chilles (Alan) Akrivos was born in a working-class neighborhood of Athens, to a family of left-wing activists. His relatives had fought the Nazis during the Second World War. One of his uncles had been part of the resistance to the right-wing military dictatorship that controlled Greece between 1967 and 1974. In 1982, when Akrivos was in his early twenties, he decided to move to the United States, settling in Astoria, a mostly Greek enclave in northwestern Queens. It wasn’t really a hotbed. People would yell at him, he said, when he tried to hand out flyers advocating for an increase to the minimum wage. Around 2015, that started to change. Akrivos was a volunteer for Bernie Sanders’s Presidential campaign, and he would often talk to voters under the elevated train station at Thirty-first Street, sitting at a long table with placards and socialist literature. “For the first time, we were not getting shouted at,” he told me recently. His neighbors actually seemed curious. They were unhappy about the state of the world, the cost of things, and sometimes even with capitalism itself. “People were, like, ‘Yeah, I cannot live like this. We need to change something.’ ”
In 2023, Astoria became notable for having a democratic socialist at every level of elected government. The neighborhood elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Congress in 2018, and Zohran Mamdani to the State Assembly in 2020. (Back when he was still a longshot, Mamdani used to plan his mayoral run in the Astoria branch of Qahwah House, a Yemeni coffee shop.) In 2021, it elected Tiffany Cabán, an attorney endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, to the City Council, and in 2022, it elected Kristen Gonzalez, another D.S.A. endorsee, to the State Senate. Observers of this political confluence have dubbed it the People’s Republic of Astoria, or a part of the Commie Corridor, a wider term that also includes nearby Greenpoint and Long Island City. A running joke is that candidates endorsed by D.S.A. regularly “do Assad numbers”—a reference to Bashar al-Assad, the former Syrian dictator—as if it were no contest.
How did this happen? Recently, I spoke to a half-dozen activists, campaigners, and longtime Astoria residents. “The short answer is extreme demographic change,” Akrivos told me. Astoria doesn’t have a particularly extensive history of socialism. Katya Nicolaou, another resident and left-wing organizer, said that there had been an influx of radical Greek students, like her and Akrivos, in the seventies and eighties. And Akrivos told me that in the late nineteenth century, pockets of socialist German immigrants settled in the area. (Also in the nineteenth century, a company town set up around the Steinway piano factory had elements of utopian-socialism.) But generally, in recent decades, the residents were conservative Democrats. Astoria is the fictional home of Archie Bunker, the bigoted, blue-collar guy from the nineteen-seventies sitcom “All in the Family,” who perpetually bickered with his more progressive relatives. (Bunker’s son-in-law, Mike, was a bit more woke, but probably not D.S.A.-level.) It used to be represented in Congress by Joe Crowley, an establishment Democrat, and at the State Assembly level for ten years by Aravella Simotas, a progressive but not socialist Greek American. Simotas narrowly lost a primary in 2020 to Mamdani, by around four hundred votes. Simotas told me recently that she had noticed the electorate had started to change more than fifteen years ago, even before Ocasio-Cortez’s initial victory.
What changed? Astoria, which was relatively affordable at that point, started to attract people who cared about the cost of living. Young families moved in. New immigrants continued to come, too, increasingly from the Middle East and South Asia. Stylianos Karolidis, a thirty-one-year-old D.S.A. member who grew up in Astoria, told me that new arrivals tend to be more open to D.S.A. candidates because they didn’t have a preëxisting loyalty to New York’s Democratic machine. “That makes people more open to change,” he explained. Georgia Lignou, who moved to the neighborhood in 1987, ventured that Astoria’s immigrant mix is also a bit less scared of the word “socialist.” “We come from parts of the world where socialism isn’t a curse,” she told me. Karolidis agreed. Even some of the newer Greek migrants, who are still coming to Astoria, he said, are pretty radical, thanks to the eurozone crisis.
It’s not just who arrived. Around the same time, Astoria’s conservative Democrats—the Archie Bunkers—started leaving the Party and becoming Republicans. Michael Lange, a New York elections analyst who is often credited with coining the term “Commie Corridor,” described it to me as a “perfect storm.” Astoria isn’t actually the most left-leaning neighborhood in New York. (That would be parts of Williamsburg and Bushwick, in Brooklyn, and parts of Ridgewood, in Queens.) In the general mayoral election, Lange pointed out, some parts of Astoria voted more than forty per cent for Andrew Cuomo. But those voters aren’t dominant in Astoria’s Democratic primaries anymore.
On Election Night, as the results rolled in, one graphic showed the returns for Mamdani in blue, against those for Cuomo in orange. A lot of New York was blue. Ridgewood was deep, deep navy; the Upper West Side was pale cerulean. Lange tweeted, “You can see the Commie Corridor from space.” Astoria was in the center, but it wasn’t the bluest. The Bronx, parts of which Ocasio-Cortez also represents, was about the same shade. It can be hard to disentangle Astoria from the citywide and nationwide trends of the D.S.A. But if you look at a significant part of Mamdani’s winning coalition that night—young people, renters, South Asians, and Muslims—it looked a lot like Astoria.
