The Democratic establishment just lost New York by 31 points – and instead of asking why, they turned their fire on the left. Not on Trump. Not on the camps or the purges. On the socialists who just beat them.
Here’s the thing: they don’t fight the far right this hard. They fight the left this hard. And Democratic voters are finally seeing why – it was never about the country. It was about the donors.
Image: Democratic congressional candidates Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier appear on stage with Mayor Zohran Mamdani during a Get Out The Vote rally ahead of New York’s primary election – Thursday, June 18, 2026, in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (Photo: AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
The following was published this past Saturday by the satirical Montana Department of Propaganda Facebook group, the place “where trolls go to die.”
As you’ll see, though, there’s nothing satirical about this particular post, one that marks the 143rd anniversary of the death of German philosopher, social and political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx.
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Karl Marx died on March 14, 1883.
And if you strip away all the Cold War propaganda and the cartoon versions people argue about online, what Marx actually did was pretty simple. He looked at capitalism and asked a question that polite society tries very hard not to ask.
Who is doing the work . . . and who is taking the money?
Marx spent years studying factories, wages, production, and economic crises. What he noticed was something workers had already felt in their bones for generations. The people producing the wealth were not the people controlling it.
Workers built the railroads. Workers mined the coal. Workers ran the machines. Workers produced the goods.
But the profits accumulated somewhere else.
Marx called this exploitation, not as an insult, but as a mechanical description of how the system worked. If a worker produces $200 worth of value in a day but is paid $80 in wages, the remaining value does not disappear. It flows upward to owners, investors, and shareholders. That difference is what Marx called surplus value.
And once you see that dynamic, you start noticing something else Marx talked about constantly: class struggle. Not the cartoon version where people run around waving red flags. The real one. The quiet daily struggle over wages, rent, healthcare, working hours, unions, and who gets to control the wealth society produces.
You can see it today just as clearly as Marx saw it in the 1800s.
Workers told there is no money for healthcare, but there is always money for war. Teachers told budgets are tight while corporations receive tax breaks. Communities told to tighten their belts while billionaires accumulate more wealth than entire countries.
And if you want to see how this plays out in real life, you do not even have to leave Montana.
In the early 1900s, copper miners in Butte, Montana were working some of the most dangerous industrial jobs in America. The mines were controlled by the powerful Anaconda Copper Mining Company, part of the copper trust that dominated Montana’s economy and politics. Miners worked brutal hours underground surrounded by toxic dust, cave-ins, and explosions while enormous fortunes were being built above ground.
Then came the catastrophe that ignited outrage across the state. In 1917, the Speculator Mine disaster killed 168 miners, making it one of the deadliest mining disasters in American history. Workers had been demanding better safety conditions for years. The disaster triggered massive labor unrest and strengthened organizing by groups like the Industrial Workers of the World. Workers were not asking for luxury. They were asking not to die underground for someone else’s profit.
The response from the powerful was swift. Labor organizers were harassed, jailed, and sometimes murdered. One of the most infamous cases was the lynching of union organizer Frank Little in Butte in 1917 after he criticized the mining companies and war profiteering.
And the fight between workers and power wasn’t only happening in the mines. It was happening in the streets too.
In the early 1900s, members of the Industrial Workers of the World fought a series of free speech battles in Missoula, Montana. At the time, local authorities and business interests were trying to shut down labor organizing by banning public speaking on street corners. Workers responded by deliberately violating the bans. One by one they stood on soapboxes and spoke about wages, exploitation, and labor rights.
Police arrested them by the dozens.
When the jails filled up, more workers arrived.
Some were beaten. Some were thrown in overcrowded cells. But the arrests only drew more attention to the cause, and eventually the city backed down. The workers won the right to speak publicly again.
It was one of the earliest free speech fights in the American West, and it came directly out of the labor movement.
That was class struggle playing out in Montana.
For decades the Anaconda Copper Mining Company had so much control over Montana’s politics that people joked the company owned “everything but the cemeteries.” Newspapers, legislators, and policy often moved in directions that protected corporate power while workers fought for unions, wages, and safer conditions.
Fast forward to today and the pattern still looks familiar. You see it in housing struggles in places like Missoula, Montana where working people face rising rents while housing increasingly becomes an investment vehicle for distant investors. You see it in fights over wages, healthcare, and public services. You see it when politicians promise tax cuts for the wealthy while teachers, nurses, and working families are told there just is not enough money for the things communities need.
