Sau­da Bara­ka didn’t pur­sue a spot on the Bridge­port, Conn., Board of Edu­ca­tion think­ing it would be a spring­board to high­er office. As her chil­dren went through Bridgeport’s pub­lic schools, she saw her­self sim­ply as an ​“involved par­ent” — until 2004, when the Repub­li­can Par­ty recruit­ed her to run for the board. Con­necti­cut reserves three seats on all school boards for a minor­i­ty par­ty — and at the time in Bridge­port, long dom­i­nat­ed by a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty machine, the minor­i­ty par­ty was Repub­li­can. She accept­ed, and won.

‘Sometimes, in years past, you couldn’t tell a Democrat from a Republican. No one wanted to talk about race; no one wanted to talk poverty.’

After Bara­ka spent four years press­ing for more fund­ing for the schools and more trans­paren­cy about oper­a­tions, the Repub­li­cans ​“kicked me to the curb,” she tells In These Times. ​“I guess they didn’t like my politics.”

Baraka’s dis­taste for cor­po­rate-style edu­ca­tion reform didn’t endear her to the Democ­rats in the city, either; as in many places around the coun­try, school pri­va­ti­za­tion is a bipar­ti­san affair. But she didn’t give up. Instead, she made plans to run that year as an inde­pen­dent. Then a friend of hers intro­duced her to the Con­necti­cut Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty (WFP), which was con­sid­er­ing a bid for those minor­i­ty spots on the board. ​“I liked the grass­roots process,” Bara­ka says. ​“I liked what they were say­ing. I liked what their plat­form was. I could sup­port pret­ty much every­thing that they were doing.” She ran on the WFP tick­et in 2009 and won, as did anoth­er WFP can­di­date for the board, Maria Pereira.

After years of bat­tle in Bridge­port, the WFP emerged vic­to­ri­ous from the 2013 elec­tions with a func­tion­al major­i­ty of the nine-mem­ber school board — two mem­bers from the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty and three WFP-backed Democ­rats — and Bara­ka as the chair.

That was just one of sev­er­al big suc­cess­es for the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty around the coun­try this fall, per­haps the most notable being the elec­tion of May­or Bill de Bla­sio and a pro­gres­sive slate of can­di­dates in New York City — includ­ing Pub­lic Advo­cate Leti­tia James, the first black woman to hold city­wide office, and Melis­sa Mark-Viver­i­to, the first Lati­na Speak­er of the Coun­cil. These WFP can­di­dates are expect­ed to push a pro­gres­sive agen­da for New York that includes expand­ing paid sick days, levy­ing a tax on the wealthy to fund uni­ver­sal pre-kinder­garten, and much more.

The New York City vic­to­ries have attract­ed new atten­tion to how the WFP exer­cis­es pow­er at the bal­lot box and in city and state leg­is­la­tures, lever­ag­ing quirks in local elec­toral sys­tems and exist­ing pro­gres­sive bases to make a third par­ty viable.

But it is the ways that Work­ing Fam­i­lies is wield­ing its pow­er out­side of lib­er­al New York that deserve a clos­er look. As pub­lic dis­con­tent with main­stream Democ­rats builds, is it pos­si­ble for a third par­ty to grow — not by run­ning a famous big name on a pres­i­den­tial tick­et, but from the bot­tom up? And if it suc­ceeds at that task, can Work­ing Fam­i­lies pull nation­al pol­i­tics back in the direc­tion of ordi­nary peo­ple and away from the 1%?

Polit­i­cal fusion

In the states of Con­necti­cut, New York and Ore­gon, the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty relies on ​“fusion vot­ing” in order to hold a slot on the bal­lot. Fusion vot­ing, oper­a­tive in eight states, allows a can­di­date to be simul­ta­ne­ous­ly endorsed by mul­ti­ple par­ties; New York­ers could vote for Bill de Bla­sio, for exam­ple, on either the Demo­c­ra­t­ic or the WFP bal­lot line. This allows vot­ers to express sup­port not just for the can­di­date but for the party’s ideals, with­out the par­ty act­ing as ​“spoil­er,” a charge often lev­eled at minor par­ties. Cross-endors­ing big-name can­di­dates can help the par­ty draw votes, allow­ing it to meet the min­i­mum vote thresh­old to stay on the bal­lot in the next elec­tion with­out a time-con­sum­ing peti­tion process. Hav­ing that slot in turn means the par­ty can — although it rarely does— run its own inde­pen­dent can­di­dates, count­ing on vot­ers to sup­port them because they know and like the WFP.

