Ten Perfect Strangers
In January 2018, ten people met in a park to canvass for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This is the story of that campaign.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Some filler words and false starts have been removed. Archival audio clips are noted where they appear.
It’s funny, the first time someone called me comrade — [Laughs] in 2019… It was like a little strange and I was like, okay, sir?
—And the other name she recommended was this 26-year-old organizer and his name was Zohran Mamdani—
With a margin that narrow, you ask yourself… how did we get so close?
—We had to shut down the office, we had to shut everything down.
Yeah the first bread pickup we did in this truck — it took days. It took DAYS.
It was, according to my car thermometer, 106 degrees outside—
—The vibe in there was amazing. I remember the chants of like DSA, DSA, like just booming chants of DSA—
—There is footage of me fanning everyone I was around… because I was in front of a billion news cameras.
And the whole place just explodes — like you’re in the clubhouse after your team has won the championship —
It’s June 21st, 2025 in Astoria, Queens. Next Tuesday, we have a primary election. I’m standing on a stranger’s porch, looking at plastic bins filled with campaign literature. I’m about to bring it to my car, to a staging location nearby where hundreds of volunteers will show up to grab materials, and fan out across the neighborhood, knocking thousands of doors.
I’d never done anything like this before in my life.
But then last winter, I got swept up in this campaign, this grassroots movement. What had started seven years earlier as a stray spark in my neighborhood of Astoria — had lit an ember, and eventually spread like wildfire throughout the five boroughs.
I’ve lived here fifteen years, now, and counting. Recently, my wife and I even bought a co-op — in a complex everyone tells you to avoid. It has its problems, but… we didn’t want to ever have to leave… and it’s what we could afford.
I spent a decade as a bartender in the neighborhood, too… At a bougie cocktail and oyster bar called Mar’s — on 34th Ave and 35th Street. They’ve got an amazing happy hour.
This is the story of how a neighborhood in Queens became a laboratory for a new kind of politics — and how it took me seven years to get off the sideline and join in.
Welcome to the People’s Republic of Astoria, episode 1: Ten Perfect Strangers.
Can you believe the numbers that you’re seeing right now?
I cannot believe these numbers right now… but I do know that every person here has worked their butt off to change the future of the Bronx and Queens, that’s what I know— [Cheering] —and that this victory belongs to every single grassroots organizer, every parent, every working mom, member of the LGBT community, every single person is responsible for this.
I’d never volunteered ever before and I jumped in feet first. I think I did something like three shifts a week for like six months. [Laughs]
That’s Shawna Morlock. She started canvassing in 2018, and would go on to knock tens of thousands of doors.
I saw that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was running for Congress in my district.
So then let’s go back even further. So you’ve never done it before. You decide you want to get involved. What did that look like?
Yeah, you know, I’m an old — I’m a geriatric millennial, so I’m right on the cusp of Gen X. And so I was very much into Facebook at the time.
Back then, Shawna was the mother of a four-year-old daughter. And with Trump in office, she was pissed.
When Trump won in 2016, it just really was like eating a hole in my psyche. It was just nonstop stress, you know, the constant doom scrolling, just everything seeming like it was on fire around me.
Shawna knew she had to do something. She just didn’t know what.
Actually, so the very first like local political act of activity that I did was the Women’s March protest in 2017—
—which was like cathartic and it felt good to, you know, yell. But after that happened, I was like… OK, well, now what?
“Now what?” It’s a question I was asking myself too, at least for a while. In 2016, after the election, I joined the Democratic Socialists of America, the Queens County Young Democrats, and for a few months, I went to all the meetings. I showed up, I listened. I tried to figure out where I fit in.
I wanted to learn how these systems operated. But it all just felt like social gatherings, networking events, mixers. I felt like I should be handing out business cards, holding a cup of lukewarm coffee. What was more talking really going to accomplish? I didn’t last six months.
So I watched it all happen. I even cheered, from the sideline. But I never actually helped. I didn’t get involved.
And so when I saw that AOC was running, and this was like pretty early — I’d say January of 2018, something like that. I went to a local canvas in Astoria Park.
Shawna was new to this whole organizing thing, but even the people running it were inexperienced.
It’s funny, at that time, it was really like a scrappy, you know, project. It was just like one of maybe 10 people at this canvas, which is a lot. But for a congressional campaign, you need to like really hit as many doors as you can. So I went out on my own from the very beginning. Yeah, I was just feet first.
