It’s a familiar story by now. In 2018, a bartender named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, mobilizing volunteers through Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Justice Democrats, defeated the head of the Queens Democratic Party, becoming a Congresswoman and international phenomenon. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign had inspired a spike in DSA membership and activism, and with AOC’s victory, the group enjoyed yet another surge, politicizing many young people who had never considered socialism before.

The same year, in North Brooklyn, the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) threw down for an activist named Julia Salazar, who won her race for state senate, becoming the only DSA-endorsed politician in Albany. In the next election cycle, NYC-DSA endorsed more candidates for state senate and assembly races. Four of them won — in the assembly, Zohran Mamdani of Queens, and Brooklyn’s Marcela Mitaynes and Phara Souffrant Forrest; and in the state senate, Brooklyn’s Jabari Brisport — making, with Salazar’s reelection the same year, a slate of five (a sixth socialist, Emily Gallagher, who also won a seat in the assembly that year, has since joined the group). In 2020, as well, Jamaal Bowman, a Bronx school principal and longtime education activist endorsed by NYC-DSA, joined Ocasio-Cortez in Congress.

This is more state power than New York City socialists have enjoyed since the 1920s. To figure out how to use it, those politicians, and NYC-DSA, have had to work quickly. As Salazar told Jacobin about her socialist slate, “We’ve spent the last year learning how to exist.”