Zohran Mamdani

I think that anyone fighting for working people and fighting for a politics that doesn't just think of working people, but puts them at the heart of what it is that we're doing is critically important anywhere in this country.

I think that for me, this is a moment in time where we have to reckon with

why people feel this way about politics.

And there is oftentimes an inability to reckon with the failures that have come before us because they implicate a lot of what we're doing right now.

I mean, part of my political project is to spread the fight for working people everywhere.

And I think that can mean new candidates.

It can also mean a renewed belief amongst those who are already there to fight.

I don't think you can fully separate the medium and the message.

I think that that person is correct that you have to have a politics that relates to working people's lives and their struggles.

It can't be one that needs to be translated.

I would also say that

Yes, there are far more New Yorkers who do not ask me about how I describe my politics and more they ask me, do I fit in that politics?

I also think, however, that if all we did was make videos without a vision, an affirmative vision of how working class New Yorkers could afford this city, then I wouldn't be seated across from you right now.

There are aspects of this campaign that are very much focused on New York City.

I don't know if there's a rent guidelines board anywhere else in this country that can freeze the rent for more than 2 million tenants.

We do have the slowest buses in the country.

We do have childcare at costs that are astronomical.

But the struggle for working people to afford day-to-day life, to afford dignity in the city they call home, that's not New York City specific.

And what I would say is wherever anyone is, to ask the people around them, what is the example of that struggle in your life?

And what are the tools?