This is the first in a regular series of articles by Todd Chretien focusing on Maine politics and society from a socialist point of view. Todd Chretien is a farmer, translator, and author who was recently elected co-chair of Maine Democratic Socialists of America. He will try wicked hard to write at least a couple times a month.

Since Trump’s election, the Maine Democratic Socialists of America chapter has been growing rapidly. We’ve got hundreds of members all over the state and 90 percent of them are (at least) a full generation younger than me. We have a few stalwarts from before my time whose experience in politics and the labor movement enrich our chapter and an even smaller handful of leftist children of the 80s like myself. Speaking in gross generalities, I think this makes me both more conservative and more radical than most MDSAers. The small number of people who became socialists in the 80s and early 90s looked to the movement’s past and to Marx and other theorists for inspiration because prospects for a broad-based socialist movement appeared so faint. International Paper broke the union in Jay, McKin poisoned our drinking water, and the Androscoggin stunk and bubbled in the summer, while Reagan handed out blocks of surplus cheese, threatened the world with nuclear annihilation, and massacred Salvadorans and Nicraguans. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive… yah, right. 

Many in my political generation adopted an outsider ethos, guided as much by punk rock rebellion (The Clash, Public Enemy, Dead Kennedys, Stiff Little Fingers, The Pogues, and, again and again, The Clash) as working-class struggle. We were right to reject Reagan, but—speaking for myself—failed to sufficiently appreciate the tenacious elements of solidarity that stood up against his attacks, even if they were losing battles most of the time. Be that as it may, punk rock socialism helped a small layer of dissidents preserve the idea that the working class has the right, and the power, to challenge the power of the elite. 

In contrast, as difficult as the world is today, my Millennial and Gen Z comrades have drawn inspiration from Bernie’s campaigns, Black Lives Matter protests, trans courage and visibility, and Starbucks workers organizing unions, all of which have shown up proudly here in Maine. Socialism unites all these struggles and identifies capitalism as the machine that produces and reproduces all the muck, from the climate crisis to the genocide in Gaza. Socialism is a common sense force that can be built brick by brick and my younger comrades expect working-class people to join us based on our movement’s good work. Socialism advocates solidarity amongst and between everyone who’s kept down and left out as the way to fight back and it proposes simple solutions that everyone can understand: tax the rich and spread the wealth. The rise of this generation of socialist activists—in their tens of thousands across the country—is a profoundly important development, without which any notion of building a significant working-class challenge to the millionaires and billionaires is doomed.

Back in 2016, DSA skyrocketed from 5,000 members to 50,000 nationally as a radical rejection of Trump. Today, through ups and downs, we’re even larger. In Maine, that influx gave us the strength to organize. Over the last eight years, we’ve won some (raising the minimum wage in Portland electing two socialists to city council) and lost some (challenging CMP). Through it all, we’ve faced difficult debates, our fair share of burnout, and a few missteps. But we’ve been buoyed through it all by a general sense that most working-class people were moving closer to the left and that fact would, in one way or another, express itself in national and state politics.

Unfortunately, I think the conditions that defined this period of optimistic socialism have changed significantly and we will have to adapt our strategy. It remains true that HUGE (to paraphrase Bernie) numbers of people reject capitalism and the two-party system and a significant layer of these people want to hear what socialists have to say. However, Trump’s reelection marks an important turning point. He has built a sort of mass movement Reaganism. And he is stronger precisely because—as strange as it is to say—he understands the need to build a social movement that can unite disparate political trends (Proud Boy fascists and Evangelicals) and potentially hostile class forces (Elon’s tech-broligarchy and desperate small business owners). More frightening, he has clearly recruited an important section of the state apparatus and the ruling class to his project; at a minimum, they are willing to go along for the ride. 

Meanwhile, Democratic Party leaders are twiddling their thumbs—the Senate, even Bernie, confirmed Marco Rubio unanimously—hoping that Trump’s assault on the status quo in the interest of the One Percent will knock just enough centrist voters from the MAGA column back to the “America is Already Great” column to win back the House in 2026. Now, it’s possible that the Democratic leadership could be proven right in narrow electoral terms, but Trump and his movement may well be more durable. I hope I’m wrong, but I tend to think it is. In fact, I think it’s downright dangerous to minimize his strength at this point. If that’s right, then Trumpism will have to be defeated and replaced with a positive and radical alternative, not simply a return to the status quo conditions that led 77 million people to vote for the Orange One.

Here in Maine, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills’ budget speech last week provided a master class in defending the status quo. But we should reject any complacency that says “it can’t happen here.” After all, Paul LePage vacated the Blaine House only six years ago and Trump already commands a majority in District 2. Worse, despite her demonstrative political talent and administrative competence, Gov. Mills is proposing an austerity budget that will lead to layoffs, cuts in public school funding, and a reduction in public services. It will push greater tax burdens onto local governments, forcing cities and towns to draw blood from a stone. And Trump’s slash and burn at the federal level will trickle down, leading the governor and her majority in the legislature to deepen the relatively “mild” budget cuts under consideration today. While Trump and his billionaire pals ought to bear the brunt of the anger these cuts will produce, the majority party in the statehouse usually pays the price at the polls.

This means that Maine DSA faces a new political period and will need to develop and improve on our practice in order to continue growing and sharpen our skills. The platform we adopted at our January statewide conference does a solid job of setting out those challenges in terms of protest action, local elections, and united fronts alongside unions, immigrants and trans organizations, indigenous peoples, and local communities. We also aim to spread socialist ideas through study groups, publications, social media, and educational meetings and conferences. Our strategic goals in the coming couple years are, first, to play a significant and honorable role in resisting Trump’s attacks on working people and, second, to increase our membership and organizational capacity.

I think that makes sense. But in addition to these practical tasks, we should add a dash of punk rock socialism to the mix without spoiling Maine DSA’s optimistic socialism recipe. Combining the best of our generations will give us a better chance to achieve our common goals.