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The Red Apple
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The week before Election Day in New York and the energy was palpable. In a café on the Upper West Side, I watched a woman wearing a “New York Jews for Zohran” shirt place an order at a kosher bagel counter. It was impossible to go more than a few feet in Brooklyn without tripping over canvassers eagerly approaching passersby with polling information. On a Q train into the city, I listened to two men in their early twenties earnestly debate the economic merits of democratic socialism. Maybe things aren’t so bad after all.
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I lived in New York for twelve years. I remember the surge of hope that brought people into the streets the night of Obama’s victory in 2008 and the subsequent disenchantment; the shocked despair that hung in the air after the 2016 election. Those years seem far away now, belonging to times that feel, in retrospect, naive. In many ways, it’s the memory of those moments, and the cynicism that followed, that makes the widespread outpouring of optimism following Zohran Mamdani’s win on Tuesday even more profound.
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Hope these days comes as an uncomfortable and alien feeling, one we have ample ground to mistrust. One need not be a scholar of history to recognize that the margins between hope and disappointment are slippery — anyone who has paid even nominal attention to the last few years could make the argument for pessimism. And yet, hope is more than nice to have; hope is essential, even when it is caveated to death. We need the joy to remember that it is possible.
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The election should not come as an end to organizing and to critical engagement but rather as a starting point. Several months ago, the Diasporist ran an analysis of Mamdani’s campaign by Lukas Hermsmeier, published in German, which speaks to the core of what Tuesday night means and what we can learn from it. “Mamdani has succeeded precisely by articulating a universal vision: economic justice and equal rights for all,” Hermsmeier wrote. “This is precisely what we can learn from. Since fascism cannot be countered with centrist ideas, instead we must help people believe that there are more similarities between us than we think. High living costs, low wages, and broken infrastructure are not caused by migration, trans people, or wokeness. This lesson applies to metropolises such as New York and Berlin just as much as it does to suburban and rural regions.”
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We do not know what comes next, but we can anticipate some of the discursive reactions. The desire to mitigate the scale of the win on the one hand and on the other to appropriate the victory to serve local ends and individual arguments will inevitably prove exhausting. The left is already bracing for disappointment, the liberal establishment is preparing to learn the wrong lesson, and the right is ready for a fight. What Germany can and should take from the victory remains to be determined. But for now, let’s accept this little bit of joy for what it is: good news.
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This week, in that spirit, we are sharing a new Seifenblase about the television show Pluribus, written by the Diasporist’s managing editor, Schayan Riaz. We’re also highlighting a conversation between Ben Mauk and the activist Sarah Schulman, published at the time of our launch, which highlights lessons organizers can learn across movements.
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Please consider donating to the Diasporist: we can’t promise free buses, a rent freeze, or universal childcare, but we can do our best to share stories that matter.
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— Julia Bosson, Editor-in-Chief
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Ben Mauk
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ACT UP, 1990 Gay Pride Parade. Photo: © Tracey Litt
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Ben Mauk: It’s impossible to watch United in Anger and not make connections between the ACT UP movement and the contemporary Palestine solidarity movement. ACT UP concerned a population you describe as “a despised group of people, with no rights … [who] joined together and forced our country to change against its will.” The resonance with German attitudes toward Palestinian lives seems clear. The resonance with German attitudes toward Palestinian lives seems clear.
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Sarah Schulman: I’m not going to make any comments about Germany, because I am not an expert. But I will say that, whether the cause is the AIDS crisis or Palestine, things only change by coalition.
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Schayan Riaz
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Rhea Seehorn in Pluribus. Photo courtesy Apple TV.
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A science-fiction show is only as good as its core idea. The higher the concept, the greater the story. And with Pluribus, Vince Gilligan (creator of Breaking Bad) delivers an instant classic: When the world’s population is infected with an extraterrestrial virus, popular romance author Carol Sturka (played by Rhea Seehorn) discovers that she is inexplicably immune to it. The virus turns everyone “happy,” and happy is in quotation marks here, because the series stretches the definition of the word. Can you really consider someone to be “happy” when they are simply following orders? Not only are they “happy,” their sole purpose in life is to cheer up others — in this case, Carol.
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Once her town is hit by the happiness epidemic, our heroine finds herself in situations surrounded by people who are full of optimism, wanting to help her, suggesting she hydrate and take care of herself, sending food and other items that might bring her joy. No one can say no to Carol — even if it’s a hand grenade, a rocket launcher, or a tank, if she asks for it, she will receive it.
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