The DSA Candidate Who Won Down South
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Democratic Socialists of America
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The article centers on DSA candidates and socialist electoral strategy, making the organization's history, structure, and electoral approach essential context for understanding this political movement's growth
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Right-to-work law
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Bond explicitly discusses Georgia's right-to-work status as a barrier to labor organizing. Understanding these laws' origins, effects, and the ongoing debate provides crucial context for the labor themes in the article
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Atlanta Beltline
12 min read
The Beltline and its light rail plans are described as Bond's top priority. The project's complex history, original transit vision versus current development patterns, and gentrification impacts are central to understanding Atlanta politics
Zohran Mamdani was not the only Democratic Socialist who just won a citywide election. In Atlanta, 31 year-old DSA member Kelsea Bond (who uses they/ them pronouns) handily won a race for City Council. That makes them the only socialist to win an election this year in the South, and just the second DSA candidate to win elected office in Georgia, after Gabriel Sanchez was elected to the statehouse there—in a campaign that Bond managed.
We spoke to Bond about their priorities, building socialist power down South, and the prospects for a glorious DSA political wave in the USA.
How Things Work: You were involved in the labor movement. How did that draw you into politics?
Kelsea Bond: I got involved in DSA in 2020. So much was happening with the Covid pandemic, Bernie not making it past the primary, and then of course the Black Lives Matter protests all over the country. In 2021 Nabisco workers went on strike, and they had a picket line out in a Georgia suburb. That was really my first time being on a picket line, growing up in the South and not being super familiar with unions. I remember at the time being disappointed with how many losses there had been on the left. Especially here in Atlanta, with the original Cop City ordinance getting passed in 2021. And then just a month later, seeing a bunch of regular, ordinary people win a good contract just because they went on strike and withheld their labor. That was really powerful for me, and solidified my understanding of how crucial labor organizing is if we want to win anything that we want in this country.
From then, I went on to help organizing Starbucks workers when they filed their first union election in Midtown Atlanta, and I went on to help them organize more stores in the area. Then was organizing strike solidarity for the Teamsters during their practice pickets in 2022, and UAW, and went on to work with almost every major labor union in the city. I was really happy to have had those same unions support me in this election. That felt very powerful to me.
What can you do from the City Council to help out the labor movement in Atlanta?
Bond: There’s a few ways to tackle that. We’re a blue city in a red state, so we
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