Three Million Doors
The night Zohran Mamdani won, a hundred thousand neighbors had knocked three million doors. This is how the movement got there — and how I finally stopped watching from the sideline.
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.
What is upppp?!
Hey, how you doing?
Sorry, I was trying to come as fast as I could
Don’t worry about it.
Yeah, I want to get something. You said you got the affogato, right?
I did. It was quite good
My name is Asad Dandia. I am a public historian, a tour guide, and a university lecturer.
On my tour that I was doing earlier today, one of the undergrads was like, How does it feel that you helped Mamdani become the mayor?
And I told him, I still haven’t processed it, like it doesn’t feel like it’s real. Feels like a dream, you know, a fever dream. And maybe it’ll hit me soon, right, but right now it just… I haven’t even sat down in the process it yet, man. And you know this city in particular… moves so damn fast that sometimes you can’t even process things. You just have to go with it, man.
Welcome to “The People’s Republic of Astoria.” This is Episode 06: “Three Million Doors.”
It’s also the series finale.
I want you, I want you as a listener to picture yourself as an 18 or 19 year old community college student who spends your weekend doing charity or mutual aid work. Your weekends are literally spent delivering rice and beans to poor families all across the New York City area with your homies. And one of those homies comes out to confess that they were a police agent sent to surveil you, your community, your family, and your social circle.
What goes through your mind? Who are you going to call? You can’t call the police, they’re the perpetrators. You’re a child of immigrants, you can’t tell your parents, your parents are gonna panic. Our parents would panic if we came home with a “B” on our report card. Imagine telling your parents, like, ‘Mom, I was spied on.’ (Laughs).
So the year is late 2011, early 2012, and the idea was very, very, very simple.
A bunch of us, and we’re all like late teenagers, 18, 19 years old, some of us are even younger, 15 or 16, all of us pooling together 10 bucks each for our allowances or internships. And every Friday, we go to Costco and buy cereal and rice and mostly non-perishable stuff. And we deliver them to people that we knew needed help.
One young man sent me a DM on Facebook in March of 2012 saying he wants to get involved with our charity work.
His name was Shamiur Rahman. And what Asad didn’t know at the time was that he was an undercover informant for the NYPD.
This is back when young people are using Facebook, right? This is pre-TikTok.
And I happily invited him to my neighborhood and to my friends group. And we had halal Chinese food together, and I introduced him to all my friends.
And he stayed with, you know, me and my friends for eight or nine months until at some point he confesses on facebook that he was an informant from the NYPD sent to spy on me and my community.
Shamiur Rahman was a part of the NYPD’s so-called “mosque crawlers,” program. He’d been trained on “create and capture” techniques, where informants were instructed to, quote, “create” conversations about politically radical topics with unsuspecting Muslims, and then, “capture” the exchanges in reports back to the cops.
And we were all completely shaken by it. Our entire community was rattled.
You don’t know who to speak to about these things.
You have no recourse.
And so I didn’t know what to do!
Word gets out to the press. Press puts out some articles on it.
Just a few weeks later, Asad got a phone call from the American Civil Liberties Union.
And I told them my story and at the end of it they were like, ‘we’re working on a class action lawsuit to sue the NYPD for what they did to you and our community and we want you to be a plaintiff.’
This was entirely new territory for Asad.
In my mind, I’m like, what? Like, what in the world? Just bear in mind, look, I had never met an attorney in my life up until that point, or at least not a civil rights attorney, right? All the adults I knew were like bodega guys or construction workers or quintessential blue collar New York jobs.
But Asad decided to sign on anyway.
So our lawsuit was called Raza versus City of New York.
And just to be clear for our listeners, we did not sue for money. We sued for policy change. We did the noble thing. If we sued for money, I probably wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be in the Bahamas vacationing. (Laughs)
When Asad Dandia was approached by the ACLU about joining their lawsuit as a named co-plaintiff, he had a choice: to fight back against his city’s own police force, or to let the situation pass him by…
Let others step up and do the work.
