I’ve been asked many times why I chose socialism over everything else.

Why not reform?
Why not “progressive capitalism”?
Why not just focus on elections, or nonprofits, or mutual aid without ideology?
Why not pick something “more realistic”?

I get the question a lot—at meetings, on panels, in private conversations after organizing sessions when people finally feel safe enough to ask what they really want to know. And the honest answer is this: I didn’t choose socialism because it sounded good on paper. I chose it because organizing for over two years stripped away every illusion I had about how this system actually works.

Socialism wasn’t my starting point. It was my conclusion.

Organizing Will Cure You of Liberal Fantasy

Before you knock doors, sit with families facing eviction, organize workers getting screwed on wages, or try to navigate city agencies designed to exhaust people into giving up, it’s easy to believe the system just needs “better people” in charge. More compassion. More data. More civic engagement.

Organizing kills that belief fast.

When you organize, you learn something brutal and clarifying: the system is not broken. It’s working exactly as designed. It produces winners and losers on purpose. It concentrates wealth, power, and decision-making into fewer and fewer hands, while dressing exploitation up as “personal responsibility” and “market forces.”

You also learn that individual success stories—while real—are politically useless if they require everyone else to fail for them to exist.

Capitalism doesn’t reward work. It rewards ownership.
It doesn’t value people. It values profit extraction.
And it doesn’t malfunction—it functions through inequality.

Once you see that up close, you can’t unsee it.

Socialism Is About Power, Not Vibes

Let me be clear: socialism is not an aesthetic. It’s not a vibe, a flag, or a Twitter bio. It’s a framework for answering one core question:

Who has power over the things that shape our lives?

Right now, the answer is clear: landlords decide who gets housing, bosses decide who eats, corporations decide what communities are sacrificed, and politicians manage the fallout while pretending they’re neutral referees.

Socialism says that’s unacceptable.

It says the people who do the work should control the work.
The people who live in communities should control the land.
The people affected by decisions should have real power over those decisions.

That’s not extreme. What’s extreme is letting a handful of executives and investors dictate whether millions live with dignity or desperation.

Reform Has a Ceiling—and We Keep Hitting It

I’ve worked on reforms. I believe in fighting for immediate wins. I’m not allergic to policy. But organizing teaches you something else that polite politics avoids saying out loud: reform has a ceiling under capitalism.

You can win protections, but they’re temporary.
You can expand programs, but they’re always under attack.
You can pass laws, but enforcement depends on institutions captured by capital.

Every gain we make is treated as a threat, every victory as a mistake to be corrected later through austerity, privatization, or quiet rollback.

Socialism isn’t about rejecting reforms—it’s about understanding why reforms keep getting undone. Without structural change, every win is on borrowed time.

“But Isn’t Socialism Unrealistic?”

This question always comes from a place of fear, not logic.

What’s unrealistic is thinking we can survive climate collapse, mass displacement, endless war, and obscene inequality while keeping an economic system that requires infinite growth on a finite planet.

What’s unrealistic is expecting people to stay passive while rents skyrocket, wages stagnate, healthcare bankrupts families, and politicians tell them to be patient.

What’s unrealistic is believing capitalism will suddenly grow a conscience.

Socialism isn’t unrealistic—it’s inevitable if we want a future that doesn’t look like managed collapse with better branding.

Why I Don’t Apologize for Choosing Sides

Organizing teaches you neutrality is a myth. You are always on someone’s side.

When you defend “the economy,” you’re defending owners.
When you prioritize “business confidence,” you’re sidelining workers.
When you say “both sides,” you’re usually protecting the powerful.

I chose socialism because I chose a side—and it’s the side of people who sell their labor to survive, who are locked out of decisions that affect them, and who are told to blame themselves for structural violence.

That doesn’t make me naïve. It makes me honest.

Socialism Is a Bridge, Not a Wall

Here’s the part people misunderstand: socialism isn’t about purity tests or excluding people who aren’t “ready.” It’s a bridge—from isolation to solidarity, from survival to dignity, from charity to power.

Most people already believe in socialist values. They just don’t use the word.

They believe healthcare shouldn’t depend on wealth.
They believe housing shouldn’t be a speculative asset.
They believe workers deserve respect and security.
They believe children shouldn’t be punished for being born poor.

Organizing is about connecting those instincts to a system that can actually deliver on them.

I Chose Socialism Because I Trust People

At the end of the day, this is what it comes down to: I trust people more than I trust markets. More than corporations. More than billionaires who hoard resources while lecturing us about scarcity.

Socialism says ordinary people—organized, informed, and empowered—are capable of running society better than any elite class ever has.

Organizing showed me that trust isn’t romantic. It’s practical.

People show up when they believe their voice matters.
They fight when they know they’re not alone.
They lead when given real power instead of symbolic inclusion.

That’s why I chose socialism over everything else. Not because it’s easy. Not because it’s trendy. But because after organizing in the real world, nothing else is honest enough to name the problem—or bold enough to solve it.

And once you see that, choosing anything else starts to feel like settling.