People attend a demonstration in New York City. Photo Credit: Zeeshaan Shabbir, Pexels

Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim Democratic Socialist, won the mayoral primary in New York City. He beat an establishment Democrat in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the world, in a grassroots campaign that proved that even funding from super-elites is not enough to overcome sound ideas. The key to his campaign’s success was largely due to community organizing across all of NYC’s diverse boroughs with a platform made by and for people of color and working class people. Transition and change are inevitable, but justice is not–we must organize for it, armed with critical hope. 

This momentous victory wasn’t just a fluke–when we organize, we win. And we must organize within and beyond capitalism to effectively implement a new, just system that protects the rights of all people, not only the rights of the white and rich. To this effect, Mamdani leveraged ranked choice voting and built alliances that ultimately propelled him to victory. 

Mamdani’s platform centers economic justice by improving quality of life and affordability through policies such as rent freezes, fast and free public transportation, and no cost childcare. Labor and environmental justice movements have been organizing on similar justice-centered platforms for decades; these policies are not “pie in the sky utopias,” but steps in the journey to ushering in the systems that sustain well-being. 

In the just transition away from capitalism, there is no contradiction between economic and environmental justice. At Just Transition Alliance (JTA), we encourage innovative ideas that eliminate pollution, fight extractivism, and keep fossil fuels in the ground, while also socializing resources in ways that meet the real day-to-day needs of workers and communities. We must have a just transition to a new economy led by Indigenous Peoples, people of color, and low-income working class communities. 

Over this last year I’ve struggled at times to sustain critical hope, but something that has been remotivating is learning about and engaging with organizing tools and concepts. Currently, JTA’s three youngest members, including myself, are enrolled in the Transformative Organizing School (TOS) stewarded by our comrades at Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and Right to the City Alliance. Now, more than ever, it’s crucial that we, and young people in particular, do not despair, and instead build up organizing skills for the fight now and ahead, while bringing more folks into our movements. We’ve been studying dialectical and historical materialism in the TOS, and our next few sessions will focus on the nuts and bolts of building a base. I also became a trainer through JTA’s training program earlier this summer and engaged with concepts of just transition and organizing.  

I have been reflecting on the application of organizing tools to successful real-world examples, and Mamdani’s campaign has been giving me hope. This moment is a critical reminder that the future has not been written yet–we have the power to make justice inevitable, and youth must recognize their part in this effort. Our anger and frustration must mobilize us into action to build momentum through wins like Mamdani’s that ultimately invoke system change. 

Mamdani’s win is a win by the people. Youth engagement and turnout shaped the primary in ways that we haven’t seen in some time. His campaign defied the odds, racist tropes, and billionaire donors lining the pockets of his opponents because it is a campaign worth believing in and organizing for. Mamdani demonstrated that organizing can bring about an alternative to the corruption and cronyism that has come to define today’s political class. Leaders can be resilient against bad faith depictions of their views and positions, and they can take principled stances for human rights that all too often get suppressed by claims that these principled stances will risk electoral success.  

This victory is an indication of the embrace of young people in politics–this is the future of democracy. I will excitedly be keeping an eye on the mayoral race and will continue to reflect on ways to apply the organizing tools I’m learning to both my personal life and here at JTA. As my colleague Fernando Tormos-Aponte reflected earlier this year, “It is time to build… The conditions for a social eruption are in place: racial and economic inequality, environmental and health crises, an abundance of experienced and motivated organizers, and organizations for social change that can convert a temporary eruption into an unstoppable tide of social change.” We must not let the momentum from Zohran Mamdani’s primary win fizzle out. Although we will hopefully continue to experience eruptions like these in the future, justice is not guaranteed. It’s up to young people and intergenerational solidarities to continue building people power for a just transition!