The WFP’s pre­de­ces­sor, the New Par­ty, was found­ed in 1990 by Dan Can­tor and Joel Rogers on the con­vic­tion that pass­ing fusion vot­ing on a nation­al lev­el was the best chance of break­ing the two-par­ty dead­lock. When a chal­lenge to state laws that banned fusion failed in the Supreme Court, the New Par­ty fell apart. But Can­tor, along with Bob Mas­ter of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca and Jon Kest, then of ACORN, decid­ed to build on fusion where it exist­ed, begin­ning in New York. In 1998, they found­ed the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty there.

How­ev­er, much of the pow­er the WFP built — cham­pi­oning issues, win­ning pri­maries — didn’t involve fusion at all, and many of those tac­tics can be export­ed to non-fusion states. Can­tor, the Work­ing Fam­i­lies nation­al direc­tor, says, ​“As much as we like fusion vot­ing, it’s not essen­tial to the actu­al advance of the project.”

So in New Jer­sey, Penn­syl­va­nia, Mary­land and Wash­ing­ton, D.C., where fusion is not avail­able, Work­ing Fam­i­lies is begin­ning to oper­ate as an inde­pen­dent polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion. It plans to build cam­paigns around issues like paid sick days, press offi­cials to sup­port them, and train can­di­dates to run in both pri­ma­ry chal­lenges and gen­er­al elections.

The point, for Can­tor, is to build an inde­pen­dent pow­er base in both fusion and non-fusion states that can pull the polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion back in a pro­gres­sive direc­tion. He notes that the Tea Par­ty didn’t just push Repub­li­cans right­ward, but Democ­rats as well.

When the major par­ties agree, as they often do in sup­port­ing, say, cor­po­rate-style edu­ca­tion reform, a third par­ty can pro­mote ideas and issues that would be oth­er­wise neglect­ed. In Ore­gon, for exam­ple, the WFP worked with local stu­dent groups to put for­ward a plan for rethink­ing col­lege fund­ing. They found a WFP-backed Demo­c­rat to spon­sor it, and the mea­sure wound up pass­ing unan­i­mous­ly in the state leg­is­la­ture. The par­ty is now work­ing on a bill that would cre­ate a state bank to invest Oregon’s pub­lic mon­ey at home instead of with Wall Street and pro­vide cheap­er loans to state res­i­dents. Such pro­pos­als are unlike­ly to come from the major par­ties, which each receive mas­sive cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions from big banks, even at the state level.

Around the coun­try, the par­ty also backs famil­iar pro­pos­als like paid sick leave and an increase in the min­i­mum wage. Though these ini­tia­tives didn’t orig­i­nate with the WFP, the party’s 15 years of clout has giv­en it enough lever­age in the states where it works to demand politi­cians take a posi­tion. Elect­ed offi­cials who have had or want the WFP’s back­ing— which means on-the-ground sup­port come elec­tion time as well as a stamp of pro­gres­sive approval — have an incen­tive to back its policies.

​“Pow­er has both an ide­o­log­i­cal ele­ment and a straight polit­i­cal mus­cle ele­ment,” says Can­tor. ​“Can you actu­al­ly deliv­er the ener­gy, ideas, troops, mon­ey, tac­tics, morale, vol­un­teers that are need­ed in any giv­en fight? The fight might be an issue cam­paign or an elec­toral cam­paign. What I think is quite delight­ful about Work­ing Fam­i­lies is we do both.”

A minor­i­ty model

The WFP’s deci­sion to run inde­pen­dent can­di­dates in Bridge­port marked a depar­ture from the party’s usu­al M.O. of flex­ing its mus­cles with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty by recruit­ing or endors­ing pro­gres­sive Democ­rats in pri­maries. But the minor­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion rules in Con­necti­cut pre­sent­ed anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty for a third par­ty to gain ground.

