Kaldıraç International

Interview with Preston Carter on the election and campaign of Zohran Mamdani

“His platform spoke to the ways that it is not unchangeable that state institutions distribute resources upward, police poverty, and externalize social costs onto workers.”

Zohran Mamdani, who identifies as a democratic socialist and stands out for his rhetoric directly addressing the material crises of the working class, won the New York City mayoral election. We asked Preston Carter what Mamdani’s election victory means, the factors that propelled him politically, the concept of “democratic socialism,” and the potential implications of this success

Preston Carter is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Philosophy Department at Fordham University and both a founding member and the Business Agent of Fordham Graduate Student Workers-Communications Workers of America Local 1104. He organizes contract enforcement and worker power while researching colonialism, language, and racial capitalism in the French Caribbean.

He described to us how that Mamdani’s success stems from his ability to generate concrete demands that directly address the deepening housing, transportation, poverty, and immigration crises in the city, that elections can be transformed into a real arena of struggle, and the effectiveness of working with a broad coalition of young people, tenants, union members, and immigrants mobilized outside traditional Democratic Party channels.

Here is the interview we conducted as Kaldıraç…

1) Zohran Mamdani’s victory attracted global attention. Could you describe his beginnings and how he built grassroots organization?

My first impression of Zohran Mamdani did not come from electoral politics. I heard about the medallion crisis, when taxi drivers (many of whom are South Asian, Muslim, and working-class) were crushed under predatory loans, before I knew who Mamdani was. The first thing I learned about Mamdani was that he joined those drivers during their hunger strike. This was after the city politicians had abandoned them, and, I believe, at least one driver had taken his own life. When I heard that Mamdani joined their hunger strike, I was impressed by his conviction.

I cannot speak as directly to the internal workings of his campaign, but the Democratic Socialists of America certainly played the biggest role in lending it organizational capacity. I would characterize Zohran’s campaign as deeply rooted in the DSA infrastructure.

The campaign structure was very intentionally open to newcomers. As a rank-and-file unionist elected Chief Steward, I quickly realized that there could be an opportunity to activate my membership. For example, international graduate workers cannot vote but live the consequences of city policy. Even without the right to vote, they can still canvas and phonebank as a union. This mattered because it allowed my members without voting rights–who are structurally disenfranchised–to meaningfully shape the political terrain.



2) What made Mamdani unique in U.S. politics? Which policies mattered most?

I can speak best from the perspective of my shop. What stood out to our members was that Zohran spoke directly to the material crises shaping our lives. We frequently encounter food shortages, unhoused members (including evictions), etc. In our first contract fight, we demanded subsidies for work-related transportation because our real wages are declining while the subway regularly raises its prices. We also fought for housing support, such as subsidies for graduate workers in the expensive student housing. And because we have large numbers of workers of a variegated resident status, we need politicians who defend NYC’s sanctuary policies rather than collaborate with ICE.

What I can say is that we fought and bargained for these protections and rights, but the University could be intransigent since they could say, “no one in the city really has subsidized travel (only high school students),” “the housing crisis is due to the economy and the University cannot control the economy,” etc.

What made Zohran unique from my perspective is that he entered the campaign understanding these fights and issues. He looked at the issues and spoke about the issues from the perspective of working-class New Yorkers rather than economists. His platform spoke to the ways that it is not unchangeable that state institutions distribute resources upward, police poverty, and externalize social costs onto workers.

He also drew a line between us and them: billionaires should not exist. And Mamdani was able (with his own shortcomings and failures apart from structural limitations) to make connections between our local issues in New York City and imperialism. The same state that cuts public services sustains immense expenditures on war and genocide.

The policies that resonated with my Union also resonated with New Yorkers:

Tax the rich
Freeze the rent
Fast and free buses
End collaboration with ICE
New Yorkers can see and evaluate how these policies are implemented, and I think that clarity matters a lot for New Yorkers living paycheck to paycheck. While these changes are rather limited, working people will remember these concrete victories. Across the global left, there has been a turn toward clear, everyday demands rather than abstract messaging, and Mamdani’s platform reflects that trend.



3) How was the daily organization managed during the campaign? How did Mamdani, who was an unknown figure, manage to win the mayoral election?

There was canvassing regularly in every neighborhood of New York City. People could sign up on the Zohran campaign website for 3-hour shifts for canvassing, and they would knock doors of people who haven’t yet committed. The people staging the canvases were field leads, and they were mostly all volunteers. There were symbolic merch incentives like a Zohran tote for field leads and special pins for canvassers (along with a “Zetrocard” that was a stamp card playing on the “Metrocard”). The campaign sold no merch, so it was only participants in the campaign who had it.

