DNC 2024 in Chicago: Perspectives After Brandon

News is spreading that the DNC will be in Chicago in 2024. To understand how to relate to it, we should consider what we just accomplished with Brandon’s win. Let’s zoom out.

Chicago’s political ecosystem came together to mobilize for Brandon. Unions like CTU, SEIU, and CCTU. Ward groups like 30th United, 33WF, UN35, and 39NU to name a few. All anchored by UWF. And many more organizations participated with UWF or in their own capacity!

While the immediate goal was to get Brandon elected, the long-term goal was to 1) use the election to get more people organized and 2) to use the campaign as a major step toward coalescing our political ecosystem into a party of our own.

And what have we accomplished? Our political ecosystem took Brandon from “< 2% name-recognition” to “mayor of the 3rd largest city” now feel *owed and bound together*. Aren’t the strongest bonds forged in the heat of struggle?

So what have the Democrats done? The Democratic Party is letting Cop City happen in Atlanta. They voted against rail workers, allowing East Palestine, OH to suffer massive ecological destruction. And they continue to fund US militarism and colonialism in Palestine.

Meanwhile, we don’t have Medicare For All, we don’t have a Green New Deal, and they still haven’t canceled our student debt. We should demand of the DNC the future we deserve: with full reproductive rights, where Trans rights are ironclad, and where Black Lives Matter.

But in demanding this from the Democrats, we keep our eyes on the prize: we deserve our own Workers Party.

Just as we make demands from our bosses, but use the struggle for those demands to organize ourselves and replace him, so too do we need to organize for reforms from the DNC for the long game of replacing them.

If we look back on the last 4 years: who took care of us? Our political ecosystem. From mutual aid, to protecting each other against the police, defending drag queen reading shows, and fundraising for abortions: we keep us safe. Apparently, we can also win mayoral races!

In Chicago, we’ve proven exactly what we can accomplish when our political ecosystem works together. We don’t have to play second fiddle to the Democratic Party. We just took down their machine! We can be so much more with a party of our own.

All struggles, movement or electoral, are about getting organized. The reforms we win, and the political offices we seize, are secondary to getting organized and ready for the next plateau. The end game is revolution by the working class, for the working class, as a class.