of 45 was also notable, with a margin of 39 points.
Young male voters swung left in other closely watched races as well, with Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger winning the group by 15 points and New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill winning by 12 points – but observers said Democratic leaders should pay special attention to the “blowout” in New York City as they seek answers about how to win over young men nationwide.
Housing campaigner Matthew Torbitt suggested that Mamdani appealed to young male New Yorkers by speaking clearly and emphatically about the need to make life for all working people more affordable – by establishing a network of city-run grocery stores to compete with private corporations, freezing the rent on rent-stabilized units, and expanding across the city’s bus system the pilot program he championed that made one bus line fare-free.
“Young men just need to feel like there is someone on their side,” Torbitt said.
This is how you run. This is how you win. This is the politics we need right now. Democratic socialist candidates can inspire people again, and fight the right effectively. . . . The history of socialist mayors in the United States shows that they can actually succeed. Socialist Daniel Hoan is considered one of the best mayors in the history of Milwaukee, having focused on rooting out corruption, establishing public buses, and keeping up the quality of city parks and public schools. He didn’t exactly overturn the basic economic order, but he did show that socialist principles are compatible with competent, honest government. Likewise, Bernie Sanders is regarded as having been a capable and effective mayor of Burlington, Vermont.
Mamdani faces an immense challenge now. After ten years of insisting that if handed power, the left can deliver for people, we don’t want to be like “the dog who caught the car.” Many eyes are on Mamdani to see what he will do next, whether he will crash and burn, sell out, or provide evidence that democratic socialism is the politics America needs. If he defies the skeptics and haters, and is the best mayor in the history of New York, delivering on his agenda, Mamdani may massively improve the political fortunes of the American left. If, on the other hand, he disappoints, he may discredit the left, and make it impossible to get socialists elected to office in the future. I hope he and his team know what they are doing—but if they govern as well as they campaigned, New York City is in good hands.
For the last ten years, Current Affairs has been relentlessly making the argument that democratic socialist politics can win, and need to be given a chance. We now have that chance, and it is probably the most exciting moment in the history of the U.S. left. The pressure is on. The fight is just beginning. But this is an incredible victory, and the hard-working New Yorkers who made it possible have a lot to be proud of.
Opening image: Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani delivers remarks at his election night watch party at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater on November 4, 2025 in the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
Following is my adaptation of one of Julia Cameron’s “heart steps.”
I open my mind and heart to guidance from the Beloved One. I am open to guidance in all its many forms. I accept help from the Beloved One through people, events, and places which inspire and instruct me. I listen to the song of the Beloved through many instruments – the ebb and flow of the tides, animal companions, the wind, a bird, a flash of sunlight sparkling off colored glass. All things speak my language. I listen to all languages with my heart. My heart hears higher and higher frequencies of guidance as I raise my own thoughts to the possibility of higher realms guiding and embracing my own.
Dick Cheney has died. The former vice president and war criminal will be hailed in the corporate controlled press as the last “reasonable” voice in the Republican Party along with his daughter, Liz. Here’s some things the media won’t mention about this warmonger . . .
1. Cheney was a member of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). This group of neoconservatives and imperialists called for America to rapidly expand the Pentagon budget, fight multiple wars and specifically overthrow Iraq. They do mention none of this would happen, “absent a catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor.” Lucky for Cheney, he happened to be inside the Bush administration after 9/11.
2. The vice president helped lie America into Iraq. According to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil, shortly after the Bush administration was sworn in, they met for their first national security council meeting. There, before 9/11, they openly brainstormed how to start a war with Iraq. O’Neil even provided documents on how they could steal the oil of the Middle Eastern nation. Cheney invited oil and gas executives to the White House during and after the invasion of Iraq. He declined to make the content of those meetings available to the public.
3. Following the disastrous war in Iraq, Cheney tried to start a war with Iran. According to Seymour Hersh’s reporting for the New Yorker in 2006, Cheney tried to create a Gulf of Tonkin incident. He believed it could be a pretext to launch bombing campaigns on Iran. Thankfully, that never happened. After he left the Bush administration, Cheney bragged he was one of the most vocal voices for bombing Iran.
