New York City has been reeling from the surprising Democratic primary mayoral victory of Zohran Kwame Mamdani. As I watch the shock and surprise, the skepticism and the hostility, a memory comes to my mind: On a hot and muggy day last September, just a couple weeks after Eric Adams’s indictment for corruption charges, a group of Bangali and Chinese working-class immigrants gathered. They were part of an organization for which I serve as executive director, CAAAV Voice, the political offshoot of CAAAV, which fights gentrification in New York City. The real estate–backed mayor had raised rents three years in a row and green-lit real estate luxury developers who preyed on their neighborhood, and everyone in the room was furious and ready to decide their next campaign.

For once, there was very little debate. The main issue facing every working-class tenant was housing. For years, the cost of living in New York City has been skyrocketing. Even before Trump’s election, working-class New Yorkers had long felt the pinch and contradictions of a gentrifying and expensive city. Many in the room were rent-stabilized tenants who, for years, had fought the mayor-appointed Rent Guidelines Board to freeze the rent. They landed on a four-year citywide rent freeze on rent-stabilized units as CAAAV Voice’s main campaign.

In this year’s New York Democratic primary, one of the pillars of Mamdani’s campaign was the demand for a rent freeze. Many of the same immigrant members who met that September day then went on to knock thousands of doors for Mamdani, part of the massive movement that led to Mamdani’s primary triumph over Andrew Cuomo and his enormous trove of corporate cash.

In a striking difference from the last mayoral election, Asian voters organized each other into Mamdani’s coalition and were a key part of delivering the primary victory. And they were a strong part of this coalition because Mamdani spoke directly to them.

For years, we’ve been reading stories about Asian voters swinging to the Right. At CAAAV Voice, we have seen the Right try to contest in the communities we organize in, sometimes with great success. The party of billionaires is hardly able to deliver — and yet the Right has mastered the rhetoric of political outsiders, of recognizing that the average working-class person is alienated from the political system and the elites who run it. For too long, the Left has had no clear and compelling alternative to offer.

That was the major difference of Mamdani’s campaign. He ran on a platform built by and for working-class people: a four-year rent freeze demand taken directly from working-class tenants, free childcare, fast and free buses. He partnered with groups that already had longstanding relationships in immigrant communities, who could be trustworthy messengers in those communities’ own languages. These campaign demands animated and expanded the electorate across the city, so that sheer people power dismantled a $25 million campaign fueled by corporate interests.

In the final stretch of the election, CAAAV Voice reached nearly fifteen thousand voters, the majority of them working-class, immigrants, and Asian. We spoke with a construction worker in Sunset Park who immigrated to New York from Fujian, China. He works six days a week and carves out the seventh day to take care of his daughter. We met them together at the park. As his daughter rode around on a small pink scooter, he told us his reason for supporting Zohran: even a small change to his budget would mean increasing his work hours, meaning he would lose even the one day he could spend with his family. He shared how important it is to him that his daughter have memories of her father being a part of her childhood. That’s not guaranteed. He voted for Zohran because he wanted New York to be a city where he can afford to be a father to his young daughter.

After the November presidential election, we had months-long conversations with a Bangali tenant leader in Astoria, who voted for Trump in the last election. He was disillusioned with the Democratic establishment, with empty campaigning that made no impact on his life, and was swayed by the promises of Trump and the MAGA Right. By the time of Zohran’s election, he had realized that the Right didn’t have anything material to offer and began to have a change of heart as he heard from other leaders expressing deep fears over Trump’s immigration policies. Over time, he was won over to become a Mamdani supporter.

The strength of our organizing strategy came from lifetimes of relationships: Neighbors talking to neighbors who fixed each others’ sink, fought off landlords together, and grew up together. While reaching out to small businesses in Chinatown, Mrs. Liu, a member of our Chinatown chapter, spoke with a Fujianese woman who owned a beauty supply shop. Her daughter played with Mrs. Liu’s granddaughter while growing up in the neighborhood. Like many we spoke to, the Fujianese small business owner also voted for Trump in the last election, but was won over to Zohran’s campaign. She said: “Trump is not fulfilling his promises — who will take care of me?” With this campaign, we had an answer.

These are snapshots of thousands of conversations that we had with working-class Asian voters across New York City, focusing on Astoria, Sunnyside, Woodside, Jamaica, Chinatown and Sunset Park. What we’ve heard over and over again are people who are tired of politicians and their lies. This makes sense under a Trump presidency where lies are an everyday occurrence, and in a city with a flagrantly corrupt mayor. As the Right has claimed they are increasingly winning over Asian voters, we organized and fought for the opposite.

On-the-ground organizing for this election delivered: Zohran won in every single one of these neighborhoods. Working-class Asian neighborhoods swung for Zohran in droves. Block-by-block data shows that canvassing around Mamdani’s affordability platform worked in Chinatown (where Mamdani defeated Cuomo by 28 points), Astoria (+52 with turnout spikes in blocks with Bangali tenants), Jackson Heights (+26 points), Sunnyside (+42 points), Sunset Park (+37 points), and Woodside (+34 points).

There are huge lessons to learn from this campaign at the national level, where the Democratic Party has been losing people in droves. Despite establishment pressure, Zohran’s campaign refused to pander and compromise towards the center — and thus refused to relinquish the beating heart of their campaign. And he took seriously the needs of immigrants and working-class people that are not seen as frequent voters. Countless working-class and immigrant tenants showed up consistently to doorknock in the pouring rain and the scorching sun to talk to their neighbors and friends. They got to work because they saw how this mayor could give them room to breathe through his unrelenting focus on meeting peoples’ material needs, with clear campaign demands and plans.

Most importantly, working-class organizations played a role in working with the campaign to shape its platform from day one. Organizations like CAAAV Voice, DRUM Beats, and New York Communities for Change had long-standing, decades-long relationships with working-class people across the city. We organized and ran a ground game that brought the campaign’s vision and demands to immigrant and Asian neighborhoods.

The results speak for themselves. Instead of swinging to the Right, Asian voters fought for a democratic socialist mayor — and won.