It wasn’t easy. After the vic­to­ries of the WFP can­di­dates, Bara­ka con­tin­ued the fight she’d begun against the agen­da of the board’s major­i­ty, ask­ing for more fund­ing for pro­grams and more infor­ma­tion on what was hap­pen­ing, now with Pereira on her side. No one expect­ed the school board’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty to vote itself out of exis­tence, but that’s what hap­pened next. Its then-pres­i­dent, Bar­bara Bellinger, with the sup­port of five oth­er board mem­bers and the may­or of Bridge­port, request­ed that the state Board of Edu­ca­tion replace the entire board with appoint­ed mem­bers. The state Supreme Court ruled that move uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, but the appoint­ed board had already hired a new inter­im super­in­ten­dent: Paul Val­las, famous (or infa­mous) for his time in New Orleans, Philadel­phia and Chica­go lay­ing off teach­ers and pro­mot­ing char­ter schools. In 2012, Bridge­port may­or Bill Finch and his pro-char­ter-school allies put elim­i­na­tion of board elec­tions on the bal­lot, where, despite $200,000 from Michelle Rhee’s Stu­dents­First and $25,000 from bil­lion­aire ex-New York City may­or Michael Bloomberg, it went down in flames.

After all that, says Lind­say Far­rell, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Con­necti­cut WFP, it was clear that the par­ty need­ed more than two mem­bers on the board. ​“We made a strate­gic deci­sion that in addi­tion to run­ning our own folks, we also need­ed to run folks in a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry who would work with our Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty offi­cials to part­ner togeth­er on a more pro­gres­sive agenda.”

Three new school board mem­bers rode their WFP endorse­ments to vic­to­ry in Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­maries and then the gen­er­al elec­tion. Com­bined with Bara­ka, now the board chair, and anoth­er WFP mem­ber, they’ll have a func­tion­al major­i­ty on the board — a major­i­ty that is opposed to char­ter schools, Teach for Amer­i­ca and the oth­er facets of the cor­po­rate school reform agen­da — and per­haps anoth­er blue­print for party-building.

New territory

The Bridge­port school board wasn’t the only leg­isla­tive body shak­en up in the 2013 elec­tions. This fall, vot­ers expressed a ris­ing dis­con­tent with busi­ness-as-usu­al bipar­ti­san pol­i­tics across the coun­try. Social­ist Kshama Sawant won a city coun­cil seat in Seat­tle, anoth­er social­ist, Ty Moore, came close to vic­to­ry in Min­neapo­lis, and an inde­pen­dent labor slate took two dozen coun­cil seats in Lorain Coun­ty, Ohio. Around the coun­try, there are nois­es about inde­pen­dence from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty — per­haps the loud­est com­ing from Chica­go, where the Chica­go Teach­ers Union is join­ing oth­er labor and com­mu­ni­ty groups to form an inde­pen­dent polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion.

All this could spell good news for Work­ing Fam­i­lies as it moves to expand. In Penn­syl­va­nia, for instance, the events in Bridge­port inspired Andi Perez — exec­u­tive direc­tor of Youth Unit­ed for Change, a youth-led Philadel­phia orga­ni­za­tion that fights to improve the city’s pub­lic schools — to be part of the launch of a new state-lev­el Work­ing Fam­i­lies coalition.

Though the state doesn’t have fusion vot­ing, there are oth­er ways for a Work­ing Fam­i­lies orga­ni­za­tion to have an impact. With­out a bal­lot line, Work­ing Fam­i­lies will con­sid­er endors­ing can­di­dates in pri­maries, on-the-ground orga­niz­ing around issues such as wages, tax­es and school fund­ing, and per­haps even­tu­al­ly run­ning City Coun­cil can­di­dates in Philadel­phia, which has minor­i­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion rules sim­i­lar to those in Bridgeport.

