Deep Organizing At Scale How Solidarity Tech Helped Power Zohran

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 27, 2025, 5:43 PM

deep organizing at scale how solidarity tech helped power zohran

Perhaps the most distinct feature of Zohran Mamdani’s primary campaign was his ‘man on the street’ videos. Talking directly to the camera, often while walking, Zohran captivates audiences on social media with his humor and energy. And every video seemed to end with just about the same appeal: “get signed up to join a canvass in your area.” To win June’s Democratic primary, Mamdani’s campaign mobilized an army of volunteers. More than 50,000 people signed up to volunteer and upwards of 30,000 or more actually attended a canvass, led by over 400 field leads and augmented by around 40 paid canvassers with fluency in... Earlier tonight, our campaign passed 1.5 million doors knocked across the five boroughs.

Here are some of the volunteers who made it happen. pic.twitter.com/lSUs4BDRsI Behind those numbers sat not just good vibes or a popular working class election platform, but a piece of infrastructure that translated viral attention into material turnout: Solidarity Tech, a CRM designed by organizers... Ivan Pardo, Founder of Solidarity Tech used his organizing platform to successfully manage the over 100,000 volunteers for the campaign of Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York. This platform was originally designed to be multilingual from its inception to organize non-English-speaking rideshare drivers. While technology was key to the Mamdani success, the authenticity of the candidate and message discipline were key to connecting with volunteers and voters.

#ZohranMamdani #ZohranforNYC #CRM #LaborOrganizing #CampaignVolunteers #GrassrootsTech #PoliticalInnovation #CommunityOrganizing #CivicTech #Democracy #VolunteerManagement #PoliticalCampaigns #NYC #SocialImpact #TechForGood The non-partisan Digital Politics Podcast with Karen Jagoda explores political and advocacy campaign best practices, new technologies and innovative approaches to voter engagement, fundraising, ground game strategies, cross-media advertising, using social media to promote... Since 2007, this show has spotted trends and interviewed strategists on the campaign trail as well as candidates, elected officials, and solutions providers who are bringing new tools to campaign staffers and volunteers. Ivan Pardo, Founder of Solidarity Tech, shares how tech can solve organizing bottlenecks for political campaigns. We discuss how Solidarity Tech was used for digital organizing in Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign in New York and Catherine Connelly’s presidential win in Ireland. Beyond tech functionality, we discuss how CRM platforms can give campaigns a human touch, how tech integrates with the culture of a campaign, and the potential downsides of gamification for volunteer organizing.

You can read more about Solidarity Tech’s origins and functionality here. Social Media and Politics is a podcast bringing you innovative, first-hand insights into how social media is changing the political game. Subscribe for interviews and analysis with politicians, academics, and leading industry experts to get their take on how social media influences the ways we engage with politics and democracy. If Zohran Mamdani wins Tuesday’s New York City mayoral election – and, according to polling, he likely will – he’ll have an army of volunteers to thank for elevating a campaign that once seemed... Behind the campaign’s 95,000 volunteers – who have ramped up their outreach in the closing days of the mayoral race – is a critical piece of infrastructure called Solidarity Tech, an all-in-one CRM that... Solidarity Tech, which launched last year, traces its origins to efforts to organize rideshare drivers in California.

Its founder Ivan Pardo, a labor organizer and software developer, said that those origins make it particularly useful for “people-powered campaigns,” like Mamdani’s operation, which has relied heavily on its ability to turn viral... When a potential supporter sees a piece of online content from Mamdani’s campaign, they’re given the option to click through to a volunteer sign-up page that then enters their information into Solidarity Tech’s CRM,... “Once somebody comes to one event or engages with a piece of content, you need to try to develop their level of commitment to the campaign – to follow up with them, get people... Traditional politics buys attention; creator politics earns it and then routes it. In 2025, Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign proved that the shortest path from a vertical video to a vote is an operational pipeline—one that starts in the feed and ends at a... This article analyzes that pipeline with a brand-manager’s lens: the creative system, the conversion system, and the organizing system that made the internet’s mayor a real mayor.

