With DSA Backing, Serana Hits The Doors

by Laura Glesby

NHFT Prez Leslie Blatteau endorses Serana, “my union sister” who is equipped to improve schools, at a campaign kickoff Tuesday.

Maria-Threese Serana’s vision for a working-class “movement” emerges from small details of her Avon Street block — from a pollinator garden with both climate and community benefits to a fire-scarred house ripe for eminent domain.

She said she hopes to bring that movement to the rest of the ward, and to City Hall, as the next alder of East Rock and Fair Haven’s Ward 9.

Serana is running for the alder seat with the backing of the Connecticut chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers (NHFT), and the Democratic Party Ward Committee.

She is a biology teacher at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School as well as the parent of a recent New Haven Public Schools student. Her son, John Carlos Serana Musser, was a recent student representative on the Board of Education.

Blaise Berglund, Conor Gilligan, and Gavin Arnold are also vying to fill the seat left behind by Caroline Tanbee Smith, who recently moved out of the ward. The four candidates will compete in a special election taking place on Sept. 15.

If elected, Serana would be the second democratic socialist to serve on the Board of Alders, following former Ward 9 Alder Charles Decker.

Over 25 people from across the city, including teachers union President Leslie Blatteau and many wearing DSA T-shirts, gathered outside P&M Market on Tuesday afternoon.

There, Serana held a campaign kickoff rally before heading to door-knock in the neighborhood.

At the rally, George Moore, the chair of New Haven’s DSA branch, asked the crowd: “Who builds our housing?”

He prompted the group to call out: “The working class!”

Moore continued the call and response: “Who makes our phones?… Who makes our clothes? … Who teaches our kids?”

“The working class!” the attendees responded.

“And yet money and power,” said Moore, is in the hands of “yacht-owning, gold-toilet-sitting, Epstein-Island-visiting oligarchs.”

Hill resident Crystal Fernandez, second from left, met Serana at DSA meetings and believes her victory would reflect that “change is catalyzing.”

After the rally dispersed, Serana took a stack of voter registration forms and campaign literature, and she set off to start knocking on doors.

The “Democratic” in Democratic Socialism

Serana also met Radko — a budding cyclist not quite old enough to vote — and his dad Ahmad. The family supports “more stores” in the neighborhood.

The sky was beginning to darken as Serana turned the corner to Avon Street. She decided to start on her own block, between Orange and Foster.

Joined by DSA members Erik Kuranko and Quin DeLaRosa, Serana knocked on several doors, tucking campaign flyers under doormats when no one was home. She stopped several people on the street, most of whom said that while they lived in the neighborhood, they were registered to vote in a different city. One person snapped a photo of Serana’s flyer so she could share it with her roommates.

In between doors, Serana reflected that although she studied political science and participated in political campaigns when she was younger, she never expected to become a political candidate herself.

She recalled growing up in a political system in the Philippines where elections were compromised in part due to rampant vote-buying. Political campaigns would offer money in exchange for proof that voters cast ballots for the campaign’s candidate.

“You would give your vote to the highest bidder,” said Serana. She never ran for office because “I didn’t have the money — and I didn’t think I could stomach it.”

She sees an echo of that overt vote-buying in the American campaign finance system. Elections here are still “run by money,” she said, even without a direct financial incentive to vote a certain way.

She lamented that some people hear about democratic socialism and think of “communist dictators.” In her view, socialism is fundamentally about democracy. Democracy, she argued, is easily compromised when a small group of people has an outsized amount of economic power over everyone else.

To Serana, socialism means investing in “universal healthcare, libraries, public schools.” It means taking on the “billionaires who are exploiting our brain power, our muscle power.”

Then she paused, laughing. “Sorry! I went into teacher mode.”