What could New York be? More importantly, who could we be? Every day is like a drum beat, the Republicans attack: they do ICE raids, they rob the poor to give to the rich, they arrest protesters. New Yorkers are forced to choose. Either turn on each other like snitches, or unite and fight. 

New York said, “Go. Fuck. Yourself.” Trump sends ICE to rip families apart; we flood the courts. The 1% raise our rents, transit and food costs; we elect a Democratic Socialist mayor. We are told “be silent” during Israel’s genocide of Gaza. Instead, we shake signs and chant like thunder and march like a massive river. 

I love New York. We are the most visible wave of resistance that is rising across the country. On the subway, I see riders play videos of people in Los Angeles and Colorado, shoving ICE out of their neighborhood. On the stoop, I hear neighbors defy Trump and say, no, damn it, we are entitled to jobs, housing and health. Call it Resistance 2.0. Call it the Global Intifada. Call it Democratic Socialism. 

We feel it lift us like a wave at the beach. The anger at humanity trampled by the state makes our hearts bob like boats in a tsunami. We are only beginning but we have already scored goals; Zohran Mamdani’s victory, No Kings Day protests, popular resistance. The wave builds from the street, up. It combines working-class New York and the Left into a new hybrid – Street Socialism. 

Street Socialism is the new politics emerging from our fight against End Times Fascism. It is a transformation of socialism by the people into a reflection of the people. Yes, it is a multiracial rainbow that stays in the sky. It is young and imagines a future beyond capitalism. It is elderly and kisses a newborn with hope. It is Mass Line politics in which activists listen to people, learn what they need, and draw a blueprint for action. It is savvy enough to do high-tech organizing but loves knocking on doors. It’s Street enough to call out identity hustling because anything can be pimped, even one’s pain. 

Street Socialism has three enemies. The first is the subcultural Left that prizes abstract ideas more than people. The next, centrist Democrats, who make hypocrisy into an art form. They side with the Right against the Left in order to keep their class privilege. Finally, the Right controls large swaths of the state and uses violence to crush the Left. The only force that can overthrow this unholy Trinity is Mass Line politics, one so powerful that a coalition can call for a general strike the size of the George Floyd protests – millions upon millions – but without a pandemic, just a vision. Now that is power. 

How to Be a Street Socialist 101

Read the signs. Look at the streetlights and mailboxes and walls. Look at cafes and bars and graffiti. The signs left by Occupy, Me Too, Black Lives Matters are faded, torn and peeling. It’s like when a flood leaves watermarks on rock. I walk down the block and here are new ones that say Free Palestine and Vote Zohran “For a City You Can Afford!” We are in the next wave. 

Two great forces gather over New York; fear and hope. Trump looms over us. We feel his shadow in our mouths. We are afraid for our neighbors. We are afraid for ourselves. Against fear, is our wild hope to feel reality’s simple truth; we need each other. In small ways and big. New York is eight million strangers, who in a flash become family during a black-out, or a terrorist attack or when you’re gonna miss the train and they hold the door. Or sometimes, just a really, really good block party.

Which is why the “Zohran for Mayor” posters, so bright and colorful, the candidate looking all beefcake good, the posters are like Valentine’s Day cards. They promise a “New” New York. As close as we get to the November general election, more and more New Yorkers are going to check out Zohran’s campaign, and in a spill over, the Democratic Socialists of America. Which gives me hope. Which also makes me worried. 

I’ve shared this fear with friends. After Zohran’s win, I called a long-time buddy who has been around the Left for decades, “What do you think will happen?’ I pinched the phone between my cheek and shoulder. His voice has a reassuring music to it. 

“We have a chance to build a real movement,” he said. “Zohran can motivate people to go beyond voting.” He paused. I could hear the gears turning. “I finally get Bernie’s political revolution. He meant the ongoing mobilization of all of us against the elites who prop up a failed status quo.”

