Mayor Mamdani Knows Your Name.

In a political landscape where it seems the head demon in charge has unchecked power to tear everything apart, Zohran Mamdani stands as a bright beacon of what a leader can be. 

I had the incredible pleasure of meeting Mr. Mamdani - on a first date of all things -  and somehow ran into each other twice in the same night. The second time, after only a two-minute conversation earlier, he remembered my name and the magazine I worked for. That moment has stayed with me because it revealed exactly who he is — both as a man and as a leader. The most incredible thing about his campaign is the way he constantly supports the overlooked, the frequently ignored, the forgotten.  No person is “little” to him.

He’s in bodegas, he’s talking to taxi drivers, he’s on Gaydar - I genuinely don’t know when he sleeps. But somehow he’s everywhere - single-handedly connecting with every single niche community in one of the most diverse cities in the world. His grassroots, on-the-ground campaign is proof that democracy still has a pulse. 

Zohran for NYC reports hundreds of multilingual volunteers speaking to thousands of New Yorkers every day for months on end. Mamdani started with very minimal name recognition, but he put himself out there - knocking on doors, attending community events, religious spaces, small businesses - going anywhere and talking to everyone, leading to his endorsement by huge NYC institutions like the New York Working Families Party and the New York City Central Labor Council. His artistic background (please go listen to his rap discography if you haven’t), striking visual branding, and investment in influencer culture helped him cut through political noise. 

Various Viral TikToks after His Halloweekend across NYC

Mamdani with Influencer Komal Nambiar via Instagram

He’s reigniting political energy among Gen Z — a generation that has consistently lacked interest in politics and voting because no politician ever seems to have any real interest in us. 

Zohran’s win is not just a victory for him or us - it’s a victory of the American Dream itself. Having emigrated to the U.S. at seven, Mamdani becoming mayor of New York City is living proof that the American Dream still exists today. That belief, that anyone, regardless of their background, can achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and opportunity, isn’t a faded ideal. It’s alive in America today, and Mamdani’s story embodies it.

Zohran Mamdani, with his mother and acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair

It’s not that everything is magically fixed, however. Zohran is an outlier - there are still millions of Americans incarcerated, discriminated, and oppressed because of whatever box they do or do not check. That’s exactly why his rise matters. 

It’s not that we ever gave up hope in America; it’s that our hope now has legs to stand on. It is my greatest hope that people have grown tired of being overlooked and cast aside by the current administration, which appears to prioritize extending and preserving its own wealth and power. Let Zohran’s win be the ignition of a fire that sweeps the nation - a reminder that We The People still have the power.

May we see through lies and manipulation of the media, stand together as one against what is objectively inhumane, and let no government ever have the power to take away our value of life again.

The Separation of Sex and State

Thursday – House of YES! Gaga Night

I have to be courageous with my sex. The memory of it sends electricity up my lungs, my mind swelling. This is what I secretly desire. A hill suddenly presents itself. 

What is provided at House of YES that makes space to summit these courageous peaks? Is it just reflections of community, life-well-lived, and preparation shedding a warm glow? How do its members fan the flame?

In the main room, two beautiful women danced to me – there was no mistake, not in the mind of a young man. I had to remind myself that this was all new to me, and I need only be present, not cool. One whipped my face with hair five times while I stood in the shallow end of dumbfounded. She smelled like cherries and amber. Colorful men danced feverishly beneath the stage’s proscenium arch; beacons in neon light.

A whisper of a dancer haunted the bar top for a Gaga-slow. In a single spotlight, he was crucified.

Not long after, papery rain flooded the room, slipping through the air and tickling our necks, bathing the floor in green and white. Pierre spoke calmly. Erotica wore black, off the clock. She spoke to my confidante, “I’d wear anything if they paid me.”

Leaving, I knew I hadn’t scaled the totem pole, but I could smell wood. To Erotica, a kiss on each cheek.

The Next Tuesday—Trans Day of Visibility March

It was a protest rather than a celebration. This makes sense. Transgender people are being used as an emotional-political bargaining chip by the Trump Administration. Marchers challenged and subverted ‘mainstream’ norms with their clothes and hair, slogans on t-shirts and signs above head.

