[Credit: Zohran for NYC]
Editorial Note: This piece is written by a DSA member not in Marxist Unity, and may not reflect the views of the caucus.
Four years on from our 2020 electoral sweep, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) stands at an inflection point. Michael Lange, a Groundwork delegate to this year’s NYC-DSA convention, writes:
“What was once a “movement moment” [has] given way to less-salient conditions: an increasingly leaderless left in the post-Bernie Sanders era [...] and humbling electoral setbacks at the local, state and federal level [...] have a pronounced effect on the continued enthusiasm, involvement, and participation of young people in politics. As favorable conditions for insurgency recede, institutional power fills the void.”
We have fought through three consecutive election cycles — 2021, 2022, and 2024 — with diminishing returns. Only one of our three challengers this year, Claire Valdez, is headed to Albany, and we suffered a crushing defeat in Jamaal Bowman’s primary loss. Since 2022, we have lost one in five of our dues-paying members. These are the conditions in which NYC-DSA voted to endorse Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor.
As an NYC-DSA convention delegate, I voted against endorsing Zohran. Make no mistake: the prospect of running a disciplined, pro-Palestine socialist from an immigrant Muslim background for mayor is incredibly exciting. Zohran is the best of the socialist movement. From going on hunger strike to protest the Gaza genocide to proposing ambitious legislation that would curb Columbia and NYU’s tax breaks and invest those billions into public higher education, he is an excellent mayoral candidate. As a YDSA organizer, I’ve seen firsthand how he has earned the adoration of the YDSA organizers who led the Student Intifada and brought New York City to its knees this spring.
But a winning candidate alone does not make a successful campaign. Without a sufficiently rigorous analysis of the mayoral run, we risk disorganizing our chapter more than we organize it through the Zohran campaign. We need to ground clear political proposals, like Socialism is the People and Stop Cop City, if we want to mobilize chapter members and build a campaign capable both of victory and of holding NYC-DSA together in case of a demoralizing loss.
In order to knock one million doors and recruit hundreds of members to NYC-DSA, we must be united around a cogent policy platform that can expand the poles of our big tent and organize the socialist ecosystem in New York City into a mass movement prepared for struggle.
Stop Cop City is Zohran’s Public Safety Issue
Zohran’s campaign blueprint is clear: extending NYC-DSA’s base of support beyond young renters along the East River in neighborhoods like Astoria, Greenpoint, and Williamsburg by making a deep, winning intervention into the Muslim enclaves of the outer boroughs, from Bay Ridge to Hillside Avenue.
A majority of New York City Muslims rallied behind Eric Adams in 2021, polarized in support of the career cop by a meteoric rise in hate crimes and public safety concerns in the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdown. Zohran promises to offer a clear, positive alternative to Adams’ model of militarized police, prioritizing de-carceral models of community safety and publicly opposing the construction of Cop City Queens. We can and should hold him to this promise.
But the NYC-DSA Convention declined to make Stop Cop City Queens a priority campaign, declining to even hear the proposal on the convention floor. My co-author on the resolution, Maya Meredith, writes:
“It has been proven time and time again that our existing strategies are not sufficient to build trust, and thereby power, with POC communities. We can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting to get a different result. So do we want to organize the multiracial working class, or not? And if we do, where is the vision for getting there?”
After two decades of escalating police surveillance in New York City’s outer borough Muslim enclaves, including Zohran’s Astoria, mounting a citywide campaign in opposition to a further expansion of the surveillance state into east Queens is effective, salient politics for this race. Without a Stop Cop City priority organizing campaign, how does NYC-DSA plan to demonstrate a meaningful investment in the campaign’s pitch to outer borough voters of color on public safety?
We Eschew the Neighborhood at Our Peril
Groundwork delegate Michael Lange argues that “the common thread that link[s] the victors [...] [is] their relational and institutional power.” 80% of electoral outcomes are decided far in advance of the first candidate’s entrance into the race. Our electoral field programs augment rather than direct trends in the neighborhood, and largely reflect existing social conditions. Zohran’s viability in this race is not dictated merely by our promise to knock on one million doors next year — it is just as much because millions of New Yorkers, doubly disgusted by Adams’ craven corruption and the escalating cost of living crisis, are craving a political alternative, and are already primed to support an insurgent for mayor.
When we condense our field operation into the breakneck pace, 90-day timetable of a primary election, we lose. It is the long-term building of relationships and construction of social institutions that directs real political power.
This thesis was embodied in Socialism is the People, a proposal introduced to the NYC-DSA Convention with the endorsement of State Senators Jabari Brisport and Julia Salazar, Assemblywoman Phara Souffrant Forrest, and the coordinator of our City Socialists in Office Committee, Zach Hendrickson. Modeled off of existing work in the Bronx/Upper Manhattan branch, we proposed that each NYC-DSA branch identify a few community-based organizations with whom to plant roots for the long haul.
Three Groundwork delegates argued against this proposal, writing: “many community structures are intentionally designed to oppose working class power and absorb dissent rather than confront power, offering small victories that create the illusion of change while maintaining the status quo.” Indeed, New York City has a flourishing ecosystem of opaque NGOs. But other membership-based organizations also hold considerable political power — one of our key coalition partners, DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving) Beats, endorsed Zohran on the day he announced his campaign.
We eschew the neighborhood at our peril. Orienting to labor, while acutely necessary, will not alone allow us to overcome crushing proletarian disorganization and reap the rewards of a politicized multiracial working class for Zohran’s campaign. Disorganization takes many forms. Organizing our buildings, places of worship, and centers of community is just as crucial as organizing our workplaces, and refusing to engage with existing civil infrastructure is abdicating this task. Reaching the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers already organized in their streets and on their blocks is just as urgent a challenge as is contesting for power within the city’s entrenched business unions.
Seeking Programmatic Unity
Amidst significant pushback, a weakened version of Socialism is the People passed NYC-DSA Convention. Today, we are presented with the Herculean task of executing Zohran’s campaign plan and living up to the high benchmarks we have set for ourselves.
Despite having voted no on endorsing Zohran, I donated $35 to his campaign on his launch day — the first political donation I’ve made in my life. I am running for branch organizing committee in Bronx/Upper Manhattan to help carry forward our base building project and align it with the exciting tasks presented by the mayoral race.
But running into this ambitious campaign in a moment of unprecedented organizational retreat for NYC-DSA promises serious risks. Without a uniting vision for politicizing hundreds of thousands of prospective Zohran voters in the outer boroughs — the vision set out in the Socialism is the People and Stop Cop City resolutions — getting to work in the neighborhood, and seriously re-evaluating the chapter’s approach to reaching people of color, a losing campaign could demobilize countless organizers across our city and foretell further retreat.
As socialists, we all have a responsibility to commit ourselves to our collective project, and to win the better world that is possible.