In a polar­ized state like Penn­syl­va­nia, whose cities are held in an iron grip by Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty machines and whose rur­al areas often sup­port far-right politi­cians like Repub­li­can Gov. Tom Cor­bett, bring­ing in a third par­ty might shake up hide­bound pre­con­cep­tions. Or at least, that’s what Gabe Mor­gan hopes. Mor­gan and the union he directs, the build­ing ser­vice work­ers’ local SEIU 32BJ Penn­syl­va­nia, are help­ing to set up the state’s Work­ing Fam­i­lies orga­ni­za­tion. Pre­vi­ous­ly, they were part of a coali­tion in Pitts­burgh that oust­ed machine Dems in the 2013 city elec­tions, endors­ing a slate of pri­ma­ry chal­lengers who went on to win in the gen­er­al elec­tion, includ­ing Pittsburgh’s new may­or, Bill Pedu­to. It wasn’t a Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty effort, but Mor­gan sees it as emblem­at­ic of what he’d like to do with Work­ing Families.

​“The goal is to build an orga­ni­za­tion that real­ly does try and speak for work­ing-class peo­ple in Philadel­phia,” he says. ​“For it to work and be mean­ing­ful, it’s got to be organ­ic to the place that it’s in. What we build in Philadel­phia won’t be the exact same as New York and won’t be the exact same as Pitts­burgh and won’t be the exact same as Connecticut.”

The new orga­ni­za­tion has already held a can­di­date forum for Democ­rats inter­est­ed in chal­leng­ing Cor­bett for the gov­er­nor­ship. Its gaze is firm­ly set on fix­ing Philly’s bad­ly bro­ken school sys­tem, cur­rent­ly under the con­trol of a state gov­ern­ment that has slashed fund­ing, elim­i­nat­ed pro­grams and shut­tered schools. It also has its sights on improv­ing pover­ty-wage jobs at the Philadel­phia air­port and chang­ing lib­er­al— ​“lib­er­al in a bad way,” Mor­gan says — tax abate­ments for busi­ness­es that wind up gen­tri­fy­ing neigh­bor­hoods with­out pay­ing back into local schools.

For Perez, the Work­ing Fam­i­lies umbrel­la is a way to solid­i­fy alliances that already exist: between unions and com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, between indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions, and con­nect all those pro­gres­sive play­ers to some­thing big­ger — a grow­ing par­ty. ​“We’re only going to build our pow­er work­ing togeth­er,” she says.

The non-union work­ing class

In order to real­ly build that pow­er, Gabe Mor­gan believes, the Work­ing Fam­i­lies orga­ni­za­tion in Penn­syl­va­nia has to stretch ​“across lines — not just union mem­bers but all work­ing-class peo­ple.” These days, most of those peo­ple are not mem­bers of a union or anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion. So for Work­ing Fam­i­lies to become a tru­ly mass orga­ni­za­tion, it will have to find a way to reach an increas­ing­ly atom­ized work­ing class.

Of course, the WFP wouldn’t be what it is with­out the sup­port of major unions and com­mu­ni­ty groups; ACORN and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca played key roles in get­ting the par­ty off the ground, and 32BJ in New York has been an affil­i­ate since ear­ly on. Bertha Lewis, for­mer head of ACORN and now founder and pres­i­dent of the Black Insti­tute, explains, ​“It was a prin­ci­ple that we had that, in order to be an affil­i­ate [of WFP], you had to have mem­bers … you had to do real orga­niz­ing, you had to do real actions, and you had to be on the ground.”

Can­tor calls for a ​“healthy bal­ance” between the two approach­es. ​“You have to have insti­tu­tion­al play­ers,” he says. ​“I always think the job of the orga­niz­ers in a giv­en state is to keep in some kind of har­mo­ny the inter­ests of the insti­tu­tion­al forces with indi­vid­ual activists — in which the for­mer pro­vides rela­tion­ships and resources and lots of peo­ple, and the sec­ond pro­vides ener­gy and ideas.”

Bal­anc­ing the exist­ing insti­tu­tions with the needs of activists who aren’t part of a union or com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tion can be a tough chal­lenge, notes Michael Hirsch, a long­time labor activist, retired union staff writer, and WFP mem­ber. In 2000, he helped build one of New York’s first Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty clubs on Manhattan’s East Side. They met month­ly and can­vassed their neigh­bor­hoods around issues and can­di­dates the par­ty sup­port­ed as mem­bers — but ulti­mate­ly, the club didn’t last, in part because it wasn’t clear how they fit into the WFP’s frame­work, which gives deci­sion-mak­ing seats to peo­ple who rep­re­sent exist­ing insti­tu­tions. Such efforts, Hirsch says, are ​“messy and hard and require a lot of ser­vic­ing,” but ulti­mate­ly nec­es­sary. They might also pro­vide a blue­print for how the par­ty could one day spread into more con­ser­v­a­tive areas, where com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions and unions have lit­tle pres­ence, but work­ing-class peo­ple might be open to hear­ing about high­er wages and bet­ter health­care and schools.