Nobody believed they could win.
“We’re not going to win this campaign. Joe Crowley is just too powerful. We’re really just trying to build out infrastructure.”— Shawna Morlock
I do remember one of them saying, we’re not going to win this campaign. Joe Crowley is just like too powerful. You know, we’re just really like trying to build out infrastructure and like, it’s wonderful that you’re here and thank you. But, you know, maybe trying to set expectations low.
Western Queens had always been politically moderate-to-conservative—
Donald Trump comes from Queens, Andrew Cuomo comes from Queens, Archie Bunker comes from Queens—
—Archie Bunker territory.
Astoria’s still got some of that old New York feel — butchers and fishmongers still exist, though fewer and fewer, as time goes on. There’s a street called Steinway, filled with Egyptian grocers and hookah lounges. The sweet smell of shisha overwhelms your senses as you walk down it. And Astoria’s an old ethnic enclave, too. Mostly Greeks and Italians.
A place stuck in the past. Or at least, it used to be.
—She comes up and picked me to do the, you know, do a trial run. I’ll be the person on the doors and you be the canvasser. And I was so awkward and weird and nervous..
But yeah, I remember thinking back to what that guy was telling me — that like, we can’t win. And I was like, I don’t know. I think she might actually be able to, you know, there’s that thing with her. I was like, I think we can do it.
So Shawna started knocking on doors. A lot of doors.
I probably had the same turfs. Like, so a turf is an assignment for you, like for, you know, a number of doors to go knock on. And I probably did that same turf five times. I don’t know. [Laughs]
Shawna wasn’t just stepping outside her comfort zone. She was learning something important: sometimes, the antidote to doomscrolling is just showing up.
I did the same doors over and over. People were like, “I’m so sick of seeing your face, go away.” [Laughs.]
While Shawna was learning how to canvass, a young activist named Michael Thomas Carter was trying to make a decision: Should he hold it, fold it, or go all in?
I’m always looking for that line, that play that maybe you win with it, maybe you lose with it. It’s almost like when you’re playing poker, right? And like both the world where you win and the world where you lose exists simultaneously in that moment.
Michael was a young man in his 20s living in Brooklyn, and the Bernie campaign had just lost. He was asking himself the question: Now what?
I was initially living in New York, kind of making ends meet, auditioning as an actor also. And I started to volunteer.
I worked the last five days of the primary. My first day was the Washington Square Park rally with 20,000 people, which was wild.
But in his time with the Bernie campaign, he made new connections. And those connections would lead to opportunities.
And so when I heard that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was running, I got an email in my inbox saying, I’m running for Congress against Joe Crowley.
Michael replied to the email. He would become the second paid employee of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez primary campaign.
In 2008, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was just a 19-year-old sophomore at Boston College, her father died suddenly of a rare form of lung cancer. For the next four years, her family would find themselves lost in the Byzantine processes of the Westchester County Surrogate Court System. In interviews she gave 10 years later, during her congressional campaign, she described a system of court-appointed lawyers who were, quote, “shaving off fees.” To stay afloat, her mom worked two jobs while she bartended. In a Newsweek piece from the time, her mother Blanca described real estate people coming around, snooping outside their house, taking photos. You can almost picture their mouths watering.
AOC declined to be interviewed for this podcast, but she’s spoken publicly about these experiences.
My first interview with Alexandria was after an abolish ICE protest in Foley Square. And then I was brought on board.
My first day of work was in Alexandria’s apartment in Parkchester. She had a sign on her wall that said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for Congress. And it was like me, Vigie and her boyfriend Riley and her.
As Michael was getting involved in AOC’s campaign, I was just working at Mar’s. When I heard that a young bartender was running against a local congressman, I asked myself: How the hell would she take down Joe Crowley?
And I said, hey, if there’s anybody who we as a movement, as a democratic socialist movement, as a left movement, could take out and make a huge impact, it would be Joe Crowley.
A ten-term incumbent congressman, Joe Crowley was the embodiment of the old way of doing things in Western Queens.
Joe Crowley at the time was the head of the Queens Democratic Party machine, somebody who was widely touted as being the next speaker of the House for the Democratic Party. So a very powerful person in a lot of different ways.
Astoria was part of the Democratic machine. It was very Greek. It was very pro-police.
Ross Barkan is a journalist, novelist, contributor to the New York Times magazine, and former state senate candidate. He’s been writing about New York for decades.
