TRANSCRIPTS
Episode 01: Ten Perfect Strangers
[00:01]
PROLOGUE
My name is Tim Donovan. It’s 2015 and I’m 30 years old, and I’m at Mar’s part-time. I’m writing about politics for venues like Salon.com, Vice News. Honestly, I’d write for anyone who’d pay me. One time, I made a hundred bucks writing a piece about my cat. I’m mostly doing stories about income inequality, the student loan debt crisis, climate change — you know, fun stuff. But I really loved it for a while. I thought I’d found a way ou: out of the rut I’d been stuck in, out of the restaurant industry I was coming to hate… Out of whatever vague feeling of powerlessness I couldn’t quite articulate that pervaded my life. I wanted to be a voice for all the people like myself who didn’t have the opportunity that I’d stumbled upon. And I thought that’s how I could make a difference. By being that voice, telling their stories or speaking for them. But I was wrong. Because that’s not how you make a difference. That isn’t how you help people. Not really. It would take me ten more years to figure that out.
[01:24]
[Audio clip: “Tonight, we made history. In the words of Nelson Mandela, it always seems impossible until it is done.”]
Welcome to the People’s Republic of Astoria, Episode 01: Ten Perfect Strangers.
EPISTOLARY 1
SHAWNA MORLOCH: 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.
That’s Shawna Morlock. She started canvassing in 2018, and would go on to knock tens of thousands of doors.
SHAWNA: I saw that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was running for Congress in my district.
TIM: 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?
SHAWNA: 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.
SHAWNA: 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.
SHAWNA: 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 yell, you know. But after that happened, I was like, OK, well, now what?
[03:16]
“Now what?”
REFRAIN
It’s a question I was asking myself too, at least for a while. In 2016, after the election, I really tried. 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. I just spent three years writing about politics and it got me nowhere. What was more talking going to accomplish? I didn’t last three months. I just knew what I didn’t want to do.
Stand outside in the January cold with a handful of strangers in Astoria park.
EPISTOLARY 1 (continued)
SHAWNA: 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 saw that it was happening. 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.
SHAWNA: 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.
SHAWNA: 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.
But then the candidate herself arrived and Shawna got to see her up close.
SHAWNA: Yeah. I mean, we were all at the, what is it, like the northeast corner of Astoria Park, you know, like where that the Greek restaurant is there.
That’s Agnanti. They’ve been serving Meze-style Greek cuisine on that corner for almost 25 years.
SHAWNA: The candidate will always like walk up late, right? But yeah, like, so then she comes up, I’d say, I mean, I would assume maybe 15 or 20 minutes after the training had like started and like picked me to do the, let’s, you know, do a trial run and like, I’ll be the person on the doors and you be the canvasser. And I was so awkward and weird and nervous.
TIM: Wait, so you got to be the canvasser and she was the door?
SHAWNA: Yeah.
TIM: That’s tough. Yeah, it’s really, was she, was she nice? Or did she like grill you on her positions?
SHAWNA: No, no, no, she was so nice. And the great thing too, about, you know, getting to learn from such an early time in the campaign too was that I don’t think the expectation was that you would have, you know, backwards and forwards knowledge of the platform at that point, because it was like January of 2018. So usually you’re still writing it at that point.
But then Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez showed up, and Shawna started to believe.
SHAWNA: 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.
SHAWNA: 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.
Shawna wasn’t just stepping outside her comfort zone. She was learning an important lesson. A lesson I wouldn’t learn for 7 more years. That sometimes, the antidote to doomscrolling is just showing up.
SHAWNA: I did the same doors over and over. People were like, “I’m so sick of seeing your face, go away.” [Laughs.]
[07:21]
ELEGY
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.
EPISTOLARY 2
While Shawna was learning how to canvas, knocking on doors, a young activist named Michael Thomas Carter was trying to make a decision. Should he hold them, fold them, or go all in?
MICHAEL THOMAS CARTER: 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?
MICHAEL: I was initially living in New York, being a tutor, kind of making ends meet, auditioning as an actor also. And I started to volunteer. And then he got plucked on board because he knew Mandarin Chinese. He was hired for just five days of work.
MICHAEL: 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.
MICHAEL: I was kind of in this Bushwick-Berners scene, these, which was a activist group of people in Bushwick supporting Bernie.
