Event Video: The New York City Mayoral Election: the Stakes and the Spectacle

New York City—the most populous and diverse megalopolis in the US, a nerve center of national and international commerce, finance, media, and culture—always has an outsized presence in local, national, and even international attention. Like perhaps no other mayoral election in NYC history, this one—with a Democratic Socialist candidate holding a nearly incontestable lead—has put into stark relief the questions, tensions, and conflicts that are not only at the heart of our municipality but that are currently defining the state of the federal union. On Thursday, October 23rd, BISR’s Ajay Singh Chaudhary and Rafael Khachaturian sat down with special guests NYC-DSA organizer Julie Swoope and Kazembe Balagun of Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem to take stock of the stakes and the spectacle of this year’s momentous election. From urgent local issues—like the cost of living crisis, affordable housing, transportation, social services, policing, and more—to national and international concerns—including the Trump administration’s incursions into cities and states across the US and Israel’s genocidal campaign in Palestine—how can we sort through both the dynamics and implications of this election? What contexts—local histories and multiracial coalitions, previous repressions and current permutations, an increasingly shaky democratic machine and rudderless national party, transformations in political economy, and even geopolitics—are at play? And how do these contexts help us all understand rapidly shifting political dynamics and movement responses to them?

The discussion begins at minute 18:00 in the video below.