Mamdani is definitely an exceptional speaker, but obviously, the media has a hyper-individualist focus. The campaign was won by the canvassers breaking record after record of doors knocked, and people recognized Zohran via the TV appearances, but I would say they got to know the campaign through the face-to-face door-knocking “politics of no translation” Zohran will mention.



4) How important were pre-existing organizations like DSA?

As I gestured earlier, it would be hard to overestimate the importance of the pre-existing organizations. The DSA has a lot of experience with New York City campaigns. I think most people trace that preparation back to Bernie, especially. And you also have mutual aid organizations and tenant unions that I noticed became more prominent during the COVID pandemic. And then there are immigrant and/or diaspora organizations such as DRUM (Desis Rising Up & Moving). And, finally, you have the organization I spend the most time with at this time, the unions.

It is not the case that all of these organizations put all their emphasis on Mamdani. A lot of these organizations or members of these organizations were somewhat skeptical about Mamdani’s ability, even if we generally saw canvassing as a good way to reach more people. But from what I hear from interviews with Zohran’s campaign leadership, no one really knew that Zohran’s campaign would come close to success from the start. One person interviewed claimed that he “knew” Zohran would win, but he is the only person I have heard say that. Retrospectively, it is hard to believe that we had such doubt in our ability to beat such terrible competitors. But I don’t think anyone could have known that Zohran could go from 1% to winning the primary and the general.



5) Mamdani calls himself a democratic socialist. What does this mean? How is socialism seen in the U.S.?

Zohran often framed democratic socialism as the fight for a dignified life for all of God’s children. That articulation resonated across working-class immigrant communities who hold moral vocabularies of justice outside the narrow language of American liberalism.

Since Bernie Sanders reintroduced the term into mainstream politics, DSA has operated as a broad big-tent socialist formation—with Marxists, social democrats, anarchists, and communists under one roof. Under that banner, “democratic socialism” has generally meant confronting capitalism, racial exploitation, financial predation, and imperial violence.

The DSA defines democratic socialism as follows on its webpage: “a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society.” Obviously, this is not a very technical definition. I am not very satisfied with these definitions, but for, let’s just say, a MAGA Republican and many Democratic machine voters, there is not usually a lot of distinction drawn between social democracy and communism.

6) Which segments participated in the campaign? What were their political orientations?

It was a genuinely broad coalition: young people and students, working-class immigrants, socialists and DSA members, unregistered or infrequent voters (who turned out and also canvassed), union rank-and-file (often organizing from the rank-and-file). What was remarkable was how many people were mobilized outside traditional Democratic Party channels.



7) What impact did Trump’s administration have? Was the vote a rejection of his politics?

Trump promised working people prosperity but delivered only hostility, police violence, and ICE terror. Yet many New Yorkers also felt unsafe under Hochul’s National Guard deployments and Adams’ collaboration with ICE. Yes, I believe the vote was a strong rejection of Trump’s politics and the complacency and complicity of Democrats with this administration. Both, in different ways, rely on the same coercive apparatus.

So, yes, those who put Mamdani into office reject Trump, but I think what is equally interesting is the rejection of the infuriating, because-assumed, areas of anti-worker bipartisan consensus. For example, for many, it is important that Mamdani resists the bipartisan alignment on the genocide of Palestinians. While Mamdani has made missteps, he has not been nearly as disappointing as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have been. Just a few days ago, he again named the genocide and spoke to U.S. complicity.



8) What effects will Mamdani’s victory have on future elections and the Democratic Party?

Bernie’s being sidelined demonstrated that the Democratic Party will hinder and sabotage working-class politics. Mamdani’s victory shows something equally important: a disciplined socialist organization supported by a coalition of unions, tenants, and immigrants can still break through in spite of the party’s anti-socialist machinery.

Mamdani is not evidence that the Democratic Party can be reformed. The Democratic Party has not stopped working to hinder Mamdani, and implementing his policy will require building more power. Because the two-party system in the U.S. can easily render third-party candidates irrelevant, Mamdani’s victory suggests the possibility of using the ballot line tactically such that primaries become a site of struggle.