4. No one was a louder proponent of torture than Dick Cheney. The vice president repeatedly defended its practice and claimed that it saved lives. For the record, it never did. We now know that definitively from the Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program. To highlight Cheney’s hypocrisy on this issue, he was once asked by NBC’s Matt Lauer if Iran would be justified in water boarding an American spy if he had information on possible activities inside their nation. Cheney, unsurprisingly, said he would be opposed to such tactics on Americans. Cheney’s philosophy was it’s okay when we do it. It’s not okay when they do it.
Cheney’s legacy of blood, carnage and war crimes is still felt at American tables who have one less child returning home from the Middle East, and the one million Iraqis who died. As I stated at the beginning of this post, many will mourn him as a man who represented a time when the GOP was reasonable. I dare those same people to interview a family member who lost a child in Iraq or an Iraqi who lost a family member following that HORRIFIC war. They will give you a different answer.
Dick Cheney rose from many government roles including U.S. Representative from Wyoming to Defense Secretary under George H. W. Bush, then became CEO of oil corporation Halliburton before serving as Vice President under George W. Bush.
As vice president, Cheney was one of the main forces behind the 2003 Iraq invasion. He pushed claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, which later proved false, and pressured intelligence officials to lie in order to support the case for war.
After the invasion, Cheney’s former company Halliburton and its subsidiary KBR received about $39.5 billion dollars in Iraq contracts, many awarded without competition. Audits later found overbilling and waste, fueling accusations of war profiteering.
Cheney also defended the CIA’s use of torture, backed secret prisons, and supported private contractors like Blackwater that were later tied to civilian killings.
In 2012, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission found Cheney guilty in absentia of war crimes for authorizing torture, and Amnesty International urged that he be investigated if he traveled abroad.
Today, both liberals and conservatives will try to paint him as a good man, even though his decisions led to the deaths of millions of innocent Iraqi civilians.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s death on Monday could be the perfect opportunity for media institutions in the U.S. to take a sober look at the George W. Bush era – but it’s more likely they’ll fire up the nostalgia machine than confront reality.
Liberal network MSNBC’s flagship a.m. program Morning Joe somberly announced the news on Tuesday and quickly worked to portray Cheney as a strong leader who fought for the country at all costs. Host Joe Scarborough said the former vice president was defined by his determination not to see another 9/11. Later in the show, author and historian Jon Meacham called Cheney “a remarkable American figure.”
“We don’t make them like this anymore,” Meacham said, implying this is a bad thing.
Scarborough celebrated Cheney as a “defender of democracy” for his opposition to Donald Trump, a common theme in his final act. The former vice president and Republican hard-liner was greeted warmly in recent years by powerful Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Adam Schiff for the pivot.
It’s a pattern we’re likely to see continued in the wake of his death – and a sign that Democrats have still not learned hard lessons about their role in sending the country into the abyss.
In fact, Cheney had more of a role in giving us Trump than his later opposition might suggest, pioneering a cruel brand of post-truth politics that Trump would perfect.
Cheney said whatever he needed to in order to push his agenda. He cast aside clear legal constraints, wantonly starting illegal wars and ignoring nettlesome obstacles like the legal prohibition on torture. He ruthlessly attacked his perceived political enemies, decrying anyone who disagreed with him as “terrorist” sympathizers. Sound familiar?
Dick Cheney is dead at 84. He did not die in disgrace, though he should have. He died wealthy, respected in certain circles, and utterly unrepentant. The man who once declared that the United States would have to go to “the dark side” after 9/11 lived long enough to see that darkness normalized, monetized, and weaponized against his own countrymen.
Cheney’s fingerprints are all over the machinery of our current decline. The torture memos that redefined cruelty as legality. The surveillance architecture that turned privacy into a privilege. The doctrine of preemptive war that made deceit a tool of statecraft. His genius was not in leadership but in the quiet conversion of fear into policy and secrecy into power. Halliburton profited as Baghdad burned, and a generation of Americans learned that truth could be suspended if the lie was wrapped in a flag.