The protest met first at Union Square then marched seven blocks south to Washington Square. Along the way, marchers linked arm in arm, groin to traffic, across opposing streets, in an act both symbolic and practical. A buzz of press flurried at the front of the crowd while bystanders pointed phones. In all, marchers took up four to five city blocks.

Intermittent conversations took place between law enforcement and march organizers. A protester with a half-shaven, half-mulleted head and a strong voice, shouted back to the crowd that they had been threatened by police – told to stop using their megaphones – and that consequently, protesters must be even louder.

Two phrases dominated the air:

1)        “Trans rights are human rights”

2)        “Protect our transgender children”

One sign read, “WE DON’T WANT YOUR CIS CHILDREN TO BE TRANS. WE WANT OUR TRANS CHILDREN TO BE SAFE!”

In Washington Square Park, marchers trickled around the drained fountain. A handful of skateboarders and fútbolers lingered in the fountain, where they had been before the crowd set in. Washington Square Arch towered north. A group of white Hare Krishna’s played hand drums and swayed, selling beads to the side.

Inside the fountain, a brown person spoke to a black person. It was a march organizer speaking to a skateboarder, the same organizer who earlier relayed information about megaphones and the police. With a face signaling defiance, the skateboarder turned and continued rolling circles around the fountainhead, through narrowing gaps in the crowd. That person chose to pursue their own object, not disrespectfully, despite all else occurring around them – a sight common in New York City.

Sunday – Home

In a video online a person spoke of the courage it takes, and the cool it leaves behind, when one endeavors to express themselves truthfully. Inside each of us are desires, fantasies, and intuitions as natural and ingrained as the birthmark on your hip, and they want out. 

House of YES, where color and sex and butterflies live, is a safe place to experiment with those innate qualities; to explore a more honest expression of self. For those who find truth there, it is a place to shine brightly and live with integrity.

Protests–byproducts of money, threats, death, and scarcity–are public gatherings of likeminded individuals advocating for those same freedoms guarded between YES’s motherly walls.

On a basic level, the people in Washington Square Park protested because their right to be themselves is being threatened. The persecution of human beings for the hidden purpose of disarray, toward ends of wealth and dominance, is an old and wicked trick. Yet the internal journey toward a more truthful existence, life’s most sacred pilgrimage, can really only be quelled by oneself or their killer.

Written by Aidan F. Dean Dunn

Photographer: Max Garcia Rico @maxg.ricophotography

Creative Direction/Production: Jaiden Blanks @thejaidenalexis

Stylist & MUA: Katelynn Herrera @katelynn.herrera

Production Manager & Hair: Natasha @natasha_teiman

Talent: Gabrielle Clemons @gabriellebiancaa

Oh the Places You’ll Go - Allegra Kirkland, Politics Editor at Teen Vogue.

In the modern age, more than ever, journalism and the news are in the palms of citizens everywhere. Anyone and everyone is able to be a reporter, the firsthand account of what is going on. However, this has brought an onslaught of the ever-popular fake news, false information, and straight-up lies being spread like wildfire across the internet. Allegra Kirkland is a New York City resident, mother, journalist, Oberlin graduate, and current Politics Director at Teen Vogue. 

I had the chance to interview Kirkland, getting a closer look at the responsibilities of a working journalist in Lower Manhattan and the world today. As I walked through the streets of Manhattan to get to One World Trade, the location of Teen Vogues office, thoughts were swarming my head about who Allegra would be, the kind of conversations we would have, and what her job was like, especially after earning her spot at one of the top media companies in 2025. Teen Vogue has been consistently rising back into the spotlight, increasingly speaking out on different social and political issues across the globe. After I got through the security of the building and we had secured our respective iced lattes (which Kirkland very kindly got for us), we sat down, and I got to hear some of Kirkland's thoughts. 

Allegra Kirkland

Lucy Anderson: Who are you? Do you want to give us a little bio, name, place, etc?

Allegra Kirkland: Of course, sure. I'm Allegra Kirkland. I'm the politics director at Teen Vogue, and I've been here since 2019, so almost six years. I just oversee basically everything that lives in the politics section, so all of our coverage of education, and what's going on in Congress, and the courts, and our history coverage, immigration, climate change, and just, like, you know, minor stuff. That's just minor stuff, yeah.

LA: So, Teen Vogue for six years, but before that, what were you doing? What was your path up to Teen Vogue? 

