The last five years have been, objectively, abysmal. Climate disaster is no longer looming: it has arrived. Floods, fires, and heatwaves have devastated communities, especially in the global majority. Economic injustice is sharper than ever. Fascism is not creeping; it’s galloping. Meloni in Italy, Le Pen in France, Orbán in Hungary, Modi in India, Milei in Argentina, and now, somehow, Trump again in the U.S. Sticking to the facts, that's not all; the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent movement, however powerful, had not managed to disrupt the mass incarceration machine. The erosion of civil liberties and suppression of speech and protest, as we witnessed at Columbia University and elsewhere. AI and corporate interests even more in control, Covid that spared no one but exposed extreme inequity by design that so many hoped to keep ignoring, and now the continuation of Nakba and a genocide in Gaza. There’s so much more that I could write here but the point is made, and I also know this did not begin 5 years ago and maybe that is the actual point. Things are objectively bad, like really bad.
When COVID hit, I was living in Amsterdam and working in the Hague. While I didn’t bake bread, I did something I hadn’t done in years: I slowed down. As a former public defender in New York City, my life had felt like emergency triage. I read a book called Doughnut Economics and while I have no expertise or claim to this world, what I did take away was this idea of prioritizing human needs over GDP growth in consideration of ecological limits. I moved back to New York City in late 2021. I could feel the impact covid had on the city, my friends, everyday people, small businesses, everything. There was a sense of agitation mixed with a fear and definitely a desire to get on with things. But this idea of reverting back to business as usual seemed like the biggest mistake the world could make. I began searching—intentionally—for people and ideas that pointed toward something better. Ironically, Amsterdam adopted the doughnut economics model after I left.
A couple of years later, in May 2023, Zohran Mamdani, an Assembly member for the 36th district in northwest Queens, first slipped into my feed. He had co-sponsored a bill titled Not On Our Dime that would end New York State’s aiding and abetting of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. It sought to halt the funneling of over $60 million in tax dollars to apartheid Israel, funding that supports the expansion of settlements and enables settler violence. I was in complete disbelief. How was I only just now discovering a New York politician that was brave enough to take such a tangible and direct stand? I immediately began posting and sharing this news with friends and family.
By December 2023 I was not just a follower of Mamdani, but a fan. He introduced another bill: a proposal to tax private universities like NYU and Columbia to fund CUNY. As an alum of both NYU and CUNY, this hit close to home. It has been reported that Columbia had saved an estimated $182 million in taxes in 2023 alone; NYU, $145 million. Mamdani’s proposal was more than clever: it was just. He was offering creative, progressive solutions with a rare integrity that often goes missing in politics. It felt like he had emerged from the margins with exactly the clarity and conviction I’d been hoping to find.
Meanwhile, Puerto Rican politics was heating up. November 2024 marked a historic shift in Puerto Rico's general election with the rise of a center-left coalition party known as Alianza, or The Alliance. Much like Mamdani’s presence, they seemed to emerge from the sidelines, with no prior warning or precursor. It was formed to disrupt the stagnant two-party dominance of Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) and Partido Popular Democrático (PPD)—in support of a human-centric, socially-conscious approach. Alianza presented a bold alternative to what many believed was a corrupt and out-of-touch system. While the coalition didn’t win the governorship, it made significant gains, winning legislative seats and galvanizing young voters.
Ahead of the election, an estimated 50,000 people gathered at a rally in Puerto Rico where Bad Bunny performed, turning into a political moment that referenced the devastation of Hurricane Maria. Standing before the crowd, he declared:
“In two days, whether there’s thunder, rain, or lightning, nothing will stop us from making history. I will never forget how the government abandoned us during the hurricane. This November 5th, we are going to be the storm—and there’s nobody who can save them.”
Bad Bunny’s words resonated with my sister and I, Palestinians in diaspora and fans of Bad Bunny; she had introduced me to him in 2018. The truth is there is not a day that she and I do not speak about Palestine. We, in a sense, are primed to both identify connections to our identity and to be in automatic solidarity with other movements. More importantly, this resonated with his people, especially with a younger generation of Puerto Ricans—both on the island and in the diaspora—who are returning, reclaiming their culture, and reconnecting with their ancestral land and moving politics away from the status quo.
At this point, safe to say everyone knows Bad Bunny. He made global headlines earlier this year with the release of his critically acclaimed album DeBÌ TiRAR MáS FOToS, a socially and politically charged record that united Latin American communities in North America, and quite frankly, the rest of the world. It serves as a powerful reminder that colonial violence and imperial conquest is a universal experience that we need to challenge to safeguard our communities. The way his music was received by both youth and older generations everywhere. I was personally thrilled to see his political comeback post-Kardashians.
I recently met a young woman on the beach in Vieques. We talked politics for an hour, about Palestine, Bad Bunny, and Mamdani. It felt fitting to have that conversation in Vieques, a small island long-contested: first under Spanish colonization, then U.S. military occupation. She had started an organization—something like the origin story of Lifta Club—to document and preserve Puerto Rican history. She truly believes that thriving is premised on sharing our stories of heritage. While our vision at Lifta Club continues to evolve, our intention was always to imagine our future in the present.
Everywhere I went, the Puerto Rican flag stirred something in me. In 1948, the same year as the Nakba, the U.S.-appointed Puerto Rican governor signed the Gag Law. It made it illegal to fly the Puerto Rican flag. The law also restricted other expressions of nationalist sentiment, such as speaking in favor of Puerto Rican independence or singing revolutionary songs. These acts were punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Similarly, in the present day the Palestinian flag is banned all over occupied Palestine. People living in places like Haifa and Akka (often referred to as 48ers) risked their lives going out on the streets in protest of the genocide, and yet they did, flying the flag high. The suppression of independence movements always goes hand-in-hand with cultural erasure.
Bad Bunny is not new to politics. In 2022, he put out this music video, a commentary on the dangers of corporate greed and capitalist interests and policies impacting Puerto Rico, its physical landscape, and in turn the exploitation of his people. Zohran, an actual politician, is making waves running as a Democratic Socialist for mayor of NYC. By offering a platform of affordable housing and public buses and taxing elite universities to fund education, to name just a few, Mamdani has shown himself to be a real New Yorker wanting to lead real New Yorkers.
What ties these moments together, from Queens to San Juan to Gaza, is the shared urgency of liberation. Whether it’s Puerto Ricans resisting U.S. colonialism or Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation, or New Yorkers resisting the crippling effect of hypercapitalism and housing costs: across all these movements for liberation, there is a knowing that freedom is possible.
And what do Zohran Mamdani and Bad Bunny have in common? They’re more than just symbols of change. They represent what it means to act when people have lost faith in electoral politics altogether. But more importantly, they’re political innovators, shifting perspectives and challenging the notion that structural frameworks are immovable. Bad Bunny turned a music video into a call for anti-capitalist cultural preservation. Mamdani ditched lawn signs in favor of clever, accessible online campaigns that focus on human issues. His campaign ultimately reached the whole world. Cultural shifts often don’t come from where we expect them—but they come if there is a willingness to pay attention, get curious, and most importantly to believe.
