It’s a historic summer to be a New Yorker, Assembly Member Diana Moreno (D-Queens) told a packed Bushwick crowd on Thursday night.
The Knicks are one game away from an NBA championship. The World Cup just started. And New York City has a Muslim democratic socialist mayor showing the world what governing for working people actually looks like.
“We don’t just witness history,” Moreno said in her remarks Thursday. “We make history.”
That’s the bet the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA) is making heading into the June 23 Democratic primary. Riding the momentum of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s historic 2025 upset, NYC-DSA has assembled its most ambitious electoral slate ever: 10 candidates running for Congress, state Senate, and state Assembly, which it says is the largest socialist legislative slate in American history.
If they win, the DSA will have seized not only City Hall but the beginnings of a governing coalition as well. “From Harlem to Bed-Stuy, from Ridgewood to the Lower East Side, we’re going to bring socialism to New York,” Moreno said.
The slate
The 10 NYC-DSA candidates on the June 23 ballot span federal and state races across the five boroughs—and have drawn endorsements from Mamdani, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), whose district includes neighborhoods in the Bronx and Queens, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), though not always the same ones. Between the three of them, they’ve covered nearly the entire field.
Two are running for Congress: Assembly Member Claire Valdez for the 7th Congressional District, covering a swath of Brooklyn and Queens, and Darializa Avila Chevalier for the 13th Congressional District, which includes Harlem and parts of the Bronx.
One is running for state Senate: Aber Kawas, a Palestinian community organizer, in Senate District 12 in western Queens, for the open seat left by retiring Democratic state Sen. Michael Gianaris.
The remaining seven are running for state Assembly. Diana Moreno in Assembly District 36 in Queens (the seat Mamdani vacated when he became mayor), won a special election in February, making her an incumbent, and will face two other Democrats this month, Mary Jobaida and Kevin Coenen. Samantha Kattan is running for Assembly District 37 now that Valdez, who represents the district now, is running for Congress and Illapa Sairitupac will run for the second time for Assembly District 65 on the Lower East Side and in Chinatown.
Four are challenging incumbents who have spent anywhere from a couple years to more than a decade in office: Christian Celeste Tate in Bushwick and East New York, Eon Huntley in Bed-Stuy and northern Crown Heights, David Orkin in Queens, and Conrad Blackburn in Harlem.
‘They have cash. We’ve got canvassers.’
Thursday’s rally was designed to do one thing: Get NYC-DSA members out into neighborhoods to knock on doors, or as they put it, “get out the vote.”
Emma Vigeland, co-host of The Majority Report and DSA member, has personal investment in the slate’s success. “They have cash,” she told the crowd. “We’ve got canvassers.”
She was not exaggerating about the cash. Vigeland noted that Blackburn, Huntley, and Celeste Tate have all faced spending from corporate- and Zionist-backed super PACs working to defeat them—including, she said, spending from Zionist donors and sports gambling groups.
“The billionaire class is ransacking our house,” Vigeland said. “It is our job to make sure that they don’t escape out the back.”
Kattan drew on her decade as a tenant organizer—and on a more recent experience.
“Just 18 months ago, I became a mom,” Kattan said. “Raising my daughter Daphne has been the greatest joy of my life, but it has also made me extremely angry.”
She described pushing a stroller through her Queens neighborhood and seeing crumbling roads, underfunded transit, and neighbors who cannot afford to raise families of their own.
“Too many people are forced to put the lives that they dream of on hold because they can’t afford to live them,” Kattan said.
Blackburn, the public defender running to represent Harlem in Assembly District 70, rooted his campaign in the borough’s history of Black radical politics.
“I don’t believe that Harlem is just a place,” Blackburn said. “Harlem is our culture. Harlem is our swag. Harlem is a movement.”
He called for social housing, reparations, and a shift away from incarceration as a response to poverty.
“Locking away our people will not solve poverty, will not solve displacement, will not solve instability,” Blackburn said.
Hasan Piker, under subpoena, shows up anyway
The rally drew one notable out-of-town guest: Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, one of the most-watched political commentators online, who traveled to New York City to stump for the slate.
Piker is currently under federal investigation. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control subpoenaed him in May over his participation in the “Nuestra América Convoy,” a humanitarian aid mission to Cuba in March. He is one of some 40 Americans under investigation for the trip.
He did not shy away from his circumstances on Thursday night. “If this organizing and this work was not impactful, the federal government would not be coming after people like myself,” Piker told the crowd. “I’m unbowed.”
He borrowed a line from the president to make his point. “In the words of Donald Trump: ‘They’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you. I’m just standing in the way.’”
Piker framed NYC-DSA as the “tip of the spear” of a national political realignment. “Here in New York City, you are on the front lines of one of the most important battles,” he said. “You are, in many ways, the vanguard of a struggle that is taking place all over the country.”
Early voting begins Friday, June 13. The primary is June 23.
