Today marked a completely new moment for New York City, and for America. There will be countless attempts at analysis and reflection and what-does-it-all-mean in the days to come, along with an unimaginable number of hateful attacks. But what's worth reflecting on right now is the fact that we've entered a new era, and that, even at the very start, there are some extraordinary things that we can observe.

You have to start with the principle.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: You have to start with the principle. You must have a politics that believes in something. You can't win unless you know what you're fighting for. Something specific, that people can see and believe. Something that people will know when it's been achieved. It can't just be a vague platitude, and it can't just be "root for our team" or "the other guy is bad". Zohran and his team understood this profoundly well, and made a campaign focused on substance -- grounded in humanist principles, and tied to extremely clear, understandable and specific policy deliverables.

You will have to put your body on the line.

The thing that first put Zohran on the map in city-wide politics was his hunger strike in solidarity with taxi drivers. This was a heart-wrenchingly important issue for our South Asian communities in particular because, even after so many painful deaths, it still felt like nobody in power cared. By putting his physical self into the same risk as the drivers who were fighting for their lives and livelihoods, Zohran showed who he was at a profound level — and proved himself ready for the moment of what it will take to fend off an authoritarian takeover. No surprise, then, that when the violent and out-of-control Border Czar Tom Homan abducted Mahmoud Khalil, Zohran had no qualms about confronting Homan in person to demand Khalil be freed. Standing in front of Homan, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with those who refused to back down in the face of the most basic of human rights violations, New York's leaders were able to secure the freedom of a man wrongly taken from his pregnant wife.

They have to be able to talk about us without us.

This is one of the refrains that comes up most when I'm talking to people about communications, in almost any context from organizing to business to building a community. A message has to be simple enough, memorable enough, and clear enough that even someone who's just heard it for the first time first time can repeat it — in high fidelity — to the next person they talk to. The Mamdani campaign nailed this from the start, focusing not just on "affordability" in the abstract, but specific promises around free buses, universal childcare, and frozen rent in particular. The proof of how effective and pervasive those messages have been is that detractors can recite them, verbatim, from memory.

Meet the people where they are, in the streets or in the media.

This is another point that just ties to the core humility of earning every vote. From that very first famous video on Fordham Road, where Zohran went to meet voters in the Bronx in a district that had swung very hard away from the Democrats, he literally took the campaign to the people and met them where they were, and listened. Since then, he's been at every event in the city from bar crawls to bar mitzvahs, showing not just a superheroic stamina that shames opponents twice his age, but an enthusiasm for both the city and its people that simply can't be faked. The same thing happened online. No matter what platform you use, or which influencers or outlets you get your information or entertainment from, Zohran was there, smiling and on-message, welcoming you in. Nothing was beneath him, and nothing was inauthentic, because he believes in his story.

Money melts when it meets a movement whose moment has arrived.

They spent billions. Bloomberg dipped into his pocket and personally spent over $10 million. People who live thousands of miles away invested millions of their ill-gotten fortunes, and spent countless hours spewing bile on top of it. And none of it amounted to anything. Because, despite all the corruption, and despite how much our democratic institutions have been weakened, ultimately New York City's voting system has held, and the power of the people has prevailed. Maybe now the tycoons will get the message that it's cheaper just to... do things that people want?

"Hope and change" means more after so much lost and learned.

Having been a veteran of both Obama campaigns and Obama administrations, I remember well both the optimism of those moments, and the certain sense of trepidation that so many Americans wouldn't see Obama as the first Black president, but as the end of white presidents — and would provoke a backlash accordingly. As turned out to be the case. When those forces decided to burn down the country in response to his presidency, it made a lot of us wary about hoping again. But hearing Zohran's speech say "There are many who thought this day would never come" brought back memories of Obama's similar words after that extraordinary victory in Iowa. When Zohran said "hope is alive", it spoke to both Obama's famous "hope" slogan, and to Jesse Jackson's groundbreaking "Keep Hope Alive" speech from a campaign that inspired and innovated before Zohran was even born. I'm lucky enough to have sat down with these men and heard them in depth, behind closed doors, in nuanced conversation. But I know that the rhetoric of what they've said in soaring speeches on stage is what moved so many. It's the bigger words that make movements. And though many people who got their hopes up in those eras, or who felt let down by some of the cynicism or failures or flaws since then might be afraid to be optimistic again, I think this movement is full of people who are aware of both the strengths and shortcomings of what has come before. It won't be perfect, but it's a chance to keep doing better.

