Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaign for fellow democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, now NYC mayor. Photo : Andres Kudacki/Getty/file photo.
By Stansfield Smith – Nov 12, 2025
The disenfranchised, cast aside people of the US find hope when an AOC, Brandon Johnson, Mamdani and Bernie Sanders campaigns and wins public office. These campaigns overcame corporate backed opponents, relying on people power not corporate financing, organizing many thousands of our fellow working people to participate. Yet, possessing public office does not change the economic and class structure of this country, where the real ruling power lies. Our country’s system, on the local, state, and national level, is a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
The public offices they won are one cog in an entrenched economic and political structure, and changing this has little relation to winning office. Once elected the AOCs, Brandons, Bernies and Mamdanis can be easily swallowed up by the system run by billionaires. The billionaires have one thousand and one weapons to neutralize any progressive measures and make them compromise. They began as outsiders fighting the system, but step by step, they became its representatives.
Brandon Johnson, a Chicago Teachers Union organizer, political kin to Mamdani, was elected mayor of Chicago in April 2023, so gives a glimpse of Mamdani’s future as mayor. Mamdani made a name for himself by speaking out for Palestine. Mayor Johnson cast the deciding vote to pass the first Gaza ceasefire resolution in a big city. While Brandon’s campaign inspired progressives and the left, and many thousands volunteered, his platform was mild compared to the Great Society programs of LBJ and Nixon. He declared, “everyone in Chicago deserves to have a roof over their head,” and called for increasing the real estate tax on properties over $1 million to provide housing and services to the homeless. But, two and a half years later, taxes on the rich have not been raised. He called for childcare for all, now forgotten. He campaigned on replacing lead service lines to the 400,000 Chicago houses, eliminating a major source of lead poisoning. Chicago replaced 5,100 leadlines in 2024 and aims for another 8,000 this year.
Brandon campaigned on increasing summer youth jobs to 60,000. The number has reached 31,199 in 2025, half, but still a 55% increase since he took office. He campaigned on reopening all 14 mental health centers; two and a half years later, three were reopened.
Johnson campaigned on combating police abuse. Given a boost before he took office in 2023, voters elected community representatives in 22 Chicago Police District Councils, with the power to hold police accountable, said Chicago Alliance against Racist and Political Repression. Yet PBS reports slightly more police abuse. Moreover, in 2024 Chicago taxpayers spent at least $107.5 million on police misconduct lawsuits, the highest total in over a decade. In 2025, “Through May alone, the City Council has already approved at least $145.3 million in taxpayer payments to settle lawsuits involving the Chicago Police Department, a record number that dwarfs sums from past years.“ Where is the change?
Johnson’s program committed to free public transit for public school students. Today only the first day of school is free. It committed to reduced or eliminated fares for seniors, those with disabilities, and residents living below the poverty line. Today, there are reduced fares, though Chicago had free fares for the first two groups from 2008-2011 under Mayor Daley; still no reduced fares for the poor. Even if all were free, this is but a minor progressive change.
Brandon became mayor of Chicago, a city $29 billion in debt, in a state $223 in debt. His progressive platform morphed into overseeing cuts to manage the debt. Brandon’s new budget would cut Chicago Public Library funding for new books and materials in half – quite stunning for a Chicago Teachers Union organizer. We elected a progressive to do that?
Brandon Johnson did not betray his program. He, like the others, campaigned on wishes he could not keep, given real decision-making power is not in his hands. In this era of slow US economic decline of their system, the billionaire elite who lord over us reduce progressive agendas to moderating cutbacks to services provided to the people. Once in office, these progressive Democrats face a power structure that boxes them, making their campaign commitments pipedreams.
What could Brandon, or AOC, or Bernie do? The rich with their vast wealth control the government, own the print media, TV, radio, social media, own the all-powerful banking system, business and factories, the food industry, real estate and housing market, educational institutions, the courts and legal system, and the police forces. All major institutions of society do their bidding.
The rich can buy members of the New York or Chicago city council, control state legislatures, dictate interest rates on city loans, launch hostile media campaigns, stymie the mayor through the city bureaucracy. They can use control of the police to let crime worsen, manipulate a city union to go on a disruptive strike, inflate or reduce real estate and home prices, cause business and jobs to leave the city, block bank loans to the city, cut state and federal funds for city programs, and so on. Their control gives them endless tools.
As Susan Kang writes in Truthout “analysts have rightly noted that a grassroots movement to reshape state-level politics and take on Wall Street will be necessary to realize Mamdani’s campaign promises.” Mamdani had 104,000 volunteers working on his election campaign. Bernie must have had the names of millions from his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. Block Club Chicago noted, How Grassroots Organizing Fueled Brandon Johnson’s Victory: ‘It Was 100-Percent People Power’ The people’s desire and commitment to fight for serious social change is real.
The only way to institute the (mildly) progressive programs Brandon or Mamdani ran on is to challenge the control by the rich, to educate, organize, and mobilize people in the streets, massively, repeatedly, to counter every attack by the ruling rich with a mass popular response. The only way to combat corporate control is to build an alternative center of organized power among the people, a popular power beyond the control of the two corporate parties. Otherwise, people like Mamdani will be neutralized, co-opted, swallowed up, reduced to administering the government apparatus for the ruling rich. Like AOC and Bernie do today.
This is the only feasible route to take. The Bernies, AOCs, Brandons and Mamdanis would have to explain to people how the rich control the government and the world we live in, explain to the people that their organizing and mobilizing does not end with the election victory, it is the first baby step. A long journey of trials would lie ahead, where the real organizing, mobilizing, and political education taking on the rich who run this country is essential.
But none of these candidates, now officials, call for building a people’s political force independent of either of the two corporate parties. They discourage it. They push the movement into the Democratic Party, and this party only serves to derail the movement into ineffectual protest channels. Seven million turned out for the Democrats’ No Kings Day, and just three weeks later the Democrats are surrendering to Trump’s social budget cuts.
In effect, the great hope of an AOC, Mamdani or Brandon Johnson ends the day they take office. No longer it is a campaign for the people to take over government. Rather, we watch the people’s hope turn into a government clerk for the rich.
When new progressive leaders build an election campaign and movement independent of the two corporate parties, as Bernie had advocated before his capitulation, then we will witness a profound breakthrough in the system.
SS/OT
Stansfield Smith
Stansfield Smith is a Chicago-based anti-imperialist activist. He was active for over a decade in the Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5. His work is now on ChicagoALBASolidarity.wordpress.com. He has written on Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs and on North Korea for Counterpunch and others.
