For the city of New York and for people in the US, Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the mayoral election is certainly a far better result than any other outcome. However, we must avoid falling for the same blunders of complacency, individualism, and wishful thinking that led to the rise of Trump and the global far right.

Social movements must finally learn that the old strategy of “socialist faces in high places” does not break the cycle of violence and injustice. Well-meaning and honest progressive candidates are entangled with positions of authority and pressured from all sides by elites and bureaucrats. This leaves them little space to do anything meaningful with their pre-electoral promises. Sooner or later, Mamdani’s supporters will be disappointed when he fails to deliver on his (moderately) socialist promises.

We must not forget the Obama administration, or the experiences of the parliamentary left in Europe last decade, when the hype around SYRIZA in Greece and Podemos in Spain quickly turned into widespread cynicism and passivity. In the same period, leftist municipalist platforms managed to take local governments in different cities, most notably Barcelona. But there too, very little of significance was achieved and these platforms lost office, largely to blame on their own actions and inactions.

In the US, many cities saw similar trends over the decades—including Atlanta, Detroit, New Orleans, and Washington, DC—where local and regional political leaders rose from the ranks of the civil rights, labour, and Black Power movements, only to immediately turn around and betray their communities. These mayors ended up doing just what their predecessors did: displacing poor families, covering for police murder, cutting taxes for corporations while raising them for the poor and working class, and in particular repressing new popular movements for autonomous self-government.

It would be foolhardy to ignore this persistent historical trend that spreads across borders and continents. After so many disappointments, surely it must be clear that it is not a question of honesty but a structural barrier that prevents progressive candidates from fulfilling their pre-electoral promises. We must stop expecting people in authority to deliver social justice and equality, no matter who they happen to be. Instead we have to focus on the way power is structured, not who is at the top. Does anyone expect a leftist politician like Mamdani to endorse radically democratic governance?

Instead of placing expectations in progressive candidates, local movements and grassroots participatory institutions could confederate and push for recognition—ultimately as the highest decision-making bodies in their localities. What we most urgently need, however, is deep transformation of our cities and their economies, infrastructure, services, public space, ecology, and social life. For this, no help will come from mayor’s office.

We are confronted by myriad crises, and the only way out of this mess is for an organised populace to command real community power. There are no shortcuts.