Michael needed work. So he reached out to a regional field director with the Bernie campaign, Ricky Cardenas. Ricky connected Michael with a woman running for state Senate in Washington Heights. She’d endorsed Bernie in the Democratic primary. Her name was Marisol Alcantara.
MICHAEL: So it created this very strange collision during the campaign between like a few leftover Bernie people, the Dominican political establishment in Washington Heights and the Independent Democratic Conference and the $500,000 that they contributed to the campaign.
INTERLUDE
The IDC.
MICHAEL: The IDC or Independent Democratic Conference, which is a euphemistically named formation for a group of Democrats who caucus with the Republicans in the state Senate, throwing control of the state Senate to the Republicans at the behest of someone you might know, a man named Andrew Cuomo.
In 2009, Democrats had just won control of the New York State Senate by a razor thin margin. And then, they hadn’t. The full story is a classic of local politics. Chaotic, messy, petty, greedy. But a simple version goes something like this. After Democrats won control of the state senate, a breakaway group refused to caucus with their own party. They would join the Republicans in a new majority. By 2012, they’d formed an official organization, the IDC. A pure power grab. The move was framed at the time by Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo as a way to foster bipartisanship. For seven years, Republicans controlled the chamber, and in that time, they killed the DREAM Act, the Reproductive Health Act, they stopped basic tenant protection, and stonewalled gun safety reforms.
By 2017, the system was thoroughly entrenched, and even politically active progressives like Michael Thomas Carter were barely aware of its existence.
EPISTOLARY 2 (continued)
MICHAEL: What happened is I got into government with her. I’m in the state Senate, press secretary, and I get a whole education in what’s going on in the state Senate. Andrew Cuomo’s rolling this, the extent to which the Republicans are controlling the agenda up in Albany, the extent to which this person who I respected and who had some political ideas I agreed with was really supporting the wrong side. And so I needed to get out. I wanted to get out. So I got quite the education in the machinations of the institutional New York Democratic Party.
Michael would learn from that campaign and from working for Marisol Alcantara.
MICHAEL: 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. And I said, hey, if there’s anybody who we as a movement, as a democratic socialist movement, as a left movement, as a Bernie progressive movement could take out and make a huge impact, it would be Joe Crowley.
Michael replied to the email. He would end up becoming the second paid employee of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez primary campaign.
MICHAEL: My first interview with Alexandria was after an abolish ICE protest in Foley Square. We kind of like went to the protest and then we had a talk, like kind of in the square, in the street, about the race, how to move forward, plans to win, all of that. And then I was brought on board.
The operation back then was bare bones.
MICHAEL: They basically needed somebody to scale them up to the next level, somebody who could help them fundraise so that they could actually build a real campaign. And that was my first role with them was as a fundraising coordinator, fundraising director.
He got right down to business.
MICHAEL: 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.
Michael weighed his options.
MICHAEL: There’s a high risk play that could lead to victory or a low risk play that will surely lead to defeat. He needed advice that he could trust.
MICHAEL: I remember telling my dad we have a 10% chance of winning, but that percentage rose over time. I simultaneously always believed and never believed that we would win.
And at least an upset in a GOP primary gave Michael hope.
MICHAEL: Big politics heads might remember when this guy Eric Cantor lost his primary on the Republican side to a Tea Party candidate and shocked the entire political world. I was like, okay, if we could do this to Joe Crowley, we could do this to any of these jokers.
Through his work in the state Senate, Michael would learn all about the machine in Queens.
MICHAEL: Because of my work with Marisol, I also knew about Joe Crowley. 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.
But it wasn’t just Joe Crowley they were fighting.
INTERLUDE
ROSS BARKAN: Astoria was part of the Democratic machine. Western Queens had always been politically moderate to conservative. It was Archie Bunker territory. It was very Greek. It was very pro-police.
That’s Ross Barkan. He’s a journalist, author and former State Senate candidate from Bay Ridge.
MICHAEL LANGE: I mean, really back in the day, there was a very active neighborhood clubhouse scene.
Michael Lange is the author of the Substack “Narrative Wars,” and an expert in local politics.