Personally, what I appreciated most about Mamdani’s campaign was the following: on the one hand, Mamdani often emphasized that his major platform can be communicated in a door-knocking conversation, requiring no translation–no jargon, etc. On the other hand, what I also noticed was that the campaign translated, to–I dare to say–an unprecedented level, much of its key literature into Spanish, Urdu, Hindi, Creole, and Yiddish. New York City has over 800 languages spoken. Many of the languages spoken in New York belong to communities that have lived through U.S. invasions, occupations, and economic interventions. So I think this translation practice is a very important and practical way to actually make a material difference. One could say that it was simultaneously a politics of no translation and a politics of translation. Translating campaign material into those languages was not merely symbolic. It is an affirmation of those communities’ political agency against the structures that displaced many of them in the first place.

Interview with Preston Carter on the election and campaign of Zohran Mamdani - Kaldıraç “His platform spoke to the ways that it is not unchangeable that state institutions distribute resources upward, police poverty, and externalize social costs

“The collapse of the regime seems probable”

Interview with Marzieh Nazeri and Abbas Mansouran, members of Central Committee and International Bureau of Communist Party of Iran

As the hundreth day of the rebellion was coming, we had a short conversation with our comrades, which also touched on the historical background of today.

The resistance, which started at the end of three quarters of the last year according to the Western calendar, turned it over to the new year as a breathless rebellion.

We tried to ask questions from which we can learn lessons, in an effort to “report a Z” of the proggress that have taken place in the months since our first interview with comrades from the Communist Party Central Committee and the International Bureau.

The answers we received to the questions we asked about the proggress of the rebellion and the revolutionary movement, and their analysis for the future, gave us further hope for the revolutionary transformation of our region, along with lessons for the year of struggle that we are about to pass the first month of.

To put it in the comrades’ own words, “Due to the spirit of the rising masses, the current movement has gone through a growing process and despite the current murderings and crimes by the Islamic capitalist regime, that you have rightly pointed out, there is no sign of a decline in it. Thousands and thousands of people accompanied by mourning, music, poetry, hymns and fighting slogans participated in the memorial ceremonies for the killed protesters in an unprecedented way in Iran as a way of continuing their struggles and determination for the continuation of the revolution.”

Moreover, we heard the sentences and the following which are written without too much enthusiasm as a “Vamos Bien” with the temperament of our geography about ‘efforts to bring the left and socialist forces closer, regarding the proggress of left, socialist, revolutionary forces’: “Since 2018, there have been six leftist and communist currents, including the Communist Party of Iran, which have come together in a council named the Left and Communist Forces Cooperation Council. Also two weeks ago, a call was given by the Communist Party of Iran and the Labor-Hekmatist Communist Party to form a left and socialist bloc in Kurdistan in order to bring the dispersed leftist and communist individuals”.

Finally, the following answer, which was given without going through the whole interview, should be remembered as our reality today, and should be heard: “Pro-Western opposition is only seeking regime change and not a revolutionary overthrowing, meaning wanting to transfer power from one capitalist political power to another. In the current situation, the prospect of the collapse of the regime as a result of the advance of the movement and the overthrow of the political rule of capital seems probable. We can consider the ongoing situation as a class struggle in Iran. The entry of the working class into a nationwide general strike and leading the movement and labor and socialist movement joining together is not a dream and it can come true.”

“The collapse of the regime seems probable” - Kaldıraç Interview with Marzieh Nazeri and Abbas Mansouran, members of Central Committee and International Bureau of Communist Party of Iran As the hundreth day of the rebellion was coming, we had a short conversation with our comrades, which also touched on the historical background of today. The resistance...

What Should a Person Give Her Life To?

Our friend, let us tell you from the start in order to do away with any suspicions: this statement is written to “brainwash” you.

Of course, you are taking precautions against their indoctrinations, and you verify the news you follow from many sources. You never play “pro-regime” channels on your TVs at home, and when it’s appropriate, you do not hesitate to tweet your own ideas.

Perhaps you even prepared aid packages for those who suffered from the İzmir earthquake, you were excited by the march of the Soma miners, and you got so angry with the arrests of metal workers that you raised hell in a WhatsApp group.

Like everyone, you are trying to distribute the weight of the days and the news. When the festivity of the “thank God these bad days are over, now worse days are ahead” chats disperses and a somber wind takes its place, you feel lonely, we know.

Maybe you think that “the conditions of pandemic” force you into loneliness, you’re wrong.

You are still alive…

You are not yet a number in the turquoise table[1] that is published (!) every day.

You are not yet sharing the same fate with Hasan whose heart could not handle being forced to continue working despite being sick with Covid-19 at Galataport where Survivor’s final episode was being broadcasted, we didn’t read you on the same page as Emine who committed su***de by leaving the hair dryer on because she could not keep her children warm, and you haven’t died yet like 8 years old Çınar who fell from the roof after following his father who was trying to help him connect to EBA,[2] or like 50-year-old Aziz who had a heart attack after climbing a hill to broadcast a lesson to his students because he was having internet issues, or like health workers who we lost one after another and who were told after 9 months that their masks were not working.

