Bing Bong, Baby

It's Zohran Mamdani's New York City, I was just lucky enough to live in it.

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past week, let me be the one to tell you that DSA candidate Zohran Mamdani decisively won the Democratic primary for mayor in the first round of voting, crushing the hopes and dreams of serial sexual harasser and nepo baby Andrew Cuomo and effectively becoming the next mayor of New York City (the general elections here are nearly meaningless at this point, and even if Cuomo decides to mount an independent run in the general he got beaten so decisively it’s hard to imagine him having any chance without the coveted party endorsement, Adams is running but he’s got historically low approval ratings, and Curtis Sliwa is, well, Curtis Sliwa).

A lot of people didn’t expect this outcome. It would be foolish to say that I did, because I am not clairvoyant, but I think I came closer than most to believing the second Zohran announced his run. I was only briefly a DSA member, but that was enough to show me this was possible.

I’ve been running from New York City my entire adult life. Really I’ve been running from my parents my entire adult life, and my parents happen to be in New York City, so that means I’ve been running away from home as much as I can. Then 2020 hit, and nobody was doing much running anywhere. I moved back home that year, read 100 books in 12 months, and joined DSA.

It was an escape attempt, like the books and the TV (the only time I finished multiple TV shows I started was during the pandemic). I was unemployed, socially isolated, and felt generally useless, as on top of everything my mother was navigating a serious health scare. But DSA became something more to me. I looked forward to the organizing Zooms, when people coached me through canvassing that I never wound up doing due to COVID concerns, but whose lessons I took with me for future actions.

And then they announced a primary challenger for my council district and I joined. Jaslin Kaur was only a few years older than me and running for city council. She was from Glen Oaks, I was from Little Neck, both from a pocket of Eastern Queens the rest of the city usually forgot, or if they remembered, saw it as a pocket of white soccer moms and SHSAT-obsessed Asians. But DSA didn’t forget Eastern Queens. They didn’t accept the political established wisdom that this neighborhood was a lost cause. I remember sitting on Zoom calls with people talking about improving local schools and introducing a greenway and new transit corridors into the neighborhood. It made me feel something for the place I grew up in that for the first time, wasn’t disdain. Mamdani was always a figure during the campaign, fresh off of a successful primary challenge of his own, joining Jaslin on actions for taxi drivers and overall bringing immense help to the campaign.

Jaslin didn’t win her primary, although I think she came a lot closer than a lot of people thought a socialist challenger in Eastern Queens would. As others pointed out on Twitter, the base of support she built on the South Asian corridor along Hillside was a surprising turnout for Zohran.

The year Jaslin ran for office, DSA had an entire slate of city council candidates which wound up being less successful than their previous attempts at electoral victories. I remember the ridicule from mainstream Democrat voices then talking about how this meant NYC DSA was over. Actually, it meant that DSA had grown strong enough that they could vet and field candidates running serious campaigns outside of their traditional strongholds, which also meant these candidates weren’t always going to win.

It also showed that DSA didn’t accept the conventional wisdom of “good” neighborhoods and “bad” neighborhoods. They weren’t just focused on shoring up their base, they wanted to expand to the entire city. It’s true that the organization still has a problem with reaching out to Black voters (especially older ones). There have also been critiques that Zohran’s campaign neglected The Bronx. But I sincerely believe these things will change because I see that this organization doesn’t want to leave any New Yorkers behind.

I wrote an essay a few weeks ago about why I left New York. This past week has been bittersweet because I keep wondering if this had happened four years ago, would I have been able to stay in New York? But then again, it took four years (and then some) to build up the ground game for Zohran’s win to happen. There’s no use doing ifs ands or buts now.

I’ve been obsessed with New York-centered coverage the past week or so. Besides religiously reading Michael Lange’s newsletter, I’ve loved the Urban Omnibus, which tells the story of New York through architecture. The Neighborhoods Substack is a recent discovery I love browsing, with photos from every single New York City neighborhood. There’s no city like it, and I’m sad my own kids won’t get to live there. But there are beauties elsewhere, for those with eyes to see them. And there are opportunities to win elsewhere.

I think Zohran’s win is an important lesson for all of us. I’ve had enough of preemptive defeats. I’m sick of accepting losses. The loss may still happen, and probably will, but I want to do a canvass shift with my friends and have a sly beer afterwards and maybe talk to some neighbors and see what they’re thinking before I lose, rather than losing before the battle even happens while sitting on my phone. We can’t be miserable forever. The world depends on it.