ABOUT TIM

Tim Donovan is a 15-year resident of Astoria, Queens, and a former freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Salon, VICE, AlterNet, and Al Jazeera America. He has covered the student loan debt crisis, climate change, wealth inequality, and labor issues.

For years, Tim watched the political transformation of his neighborhood from the sidelines—until 2025, when his local assemblyman, Zohran Mamdani, launched a longshot campaign for the Democratic mayoral primary. As a volunteer on the campaign, Tim discovered a remarkable grassroots infrastructure operating in his own backyard. After the primary, he set out to document how this traditionally moderate neighborhood became a democratic socialist stronghold, using his extensive network of personal connections to tell the story of this transformation from the ground floor.