What we're joyfully running toward, not what we're fearfully running from.

So much of what people hear in politics is negative and threatening. Zohran's opponents spoke almost exclusively about how people should be scared and angry. But the undeniable energy of the Mamdani campaign has been joy — an effusive, exuberant, contagious joy. Even when times are hard, maybe especially when times are hard, people are drawn to that joy. And they've been missing leaders who offer them a positive vision. They don't want to hear horrifying visions of "American carnage", especially when they know those are lies designed to manipulate. A better world is possible.

People are smart. We can talk like adults.

No one wants to be condescended to. Perhaps one of the most joyful parts of Zohran's instantly-legendary victory speech on election night was its eloquence. His speech was at well above a 10th-grade level. It was complex, erudite, punctuated by deep and fluent references. He proved that politicians don't have to condescend to voters with baby talk! And a big part of re-establishing our democratic norms is going to be speaking to the electorate as if we are all adults, assuming a level of literacy in culture and history, as well as as basic civics. I keep saying that I'm hoping we get an "easter egg breakdown" version of this speech, similar to the ones that people on YouTube do for a Marvel movie or a Star Wars trailer. There's such a dense level of references and context that people will be able to extract meaning from it for years to come — a welcome contrast to a political environment that has usually had deeply hateful dog whistles as the only thing buried within its content.

If you run from who you are, you have already lost.

Coming on stage for a political victory to Ja Rule's New York (I had bet that there would be some Jadakiss involvement in whatever walk-on music he picked), and walking off to Dhoom Machale, while saying with his full chest that he's a Muslim, a New Yorker, and a young Democratic Socialist — these are the moves of a person who knows that those who are motivated by hate will never back down if you try to hide or be evasive about who you are. A coward dies a thousand deaths, and a politician who hides their identity loses a thousand elections before a single vote is cast. We see Vivek Ramaswamy tap-dancing around his faith every day, and the white supremacists that he's cozied up to will never let him win. But fourteen years ago, the racist and hateful media falsely called President Obama's private birthday party a "hip-hop BBQ". And as I said years later, you should just have the damn hip-hop BBQ — they're going to accuse you of it anyway. Lean into who you are, own it, and let the haters stay mad.

Everything can start from one voice.

This is perhaps one of the most profound lessons of Zohran's campaign, and one of the most personal, because I got to see these people have these impacts firsthand. When Lindsey Boylan stood up in 2020 to tell her story of how Andrew Cuomo had harassed her and created a brutally hostile environment for her work, she not only had everything to lose, but there was no way to know whether there would ever be any accountability. But by speaking her truth, she made it possible for other women to speak up, and she made it possible for Zohran Mamdani to be an advocate for accountability as a candidate for mayor. Similarly, when Heems spoke to the Village Voice about Ali Najmi running for city council, I read it as my friend simply using his platform to help his friend campaign for office. What I didn't know at the time was that he would be galvanizing a young Zohran Mamdani to canvass for a campaign for the first time in his life, introducing him to the idea that this was a city where he could have political impact. This week, 104,000 people knocked on doors as part of their succesful effort to make Zohran mayor.

This one's so personal for me — we both have mothers named Mira who come from the same small state in India, and so many people I love carry Zohran in their hearts like family. But stepping outside of my deep emotional connection, there are a rich vein of lessons that apply to a much broader context, and I hope people will reflect on how much there is to learn from this moment. As proud and excited as I am for Zohran, I'm just as excited to find out which of those young people who was out there knocking doors next to me these last few months is going to be my mayor in a few years.