Fourteen months ago, I received an inquiry from an organizer who had spent the last year working for a certain State Assembly Member in New York. And though she could neither “confirm nor deny the rumors” that Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani would be running for mayor, she told me she had been put in charge of all of the high-profile events for the campaign. She had read The Art of Gathering multiple times, had taken my digital course, and she asked: Could we talk about how to infuse more joy and meaning into politics?
I did not know who Zohran Mamdani was at the time, but I did know who Katie Riley was. I knew she had real gathering chops, and a history of congressional and non-profit campaign advisory work. She also understood the power gathering can have when people are creative, thoughtful, strategic, and bold enough to use it when they actually have power to do so. And, fortunately for me, I said yes.
If you’ve been paying any attention to New York City for the last year, you may have noticed a new vibe coming out of the city. And while countless unusual, interlocking, brilliant choices led to the generational surprise of 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani being elected the city’s next mayor, one of the key elements was how this campaign consistently, creatively, and strategically gathered and built a 100,000-volunteer strong movement while doing so.
As part of my new series, THE BREAKDOWN, a behind-the-scenes dissection of a remarkable gathering, Katie Riley, Deputy Campaign Manager of the Zohran Mamdani campaign, joined me on GROUP LIFE to talk for the first time publicly about how, over the course of 14 months, they used gathering as their super power.
For 75 minutes, Riley sits down with us and we break down their gatherings — their tiny house parties, their launch event, their 1,800 and 10,000-person rallies, and even the city-wide scavenger hunt and more. For gathering nerds, this is a master class in taking gathering as a tool of group life and applying it to joyful, meaningful, transformative organizing. And even if you want nothing to do with politics, you will still learn a ton. As I say on every GROUP HELP Session, we can learn from everywhere.
Take a listen.
10 ways the Zohran Mamdani campaign threw the better party (and won)
1. Don’t assume you know what the purpose of a rally (or a fundraiser) is. We began by asking what the purpose of each event was, every single time. And the more “obvious-seeming” the event was (“a fundraiser is to raise money!” “a rally is to raise energy!”), the more time we spent determining the gathering’s actual purpose, the from-to. For the first public rally at Brooklyn Steel on May 4, 2025, Riley was clear: “The purpose of this rally is to get people from loving the guy to believing he can actually win.” Then they made every decision for the three-hour, 1,800-person rally around that specific, disputable purpose.
2. Throw the party YOU would actually want to attend. Zohran Mamdani’s launch event was not a press conference. It was a block party. With balloons. And a section for kids. There was a lot of Beyoncé (Riley chose the playlist, lol). They served food made in Astoria, from all around the world. They set it up so that, as Riley explained, “the very first image” of the campaign was the candidate “surrounded by people who represented the diversity of New York City and the coalition he was running to represent.” They wanted it to “feel joyful right out of the gate,” and for people to feel invited in, not talked at. It was an embodied event where people experienced the values and vibes the campaign stood for.
3. Always book the room with a disco ball. When choosing a venue for the first big rally, Riley told me, “We knew we needed a stage, and we needed a place that could hold a lot of people. There are structural pieces that go into any choice like this. But we wanted a place that felt like you could actually throw a party there. It was in Bushwick, and so many of our earliest, most committed supporters are in Brooklyn. We just wanted a space that had a youthful vibe. A way to get me to book a venue is to have a disco ball. You’ve got a disco ball, we’ll work around the party.” The room itself was a signal: this is not a lectern-and-flag situation. This is a party you want to be at.
4. If you want families, have coloring sheets. At the block party, there was a section with coloring sheets and an arts-and-crafts station where kids could draw and color – a ritual they pulled through many future events. But the coloring sheets were also the platform: “fast and free buses.” The kids colored buses. It was an understandable platform (and those coloring sheets could presumably go home and end up on fridges). Again, it was an embodied event. People have children. One of the campaign’s main promises is universal child care. There’s no disconnect here. (I told Riley that the day after the election, my seven-year-old daughter informed her brother that they wouldn’t need their subway cards that morning because Mamdani won and “buses are now fast and free.” 😂 She got the message.)