Different century. Same conflict.
Marx did not invent those contradictions. He simply pointed at them.
And that is why more than a century after his death people still argue about him. Because Marx taught ordinary people to ask a dangerous question.
Who actually benefits from the way society is organized?
Once people start asking that question, the conversation changes. And that question has been haunting the powerful ever since.
Over at The World Socialist Web Site, Jerry White has written a piece in which he puts forward a concrete plan for the establishment in the coming year of a socialist agenda to counter the Trump administration’s fascist one. Following is an excerpt.
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As Christmas approaches and the year comes to an end, Trump administration officials are pointing to headlines about GDP growth and a soaring stock market to support the president’s absurd claim that Americans are enjoying the “greatest economy in the history of our country.” Behind these figures lies a sharply “K‑shaped” social reality: spectacular gains in wealth and consumption for the affluent, while tens of millions of workers confront stagnant real wages, mounting debt, mass layoffs, evictions, utility shutoffs and preventable deaths.
The past year has, in fact, seen a further concentration of wealth to levels that are unprecedented in modern history. Over the past year, billionaires in the US, consisting of 900 individuals, increased their wealth by a staggering 18 percent, to a record $6.9 trillion this year. Ten individuals alone increased their wealth by $750 billion. No figure embodies this obscene spectacle more than Elon Musk, whose net worth surged by over $500 billion in just two years, to reach $749 billion – more than the GDP of entire countries.
At the other pole of society, a recent AP/NORC poll shows that most Americans are concerned about rising prices for groceries, electricity and holiday gifts, with nearly half delaying major or non-essential purchases and searching for the lowest prices. Many are also racking up debt through “buy now, pay later” apps such as Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, PayPal, and Zip.
A Politico poll released in November found that more than a quarter of the population, 27 percent, said they had skipped a medical check-up due to cost, and nearly one in four reported skipping a prescribed medication for the same reason.
. . . There is growing anger in the working class, which possesses enormous social power. Supply chains, transport, healthcare and public services cannot function without labor. The strategic task is to convert widespread opposition into an organizational and political counteroffensive in 2026.
The World Socialist Web Site and the International Workers Alliance of Rank‑and‑File Committees (IWA‑RFC) call for the formation of rank‑and‑file committees in every plant, workplace and neighborhood to demand an immediate halt to permanent layoffs; full pay and benefits for affected workers; and shortened working weeks with no loss of pay to preserve jobs.
These committees should demand a ban on utility shutoffs and mass evictions; cancellation of predatory debt and an end to wage garnishment for student loan defaulters; and the reversal of public subsidies to billionaire projects in favor of massive public investment in housing, healthcare and services.
An industrial counteroffensive must be connected to a political struggle against the Trump administration – a government of, by and for the oligarchy. Trump is erecting a presidential dictatorship, the political form that corresponds to a society riven by staggering levels of social inequality. The vicious, fascistic campaign against immigrant workers, including Gestapo-style raids and the rounding up of entire families, is the spearhead for a broader attack on the democratic rights of the entire working class.
The Democratic Party has refused to mount any opposition, as it agrees with the main elements of Trump’s social program. Just one month ago, the Democratic Socialists of America mayor-elect of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, met with Trump at the White House, smiled for photos, and declared his readiness to work with the fascist president.
It is not a question of tinkering around the edges of a bankrupt economic and political system, but mobilizing the immense power of the working class in an irreconcilable fight against the entire corporate and financial oligarchy. This fight must be waged independently of – and in opposition to – both capitalist parties and the corrupt union bureaucracies, which serve as enforcers for the corporations and the state. The trade unions seek to divide workers along national lines and disarm them in the face of a historic offensive against jobs, wages and democratic rights.
The program of this counteroffensive must be the expropriation of the financial and corporate elite, the socialization of the major industries, and the use of modern technology to eliminate poverty, guarantee decent housing and healthcare and raise the material and cultural level of all humanity. The resources exist to guarantee full employment, housing, healthcare, and education for all. The question is: Who controls these resources – the oligarchy or the working class?
The answer depends on building a revolutionary socialist leadership, rooted in the working class and guided by a clear political program. The Socialist Equality Party and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees are fighting to develop this leadership and to organize the growing resistance of workers and youth throughout the world.