AK: Yeah, so before that, I loved to stay in places forever, apparently. I was at this publication called Talking Points, I don't know for... five-plus years, and I did, like, every job. That was where I came up, I guess. I did every single job there... You kind of learn how to do everything when no one's expecting you to know how to do it all yet. It's useful. It also just gives you more respect for everyone's job in the newsroom. 

I knew I wanted to be writing and stuff. So I was writing while doing those other jobs. And then, I became a news writer on the 6 am shift. So I had to get to the office at six in the morning every day- but it was good training because there was no one else on. 

That was a crash course. And then I became a reporter, covering national politics. But my little beats were voting rights and far-right extremism. And then, I was a reporter on that last job before I came to Teen Vogue.

LA: Wow. Amazing. Do you think anything within your job might surprise people? Is there something that maybe even surprised you in terms of, like, subject matter or what the role involves?

AK: I like it, self-consciously, but it's accurate; I joke that 50% of my job is just sending and receiving emails. Like, it's crazy. Just because we don't have staff writers, we work exclusively with freelancers, which is so interesting. I think that's very unique. Fielding pitches all day long. And I really do want to, especially because we work with so many, like, early-career writers and students. Like, I don't want to leave people hanging. So it takes a long fucking time. That's the least sexy part of the job. Is responding to emails. Also, there was a lot of project management in terms of just bringing different parts of our team together. That I actually really enjoy. 

LA: That's a very niche talent, finding the people who you think will do well together. 

AK: I'm just being like, “okay, the social video team is annoyed about this thing” and “we need to keep this moving” and “what's the deadline for that?” And I don't know. It's just a lot of moving parts, so you're kind of [always] reading emails. 

LA: You're in politics, and out of the four main columns that Teen Vogue does. There is immigration, environmental justice, government, and history. Is there any one of those categories that really draws you to the politics column? Or is there a column you feel you most drawn to?

AK: Yeah, that's [all] stuff I am interested in. But, I think education is something I've just kind of gotten more involved with since being at Teen Vogue, because we didn't do a lot of the coverage of my past job. I just think it still lends into everything else that's happening in the country right now. We see all the attacks on trans youth, start in schools, and bathroom bans and things like that. All the anti-DEI stuff. It all kind of grew out of the Department of Education being shut down. So I just think that it's such a fascinating [topic]. 

LA: Yes. The history of education is very interesting. How it started out as just shoving kids in a room to get them to learn how to sit still, to what we have now, is very interesting. 

AK: And surveillance. Like, we're running this piece soon. The Knight Institute at Columbia is filing this lawsuit against this Texas school district for using these ED tech programs that basically, track every single word that kids type on their school-issued laptops and stuff - and it's supposed to be for flagging mental health concerns, but, obviously, that could be used by overzealous people.

LA: What has been your favorite part of your journalism career so far? I know that's, like, a huge sphere, but is there anything that really sticks out to you? 

AK: Yeah. I mean, this probably sounds corny, but I really love working with student journalists. Like, I don't know. I just think it's so fun and engaging. And I learn so much from the pitches we get. And, I've worked with so many teenagers who are more professional and better writers than 34-year-olds. And, like, one specific project was for the election last year. We had this group of student journalist correspondents who were in battleground states. And they were such wonderful human beings.

LA: The most radical people come from some of the most difficult places to live. The most difficult places to be radical. 

AK: Right. And when I'm, like, “oh, my God, how am I still in this industry?” Then I meet people who really want to. I'm like “okay… maybe this job is awesome”.

LA: Exactly. Well, I have one last question for you. Because of all of your work in activism and politics, and the care that you seem to really have for all of these issues. Are there any pieces of advice that you want to give to student journalists and those teenagers who want to make a change, and who want to follow a path like yours? 

AK: Yeah, some cliche ones, but generally just finding community. Finding like-minded people, finding people who can help you along the way, whether it's mentor figures or just peers who you can be, like, “I'm applying for this job, can you look at my cover letter?”. It is nice to have people who care about the same things you care about. (and) Don't worry about having the perfect internship, the perfect career path. It's okay to take a nonlinear one.

Stay updated with Teen Vogue @teenvogue on socials and here. Thank you to Allegra Kirkland and the staff at Teen Vogue for the interview. All photos provided and approved by Allegra Kirkland.

This interview has been edited for length.