Putting the "trail" in campaign trail
Zohran Mamdani’s Manhattan odyssey
This week’s newsletter is the third and final part of what ended up being an accidental trilogy of stories about the terrible suffering that millions are enduring across America right now, and what a viable path forward—figuratively and literally—could look like.
Since we’ve officially entered summer blockbuster season, I want to take the opening moment of this week’s newsletter to recognize a decades-old cinematic franchise that serves delectable Grade A cheese like no other. The Rocky movies. Sylvester Stallone could have called it a day after Rocky nabbed the Best Picture Oscar in 1977. Instead, he wrote, directed, and starred in Rocky II, taking the franchise into unabashedly hokey territory. And this led to one of my all time favorite movie montages; a ridiculous yet inspired scene that makes me laugh and smile.
Rocky is just a few days out from his big rematch with Apollo Creed, which can only mean one thing. It’s time for another training run, set to Bill Conti’s brassy Rocky theme! But this time, Rocky doesn’t go it alone. As he jogs through Philly’s railroad corridors and the Italian market, onlookers greet Rocky and cheer for him. And some of the onlookers start running with Rocky. By the time Rocky reaches the Ben Franklin Parkway, thousands of Philly residents are jogging behind him, as he makes the final push to the art museum stairs. I mean, really, people. Are you not entertained?!?
The Rocky II training montage is one of the sweeter demonstrations of how a local underdog can get people into streets. Sometimes, the underdog might even get them moving across town together, fueled by belief in something unlikely. So a few weeks ago, when I heard that New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was going to spend a summer night walking the entire length of Manhattan Island, I paid attention.
Mamdani—or Zohran, as many of his supporters refer to him—is a three-term New York state assemblyman representing Astoria, Astoria Heights, and Ditmars-Steinway in Queens. Last fall, he kicked off his bid for the Democratic Party nomination for New York mayor as a longshot candidate. As unapologetic democratic socialist, running for the highest office in the national capital of finance, Mamdani earned himself an enthusiastic base of supporters by proposing a more affordable city for eternally-squeezed New Yorkers; with interventions such as rent stabilization, city-run grocery stores with lower food prices, and fare-free bus routes. One of these supporters was Brad Lander, the city comptroller and a fellow primary candidate, who reciprocally endorsed Mamdani near the end of the race. It was a natural alliance, as both men shared a more egalitarian vision for New York and they had also demonstrated fighting spirit when confronting ICE officials over the deportations of New Yorkers.
All of these things put Mamdani at odds with not just the right, but Democratic Party leaders who have spent the last three decades operating on the premise that cool ideas and confrontational energy must be watered down to appease the conservative movement—which has taken advantage of this placation to grab even more power. So it was clear from the beginning that running the standard electoral campaign with buttoned-up TV ads wasn’t going to cut it for Team Zohran. The illuminating, funny, and moving social media videos created by the campaign team were set in New York staples like bodegas, Halal carts, and parks. In retrospect, these videos feel like an incremental buildup to the cross-Manhattan walk that Mamdani and his team took on Friday June 20th; a documented 16 mile journey from Inwood Hill Park to Battery Park.
“We’re outside because New Yorkers deserve a mayor that they can see, they can hear, they can even yell at,” Mamdani says with a grin toward the beginning of the walk video. And what follows is a Rocky-eque montage of Mamdani and his supporters doing something that a lot of politicians talk about but few actually practice—meeting people where they’re at. Anyone who’s spent time in New York during the summer knows that New Yorkers utilize every available space for hanging outdoors in the afternoon and evening. And as the video progresses, we see these folks talking with Mamdani or saying hello from their camp chairs, storefronts, and stoops. Some of them join the long walk. Others offer vocal confirmations that they voted early. The ensemble cast of the video—the New Yorkers—are multiracial, multigenerational, and they seem pretty stoked.
Now obviously, when it comes to public events, any campaign video highlights exactly that; the highlights. I’d imagine that Mamdani and his fellow walkers also encountered jeers, indifference, and plenty of odd looks on their way to Battery Park. But when the video of the cross-Manhattan walk went live on YouTube and all the social platforms, media outlets took note. And several of them seemed to ask, “Really? They actually walked from one end of the city to the other? Huh.” But it was a perfectly fitting finale for an uncommonly energetic and intrepid primary campaign.
A few weeks ago, I attended a community hike on Vermont’s Lamoille Valley Rail Trail led by Bernie Sanders (which you can read about here.) But where the Bernie hike was more of a walking town hall—and a lovely one at that—Zohran Mamdani’s walk has the aura of something more self-deterministic. Something that feels essential right now.
Every time I walk around New York, I’m struck by the dichotomy of what I can see around me, and what goes unseen far above me. These higher powers, veiled from sight in high rises in the Financial District and Midtown, exert a level of influence that shapes the visible environments where millions of us have fallen in love with New York. The poverty that’s grown more noticeable in recent years across New York and pretty much all American cities is the cruel, logical result of decisions made hundreds of feet above the street level. Jordan Neely, the 30 year-old homeless Street performer who was strangled to death by Daniel Penny after experiencing a mental health crisis on an MTA train two years ago, is one of thousands who might have experienced a different life in a cityscape less lacerated by inequality, austerity, and police violence.
A kinder New York.
And yet, New York is a kind city. In my opinion, no other place better illustrates the difference between “nice” and “kind.” In passing, New Yorkers—and us Bostonians—are not the nicest people you will meet. We can be rude and surly. But when you’re in need, a softer side of us tends to come out. If you’re boarding a bus and struggling to keep balanced, someone will usually vacate their seat for you, and they’ll often do so with a smile. Or suppose you just found out about a loved one being rushed to the hospital, your cell phone is about to die, and you have to finish the call; when you ask people on the street if you can borrow their phone to finish the call, someone will say yes. Even the needs that city residents learn to tune out, like people who are unhoused asking strangers for spare change, are usually met by somebody. This is kindness.
But circumstantial kindness from one person to another is not enough—especially at a moment when many of the actors that helped put Donald Trump back in the White House are trafficking in narratives of cities as lawless hellholes. These stories are crafted with one intention; to make people scared of the systemic poverty that’s grown much more noticeable in cities like New York and San Francisco, as wealth inequality worsens and safety nets are broken. The killing of Jordan Neely is the sort of atrocity that happens when people decide that the appropriate response to these glimmers of profound suffering is to become hard-hearted. To decide that some people are beyond help.
There is another way forward, however. It involves channeling the kindness that lots of us have offered or received as individuals into something bigger that’s capable of sweeping across the city. And toward the end of his cross-Manhattan walk video, Zohran Mamdani touches on this.
“To everyone who pulls me aside to whisper, with the best intentions, “You have already won,” I am sorry, but the days of moral victories are over,” Mamdani says, his voice rising. “Because this is a campaign that is going to win on June 24.”
Mamdani’s walk across Manhattan wrapped up around 2:30am at Battery Park. The walkers and onlookers who hadn’t retired by then headed home and went to bed.
On Tuesday, they voted.
And they won.
Thank you for this.