NOTE:Jerry White was the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for vice president in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Joseph Kishore was the party’s candidate for president. For the Socialist Equality Party 2024 presidential campaign’s official website, click here.
Writer and publisher Ed Felien has a piece in the latest issue of Southside Pride that caught my attention, especially as I supported both Zohran Mamdani and Omar Fateh in their respective mayoral runs, even volunteering with the latter’s campaign here in Minneapolis.
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What happened with the November elections?
Everywhere there was a Blue Wave, a rejection of Trump and his policies. In New York City, an African immigrant, a Muslim, a Democratic Socialist, won the Mayor’s seat, but, in Minneapolis, an African immigrant, a Muslim, a Democratic Socialist, lost. Legislatures all over the country turned bright Blue, but, in Minneapolis, the City Council went from a nine vote DSA majority to seven DSA votes – just barely a majority. Why? What happened?
How could New York City, with all its ethnic prejudices and deep-pocketed special interests, elect Zohran Mamdani? And Minneapolis couldn’t elect Omar Fateh?
Money made a big difference. “All of Mpls,” a Frey-aligned PAC, raised nearly $1.6 million from landlords, developers, labor unions and the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce. They used that money to run a non-stop smear campaign that had lots of mud and little substance.
Fateh responded by talking about rent stabilization, and a progressive income tax on residents who made more than a million dollars a year, and free college tuition for low income students.
A lot of voters didn’t want to think about all that stuff, and they thought that with all that mud being thrown at Fateh—some of it would stick. They didn’t want to get themselves dirty, so they couldn’t vote for Fateh.
Early money made a big difference in the City Council races in Wards 5 and 7, and it cost the DSA-sympathetic bloc the two votes needed to override a mayor’s veto.
But money wasn’t enough to topple Aisha Chughtai in Ward 10, even though they outspent her three to one.
Another important factor that hurt Fateh’s chances was the discrediting of the DFL endorsement. The Frey campaign complained to the State DFL that there were more delegates registered than voted. Voting didn’t begin until late afternoon. Many delegates had left, exhausted by the delaying tactics of the Frey campaign, but there were still sufficient numbers to qualify as a quorum.
The Frey campaign knew how to count. They could see that they had no chance to get to 60% for endorsement, so they wanted to make sure no one else did either. They knew that when Jazz Hampton and DeWayne Davis were eliminated, their votes would go to Fateh. They tried to drag out the Convention with elaborate motions and vote-counting machinations. After the first vote for endorsement, Aisha Chughtai saw what was happening. She moved for a change in the rules that would allow visible counting of delegate’s hands to tally a second vote, after all candidates other than Frey and Fateh had been eliminated on the first ballot. If she wouldn’t have done that, the Convention would have had to adjourn at its designated time without an endorsement.
After the second ballot and the endorsement of Omar Fateh, the Frey campaign complained that DeWayne Davis had been unfairly eliminated from inclusion on the second ballot. If Davis had survived the first ballot with enough votes to qualify for the second ballot, he would most certainly have been eliminated in the second ballot, and his votes would have gone to Fateh on the third ballot. But that would have taken so much time that the Convention would have been forced to adjourn.
The Frey campaign took their complaint to the DFL State Central Committee. DFL Chair Ken Martin had just gotten promoted to Chair of the National Democratic Party. Tim Walz appointed Richard Carlbom as the new Chair of the State DFL. Carlbom had worked for Walz since 2007 as his Policy Director and fundraiser. Carlbom’s old firm, United Strategies, received $30,000 in consulting fees from the Frey campaign this year. Carlbom convened a committee that ruled that the Minneapolis DFL Convention was flawed. They revoked Fateh’s endorsement and put the Minneapolis DFL in receivership for two years, so none of their endorsements would be valid until reviewed by the State DFL hierarchy. Tim Walz then endorsed Frey for mayor.
The Minnesota DFL is a result of the merger of the Democratic Party and the Farmer-Labor Party in 1944 by Hubert Humphrey, so he could run for the U S Senate. The Democratic Party was conventionally liberal, and the Farmer Labor Party was radical and anti-capitalist. “Capitalism has failed and should be abolished. We mean to establish a Cooperative Commonwealth” – 1934 Farmer-Labor Party Platform. “I am what I want to be. I’m a radical. I’m not a liberal. We need a definite change in the system.” – Floyd B Olson, Farmer Labor Governor.
