As news broke on Tuesday night that Zohran Mamdani had won New York City’s mayoral contest by a decisive margin, advocates for environmental justice began celebrating—people jumped on chairs, clanged pots and pans in kitchens and danced raucously to New York anthems.

Some environmental activists had been up since dawn volunteering to get out the vote in shirts bearing slogans like “climate baddies for Zohran,” and the celebration carried an undercurrent of exhaustion and relief. “Last night Mamdani told New Yorkers to breathe,” said Briana Carbajal, the state legislative manager for the northern Manhattan-based group WE ACT for Environmental Justice. “And today I think we’re all breathing cleaner air.”

For groups that have spent years fighting to link climate policy to New York’s housing

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