MICHAEL LANGE: The old machine bosses had machines. They had clubhouses and people they would turn out. Right. It was a real kind of part of social fabric. You know, before people were bowling alone, they were precinct captains in their neighborhood. I mean, you have a good precinct captain. They know everyone on their block.
MICHAEL LANGE: 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. And really there’s been a lot of writing about this, a lot of coverage, a lot of journalism that you can look up.
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, they had it down to a science.
MICHAEL LANGE: And so there was this really awful profiteering happening by the Queens Democratic Party. And the reason they were able to control that is because of the control they have over the judge selection process. And so they had this sort of sweet little racket going.
Fifty 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.
MICHAEL LANGE: They picked the judges who then assigned them lucrative cases in surrogate court.
ROSS BARKAN: 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, he was very close to Christine Quinn, who was the powerful council speaker. His predecessor, Tom Manton, had helped pick council speakers as well.
MICHAEL LANGE: And unlike the old machines, Crowley was not doing much engagement with the clubs. He was not fretting new membership.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would go on to win that election, and prove that a new model of electoral organizing is possible.
[17:05]
REFRAIN
In 2024, Donald Trump was re-elected president and a whole new generation of activists were sitting at bars doom scrolling on their phones. And one of them was a 24 year old named Magdalena who’s asking herself a familiar question. Now what?
MAGDALENA MORANDA: Presidential election night — watch party was at Katch.
EPISTOLARY 3
And then someone came in who was about to change Magdalena’s life.
MAGDALENA: Zohran actually came in to the watch party that night.
Even back then, people like Magdalena were already preparing for the Zohran campaign.
MAGDALENA: It was actually very nice. Because it’s like very obvious of like, no, here is like the hope coming through the door.
For Magdalena, that question, now what? It already had its answer.
MAGDALENA: This is what we need to focus on. We are going to elect this man. This man is going to become our next mayor.
So she got to work immediately.
MAGDALENA: Very early on in, I mean, on day one, we were clearly testing out a brand new script and then the script was, will you donate? Will you give 10 bucks? If Zohran sounds like someone you would want to vote for, will you donate to him? And I remember we got a donation at the door. A woman wanted to give us $10 in cash and I was like, wait, this is perfect. I actually have the form that you can fill out and take your cash.
Magdalena is always like this. She’s such a tireless volunteer. I’ve heard Zohran himself call out her efforts. Twice. She seems to be working at every event, volunteering every chance she gets. If you were to tell me she has an identical twin sister and that they both go by Magdalena just to get more done, I honestly might believe you. According to Magdalena, this work ethic, it goes way back.
MAGDALENA: I was an overachiever. I took all the hard classes. I was in every AP, every honors class. When I believe in something, I would just throw myself fully into it.
In the spring of 2024, it’s time for Magdalena to move. The choice seems clear.
MAGDALENA: I moved to Astoria and yeah, I mean, I thought it was great. I mean, kind of perfect timing. There was already rumors starting up like, Zohran might run for mayor. Well, I would love to be in the heart of it all while this is all happening.
So she moved in and she got to work.
MAGDALENA: I loved canvassing and I just loved canvassing in the city so much more because you get to talk to so many more people and there’s no driving involved. Like literally your turf could be just one block and you’re like talking to all these people. I was like, this is incredible.
Much like Shawna seven years before, Magdalena would be at Zohran’s first campaign canvas.
MAGDALENA: Then December 14th, we have the official field launch.
She didn’t even make it there on time because she was too busy working another fundraiser also for the Zohran campaign.
MAGDALENA: I remember getting to the fundraiser. I was a little late, so I show up alone. I’m like, I don’t actually know what to do with this thing. I showed up, I like dropped my bags off. The hosts were super kind, super friendly. Both of them were like Egyptian immigrants, were like professors. I could see like all the different parts of the Zohran coalition.
Magdalena wears a lot of hats. Astoria field lead for the Zohran Mamdani campaign, co-chair for NYC DSA’s Electoral Working Group. And for my story, she gets some credit for this whole podcast’s existence, because her Thursday canvases sent me down this road. And as anyone who’s attended one can attest, once you go to one of Magda’s canvases, she’s going to get you coming back for more.
MAGDALENA: Start out with a round of intros. Ask people why they’re there. Talk to people. Ask them what neighborhood they’re coming from. Why do they care about this? What issue made them want to come out to canvas? And it’s also like vibes. Being nice at the beginning.
