I was freshly 17 in November of 2008, not of legal voting age, and who knows if I would’ve voted for Obama if I’d been able to. Much of my family was (and still is) Republican, and their influence was strong. Even though I couldn’t vote, I was old enough to know that something felt different and people were hopeful in a way they hadn’t been in a very long time.
I later voted for him in 2012 when some would say I’d been “indoctrinated by my college education.” I’d say I finally got out of my sheltered, Long Island bubble and got to see the world. I met people from different socioeconomic backgrounds and developed empathy. I befriended people who looked and lived differently than me. Despite growing up straddling two worlds — my mother a poor kid turned successful businesswoman, my father a union man who worked blue collar jobs — I was shielded from many of the hardships that most Americans face. Maybe that’s why the “I struggled so you should too” ideology never made sense to me. I didn’t struggle, and no one else should have to either.
They say you get more conservative as you age, but every year that I’m alive, I drift further left — so far left that I wouldn’t be as jazzed about Obama if he showed up today. In a country with so much, it’s incomprehensible that so many have so little.
Maybe it’s the millennial-cringe-dreamer inside of me, but I refuse to believe that this is the best we can do. The same people who told us anything was possible are now telling us that we have to starve and scrape and suffer because that is “just the way it is” — that this the American way. I call bullshit. If we have enough money to send bombs to other countries that rain down upon children…if we have enough money to turn The White House into a shitty, golden, Cheesecake Factory-esque nightmare…if we have enough money to line the pockets of billionaires who won’t spend that money in 100 lifetimes — we have enough money to feed the hungry and house the homeless.
My favorite uncle likes to say, “I’m not an American, I’m a New Yorker” — and my god does that resonate with me. We are like our own little country. We play by our own rules. Our mayoral races often become international news, sometimes because our mayors take money from Turkey, but this time, it was because a candidate, Zohran Mamdani, ran the most exciting campaign since Obama’s. So many people are dumbfounded by his success, unable to understand what could have possibly made him so possible.
But there’s no secret sauce. He listened to people and addressed their concerns, the parts of them that had been crying out to be seen and heard. That’s it.
He spoke to the young people who will inherit this city and this earth long after so many have done everything they can to destroy it.
He spoke to the parents who often have to leave the city they love because childcare costs here are too great.
He spoke to the artists who made this city what it was, but, as luxury high rises roll in, can no longer afford to live here by selling their paintings or sculptures or music.
He spoke to our servers, our construction workers and our janitors and our TAXI drivers (the yellow cab is an integral part of NYC iconography) who get us where we need to be and are being crushed by debt.
He spoke to me and more importantly to my friends and chosen family — many of whom are queer, trans and/or POC, whose parents or who have themselves immigrated here, who are watching in fear as families are torn apart at Federal Plaza.
He spoke to the people who make this city what it is. (Spoiler alert: it’s not the exorbitantly wealthy who are threatening to leave.) While other candidates made backroom handshakes with billionaires and our fascist president, he walked the streets with his hopeful constituents.
(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
He’s my age, 34, which is old enough to have lived through several recessions, a global pandemic and natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy. We were the same exact age, sitting in our respective 5th grade classrooms, on 9/11. He watched, as we all did, as Islamophobia became rampant in the aftermath, and are watching now as it seems to be rearing its ugly head again. He built his campaign on addressing the affordability crisis in our city, and his opponents attempted to twist it into something vile. They’ve turned the concept of socialism into its own boogeyman, despite how much all of us benefited from things like labor laws, social security benefits, pensions and hot people putting out fires (firefighters). These are often the same people complaining that there are too many homeless people on their block or that crime has risen, when it’s been proven repeatedly that reducing poverty and income inequality reduces crime. We (the majority of people) are all so much closer to being on the street than we’ll ever be to being a billionaire.
And on those threatening to leave: they are not New Yorkers. Or they are at least not real New Yorkers. Real New Yorkers, like myself, know that we’d have to be pried out by the jaws of life from this city. We know we couldn’t live happily anywhere else. We can disagree on bodega and bagel orders, we can be split on sports teams, we can be found in five different boroughs, but we are unified by one feeling: it’s New York or nowhere, baby. That’s another reason for Zohran’s success — he campaigned on a message of “I love this city, let’s fix it” whereas every other candidate’s messaging seems to have an underlying tone of “this place fucking sucks and that’s why I have another house in Westchester.”
I would’ve stayed no matter who won the election. I will sink into the harbors of the East River with this city. I’m a homeowner in New York City, something rare for anybody my age, and it was only possible for me because I co-bought it with my mother. Like many millennials and now gen Z-ers, I never could’ve afforded my apartment alone. The home I grew up in on Long Island, where I lived from 1992-1998, cost $175,000 at purchase and is valued at $874,700 now. When I was going through my divorce, I also needed extra help to get by. What would I have done if I’d had to get out of that abusive relationship alone, without my mom’s support? What if I also had a kid? What if I needed to get a second job? This is the reality for so many. It is because of my great privilege — not in spite of it, that I feel compelled to speak out about injustices — whether they be in the housing market or otherwise. It’s not radical to believe that people should be able to afford to live in the city in which they work.
I voted early on Halloween, my favorite day of the year. I was confidently able to cast my ballot not only for “the lesser of two evils” like I’ve had to do so many times in the past decade, but for someone and something that I truly believe in. On election day, I walked past people in Zohran tees and pins as we shouted, “We got this!” to each other. It felt good.
I know we shouldn’t hang our hopes on any one person and I definitely don’t think Zohran Mamdani will be a perfect mayor who can wave a magic wand and fix the city. My hope has actually been renewed by everyone behind him. I am honored to have canvassed and volunteered with around 100,000+ other New Yorkers to knock on millions of doors. Those numbers are insane. It shows that people actually do give a shit, that hope is not lost, and that we can accomplish things through collective action. In a time of hyper-individualism, we actually got our shit together to at least attempt to make the world a better place. Isn’t that cool? I am hopeful in a way I haven’t been in a very long time.
YES BRITT MIGS IN AUTOSTRADDLE! YES ZOHRAN MAMDANI AS NYC MAYOR! YAY CRINGE HOPE CORE!