“I am still in ecstasy over this,” said artist Molly Crabapple on the phone today, November 5. Millions of us feel the same way — Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral election yesterday sparked celebrations across the world, including at a bar in Williamsburg where Crabapple danced and cheered with her friends and fellow organizers.
“There was an Italian TV crew that interviewed me while I was drunk off my ass and asked if I was afraid of Trump sending in ICE to New York,” she explained. “I said that he’s gonna send them in anyway, and at least now we have a mayor who will fight.”
Crabapple should know. A born-and-bred New Yorker and an accomplished artist and writer, she turned 18 years old right after 9/11, lived across the street when Occupy Wall Street began, and joined 500 Jewish activists to shut down the New York Stock Exchange last October in protest of the genocide in Gaza. Since joining the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in 2017, the same year that Mamdani joined, she has witnessed him lay the groundwork for his political career as an organizer and community-driven advocate first. She designed stickers for his first state assembly campaign over five years ago, and just before the primaries in June, she live-sketched his rally at Manhattan’s Terminal 5. Crabapple reflected on how far Mamdani has come on Instagram yesterday, complete with a bread-and-roses illustration of the mayor-elect surrounded by the everyday New Yorkers who made his campaign possible.
I spoke with Crabapple over the phone about what the election means for working artists, her involvement in Mamdani’s campaign, and advice for artists who want to build toward a better future. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Hyperallergic: How are you feeling about the future of New York, specifically for artists, in the wake of this historic election?
Molly Crabapple: This is one of the most beautiful days that I have seen in a long time. I was born in New York City, lived here my whole life. I have seen artists driven out by the skyrocketing rents, by the squeeze of finance capital. Despite how it’s sometimes framed, artists have the same needs as every other working-class New Yorker. We need space to live. We need to be able to afford food, we need to be able to afford childcare, and the same things that are driving out all these other working-class people have also been driving out artists. Displacement has just been such a fact of life. Such a tragic fact for as long as I can remember. I feel such hope that finally we can have a city that is meant to make life a bit easier for working people instead of something that’s just about squeezing and erasing us.
H: How did you spend Election Day?
MC: My friend Naomi Klein flew into town specifically to speak at DSA and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) canvases. So I spent Election Day first with Naomi at a poll site near Grand Army Plaza, handing out Zohran flyers to potential voters. One person who I’ll always remember was an 86-year-old Caribbean lady who was for Zohran, and she was saying that it’s such bullshit how people like Cuomo are giving him so much flak for not having experience when you never get experience except by doing the job. She was pumping her fist. There were so many people who couldn’t vote because they were immigrants, but they were all for him, and it was just, really … love, right? Then I spent the night at one of the DSA watch parties that was at 9 Bob Note with a crew of my friends. The line was halfway down the block. It was insane.
I’ve been a DSA member for eight years. Never in my life could I have imagined the dorky little meetings that we were having eight years ago would one day lead to one of ours becoming mayor of the greatest city in America.
Crabapple’s live sketch made during Mamdani’s rally on June 13 at Terminal 5 in Manhattan
H: When did you and Zohran meet? How did you first get involved in his campaigns?
MC: He’s a DSA comrade. He has been a ground-level DSA organizer for so long. He was involved in our first electoral campaign that I remember, which was the campaign for Khader El-Yateem in Bay Ridge, a Palestinian Lutheran priest who was running. Because I am an active DSA member, when he became one of a block of people who were running for state senate and assembly, I volunteered to do artwork. I did stickers for his campaign.
Then, in 2021, there were these huge protests by taxi drivers to get out of the debt peonage that was already pushing multiple drivers to suicide. Zohran championed this like nothing I’ve ever seen a politician do. He moved his office to the pavement where the taxi drivers were camping out. Anyone who wanted to meet him for any legislative business had to do it surrounded by these taxi drivers, hearing and seeing them. He also went on a 15-day hunger strike. I wrote a cover story for the Nation about it. I interviewed him and heard him speak, and I’m thinking, this is what we need. There was so much charisma and anger, in the good and righteous sense. And so much love. I also remember that the night the taxi drivers won debt relief, he put on bhangra and all the guys were dancing on the pavement. It was so beautiful. We don’t have enough examples of winning, so it’s really important to taste the sweetness when we do.
H: That’s such a great way of describing it.
MC: Thank you. I also saw Zohran when I got arrested with Jewish Voice for Peace at the stock exchange. Zohran was there that day to support. He’s been so amazing with JVP. He’s always there. He’s not someone who just glommed onto DSA because they’re an electoral machine. He’s from us. And I’m over the moon to see one of ours as mayor.
H: Speaking of, I wanted to ask about the artwork you posted yesterday, which really represents that spirit growing out of DSA. What does that piece represent to you?