The old machine bosses had machines. They had clubhouses and people they would turn out.
There are three lawyers in the Queens Democratic Party of that era, and they’re still around, actually. Sweeney, Reich and Bowles, who created a system whereby they would automatically represent people who were in foreclosure or inheritance disputes and thereby make millions of dollars from the loss of homes by working class people in Queens…
In Westchester, that same system had been bleeding fees out of the small nest egg left to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s family when her father passed away suddenly in 2008. For Alexandria, this whole story was personal. And in Queens, where she was running, Joe Crowley’s allies had it down to a science.
And the reason they were able to control that is because of the control they have over the judge selection process. Really there’s been a lot of writing about this, a lot of coverage, a lot of journalism that you can look up.
Thirty million in earnings to this point; handpicked judges who then assigned cases. She would run against the man who controlled it. According to reporting by Chris Bragg from January 2025 in New York Focus, the system is still alive and well today. Sweeney, Reich and Bowles are still involved in the judicial selection process. They pick the judges who then go on to assign them lucrative cases in surrogate court.
Crowley, through his position in Congress, through the fact that he was a very good inside operator, the fact that he had a lot of influence in the city council. His predecessor had helped pick council speakers as well. I mean you had real patronage operations. The Queens Democratic Party had a patronage operation through the court system, somewhat, and through city hall as well, through the city council. But it was not nearly as extensive as kind of the old line patronage operations were.
The machine was not really a machine anymore. There was very little political organizing the Democratic Party in Queens did by the 2010s. But he wielded a lot of soft power.
Crowley had stopped organizing his district. But in his defense, who wouldn’t have? It had been 14 years since he’d even had a primary challenge. He’d won ten elections in a row by more than double digits. His predecessor had handed him his seat.
And he didn’t live in the district! He lived in Virginia, he lived in a very nice house in Virginia — which was known!! I mean, AOC very wisely made an issue in the race — and in her great ad, still to this day, maybe the best political ad ever created…
She made that point very plain about how Joe Crowley did not breathe the air and drink the water we do.
And that was very compelling.
“That election was about a progressive candidate versus a centrist. But really, it was also about someone who was organizing the district against someone who wasn’t.”— Ross Barkan
And that election, I mean, it was about progressive, you know, was about a progressive candidate versus a centrist and the defeat of the center by the left. But really, it was also about someone who was organizing the district against someone who wasn’t.
By the time primary day rolled around, AOC’s army of volunteers had knocked on 120,000 doors in her district, spanning the blocks in Northwest Queens. Crowley’s campaign stuck to the old method, tried and true. Blanket the airwaves with TV ads, hit radio, get glossy mailers in every mailbox.
He’d raised over 3 million dollars, most of it from corporate PACs and financial firms. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had only raised 800,000, mostly from small donors, people like me.
The machine still had the money. It still had the endorsements. What it didn’t have…?
And so, yeah… just hit hit hit doors in my area. It works. We really crushed it in Queens.
When there’s a real ideology, you get a level of commitment money can’t buy.
So how do ten people in a park beat the ten-term incumbent congressman with $3 million in the bank, who has all the union endorsements, all the political endorsements — who controls the whole local political machine?
The answer turns out to be simpler than anyone could have expected: You just show up.
Oh… also, it really helps if your opponent doesn’t.
—Veteran New York City Democratic congressman Joe Crowley has gone to primary defeat tonight. After he sent a stand-in to represent him at a recent debate, the NY Times editorial board wrote, “If you want to be speaker, don’t take voters for granted.”
The establishment had gotten lazy.
…I do know that every single person here has worked their butts off to change the future of the Bronx and Queens— [Cheering] —That’s what I know. That’s what I do know.
I’m not the best, you know, educated, well-read socialist, you know, not doing the book clubs. I’m more of just like a person who arrived to this place because I deeply care about my neighbors and wanting to take care of everyone, no matter who they are, where they live.
There’s lots of people that are going up and down here. And I think it really gives you the opening to accept that the world can be better — and that we really have a position, and like, we have a job to do to try to make it better. You can’t just wait for other people to do it for you. And it feels good — once you win that first campaign, right?
And it’s like, we can do this over and over and over. It’s not just one shot or two shots. And it’s like building up a culture of service.
In 2024, Donald Trump was re-elected president and a whole new generation of activists were sitting at bars, doomscrolling on their phones. One of them was a 24-year-old named Magdalena who was asking herself a familiar question. Now what?