So, you are still alive.

Apart from the fact that you survive in an open air prison just waiting for one day to be over after another, even though your chest tightens when you look around, that you are part of the “herd” who has gained immunity comes to your aid.

The unbearable lightness of staying alive…

Are you there?

Are you still reading?

Now we can meet.

We are those who are searching for ways to not cease being human, not those who are content with staying alive but those who want to live humanly.

You certainly saw, heard and knew.

Perhaps you too aspired to say without hesitation “solidarity keeps us alive” and stand amongst us, perhaps you turned your head away saying “a bunch of lunatics,” you moved away “with fear” when you watched us get beaten with batons after just one slogan.

We want to “live humanly” and this is not about eating or drinking as one might initially think.

No, our steps are not towards earning Euros instead of Turkish Liras when we get the first opportunity.

We do not feel obligated to give our smiles towards 64 megapixel cameras.

And we are not those who lie in bed at the end of the day and comfort themselves by saying “thank God today has also passed without an incident,” while being filled with fear of unemployment, fear of bosses, fear of the police, fear of one’s neighbour, and fear of the future.

We do not want the crumbs that are offered to us, we want the world.

You want it too, we know.

“…Hearts of millions are weighing like dark nights,

Not enough to smash faces of the bourgeoisie

Is the labor of thousands.

But we know of days

That not even a light wind blows

We know that with a blast of thunder splits

The face of the universe

A storm covers the earth…”

We are revolutionary socialists and we care calling for you to join us, to join our ranks.

To be on our “ship” in the coming storm.

Look around you.

The world is covered with a virus named capitalism.

Everywhere in the world the humiliation, exploitation and imprisonment of humanity ensues.

That which kills the smallest child, and that which unplugs an elderly person left to his fate because there weren’t enough rooms left in a health system plundered throughout years for profit is the same despicable system.

It continues to play the chants of plunder-profit-war everywhere.

Just because of this, war for better days also proceeds everywhere around the world.

“…Adept ears

listened to the wind,

and said,

‘The storm is close,

take care to blow the fire…”

The voices we hear are not imagined.

At times we listen to Soma miners who say “God knows we are not scared of you,” at others we walk with women saying “Let our anger surround the world” in Taksim, in Şili we write “it was not depression, it was capitalism” on the walls, we light up the sky in Guatemala by setting on fire the central bank against the anti-people budget planning, in India we are millions striking, and from French slums we take it to the streets shouting “Freedom, freedom, freedom.”

Are you hearing the voices?

We are living for beautiful days, fighting for beautiful days.

We are fighting for a world where work will not be a necessity for daily subsistence, for survival, and for being able to feed oneself; a world where the subjugation of humans by other humans and everything that comes with such subjugation will be eradicated, where all the possibilities of human beings will be developed freely, and where humanity will socially and once again be reborn, we are fighting for socialism, for communism.

And we will continue along this road until victory.

Because my friend, fighting against humiliation, exploitation, and oppression, not only for the future, but for today too, is the only way to live.

To get used to this humiliation, this system that stains and corrupts our humanity, not fighting against this exploitation, is the most painful of deaths.

We are revolutionary socialists.

Revolutionarism is expressed through the attitude towards life.

Attitude taken towards death is a natural continuation of this.

When one cannot have a strong attitude towards life, when one does not live resolutely, death becomes both a refuge and a feared encounter. On the contrary, some deaths mean the transcendence of death.

“Those who defeat death for their faith

once again taught

that sometimes action

is the last breath given in the name of life

and that this breath

is worth tens of years

spent without meaning.”

It was 23 years ago.

We sent two of us to the sky.

Two revolutionaries, two comrades, to human beings, who defeated death, who stayed with their departure…

Burhanettin Akdoğdu was a student in Uludağ University. In Kaldıraç magazine, he wrote his poems and articles under the name of Bekir Kilerci.

He was a revolutionary theater actor, a poet.

Bekir joined the struggle during times when the wind was blowing from the opposite direction, when revolutionarism was being promoted as foolishness, when all kinds of ideological disinformation were being spread and turning away from socialism was being glorified, and he became the commander of the “ship.”

On the 13th of December 1997, in the same month that his poem for Erdal Eren[3] was going to be published, on the same day that Erdal Eren was immortalized, under torture in the Anti-Terrorism bureau in Ankara, Bekir was also immortalized without giving away anything.

