A doctor, a waiter and a programmer: To the DSA, they are all 'working-class' voters

The Democratic Socialists of America are trying to redefine what it means to be a working-class voter in New York City.

To the DSA, restaurant workers, doctors and techies should see themselves as in the same boat. Compared to billionaires, they’re all relatively poor.

“The definition of working class really includes anyone who's dependent on their own work and their own labor for their livelihood and for their income,” said Grace Mausser, who co-chairs the DSA’s New York City chapter.

The chapter has seen explosive growth since Zohran Mamdani announced his mayoral campaign in October 2024. And new members joining Mamdani’s “political home” are told in orientation sessions to think of anyone who works for a living as working class.

Mausser said this includes programmers who work at Google as well as professionals who make six-figure incomes. “I would say a doctor who makes a healthy income, who's making $400,000-plus, is in economic reality much, much closer to a waiter than they are to Jeff Bezos,” she said, referring to Amazon's founder.

The shift portends a potential political realignment that views workers and billionaires as opposing sides of a class struggle. Historically, working class referred to people who did manual labor or low-wage work. With the broader definition, the DSA is attempting to tap into the population of people who may have seemingly comfortable desk jobs and decent salaries but still feel the city’s soaring costs have made it tough to climb the economic ladder.

On a recent afternoon along Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, many New Yorkers shared their feelings on the economy and whether they considered themselves part of the “working class.”

“You work towards a goal, but once you get to that point, everything is more expensive, so you're just constantly chasing after stability,” said Tim Min, a 38-year-old who works in advertising and considers himself “upper-middle class.”

He and several others strayed from the DSA worldview by defining the working class as those with the most limited opportunities and leisure time.

The working class are “the foundation of New York, the people who have to work so that everyone else can just enjoy the things,” Min said.

Mike James, a 28-year-old who works in building maintenance, defined “working class” as a “wage slave.”

Others spoke about how the gig economy had given rise to a new working class that upends the 9-to-5 model.

“I would say I'm definitely working class, and would probably be working class until I no longer am able to work,” said Orlando Thompson, a 47-year-old freelance videomaker and photographer who characterized himself as a gig worker.

Brynda Mara, 48, defined “working class” as endless hustling to make ends meet. She works as a writer and high school teacher, and rents out her home on Airbnb. Her plan is to retire abroad.

“If I decided to stay in New York City after retirement, I would never be comfortable,” she explained.

The DSA’s inclusive definition of working class has clear political implications. Mamdani has called the working class the “one majority in this country.” His relentless focus on affordability resonated with younger, educated renters as well as delivery workers and taxi drivers. During last year’s general election, he won 54% of the vote in areas of the Bronx where the median income is less than $75,000 a year.

Not that long ago, Eric Adams built a working-class coalition with low- and middle-income voters in the outer boroughs. He once said he would be the city’s first blue-collar mayor, pointing to his calloused hands.

But white-collar voters who are driving the DSA’s membership surge are able to speak about their own struggles. As of March, the unemployment rate among people with bachelor’s degrees ages 22 to 27 is up sharply from the pandemic, at 5.6% during the first quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. New York state has one of the lowest home ownership rates in the country: Only half of all adult residents and a quarter of those under 35 are homeowners.

“These are not people who are looking for a free ride or handout, but they don't expect their hard work to be accompanied by such precarity," said James Parrott, a labor economist at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. “When they think about what their employment prospects are going to be, what their life and retirement might be, whether or not they could afford to buy a home. These are things that Americans, for a long time, took for granted, but they can't do anymore.”

Henry Garrido, the executive director of DC37, the city’s largest municipal union, said he understands how widening income inequality has led to economic frustration among even higher-income earners. But he also pushed back on the notion that they should also be considered working class.

“Someone who earns $400,000 doesn't have the same perspective of somebody who is barely making 18 bucks an hour,” he said. Garrido started in the union as a cafeteria worker, where he and others showed up in sweltering conditions “because it was the only source of income.”

“It's not the same for folks that have the ability to take a job at Google, for instance, and can go work for Microsoft,” Garrido added.

Adam Carlson, a Democratic pollster, said he helps his clients drill down on working-class voters by establishing certain cutoffs on income and educational attainment. He warned that an over-inclusive definition of working class can be counterproductive when developing a strategy to win certain voters.

“If you're talking about everybody, you're also talking about nobody, right?” he said.

Like the debate over who qualifies as a real New Yorker, the broadening of the working class to include white-collar professionals prompts questions of authenticity. In one of the most fraught contests, the recent congressional race for an open seat in Brooklyn and Queens pitted DSA candidate Claire Valdez against Antonio Reynoso, a progressive backed by the Working Families Party.

Valdez won the primary decisively, even as she faced scrutiny over her working-class bona fides, with some asking about her upbringing in Texas as the daughter of a civil engineer.

Jasmine Gripper, the head of the Working Families Party, dismissed such criticisms as petty.

“I really try not to play the oppression Olympics game,” she said. “Who had it harder? Is your struggle real? The fact is, we're all struggling.”

But Gripper did draw a distinction between the Working Families Party — a bastion of progressive politics in the city — and the insurgent DSA. The WFP, Gripper said, is the political home for the “working poor.” She ticked off a list of examples that included home attendants, car wash workers, delivery workers and restaurant servers.

“Those are the working poor New Yorkers who are on their feet all day. They're doing the jobs that keep our city running,” she said. “And for us, the party is focused on building power for them.”