Fighting the NYPD would come with real consequences.
So they started to go after my friends. And at the time I had an undocumented friend who was basically abducted or arrested from his home, taken to a detention center. And they quite literally tried to deport him. They asked about me and I feel like they really really shook him up.
It’s three weeks later and he tells me about his experience, and he makes a request of me after that, he says, you know, we might have to part ways. And I’m wondering why. And basically it’s because he’s worried they might come after him again because of his affiliation with me. It wasn’t personal, but he had to protect his family.
I said, of course, like, I’m not going to coming between you and your family,
Just a week after the lawsuit was announced, Asad, his mother and sister were getting off a plane at JFK airport, headed back from a short pilgrimage to Mecca. Federal agents were waiting for them there.
Yeah my mom was the bravest person in that room because she demanded a phone call to call my dad who was outside. So my dad didn’t make the trip with us.
She also demanded that she be present when they go through our luggage. And I remember telling her to like relax and calm down. And she was like, no, you don’t know what they can do. They can plant a bomb in there and say that we did it, right? I need to be there as I go through our luggage. And a really brave thing for her to do and her request was granted. We got to watch them go through our luggage to make sure they’re like planting anything in there.
In March of 2017, the City of New York and the ACLU agreed to settle the lawsuit, enacting a number of structural reforms to the way NYPD operates.
One of the policy changes we got was the elimination of the radicalization report. This was a report that basically claimed to identify signs of radicalization among Muslims. And among those signs were like wearing a hijab, growing out your beard, going sober, discussing politics, right? You know, everyday facets of people’s lives, right, were deemed suspect.
And that’s really the story of how I changed New York City policy in my early 20s before I got my first full-time job.
Seven years later, in 2024, Asad would join the inner circle of advisors for a young mayoral candidate. A 32-year-old muslim democratic socialist named zohran mamdani.
Hi everyone! Welcome to the beautiful People’s Republic of Astoria! (Cheering)
In the summer of 2025, after Andrew Cuomo lost to Mamdani in New York’s democratic primary for mayor, the former three-term governor of New York announced his intention to run in the general election as an independent. With Curtis Sliwa on the Republican line, it would be a three-way race for the mayor’s office.
I’m Magdalena, I’m one of your field leads today—
In June, Zohran Mamdani had shocked the world with his upset victory. And in a matter of weeks, I’d set out to document the experience — to chronicle the short history of the movement that made this moment possible.
Now, with August arriving in New York, the general election season was finally gearing up.
Welcome, I’m so happy that so many of you it’s your first time canvasing ever. This makes me so happy, this is so many people.
Who’s first time is it, raise your hand?
Nice
Magdalena Moranda was running the campaign’s first canvas in Astoria. There were at least sixty people there that day to volunteer.
We call it “The People’s Republic of Astoria” for a reason. We’re repped by a socialist at every level of government.
I wanted to introduce our amazing city councilmember, Tiffany Caban.
What’s up y’all?
It’s the general election, we’re riding high, cuz our boy Zohran won the primary…
After losing a heartbreaking race to become Queens District Attorney by just 55 votes, Caban knew a thing or two about what it felt like to come up short in an election. She didn’t plan to let history repeat itself.
We are not — y’all seen those track videos, where like, the runner is beating the crowd and then, before they get to the finish line, they start celebrating and some motherf***er comes up behind them and — (laughs) we’re not letting that happen. All right? Eyes on the prize. We do not win until we cross that general election finish line… and the reason that we don’t take our foot of the gas is also this… we’re not just trying to win. We’re trying to win with a mandate—
So we’re gonna go hard on the streets, at the door, talking to your neighbors — every chance you get.
As summer came to a close in 2025, the Zohran Mamdani phenomenon was taking New York City by storm.
Let’s turn our attention back to New York right now. And if you don’t know the name Zohran Mamdani, you soon will—
Zohran Mamdani/Socialist Zohran Mamdani
As the general election approached, most of the people I’d met on Magdalena’s Thursday canvases in Astoria had graduated to becoming field leads themselves. Now they were running canvases across Queens and Brooklyn.
