Critique Is Easy. What’s Your Plan for Power?

The way to help Zohran Mamdani overcome establishment and billionaire opposition to his agenda has to involve organizing bigger and deeper, rather than simply criticizing him harder.

In late November, I argued that “way too much leftist discourse is polarized into denunciations vs. defenses of Zohran [Mamdani]. A more useful & important debate is how to organize enough New Yorkers to win Zohran’s agenda — and to counteract the inevitable pressures on him from capital and the political establishment.”

Others disagreed. A few days later, the pro-Palestine group Within Our Lifetime (WOL) posted a public sign-on statement announcing that Mamdani’s decision to reappoint Jessica Tisch as New York Police Department commissioner “betrays his campaign promises and aligns him with the NYPD’s legac