He taught a generation to confuse vengeance with justice. He convinced them that brutality was strength, that secrecy was safety, and that democracy could survive anything so long as the right people were in charge. The corrosion of conscience that began in those years never left us. It calcified into cynicism, and that cynicism became the oxygen of the authoritarian movement that followed. In his time, Cheney was often caricatured as Darth Vader, a moniker he wore with amusement. In hindsight, it stands as one of the most fitting apologies in modern political history. The cruelty that once required justification now parades as virtue, a moral inversion born in the shadow of Cheney’s America.
Two decades later, that same machinery hums under a new operator. The Trump administration took Cheney’s hidden authoritarian blueprint and removed its disguises. Where Cheney cultivated plausible deniability, Trump cultivates spectacle. Where Cheney institutionalized secrecy, Trump broadcasts vengeance. Both rely on the same architecture: the executive branch as weapon, the law as accessory, the lie as gospel.
. . . History should not remember Cheney as a statesman. It should remember him as a technician of empire, a man who perfected the mechanics of control and handed them, like loaded weapons, to those who came after him. His legacy lives not in monuments or memoirs, but in the machinery of the American police state he helped design.
Dick Cheney is gone. But his shadow still governs. Until we dismantle what he built, America will remain what he made it, a democracy in name, an empire in practice, and a lie we keep telling ourselves.
– Tony Pentimalli via social media
November 4, 2025
Recently Marc Lamont Hill and Briahna Joy Gray engaged in an insightful and timely conversation on the future of the Democratic Party.
Here’s how this conversation is introduced:
As inequality deepens and dissent is punished, many are looking to new voices like Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist running for New York City mayor on a platform of rent freezes, free public transit, and taxing the rich.
Can candidates like him revive the Democratic Party in the United States, or is real reform from within impossible?
There is a left populist economic path to electoral success and Zohran Mamdani is writing that path. You don’t need to become Liz Cheney to win. And in fact, Liz Cheney is not exactly winning in politics, and bear-hugging her did not turn-out so well for Kamala Harris in terms of ginning up votes. . . . So when you hear about compromise, and how we have to be a center party, and how we have to be pragmatic in order to win, that’s all propaganda to justify why the [Democratic establishment] won’t just ran on legitimate popular policies like universal health care, like taxing the rich, like a $15 minimum wage. Really basic stuff. . . . In this moment there’s an enormous amount of frustration with the Democratic Party among rank-and-file Democrats which presents opportunities for those of us who would like to see a break from the party. And, short of that, the threat of a break that is sufficiently real that it actually forces the Democratic establishment to have to choose the people over their corporate commitments. I don’t know if we’re close to that, if the party can fundamentally ever be reformed because I believe the purpose of it is to advance those corporate commitments. . . . I question if it is possible to be within the Democratic Party and carry on legitimate left, progressive values; economic populist values.
Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh had an op-ed in last Thursday’s Minnesota Star Tribune.
As a supporter of and volenteer with his campaign, I share today, with added images and links, Omar’s October 30 op-ed in its entirety.
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I love Minneapolis. This is the city where I want to raise my family. From morning coffee at Code Blu to pick up games at Peavey Park, this city is home. I’m eager to send my son to a Minneapolis public school, because I believe in what this city can be. We aren’t reaching our potential, but I see it – and I know you do, too.
I’m deeply concerned with the world my son has been born into. I want to raise him in a city that gives him the tools he needs to spread his wings and enough support to lift him up if he stumbles. I’m not just running to fix a broken system, I’m running to help build the city to grow up in. It’s time we had a mayor who will work as hard as we do to ensure Minneapolis is a city working people can afford to call home.
I delivered in the state Senate, and I worked across the aisle with Republicans to pass transformative policy. I passed free college for working-class families making less than $80,000 annually, led the fight to pass a living wage for Uber and Lyft drivers, and invested $19 million in Minneapolis public safety. Despite corporate interests throwing their weight around at every turn, I still got the job done – and I did it with a broad coalition of support.
For the last seven years, we’ve had a mayor who has failed to deliver meaningful change. He failed to work collaboratively with 13 fellow Democrats on the City Council, by prioritizing his ideology and political ambitions above the needs of Minneapolis residents. You deserve better than broken promises and endless vetoes. You deserve a mayor who puts you first.