I didn’t see much of them that autumn, as I skipped week after week of canvasses to work on this podcast instead.
In no time, it’s Sunday, November 2nd, just two days before New York City’s mayoral election. At this point, I’m fully focused on producing Chapter 03, “Fifty-Five Votes.”
So picture it —
I’m at my cluttered desk, at home, alone, listening to Shawna Morlock and Luke Hayes talk about their regrets—
You know, you just go through so many things you should have done.
I’ve been working on this episode all day. All week, really.
Cutting and cleaning tape, I’m slowly constructing the episode around their words. And I keep hearing them talk about how many other doors they wish they’d knocked. How close they almost came.
I think every person was like, ‘if I’d just done four more shifts’—
Part of you is just like… how did this… how did we get so close?
And I start wondering… why the hell am I still sitting on the sidelines?
So I delay the third episode.
Quick run-through of door knocking—
That’s Kyle Huey, an Astoria Field Lead for the Zohran Mamdani campaign.
You will see a map. You are the blue dot. The houses you are going to are the grey dots. On each house you will see a number. That’s how many people are in that household. Sometimes a household could be 40 people because it’s a big building. Each person should have an apartment number. Some of them don’t. If you can’t find it, mark ‘Not Home,’ move on—
He was running the canvas in my neighborhood two days before the general election.
If you can, no more than 5 minutes at the door. We’re not here to have 15 minute debates, we’re here to get out the vote.
And I have a request. Would any of you be willing to be recorded? Knocking on doors, talking with people. I mean, no pressure if you don’t want to, I’m here to knock doors… but I was hoping…
Anyone want to? Going once, going twice— Yeah? Yeah?
Awesome.
Thank you so much. Just made my day.
Of course, of course.
Wait so where we going?
Oh sorry, just keep going all the way down 37th and then do a loop back up here?
Yeah I think so right? Yeah I think that’s easy.
Some of the apt numbers in Astoria can get a little crazy, so you have to do a little detective work to figure out which building, which stairwell is which one.
What’s the first number?
The first one is… 23-11—
This is us!
Yeah, let’s do it.
When you’re knocking on a door, I recommend no cop knocks. (Laughs.) People don’t want to answer the door to that. So what I do, I do “bump bump-bump-bump…”
Hello?
Hi, we’re volunteers with the zohran mamdani campaign, you have a moment to talk?
Main two questions, I’m just gonna go back over it again: will you pledge to vote for Zohran Mamdani?
Hello!
How’s it going?
Hello, I’m definitely already voting for Zohran.
Have you already voted?
No, I’m going to go, I think tomorrow..
Monday there’s no early voting, so just so you know—
Ok, sweet
And do you have — a plan to vote, yes!
“And what is your plan…”
Yes those are the two things, great.
The lines are already crazy, just so you’re warned
Awesome, so you have a plan…
Yes
You know where you vote?
Yes
Excellent.
Just a year earlier, in 2024, Asad was getting pulled into the Zohran campaign, too.
Zohran and I both knew of each other for a very long time, but we hadn’t yet sat down one of one between the two of us until August of 2024.
Do you… do you remember what the purpose of the conversation was?
Yeah, so the purpose of my conversation with Zohran that day was explicitly about his ambitions to run for the mayor of New York City.
You know, we were both familiar with each other and what we were doing, but we hadn’t really just chopped it up one on one. And that’s very common in New York. You may know of somebody, you may have heard of them, but you haven’t really just sat down for coffee or for bread.
And so we had officially and formally sat down to chat in August of 2024.
He reached out to me because a lot of my organizing work has centered around Muslim, Arab South Asian communities of New York City.
Zohran wanted to get my feedback and my insight on like ‘can you break it down for me?’ right? Like ‘who should I know? Who should I talk to? What should I know? What should my approach be?’
