Civilitycraft is our modern witchcraft: we conjure bad manners to explain democratic breakdown, the way failed crops were once blamed on witches. But politics isn’t haunted by rudeness: it’s broken by rules and power. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/our-crisis...

Kamala Harris explaining in her book why not a single Palestinian or Arab American was allowed to speak at the DNC.

In the last six weeks, the Tenant Union Federation launched seven (7) majority tenant unions, across five (5) states, representing 1000 units of housing owned by Capital Realty Group, a New York-based corporate landlord. The first portfolio organizing of its kind... www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Start a group against “the groups” while Trump works to outlaw the groups and democracy begs for stronger groups. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/realignmen...

2017, Hungary: Bill Seeks to Stifle Independent Groups www.hrw.org/news/2017/06...

Everyone knows I’m a big Marvel Comics nerd, but it’s time to cancel my Disney Plus subscription.

Getting more sinister by the minute www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/u...

What We Look At When We Look At a Baby www.waleed-shahid.com/p/what-we-lo...

It is true that there isn’t a left-wing equivalent to Kirk and Turning Point on American campuses, either in the reach of their network or the scale of their budget.

To mourn Kirk’s horrific killing as a wound to democracy is right. To recast him as democracy’s patron saint is dangerous delusion.

Superb article in @jacobinmag.bsky.social by @waleedshahid.bsky.social about Uncommitted, the Palestinian cause, and the future of the Denocratic Party. With some real optimism and a way forward. jacobin.com/2025/08/unco...

NEW: In 2024, the DNC refused to platform a Palestinian American. Today, Gaza is unavoidable in Democratic politics. I dug into Uncommitted's experience rallying anti-war voters + confronting elites' entrenched deference to Israel – and what the party could learn: www.huffpost.com/entry/democr...

@waleedshahid.bsky.social: “History shows that independent political and fundraising operations often do more to change a party’s direction than the party’s own infrastructure" www.cnn.com/2025/08/26/p...

nobody: me and @mattyglesias.bsky.social: 🚨You won’t BELIEVE the 1850s debates over political factions and coalitions. i regret to inform you, this is the least clickable beef in internet history. bring your own footnotes. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/what-ygles...

We need to talk about Clue #4 of the #ZcavengerHunt. I wrote about how @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social wouldn’t be the first DSA member elected mayor of New York. He wouldn’t even be the second socialist to hold the job. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/zohrans-sc...

I highly recommend this piece from @waleedshahid.bsky.social looking at what happened to Brandon Johnson in Chicago and the lessons that Zohran Mamdani and his supporters should take from it: www.waleed-shahid.com/p/what-mamda...

One of the Dem party's top thinkers, someone whose words carry enormous weight to shape strategy, believes the uncommitted movement is composed of "idealistic young dupes" and "contributed in small but real ways to Trump winning." The actual, heartbreaking story from @waleedshahid.bsky.social -

Inside Uncommitted: A year after the DNC, I reflect on what it meant for Democrats to bar Palestinian Americans from the convention stage and what the campaign revealed about fractures, power, and the future of the anti-war movement and the Democratic Party. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/inside-unc...

🤬🤬🤬 The media is blowing it but if you’re not mad enough about that, you can also blame the Dems, basically none of whom are even bothering to speak up against this. Primary everyone.

NEW: Trump’s DC “crime crackdown” distraction worked as planned: in 72 hrs, media mentions of Epstein revelations fell 71% and BBB coverage dropped 29%, replaced by wall-to-wall footage of troops in the streets and repetition of Trump's message. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/the-distra...

Ari Aster’s Eddington: Joaquin Phoenix’s Sheriff is America in the 2020s. Overloaded, sick, panicked, drowning in crisis and noise, his attention scattered, instincts warped.

1850s Republicans fought over similar questions Democrats and progressives face now. Radicals set the ideological horizon, moderates built the majority. They fought each other, but together they also won. New piece on the usable past: www.waleed-shahid.com/p/progressiv...

As @waleedshahid.bsky.social explores in depth, the real story of progressive electoral performance is far more nuanced than "moderation wins." Worth reading his analysis alongside ours:

Trump’s stunt in weaponizing D.C.’s security forces is succeeding in working some of the refs at Morning Joe. The scandals and corruption fade, the spectacle wins.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, hosts performed Trump’s script, trading fear stories about D.C. nights. It was liberal surrender to authoritarian choreography: amplifying panic to make his distraction and seizure of the city seem inevitable, even reasonable.