“Yeah,” I sighed and memories of my early activism flashed. “The Left is the Left. There’s a lot of personality cults and sectarian I’m-more-revolutionary-than-thou bullshit.” We sighed like twins. In my head I played a movie montage of life right after 9/11. The Ajax smell of the Twin Towers hung in the air. The Iraq War was going to start. I went to a communist bookstore for answers. To their credit, the staff showed me books that were like hospital x-rays. I saw bone-hard facts under skin-level propaganda. I saw the disease of U.S. imperialism, a cancer on the planet. I was grateful but unnerved at how all problems, all questions were already answered by their leader’s “new synthesis.” It felt a little culty. I left and would see them at big anti-war protests. I waved at them, smiling, but smiling from a distance. 

The Left has dead ends. On the phone, my friend’s voice became background. I remembered a reporter presenting on his road trip across America during Occupy Wall Street. He sat at the sites, seeing bright-faced newcomers, ready to take-it-to-the-man, get bogged down in debates over words and identity. One by one, like candles being snuffed, the Occupy sites dwindled before the police came and stomped them out under their boots. 

“I’ll just say it,” I said. “I’m scared to hope. Mamdani’s campaign, the DSA, the thousands of young people out canvassing.  Now after Zohran’s win, the Left feels alive and growing. I just hope it’s not too late.” 

My friend was silent. I looked at the phone. The call dropped. I had been talking to myself. 

I texted: I’m going to the next DSA meeting. I’ll bring my son. Join us. 

He texted: Yes. I’ll see you there! 

Just like that, it was there again, the slightly dizzy feeling, being lifted until your toes don’t touch ground. Like a wave. 

Liberals, the Best Enemy Money Can Buy

“In Return of the Jedi, the fish-faced general, what’s his name,” I snapped fingers, “Admiral Ackbar, when the rebels attacked the Death Star and saw enemy ships, he yelled, ‘It’s a trap!’, let’s photoshop Bernie’s face on him. On the Empire’s star-destroyers, photoshop Obama, Pelosi, Schumer and Eric Adams.” I made a magic ta-da gesture. “Liberals are a trap!” I laughed at my joke. The dinner guests did not. 

Around the table, guests raised eyebrows or silently picked at food. Live in New York long enough, you’ll know people who know people. I was the plus one to a dinner party of a Black media power player. Glasses sparkled like diamonds. The fucking dog had a gold chain leash. The dog! 

It was after Zohran’s win, and the specter of socialism really scared them. After my joke, person after person began a litany of why he will fail in the election or as mayor. The guests counted off reasons. One, the city doesn’t have the money. Two, unions won’t back him. Three, Trump will arrest him (that last point said with a snicker). Four, Americans hate socialism. Four and a half, Black people don’t trust it. Five. THE CITY HAS NO MONEY!

The more I listened, it felt like each guest took off their faces like a rubber mask and under it was a jerky android. They repeated the attack lines used by the New York Times and Democratic Party. When I left, down the street were Section 8 houses, a police car’s lights flashed like angry eyes. The shadows of addicts moved on the wall. Seeing the thin line between new money and old poverty, I got it. Since the Civil Rights Movement, decades of integration created a layer of newly minted, middle-class people of color. It’s Caribbean brownstone owners. It’s Puerto Rican coffee shop or supermarket owners. It’s Asian laundry-mats. It’s Yemeni bodega owners. It’s Black American real estate and media stars. No one wants to have their money fucked with. No. One. 

Seen from a seat at that table, democratic socialism, or any type of socialism, was a threat. The blind spot of that way of living was the inner rot of classism. We justified us versus them in ways that disturbingly echoed racists. We code-switched so much we forgot how we really talked. We cut off family who fall between the cracks to save ourselves. Enough of us do it and it kicks up a level. It becomes “common sense” or “street smarts” that fits all too well with a neo-liberal, free market, Social Darwinism but without the crude monkey cartoons. 