Short, mobile-first clips used three-second hooks, visual humor, and site-specific filming (streets, bodegas, transit). Imperfection acted as a trust signal for Gen Z and young Millennials. The campaign normalized fan labor—songs, skits, edits. When supporters create, your effective CPM collapses, and message credibility rises via peer-to-peer diffusion. Instagram automations replied to story mentions, pushed links via DM on comment triggers, and captured emails/SMS inside the app—avoiding algorithmic penalties for external links. Content in Urdu, Bengali, Arabic, and Hindi localized metaphors and everyday references (e.g., lassi cups to explain ranked-choice voting), turning recognition into rapport.

This seminar will be a presentation by Ivan Pardo, the founder of Solidarity Tech, facilitated by Micah Sifry, writer and organizer. Solidarity Tech was originally built to help organize rideshare workers – a notably difficult-to-organize constituency. More recently, it served as the main technology backbone for Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral campaign. The presentation will cover how the platform built for “deep organizing” of workers was leveraged as a CRM for grassroots political campaigns - including Mamdani. We will also facilitate a Q&A where we can ask questions to learn more about the complex governance of the system from from a socio-technical perspective. Get a glimpse into Solidarity Tech through Micah Sifry's Substack blog here: https://theconnector.substack.com/p/solidarity-tech-the-platform-powering

More about Metagov Seminar: The Metagov Seminar invites individuals working in online governance to present their work to a community of other researchers and practitioners. Seminar topics include, but are not limited to, computational tools for governance, governance incidents and case studies from online communities, topics in cryptoeconomics, and the design of digital constitutions. In the last two weeks, two monumental electoral victories have reenergized the international left: Catherine Connolly’s landslide victory in the Irish Presidential Election, and Zohran Mamdani’s heroic triumph in the New York City mayoral... The two campaigns were won both on the doors and online. In addition to both campaigns being powered by massive volunteer participation from broad layers of the socialist and progressive left, the two also utilized almost identical digital infrastructure and strategies. Here are five of the digital approaches which won it big in 2025.

It is almost a cliche now to note that Zohran has found success through his dynamic use of video content, and most especially his “man on the street” and “walk and talk” style videos. And the same has been noted about Connolly’s campaign, with the commentariat noting her campaign’s use of relatable content (like her keepie-uppies) to drive accidental virality. There is no doubt that video played a significant role in both campaigns, both in conveying a coherent political message capable of assembling a winning coalition and in bringing joy and whimsy into the... What is also interesting to note—at least for future campaigners seeking to replicate this video-campaigning style—is the use by both campaigns of supporter-sourced content in addition to high production value videos. Mamdani’s appearances on popular podcasts as well as tags in videos by social media influencers and spontaneous volunteers became a symbol of his popular appeal. Similarly, on the Connolly campaign, we leaned into grassroots desire to help the campaign, assembling a volunteer video team to edit timely and fun, if imperfect, videos and reels.

We made it a priority, time allowing, to give volunteers runway to contribute as well as a platform for their work that they could be proud of. The core team created a brand kit of template guides and graphics that we shared on easy-to-use, collaborative platforms like Canva and CapCut. With some guidance and feedback, volunteers were able to make significant progress on or almost entirely independently edit content such as other volunteers’ testimonials, event recaps, and candidate appearances on popular podcasts, TV, and... Alongside high production value content we created, this content helped provide a steady stream of IG/FB story content and even video and reel posts throughout every day of the campaign.

Deep Organizing At Scale How Solidarity Tech Helped Power Zohran

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Perhaps The Most Distinct Feature Of Zohran Mamdani’s Primary Campaign

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#ZohranMamdani #ZohranforNYC #CRM #LaborOrganizing #CampaignVolunteers #GrassrootsTech #PoliticalInnovation #CommunityOrganizing #CivicTech #Democracy

You Can Read More About Solidarity Tech’s Origins And Functionality

Its Founder Ivan Pardo, A Labor Organizer And Software Developer,