MC: I did that artwork as an illustration for the Nation for an article about his DSA roots. It’s based on a mural that I did in the DSA office, which shows the working people of New York. The Nation art director, Robert Best, asked me to do something inspired by the style of my mural that was about Zohran’s campaign. So I just asked some people I knew — including the amazing Rafael Shimunov, who is the “Hot Boy for Zohran,” he’s a buddy of mine — to pose with their Zohran swag, and then I drew him in the center of it. It’s very much in line with the article, which talks about him as a committed Democratic Socialist and someone who is not creating a campaign that’s solely about himself, but rather that is about and comes out of a movement.
Crabapple’s illustration for “Zohran’s Secret Weapon” by Hadas Thier, published in the Nation in September
H: Can you tell me a bit more about your journey as an activist and organizer in the city? How did it all begin?
MC: My dad’s a Marxist political economist. My mom is an artist. My parents are both old-school New Yorkers. My mom’s family has lived in the city since 1904. My dad came in the early ’50s during Operation Bootstrap, when a lot of Puerto Ricans came over to do low-wage factory jobs. So, for me, I was kind of born into being on the political left.
Like a lot of people my age, my first real activism was around the Iraq War and the war on terror because 9/11 happened two days before I turned 18, and I was in Chelsea. Just seeing how this tragedy and crime against our city was being manipulated to invade these countries and slaughter innocent people and set up torture camps … it was so horrific. I spent a lot of time protesting against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and also against the torture camp in Guantanamo Bay.
That was my first experience, just being on the streets when I was 18 and going down to DC and sleeping on floors, going to protests, all of that. I started getting heavily involved in leftist politics when Occupy Wall Street happened across the street from where I lived. I was down there from the first hours, pretty much. I documented it with my artwork. I made posters for the movement, I wrote about it, I got arrested at it. The rebellions and protests that came out of that were things that shaped my life.
And when Trump got elected the first time, I felt like the sort of anarchist-inspired leaderless protests at the squares, which were very much dear to me, were insufficient to combat fascism. I needed to join an organization, and that’s why I joined DSA.
H: It must feel so surreal to be a lifelong New Yorker, having lived through 9/11 especially, now seeing Mamdani elected thanks to the work of an energetic, community-based movement.
MC: Yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s very much New York healing a lot of its fucked up racism. Or the parts that were still wallowing in that fucked up racism being electorally defeated.
Stickers Crabapple designed for Mamdani’s first campaign for state assembly in 2020
H: Do you ever feel like your activism comes at a price? Has it affected your relationships with collectors, galleries, or art institutions?
MC: I don’t know if it’s affected it for a long time. When you have been a leftist as long as I have, you’re pre-canceled. You don’t get the opportunity in the first place. And art is a competitive world. It’s hard to know, like, did I not get this opportunity because I was a leftist or because they wanted something that had pictures of cowboys? However, one time when I definitely did get fucked over was because of Palestine, and this is not a unique story. Many, many artists who opposed the genocide suffered career consequences. I mean, much worse than mine. But I had my first solo show in seven years that opened in November of 2023, and it was not a political show. It was pictures of my beautiful friends in lingerie sitting on an antique chair. There were a number of collectors who had committed to sales before October 7 and withdrew their sales afterward because I opposed the genocide. It wasn’t something I was allowed to talk about at the time because of the omertà of the art world, and it had a very big impact on my sales. Nonetheless, if I cared about money primarily, I wouldn’t be an artist. I would be an electrician or an accountant.
H: And you’re also in a community of other like-minded artists. The retaliation against artists who’ve spoken out for Palestine is still going on and can feel really isolating. But community is kind of a balm for that, or a place to find solace and support.
MC: Absolutely. And I have to say, comrades like my friends who run the Palestine Festival of Literature, Omar Hamilton and Yasmin El-Rifae, have been the greatest supports to me. Any decent person opposed the genocide. It’s just basic human decency. If rich fuckers are angry at us for being against children being thrown into a meat grinder, so be it.
H: What’s your message to artists and art workers who want to use this moment to get involved in building a sustainable, affordable future for our community in New York City?
MC: There’s two things. First of all, and this is my advice to everyone: Join an organization. For me, that’s the Democratic Socialists of America. For you, it might be something else. I highly recommend joining the DSA. I think it’s the most powerful game in town right now. But we can’t have that much power as atomized individuals expressing ourselves. We have to join political organizations, and those will include artists and non-art people.
The second thing is, as an artist, you have a skill, right? You can paint, you can sculpt, you can draw, you can make videos, you can organize, you can do poetry, whatever. And if it moves you and if it feels right to you — because it’s certainly not an obligation — but if it’s something that you want to do, you can always use your artwork in service of the movements you care about. For instance, I did posters. I’m certainly not someone who thinks that every single artist must do political art all the time. Artists have the same obligations as all humans in regard to the politics of their place, and I don’t think that everyone has to make agitprop. But if that is something that calls you and that you would like to do, just find someone who needs it and volunteer your work. That’s what I did.