Hours later I trotted up the subway steps into Bed-Stuy’s summer night. It was a cool blessing. Zohran posters everywhere. Will we win in November? If we do, will liberals sabotage his mayoralty and the movement? They already did with Bernie years ago. They hold high positions in the media and politics. Their ideology gets into your head like a Doja Cat song.

Maybe Street Socialism is different. It offers the one thing the street wants, redemption. Yes, when the masses joined protests, they were sparked by a moral shock, a Trayvon Martin shot, a George Floyd yelling, “I can’t breathe!” What sustains it beyond shock is yes, the chance to stop oppression but also, redeem ourselves. When you’re a hustler, you sell what you can steal or you sell bits of yourself. You fight to survive. You keep up a reputation. It’s the code of the street. I know, I’ve touched gunshot wounds in my neighbor’s arms and calves. I ducked when a crew shot up our block party. I saw a friend reduced to begging for dimes to buy coffee. I have seen boys snatch gold chains off grown men, left stunned on the sidewalk. I can relive that in just the four blocks between the subway and my building. 

Street Socialists know a deep need for redemption drives the people. Yes, we want better things but we also want to be better. After being so low, we hunger for a wave to lift us again, to wash us clean of blood. We want to be sacred and respectable too. We just don’t believe it’s possible and retreat into vulgar bitterness. But when it feels at your fingertips, all that repressed hope washes over the street like a tsunami. 

I thought about the dinner. Maybe that’s the most frustrating thing about liberals. They are so afraid of losing privilege they don’t see how much we all need to be healed from classism. They see Street Socialism as a threat. It is not a threat. It is holiness. 

Fight Club

What will happen? I am on the stoop, reading the Indy when a neighbor comes by. He is tall, a fresh fade that looks perfectly tapered. He has a Zohran pin. So do I. We pretend they are magnets that pull us into a hug. 

“I can’t let go,” I yell. 

“Push it,” he says.

“This is not a Salt-n-Peppa song!” We giggle. I ask him what he thinks of the city after Zohran’s win. 

“I think things could change fast,” he leans and looks at me and doesn’t blink. “That’s if they don’t shoot him.”

The Right loves violence. They brag about it. The show off arsenals, guns laid out in a bed. Right Wing politicians stoke racism so lone wolves murder liberals and leftists. The Right controls the Federal Government and are conjuring up a private army, ICE to legally destroy innocent people, and like a domino effect, legal citizens are not far behind. 

My great fear of Zohran’s campaign, the DSA and other Left groups is that their belief in the better angels of our nature drives their success. It feels like a vulnerability. What happens when the Right steals an election, dissolves government, jails politicians? If it does not go that far, what if the Right surveils us or plants agent saboteurs in meetings, or exposes vulgar internet search histories by activists, or blacklists professionals? Democrats and Democratic Socialists are devoted to respectability politics. Sure the DSA is militant, but its roots are in the college-educated middle class.

Street Socialism is dirty. No one has time for that shit. Spend life working the angles, beefing with crews, shooting and stealing and working minimum wage and you get very realistic about human nature. Sure, use non-violence because it’s tactical. Sure, use non-violence because it’s ethical. We do not want to become monsters to defeat monsters. If we succeeded and New York became a workers’ city and won against MAGA, and the 1% tries to take it back, best believe the old street instincts will kick in. The people will defend it by any means necessary. 

“We have to be real,” I said. “If the Liberals can’t stop us, the Right will come down on the Left like a hammer. The only chance we have is if everyone comes out.” I gestured up and down the block. “Everyone.” I looked at him. “Only mass politics can save us from authoritarianism.” I began texting him.

“Here.” 

“What’s that?” his eyebrows knotted. 

“Info for the Democratic Socialists meet up,” I said. “Come with me.” 

Trough to Crest

Knock. Knock. I trot to the door, rubbing wet hands on a towel, “Who’s there?”