You know, in terms of messaging and so on and so forth. And so I can’t recall how long we were sitting. But it was quite a long conversation.
And after our conversation he told me that he might be in touch with me to talk about the campaign and less than two weeks or at least two weeks afterwards, he calls me to basically join this kitchen cabinet of his.
So you have something called a kitchen cabinet on campaigns, which is basically like your inner circle of your inner circle.
—It’s this informal kind of advisory board or committee, whatever term you want to use, of people who just can offer feedback to the man himself, but also to the rest of the team.
And I immediately said yes, I said ‘put me in, coach.’
And we took it from there.
And then Zohran announces that he’s running for mayor.
On Tuesday, November 4th, 2025, I spent the whole day volunteering for the Mamdani campaign, in the Ditmars neighborhood of Astoria. I got started early.
It’s getting people out to vote, it’s getting people excited for it, it’s joyous, we are a joyous campaign. I know it’s early but it’s early for them too, but they’re headed to work so we wanna try to catch them now.
Shawna Morlock was there, too. She’d been roped into helping out that day as a Field Lead.
Not that she was complaining.
Back at Katya’s house, it was like, the vibes were amazing.
Amazing. (Laughs.)
Thank you all for being here. This is an incredibly joyous occasion.
We’ve had press and media from France, Africa, from Japan,
—India!
From India—
—Italy!
—We’ve had volunteers from D.C., from California, from all over the place. And you all are making this happen, and we appreciate you being here—
I was there when he didn’t know what his three main policy planks were gonna be.
I sat in that room with, I want to say, roughly 10 other people.
Make sure you grab a button if you haven’t had one already and put that on… yeah, let’s do it. Let’s go take a photo.
…and the only two policy planks that they had at that point were the rent freeze and the fast and free busses.
“Freeze the—!”
“Make buses fast and—!”
“Support universal—!”
And I raised my hand, and I said, ‘childcare.’
You know, New York is bleeding out families at an exponential rate. And it’s something that I think is crucial for us to emphasize because cities need families. Cities need kids, children. You know, a city is a multi-generational project.
My younger sister, she got married, moved out, she has kids, but she can’t like raise them here, you know what I’m saying? Like, and she’s pretty, she’s doing pretty well for herself.
Back at Katya’s house, everyone was having a good time.
You know, snacks were flowing, people were chilling…
We are in a home right now, it is Katya’s home. Just to give you an example, Katya has known Zohran for years, so…. We are in the presence of someone who’s been here since the very beginning, so thank you for having us…
A local Greek-American woman who’s lived in the neighborhood since the mid 1980s, Katya is a pillar of Astoria’s Democratic Socialist movement. On election day, her house was fully transformed into a staging location for the campaign.
Make sure you grab a button if you haven’t had you already and put that on the way out… if you absolutely…
Hundreds of people passed through Katya’s home that day, to help the campaign win this general election contest.
Everyone was so worn out, and you could feel the exhaustion, but like, it was like those we didn’t know that we were gonna win.
For new volunteers like me, this day was the culmination of ten months of effort — something invigorating and new.
But for more experienced volunteers like Shawna, it was just one more election in a fight that never ends, where the movement — and an individual’s responsibilities within it — never really stop pushing forward.
You know, but in that moment, there was just this… the beauty of coming together, and the solidarity that everyone felt was just stunning. I was just like, I cannot believe that. And it was a kids—
—oh yeah, Mark’s kids—
Look at the chat. You have the group chat?
Yeah yeah yeah.
Look at the chat.
Okay—
I started a, uh, a chant. Wait. Yeah, I started a “Tax the Rich” chant, and another one!
Nice!
—it was just like, sincerely, like the most perfect, like, encapsulation.
Pardon me folks! Pardon me. Right above your head, right above your head real quick I’m just gonna put one more of those down…
Thank you so much, Katya. As always.
I’m gonna put this here?
It was really fantastic.
Were you there for the singing?
Yes! At 6 o’clock. I’ve got video of it.
