This week, our column features an interview with Charlie Muller, a youth activist from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The interview was conducted following the National Convention of the YDSA, held in early August. In the conversation, Charlie discusses the significance of the gathering, the prospects of the student movement in the United States, the challenges in the struggle against the Trump government, and the importance of internationalism.

FLCMF: Charlie, thank you for the interview. Can you start by telling us about the YDSA National Convention and its main conclusions?

Charlie Muller: The Young Democratic Socialists of America, or YDSA, is the youth and student wing of the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the U.S. That makes YDSA the largest youth socialist organization in the country, with chapters on hundreds of campuses nationwide.

This August, we held our national convention in Chicago, where hundreds of delegates gathered to debate the direction of our movement, how to advance socialist organizing on campus, and beyond. We also elected a new national leadership.

The student movement today is strongly defined by the struggle for Palestine. Over the past two years, this generation has been shaped by the Palestine solidarity movement, as well as by resisting Trump and the far-right program attacking students, immigrants, and workers. Universities have become a central site of that struggle.

Within YDSA, students are organizing on many fronts. One major development has been building a labor movement on campus, not only in solidarity with faculty and staff, but also as student workers ourselves. Students perform essential jobs in housing, dining services, and other parts of campus life. In recent years, student workers have formed unions and led important fights for higher wages, better working conditions, and more democratic control of the university.

A key example was the University of Oregon Student Workers Union strike, representing almost 4,000 undergraduates. They demanded higher pay, protections against harassment, and broader political rights for all students. They won important gains in their first contract, but also learned that the labor movement alone is not enough to achieve wider political demands.

At our convention, one of the central debates was about student unions, that is, broad, mass organizations of students, common in other countries but rare in the U.S. In the wake of the Palestine encampment movement, some campuses have experimented with student unions, winning victories such as divestment from weapons manufacturers at San Francisco State University and mobilizations against cuts to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at Virginia Tech.

Another major proposal we adopted was the campaign for sanctuary campuses: keeping ICE off campuses, defending free speech, academic freedom, and the right to protest. YDSA united around fighting Trump’s attacks on immigrants and standing in defense of Palestine.

In the end, the convention voted down the proposal to formally pursue building student unions nationwide. Many felt it underemphasized the role of a socialist organization. Those in favor argued that student unions are essential to uniting hundreds or thousands of students in common struggles, while socialists can play a leading role within them.

The convention also reaffirmed YDSA’s identity not just as a student group but as the youth wing of a broader socialist movement. We’ve begun recruiting non-student working-class youth, especially in places like Milwaukee, and coordinating across campuses to build statewide coalitions.

Finally, one of the most important outcomes was the adoption of a political program, to be amended at each convention. This gives YDSA a clearer identity and a way to present itself on campus.

FLCMF: Since last year, what importance has the struggle in solidarity with Palestine acquired within the student movement?

Charlie Muller: In the spring of 2024, we witnessed a mass mobilization in solidarity with Palestine in the face of the genocide in Gaza, backed by the United States and Israel. Students across the U.S. — and around the world — launched campus encampments, occupying spaces and demanding divestment from university endowments tied to weapons manufacturers complicit in the genocide.

This tactic spread quickly because it was easy to replicate, allowing newly radicalized students to join and creating the sense of a mass resistance in the U.S. It also expanded globally, helping to build an international student movement. Although concrete victories around divestment were limited, the encampments played a decisive role in shaping the political consciousness of today’s student movement.

For YDSA, this was the first time we participated in a student struggle broader than our own chapters or alliances with young Democrats and progressives. We found ourselves working alongside a distinct “Palestine left,” a political force in its own right, and engaging not only activists but also ordinary students who were radicalizing around the genocide and becoming open to political struggle.

Since then, however, the political climate has shifted sharply toward repression. Trump’s government targeted the Palestine student movement — most dramatically with the kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil — sending a clear message that mass resistance to his agenda, whether by students, social movements, or even the labor movement, would be met with harsh repression.

In response, the student movement has had to adapt. One of the challenges has been to assess this new moment and develop tactics and slogans that address the central crisis: Trump’s attacks on students, the working class, and immigrant communities. These attacks have taken the form of deportation raids, assaults on higher education, and violent repression.

The key lesson from the Palestine encampments is that we must link the radical energy against the genocide to a broader mass movement opposing Trump. That is where much of the political struggle will need to go in the coming years.

FLCMF: One difference between the first and second Trump terms has been a systematic offensive against higher education institutions. Many university bureaucracies have yielded to blackmail, causing even more outrage within academic communities. Can you tell us how this looks on a national level?

Charlie Muller: Yes. Trump has launched a full-scale assault on higher education and public education in general. This began with direct attacks on the student movement, particularly at Columbia University, which had been one of the most visible centers of protest against the genocide in Gaza. The kidnapping of Mahmoud Khalil symbolized the beginning of this repression.

Under Trump’s pressure, Columbia capitulated, inviting violent police repression through the NYPD, targeting students in protest. The university even signed an undemocratic settlement with Trump’s administration, paying out $200 million and agreeing to sweeping governance reforms: changes to student conduct rules, restrictions on student rights, and the introduction of a new campus security force with arrest powers. In effect, Columbia became militarized. A similar process unfolded at Brown University, which also signed a settlement involving structural reforms.

This pattern shows how Trump has been able to force universities to intensify repression of student movements. A feedback loop has developed: protests trigger repression; repression generates further protests; and administrations, under federal pressure, crack down more quickly to avoid national scrutiny. For activists, this makes clear that universities are not merely pressured by Trump but are also complicit, often willing to comply with his authoritarian agenda.

