The red thread in New York’s blue politics: Lessons from Mamdani’s rise

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* 

As the dust of New York’s recently concluded mayoral election settles, a new political dawn rises over the city. The victory of thirty-four-year-old Zohran Kwame Mamdani marks a historic shift in the city’s politics—one that reclaims the progressive and socialist traditions long buried beneath decades of corporate liberalism and market-led governance. Mamdani, a self-professed socialist and member of both the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, represents the growing resistance to the dominance of capitalist interests in American urban politics.

New York, one of the wealthiest cities in the world, remains a city of deep inequality. One in four residents lives in poverty, while rents, food, childcare, and transportation costs have made dignified living nearly impossible. Over half a million children go to bed hungry every night. In this context, Mamdani’s campaign struck a resonant chord by offering a politics of hope against the hopelessness of racialised capitalism. His promises—to freeze rents, double the minimum wage, provide free public transport, expand mental health services, and introduce city-owned grocery stores—may not be revolutionary in themselves, but they embody a much-needed corrective to a city and system that have failed its working people.

Yet Mamdani’s victory did not emerge in a vacuum. It is the latest chapter in a long and often-forgotten history of struggle led by communists, socialists, and Black working-class communities in New York. From 1921 to 1939, during the depression years, the Communist Party USA, the Workers Party of America, trade unions, tenants’ unions, and cultural organisations mobilised tens of thousands across Harlem and beyond. Their demands—affordable housing, fair wages, community safety, and racial equality—echo in Mamdani’s platform today.

Black communist organisers in Harlem were central to this tradition. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, Garveyite movements, and the Black United Front all intersected with leftist politics in ways that profoundly shaped New York’s social consciousness. Mark Naison’s Communists in Harlem During the Depression (1983) documents these movements and their influence in turning Harlem into a crucible of radical thought and action.

The Communist Party also helped nurture the Harlem Renaissance—an extraordinary cultural and intellectual awakening that redefined Black identity and American art. The poets, musicians, filmmakers, and thinkers of that era were not merely cultural icons; they were revolutionaries who envisioned an emancipated future. Against the background of rampant racism and capitalist exploitation, their creative resistance laid the moral and ideological foundations of a progressive New York.

This legacy resurfaced in 1968, when the Black United Front, Students’ Afro-American Society, and Students for a Democratic Society challenged Columbia University’s racist gentrification plans. Harlem’s communists, tenants, and students joined hands to defeat powerful political and corporate interests. Their victory reaffirmed Harlem’s place as the moral and political compass of New York—a legacy that now finds renewed expression in Mamdani’s triumph.

However, history also warns that progressive victories are always fragile. Reactionary forces have already begun to vilify Mamdani and undermine his agenda. The billionaire class, supported by bipartisan elites, continues to dominate the city’s politics. Both Democrats and Republicans, despite their rhetorical differences, have repeatedly united in preserving the privileges of the wealthy while eroding the livelihoods and liberties of working people.

For Mamdani, the real test begins now. His success will depend on his ability to sustain a grassroots movement that carries forward the revolutionary spirit of Harlem’s communists and socialists. He must draw strength from their vision while adapting their emancipatory ideals to the realities of twenty-first-century racial capitalism.

The lesson from history is clear: every compromise with the forces of capital and reaction weakens the working-class movement. To defend and deepen this victory, the progressive left must remain ideologically steadfast and organisationally united. Mamdani’s triumph is not merely a political event—it is a continuation of a century-long struggle for dignity, justice, and equality in the heart of the capitalist world.

Hope must not merely survive—it must organise, mobilise, and march forward.

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*Academic based in UK