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New York’s sort-of-third party has won some big victories in the past two decades but its future is uncertain after defying Andrew Cuomo and his labor allies to endorse Cynthia Nixon. This Saturday - May 19 - the Working Families State Convention is in Harlem.

Only by understanding how Trump fits within our recent history will the left be able to figure out where we go from here. We are once again at a moment of consequential political realignment. Both major parties are deeply divided. We need to engage in shaping the newly emerging parties. The Democrats may or may not move left; they, like the Republicans, may split.

How we vote on November 8 will be the first step in a long process of building a new economic and political order in New York State and in the United States. It is an opportunity to push the nation - and Dems - forward. It is important to vote the Working Families Party (WFP) line for several reasons. The WFP is an independent progressive political party that in New York State can run progressive candidates who are endorsed by both the WFP and the Democratic Party.

We simply can't afford to throw away the energy, the idealism, the thirst for justice that the Sanders campaign has revealed and revived. In the long run, that probably matters even more than who sits in the Oval Office. For the Democrats, the road to reconciliation is not obscure. Sanders is right to rail at our rigged system - but if the Democrats win in November thanks in part to his ideas and his voters, he'll be positioned to do something about it.

The Working Families Party has pushed the political debate to the left in the states where it's already active. Now-in the era of Occupy and Bernie Sanders-it's ready to take that fight nationwide. The WFP's agenda-frankly redistributionist and devoted to social equality-targets a class of Democratic elected officials who, in the view of many liberals, seem to listen more to their moneyed donors than to the left-wing rank and file.

The win marks a major victory for the Pennsylvania Working Families Party, which endorsed Kenney. The endorsement lauded Kenney for his work on Philadelphia’s City Council “supporting efforts to raise wages, improving Philly’s schools, increasing access to housing, ending the discriminatory practices of the criminal justice system, and limiting corporate power in politics.”

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Syriza opened itself to the social movements that emerged to challenge austerity and has become their political voice. It did what parties are supposed to do. It's appropriate to be inspired. Podemos - the new left-wing party in Spain is shaking things up there. Spain's elections are in the fall. Spain has a much bigger economy than Greece, so the prospect of an anti-austerity, anti-oligarchs party in power there is an even deeper challenge to the economic status quo.