In most American cities, real estate and development companies own the city council and mayor (if there is one) thoroughly. Yet people like Kshama Sawant have managed to get on the local government and make effective changes. Any socialist electoralist strategy in America has to successful start at the local level, so I'm asking if there's any stratagies we should employ to build labor power and/or effect local legislation. Of course direct action strategies like the Young Lords did in the 60s is effective, but I am thinking more electorally here. Direct action and electoralism can, and should, be in concert.
Electoralism can best be used to lend credence to the group doing direct action.
Officially celebrating those actions and condemning other parties for failing to act.
Do as many good things as you can in office and prevent as many bad things as you can. Build up support for your party and politics over time until you have the votes to build a legal framework preventing landlords, real estate dicks, or development ghouls from being on the city council.
This post is more about breaking into local office, or at least breaking some of the power that real estate (or your whatever your local capitalist is that controls the government). Voter turnout is like under 25% in non presidential years and only old surburban people end up voting.
I think unfortunately if there was a surefire or even just repeatably moderately successful track to socialist entryism in electoral politics, we'd already all know it and be doing it.
Unfortunately, the only way in is to do things the hard way, work really fucking hard for a really long time to create a movement in your area that will hopefully bust the doors off the voting hall and get you in. You can use direct action and social media to accelerate growth of that movement, but it's still going to be an uphill multi-year battle.
If you're thinking local offices and how they might be effectively used, look at district attorney elections. They hold a ton of power over what crimes get prioritized and how different crimes are handled.
At the simplest level, you could make an immediate impact by not charging minor, bullshit crimes (e.g., drug possession) or focusing on repeat offenders and non-carceral solutions. You can rachet down years of incarceration or supervision for more serious crimes. A more complicated -- but feasible -- option is to also prioritize prosecution of crimes committed by the local business interests you're talking about. In theory, that's a fairly straightforward path to checking their power, and it would have popular support.
Plus, there are templates for winning these types of elections on this type of platform, so you're not breaking entirely new ground.
I would be uhhh...really careful about that. One issue is that the local large-scale developers are also the local crimelords in many, many places. More than one well-meaning leftist has met an unfortunate end that way.
-V.I. Lenin