“His platform spoke to the ways that it is not unchangeable that state institutions distribute resources upward, police poverty, and externalize social costs onto workers.”
Zohran Mamdani, who identifies as a democratic socialist and stands out for his rhetoric directly addressing the material crises of the working class, won the New York City mayoral election. We asked Preston Carter what Mamdani’s election victory means, the factors that propelled him politically, the concept of “democratic socialism,” and the potential implications of this success
Preston Carter is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Philosophy Department at Fordham University and both a founding member and the Business Agent of Fordham Graduate Student Workers-Communications Workers of America Local 1104. He organizes contract enforcement and worker power while researching colonialism, language, and racial capitalism in the French Caribbean.
He described to us how that Mamdani’s success stems from his ability to generate concrete demands that directly address the deepening housing, transportation, poverty, and immigration crises in the city, that elections can be transformed into a real arena of struggle, and the effectiveness of working with a broad coalition of young people, tenants, union members, and immigrants mobilized outside traditional Democratic Party channels.
Here is the interview we conducted as Kaldıraç…
1) Zohran Mamdani’s victory attracted global attention. Could you describe his beginnings and how he built grassroots organization?
My first impression of Zohran Mamdani did not come from electoral politics. I heard about the medallion crisis, when taxi drivers (many of whom are South Asian, Muslim, and working-class) were crushed under predatory loans, before I knew who Mamdani was. The first thing I learned about Mamdani was that he joined those drivers during their hunger strike. This was after the city politicians had abandoned them, and, I believe, at least one driver had taken his own life. When I heard that Mamdani joined their hunger strike, I was impressed by his conviction.
I cannot speak as directly to the internal workings of his campaign, but the Democratic Socialists of America certainly played the biggest role in lending it organizational capacity. I would characterize Zohran’s campaign as deeply rooted in the DSA infrastructure.
The campaign structure was very intentionally open to newcomers. As a rank-and-file unionist elected Chief Steward, I quickly realized that there could be an opportunity to activate my membership. For example, international graduate workers cannot vote but live the consequences of city policy. Even without the right to vote, they can still canvas and phonebank as a union. This mattered because it allowed my members without voting rights–who are structurally disenfranchised–to meaningfully shape the political terrain.
2) What made Mamdani unique in U.S. politics? Which policies mattered most?
I can speak best from the perspective of my shop. What stood out to our members was that Zohran spoke directly to the material crises shaping our lives. We frequently encounter food shortages, unhoused members (including evictions), etc. In our first contract fight, we demanded subsidies for work-related transportation because our real wages are declining while the subway regularly raises its prices. We also fought for housing support, such as subsidies for graduate workers in the expensive student housing. And because we have large numbers of workers of a variegated resident status, we need politicians who defend NYC’s sanctuary policies rather than collaborate with ICE.
What I can say is that we fought and bargained for these protections and rights, but the University could be intransigent since they could say, “no one in the city really has subsidized travel (only high school students),” “the housing crisis is due to the economy and the University cannot control the economy,” etc.
What made Zohran unique from my perspective is that he entered the campaign understanding these fights and issues. He looked at the issues and spoke about the issues from the perspective of working-class New Yorkers rather than economists. His platform spoke to the ways that it is not unchangeable that state institutions distribute resources upward, police poverty, and externalize social costs onto workers.
He also drew a line between us and them: billionaires should not exist. And Mamdani was able (with his own shortcomings and failures apart from structural limitations) to make connections between our local issues in New York City and imperialism. The same state that cuts public services sustains immense expenditures on war and genocide.
The policies that resonated with my Union also resonated with New Yorkers:
- Tax the rich
- Freeze the rent
- Fast and free buses
- End collaboration with ICE
New Yorkers can see and evaluate how these policies are implemented, and I think that clarity matters a lot for New Yorkers living paycheck to paycheck. While these changes are rather limited, working people will remember these concrete victories. Across the global left, there has been a turn toward clear, everyday demands rather than abstract messaging, and Mamdani’s platform reflects that trend.
3) How was the daily organization managed during the campaign? How did Mamdani, who was an unknown figure, manage to win the mayoral election?
There was canvassing regularly in every neighborhood of New York City. People could sign up on the Zohran campaign website for 3-hour shifts for canvassing, and they would knock doors of people who haven’t yet committed. The people staging the canvases were field leads, and they were mostly all volunteers. There were symbolic merch incentives like a Zohran tote for field leads and special pins for canvassers (along with a “Zetrocard” that was a stamp card playing on the “Metrocard”). The campaign sold no merch, so it was only participants in the campaign who had it.