Beyond policing, Trump’s offensive is reshaping higher education itself. Universities are being restructured in line with his broader vision for the U.S., targeting spaces of critical knowledge production. Humanities, social sciences, and even certain natural sciences — where inequality, oppression, and exploitation are studied — are facing severe austerity. Research funding is being cut when tied to terms like “diversity,” with grants withdrawn and entire PhD cohorts eliminated. Programs are disappearing at both public and private universities.

The result is intense austerity, political repression, and attacks on academic freedom, particularly against those mobilizing around Palestine. Trump’s project is to transform universities so they no longer serve as incubators of democratic struggles or spaces where society is questioned. Instead, he seeks to push working-class people out of potential middle-class, professional jobs that require a degree, forcing them into lower-wage, “lower-skill” work, as part of a broader reshaping of the American working class.

As socialists, we believe in defending public education and higher education as a universal right: free, fully funded, and high-quality. That means mobilizing both the student and labor movements to resist Trump’s austerity and repression, and to fight for the resources universities need at both state and federal levels.

FLCMF: How do you see the connection between YDSA and broader political campaigns such as the Zohran Mamdani in New York City?

Charlie Muller: Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic Party primary in New York City was one of the most significant socialist victories in a generation. It showed that a majority of working-class people in the city support his program of affordability and are willing to vote for a socialist who stands openly in solidarity with Palestine. This proves there is space within electoral politics for the left to be radical, present its program, and win real support.

Mamdani campaigned on a program focused on immediate working-class needs: making buses fast and free, fighting for a rent freeze in stabilized apartments, expanding universal childcare, and making groceries more affordable. These demands directly responded to people’s daily struggles. His victory came after a year in which many working-class people in New York — especially in the Bronx and Queens — either voted for Trump or boycotted the elections altogether, reflecting frustration with the Democrats’ failure to address economic issues. Trump exploited that anger by presenting himself as a radical alternative to Biden, Harris, and neoliberal Democrats. Mamdani’s program, by contrast, spoke to those same frustrations but offered a genuine working-class alternative.

This makes Mamdani’s win a victory not only against the far right and Trump, but also against Democratic Party austerity. It demonstrates that electoral politics can be a path to bring hundreds of thousands of people into socialist politics. DSA played a central role in his campaign, laying the groundwork that mobilized 50,000 volunteers, canvassed across the city, and ultimately won over half a million votes.

The challenge now is governance. Winning the primary was only the first step. To pass his program — such as taxing New York’s billionaires to fund childcare and housing — we will need a mass movement capable of standing up to the real estate lobby, corporate elites, and hostile politicians. That means mobilizing beyond the ballot box: in workplaces, campuses, neighborhoods, and unions. Encouragingly, we’ve already seen groups like “Educators for Zoran” and “Service Workers for Zoran” emerge, alongside community organizations, showing a participatory, bottom-up vision of politics.

Some comrades have proposed creating a broader membership-based activist formation — something like a proto-party — that could unite those who support Mamdani’s agenda even if they are not ready to join DSA or commit to socialist politics. Victories like this can serve as a launching pad for socialist politics to grow, eventually laying the foundation for an independent working-class party, breaking with the Democrats, and building toward socialism.

Of course, Mamdani will face immense pressure to compromise once in office. Instead of focusing on censuring or criticizing elected socialists when they falter, our priority must be building a mass movement strong enough to allow them to hold firm: to defend Palestine, to fight Trump, and to resist repression. Only by sustaining grassroots mobilization can we ensure that victories like Mamdani’s do not remain isolated but become part of a broader transformation.

FLCMF: In addition to being an activist, you are also a researcher of international experiences in the student movement. How do you see the importance of internationalism among youth?

Charlie Muller: Capitalism is a global system, and to confront it and build socialism we need to organize the international working class across borders and nations. This means orienting ourselves to the working class as the true agent of change — not to governments, parties, or states, but to the social and mass movements, to trade unions, and to grassroots organizing capable of transforming society.

Today, with Trump’s election and return to government, we face a victory for the international far right. This reactionary force is gaining ground across the world: in Latin America, with figures like Milei in Argentina and Bolsonaro in Brazil; and in Europe, with the electoral rise of far-right politicians. The far right presents itself as a radical alternative, channeling anger at the crises of capitalism — ecological collapse, wars, genocide, famine — towards white nationalism, chauvinism, and hatred of immigrants, the poor, and marginalized communities, including trans people, queer people, and people of color. Their program is to strip away rights and liberties, to attack democracy, and to push society backward.

This represents an existential threat to the working class and oppressed peoples, not only in the U.S. but globally. For socialists in the U.S., at the heart of imperialism, our task is to confront U.S. imperialism, defeat Trump, and build a mass movement against his agenda. But this struggle must also connect with movements worldwide: against Trump, against imperialism, and against authoritarianism, building a united front of anti-fascism.

Youth have a key role in this process. They have been protagonists in uprisings around the world, against authoritarian regimes, against genocide in Gaza, against the far right, and against capitalism itself. Building an international youth and student movement capable of coordinating struggles and demands is essential, because the challenges we face are common across borders.

We see that Trump’s policies — tariffs, trade wars, and imperialist aggression — affect not only the U.S. but also countries like Brazil, where economic sanctions have been used as political tools to support coup-plotters and undermine sovereignty. These measures ultimately punish the working class everywhere. That is why we must develop shared slogans, strategies, and solidarity in the fight against imperialism and fascism.

Young people are rejecting capitalism and genocide, fighting for their future, and showing that through international common struggle, it is possible to change the world.

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