If the historic 2023 session taught me anything, it’s that when you have the opportunity to make change, you seize it. You stay up all night with workers because people are making poverty wages, struggling to feed their families and they have waited long enough. What I have never done, and what I will never do, is look the people of this city in the eye and ask them to wait their turn.
I won’t run from President Trump; I’ll build the line of defense from the masked federal agents breaking into your home in broad daylight, separating families from their loved ones and disappearing our neighbors. I will fight for a stronger sanctuary policy that guarantees that the Minneapolis Police Department never supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and I’ll stand up against the federal government’s attacks on health care and bodily autonomy.
Families have been put in an impossible position; they should never have to decide between paying rent and putting food on the table. I’m ready to raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour by 2028 and pass a rent stabilizatiom policy that still incentivizes new construction and tenant protections. I won’t bow to corporate interests or political pressure, because you deserve a mayor who fights for you.
It’s past time for true public safety. The political strategists have manufactured a myth to pit us against each other about our own safety. To that I say, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. That’s why I secured $19 million in public safety funding for Minneapolis and called for real accountability in policing. Safety means no longer asking officers to take on every problem leading to residents waiting on the phone with 911. Real public safety means investing in officer wellness while freeing up their capacity to focus on violent crime and clear the case backlog.
The MAGA talking heads, the dog whistles and the millions of dollars being spent to put my face in your mailbox, insisting that I’m too young, too radical, too idealistic – are afraid I’m too close to you. The worker, the immigrant, the renter, people in this city who are just trying to make it. If fighting to house people, protect immigrants and keep you safe is radical, then count me in, because Minneapolis is worth fighting for. For my son, for you – because we have the people, the power and the potential. Now, we need a mayor ready to meet the moment.
This past Friday, October 31, Omar Fateh was interviewed by Amy Goodman on the independent global news hour Democracy Now!. Following is the full 8-minute interview.
Listen to the wind. It has something to tell you.
Whether it is as quiet as the current
That lifts the hawk to circle the sky
Or as loud as the storm chasing high waves to shore:
The wind has something to say.
There is a word for each of us, a message sent directly
That flows through the wind each day
Offering us insight and vision, clarity and creative ideas
If only we will stop long enough to receive it.
Be still. Be awake. Trust your spiritual senses.
Listen to the wind. The Spirit is speaking to you.
Omar Fateh, a Democratic socialist, hopes to
defeat incumbent mayor Jacob Frey by focusing
on affordability, wages and public safety.
– Rachel Leingang
I share today the second half of Rachel Leingang’s recent Guardianarticle on Omar Fateh, the Democratic socialist who is running for mayor of Minneapolis and whom I’m supporting. In fact, I’ll be door-knocking for him later today. (NOTE: For the first part of Leingang’s piece, click here.)
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Omar Fateh, like [New York mayoral candidate] Zohran Mamdani, is running a campaign full of progressive promises, including raising the minimum wage to $20 an hour, a plan for rent stabilization, a public safety system that funds alternatives to police for calls like mental health crises and standing up to Trump. Six of the 13 council members have backed him, as have unions and state lawmakers.
He casts [incumbent mayor] Jacob Frey’s two terms as “broken promises and vetoes,” noting a 2017 campaign promise to end homelessness within five years and goals for public safety reform after George Floyd’s murder [in 2020].
“We have a progressive city council that’s ready to do the work, that has been doing the work,” Fateh told The Guardian. “We just don’t have a mayor as a partner.”
Fateh, born in Washington DC, moved to Minneapolis about a decade ago. In 2020, the Democratic socialist launched a challenge to an incumbent Democrat for the state senate, earning the party’s endorsement and eventually becoming the first Somali American and first Muslim in the chamber. As a senator, he pushed through a bill creating labor standards for ride-share drivers and championed a tuition-free college plan.
His time in the legislature and reputation as a progressive fighter gave him a base of support in the mayoral contest, elevating him to top contender against Frey, Jacobs said.
An increased national profile has brought along an increase in threats, racism and Islamophobia, Fateh told Sahan Journal, a local publication, this week. Earlier this month, he got a message that said: “Two bullets to the head, done.” He has had to take additional safety precautions and pay for security, he told the outlet. “Most campaigns don’t have to think about this,” his campaign manager told Sahan Journal.