Mamdani is definitely an exceptional speaker, but obviously, the media has a hyper-individualist focus. The campaign was won by the canvassers breaking record after record of doors knocked, and people recognized Zohran via the TV appearances, but I would say they got to know the campaign through the face-to-face door-knocking “politics of no translation” Zohran will mention.
4) How important were pre-existing organizations like DSA?
As I gestured earlier, it would be hard to overestimate the importance of the pre-existing organizations. The DSA has a lot of experience with New York City campaigns. I think most people trace that preparation back to Bernie, especially. And you also have mutual aid organizations and tenant unions that I noticed became more prominent during the COVID pandemic. And then there are immigrant and/or diaspora organizations such as DRUM (Desis Rising Up & Moving). And, finally, you have the organization I spend the most time with at this time, the unions.
It is not the case that all of these organizations put all their emphasis on Mamdani. A lot of these organizations or members of these organizations were somewhat skeptical about Mamdani’s ability, even if we generally saw canvassing as a good way to reach more people. But from what I hear from interviews with Zohran’s campaign leadership, no one really knew that Zohran’s campaign would come close to success from the start. One person interviewed claimed that he “knew” Zohran would win, but he is the only person I have heard say that. Retrospectively, it is hard to believe that we had such doubt in our ability to beat such terrible competitors. But I don’t think anyone could have known that Zohran could go from 1% to winning the primary and the general.
5) Mamdani calls himself a democratic socialist. What does this mean? How is socialism seen in the U.S.?
Zohran often framed democratic socialism as the fight for a dignified life for all of God’s children. That articulation resonated across working-class immigrant communities who hold moral vocabularies of justice outside the narrow language of American liberalism.
Since Bernie Sanders reintroduced the term into mainstream politics, DSA has operated as a broad big-tent socialist formation—with Marxists, social democrats, anarchists, and communists under one roof. Under that banner, “democratic socialism” has generally meant confronting capitalism, racial exploitation, financial predation, and imperial violence.
The DSA defines democratic socialism as follows on its webpage: “a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.” Obviously, this is not a very technical definition. I am not very satisfied with these definitions, but for, let’s just say, a MAGA Republican and many Democratic machine voters, there is not usually a lot of distinction drawn between social democracy and communism.
6) Which segments participated in the campaign? What were their political orientations?
It was a genuinely broad coalition: young people and students, working-class immigrants, socialists and DSA members, unregistered or infrequent voters (who turned out and also canvassed), union rank-and-file (often organizing from the rank-and-file). What was remarkable was how many people were mobilized outside traditional Democratic Party channels.
7) What impact did Trump’s administration have? Was the vote a rejection of his politics?
Trump promised working people prosperity but delivered only hostility, police violence, and ICE terror. Yet many New Yorkers also felt unsafe under Hochul’s National Guard deployments and Adams’ collaboration with ICE. Yes, I believe the vote was a strong rejection of Trump’s politics and the complacency and complicity of Democrats with this administration. Both, in different ways, rely on the same coercive apparatus.
So, yes, those who put Mamdani into office reject Trump, but I think what is equally interesting is the rejection of the infuriating, because-assumed, areas of anti-worker bipartisan consensus. For example, for many, it is important that Mamdani resists the bipartisan alignment on the genocide of Palestinians. While Mamdani has made missteps, he has not been nearly as disappointing as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have been. Just a few days ago, he again named the genocide and spoke to U.S. complicity.
8) What effects will Mamdani’s victory have on future elections and the Democratic Party?
Bernie’s being sidelined demonstrated that the Democratic Party will hinder and sabotage working-class politics. Mamdani’s victory shows something equally important: a disciplined socialist organization supported by a coalition of unions, tenants, and immigrants can still break through in spite of the party’s anti-socialist machinery.
Mamdani is not evidence that the Democratic Party can be reformed. The Democratic Party has not stopped working to hinder Mamdani, and implementing his policy will require building more power. Because the two-party system in the U.S. can easily render third-party candidates irrelevant, Mamdani’s victory suggests the possibility of using the ballot line tactically such that primaries become a site of struggle.
Personally, what I appreciated most about Mamdani’s campaign was the following: on the one hand, Mamdani often emphasized that his major platform can be communicated in a door-knocking conversation, requiring no translation–no jargon, etc. On the other hand, what I also noticed was that the campaign translated, to–I dare to say–an unprecedented level, much of its key literature into Spanish, Urdu, Hindi, Creole, and Yiddish. New York City has over 800 languages spoken. Many of the languages spoken in New York belong to communities that have lived through U.S. invasions, occupations, and economic interventions. So I think this translation practice is a very important and practical way to actually make a material difference. One could say that it was simultaneously a politics of no translation and a politics of translation. Translating campaign material into those languages was not merely symbolic. It is an affirmation of those communities’ political agency against the structures that displaced many of them in the first place.
