Jacobin Radio: Mamdani’s Win w/ Alex Press and Luke Savage

Jacobin Radio

Jacobin

Socialism, History, News, Left, Jacobin, Alternative, Socialist, Politics

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Suzi speaks with Jacobin writers Alex Press and Luke Savage about Zohran Mamdani’s insurgent — and successful — New York City mayoral campaign.

Alex Press takes us out after dark in Queens with the democratic socialist mayor-elect, meeting taxi drivers at LaGuardia, nurses and residents at Elmhurst Hospital, delivery workers on the night shift — the people who keep New York running while the city sleeps.

Luke Savage analyzes the bipartisan meltdown that Mamdani’s campaign provoked among billionaires, media moguls, and the Democratic Party establishment — all united to stop a democratic socialist from gaining power.

We talk about Mamdani’s agenda: free public transit and childcare, a $20 minimum wage, regulation of gig companies and labor rights for delivery drivers, freezing rents, and more. And we discuss why the working-class movement behind him has elites so terrified.

Read Alex’s report on Mamdani and late-night New York: https://jacobin.com/2025/11/mamdani-night-shift-nyc-mayoral-election

Read Luke’s report on the establishment meltdown: https://jacobin.com/2025/11/socialism-barbarism-mamdani-cuomo-trump

Jacobin Radio with Suzi Weissman features conversations with leading thinkers and activists, with a focus on labor, the economy, and protest movements.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Susie Wiseman. Today we're going to take you inside the movement that just shook New York City and the political establishment nationwide.
0:21.6	Zora Mamdani's stunning rise from Democratic Socialist Assembly member in Queens to the city's next mayor
0:28.6	has exposed both the power of a new multiracial working class politics and the panic that it's unleashed among elites.
0:36.6	In the first part of the program, Jacobin's Alex Press will take us out after dark, literally,
0:42.9	as Mom Dhani spends the night talking to nurses, taxi drivers, and delivery workers who keep New York City running
0:49.8	while most of the rest of the city is asleep.
0:52.7	Her reporting shows what this campaign looks like on the ground.
0:56.2	Solidarity forged literally in exhaustion and hope.
1:00.2	And then in the second half,
1:01.8	Jacobin columnist Luke Savage joins me to analyze the backlash,
1:06.8	a bipartisan meltdown uniting billionaires, media barons,
1:10.4	and party leaders who see in Malmdani's democratic socialism a real threat to the order that they defend.
1:18.0	It's a tale of two New Yorks, the one built by workers and the one terrified of them getting power.
1:24.4	All this when our program returns in just a moment.
1:40.1	Music power. All this when our program returns in just a moment. This is Jacobin Radio. I'm Susie Wiseman. And this week, we're looking at the movement that's remaking New York politics. Democratic Socialist mayoral candidate. I guess he's now mayoral to be. I forgot what you call that.
1:54.3	Mayor elect. Thank you. Zoran, Mom, Don, he did something no one expected. He took his campaign to the night shift workers,
2:02.0	the taxi drivers, nurses, delivery riders, the people who keep the city alive while the rest of us sleep.
2:07.7	Jacobin's Alex Press joined him on that midnight tour and she brings the story from the streets.
2:13.3	Her piece in Jacobin is called Out After Dark with late night workers in Zora Mamdani.
2:18.3	It's really a great piece.
2:19.6	And it follows mayor-elect Zora Mamdani across Queens on a night shift that reveals what his campaign's really about.
2:26.7	The people who make New York City but rarely get heard.
	...

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