Our Time for NYC was founded as a nonprofit political group after Zohran Mamdani\u2019s election as mayor by members of the Democratic Socialists of America hoping to maintain the organizing energy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But just five months later, Our Time has lost virtually all of its staff.<\/p>\n
Emma Saltzberg, a member of Our Time\u2019s board, confirmed that Executive Director Jeremy Freeman, Field Manager Magdalena Mora\u0144da and Organizing Director Sara Blazevic have all left the organization in recent months, and Deputy Director Divya Sundaram will be departing after this week. At that point, Communications Director Jesse Myerson, a former spokesperson for New York City Council Member Tiffany Cab\u00e1n, will be Our Time\u2019s only remaining full-time staffer. The group\u2019s board has also undergone a reshuffling, with Saltzberg joining alongside new board members last month and one of the group\u2019s two original board members stepping down last week.<\/p>\n
Salzburg said the board is currently in the midst of a \u201cthoughtful and intentional strategy reflection process,\u201d which will hopefully result in a new strategic direction for Our Time. \u201cWe are in a moment of pausing, reflecting, adjusting to meet the moment,\u201d she said. \u201cI think we’re all really committed to doing what the moment requires of us, and being as effective as possible in fighting for the New York that we deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freeman also confirmed that he left his role as executive director. \u201cI stepped down to pursue other opportunities. I continue to be excited about and confident in Our Time\u2019s work to advance the affordability agenda,\u201d he said in a statement to City & State.<\/p>\n
Our Time was created with great fanfare in November<\/a>, following Mamdani\u2019s victory in the mayoral election. The 501(c)(4) nonprofit was founded by NYC-DSA members who worried that Mamdani\u2019s 100,000-strong army of volunteers would be demobilized once the campaign ended. Although some in DSA argued that those volunteers who wanted to keep fighting for Mamdani\u2019s agenda should just join DSA, there was concern that less politically engaged volunteers might not want to join an explicitly socialist organization.<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout the late 20th and early 21st century, there has been a real reluctance to identify with the term \u2018socialist,\u2019\u201d said Grace Mausser, co-chair of NYC-DSA.<\/p>\n They underestimated the interest. NYC-DSA has continued its meteoric rise during the first 100 days of Mamdani\u2019s administration. The group grew from 5,910 members in October 2024 (when Mamdani launched his campaign) to 9,650 members in June 2025 (when he won the Democratic primary) to 12,860 in November 2025 (when he won the general election) to 14,360 last month.<\/p>\n \u201cIt turns out that democratic socialism is more popular than we thought it was,\u201d Saltzberg said.<\/p>\n \u201cZohran really embracing it, not only through the campaign, but also actively as mayor, I think, has made it a lot less kind of scary, alienating, esoteric as a term for many,\u201d Mausser said. \u201cSo I mean, this is a positive development, from our perspective.<\/p>\n Mausser said DSA\u2019s success may have sucked the wind out of Our Time. It\u2019s not the case that all of Mamdani\u2019s campaign volunteers joined DSA, but the most active ones did (if they weren\u2019t already members) and the rest have proven more difficult than anticipated to mobilize. \u201cI think we may need to figure out if the way Our Time was organizing itself was the best way to reach and activate those people,\u201d Mausser said.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t help that the Mamdani has kept his distance from the group aimed at appealing to his acolytes. Our Time acquired the Mamdani campaign\u2019s list of volunteers, but that\u2019s about it. While the mayor has repeatedly givenDSA shout outs, and City Hall representatives meet regularly with the socialist group\u2019s leaders, the same is not true of Our Time. And when Our Time helped organize a massive \u201ctax the rich\u201d rally in Albany in February, Mamdani skipped it<\/a>,to avoid complicating his ongoing negotiations with Gov. Kathy Hochul. Turnout was much lower than anticipated. It\u2019s difficult to mobilize pro-Mamdani volunteers when Mamdani doesn\u2019t even show up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our Time for NYC was founded as a nonprofit political group after Zohran Mamdani\u2019s election as mayor by…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":744816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[20184,5229,154640,70742,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-744815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-albany","tag-america","tag-dsa","tag-heard-around-town","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116447096983816849","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}