They say with organizing, a choir can hold a note for infinity, because if one person takes a breath, the other people are holding the note.
I was, like, quite literally crying, you know, like, I remember just like, (fake sobs) like, choking up, and like, the solidarity. Like, it was just like, such a beautiful moment.
The volunteers at Katya’s house are paired off for one final canvass. I seek out Shawna, specifically, and ask if she’d be willing to go with me for the last shift of the campaign.
Does everyone have lit & folders? Or no?
No folders
Ok hold on, everyone stay here
I don’t like the folders—
I don’t like folders.
We have folders here!
We’ve got em, we’ve got em!
Sorry, sorry.
You have folders?
Everyone already got lit, we just didn’t distribute folders—
Oh, okay perfect
Getting to do that last shift together—
…maybe I can just assign myself
We can just go. (Laughs) I kinda love that. No, you’re gonna f*** it all up…
Well, you just do the unassigned first. You know there’s like a thing…
I don’t know, I never used the backend of that.
Oh! You know what?
What?
I told them I would help break down.
Ok.
It shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes. You wanna do that and we can knock together after that? Is that okay?
Yeah yeah yeah, yeah! Yeah, I’ll do anything, I don’t care.
Actually, so why don’t you and I do that—
Just go do that, and then we’ll just make our own afterward. Yeah yeah yeah, cool.
We try to help Katya clean up her house — she basically refuses us, pushing us out onto the sidewalk, telling us to go knock more doors.
Eventually, we do head out.
The turf we take happens to be my own building: I get to check myself off as having voted.
And with Shawna trailing behind me, we climb my staircase.
I’ve knocked that unit a few times, but not with someone who lives there, which is actually much more convenient, by the way. Thank you very much.
It was a lot easier to get in. (Laughs.)
And you’re like, ‘oh, I’m your neighbor!’ Like, that is, you know, the golden ticket to talking to people.
One of the first doors we knock is a young guy. He tells us that he plans to vote for Mamdani, and we have to ask him… when?! I mean, the polls close in less than three hours.
And then we watch from the hallway as he puts on his shoes.
As the minutes rush by, we hurry through our turf, trying to finish up early. Shawna has a date at the Bier Garden; while the rest of the city is worrying about a mayoral election tonight, DSA is already looking forward to the next fight. With Zohran the presumptive mayor, there will be a special election in Astoria to replace him in the State Assembly.
And it will happen fast.
Shawna and the DSA? They’re ready.
As 9 pm approaches, we arrive at the Bier Garden. Shawna has special permission to skip the line and get inside — she’s on the list, there to photograph Diana Moreno, DSA’s State Assembly candidate who’s being introduced to the crowd before the poll results even come in.
But even convincing her to run for office had been something of a struggle for Shawna.
I had reached out to Diana like no one was asking me to do it. I was just like, ‘Hey, she’s amazing. We should actually be considering her.’ And so I’d asked her,. She said no a few times.
I was on vacation, actually visiting some family in Minnesota, and she ends up calling me up, and so she’s like, ‘I, you know, I’ve been thinking about it. It’s been, like, on my mind. I talked to my family, and I think I’m gonna run.’
Now, Diana will give a stump speech in front of hundreds of her neighbors, to introduce herself.
As Shawna approaches the doormen to be let inside, we hug goodbye, and I pull stickers promoting the podcast out of my bag.
Out on the street, it is a madhouse.
This time, the press has fully descended upon the People’s Republic. TV news cameras and crews crowd the sidewalk. And the line to get into the Bier Garden is hundreds long, stretching down and around 24th Avenue, east towards 31st Street.
It doesn’t take long to give away hundreds of my stickers.
Soon, my bag is empty.
Now, it’s a little after 9 pm and the polls have closed.
What am I gonna do next?
It’s strange to be alone. On primary night, I’d been surrounded by people I knew, people I cared about. A whole community, working for a common cause. But this time, my wife is out of the city, and I haven’t seen the regular volunteers I’d gotten to know from March through June. So I head to a bar nearby to watch the results come in, alone.
