It was a windswept, bitterly cold Saturday afternoon in December when more than 50 people gathered in front of the Brooklyn Museum. It was the first day of door-to-door canvassing for Zohran Mamdani’s upstart mayoral campaign. We were barely a month past Donald Trump’s devastating re-election victory and another dispiriting failure by the Democratic Party establishment. It was hard not to be a doomer.

When asked why they had come out, one volunteer replied, “I want to be in favor of something for once.” Another added, “I want to feel something again.”

We followed a pair of canvassers as they made their way up and down six floor apartment buildings, knocking on 51 doors in three hours, getting one fi rm commitment plus several tenants who were intrigued by his rent freeze proposal. History was starting to be made.

Zohran was running at 1–2% in the polls, but we put him on the cover anyway with the provocative headline of “Mr. Mayor?” and observed that his campaign platform — rent freeze, fast and free buses, free universal child care — was popularizing socialism as a common sense solution to the high cost of living.

We also noted Mamdani had a socialist movement coalescing behind him that had been running and winning tough races against the entrenched status quo politicians for almost a decade. For many Indy readers, our cover story would be the first time they heard about the Mamdani campaign. By June, the same political and media establishment that had proclaimed Andrew Cuomo the inevitable frontrunner started to realize the ground was shifting beneath their feet.

Starting January 1, a socialist will be running the largest and most influential city in the country while a would-be dictator continues consolidating power in Washington. The eyes of the world will be on New York. It will be a moment filled with possibilities and fraught with peril. And, it will be the biggest story we’ve ever covered. For us, the sheer number of angles to explore are staggering. Grassroots movements of tenants, workers, immigrants, climate justice activists and many others will try to seize the moment to try and win transformative changes that were previously impossible. We’re here for it. With the Left ascendant in the largest and most influential city in the United States, we’re looking to do more in 2026 – more coverage in print and online, more editions of the paper, more copies printed and distributed, more podcasts and live events.

And we need your help. Our goal is to raise $50,000 in our winter fund drive, more than we’ve ever asked for before. Reaching our goal will give us the financial runway we need to take off and soar. We live in a moment when oligarchs such as Larry Ellison (CBS, MTV, Paramount Studios, TikTok), Elon Musk (Twitter/X), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) and Jeff Bezos (Washington Post) are building media empires.

In contrast, The Indy functions as a public commons that runs on broadly socialist values. We do the work throughout the year — publishing this newspaper, updating our website regularly between issues, hosting a weekly Tuesday 5–6pm radio show on WBAI-99.5 FM — and we share it all freely. Under capitalism, that doesn’t make any sense. So call us crazy, but we trust that enough readers who share our values will contribute when we ask for support. Will you be one of those readers?

If you have given in the past, thank you. If you can give again this year and even dig a little deeper, we will be so grateful. If you haven’t given before, this is an incredible time to join the extended community of Indy supporters and make your first contribution. Thank you from all of us for your support.

Onward,

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