CAESURAS
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. Now, what I’ve learned is that what kept them coming back were one another, the community.
MAGDALENA & SHAWNA: Honestly, that was a major part why I kept coming back, both because like, 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, like, and even people that aren’t even necessarily like doing electoral organizing any longer. Partially 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.
That sense of community. The group photos, the new friendships, the post-canvas socials. They’re what turned 10 people in the park into 50,000 around the city.
MAGDALENA & SHAWNA: You know, we’re very intentionally trying to make DSA a home for people, not just for politics, you know, but just as a communal space for people who, you know, deeply care about society and like taking care of your neighbors and trying to, I guess, 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 helps people from just like, honestly, staying on their couch. It’s like, because every volunteer thing, you’re fighting the couch. 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.
INTERLUDE
So how do 10 people in a park beat the 10 term incumbent congressman with $3 million in the bank who has all the union endorsements, all the political endorsements, controls the whole local political machine? The answer turned out to be simpler than anyone could have expected. You just show up. Oh, also, it really helps when your opponent doesn’t.
MICHAEL LANG: The machine was not really a machine anymore. There was very little political organizing the Democratic Party in Queens did by the 2010s.
ROSS BARKAN: But 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, Tom Manton, had helped pick council speakers as well. He wielded a lot of soft power. That’s how I would describe it. 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.
MICHAEL LANG: And unlike the old machines, Crowley was not doing much engagement with the clubs. He was not fretting new membership.
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 never lost a race by less than double digits. His predecessor had handed him his seat. He didn’t live in the district. He lived in Virginia.
ROSS BARKAN: 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.
[Audio clip from AOC campaign ad: “This race is about people versus money. We’ve got people, they’ve got money. It’s time we acknowledge that not all Democrats are the same. That a Democrat who takes corporate money, profits off foreclosure, doesn’t live here, doesn’t send his kids to our schools, doesn’t drink our water or breathe our air, cannot possibly represent us.”]
ROSS BARKAN: In 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.
[Audio clip: “Let them know that this is just the beginning.”]
DENOUEMENT
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 200,000, mostly from small donors, people like me. The machine still had the money. It still had the endorsements.
What it didn’t have were people like Shawna, willing to go back to the same door five times.
SHAWNA: And so, just hit doors in my area. It works. We really crushed it in Queens.
It didn’t have people like Michael seeking out a challenge, looking for a long shot candidate who might not win, but would at least share his values if she lost.
[26:18]
The establishment had gotten lazy.
[26:24]
As winter turned to spring in 2018, the flowers weren’t the only thing blooming. The volunteer lists were growing.
Election night. June 2018.
[News clip: “Breaking now, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has defeated 10 term congressman Joe Crowley in a shocking primary upset.”]
Over the next seven years, other campaigns would refine this approach. They’d hone it, improve it, and perfect it. People like Shawna would start taking on new roles, gaining new skills, recruiting new members. Nowadays, Shawna is a district leader for the Queens County Democratic Party, as well as an active member of the Queens branch of the Democratic Socialists of America. She’s involved in almost every local campaign, knocking on doors, phone banking, doing whatever it takes.
[27:20]
CODA
I don’t remember if I was working at Mar’s that night, 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. At the time, I didn’t realize it had become my own personal cocoon. Shawna Moorlach 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.
In a few short months, they’d done something real. Something that actually worked. And me? I stopped writing the moment it seemed pointless. Joined a few organizations, quit them too. I tried to make a difference and 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. I told myself they didn’t really need me. Not here in the People’s Republic.
And I could take comfort in the fact that I was happy. I really was. I really am. My wife has a great job. I have 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.
[29:05]
EPILOGUE
Next time on the People’s Republic of Astoria, episode two: 20 Years Apart.
[Audio clips from Episode 2]
ROSS BARKAN: 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.
JIMMY VAN BRAMER: A lot of those really powerful forces who are not used to losing, right? 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.
[CREDITS]
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 Luong and Sarah Noe. Thanks to Shawna Moorlach, Michael Lang, Michael Thomas Carter, Magdalena Miranda, Ross Barkan, and all the other guests.
See you next time in the People’s Republic.
[Audio: “You gotta be ready.”]