Almost immediately, I find a small group of Zohran supporters standing on the sidewalk, lost.
I tell them I’m headed to a place nearby showing the election coverage, and they tag along. Soon, we’re picking up other stray Zohran supporters on the way.
By the time we get to the bar, I feel like the pied piper of the Mamdani campaign, wearing my orange Zorhan bandana around my forehead, my little crew of fans and volunteers in tow.
We get inside and find a group of supporters already there.
Now it’s a party.
On the TVs, the numbers start coming in, and they’re looking good from the start.
Later that night, Zohran Mamdani is declared the winner.
The Democratic Socialist, Zohran Mamdani is the projected winner, the mayor-elect of New York City, the first Muslim to hold that position.
Even in that moment, it didn’t feel like an ending.
Thank you, my friends.
Maybe the end of the beginning.
Tonight you have delivered a mandate for change. (Cheering.)
We will fight for you, because we are you.
Or, as we say on Steinway, ana minkum wa alaikum.
Zohran would go on to capture more than 50% of the vote in the three-way contest. Over the course of ten short months, his army of volunteers had become a hundred thousand strong. Collectively, we knocked over three million doors.
We’d taken a political revolution from a small corner of northwest Queens and brought it citywide.
In 2025, I got to be a part of something built by my neighbors, and powered by my community… something made by people like myself who were further along in their journeys. Who’d signed up earlier, or just committed more fully… and with less fear.
But what comes next? See, that’s harder to say… because DSA can’t risk devolving into a clique where friends elect one another to public office… and then nothing changes. It can’t be a social club masquerading as a movement.
But this victory wasn’t DSA’s alone, and the engine that drove it to victory wasn’t built in 2024, when Zohran decided to run for office. It wasn’t built in 2018, when Shawna Morlock met ten perfect strangers in Astoria Park to attempt the impossible.
See, a movement is always part of a longer story.
For us, the formative moment, as is the case for so many Muslims, was 9-11.
I was in the fourth grade. I was in New York. I was in Brooklyn.
That was such a defining kind of… turning point in so many of our lives. Because these were our neighbors, right, who were killed in these tragic attacks. And so many of us wanted to mourn. But we were never given a chance to mourn because our community was collectively blamed for the attacks, right?
Cuz even if you don’t care about politics, politics cares about you.
I don’t know how long I’ve been asking myself “now what?” without having an answer. For the last eight months, for sure. Really, probably more like the last eight years.
I used to tell myself that I got into volunteering because I finally had the energy and the free time.
But I could have started earlier.
For seven years, I chose not to get involved.
And back then, for me, it was easy to stay on the sideline — I wasn’t personally affected by ICE raids or abortion bans, and I wasn’t part of the community of people who were already doing the work.
So I felt no real pressure to join the fight.
I want you to understand that… my story was 10 years ago, right? So I want us to understand that history is not just something that happened back then. History is something that is being remade every single day by us, and we have the agency to decide what direction history goes in. And we do it collectively.
I mean, here we are today with Zohran in city hall and — a new development for you — his chief counsel is a man named Ramzi Qasim. He was my lawyer when I sued the NYPD.
Ramzi and I were standing in front of One Police Plaza in June of 2013, the NYPD headquarters, to announce the launch of a lawsuit against New York City government and specifically the police department for surveilling the Muslim community.
And now he sits in City Hall every single day with his boss, the Muslim mayor of New York in 2026.
So from suing the government to being in the government, it’s all come full circle.
When I set out to make this podcast, I didn’t realize that I was reaching for another form of avoidance; a way to keep this movement at arm’s length. But in the process of making it, I learned a lot about the ways that other people confront their alienation, and overcome their fear.
You know, you could hunker down and let it pass you by… or you could… step up, and fight for something new—
Cuz every volunteer thing, you’re fighting… you’re fighting the couch—
To shut your mouth and just pack bread or something… is a good way to remember the things that people really need—
—you chase that feeling… you chase that same feeling forever.