It seems the Democrats in charge of the State DFL wanted to break with the Farmer-Laborites in Minneapolis.
Maybe the radicals in Minneapolis should accept that challenge.
Maybe someone like Aisha Chughtai should challenge Walz for the DFL endorsement for Governor next year – articulating a progressive vision for Minnesota, and, in case she doesn’t win the DFL endorsement or the DFL Primary Election, maybe Robin Wonsley should run for Governor as an Independent in the Farmer-Labor tradition.
The State DFL has sown the seeds of discontent; they deserve to reap a harvest of nettles and thorns.
Jacob Frey was asked what he thought about the election, he said, “I do think the message that has been sent loud and clear is that we have to love our city more than our ideology.” In other words, we should accept the wisdom of our landlords and the Chamber of Commerce and forget about all that sharing and caring.
– Ed Felien What Happened? Southside Pride
December 2, 2025
Related Off-site Link: Throwing Mud at Fateh – Clint Combs (Southside Pride, December 2, 2025).
NOTE: This first meme features a quote from American socialist activist and trade unionist Eugene Debs (1855-1926). Debs was recently highlighted in a piece by Michael K. Smith in CounterPunch. According to Smith, Debs “[made] socialism as American as the Liberty Bell.”
Could it be any more obvious that they don’t give a damn about working and poor people? They’re ruthless representatives of the wealthy and the bosses as much as the Republicans are.
They carried out a government shutdown as a purely performative gesture, claiming that they were standing up for Affordable Care Act subsidies and the restoration of Medicaid funding.
But they held the shutdown just long enough for the 2025 elections to get done. Then they picked a group of Senators who are either retiring or are not up for re-election in 2026 to be the bad guys.
Tens of millions of poor people went through absolute heartache for the basic food assistance they lost during the shutdown. TSA workers went six weeks without pay, many of them facing evictions because they were unable to pay their rent.
The Democratic Party had multiple chances to make the ACA tax credits permanent when they had Biden in the White House and a majority in both the House and the Senate. They could have voted in Medicare for All, but they represent the billionaires and multimillionaires, so of course, they did not.
The Democratic Party is utterly rotten. Working people need a new party of our own. A party whose leaders fight against the bosses and their political goons.
I am running as an independent revolutionary socialist against genocidal billionaire-backed Democrat Adam Smith. Winning our election would be nothing short of a political earthquake in D.C. politics and a huge step towards a new party for workers.
My campaign is fighting for free healthcare for all funded by taxing the rich, national rent control, and a national $25/hour minimum wage. We are fighting for an end the genocide in Gaza, for a permanent end to all U.S. military aid to Israel, and to the brutal occupation of Palestinian lands.
Following is L.A. Progressive’s September 8 interview with Kshama Sawant. If you’re new to Kshama and her campaign, a campaign that I’m supporting, then this interview serves as an excellent introduction.
The last few years have felt like end times. . . . [A]voidance is not the answer. Sorry to be cringe, but it seems the answer, actually, is hope. And right now it is most prominently represented by two politicians whose profiles we’ve seen go stratospheric. Here [in the U.K.], in Zack Polanski – the gay, Jewish, northern leader of the Green Party – and there [in the U.S.], in Zohran Mamdani – the young Muslim mayor elect of New York City. Both outspoken socialists, unafraid to shake things up or to actually get involved in the communities they purport to represent.
What won me over with Mamdani, aside from his no-brainer manifesto (affordable housing, free public buses, rent freezes, universal childcare for children under five), is how his campaign actually embraced people, rather than treating them as merely a bunch of demographics to placate. He spoke to young people the way we actually talk to one another. He went on podcasts, made memes, turned up at club nights (I’m still obsessed with him appearing at the club two nights before the election), and generally met people where they were instead of expecting them to come to him. He made the act of politics – and voting – feel exciting, accessible, unmissable. Bear in mind, I spent the night of New York’s mayoral election waiting with bated breath for the results, and I live in Hackney.
Now, with Andrew Cuomo defeated and Trump rattled, Mamdani is set to assume real power in the biggest city in the US. To me, the 34-year-old’s win feels like a fresh chapter: proof that there is an alternative to a status quo that increasingly only works for the few. It can be challenged – more than that, it can be toppled.
