With Zohran’s victory in the mayoral election, NYC-DSA has reshaped New York’s political landscape, and through an unrelenting fight against cynicism and mediocrity, built the largest, most influential left organizing force in the country.
Today, we stand stronger than ever, but our momentum also brings uncertainty. Many of us have felt an intense whiplash between the phenomenal achievements in our city and the dire situation across our country. Now that we’ve shifted the political reality, the eyes of the country—even the world—are on us. What will we do with that power? What must we do?
Exactly what we’ve done before: fight strategically and ambitiously to once again reshape our political terrain. That’s why we must endorse Chi Ossé and take down the exhausted Democratic machine by primarying Hakeem Jeffries.
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Jeffries represents everything that’s brought our country to the brink of entrenched fascism. As the highest ranking Democrat in the House, he has been complicit in the political conditions that leave the working class nothing but harder and shorter lives. His top donors are the architects of our suffering: BlackRock, which has stolen our homes for profit; Lockheed Martin, which has stolen our tax dollars for war; and, of course, AIPAC, which has stolen our dignity for destruction.
Jeffries stands directly in the way of the future we want to build, blocking progress in Brooklyn first, nationally second. He fights harder against his own left flank (supporting moderates over progressives in primaries, even when the progressive was the incumbent, and stalling efforts to restore federal worker bargaining rights) than the fascists entrenching federal power (praising Marjorie Taylor Greene and voting for a resolution that glorifies Charlie Kirk and “Biblical truth”). His promises are nothing more than toothless attempts to tinker around the edges of a desperately broken system. He goes to battle with strongly-worded letters and a child’s baseball bat.
The contrast could not be more stark. Where Jeffries repeats tired clichés about affordable housing while taking money from the architects of displacement, Chi Ossé wins dignity and economic relief for working class New Yorkers by banning the expensive and humiliating practice of forced broker’s fees. Even before his active DSA membership, Chi has consistently fought alongside our movement, winning material investments for housing, a library, and parks, and increasing access to Narcan. He took divisive votes against Eric Adams’ austerity policies shoulder-to-shoulder with our Socialists in Office, and faced the same political repercussions they did.
Despite Chi’s strongly aligned record as a councilmember and consistent presence on the left, some point to his delay in joining NYC-DSA to claim that he can’t be committed to our project. But Black Leftists being reluctant to join us is an ongoing issue that is not unique to Chi—we know this from the existing racial makeup of our organization. NYC-DSA has consistently struggled to engage the Black electorate and to connect with the existing political and community formations that form the connective tissue of the city’s Black Left.
Zohran’s campaign made enormous gains on this front through dedicated outreach that shifted support in Black working class neighborhoods from the primary to the general election. Chi’s campaign offers us the opportunity to build on that momentum, starting with a trusted messenger with a multigenerational family history in Central Brooklyn who has already built a dedicated base of support.
Like Zohran, Chi is a gifted political communicator, with a massively outsized platform. Since joining NYC-DSA, Chi has used that platform to make frequent and sincere efforts to grow our organization in video and in print. He wrote that, “[t]he months spent canvassing in the cold and the days spent standing outside poll sites in a sweltering heat wave with dedicated DSA organizers reminded me of the beauty of organizing and fighting for a cause together. I knew it was time to join and once again put the demand of the moment first.” His own story of choosing to join the organization provides a pathway to demonstrate that a commitment to improving material conditions for Black communities and a commitment to building socialism can not only coexist but are mutually dependent.
With Chi carrying this banner, we can inspire voters tired of the Democratic Party establishment’s entitled approach to the Black community to win the change they deserve. And critically: this race is winnable. 13,000 people registered to vote in NY-8 between February and November of this year—10,000 of them in Jabari Brisport’s senate district alone. Zohran won NY-8 in the primary by picking up 75% of the vote in Senate District 25 (19,000 of 39,000 votes), a DSA stronghold represented by Jabari Brisport, through a relentless field game and by keeping 20-30% of the vote in the rest of the district with comms, flyers, and public appearances only. There was not a field operation in the majority of NY-8 for the primary, something that would change with a Congressional campaign with a larger budget for a single district than Zohran had across the entire city.
The easiest way to take Chi and DSA to a historic win is to rely only on these northern precincts, picking up 17,000 votes in AD 55, 56, 57. However, part of the reason to run this race is that we have an opportunity to expand and grow on that coalition by running a robust, well-trained, and unrelenting ground game across the district. By reactivating the dormant Operation P.O.W.E.R. coalition of the married, explicitly Black socialist radicals, Inez and Charles Barron in central districts, AD 54, 55, 56, 57, we will pick up another 6,291 votes. The southern precincts, by far the most difficult and conservative, will be won through multilingual canvassing in Brighton Beach, Mosque visits, and targeted canvassing in the large developments of Coney Island, allowing us to secure the final 4,103 votes. The DSA electoral difference has always been in canvassing, and this race is not only winnable with our field power, but also an opportunity to dramatically expand our capacity and bring along new recruits into our other chapter campaigns.
Victory is never assured. But running a charismatic, well-known, native Black Brooklynite in this district will allow us to expand our organization to neighborhoods neglected by the system and their elected officials for too long. Building a multiracial working class coalition is a prerequisite to the world we need to create. Zohran’s campaign made new inroads across the five boroughs, including in the eastern and southern parts of NY-8. This achievement required a high degree of visibility. Without a top-of-the-ticket campaign, we risk losing momentum, and an opportunity to keep people engaged in this fight.
This race would also increase media coverage and voter attention for all of our downballot races, especially for the Black socialist slate of Jabari Brisport, Phara Souffrant Forrest, Eon Huntley, and Christian Celeste-Tate, whose districts all overlap with NY-8. If we were to wake up the morning after primary day in June 2026 with a disappointing loss but with a socialist mayor, more SIOs in the State Assembly, and 20,000 NYC-DSA members, we would be waking up as a more powerful organization than ever before.
Finally, going on the offense is critical to defending our gains. We need to deliver Zohran’s affordability agenda, and we cannot make the mistake of believing that Hakeem Jeffries—who could barely even muster the will to say his name—will stand with us. The Democratic establishment will not fall in line with just one mayor, no matter how successfully he governs. Jeffries is looking for any and every reason to sabotage our movement. Running a nationally visible, powerful communicator will empower us to call out when and how Jeffries is undermining our agenda. Win or lose, such a challenge is our only leverage.
As members of the strongest left-wing organization in the country, we’ve created both a blessing and an obligation for ourselves. The blessing is the knowledge that we can make history, and that our struggle is not futile. The obligation is to fight like we know that’s true—with the ambition and urgency this moment demands.
It’s time to take our politics to the national scale, and strike at the heart of our opposition. The future will be ours, but only if we fight for it.