Last month, I took a walk around northern Astoria with Karolidis, the D.S.A. member who grew up there. As a young man, Karolidis had been a conservative Republican. “I was really on one about gentrification and affordability,” he said. “My nemesis when I was a teen was the hipster.” He saw the neighborhood change from his front door: people started calling delis “bodegas,” and diners became smoothie shops. When he was ten years old, he remembers seeing his neighbors, two women in their twenties, order FreshDirect. “I was, like, What the hell is that?” he told me. “That was a harbinger.”
Karolidis moved away from Astoria, but he found himself drawn in by the Ocasio-Cortez campaign. “I don’t think I understood what it meant to be a socialist—I just knew, these were the people doing something in my neighborhood,” he told me. He moved back, and got involved with a D.S.A. campaign to gain public control over the energy system. Within three years, he had started a socialist podcast. “I just learned an incredible amount about the economy, how the world works, and what socialism is and what Marxism is,” he said. “What is the petite bourgeoisie? It’s been a wild ride.”
Earlier in the day, I’d also met with Shawna Morlock, who had been one of the very first volunteers on Ocasio-Cortez’s primary campaign. Morlock, who was a hair stylist, had moved to Astoria a few years earlier with her husband, a restaurant manager, because it was “a place you could afford on two blue-collar salaries.” She had never worked on a political campaign. On her first-ever canvassing shift, near Astoria Park, she met Ocasio-Cortez, who, in a role-play, pretended to be a voter, and had Morlock practice pitching her. (“I was so awkward and terrible, but she was so kind,” Morlock said.) Morlock joined the D.S.A. and eventually became a full-time staffer to Gonzalez, the state senator.
“I don’t think I joined D.S.A. thinking, I am a socialist,” Morlock told me. “I joined it because they believe the same thing I believe in.” The year after Ocasio-Cortez won, Morlock campaigned for Cabán, who was running for Queens District Attorney. (Cabán lost the Democratic nomination by just fifty-five votes, and was later elected to the City Council.) One day, Morlock recalled, “I was picking up my literature to knock doors, and one volunteer was, like, ‘Thank you, comrade.’ ” I was, like, ‘O.K.? Comrade . . . I guess.’ ” As Morlock puts it, it took a few campaigns to “dis-McCarthyize” her mind. “After organizing for a couple of years, I’m, like, I’m socialist.”
Astoria can feel a bit like an island. It’s nice, a little isolated, and has good seafood. Is there something about it as a place that has made it more amenable to socialist politics? “Astoria is very accessible,” Nicolaou, the Greek left-wing organizer, told me. “People are accessible to each other.” “It’s walkable, it’s beautiful, it’s a good place to run political campaigns,” Lange told me. There is an argument that Astoria is the perfect place for one of the D.S.A.’s signature New York tactics—the canvass. “I’ve knocked all of Astoria, basically,” Morlock told me. When she rings a doorbell, people actually come to talk to her. “I’m coming back to the same people, over and over, cycle to cycle, who remember me,” she said.
In 1932, Morris Hillquit, a founder of the Socialist Party of America, coined the term “sewer socialism” to describe a kind of socialism that focusses on everyday municipal problems. Nicolaou said that a lot of the neighborhood’s older residents were impressed by young D.S.A. members who went grocery shopping for vulnerable people at the start of the pandemic. Karolidis told me a story about Mamdani, when he was a state assemblyman, supporting seniors at an affordable-housing complex near Ditmars. “Now there are dozens of older Greek seniors in this complex who love Zohran because he helped them out,” he said. The City Council office of Cabán, he added, has a reputation for being very responsive. “It’s the little things over and over,” Morlock said. Some people are “probably not familiar with D.S.A. and what it means to be a socialist,” Karolidis said, “but they see our candidates and are, like, ‘Oh, yes, I had a good experience—I like these people.’ ”
Astoria’s local outpost of the D.S.A., the Queens branch, is also known for being results-focussed and cohesive, multiple people told me. (“There’s nobody who is, like, ‘Oh, man, this candidate doesn’t know this Marxist theory,’ ” Lange said.) Years of winning elections have reinforced that approach, and helped members bond outside politics. The New York City chapter of D.S.A. has a run club and a thriving parents’ group called Comrades with Kids. (Diana Moreno, who was recently endorsed by Mamdani to take over his State Assembly seat, is a loyal member of the parents’ group chat.) In Astoria, normie Democrats wind up getting converted. Morlock told me about a friend of hers from the neighborhood. “When we first met, I remember her being, like, ‘Oh, I love Kamala Harris or Cory Booker,’ ” she said. Now that friend sends Morlock communist memes. “Really, really hard-core anti-capitalist things,” Morlock said. Why did that happen? “This mom—she is struggling to afford the things that used to be easy,” Morlock said. “Our kids are seen as an afterthought. Our elected leaders don’t give a shit. Everybody’s fucking pissed!” Lignou, one of the longtime Astoria residents, told me, “Astoria attracted many people because it was very humane. You can save and raise a family. Then everything became very expensive. It was a very good example of what capitalism does.”
