Zohran Mamdani won in New York fasting for taxi drivers. Katie Wilson won in Seattle fighting for commuters. And the big difference between the two cities at opposite ends of the United States mattered little, because their campaigns spoke the same language: that of those who do not have access, but demand a voice. Two victories born outside the radar of power, but built with patience, coalitions and obstinacy.
Katie Wilson in Seattle like Zohran Mamdani in New York: the new mayor far from the establishment
Wilsonactivist and founder of Transit Riders Unionan organization that defends the rights of public transport users, he beat outgoing mayor Bruce Harrell with a grassroots campaignwithout political godfathers or millionaire super-PACs, the classic committees that raise unlimited funds to influence elections. Mamdaniformer state deputy, he defeated Andrew Cuomo twice, former governor supported by financial and real estate elites. Both won by speaking to workers, students, families excluded from the real estate market and essential services, in short, to those who have no voice in city councils.
Politics that takes the bus
A campaign made by talking about priorities. Katie Wilson successfully promoted campaigns for reduced fares aimed at low-income commuters and for the introduction of free transport for students, measures subsequently adopted by the local authorities thanks to the pressure exerted by his organisation. Mamdani has pushed forward a proposal to make buses free in New Yorkin a city where the cost of mobility is a social barrier. Both have made child care, housing justice and progressive taxation the pillars of a policy that doesn’t promise change, but builds it.
Katie Wilson led the fight for accessible transportation. Zohran Mamdani fasted for taxi drivers. Today they govern (@instagram)
Govern without asking permission
The strength of Wilson and Mamdaniin fact, does not lie in individual charisma, but in the ability to build real coalitions: between students and workers, between migrants and unions, between suburbs and cultural centers. To offer a policy that does not simply denounce, but proposes. Their campaigns did not seek to reassure, but to mobilize. They didn’t ask for space, they took it. And they did it with strategic clarity.
The future is not a direction, it is a method
Seattle and New York, as we have already said, are not at all similar: one is a vertical, dense metropolis, where power is concentrated between skyscrapers, media and finance; the other is a horizontal city, a contradictory laboratory of the new digital economy, where innovation has not yet solved social injustice. But Wilson and Mamdani don’t just represent a generational change. They represent, at least for the moment, a change of method: politics as a service, not as consensus management. We don’t know if this method will become the norm. We don’t know if the bus really won’t be paid for, if rent will be found at decent prices or a job that’s enough to live on. It must be said, however, that perhaps when politics begins to live the lives of citizens, people start listening again.