How you doin?
I’m good. I’m great. How you doing?
It’s been a… it’s been a year.
It sure has.
What’s your role, what’s your position, what’s your official…? Lay it out for me.
So, I ran for the position of Queens borough rep to NYC DSA’s electoral working group. Felt very important this year.
You need leaders, you need organizations.
Being angry is cathartic, but the best catharsis is winning.
There’s the line, thank you
Yelling and, you know, fist-raised is fantastic, and it should be done, but at the end of the day, sitting down for that 8 pm meeting on a tuesday night also needs to be done, and actually is important to like organize the organizers. and I’m incredibly grateful for the folks that are very good at that.
And I’m, yeah, I’m muddling through all of it.
Ah door knockers, hi. Who has never knocked doors for the campaign yet? Nice. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, nice. Amazing.
What I recommend is looking at your first one, ringing it. If they don’t buzz you in, look at your next one on your list—
Ok, who do we got?
We also need three—
It’s never that easy.
The first person who opens the door, you will forget your own name. The first door that opens, I’m always like ‘ahhh-blah-blah,’ I stumble over my words. It happens.
Hello!
Oh my god, hi! Awesome!
Uh, Sorry…
No you’re fine.
Um, so you’ve already voted as well, is that right?
Once you get inside, then you can be knocking on doors. But to get into the building, ring down your list. But do it slowly enough so that the person who buzzes you in is the first apartment you go to.
Hi there!
How’s it going?
Hi, how are you?
I’m good, thanks! My name is Emily, this is Tim, we’re volunteering for Zohran’s campaign for mayor.
I already go to vote.
You did!
Yeah
Great
It’s okay
Ok great, so you’ve already voted, would you mind me asking who you voted for?
Did you vote for Zohran?
Yeah
Beautiful
Great
He’s our neighbor!
Yeah, exactly.
Our whole goal here is to turn out our people.
Hi!
Hello!
How’s it going?
How’s it going.
We already voted
Everybody in the house?
Yeah we voted.
If it’s a tall building, I recommend starting at the top and working your way down—
Cool!
That was a great building, holy crap, it’s never like that!
Oh! Tim?!
Yo have you voted yet?
No I can’t vote
Oh you can’t vote? Here take a sticker
Can you just
So good to see you, Manny
So good to see you, I’m moving out, actually
Oh you’re the one… that’s so funny
Yeah we’re knocking on doors for Zohran
So you’re campaigning
Yeah we’re volunteers
Oh great, If I could I’d vote. How are you?
Well we’re gonna miss you in Astoria. Good luck in Harlem! That’s so crazy. I love this neighborhood.
He used to work for me when I managed a bar in a previous life.
Astoria’s a special place, and honestly, you probably can’t take this model elsewhere and expect a similar result.
But still, you can try.
Because when they started this here in 2018, it seemed impossible, too. But then my neighbors got busy. And eventually, there were a hundred thousand of us, spread out, knocking three million doors.
With every staircase, we climbed towards something new.
I can’t tell you if we’ll keep winning — or guarantee that the candidates we do elect will make this city a better place.
But I know that we’ll keep climbing.
The People’s Republic of Astoria is written, narrated, and produced by Tim Donovan. Music by Pyrosion.
This project could not have happened without the people in my life who supported me along the way. My wife Alice, primarily, who humored me as this project stretched from November of 2025 all the way into June of 2026. And this never could have happened without Daisy Larom, the original co-creator, who gave me the courage to move forward at the very beginning, even as she stepped back. I’d also like to give special thanks to Sarah Noe, who project managed during the early part, where I was still learning to juggle all the various roles and responsibilities.
Thanks to Mark Hassenfratz for peer-pressuring me into coming to a bread rescue with the Astoria Food Pantry in early 2025. And thanks to Nick and John — and the whole crew at Diamond Dogs — for hosting my Launch party. Thanks to Julie Shapiro for her advice, and thanks to Emily, Katya, Shashank, Katie, Mike, Aatif, Mark, Kyle Huey, Caitlin Boas, and all the other members of Queens DSA for their time and insight.