On a recent evening, I pushed open the door of the Syllogos Kreton Minos, a community club for the Cretan diaspora in northern Astoria, to attend a Greek music night, run by Nicolaou. I was looking forward to quizzing long-term Astoria residents about the recent leftward turn. “The Greek left loves this kind of music,” Nicolaou had told me, referring to a genre called rebetiko, which she described as a Greek version of the blues. Inside, there were a few Christmas decorations, and some older Cretan men played endless rounds of cards in the corner. I was early, so I started eating a large plate of pork kleftiko, a dish of meat and red and green peppers, braised with oregano and olive oil. Slowly, the musicians set up and the tables around me started filling. Akrivos, the Athenian from a political family, was picking at a plate of fried whiting, and I was handed a shot glass of grappa mixed with honey by Barbara Lambrakis, a seventy-five-year-old woman who has lived in Astoria since she was thirteen. Lambrakis was very excited to tell me that she owned an apartment building near where Mamdani lived. “Even though I do own rent-stabilized apartments, I support him, believe it or not,” she said.
I was sitting next to Maria Lymberopoulos, a seventy-five-year-old woman who has lived in Astoria for fifty years. Lymberopoulos told me she thinks of herself more as a liberal, but since 2019 she had consistently voted for D.S.A. candidates. She’s not interested in the “socialist” label. (Mamdani, she said, reminded her of a young Barack Obama.) “I believe in the social issues we have—everything is expensive. They’re concerned about the things the average person needs.” There wasn’t much difference between her idea of liberalism and Astoria’s idea of socialism, she said. “Maybe, when you get older, your mind opens up more,” she told me. “And you’re ready to accept what your grandson or the young neighbor is doing.”
In the meantime, Nicolaou and a friend had started dancing. Akrivos was noodling on a bouzouki. Over the music, Lymberopoulos made sure to tell me that most Greek people in Astoria weren’t this leftist. Earlier, I’d also spoken to a man in his late sixties, named Dimitris, whom someone had described to me as an “old-school Greek communist.”(Dimitris declined to give his last name. “They have memories of McCarthy,” Nicolaou said.) Dimitris told me proudly that, in the early nineties, the former general secretary of the Greek Communist Party had visited Astoria, and he’d met him; his friend showed me a photo on his phone. Dimitris was grateful for the socialist wave, but he wasn’t fully impressed. “I wouldn’t call them socialists,” he said of Astoria’s younger residents. “As Marx put it, all the crucial sectors of the economy—they are supposed to belong to the people. I didn’t hear any of those candidates proposing something like that.” Of Ocasio-Cortez, he told me, “She’s not a Marxist. Anybody can say ‘I’m a socialist.’ It’s become fashionable to.”
A few days earlier, on my walk with Karolidis, we’d gone to look at his old family home. He had told me it was a very obvious metaphor for Astoria. We walked down Ditmars Boulevard, past Karolidis’s old elementary school, and onto Sound Street, a strangely cut-off street that hits the highway. Karolidis had grown up in a low-slung duplex. His family lived on the left side; his father ran a food truck and stored it in the garage. When Karolidis was sixteen, his father died. His mother had to sell the house, and the family moved to Jamaica, Queens. A few years later, their half was redeveloped. The new owner added another story, and then subdivided it into apartments. Standing on the street, we gossiped about how funny it looked. The right side, which hadn’t been renovated, had a classic triangular roof that ended suddenly as it hit the new story of apartments, which shot straight up. “It used to be one—it looked normal,” Karolidis said. “You can see what I mean,” he said.
I asked Karolidis how he thought his sixteen-year-old self, the conservative Republican, would have reacted if he’d told him that, one day, people would be calling his neighborhood the People’s Republic of Astoria. He warned me that the term was very “Twitter-born.” He could imagine his teen self getting angry over it. Now he appreciated it. Since he’d been forced to move out of Astoria all those years ago, he’d grown up, met someone—a transplant from the Midwest—moved back, joined the D.S.A., campaigned for public power over electricity, and quit his old job. Astoria had changed a lot but also stayed the same. Socialists, he pointed out, had been elected in Astoria for almost ten years, and the place was still quite nice. “I feel very positive about that term now,” he said. “The People’s Republic, or the Commie Corridor—the people own it.”
[Naaman Zhou is a member of The New Yorker’s editorial staff. He was previously a reporter for the Guardian Australia.]
