Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary makes the self-proclaimed democratic socialist poised to become the first Muslim person of South Asian descent to hold this position.
Mamdani’s crushing defeat of Democratic political dynasty heir Andrew Cuomo — surging from a mere 1% in early polls to a commanding 56% final victory — shattered the expectations of so-called election “experts” over which corrupt representative of the elite would fill the seat.
Mamdani campaigned for an affordable New York City. His platform calls for free and faster buses, making City University of New York tuition free, freezing rents on rent-stabilized housing, free child care for children between the ages of six weeks and five years, and setting up a city-run grocery store in every borough to drive down food prices. To pay for these programs, the campaign is proposing a 2% increase in the income tax for city residents who earn more than $1 million a year.
His campaign has also called for a “Department of Community Safety” tasked with responding to mental health crises and homelessness with community-based services as opposed to intervention by the NYPD.
Despite the many pro-Zionist media attacks on Zohran Mamdani’s open support for Palestine, he won, underscoring how the working class and youth are increasingly rejecting the manufactured consent for imperialism and apartheid. Mamdani’s open solidarity with Palestine was not a liability but a catalyst, mobilizing a base that supports Palestine against starvation and genocide.
Two city council elections in Brooklyn also reflected this. A landslide vote reelected both Shahana Hanif, a progressive Muslim, and Alexa Aviles, a DSA member, despite Solidarity PAC (New York City’s local version of AIPAC) financing opponents.
These results show how the massive street mobilizations and global resistance are reverberating in the electoral battlefield as well.
New York City, the capital of capitalism
The Financial Times quoted an anonymous Wall Street executive responding to Mamdani’s platform: “Why would we adopt [it] in the world’s capital of capitalism?”
Yes, New York City is the capital of finance capitalism, and what happens in NYC has national and ultimately international repercussions.
It is home to the Wall Street Stock Market and megabanks like JPMorgan Chase, as well as shadow banks like BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world.
Some 384,500 millionaires, 818 centimillionaires (those with at least $100 million in assets), and 66 billionaires list residences in New York City. According to the Visual Capitalist, NYC is the wealthiest city in the world based on its millionaire population.
This parasitic class of landlords and bankers is losing its mind over this development. Donald Trump, a real estate mogul himself, has called for deporting Mamdani. It’s impossible to keep up with the amount of slander and attacks from both Democratic and Republican bosses.
New York City also home to millions of workers
There are over 8 million working-class people living in New York City, and over 19 million workers and their families in the metropolitan area. These are the people who keep NYC running. They run the buses, trains, and subways, staff the hospitals and all the offices, clean the streets, pick up the trash, keep the sweatshops running, and much more.
New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the country and in the world. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. Approximately 36% of its residents are foreign-born. The Puerto Rican, Chinese, South Asian, Dominican, Mexican, Ecuadorian, and Haitian communities each number hundreds of thousands of people.
New York City has the largest Black population of any city in the U.S., comprising 20.2% of the city’s residents.
What do the wealthy elite fear?
What really unsettles the billionaire class is the possibility that Mamdani’s election might interrupt their endless stream of insider deals — but their fears run even deeper.
The capitalist drive for profit ensures that bosses fight tooth and nail against even the most modest and justified demands. Relief from crushing inflation — nothing less than a hidden wage cut — is a basic right for workers. It takes not only the threat of the guillotine, but their actual necks in it, to wrestle concessions from the bosses, especially in a period of capitalist contraction and crisis, when the system finds it close to impossible to do so.
Those bosses and bankers most attuned to their ruling class interests fear something even worse: that this spark could rouse the working class, transforming demands for reform into a struggle for workers’ power.
Once New York City’s vast working class awakens, no handful of billionaires, millionaires, and financial speculators can stand in its way.
What must the workers prepare for?
Of course, the ruling class’s first line of defense will be to defeat Zohran Mamdani in the November election, sparing no expense and leaving no lie untold to achieve it — a battle we are witnessing in real time. Behind the scenes, they will also maneuver to chip away at the campaign’s demands.
By their very nature, bourgeois elections temper political demands in a conservative direction, making these pressures predictable. Should Mamdani compromise excessively, it would destroy the campaign. Yet, unless unexpected developments arise, the campaign’s core energy and platform remain largely intact, positioning it to win.
If Zohran wins, the next and possibly more important battle will be how to implement the very program that inspired the victory.
This is where the question of arousing the working class to fight in its own interest is of the most importance to class-conscious workers and revolutionaries.
The NYPD, real estate tycoons and bankers
Regardless of who is at the mayoral helm, the question of who holds the power and whose interests the state – and in this particular case, the New York City Police Department – serves and defends will become front and center. It will be the obstacle.
The New York City Police Department (NYPD), with a documented history of corruption and police brutality, is the largest municipal police force in the country. Its official budget is $10.8 billion — costing NYC workers approximately $29.6 million per day — though the true figure is often obscured. The department employs 36,000 uniformed officers, making it larger than the active militaries of several nations, including Belgium and Ireland, Jamaica and Panama. Its international reach is extensive, with offices and detectives stationed in 15 cities across 12 countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas.
When a banker feels threatened by an unhoused person outside their building, when protesters block a company funding Israel, or when workers refuse to tolerate slave wages, billionaires don’t negotiate — they call the NYPD. One phone call, and they expect arrests, removals, jail time. The message is clear: Power protects profit, and the city enforces it.
Billionaire Jessica Tisch, heiress to a real estate empire that spans much of New York City, is presently the police commissioner of the New York Police Department. Rumors have swirled about a possible mayoral run. This isn’t a representative of the rich running the department; it’s the rich running the department themselves.
Any Mamdani administration will undoubtedly have to contend with this reactionary force and those that stand behind them. This includes the future of the Cop City training complex being built in Queens and how to dismantle the “Strategic Response Group,” the special 800-strong battalion of cops notorious for abusing the constitutional rights of protesters.
Removing this reactionary clique will not be simple. The people have to prepare for a fight.
Which side are you on?
In 1931, miners and mine owners were locked in a bitter and violent struggle called the “Harlan County War.” Florence Reece, a daughter of a coal miner and companion of union organizer Sam Reece, updated the lyrics to a song she composed at the age of 12, “Which Side Are You On?” The song’s raw and resolute message became the union’s battle call.
Today in New York City, that same question rings true. We did not decide this battle; our opponents did. In essence, the mayoral race in November will serve as a referendum on these issues. As revolutionary socialists, our central concern is the workers’ struggle. Its awakening is crucial, and we will be there — not in defense of a corrupt and decaying system, but present to defend the picket line, organizing for an end to the rule of billionaires. Will an election end the capitalist system? No. But a revolutionary movement of the working class can.
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