On this side of the pond, Zack Polanski is ruffling feathers with a smile, too. He took over from Carla Denyer as leader of the Greens only two months ago, and membership has already skyrocketed, surpassing 100,000 for the first time. This groundswell of support from voters desperate for an alternative to the main parties that is not Reform, means that what was once viewed as a well-meaning but inconsequential party of moral conscience and green fingers now has to be taken seriously. Hearing Polanksi’s voice cut through a news cycle that has come to be defined by division and hatred warms my heart.
They may have won this race, but we have changed the narrative about what kind of city Minneapolis can be. Because now, truly affordable housing, workers’ rights, and public safety rooted in care are no longer side conversations; they are at the center of the narrative.
– Omar Fateh
Yesterday morning, when it was confirmed that incumbent Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey had won reelection, Minnesota state senator Omar Fateh, the Democratic socialist who was Frey’s leading challenger and the candidate I was supporting, shared the following on social media.
Thank you, Minneapolis!
While this wasn’t the outcome we wanted, I am incredibly grateful to every single person who supported our grassroots campaign.
I’ll keep fighting alongside you to build the city we deserve. Onward.
In response, I posted these words:
Thank YOU, Omar! You ran a deeply meaningful and inspiring campaign, one that I and so many others were honored and happy to support. 👍🏼💗
Above: Standing at right with Sen. Omar Fateh and my friend Joseph – Minneapolis, September 17, 2025.
It’s the type of platform that compelled one supporter to post on Facebook back in August: “Omar Fateh has shown he’s not just another politician – he’s a movement. While others cling to insider deals and big-money donors, he’s standing firmly with working people, amplifying the voices of residents who are too often ignored. The establishment may try to block him, but the people of Minneapolis are rallying behind him because they see in him an incoming mayor who fights for justice, equity, and real change.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey fended off a challenge from democratic socialist Omar Fateh to secure a third term by winning enough support in the second round of the city’s ranked-choice voting system.
City election officials declared Frey, a Democrat, the winner Wednesday morning after tabulating second- and subsequent-choice votes. Frey won 42% of first-choice votes, followed by Fateh with 32%, former pastor DeWayne Davis with 14%, and entrepreneur Jazz Hampton with 10%.
Fateh – a Democratic state senator and son of Somali immigrants – congratulated Frey on his victory.
“They may have won this race, but we have changed the narrative about what kind of city Minneapolis can be,” he said. “Because now, truly affordable housing, workers’ rights, and public safety rooted in care are no longer side conversations; they are at the center of the narrative.”
. . . Fateh’s campaign drew comparisons with that of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, another progressive state lawmaker and democratic socialist who was bombarded with racist, Islamophobic, and xenophobic hate by prominent right-wing figures. Like Mamdani, Fateh hoped voters would focus on his record of serving his constituency in the state Legislature.
Among the dozens of bills authored by Fateh were a successful proposal to fund tuition-free public colleges and universities and tribal colleges for students from families with household incomes below $80,000, including undocumented immigrants, and another measure that exempted fentanyl test strips from being considered drug paraphernalia.
Fateh was also the chief state Senate author of a bill that would have ensured that drivers on ride-hailing applications like Uber and Lyft were paid minimum wage and received workplace protections. Although the bill was approved by both houses of the state Legislature, it was vetoed by Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Gov. Tim Walz, sparking widespread outrage among progressives.
Initially chosen over Frey by state DFL delegates, Fatah’s endorsement was rescinded in August by state party officials, sparking widespread outrage from progressives including Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who condemned the “inexcusable” move, which she chalked up to “the influence of big money in our politics.”
On Tuesday, November 4, Omar addressed those who had gathered for his election party at a downtown Minneapolis hotel about the campaign he had ran against Frey.
Omar gave his speech before the final outcome of the election was known; in other words, prior to a second round of rank choice voting to determine the winner of the Minneapolis mayoral race.
Earlier today Mukhtar M. Ibrahim offered an insightful and hopeful take on the mayoral campaigns of Omar Fateh in Minneapolis and Kaohly Vang Her in St. Paul.
A Hmong refugee’s daughter will soon govern St. Paul. A Somali trailblazer changed the politics of Minneapolis.
The 2025 mayoral elections didn’t just decide who leads the Twin Cities. They revealed who the Twin Cities are becoming.
Kaohly Vang Her’s victory in St. Paul and Omar Fateh’s strong showing in Minneapolis mark a generational shift in political power, one led by immigrant communities, renters, working families, and young voters who are reshaping what leadership looks like across Minnesota.
