Ten Perfect Strangers

In winter of 2017, Shawna Morlock was doomscrolling after Trump’s election. She’d gone to the Women’s March and it felt cathartic, but it left her asking: “Now what?” She heard that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was running in her district. She’d never volunteered in her life. But then she met the candidate, and she started to believe.

Meanwhile, Michael Thomas Carter was a young activist who had to make a choice: keep his safe job, or take a risk with an insurgent outsider? A veteran of the Bernie Sanders campaign, Michael replied to an email from an unknown candidate — and became the second paid employee on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s primary campaign. His first day of work was in her apartment in Parkchester.

Journalist Ross Barkan explains the forces that AOC was up against — Joe Crowley and his friends in the Queens Democratic Party, and a system of patronage that hand-picked judges and made backroom deals. Through the law firm of Sweeney, Reich and Bowles, the machine controlled a judicial selection process that generated millions in fees from inheritance disputes and foreclosures — the very system that had bled fees from AOC’s own family after her father’s death in 2008.

You’ll also meet Magdalena Moranda, a 25-year-old activist from the next generation, asking the same question Shawna asked in 2018 — and finding her answer in the Zohran Mamdani campaign seven years later. And you’ll learn what actually keeps these volunteers coming back: not the politics, not the policies, but the friendships they make along the way.

One door knock at a time, one phone call at a time, one volunteer shift at a time, Tim’s neighbors were building something. This episode is about the choices we make — and sometimes, the ones that we don’t.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 29-year-old former bartender from the Bronx, challenged ten-term incumbent Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary for New York’s 14th Congressional District in June 2018. Crowley had over $3 million in the bank, mostly from corporate PACs and financial firms. AOC raised $800,000, mostly from small donors. Her army of volunteers knocked on 120,000 doors across the district. Crowley famously sent a surrogate to represent him at a debate. AOC won by nearly 15 points — a result that shocked the political establishment and launched a national movement.

Joe Crowley served ten terms in Congress and was widely considered the likely next Speaker of the House. He was also the head of the Queens Democratic Party — inheriting a machine that, by the 2010s, had largely stopped organizing voters but still wielded enormous soft power through endorsements, fundraising, and influence over the City Council. His predecessor had handed him his seat. He didn’t live in the district — he lived in a house in Virginia — a fact AOC used to devastating effect in what Ross Barkan calls “maybe the best political ad ever created.”

The episode details the workings of the Queens judicial patronage system. Three lawyers — Sweeney, Reich and Bowles — controlled a process whereby they were automatically assigned to represent people in foreclosure or inheritance disputes in surrogate court, generating millions in fees. This was possible because of their influence over the judicial selection process: they helped pick the judges who then assigned them lucrative cases. According to reporting by Chris Bragg in New York Focus from January 2025, the system is still alive and well today. AOC’s own family experienced this system firsthand after her father’s death in 2008.

AOC’s campaign pioneered what would become the organizing model for every campaign in this series: an army of volunteers knocking on doors, face to face, in a district where the incumbent had stopped doing any organizing at all. It hadn’t been fourteen years since Crowley had even faced a primary challenge. The machine stuck to the old method — TV ads, radio, glossy mailers. AOC’s team had people willing to climb five flights of stairs in the summer heat. Michael Thomas Carter put it simply: “When there’s a real ideology, you get a level of commitment money can’t buy.”

The episode’s final act explores why volunteers keep coming back — and it’s not the politics. Shawna describes the post-canvas socials, the friendships formed over years of electoral work, a community that became her primary social circle. Magdalena, seven years later, echoes the same sentiment: “I’m creating real change, but also I love doing this with these people.” The antidote to doomscrolling, it turns out, is just showing up.