Fateh believes [his] revoked endorsement [by the state Democratic party] is in part because of the donor class and how it would look to support a progressive candidate with a populist message, especially in suburban and rural areas where the party has lost ground.
“The Democratic party as a whole likes to always say we’re a big tent, we are a wide spectrum, we welcome everybody,” he said. “But a lot of times it seems like when it’s the more progressive wing . . . they shut [them] out.”
After knocking on doors, Fateh returned to the park, where families set up bubble machines and boxes of fruit snacks and goldfish for a “play date with Omar Fateh”, himself the tired first-time father of a newborn. He is quick to show off pictures of his baby. Frey also has a newborn, his second child – the two politicians’ babies were born within 10 days of each other.
An organizer at the play date asked the crowd of a few dozen adults and kids if anyone knows who Fateh is. “I’ve seen him on the phone!” one kid yelled.
Sarah Quinn, a Minneapolis voter who spoke to the crowd at the event, said she had heard from people who were ready to vote against Frey, but weren’t sure how they would rank the other candidates. People seemed excited to hear about Fateh’s vision, she said, and she was sick of hearing about vetoes of council bills and “low-grade insults back and forth” among the mayor and council.
“I feel like Minneapolis has this reputation of being a really progressive city, and I’m not actually feeling that as a resident,” Quinn said. “And so just hearing his agenda has really resonated with me, and I think that he’s somebody that can actually get the shit done with the city council.”
The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has served as a boogeyman of sorts for the Democratic establishment: before the Minneapolis convention, one proposal, which was later pulled back, sought to make it so a candidate couldn’t be endorsed by both the DSA and the [state Democratic party, known in Minnesota as the DFL].
Fateh’s campaign has been boosted by the Twin Cities DSA. Brooke Bartholomew, the group’s co-chair, said they had seen new members sign up after Mamdani’s win in the primary.
“We have the people power,” Bartholomew said. “That’s part of what DSA brings to the table for Omar Fateh’s campaign is people power – going on those doors, talking to neighbors and helping to build this really diverse coalition.”
Frey, endorsed by Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, has the money advantage over Fateh and the other two top contenders, Jazz Hampton and DeWayne Davis. That “organizational muscle” that comes from allied groups and the business community could help get out the vote for Frey, said Jacobs, of the University of Minnesota.
The Guardian repeatedly sought an interview with Frey and asked to attend a campaign event. The campaign initially agreed, but then did not make the mayor available, instead sending a statement from a campaign spokesperson.
“Over the last five years, Minneapolis was tested like never before,” the statement said. “Under Mayor Frey’s leadership, the city has been making a comeback. Violent crime is trending down, the city is creating eight times more deeply affordable housing than before Mayor Frey took office, and Minneapolis is taking the Trump administration to court to defend our neighbors. The mayor is running for one final term to improve public safety by hiring more police officers and implementing police reform, expanding affordable housing, and focusing on delivering excellent core city services. We’re optimistic that Minneapolis voters will support that vision next week.”
Since Trump returned to the White House, Frey has vocally defended Minneapolis, which could become a target of Trump’s increased deportation raids or military occupations. The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, came to town in late October, stoking speculation that the city could be next on Trump’s list. Frey, flanked by city leaders, put out a video on the day of her visit saying he had been preparing for months for a potential federal influx.
“In Minneapolis, we have your back,” Frey said to the city’s immigrant communities. “You will be protected and respected by our city employees regardless of your immigration status.”
Opposing Trump is an increasing part of the mayor’s purview, and one that all the contenders say is critical. Fateh wants the city to strengthen the separation ordinance that prevents city employees from aiding immigration activities.
While the race is often cast as a two-person contest, Hampton and Davis see lanes for themselves to win, given ranked-choice voting, and not just to help Fateh.
“I would not be running to prop up someone else’s campaign,” Hampton said. “I’m running to win, and I believe that we can and will. However, if that means door-knocking with other candidates to let everyone see us, that’s what we should be doing.”
Davis, a minister and former congressional staffer, said voters were ready to move beyond “leadership by press conference and ribbon-cutting”, and the success of the three insurgent campaigns shows that.
