211 Minutes With.... Julia Salazar

Meet the other Democratic Socialist running in a New York election.

- Christian Lorentzen

On the Sunday after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the first self-described Democratic Socialist likely to claim a seat in Congress since Bernie Sanders, I spent the afternoon with Julia Salazar. Like Ocasio-Cortez, Salazar is a 20- something Latina Democratic Socialists of America member and first-time candidate taking on a centrist Boomer Democrat. In the state primary, she’ll go up against Martin Dilan, who’s represented the State Senate’s 18th District, in North Brooklyn, for 16 years. It’s the next step in an effort by the DSA to tip some of the country’s safest blue seats a little further to the left.

Salazar was knocking on all the doors of the Marcy Houses in Bed-Stuy, collecting some of the 1,000 signatures she’d need by July 9 to ensure her spot on the ballot. “Hi, I’m Julia, I live in the neighborhood, I’m running for State Senate in the election on September 13,” went her pitch. The first door she knocked on, the family invited her in to discuss tenants’ rights, health care, fixing the subway system.