Her’s win is historic. In just three months, she built a campaign rooted in grit, community, and pragmatism, door by door, conversation by conversation. The first Hmong woman to lead a major American city, she represents both continuity and change: a candidate fluent in policy and deeply grounded in the lived experiences of her constituents.
Across the river, Omar Fateh ran an excellent campaign that transformed Minneapolis politics. He may have fallen short of unseating a two-term mayor, but he redrew the map, geographically and ideologically. His coalition brought renters, students, and working-class families into the center of city politics, pushing affordable housing, public safety, and economic justice to the top of the civic agenda.
Together, these campaigns signal a broader shift.
The old model of Minnesota politics, dominated by establishment networks and legacy coalitions, is giving way to a more dynamic, diverse, and grassroots-driven era. Representation has evolved from symbolism to strategy, from presence to power.
For years, both Minneapolis and St. Paul have called themselves progressive cities. These elections showed what happens when that label is tested, when new leaders from communities once seen as outsiders claim their place inside the institutions of power.
The next chapter of Twin Cities politics won’t be written by the same hands. And that may be the story’s greatest promise.
I conclude this post by sharing the following compilation of messages from supporters of Omar and his campaign. These comments were posted on Omar’s Facebook page over the last two days. They are accompanied by photos also posted on the Omar for Mayor Facebook page.
• Well done, Omar! You have succeeded beyond doubt, and measure. Your triumph lays with your integrity, honesty and tenacity. You may have not gone the length, but sometimes victory is simply showing up and persevering.
• Congrats, Omar! You are still the winner of the young generation who are looking upon you. Don’t give up. Move forward, young man. Sky is the limit. 🙏
• A loss can sometimes mean more than a victory. You gave it your all, great fight, and best of luck next time, Champ!
• You have done something that most people would never dare to try. This is not the end — it’s just the beginning. A time will come when people will applaud your success. Congratulations, Mr. Omar Fatah
• Omar, you ran an exceptional campaign and we are all proud of you. Continue fighting the good fight!
• True leaders are defined by resilience, not results and you’ve shown that beautifully 🥰❤️
• Congratulations brother Omar Fateh you have opened the paths towards future success.
• Congratulations! Every setback is a setup for a stronger comeback. I’m sure you’ll rise higher, wiser, and more powerful than today.
• Thank you for your courage and dedication You inspired so many of us and gave hope to our city. This isn’t a loss it’s a new beginning Onward and proud of you.
• Omar Fateh, you fought so hard and came so close, and that in itself is something to be proud of. Your dedication and heart truly inspired so many of us. There’s always a next time, and I believe that one day you’ll represent the people and see your dream come true.
• Proud of your effort and dedication, Omar Fateh! You’ve shown real leadership and integrity. The fight continues, and we’re with you all the way!
• Thank you for your efforts. We truly need more politicians like you.
• I wish you all the best! Your campaign was so successful, and coming second to Frey was an amazing achievement. So try again next time.
• We love you, Omar Fateh! You ran an incredible campaign and your leadership and integrity are unmatched. You have opened doors for so many people and you are a role model for all of us. Thank you for your service!
• You ran an amazing campaign! Thank you for your hard work and dedication — we’re proud of you.
• Thank you, Senator Omar Fateh! 🌟 You ran an incredible campaign for Minneapolis Mayor, inspiring and engaging voters from all walks of life, and turning out an unprecedented number of supporters. Even without the numbers you hoped for, you won by organizing, connecting, and motivating our community.
• Congratulations, brother! 🎉 True leadership is not only about winning.
• Proud of the movement you built. This is just the beginning.
• A great effort. Thank you for shining your light. Minneapolis loses with Jacob Frey.
• Congrats! This marks the beginning of your success. You are a hero who has shown courage, confidence, and determination. I wish you a bright and successful future.
• That was an incredible campaign with a lot positive things to build on. Keep going!
• You have achieved something unimaginable; though it was difficult, you still remain steadfast in your goal and in proving that you truly deserve to represent us.
• You deserved more, Omar, but your impact was real. Keep going! We’re with you.
• You showed true leadership and integrity throughout your campaign. Keep your head high. This is just one chapter of a much bigger journey.
• You have made us all proud, and you will forever hold a special place in our hearts. May Allah continue to bless and guide you always.
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
