Nelson joined the Young Socialists in 1996, while he was a student at the Minneapolis Community College in Minneapolis, and the Socialist Workers Party shortly thereafter. He had been active on campus in a struggle to defend affirmative action in face of an effort by the administration to cut scholarships. In 1996, he was part of the SWP slate in the state elections, running as the party’s candidate for Minnesota assembly in District 63-A. The magazine of the American Association of Retired Persons covered his campaign.

The next year, Nelson moved to Atlanta to help build the communist movement there. He was the SWP candidate for Atlanta mayor in the 1997 elections and beat back an attempt by city authorities to disqualify him from the ballot. While in Georgia, Nelson worked in plants organized by the UNITE union and the United Steel Workers of America. In 1998, Nelson moved to New York, where he worked for five years in the print shop producing Pathfinder books and the Militant.

Over the last eight years, Nelson has also written articles for the Militant as a worker-correspondent. These include reporting on protests against the U.S.-NATO assaults on Yugoslavia in the 1990s, an FBI raid targeting Algerian immigrants in Brooklyn in 2000, and actions by the Cleveland city government to slash jobs and services last year.  
 
 
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