Like most Americans, I’ve been following the election, and Tuesday, Nov. 3, is the last day we can vote.
I have to admit that from the South Side of Chicago, I’ve been watching the state near me, Michigan, with a heavy heart. On Tuesday, voters there will decide whether or not to send Abdul El-Sayed to the United States Senate. He is a progressive who wants to implement Medicare for All, and he wants to abolish ICE. He has Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in his corner (Britannica). What interests me about him is that he is part of a broader push on the left that sees American principles as the problem.
El-Sayed says that he is not a socialist. He calls himself a capitalist, and the Democratic Socialists of America have never endorsed him. But one has to wonder if keeping that distance is part of his campaign strategy. Between 2017 and 2020, he spoke at six DSA chapter events and even gave the keynote speech at a 2019 fundraiser. The socialist organizers have called him “a longtime friend of Detroit DSA” (Fox News). In addition to this, 50 DSA members flew in from New York to knock on doors for him before the primary (Washington Examiner). I’ll let Michigan decide what the most apt political label is for him.
He has made a concerted effort to show Black voters in the Detroit area that he is with them. He lost the city in the August primary, and since then he has visited Black churches, stood with Black pastors and put out an agenda for Black communities with housing timelines, minority business loans and school repairs.
In September, he told a room full of female faith leaders in Detroit, “When it comes to Black communities in Michigan, when it comes to Black communities in America, there are unpaid debts that have long since come due that we are unwilling to acknowledge, let alone pay down.”Â
It is important to notice the language here. He’s talking to us as if we are people who are owed, as if our future depends on somebody else paying up. He sees us as members of the oppressed class, and he’s trying to chill with us on that level, just like the good old White liberal used to do.
I’ve listened to him long enough to know that I can’t find any of the things that I’d want to hear him say. He says nothing about embracing America without apology. Being an American means not relying on excuses, being responsible and taking accountability. But he says none of this. For 60 years, the left has talked to Black Americans this way, and I’ve seen the profound damage that kind of talk does in the communities that I serve.
I have said this elsewhere. This socialism that candidates like El-Sayed lean heavily into is not a good thing. After all, we Black Americans were the first in America to truly live under the kind of government dependency that socialists now want for everyone. Though they were sold politically as programs that would lift us out of our history of oppression, the Great Society, the housing projects and welfare rules that punished marriage and work all trapped us in a vicious culture of dependency.
In 1963, 23.6% of Black children were born to unmarried mothers. By 2023, the number had increased to 69%.
Fathers were leaving, a check took the place of the man in the house, and marriage, faith and work started to look optional. Many Black Americans fled this life by using the American principles of uplift, and too many others found themselves in what has become known as the permanent Black underclass.
That’s what I see every day. I created Project H.O.O.D. to undo all of this damage with job training and character building, and by telling young people the truth, which is that government dependency doesn’t have to be their destiny.
The people who rallied around El-Sayed have told us what they want. The DSA’s 2026 program, “Workers Deserve More,” has made the call for abolishing the Senate and the Electoral College and replacing