Trump’s takeover of D.C.’s police is part of a city-by-city plan to distract from his corruption and paint Democratic cities as chaos and himself as the fix. The 1850s abolitionists offer lessons for resisting federal power targeting local self-rule. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/one-city-a...

Imagine a German saying they're proud of the Nazi part of their history.

On progressive, populist, social democratic, socialist electoral strategy. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/primary-co...

Coming soon: 🐣

Elkind criticizes Mamdani and is financed by Reid Hoffman (the billionaire who tried to oust Lina Khan and funds efforts to block progressive challengers). Meanwhile, AIPAC world is growing angry with Nadler over his recent shifts on Israel.

This is why the Bove seat was vacant, and there’s a real throughline from the forces that defeated the previous Democratic nominee to where we are today. www.newyorker.com/news/the-pol...

NEW POLL from @DataProgress and @imeupolicy of NYC Democratic primary voters: • 78% say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza • 79% support restricting weapons to Israel www.imeupolicyproject.org/polls/zohran...

NYC mayoral hopeful Mamdani faces sharp jabs from within South Asian community https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-mayoral-hopeful-mamdani-faces-sharp-jabs-from-within-south-asian-community

Being the mayor of New York is brutal—even if you're not a 33-year-old Muslim democratic socialist. Zohran Mamdani will have to pull off an incredibly difficult balancing act if he wins.

NEW: In @thenation.com, I look at what @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social can learn from the successes and failures of Mayor Dinkins, Bloomberg, and de Blasio and what it could take to turn a movement into a government. www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Brazilian president: "I'd like to say something to the American people; If Trump was Brazilian and did what he did at the Capitol, he'd be on trial in Brazil for violating the Constitution. He would be arrested if he had done that." (ht: @ronxyz.bsky.social)

More than two thirds of New Yorkers are tenants. Andrew Cuomo compared them to hotel guests. We need a Mayor who will bring our city together around an agenda to lower costs for everyone, whether they rent or own.

Democrats remain on X because they think they have greater reach. The numbers are all fake, though. Take a look at these identical posts from Elizabeth Warren. X followers: 6.6 million X reposts: 1,321 X likes: 4,489 Bluesky followers: 390,400 Bluesky reposts: 1,500 Bluesky likes: 3,600

EXCLUSIVE: Democratic voters who skipped the 2024 election favor candidates like Bernie Sanders and AOC. Polling shows they believe inequality is at the heart of America’s problems and health care should be available to everyone.

Mancilla: We were the first union to officially endorse and rank Zohran Mamdani… And for us, it was simple. We didn’t want a politics of the present, which was corruption and selling off the city to the Trump administration, nor did we want the return of a disgraced governor now as mayor.

The only way you could see the Arizona congressional primary as a referendum on Mamdani is if your understanding of his win is limited to "young guy popular on social media defeats man with famous last name" – which, to be fair, might be how some journalists outside of NYC (mis)interpreted the race.

What on earth is this claim? Grijalva is the daughter of an ex-CPC chair, was endorsed by AOC and Bernie, and beat the guy who ran as a moderate saying Democrats needed to move away from social issues by 60-14. Mamdani made no mention of this race, and his biggest endorsers were for the winner. ??

"[Roosevelt] curbed monopolies, taxed excessive wealth, and empowered labor unions precisely because he saw economic democracy as essential protection against authoritarian drift." www.waleed-shahid.com/p/fdr-and-re... @waleedshahid.bsky.social

In 1945, labor leader Walter Reuther of UAW warned in the NYTimes that the US faced a crisis not of scarcity but mismanaged abundance. Without democratic planning and redistribution, prosperity could deepen inequality and undermine democracy itself. www.waleed-shahid.com/p/fdr-and-re...

Unearthed footage that Fox News refused to air during the election last year shows Trump nervously refusing to commit to releasing the Epstein files. “I don’t know about Epstein so much as I do the others.”

Useful public diplomacy and synthesis from @waleedshahid.bsky.social: "Lost in this polarization is the obvious opportunity: harnessing populism’s electoral resonance to win power, while leveraging abundance’s insights to govern effectively." www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Ex Obama Advisor Ben Rhodes on Pod Save: "If you think you can continue to take💰from AIPAC — @RepJeffries or @SenSchumer or whomever — AIPAC is part of the constellation of forces that delivered 🇺🇸 into the hands of Trump and Stephen Miller.” Full: www.youtube.com/watch?si=aim...