On the cover of New York Magazine’s March 4–17, 2019 issue, writer Simon van Zuylen-Wood takes a look at the lives of New York City’s young socialists. Socialism is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s calling card, Trump’s latest rhetorical bludgeon, and a fixture of the Brooklyn social scene, it seems. Included in the package is a guide to socialism’s intellectual heroes, Twitter savants, neoliberal enemies, and common buzzwords; a debate between New York columnist Jonathan Chait and Jacobin founder Bhaskar Sunkara on what’s wrong with liberalism; and more.
“I actually got thinking about this story a couple years ago, when I started noticing more and more of my generational cohort — including, maybe, myself? — drifting leftward,” van Zuylen-Wood says about the origins of this story. “Fast-forward to 2019 and we’re living in AOC’s world. The time seemed ripe to document the way socialism has become not just a political program but a lived experience for young New Yorkers.”