Vaughn Stewart represents the rise of a new political movement. Elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in November, he campaigned as a self-described socialist.

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Stewart was elected to represent parts of Prince George’s County. His district covers the ethnically and socio-economically diverse towns of Greenbelt, New Carrolton and Hyattsville.

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Stewart is a cancer survivor, and he clearly remembers the moment he decided to run was when “I was sitting with an IV in one hand and my iPhone in the other, reading what the Republicans were doing to those of us with preexisting conditions,” he said.

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From college campuses to gentrifying neighborhoods to statehouses across the country, people are beginning to pick up the label of “democratic socialists” and offer their vision to voters.

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“People in our age are disillusioned with what they are seeing” said Verónica Del Valle, a self-described democratic socialist from the American University in Northwest Washington, D.C.

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“I was really inspired after seeing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez win … someone who speaks and thinks like me,” she said.

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Ocasio-Cortez, who ran for Congress in New York to represent the Bronx and Queens, is one of a number of candidates who, like Stewart, were endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

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Cold War red-baiting left Americans wary of anything remotely associated with the word “socialism” for decades. That has begun to change, thanks in part to groups like the Democratic Socialists of America, which a nationwide has more than 55,000 dues-paying members.

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But there are also local efforts. The group’s Metro D.C. chapter has begun to organize around problems facing communities within the capital area.

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Margaret McLaughlin, a spokesperson and grassroots organizer for the Metro D.C. chapter, said, “We’re trying to get people to hear the voices of those who have been historically shut off.”

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The local chapter ran a campaign on “neighborhood socialism.” In doing so, 11 members ran in 10 different Advisory Neighborhood Commission races (however, those 10 comissions reflect a small fraction of the total 296 ANCs citywide).

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Organizer Zachary Eldredge, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, helped each candidate run their grassroots campaign.

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These socialist groups are interested in the neighborhood commissions - which mostly serve as a platform for neighborhood busybodies to complain - for a reason. For Eldredge, the idea came from when he “was working on a campaign called D.C. Reinvest that was trying to get the city to cut off its relationship with Wells Fargo.”

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The actions came after Wells Fargo, one of the nation’s largest banks, agreed to bankroll the Dakota Access Pipeline, which had sparked environmental protests and concerns about Native American rights in North Dakota and across the nation.

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“We would go to these ANC meetings and try and get them involved in city politics,” he said. Although these bodies have limited legal power, “They have the informal ability to set the agenda,” he added

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“One thing that I’m really proud of it that we ran candidates all over the city,” Eldredge said. This is despite members being mostly based in the northwestern part of the city. Of 11 candidates, four were successful, all of them running on a progressive agenda.

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In one district, Ryan Linehan won his race 62 percent to 37 percent. He dubs himself “Ivy City Ryan,” and ran on decidedly local issues. Ivy City is a triangular neighborhood bordered by New York Avenue to the west, Gallaudet University to the south and the Mount Olivet cemetery to the east.

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“I moved to Ivy City two years ago, and really fell into the transplant community a lot of people fall in,” he said. However, after he started coaching high school football, he really “fell in love with the city.”

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“There is no rec center in Ivy City, so we put a basketball court in our backyard,” he said. “It’s there if you look it up in Google Maps.”

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In fact, that is Linehan’s biggest priority as a commissioner. His goal is to transform the Crummell School, which housed one of Washington’s first black schools during segregation, into a recreation center.

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Linehan’s ideas represent the mixture of hyper-local and national issues that other democratic socialists have been campaigning on. “Gentrification is hurting people, money is determining elections and greed is breaking the country,” he said.  

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He credits his victory in part to the large amount of canvassers and volunteers from the Democratic Socialists. “You need canvassers, people who will go out there and knock on doors and shake hands,” he said.

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Linehan cites other politicians, who share his ideas and his label as a democratic socialist, as an inspiration for his run. These include Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez. He is hardly alone in those reasons.

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Stewart, the recently-elected state House delegate, ran on a radical platform. “New Deal liberalism and social democracy aren’t sufficient,” he said. Instead, he proposes social housing, state-funded public housing units. He expects to make housing issues “his bread and butter.”

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On campus, a chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America at American was founded at the beginning of the fall semester. Co-chair Eric Perless explained how he feels socialism has become relevant again. “This is a struggle for democracy,” he explained. “Climate change, affordable housing, and the lack of good-paying jobs have all created human crises.”

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McLaughlin had called democratic socialists at elite private universities, such as American University, as “class traitors,” using Marxist language that comes up surprisingly little in conversation with self-avowed socialists.

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Perless agrees with this description. “My parents are small-business owners, and I’m a socialist, so yeah, I am a class traitor,” he said.

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For him, the ultimate goal of organizations such as the Young Democratic Socialists is to create more class traitors and to educate more people about socialists.

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To do this, Perless and his co-chair Del Valle have organized for speakers to come to campus. Stewart came in the fall before his election and described “being kicked out of the room, but they kept asking questions so we just found a new room.”