Since the party’s strat­e­gy often revolves around win­ning pri­maries, the eas­i­est mea­sure­ment of par­ty ​“mem­ber­ship” goes out the win­dow — you don’t want peo­ple to reg­is­ter as WFP mem­bers when that pre­vents them from vot­ing in Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty elec­tions. But Can­tor explains that there is a ​“long arc of involve­ment” for peo­ple who want to sup­port Work­ing Fam­i­lies — from being on its email list and maybe donat­ing some mon­ey, to join­ing a local group, to attend­ing can­di­date screen­ings and meet­ings, to sign­ing a ​“vol­un­teer con­tract” pledg­ing a cer­tain amount of door-knock­ing or phone bank­ing for can­di­dates.“ All of it is valu­able,” Can­tor says.

As the par­ty expands out­side of its com­fort zones, Can­tor says, ​“The big chal­lenge for us is: Can we fig­ure out the form of [the] orga­ni­za­tion that peo­ple can iden­ti­fy with, feel good about [and] sup­port with their feet and wallets?”

The Cuo­mo question

In New York, where the par­ty began, the dust has bare­ly set­tled around the city’s elec­tions. But even as de Blasio’s win is her­ald­ed, the ques­tion of anoth­er New York Demo­c­rat comes up a lot for the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Par­ty: Gov­er­nor Andrew Cuomo.

The Left has ques­tioned the WFP’s can­di­date choic­es many times since its found­ing, but nev­er more angri­ly than the deci­sion to endorse Cuo­mo, who ran an eco­nom­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive cam­paign and has gov­erned in the same vein. Yet the New York governor’s race holds the key to the WFP’s bal­lot line. State rules require par­ties to get 50,000 votes in a governor’s race to keep their spot on the bal­lot, as the par­ty did in 1998 when it made its first cross-endorse­ment of Demo­c­rat Peter Val­lone. Though Val­lone lost to George Pata­ki that year, the WFP net­ted 51,325 votes and gained the spot it has held ever since. Were it to lose its bal­lot line, it’d have to peti­tion each time to have a can­di­date on the ballot.

With­out endors­ing Cuo­mo in 2010, the par­ty feared it wouldn’t meet the 50,000-vote quo­ta. Cuo­mo took advan­tage of the WFP’s posi­tion and pushed it to sign on to his whole agen­da, which includ­ed tax cuts and work­er pay freezes. Cuo­mo won eas­i­ly and the WFP kept its bal­lot line, but it’s unclear whether he helped the party’s vote total. Soci­ol­o­gist and In These Times con­trib­u­tor Peter Frase (full dis­clo­sure: my boyfriend) crunched the num­bers and found that in vir­tu­al­ly every coun­ty, Cuo­mo got few­er WFP votes than any of the party’s oth­er statewide cross-endorsed can­di­dates. By con­trast, when Eliot Spitzer was cross-endorsed by WFP in the 2006 guber­na­to­r­i­al race, he gar­nered more votes on the WFP line than the party’s low­er-lev­el can­di­dates. While there’s no way to prove with cer­tain­ty that an inde­pen­dent WFP can­di­date would have crossed the 50,000-vote thresh­old, Frase notes that the Green Par­ty got 59,906 votes for its inde­pen­dent can­di­date, Howie Hawkins — sug­gest­ing that it was pos­si­ble for a third par­ty to hold a bal­lot line with a Left chal­lenge to Cuomo.