The Mamdani comparisons don’t track as much with the Minneapolis race, Davis said. Looking past the weak opposition from Cuomo in New York, Minneapolis has a “very active establishment” of business-oriented Democrats.
“I think we are far more divided here,” Davis said of Minneapolis voters. “And so given the ranked choice with us, that division, it’s any guess about how that iteration of choices through ranked choice will end up happening.”
This past Thursday, October 30, Omar Fateh was interviewed by Minneapolis-based Water Wave TV. In this interview, Omar talks about his life before politics, Minneapolis police, ICE, and his campaign to be mayor of Minneapolis.
0:00 Introduction 0:30 – Current political climate 2:50 – Who is Omar Fateh? 4:20 – High school 6:00 – What got you into politics? 7:50 – Youth disconnect with politics 10:00 – Using your background to shape you as a mayor 13:00 – Legislation changes 16:00 – Mistakes you’ve made as a legislator 20:00 – Turning point to run for mayor 21:50 – What does the first 100 days in office look like for Fateh? 23:45 – How do you expect to get things done with people who don’t agree with you? 25:30 – Key indicators that what you are saying is working if you become mayor 27:00 – Public Safety and George Floyd 31:00 – Police staffing issues 33:10 – ICE
NOTE: For Part 2 of this interview, click here. For Part 3, click here. To watch all three parts as a complete one-hour & 40-minute interview, click here.
I established The Wild Reed in 2006 as a sign of solidarity with all who are dedicated to living lives of integrity – though, in particular, with gay people seeking to be true to both the gift of their sexuality and their Catholic faith. The Wild Reed's original by-line read, “Thoughts and reflections from a progressive, gay, Catholic perspective.” As you can see, it reads differently now. This is because my journey has, in many ways, taken me beyond, or perhaps better still, deeper into the realities that the words “progressive,” “gay,” and “Catholic” seek to describe.
Even though reeds can symbolize frailty, they may also represent the strength found in flexibility. Popular wisdom says that the green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm. Tall green reeds are associated with water, fertility, abundance, wealth, and rebirth. The sound of a reed pipe is often considered the voice of a soul pining for God or a lost love.
On September 24, 2012,Michael BaylyofCatholics for Marriage Equality MNwas interviewed by Suzanne Linton of Our World Today about same-sex relationships and why Catholics can vote 'no' on the proposed Minnesota anti-marriage equality amendment.
"I believe your blog to be of utmost importance for all people regardless of their orientation. . . . Thank you for your blog and the care and dedication that you give in bringing the TRUTH to everyone."– William
"Michael, if there is ever a moment in your day or in your life when you feel low and despondent and wonder whether what you are doing is anything worthwhile, think of this: thanks to your writing on the internet, a young man miles away is now willing to embrace life completely and use his talents and passions unashamedly to celebrate God and his creation. Any success I face in the future and any lives I touch would have been made possible thanks to you and your honesty and wisdom."– AB
"Since I discovered your blog I have felt so much more encouraged and inspired knowing that I'm not the only gay guy in the Catholic Church trying to balance my Faith and my sexuality. Continue being a beacon of hope and a guide to the future within our Church!"– Phillip
"Your posts about Catholic issues are always informative and well researched, and I especially appreciate your photography and the personal posts about your own experience. I'm very glad I found your blog and that I've had the chance to get to know you."– Crystal
"Thank you for taking the time to create this fantastic blog. It is so inspiring!"– George
"I cannot claim to be an expert on Catholic blogs, but from what I've seen, The Wild Reed ranks among the very best."– Kevin
"Reading your blog leaves me with the consolation of knowing that the words Catholic, gay and progressive are not mutually exclusive.."– Patrick
"I grieve for the Roman institution’s betrayal of God’s invitation to change. I fear that somewhere in the midst of this denial is a great sin that rests on the shoulders of those who lead and those who passively follow. But knowing that there are voices, voices of the prophets out there gives me hope. Please keep up the good work."– Peter
"I ran across your blog the other day looking for something else. I stopped to look at it and then bookmarked it because you have written some excellent articles that I want to read. I find your writing to be insightful and interesting and I'm looking forward to reading more of it. Keep up the good work. We really, really need sane people with a voice these days."– Jane Gael
"Michael, your site is like water in the desert."– Jayden
