When Claire Valdez recently made her way to Washington, D.C., to prepare for her new life in Congress, she quickly got a taste of how unwelcome she was — at least among many of her future colleagues. That day, a majority of the House, including nearly every Republican and eight Democrats, voted in favor of a GOP-led “condemnation and denouncement of socialism in all its forms,” including the Democratic Socialists of America.

“When I joined DSA in 2019, I thought I was basically joining a reading group, and now we’re being condemned on the floor of Congress,” Valdez tells me with a hint of amusement. The soon-to-be congresswoman-elect mocked the symbolic vote by posting a photo of herself grinning and flashing a peace sign in front of the Capitol. “It was surreal, mostly because I think people are really scared of us,” she says, then adds, “I think some of them should be.”

We’re sitting in Peg’s Cavalier, a small bar in Ridgewood, one of several Queens and Brooklyn neighborhoods the 37-year-old will soon represent in D.C. The area has been playfully nicknamed New York City’s “Commie Corridor,” but Valdez points out that the people in her district aren’t the only ones demanding dramatic change. She says the members of Congress attacking her and DSA are “so out of touch with what’s happening in the United States right now,” not just because polls show Americans with a more favorable impression of socialism, but because of how angry people are.

“People are pissed that they’re not getting paid more money, that more and more of their lives are being dedicated to working shitty jobs,” she says. “They’re pissed that rent is going up, that they can’t afford retirement, they can’t afford their health care, and we have this unimaginable income inequality.”

Valdez is one of several democratic socialists set to be sworn into Congress in January, part of a growing bloc that, depending on how many seats Democrats win in the midterms, could soon wield significant leverage over their more moderate colleagues. She’s already been having conversations with other incoming DSA House members, including fellow New Yorker Darializa Avila Chevalier, who ousted Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair Adriano Espaillat this summer; Chris Rabb from Philadelphia; and Melat Kiros, who primaried and defeated a 15-term Democratic incumbent in Denver. “We’re building this new vision of what politics can and should be: one that’s about solidarity and cooperation and working together and not about ego and the kind of careerism that I think motivates a lot of politicians,” she........

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