The Mamdani team, fresh off the amazing victory in the NYC election, has set a path to leverage the 100,000 volunteers and massive campaign enthusiasm to maintain engagement in civic activism and to turn the campaign’s promises into policy achievements and improvements for the city and it’s residents.
Our Time is a new organization building on the grassroots momentum of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign to deliver on the promise of a more affordable New York City.
This is a quite explicit move to keep all those who were so passionately engaged in the campaign as, if not more, engaged in making promises reality.
We will organize to win and defend the agenda that resonated with voters: free child care, fast and free buses, freezing the rent and building affordable homes, and more. We’ll be door-knocking, phone-banking, communicating, and organizing at the neighborhood, city, and state level. To get it done, we’ll collaborate with community organizations, movement groups, and unions that have been doing this work and share a commitment to the affordability agenda.
Our victory was historic, but the campaign for an affordable New York City is just beginning. Even as billionaires have made their opposition clear, more than 100,000 volunteers helped win this election, and they want to keep going. Our Time can be a vehicle for continued engagement — a way for folks to plug in and stay active while they find a long-term political home.
This is a great move to see. As to the diary’s title, this is also timely as I was contemplating writing something along the lines of “Mamdami: Don’t Repeat Obama’s Mistake” due to some online engagement I had just yesterday related to how the Obama campaign failed in transitioning Obama For America from a critically important election campaign tool into something that would help strengthen society (and, btw, Democratic Party prospects) in the years that followed.
My short BSky thread yesterday and my Nov 4, 2008 Daily Kos diary Heed Barack's Call! The morning after and beyond …
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Often think of lost moments in time. After the 2008 victory, OFA (Obama For America) essentially atrophied (in my experience) for awhile, with little more than some text messages and emails. WI (What if ...) OFA had turned to 'civic action', organizing regular community-focused events. 1/
— A Siegel (@asiegel.bsky.social) 2025-11-05T12:53:59.412Z
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Such as stream cleaning, food bank support, tutoring, ... leveraging OFA (and Democrats) activism and enthusiasm in a very public way to help people and strengthen communities amid the economic crisis. Would that have muted the (billionaire-backed) Tea Party rise/impact? Boosted local party orgs?
— A Siegel (@asiegel.bsky.social) 2025-11-05T12:56:02.135Z
Honestly, from Nov 2008 until yesterday, I had no window on the back story of how such an action was proposed from within the Obama campaign and then killed off by several senior campaign staffers with close ties to the DNC who didn’t want an independent organization but one under the DNC. It is a sad and painful story how OFA 100,000s (millions) passion became little more than an atrophying DNC fundraising email list.
While there are innumerable reasons to respect Barack Obama, he is human and has made many mistakes — many serious mistakes like denuding the Senate to fill his cabinet and seemingly acting as if Republicans were (could be) honest partners for too many years. Considering all of these, not turning OFA into a mass movement to help society and help achieve the campaign’s objectives was (as discussed / argued in the New Republic article) perhaps his greatest error ever.
Thus, again, kudos to the Mamdani team for not repeating the Obama team’s mistake. The creation of “Our Time for an Affordable NYC” could well become one of the most important results of this election.