Presidential election night — watch party was at Katch.
And then someone came in who was about to change Magdalena’s life.
Zohran actually came in to the watch party that night. It was actually very nice. Because it’s like very obvious — like, no, here is the hope coming through the door.
For Magdalena, that question — “now what?” — it already had its answer.
This is what we need to focus on. We are going to elect this man. This man is going to become our next mayor.
Much like Shawna seven years before, Magdalena would be at Zohran’s first campaign canvass.
I set out being like, I want to canvass once a week. And especially towards like that final month, it ended up being more like three, four days a week, honestly.
The politics, the policies, the doom scrolling, the rage. Those might have been the impetus for this work at first. But for Shawna and Magdalena and thousands like them, that’s not what kept them coming back.
Oh, I’m like creating real change, but also like, I love doing this with these people.
I’m still to this day friends with a lot of people that I met through that race. Even people that aren’t even necessarily like doing electoral organizing any longer. Largely a lot of the people I hang out with and like a lot of my social circle is people who do this kind of work.
They’re coming back for one another: for the group photos, the post-canvas socials. The new friendships they’re making along the way.
You know, we’re very intentionally trying to make DSA a home for people — not just for politics, but just as a communal space for people who deeply care about society and taking care of your neighbors and trying to rebuild those places that we’ve lost.
The post-canvas social is so crucial to building a canvas. That’s where the bonds form. That’s where people want to come back and canvas with you again the next week.
It’s also a weird thing as an adult to meet people and to make literally hundreds of genuine camaraderie and affection for hundreds of people that you’ve met throughout the years.
But also it helps people from just, honestly, staying on their couch. Because every volunteer thing, you’re fighting the couch.
“I’m seeing the same people year after year after year after year with our electoral campaign.”— Shawna Morlock
You know, usually people substitute this with their work. You know, you make your work friends and then you go to another job and like, you probably don’t keep in touch with those people anymore. But I’m seeing the same people year after year after year after year with our electoral campaign.
I don’t remember if I was working at Mar’s the night that AOC won, but it wouldn’t have made a difference. Places like that exist as a refuge from politics. It’s a place to sip cocktails and forget about real life.
Shawna Morlock had knocked on doors three nights a week for six months with a four-year-old child at home. Michael Thomas Carter had risked his career on a 10% chance. Ten people in a park had transformed into hundreds and then thousands. And a 29-year-old bartender had just taken down a 10-term congressman — and won.
And me? Joined a few organizations, quit them the moment it seemed pointless. I tried to make a difference, but… decided it was a waste of time. So I deleted Twitter, stopped reading the news. It was comforting, to not watch the world fall apart.
And I told myself they didn’t really need me — not here, in the People’s Republic.
I could take comfort in the fact that I was happy. I really was. I really am. My wife has a great job. I’ve got great family, great friends. I get to spend my days — in the greatest city in the world.
But what I didn’t have? Was an answer — to a simple question that Shawna and Magdalena and Michael had all figured out.
Now what?
That’s because for me, I’d stopped asking completely.
She gave me two names. One seemed like he couldn’t do it or didn’t want to do it. The other person was this 26-year-old organizer they hired and his name was Zohran Mamdani.
I mean, billionaires don’t lose, right? Trillion dollar corporations don’t lose. Real estate developers in New York City don’t lose. And when they lost, they were ****ing pissed.
The People’s Republic of Astoria is written, narrated, and produced by Tim Donovan. If you’re enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. For show notes, more information, and episode transcripts, visit our website at peoplesrepublicpod.com. Music by Pyrosion.
Special thanks to my wife, Alice, for all of her great ideas, her constant advice, her endless support. Without her, none of this is possible. Thanks to Daisy Larom and Sarah Noe. Thanks to Shawna Morlock, Michael Thomas Carter, Magdalena Moranda, Ross Barkan, and all the other guests.
See you next time in the People’s Republic.
You gotta be ready!
Chapter 02: Twenty Years Apart
Read Transcript →Written, narrated, and produced by Tim Donovan.
Music by Pyrosion. Full Creative Commons licenses available at peoplesrepublicpod.com.
Special thanks to Daisy Larom and Sarah Noe. To Alice, for her endless support. And to Michael Thomas Carter, Shawna Morlock, Magdalena Moranda, and Ross Barkan.