The gov­er­nor is up for re-elec­tion in 2014, and the par­ty will no doubt face a lot of pres­sure from both the pro-Cuo­mo and anti-Cuo­mo crowds. But it’s hard to imag­ine a polit­i­cal cli­mate both region­al­ly and nation­al­ly more dif­fer­ent than the one in which it made its choice last time, and it’s equal­ly dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a can­di­date more off-mes­sage for the cur­rent moment than Cuo­mo. His lat­est exploit, at press time, was to attempt to com­man­deer some $613 mil­lion of the $13 bil­lion JP Mor­gan Chase mort­gage-fraud set­tle­ment, sup­posed to be ear­marked to help home­own­ers, into the state’s gen­er­al fund, where he want­ed to use it in part for tax cuts.

Moves like this, or like Cuomo’s play to cre­ate uni­ver­sal pre-kinder­garten in the state with­out pass­ing the tax increase on the wealthy to pay for it that was cen­tral to de Blasio’s cam­paign, are often por­trayed as a clash of egos between Cuo­mo and de Bla­sio, or between Cuo­mo and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Eric Schnei­der­man. But they’re also about some­thing broad­er — a shift in pri­or­i­ties, per­haps, or in power.

This is pre­cise­ly why the ques­tion of Cuo­mo is big­ger than just one can­di­date. It’s a ques­tion of pow­er and who has it, with­in the WFP and with­out. In some ways, it is the ques­tion of the future of the WFP’s strategy.

To Hirsch, there’s only one answer: Run a can­di­date against Cuo­mo. ​“It’s a risk, [but] it’s a risk worth tak­ing,” he says. The way for­ward would be dif­fi­cult, but not impos­si­ble, he con­tin­ues: ​“It would mean basi­cal­ly get­ting the unions to agree to dis­agree. It would mean try­ing to fig­ure out if any union is will­ing to break with Cuo­mo. It would mean encour­ag­ing peo­ple of the Left who don’t do elec­toral work to do elec­toral work.”

The unions dis­agreed in 2013, too. SEIU 32BJ New York endorsed for­mer City Coun­cil Speak­er Chris­tine Quinn in the may­oral pri­ma­ry; the Unit­ed Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers (UFT) went with one­time comp­trol­ler Bill Thomp­son, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee in 2009, and still oth­ers sided with comp­trol­ler John Liu. 1199SEIU and com­mu­ni­ty group New York Com­mu­ni­ties for Change, also affil­i­ates of the WFP, did endorse de Bla­sio. WFP was offi­cial­ly neu­tral in the pri­ma­ry because of the conflict.

It will be hard to get any union to break with a gov­er­nor who appears cer­tain to cruise to re-elec­tion. Hirsch believes, because of this, that it’s impor­tant to chal­lenge him from the left.

It wouldn’t be the first time that the WFP agreed to dis­agree with some of its major affil­i­ates, either. In Ore­gon, the party’s Pay It For­ward plan for high­er edu­ca­tion fund­ing met with stiff oppo­si­tion from the UFT’s par­ent union, the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers. Can­tor says of that expe­ri­ence, ​“If you build an orga­ni­za­tion so that peo­ple devel­op a his­to­ry of work­ing togeth­er and build some trust, then you can dis­agree and it doesn’t blow up.”

An endorse­ment deci­sion will hap­pen in the com­ing months, and any pre­dic­tion is prob­a­bly pre­ma­ture, but the Par­ty has cer­tain­ly not remained silent in the face of Cuomo’s poli­cies. A recent WFP press release put it this way: ​“The governor’s trick­le-down plan, replete with estate and cor­po­rate tax cuts, only serves to cement New York’s sta­tus as the inequal­i­ty cap­i­tal of the world.”

It all comes down, in the end, to how pow­er gets built. It requires coali­tions and trust; insti­tu­tion­al sup­port and enthu­si­as­tic activists; lots of orga­niz­ing, and per­haps most of all, a will­ing­ness to pick the right fights.

Bertha Lewis knows per­haps bet­ter than any­one else how hard those fights can be. But she thinks they’re worth it. ​“Some­times, in years past, you couldn’t tell a Demo­c­rat from a Repub­li­can. No one want­ed to talk about race; no one want­ed to talk pover­ty. This whole con­ver­sa­tion that we’re hav­ing nation­al­ly about inequal­i­ty is because [groups like WFP] kept to our prin­ci­ples and our ideas and kept say­ing, ​‘There is inequal­i­ty, there is inequal­i­ty, there is inequality.’ ”

​“We found our mus­cle,” she says.