“I want to tell you about Zohran’s campaign,” a husky voice said from the other side. I open it and see a white woman in a Hot Girls for Zohran shirt. She has bright eyes, and conviction in the angle of her jaw. She did what women do, scanned me for danger and handed me a door pamphlet.  

“Funny shirt,” I pointed as my son squeezed in, head like a big curious rabbit. 

“Who’s Zohran?” he asked. 

“The next Jesus,” I murmured and put the pamphlet on the doorknob.  

“You don’t believe in Jesus,” he looked up. 

“If he freezes my rent, I will,” I saw the canvasser going into her pitch. I gestured to stop. “I’d vote for him twice, if I could. You had a long day ahead. Save your voice.” 

She winked and turned to the next door. Knock. Knock. More canvassers knuckled doors above.

Before the election, I saw Zohran canvassers everywhere, at the Children’s Museum, on front stoops, cafes, restaurants. An small army of 50,000 volunteers knocking on over 1.5  million doors throughout the city. My son’s godmother was one. She told me over the phone about the thrill of new faces, rediscovering New York, the sweet conversations at the doorway. People told her about their hardships. How they remade lives from loss. It made the campaign’s ideas of a rent freeze and free buses and city-run grocery stores connect to reality.  

What she told me. What friends told me. They were transformed by the work. Each door opening to new lives, new stories. They heard more than words. They listened to the tired shoulders. They saw red eyes from double back-to-back shifts. They made a note of large families packed into a tiny apartment. They saw hope and fatalism mix like a lava lamp in a child’s eyes. 

It helped that on social media, Zohran was funny as hell. In one video, he said “rent freeze” and jumped into the icy Atlantic for the polar bear plunge. He’s relatable. He eats halal from a food cart. He rides trains and buses like us. He does bad rap videos like us. He met his wife on Hinge like us. He has Street Socialist vibes. When he walked the length of Manhattan, my man got hugged and dapped and cheered. 

Remembering the campaign made me smile. I get up, go to the door and snatch the Zohran pamphlet from the knob. Outside on the stoop, I watch a U-Haul truck across the street. A family I knew for years is moving to a cheaper city. I look at Zohran’s face on the pamphlet. What do we need to win? Not just the election but the city and the nation. I look up. Until November, we need a full court press of canvassers and phone banks and rallies. We need people who live and know our blocks to talk and say, “It’s time.” What’s more, we need that full court press, even after the November general election.

We need Street Socialism. The flow of conversation between the activist cadre and the people has to grow and grow until a line is crossed. The people are no longer represented by a party, but use the party to represent themselves. They can challenge the authoritarian state. They can finally wield the power that no one has seen in almost a century – a general strike. 

What does that look like? When that level of class struggle is reached it means that me and my friends, family, neighbors – gather on stoops and talk in diamond hard words. Sanitation workers would be on strike. Teachers and MTA workers would be on strike. Private workers would be on strike. Hell, even some police. A mass mobilization of people would gather like a storm cloud. ICE agents and police set up barricades. We are prepared. We weigh protest signs in our hands. We have food and water. We have plans to endure. We strike until the city is ours. 

The Ocean’s Promise 

What will happen to New York? What will happen to us? I go to Coney Island and stand on the beach. Maybe the horizon has answers. 

Under a blazing sun New Yorkers play in the ocean. The tides are rhythmic, crashing in, pulling back like a blanket of foam. It’s fun to feel your feet sink. It’s fun to see a mix of people, the hijab wearing women holding a child, a Mexican father belly-flops on the water, Asian lovers kiss and hug. It’s like the city came for a communal baptism of joy. Laughter. Smiles. Playing. 

Maybe we come because we need to be part of something larger, more powerful than us. Maybe it heals us, in a deep way to be freed of the self and let the ocean send wave after wave, tossing us like toys. 

I wade up to my chest and gaze at the immensity. Where do waves come from? The ones that change history. How powerful can they be? The ocean lifts me up until I can’t feel the bottom with my feet. I turn and see New Yorkers, happily riding the waves because they are endless and beautiful and free.

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