And of course, thanks to my guests, including those whose voices never made it into an episode.
Hiii, my name is Magdalena Moranda, I use she-her pronouns. My favorite astoria food — okay, King of Falafel, always. Classic falafel sandwich. Actually, I’m vegan so I can’t eat any of the food at Little Flower cafe, but the iced pink tea with oatmilk at Little Flower is one of my favorite drinks in Astoria.
I’m Ross Barkan. The Bier Garden is very nice.
(Laughs) So my name is Jimmy Van Bramer. And my favorite Astoria food…? You know, I’m gonna say pizza from Gaudio’s on 30th Avenue, because when we were young that’s where we went all the time.
Ooh, my name is Helen Ho, and my favorite food in Astoria… I have to go with the place I eat at the most often, which is Los Portales, a mexican restaurant on Broadway.
Ooh. Oh wow. Luke Hayes… favorite food, that’s tough, there’s a lot of good options. Uhhhh. (Laughs) Huh. I’m partial to momos, just because I ate of lot of those on Caban’s campaign. But uh, it’s hard to single out just one.
My name is Asad Dandia. Favorite restaurant in Astoria. On Steinway Street. Ah, there are so many options. Okay, at risk… I will say… and they’re all great. I will say I’ve been a sucker for Duzan for a long time.
Oh my god. That’s a… divisive question amongst my friend group. Ok, so… my name is John Surico. My favorite food in Astoria. Whoooh. Okay, the place that immediately always comes to mind for me in Abu-Qir on Steinway, which is an egyptian seafood place. Now that our assemblymember’s food options have really made the rounds, the lines at Abu-Qir have grown much longer. But at the same time, it’s a fantastic restaurant, I can see why Zohran likes it so much.
My name is Sofya Aptekar and, uhhh, so much to choose from. But I would say, the King of Falafel is a special place… and as a vegetarian, I just love their falafel.
Michael Lange, L-A-N-G-E. My favorite food in Astoria? Baharia… Estiatorio…? On Broadway…? Yup, it’s been a minute, it’s been a minute.
My name is Eric Thor, E-R-I-C, T-H-O-R.
Yeah, my name is Benham Jones. Like ben-ham. (Whispers) My favorite food… in Astoria. (Full voice) I love value, the budget Vietnamese… Lotus One! 31st Avenue. There are fancier options, but those are reliably tasty and good-natured people
My name is Michael Thomas Carter. I’ll go with Queens generally — I love the food in Flushing, Chinatown.
Oh my gosh… okay. My name is Shawna Morlock, I use she-her pronouns… I’m trying to think where we eat the most at. I mean we do Kylcades now, now that they’ve moved closer… Monday afternoons for lunch at Kylcades for lunch is like, the best thing to do.
I also must acknowledge an element of this story that was not addressed: I was unable to secure an interview with any opposition voices. As a direct consequence, this story is inherently one-sided. Insofar as it’s the story of a group of people — their movement, what they built — I’ve made my peace with that editorial choice. But it’s a limitation that deserves acknowledgment.
So… if I did my job over the course of this series, you might be wondering how you can get involved. Check out the website, peoplesrepublicpod.com. I’ve got a page right at the top that points to a bunch of local races and causes you can plug into today.
Thanks again for listening. And see you around “The People’s Republic of Astoria.”
Written, narrated, and produced by Tim Donovan.
Music by Pyrosion. Full Creative Commons licenses available at peoplesrepublicpod.com.
Special thanks to Alice; to Daisy Larom, the original co-creator; and to Sarah Noe. Thanks to Mark Hassenfratz, to Nick, John, and the crew at Diamond Dogs, to Julie Shapiro, and to Emily, Katya, Shashank, Katie, Mike, Aatif, Mark, Kyle Huey, Caitlin Boas, and all the other members of Queens DSA. And to every guest whose voice appears in the series.