“Those who cannot dare to fight for their ideals, die for the ideals of others,” wrote Bekir.

“If you ask me today, I am

neither Laz,

neither Arab,

neither Tatar,

nor Bosniak,

of course for reaching my roots

I am happy

but first of all, I am a man of my class.

I was born as a worker’s son,

I lived as a worker

and I will die as a fighter of my class,” he said. He lived as such, and he defeated death this way.

Ali Serkan Eroğlu was a student in Ege University.

He was 19 years old, his eyes were in the stars. He was a revolutionary theater actor, a poet.

He was the founder of Ege Ensemble (Theater Society Against the Wall). He was helping publish countless literary zines in his school. He read Kaldıraç magazine and fought for the free world he dreamt of. He was offered the chance to become an informer against his comrades, his answer cost him his life.

On the 24th of December 1997, he was hanged in his school’s bathroom. His departure was a scream, a Scream of Being Human.

“Whoever you are, die well!” wrote Serkan. To die well, you’d had to live well in the first place. That is how Serkan lived.

We commemorate our two heroes who fought and dreamt for a classless, free world without exploitation.

They continue to live everywhere in the world in workers’ and peoples’ rebellions against this despicable system.

They are amongst us, now and always!

While we remember them, while we tell of them, while we carry on their struggles, we invite everyone who wants to remain human, who wants a humanly and free life, to “live” like them.

“I searched for simple truths at first.

My head spun when I saw the realities.

How hard they were to grasp;

my brain couldn’t take it,

my hands started to work.

I started to change life.

How easy everything actually was

the whole issue was to

weave life

thread by thread.”

Join Kaldıraç to weave life thread by thread!

[1] The phrase is referring to the color of the daily coronavirus stats table government publishes.

[2] Turkish government’s online-learning platform.

[3] Anatolian revolutionary who was executed in 1980 at the age of 17. His age was officially taken a higher than 17 to allow the ex*****on.

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Brandworkers ile Röportaj

ABD'de bir işçi merkezi olan Brandworkers'dan Gabriel ile Amerikan işçi mücadelesi tarihi ve günümüzdeki durumu; New York’taki göçmen işçilerin sorunlarını, bunlara karşı merkezin kullandığı taktikleri konuştuk.

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Dear people of Sudan,
About the massacre: We deeply felt your losses.
We believe that your struggle against the humiliation, opression and exploitation is going to be successfull.
The working class, oppressed people and revolutioners of Anatolia are in solidarity with you

✊✊More than 180 groups over 18 countries have signed the joint statement📣 https://crossbordersolidarity.com
"The instrumentalization of the lives of migrants,asylum seekers and refugees reduced to a threat and a bargaining chip must end!"

Murdering Qasem Soleimani is an expression of US desire to spread war

With new attacks, US imperialism is trying to deepen the war which it has lost in Syria. The assassination of the Iranian commander of Quds Force, Qasim Suleimani, is a clear expression of the US desire to spread the war.

The US-Britain-Israel alliance which is a front of imperialist sharing war is behind these attacks. Iran is one of the most important force in the region that distorted the US plans and therefore the US tries to create an opportunity to intervene. Iran which is on target after Iraq-Libya-Syria, has had an important role to distort the US plans by supporting the organisations which resist in the region.

In its last step, the US want to compensate for its loss in Syria by spreading the war with attacks on Iran. This attack is a step towards a greater sorrow for our region turning into a blood bath. The collaborative states in the region will be lined up to take the positions alongside the US and Israeli front, implicitly or explicitly.

Working peoples in our region have started to show that they are against the capitalist exploitation system by rebellions, by standing side by side on the streets, by surpassing all their identities. This attack has come to the fore in such a period.

On one side is Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, Iran, which are tried to be brought to the knee with the attacks of imperialism; on the other side, the rebellions of the people in the region against the exploitation and looting system …

From the horizon of this blood sea, a red sun will rise

Working class and peoples will end the imperialist sharing war, all exploitation and humiliation on Earth by coming to power and get rid of imperialists and all of their collaboratives.

It is in our hands to end the capitalist order of exploitation and the imperialist war. The removal of imperialism from our region and the struggle for revolution and socialism are intertwined.

October revolution ended the first sharing war. Socialism is the only force that will prevent the war of sharing that spreads all over our region as before .

It is now more possible than ever to raise the anti-imperialist resistance aiming the power of the working people, the proletariat dictatorship.

Long live the common struggle of the peoples!

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