How Labor and the Left Can Bolster Zohran Mamdani
If Zohran Mamdani wins, he will face fierce resistance from business elites and the political establishment. Unions and grassroots member organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America can play a key role in helping him overcome this opposition.
Planning and cooperation between Zohran Mamdani and unions and left organizations like DSA can help make his potential mayoralty a success. (Kyle Mazza / Anadolu via Getty Images)
Zohran Mamdani’s monumental victory in the New York City mayoral primary over former governor Andew Cuomo was a rare bright spot for a beleaguered US left. But the fight is just beginning for Mamdani and his allies. Should he win the general election next month, a Mamdani administration is almost certain to face fierce attacks from business elites and political opponents inside and outside the Democratic Party.
Mamdani’s primary win, powered in no small part by the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) and aided by support from the labor movement, shows that left-wing politicians can find strength in mass membership organizations. A potential Mamdani administration will need the city’s unions and left-wing organizations to bolster his political capital and apply pressure on the city council and the state legislature to pass his ambitious agenda. Preemptive planning and cooperation between Mamdani and unions and left organizations like DSA can help make his mayoralty a success.
Skepticism over whether Mamdani will deliver on his promises is warranted, especially after seeing the serious headwinds often faced by progressive mayors. Some commentators have compared Mamdani to Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson because of their similar policy priorities, and Johnson’s mayoral tenure offers some potential lessons. There have been wins during Johnson’s tenure as mayor, such as the abolition of Chicago’s subminimum wage for tipped workers; with those victories came some missteps, such as a failure to effectively communicate with the public. Some of Johnson’s most progressive accomplishments as mayor were the result of outside agitation from grassroots organizations.
Progressive mayors often face an uphill battle due to elite resistance and sabotage. Mamdani’s tenure as mayor will be no different; however, he is more than just a standard reform-minded progressive. His policy platform reflects, to some degree, a deeper commitment to socialist principles. In addition to his rare steadfast support for Palestinian human rights, much of Mamdani’s economic agenda will directly challenge corporate interests. Publicly owned grocery stores, a social-housing-centric approach to the housing crisis, and universal childcare modestly push in the direction of bringing more of the economy under public and democratic control.
The Importance of Grassroots Organization
These policies — as well as his plans to tax the rich to pay for them — are likely to encounter immense resistance from the city’s ultrarich. Many New York City billionaires are already threatening to leave the city if Mamdani wins in November.
Threats of a capital strike, whether bluffs or not, often derail progressive mayors’ economic policies before they can get off the ground, as historian Kevin A. Young has argued in Jacobin. In Chicago, former Harold Washington ran on a very similar social democratic platform during his 1983 mayoral campaign. Once he assumed office, Chicago’s business elite blocked his attempts to expand public programs and redistribute wealth. He eventually compromised with capital in hopes that maintaining capital investment in the city would generate a large enough tax base to fund a robust social safety net.
Young argues that progressive parliamentary politics cannot meet the challenge of capital strikes without the support of a militant working-class movement on the ground. For Mamdani to implement even part of his agenda, the Left will need to mobilize ordinary New Yorkers on a mass scale. As a member of NYC-DSA himself, Mamdani has a background in democratic movement politics, and members of DSA and the broader left helped propel his campaign to victory over Cuomo. He may be able to lean on these organizations for political capital — for instance, to build and mobilize support across the city for his agenda in the face of opposition by “moderate” local and state lawmakers.
It is in the Left’s interest to begin devising strategies to not only defend the potential Mamdani administration from right-wing attacks but to also go on the offensive against the neoliberal political establishment — to do what it can to help expose the elite capture of public institutions and the antidemocratic nature of “liberal” democracy. Bernie Sanders, as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, was essentially forced to construct a “parallel city government” to counteract a hostile city council’s attempts to undermine his ability to govern. Mamdani and his supporters should take lessons from Sanders’s mayoralty to heart; a recent rally in Brooklyn with Sanders suggests that the would-be mayor is doing so.
Right-wing Democrats are already maneuvering to sabotage Mamdani before he even takes office. Several top Democrats have refused to endorse Mamdani’s campaign, despite his winning the primary fair and square, and Cuomo and his allies have apparently forged an alliance with Donald Trump. Some Democrats, like New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, have engaged in Islamophobic smears over his support for Palestine. Trump, meanwhile, has threatened to cut funding to the city if Mamdani is elected and has previously threatened to arrest and deport him.
How Mamdani and the Left Can Work Together
As mayor, Mamdani will likely also face resistance from more conservative Democratic Party elements on the city council. Drawing on Sanders’s mayoral experience, Mamdani can respond to city council stonewalling with executive actions within his powers as mayor. For instance, one of Mamdani’s most animating campaign promises was a citywide rent freeze. This policy can be achieved through executive action by replacing all of Eric Adams’s outgoing appointees on the Rent Guidelines Board, which is empowered to unilaterally enact rent freezes for the city’s one million rent control–eligible apartment units.
This is a policy area where Mamdani might partner with grassroots left groups as well. For example, the city’s network of tenant unions and tenant advocacy organizations can work with the Mamdani campaign to field appointees from within these organizations.
New York already has a socialist caucus in the state legislature consisting of DSA-endorsed assemblymembers (Mamdani himself is one) and state senators. Several of Mamdani’s economic proposals will require the approval of the New York state legislature. His fellow socialist legislators will be his strongest allies inside the state legislature, and they will play a key role in persuading the more right-leaning Democrats to accept his policy agenda.
But this is only half the battle. Because of the threat of capital strikes as well as the influence of corporate lobbies and the large donors who fund most political campaigns, political and economic elites only begin to accept significant popular reforms when discontent with the status quo reaches a critical level. Socialist organizers and politicians can help channel discontent into tangible demands, like those in Mamdani’s platform, and as mayor, Mamdani can use his institutional platform to give these demands greater political legitimacy.
Grassroots organizations like DSA can, in turn, give him leverage in negotiations with the state legislature and the governor through strategic demonstrations, legislative pressure campaigns, and primary challenges against intransigent lawmakers. This dynamic can create a mutually reinforcing relationship between Mamdani’s office and his grassroots supporters.
Organized labor can also play a critical role in creating bottom-up pressure, despite the preemptions of post-Taft-Hartley American labor law. While unions are legally barred from engaging in strike activity as political advocacy, it hasn’t stopped labor from using their collective power to push for political change. Cross-union coalitions like Labor for Palestine, for example, are currently mobilizing members to pressure their unions to divest their pension funds from Israeli apartheid. And networks of union members can organize and participate in mass demonstrations in support of progressive policy issues — just last year, UAW Labor for Palestine members participated in mass protests against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress.
Unions also often mobilize their members to pack city council meetings as a pressure tactic to achieve strengthened statutory protections for workers’ rights. The Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) Fight for $15 campaign successfully raised the minimum wage in several localities utilizing this strategy. Labor can use its political capital to elevate Mamdani’s policy proposals and potentially blunt opposition from the corporate wing of the New York City council.
American billionaires today have world-historic amounts of wealth and political power. One thing billionaires do not have, however, is genuine mass movements and non-astroturfed grassroots organizations. The active, strategic support of those movements and organization will likely be vital for the success of Mamdani’s mayoralty and the fortunes of the broader left in the United States.