What made you decide to run for office?

 HT 
What made you decide to run for office?

ZM
I started organizing around solidarity for Palestinians. I cofounded my college’s Students for Justice in Palestine. And when you get started in that kind of organizing, you typically have zero to negative ambition to political office in the United States.

Soon after I graduated, I worked a bunch of different jobs, as seemingly everyone my age does. And then I heard about a man named Khader El-Yateem, a Palestinian Lutheran minister who was running for city council in Bay Ridge and southern Brooklyn. He was a socialist, he was pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), and he was running for local office. These are all things that I had been told could never exist simultaneously in a person. And their existence was not a cause for fear or anxiety among so many but, in fact, of inspiration.

There was definitely a point at which I started to call myself a socialist, and that was Bernie’s 2016 campaign. I ran the paid canvass for that campaign, and that was the beginning of my work within local politics in New York City in a serious way. From there, I became campaign manager for a state senate campaign in the same area, Ross Barkan. I then became a foreclosure prevention counselor at an organization called Chhaya CDC in Jackson Heights. I simultaneously became a DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) point person on the Tiffany Cabán for district attorney campaign.

What led me to make the jump to run myself was sustained involvement in DSA, and then a good friend and fellow member asked me at an electoral meeting to run for this seat. That was the first time I thought about mounting a primary challenge. And here I am. ...

Zohran Mamdani represents New York’s 36th district in the state assembly

whole article at: 
https://jacobinmag.com/2021/02/zohran-mamdani-new-york-state-assembly-queens