5. Don’t just connect people to the candidate. Connect them to each other, too. The moment the candidate is in the room may not be the most important moment of your gathering to build community. Early on, they hosted 50 tiny house parties. They created HOST GUIDES for every fundraiser and instructed volunteer hosts not just to connect their guests to Mamdani, but to one another. “Guest introductions are often overlooked, but this is your moment to create meaning for your guests and build community within the campaign,” the guide read. The purpose of the event was clear: “to make your guests feel uniquely connected and have a stake in the success of this campaign.”
6. They dared to ask BOTH questions: “What breaks your heart about New York City?” and “What restores your faith as a New Yorker?” During the house parties, they often asked guests to turn to one another and answer both. It’s real. And it’s deeply invitational: look at your city. What do you love? What breaks your heart? How do you want to be part of this thing?
7. “Stand clear of the closing doors. BING BONG.” To keep speakers on time at rallies, the emcee opened with a pop-up rule: if a speaker hit their allotted time, they’d play the classic sound the Subway plays when train doors are closing: “Stand clear of the closing doors… bing bong,” and the crowd was told to cheer them off like “You did it.” They set and kept boundaries with joy and humor.
8. Merch was for belonging, not revenue. Because of spending caps and compliance, a big merch store wasn’t the move. Most of the now-iconic merch (bandanas, paper fans, beanies) was “uniquely available” to people who were volunteering. Wearing a yellow bandana, a beanie, or a bright blue Zohran Mamdani bag signaled I am part of this, not I bought this. They layered DIY merch nights on top, where people brought their own shirts, totes, even booty shorts, made buttons and friendship bracelets, and sat next to strangers while they printed. It helped that each piece was super stylish and people wanted to wear them. Another pro tip from Riley: bandanas are great because one size fits all.
9. Get out of the world of New York City politics and into the world of New York City. Mamdani genuinely loves New York City and they wanted that love to permeate through the campaign. On August 24, 2025, the campaign announced a citywide scavenger hunt, and thousands of people showed up at Gilded Age Hall (so many that they ran out of supplies) and then ran around the city to learn New York’s history and have fun. Later, they hosted a soccer tournament. On the night before the primary, Mamdani walked from the tippy top of Manhattan (Inwood Park) all the way down to the southern tip at Battery Park, and it became another physical, joyful, in-the-streets moment where people joined him, walked alongside him, cheered, and saw a guy who genuinely wanted to be here.
10. Fun is not only important, it is GLUE for civic life. Riley said that, at so many of these events, people were “deeply confused” and kept asking, “Why are you doing this?” And the answer was always the same: “Because it’s fun.” One of the most surprising gatherings they hosted during the campaign was paper-shredding parties. It’s something Mamdani loves, and it let people show up with something they’d been holding onto (so much paper!), hand it over, and watch it get shredded. They had DJs, ice cream trucks, and DIY merch stations so people could hang before and after the shredding. It was also, by the way, a lived example of “a service that the government can do,” and a reminder that government can actually make people’s lives better.
Gatherings are the creation of a temporary alternative world where people get to experience another way of being together. And, as they exit, they think, maybe we could have more of this in the world…
As always,
Priya
P.S. Our final GROUP HELP Session of the year is on Wednesday, December 17 at noon eastern. It is: The anatomy of a Magical Question and how to crack open a group. You may have been following along with my Magical Questions series this year on Instagram. For the first time ever, I’m going to actually break down the craft of how to formulate and get better at asking Magical Questions to crack open a group. It’s not too late to get off the fence, and become a group lifer ;)
P.P.S. If you’re part of a pro-democracy organization and you want to use The Art of Gathering Digital Course in your organizing work, write us here. I’d love to hear what you’re building.
