Progressive
'epidemic' about to spread rapidly in New York
Julia
Salazar, a candidate for the New York state Senate, was standing
outside a barbershop in her North Brooklyn neighborhood one recent
afternoon, when a barber looked up and saw her through the window.
Squinting through the glass, he pointed to a “Salazar for Senate”
sign on the wall of the shop, gestured in her direction, and mouthed,
“That’s you?” She smiled. “That’s me.”
The
27-year-old community organizer has become a recognizable name and
face in the neighborhood thanks to an aggressive ground game in her
challenge to eight-term incumbent Democratic state Sen. Martin Dilan.
Salazar and scores of volunteers have blanketed the district
collecting signatures to get her name on the ballot for the September
13 primary. Salazar, her campaign told The Intercept, plans to submit
many times more than the requisite 1,000 signatures from registered
Democrats in the district by the July 9 filing deadline.
Dilan, a
vestige of the corrupt patronage machine of former Brooklyn
Democratic boss Vito Lopez, has held the North Brooklyn seat since
Salazar, a working-class Colombian immigrant, was 11 years old.
Interest
in Salazar’s insurgent campaign spiked last week when Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, another millennial Latina, shook the political world
by trouncing Queens Democratic Party boss Rep. Joe Crowley in a
congressional primary. As news of Ocasio-Cortez’s upset spread,
Salazar tweeted, “This is the most inspiring campaign victory I
have ever witnessed.” Over the past few months, Ocasio-Cortez and
Salazar have shared stages, knocked doors together, and endorsed each
others’ campaigns. “Alexandria, mi hermana, mi heroína,”
Salazar wrote on election night, “I am so grateful to be in this
movement with you.”
Saturday
morning, Ocasio-Cortez emailed her supporters encouraging them to
sign up to petition for Salazar and a few other progressive women
candidates. “I can’t think of a better place to start the fight
for progressives like us than helping get Julia Salizar [sic], Zephyr
Teachout and Cynthia Nixon on the ballot!” she wrote. (Nixon, who’s
challenging Gov. Andrew Cuomo, also endorsed Salazar this week.)
“When nobody else would endorse us or cover our race, these three
women broke ranks and endorsed Ocasio 2018. Now it’s time to stand
by them.”
Ocasio-Cortez
followed up with a tweet on Monday, encouraging her followers to help
gather signatures on Salazar’s behalf: “@SalazarSenate18 isn’t
the next me, she’s the first HER.”
A win by
Salazar would help solidify the gains made by Ocasio-Cortez, who
defeated, but did not vanquish, the party machines. The similarities
between the candidates are more than superficial. Both are committed
socialists endorsed by Democratic Socialists of America. Both support
abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a once-fringe
rallying cry that has seeped into mainstream liberal discourse in
recent weeks. Both were raised by working-class parents and threw
themselves into community organizing as teenagers. And, tragically,
both endured the deaths of their fathers before their 20th birthdays.
Most of all, Salazar and Ocasio-Cortez represent a new generation of
young, diverse, unapologetically radical women poised to take over
the Democratic Party.
The
night of Ocasio-Cortez’s win, Salazar, who was at the victory
party, felt the earth shift beneath her feet. “At first, I was
shocked,” she told me last week. “I’m less shocked now. When
you do this kind of work, you’re constantly managing expectations.
You have a grander vision, but on a daily basis, you’re just
putting one foot in front of the other. That night, I realized we can
do so much more. We can win.”
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