Progressive Politics

On Sunday, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani invited members of the public to meet with him, one on one, for three minutes at a time, in a sparely appointed room at the Museum of the Moving Image, in Astoria.

The energy in the room was part D.M.V., part papal antechamber. (The sweet Adeni chai on offer as a refreshment surely didn’t help all the nervous fidgeting.) A few participants were museum staffers and venders who had been invited to join in, but most had heard about the event on Instagram the day before, when Mamdani’s team had posted a call for people to apply to attend. In an attempt to attract people beyond the superfans, they had asked some large local unions and community groups to spread the word.

Visitor No. 1 was Vinny Corletta, a former teacher of English and language arts, also from Astoria, who had lined up in the snow before the museum opened. Mamdani’s rent-stabilized one-bedroom apartment is just a few blocks away, and Corletta wanted to talk to him, before he moves into Gracie Mansion, about building more family housing. “I want to know that these two-bedroom, three-bedroom apartments or condos are being built,” he said, as opposed to big buildings crammed with studios and one-bedrooms, like the one Mamdani lives in. “I want to see, like, where it’s earmarked and located, that schools are going to be in those places, how many seats they’re expecting.” He added, “Something that’s real, that I can follow up on and track and trace.” When Corletta emerged from his three-minute meeting, he pronounced himself satisfied. “It was amazing,” he said. “He was really taking notes.”