Zohran Mamdani was just elected Mayor of New York City. He’s not the first Democratic Socialist to win a prominent office, and arguably other office-holders wield more power—Bernie Sanders as a U.S. Senator, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez as a Representative—but what makes Zohran different is how he got there. As he himself put it at DSA’s national convention in 2023, he has been able to stand against the immense power of capital because he has DSA at his back. Our members raised him into office originally, we catalyzed his mayoral run, and we could not be prouder of how he exemplifies our theory of change.
In the U.S., nobody needs to get a political party’s permission to declare themselves a candidate of that party. In theory, members of the party would quickly filter out candidates that had never been active or politically aligned, favoring more known quantities. But in the 1970s and 80s, political parties put increasing emphasis on the mass communications tactics that frankly plague us today—starting with mailhouses, now taking the form of text message epistles buzzing your phone hourly from your “friends” in high places. As Robert D. Putnam chronicled in his landmark thesis Bowling Alone in 2000, political engagement subsided alongside social engagement, generally. Political differences person to person are now rarely about policy, they’re more about identity as a prefabricated product (‘Take this quizlet to see what political character you are!’).