This post is Part 3 of a series on social revolutions of the past 30 years — where public consciousness has massively shifted in favor of liberation. My aim is to create space to pause and acknowledge how things have changed in ways that once felt impossible, remind us that things can always be otherwise. It is inspired in part by Rebecca Solnit’s 2016 edition of Hope in the Dark and David Graeber’s 2007 essay “The Shock of Victory.” Feel free to check out part 1 and part 2.

When I was a kid, growing up in the early 2000s USA, the words “communist” and “socialist” were pretty much equivalent to “Satanist.” (okay to be fair my parents may have been a bit more extreme than most: they also thought Yoga was inviting demonic possession and Harry Potter was converting children to witchcraft, but I digress).

But as of 2026, both New York City and Seattle elected self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist mayors: Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson, respectively.

Mayor Katie Wilson of Seattle, Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York City

Although both have faced criticism from Right as well as Left wing sources (either for their espoused views or failure to follow through on them), the fact two major US cities were able to elect openly socialist candidates is a major milestone in public perception.

In this post, I’ll explore a brief history of socialism in US culture and analyze some of the trends over recent years which show movement toward popular awareness of the fundamental problems of Capitalism and increasing willingness to experiment with alternatives.

Class consciousness? Hardly know her.

People who work for a living vs. people who own stuff for a living have very different interests: think about an Amazon warehouse worker vs. Jeff Bezos (or more accurately Andy Jassy, but he doesn’t have his own Bo Burnham song).

I would trace contemporary class consciousness in America in part back to the Occupy Wall Street movement in early 2010s, where de-centralized protestors took over Zucotti park in New York City in opposition to the rule of finance capital over our lives and popularized the slogan “We are the 99%.”

protestors on the steps of London Stock Exchange in 2011, source: Ilias Bartolini

Protestors were bringing to light the fact that, at the time, the top 1% of the population owned 43% of wealth. Since then, things have only gotten worse, with just 3 people owning more wealth than the bottom half of the country, and there is widespread despair of class mobility.

chart source: wikipedia contributor RCraig09 based on World Inequality Database

Speaking of shifting perceptions of the ruling class, we can look at the public reaction to alleged assassination of the CEO of United Healthcare, which makes hundreds of billions annually off denied insurance claims, by a certain Italian-American individual.

Luigi Mangione in court in 2025, source: Steven Hirsch/New York Post via AP

The popularity of the alleged assassin, dubbed by Forbes as a “social media folk hero,” certainly demonstrated a massive shift in consciousness away from a world where billionaires and CEOs were seen as untouchable, aspirational figures to a world where the actions of individual, determined people can reach them.

It’s debatable whether one can call this celebration of alleged vigilante justice by hot guys “class consciousness” per se, but it is certainly a shift