We Can’t Out-Escalate Anymore

The theory of organizing I grew up in goes like this:

We don’t have money. We don’t have media.
The only power we have is people.

And the wild thing is — it works.
Or at least, it works better than it should for how much we have to claw against the inertia of structural racism, disaster capitalism, and grief.

The fact that organizing works at all in the U.S. — that people power ever breaks through and wins anything — is kind of a miracle. Still: it only works when it moves. Naming names. Escalating. Taking risks. Refusing civility. If power won’t move unless forced, then force becomes a mandate. 

But now we’re hitting a wall. Conflict is everywhere. Everyone is calling each other out and nothing changes: the tent doesn't get bigger, it doesn't get easier to sustain community or build real relationships. It doesn’t build, sustain, or govern. The fascism at the heart of American empire is louder, faster, and more shameless than ever. And the tactics we once used — protest, escalation, refusal — can’t outpace it. You can’t out-escalate a machine that feeds on conflict. 

When I was 13 I went to an Iraq War protest in 2003 — it was the biggest crowd of people I’d ever seen in my hometown, and it felt righteous, like it could actually stop something. It disappeared, and coverage of the protest was buried on the back page. This past weekend, when the U.S. bombed Iran — the narrative was already written. I felt that same sinking feeling I had in 2003. That sense that the story had already been written, that the outrage didn't matter. Just like it hasn't mattered as the genocide in Gaza has played out on screens since October 7th. As others have said repeatedly, "they're not even bothering to manufacture consent anymore." Can we really say that conflict still creates leverage?

As empire gets faster, louder, more algorithmic, it becomes easier than ever to co-opt, confuse, or burn out any movement that dares to resist. We don’t control the story. And we keep relying on acrimony — on conflict, crisis, urgency — to organize us. It worked for a while. We mobilize when ICE raids hit or when fascist attacks escalate — and then it collapses. Can we get a tenth of those people back to build something lasting?  Either way, the wheels of the status quo can keep going, making money all the while. Acrimony rewards speed, not vision, and there starts to feel like there’s a ceiling on scale when crisis becomes the only language.

Zohran Mamdani, running for Mayor in NYC, speaks clearly and consistently against U.S. imperialism — from Palestine to Iran to the war machine at home. It’s not the center of his campaign, but it’s not an afterthought either.

It’s part of a larger worldview — one that refuses to treat human life as expendable, or accept the foundation of the U.S. economy as fixed and inevitable. (He also makes daily, inexpensive, meaningful short form videos, but that's a different essay). 

But what seems to make him stand out is that after he says the things you’re not supposed to say in politics and backs them up with a concrete program for how to govern: housing, care, transit, safety: the infrastructure of daily life. His campaign is about the point of a governing left: not just to confront power, but to be powerful — and to use that power to make care, safety, and dignity non-negotiable.

Governing is not the opposite of organizing. It’s what happens when organizing matures — when the goal isn’t just to resist, but to take responsibility for shaping the world that comes next.

Is this delusional? Maybe. Maybe trying to talk about governing with any sense of hope — while ICE raids escalate, Gaza burns, and the U.S. bombs another country with no consequence — is naive at best, complicit at worst. Especially right now in Chicago, where people are working their asses off under impossible conditions, holding coalitions together while under attack from ICE, the right, and sometimes each other. None of this is easy.

And yet — what’s the alternative? Infinite protest with no power? Permanent burnout?

If the system is this cruel, then we can’t just critique it louder. We have to figure out how how to govern like we mean it. That’s what Zohran’s campaign does: it helps me believe that we might still be able to build something real —something that lasts longer and is lives beyond conflict.